Mexican election rigged? About a quarter of a million people chanting "Fraud! Fraud!" jammed Mexico City's central square Saturday to back leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's bid to overturn his narrow electoral defeat with court appeals and mass marches. More here and here. Here, you can get one democracy-focused NGO's pre-election take on the state of affairs in Mexico. Here is a look at Mexico's version of red states vs. blue states. And here and here are a bunch of links to other articles about the election.

Walter Benjamin on drugs. "Hashish, Benjamin believed, gave its user...a sort of X-ray vision providing access to the inner workings of time and space, culture and history. In a 1933 entry, he writes, 'There is no more valid legitimation of crock'--Benjamin's code word for hashish--'than the consciousness of having suddenly penetrated, with its help, that most hidden, generally most inaccessible world of surfaces.'" Benjamin's On Hashish is online here. more inside

Evangelical evolution. "The mellowing of evangelical Christianity may well be the big American religious story of this decade."

After Freud. On his 150th anniversary, Freud's legacy is being dismantled by the ideas of his greatest challenger, Aaron Beck. Cognitive therapy is now the orthodox talking cure in Britain, and the government wants more of it. But with cognitive science comes a new battle for the meaning of the human mind. From Prospect magazine.

Bio Mapping is a project being conducted by London artist Christian Nold which tracks how individuals' emotions change as they move from place to place while going about their day's business. Read more about it here.

Hacker fears 'UFO cover-up.'

Anxiety-Panic History. "Anxieties, Treatments and Disorders Throughout the Ages." A sample entry: "Electrical stimulation for therapeutic purposes is not new. At least two millennium [sic] ago, physicians used electric eels to relieve pain." Another (which Chy should enjoy): "the Crusaders fought a band of Moslem warriors known as 'hashshashin,' so called because they used hashish prior to battle to reduce fear and control pain." Sources cited.

Stealth campaign of super-wealthy to repeal U.S. federal estate tax revealed. Meanwhile, President Bush "wants to eliminate what he likes to call the 'death tax'" at the same time as "he wants to end Social Security's lump sum death benefit -- a $255 check that the families of many of the nation's poorest use to help pay for their funerals." (Second link from Business Week, of all places.) more inside

The rewards of being goth. While goths may be more likely to engage in self-harming behavior, they may also be more likely to grow up to be successful professionals. [via Mind Hacks]

Global Corruption Report 2006. From Transparency International, "the global coalition against corruption." Lots and lots of info. This year there's a special focus on health care corruption, including reports entitled The causes of corruption in the health sector (.pdf) and Corruption in the pharmaceutical sector (.pdf). Also, reports on corruption in countries from Algeria to Venezuela (two downloads: A to K (.pdf) and M to Z (.pdf)). Plus, much, much more! more inside

Death by Smiley Face: When Rivals Disdain Profit. New York Times article: "There is another breed of rival lurking online for traditional media. . . . These are new-media ventures that leave the competition scratching their heads because they don't really aim to compete in the first place; their creators are merely taking advantage of the economics of the online medium to do something that they feel good about."

Guitar Shred Show: The way of the exploding solo! "Mr. Fastfinger reveals the arts and secrets of the electric guitar to all." Inspired by StoryBored's FPP below. Tear it up, grasshopper!

War Without End. SF Chronicle 4-part feature chronicling several severely injured Iraq-war soldiers' treatment and reentry into society. Here's part 1, and part 2, and part 3, and part 4. Also includes photo galleries and videos and a podcast by one of the writers of the series.

Curious George: Deathbed gems. What are some of the priceless things your loved ones (or others) said while they were about to die? more inside

The God Fossil. "For the past 20 years, a small cadre [of scientists and social scientists] has been working on explaining religion as a product of evolution itself. These anthropologists and psychologists wonder if the nearly universal human tendency to believe in gods is a kind of programming that resulted from natural selection."

Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down.' Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that . . . the movements' advocates are Leninists who "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States". more inside

Curious George: USB wi-fi adapter for an old iBook. I've got an old iBook, running OSX, and I want to get wireless access. Anybody know a USB wi-fi adapter that'll work with my machine with minimal tinkering? more inside

Capitol Police arrest antiwar activist Sheehan: Invited to State of the Union address, she is removed from gallery. Also, check out Sheehan's description of what really happened here.

Web Site Takes a Happy Approach to News. This is the kind of thing (the site could easily be renamed PutYourHeadInTheSand.com) that makes me ashamed to be a human being. But here it is: HappyNews.com. Be sure to check out the hard-hitting "Secret Santa exchanges made easier" expose!

Barbra Streisand cancels her subscription to the L.A. Times due to the paper's firing of liberal columnist Robert Scheer. Laugh all you want, but Babs is probably onto something when she posits that Scheer's dismissal is "part of a larger trend toward the corporatization of our media." Indeed, the New Yorker recently published an article detailing the gutting of the L.A. Times by the suits at Chicago's Tribune Co., which owns the Times. more inside