Hardcore porn makes for pretty compelling TV when viewed in its unscrambled form, but once the action is fed through a scrambler into my 27-inch Sony, something much different emerges -- something finer and more rewarding. Those highly choreographed shag sessions materialize on the screen as the distorted, sliced-up sequences of porno-cubism that jargon-makers call "Picasso porn."

A ramrod-stiff penis here, a jiggling breast there, a vague thrusting of hips that you can't quite trace to two distinguishable human bodies -- scrambled porn is a moving mosaic of sex. It can be a little hard to follow the action, as you squint into the flickering screen, but you're captivated in a way that you never are with straight porn, because you have to envision with your mind's eye the parts you can't quite see. And that's what makes the scrambled stuff so much more fulfilling: It leaves more to the imagination.

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Since then the question has dogged me -- relentlessly -- from every quarter. It's couched in TV ads, splashed on the sides of city buses and printed on brochures that arrive mysteriously in our mail.

A poster at my bank applies the pressure tactics to exceptionally ominous effect. An attractive four-color poster -- promoting the bank's financial planning services -- features a young, pigtailed girl working furiously at her homework, penciling out a tough math equation under the glare of her desk lamp. The ruthless caption bullies mercilessly: "She's doing her part ... Are you doing yours?"

Am I, in other words, as panicked as I should be about amassing a small fortune to pay for my kid's education? Well, yes; yes I am. My daughter is only 13 months old, and I can already feel the future's financial death grip clutching at my throat.

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As an alternative to traditional medication, family doctors in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, will refer patients who are struggling through bouts of depression, stress and anxiety to a "bibliotherapist" at a local library. The bibliotherapist will then scan the library's database to create a customized course of books designed to assuage each patient's particular malady. The goal is to pair patients with books that will serve as an inspiration for them to get better -- or at least cheer them up. The pilot program is funded by the government, local health authorities and a libraries' charity.

Catherine Morris, a Kirklees librarian and the program's organizer, says the program isn't designed for people with severe psychiatric illness, but for those troubled by depression or mild anxiety.

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Consider the case of Melissa, a 32-year-old news writer in Washington, who, after 10 mind-numbing years on the job, had a serious bout of malaise, felt that life had passed her by, decided to quit the damn job and cash out her savings, and went solo vagabonding in the wilds of South America.

One balmy night on the deck of a boat cruising off the coast of Ecuador, she found herself enveloped in the arms of the boat's swashbuckling captain. They kissed -- deeply, passionately. She experienced a sense of absolute liberation, a thrill of letting go. She felt flooded with life-giving energy. Her world, to put it simply, was rocked.

Melissa's cathartic kiss definitely made her feel better, and it might even have been good for her health.

Adrianne Blue's 1997 book "On Kissing" outlines the physiology behind the fireworks. Kissing is a highly orchestrated maneuver. You lean in, tilt your head to avoid a nose collision, and the muscles in your shoulder, neck and back are called into play as the brain's motor center gears itself to the delicate task of steering the lips and tongue. Your lips are loaded with nerve endings, and as your mouth meets your partner's, impulses fire through your neural network. Your brain tells your lungs to work harder, your heart to beat faster, your salivary glands to pump moisture into your mouth. Your jaw, the one movable bone in the human skull, hinges open as you extend your tongue.

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On Monday, IBM unveiled a $100 million initiative to build a computer that will be 1,000 times more powerful than Deep Blue, the machine that humbled chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and 2 million times more powerful than your average desktop PC. Researchers say the computer, nicknamed Blue Gene, could be operational within five years.

Blue Gene's first assignment will be to solve the biological conundrum that scientists call the "protein-folding problem." In the human body, proteins are the bundles of amino acids that control all cellular processes, carrying out basic functions like metabolizing food. Each protein folds into a three-dimensional shape that determines its function, but even a slight error in this folding process can lead to disease.

Once the protein-folding puzzle is solved, scientists will be able to repair defective proteins in sick patients and create new "designer proteins" to combat disease. Pharmaceutical companies will have the ability to make high-tech prescription drugs customized to the needs of individual people, and doctors will be able to respond more rapidly to changes in bacteria that cause them to become drug-resistant.

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During the experimental procedure -- which has been performed on just a handful of patients in the United States on an experimental basis -- a microchip is inserted into the retina, the layer of cells at the back of the eye that converts light patterns into nerve impulses that travel to the brain. Any retina cells that have not been completely degenerated by disease are stimulated by the chip into functioning again. Images are transported to the chip via a camera that converts the external images into a series of electronic signals. The camera is mounted on a frame that the patient wears like eyeglasses.

A U.K. spokesperson for Motown, Wonder's recording label, told BBC News that it was not clear when Wonder is planning to undergo the surgery.

