Dennis Howlett argues that the tweet cycle is faster than the blog one, with implications for business. I'm with Doc Searls on this, who sees it as "proving useful for getting some live information out to some people.".

The Vatican is denying a report that it plans to assemble exorcism-conducting squads, ready to be sent around the world to meet rising demand. A Vatican University priest, Paolo Scarafoni (Gabriele Amorth in one account), has spoken to the press:

Vatican chiefs... have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcistinchief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus."Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.

In a rapid response, the Vatican demurs:

"Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of ordering local bishops to bring in garrisons of exorcists to fight demonic possession,'' Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters in Rome Friday.

December 29, 2007

This story about insidious car fuel continues our theme of airborne brain damage. Starting in the 1920s, one American fuel product wafted lead traces into the atmosphere via exhaust plumes. The history at times resembles a nightmarish pulp fiction, as a money-making poison spreads around the world, ultimately contributing to sickness and crime.

Ethyl was the brand name of a gasoline mixed with tetra-ethyl lead. It was designed to reduce engine knock and improve performance, but also contained enough lead to eventually damage human nervous tissue.

Just making the stuff killed some workers, sickened more, and gave others hallucinations: "the larger facility in Deepwater came to be known as the 'House of Butterflies' owing to the insect hallucinations." At one Ohio plant, starting

[o]n October 26, 1924, the first of five workers who would die in quick succession at Standard Oil's Bayway TEL works perished, after wrenching fits of violent insanity; thirty-five other workers would experience tremors, hallucinations, severe palsies and other serious neurological symptoms of organic lead poisoning. In total, more than 80 percent of the Bayway staff would die or suffer severe poisoning.

The effects on the rest of the human race were initially set aside, as the fuel became something of a global standard. One generation later (!) a scientist proved that lead had permeated the total world environment so thoroughly as to contaminate Greenland. Patterson's work lead to the 1970 United States Clean Air Act.

After that, phase II of the Ethyl Gothic appeared, as research suggests phasing out Ethyl and allied fuels has reduced the amount of lead in human exposure. At least one study correlates the drop to the reduction in American and British crime rates during the 1990s.

Archaeologists discovered an ancient Aztec pyramid in Mexico City, delighting horror fans everywhere.Setting aside the historical impact of this find, the details are right out of a Gothic film or novel:

"We have found the stairs of this, much older pyramid. The (Aztec) timeline is going to need to be revised," archaeologist Patricia Ledesma said at the site on Thursday....The archeologists also have detected a sculpture that could be of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or of the god of the sky and earth Tezcatlipoca. In addition, the dig has turned up five skulls and a series of rooms near the pyramid that could date from 1431.