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Fair and balanced, too!

June 25, 2004, 6:00 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

No need for chocolate, condoms or diapers in a machine's worldview: I was hoping that Human Body Could Soon Activate Cell Phone Commands from CNN was about rudimentary telepathy, but it's ear jamming, shopping and phoning home to the wired house. (There's video at the link.) It starts off okay...

Inventors said phones of the future will not just get smaller, but they will use your body as an extension of the phone. The finger whisper is a wearable phone in development that will send vibrations up your finger to make and receive calls.

Inventor Masaaki Fukumoto explained that the key to the phone uses a microphone and receiver placed on the tendon in your wrist.

"This phone uses bone conduction," he explained. "The vibrations travel up your finger and echo in your ear canal, so it's the only sound you hear."

...but then moves into a machine world where human tools and toys are ignored.

Godo Irukayama explained that a phone will soon be able to keep an eye on your home while you're away -- closing curtains and turning on lights at the touch of a button -- all monitored by video on your phone.

I remember cartoons about how the appliances would play when we were away. Clocks dances, stoves lit, flames danced, coffee perced, toast buttered itself.

It also tells you when an intruder has broken into your home so you can send him a message.

"I'm obviously not home now but leave." Pretty threatening, eh?
But perhaps I'll be Bond and drop a dashingly clever net after I lure him under a hidden trapdoor I open with my phone.

Yeah, right.

"Pretty soon, the only thing you will need when you walk out the door is a phone and a handkerchief. You can shop with your phone, organize your schedule, monitor your home, everything," Irukayama said.

He forgot chocolate, grooming aids, cash for street musicians and backstreet bars, band-aids or condoms (the one you're more likely to need), sunblock, and if you have kids you'd better hope the door you walk out is on the Starship Enterprise, which comes with a replicator that can whip up whatever they might need RIGHT NOW.

Irukayama insists that the new phones will not just benefit humans. In consumer tests, feeding your pet through your phone was one of the most popular uses.

Your pet need never even see you!

The phone call home can only activate a process on the other end. I think you're going to have to start buying another bunch of appliances to do things you'd do if you were home, but now will never do again.

Then you'll need a robot to bring you phoned-in-fresh coffee in bed.
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When your ship comes in: From Shelley Powers, with obvious great glee.

Ahem. Announcement.

The August Edition of Missouri Life will feature a photo essay of Missouri rivers, lakes, and ponds by writer/photographer Shelley Powers.

Subdued dancing and prancing about occurs, punctuated with an occasional raw, primal scream of delight. Cat hides, rabbits run, small children begin to cry.

This won't surprise anyone who frequents Shelley's blog, where she posts large versions of the beautiful places she hikeds during the day. I'm in awe, since with all this creative talent, she's also a programmer.
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The muckraker: Off the South Side streets sprang a groundbreaking journalist who has revealed some of America's darkest secrets. The Chicago Tribune (reg. req.) profiles Seymour Hersh. Excerpt:

...Framed by My Lai and Abu Ghraib, Hersh's reporting over 35 years shows how war can shred the human spirit, driving soldiers and public officials to massacre and torture civilians. He detects vestiges of racism beneath the savage follies he's exposed, from Vietnam to Iraq. Most of all, Hersh's work stands for the proposition that America's history is written in part by patriots who ask tough questions.

Over iced tea at the Medici on 57th Street, and during his later speech at the university, Hersh lays bare the burden of being the go-to guy for disgruntled national security officials, privy to globe-rattling secrets he sometimes cannot corroborate and sometimes believes but cannot publish without burning his sources.

"We're living in dark times," he says, gently rubbing his gray-thatched temples.

He inhabits a reality we can barely glimpse, crosscut by the chatter of encrypted satellite signals. For national security officials, leaking to Hersh is "generally better than writing a memo to the president," remarks his friend and competitor --Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.

In recent months, The New Yorker editor David Remnick says, Hersh "seems to begin every phone call with the line, `It's worse than you think.'"

The secrets don't show on his face, but when Hersh lets down his guard even a little, the inner life of the inside man seems to leak into the air around him. He is haunted by the as-yet-unpublished photographs of Iraq prison abuses. "You haven't begun to see evil until you've seen some of these pictures that haven't come out," he says.

Hersh is worried that America doesn't have good intelligence within the Iraqi insurgency. "We don't know what's going to happen next," he says. "We have no endgame."

Whether you agree with him or not, this kind of frankness makes Hersh an anomaly among his tightly buttoned investigative peers.

"The fragility of our government is terrifying," he tells his U. of C. audience. A handful of neoconservatives took control of the levers of government "without a peep from the bureaucracy, the Congress, the press," he says. "It was so easy. . . . What is it about us that made us so vulnerable to these people?"...

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Outsourcing on the line in Mass.: Earlier in the week, Gina Minks of Displaced Techies blogged,

Call to Action: Contact Governor Romney about Outsourcing and the State Budget.

Last week, the Massachusetts State Legislature approved a 2005 budget with a clause prohibiting the Commonwealth from hiring companies with outsourced operations. Governor Mitt Romney has until June 27 to endorse or veto this amendment. Romney has said he's against outsourcing in the private sector, having proposed incentives for companies that hire Massachusetts’s workers. His endorsement of this amendment would be a great way for the Governor to achieve his goal of stopping jobs from leaving the state....