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Other predictions are just as revolutionary without being part of your bathroom routine. Patients who are going blind will have biochip photosensors implanted in their eyes to act as artificial retinas. Diabetics will wear sensors under their skin to monitor glucose levels, with an internal reservoir dosing out insulin when the levels drop. And once scientists piece together the genetic jigsaw known as the human genome, they'll forecast your health problems years in advance and design personalized treatments to get you back on your feet.

This is the future of health and medicine as envisioned by scientists peering into the next millennium from the brink of 1999. Forty-two international medical journals, led by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), are dedicating their pages this month to a "global theme issue" on new medical technologies and their impact on health care.

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"They said there was a 50-50 chance that it was cancer," says Amanda, a 32-year-old in Alexandria, Va. She had to wait two days for the biopsy results. During those two days, friends and family rallied around to comfort her -- and to pray. "Numerous people, family and friends, were praying for me," Amanda says. "Everybody said, 'Our prayers are with you.' I was on prayer lists all over the city."

A friend lit candles for Amanda at her church. Two Episcopal priests came to her hospital room to issue formal prayers. One of them laid hands on her as he prayed, and Amanda felt a strange heat passing into her body. Two days later her biopsy report came back. Benign.

So what have we here? Another unlucky victim of fate who lucked out in the end? Did the pendulum on those 50-50 odds just happen to swing her way? Or is the explanation less random, more mysterious -- did faith and prayer have something to do with it?

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Or can you?

Recent screw-ups and scandals -- the most recent involving a school official accused of selling body parts for pocket money -- have raised a red flag on the issue of whole body donations at universities across the country.

In 1996, a lawsuit against UCLA charged that as many as 18,000 bodies donated between 1950 and 1993 were cremated alongside dead lab animals and dumped in trash bins. In June of this year, a Dallas man who had donated his wife's body to the University of Texas Southwestern got a bewildering delivery in the mail -- a package -- sans explanation or warning -- containing his wife's ashes.

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Some parents in Britain have come up with a whole new reason to party -- they're holding special get-togethers to get their children sick.

According to a BBC report, British parents are holding "disease parties," deliberately exposing their otherwise healthy kids to other children with contagious diseases. They have not replaced birthday parties in popularity. But Magda Taylor, head of the Informed Parent, a British group concerned about the
safety of vaccinations, says dozens of parents around the country are taking part in the fetes. Since they live all over, the parents have to be highly organized to get everyone together before -- gasp -- the child gets better.

Typically, this is how it works: A parent signs up as a member of a local network, and when one of the children in the network gets sick, the party call goes out to all parents. The ones who want to infect their child with the disease du jour show up at the appointed hour at the host's home.

But why would parents do such a thing?

"They want their children to gain immunity naturally," says Taylor. "They believe that vaccinations weaken the child's immune system," allowing a whole slew of other infections to move in.

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Troutwine is a Missouri psychologist whose
consulting firm performs psychological assessments of players for NFL
franchises, helping them put together teams that are mentally as well as
physically fit. Troutwine has worked for 17 teams since breaking into
big-league sports psychology in 1984. During each year's college draft, he
gives clients guidance on their picks by working up psychological snapshots
of the various hot-shot players coming out of college.

Through one-on-one interviews and written tests, Troutwine draws a picture
of each player's mental condition and leadership potential. "It's structural
behavioral interviewing," he explains. "I dig for specific behavioral examples of what they've done in the past. I'll say, 'Give me an example of a time when you
impacted another player's performance.'"

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National Depression Screening Day, held as part of this week's Mental Illness Awareness Week, started in 1991 with just 90 screening sites. This year, some 3,000 sites across the country are participating.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 19 million adults in the United States will suffer from a depressive illness this year, and many will be incapacitated for weeks or months because their illness goes untreated.

Part of the problem is that some people don't know the difference between clinical depression and a simple case of the doldrums. "Depression can be defined as a constellation of symptoms that evolves over time," says Joelle Reizes, assistant director of the National Mental Illness Screening Project (NMIS). "The key to depression is not just the symptoms but how long they persist," Reizes says, adding that symptoms of depression will linger for at least two weeks.

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A new British study shows that mounting workplace pressure is leading to an increasing incidence of squabbles and outright slugfests between colleagues who are stressed out.

A survey of more than 600 workers in England revealed that 64 percent felt they were bothered by workplace stress. Fifty-six percent said they were losing sleep, 26 percent had gotten sick and 28 percent had suffered a bout of desk rage that led to -- as the British so daintily put it -- a "stand-up row" with a colleague. Twenty-eight percent had turned to booze to settle their nerves, and one in three puffed cigarettes to cool down.

To avoid desk rage, psychologist Sue Keane of the British Psychological Society urges workers to take breaks throughout the workday. She told the BBC, "We are seeing desk rage as stress builds to intolerable levels and conflicts boil over between colleagues. Just a few minutes out of the office or workplace at lunchtime could make all the difference."

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This common form of social altercation -- let's call it Personal Space Invasion Syndrome (PSIS) -- has emerged as a malady of epidemic proportions. And if allowed to rage unchecked, PSIS can undermine your health.

"The violation of personal space increases tension levels enormously," says Robert Sommer, a psychologist at the University of California-Davis and author of the book "Personal Space." Sommer conducted research by going to parks and libraries and deliberately violating the personal space of innocent bystanders to see how they reacted. When people's space is trespassed upon, he says, "It provokes cathartic responses. They begin tapping their toes, they pull at their hair, they get completely rigid. It may not trigger a full-blown schizophrenic episode, but it's clearly not good for your health."

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Dr. Dorthe Hansen of the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre and colleagues
in Denmark analyzed the boy-to-girl ratio of 3,072 babies who were conceived around the time of a traumatic event in the mother's life. For the purpose of the study, a traumatic event was defined as the death of the mother's partner or an older child, or a serious illness in the family. The birth ratio of traumatized mothers was compared to a control group of mothers who were not exposed to traumatic events.

The research showed that only 49 percent of the traumatized mothers
gave birth to boys, as opposed to 51.2 percent in the control group. "The
results," the authors write, "show that severe life events may reduce the
sex ratio, especially for exposures around the time of conception."

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But does number you-know-what really have the power to wreak havoc in our lives? Terri Bonebright, assistant professor of psychology at DePauw University, believes that Friday the 13th is nothing more than a bogeyman date that people use to account for the snags and snafus of everyday life.

"It all revolves around superstition," Bonebright said in a press release. "In the case of Friday the 13th, people have been told it will be a bad day, so they selectively remember all the bad events that occur throughout the day."

So if you get fired from your job today, or smash up your car, you can blame it on Friday the 13th. Superstition, Bonebright said, provides us with an excuse for explaining away our mistakes and disgraces. In other words, it's an easy way to rationalize the screw-ups for which we ourselves are ultimately responsible.

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The navel is the locus, the centerpiece of the human body. It's the communal scar of humanhood, the sole button on your birthday suit. Japanese spiritualist Hogen Fukunaga writes, "The navel is the core of everything about the person." So it logically follows that the unlucky person who ends up with an abnormal version of this most central of body parts is doomed to a life of dubious distinction.

Growing up a stick-man skinny kid, I had an outie bellybutton. Later, when I got a little meat around my middle, my navel caved in on itself and morphed into a more conventional-looking innie. But I still remember the trauma and ridicule, the stares and snickers that I was forced to endure as a child outie. I recall the extreme measures I took, back then, to avoid public exposure -- ducking into an abandoned corner of the locker room to change clothes, sucking in my stomach to create the illusion of an innie, tugging the waistband of my swimsuit above my midsection so nobody could see my damning malformation.

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One group of patients used a jaw-relaxation technique, another group listened to music and a third group used a combination of relaxation and music. A control group received nothing. The participants were able to dose themselves with morphine or Demerol by pressing a button connected to their intravenous pumps. To ensure the credibility of the study, a computerized program was used to verify that all the patients shared similar characteristics in regard to demographic factors, gender, pain history, medication use and type of surgery.

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While the American Meat Institute was hosting a hot dog lunch inside the
Rayburn House Office Building, DuVal, accompanied by two curvy sidekicks in red, white and blue bikinis, stood outside the building handing out veggie
wieners and sodas. Invitations to the Not Dog Lunch showed a scantily clad
DuVal posing over the caption "I'm throwing a party -- can you come? Eating meat can cause impotence."

PETA claims that the fat and cholesterol in meat and other animal products can play a key role in the development of erectile dysfunction. In an article on PETA's Meat Stinks Web site, Dr. Neal Barnard writes that "artery blockages, a major cause of erectile dysfunction, are strongly linked to one of America's most popular food categories -- meat."

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Charm is a gastroenterologist, professor of medicine at the University of California and amiable oddball who calls himself -- sans any trace of irony -- America's No. 2 Doctor, the King of the Colon and the Prince of Poop. He spells out his last name as an acronym for his personal mantra: Choosing Health And Realizing Miracles. And he believes in the miracle of colonics.

You've seen the ads in the back pages of certain health magazines, in "personal services" sections of alternative newspapers and on bulletin boards at organic food stores: colon hydrotherapy, colonic irrigation, get your colonic here. It's the naturopathic procedure that calls for gallons of water to be pumped through your large intestine to wash out any lurking toxic sludge.

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