...Please contact Governor Romney and ask him to take the initiative to stop outsourcing and support the no-outsourcing amendment.

Tell him you support his position against outsourcing in the private sector and that he should take the same position at the state level. Tell him we should be creating employment opportunities for Massachusetts and American workers and you do not want your tax dollars supporting overseas outsourcing operations.

You can contact the governor using the information below.

By Web Form:http://mass.gov/Agovwebmail/WebMailPageControl.ser?level=101

By Phone/Fax:

State House
Office of the Governor
Room 360
Boston, MA 02133

Phone: (617) 725-4005
FAX: (617) 727-9725
TTY: (617) 727-3666

Now, though, she's more than concerned, after a mass mailing from the Mass Software Council. She excerpts, adding comments in brackets.

• This restriction on free trade is a bad precedent; already, other countries are considering prohibitions against US companies competing for international contracts.

• Companies must retain the flexibility to align operations and make workforce sourcing decisions as necessary to meet customer demands
[Governor Romney, this statement is completely opposite of what you have stated that you want to do.....i.e. bring more jobs to MA. "Aligning operations" and "making workforce sourcing decisions" are code words to all workers for layoffs

• Companies must have the flexibility to build the best products and services at the most competitive prices.
[This is a code for "companies need access to cheap labor"]

• We urge you to VETO Outside Section 21 -- "Prohibition Against Outsourcing Jobs", which would create barriers to growth, innovation and job creation in Massachusetts.

[The last point is just silly. Currently, food stamp and Medicaid operations for the Commonwealth are handled in part by workers in India. These workers do not make anywhere near US minimum wage.]

She wants to ask the governor,

• Do you think that the contractors who won the bid for these jobs are refunding the state for the difference in what they would have had to pay American workers and what they pay their Indian workforce?

• Is it fair to shut out local, home grown contractors from winning these bids since they do not have access to the cheap foreign labor, and must pay their workers minimum wage (at least)?

• Is it right for people who have to collect benefits from the state because they cannot make a living wage to be served by people who make even less? Why not keep those jobs here, and give people an opportunity to get off public assistance?

• Why are our tax dollars going to make companies from other countries rich?

Use the addresses above to make your views known.
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Related: Christians in the West outsourcing prayers to India

BBC to launch Arabic channel: Coming full circle. From the Guardian (U.K.),

The BBC is in talks about launching a 24-hour news channel broadcasting in Arabic across the UK, Europe and the Arab world.

The venture would pit the BBC against the Qatar-based al-Jazeera station, whose original nucleus of journalists were trained by the corporation.

A BBC spokeswoman said it had been presented with the idea, which is still at the planning stage, by the Foreign Office.

"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has asked the BBC to develop a proposition for a BBC Arabic television service of news, information, discussion programmes and documentaries, to be broadcast across the Arab world and also in Europe and the UK for Arabic speakers," the spokeswoman said.

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: You might want to bookmark that one for future use.
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Band tweaks John Q. Adams' 1824 campaign song for Kerry: Slavery's comin', knavery's comin', plunder's comin', wonder's comin', hatin's comin', Satan's comin' if John Quincy not be comin'...

Jeremy Schlosberg turned me on to this from the band Piñataland this morning:

...have you seen this?:

An eclectic, history-obsessed band from Brooklyn (I think) has gotten their hands on, apparently, an actual campaign song used by John Quincy Adams (of Massachusetts) in the 1824 election and, with the alteration of but one syllable, have made a rather wonderful and relevant new song. ...

The MP3 is available online but they are asking for 99 cents, via Paypal, to support it.

It's free to stream (RealPlayer), though. More background and lyrics are here. Adams's song from 1824, Little Know Ye Who's Comin', is set to the tune of the Scottish Highland Muster Roll.

Slavery's comin', knavery's comin', plunder's comin', wonder's comin', hatin's comin', Satan's comin' if John Kerry not be comin'...

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June 24, 2004, 7:27 p.m.

Serious goings-on below, even without war, dueling candidates or Messiah Moon.

Breaking: Court Blocks Loosened FCC Media Limits:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday refused to allow loosened federal rules on media ownership to take effect, dealing a blow to large broadcasters like News Corp. (NCP.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) and Tribune Co.(TRB.N: Quote, Profile, Research) that may be looking to expand their reach.

Businesses will not be able to own more than one television station in a city, or both a newspaper and TV or radio station in a city, until the Federal Communications Commission better explains why that would not harm competition, the court said.

"The commission has not sufficiently justified its particular chosen numerical limits for local television ownership, local radio ownership, and cross-ownership of media within local markets," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia said in a 218-page opinion....

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Senate bill would ban P2P Networks: By Declan McCullagh at CNET:

Popular file-trading networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus would be outlawed under a new bill (pdf) that enjoys broad support from top Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Their legislation says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks and could also imperil some consumer electronics devices. ...

Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig: Even I can’t believe this,

Senator Hatch (who used to understand stuff) has introduced the INDUCE Act, which will criminalize the act of inducing another to commit a copyright violation. This is a brand new theory of copyright liability, which, as this floor statement makes clear, is directed at overturning Sony with respect to p2p.

The proposal alone is troubling enough. But the outrageous part is that there is talk that this massive new layer of federal regulation of technology will happen without hearings — indeed, that it will be passed in the next weeks.

Whatever the merits of this new regulatory program are (and, imho, there are not many), it should not happen without an opportunity for Congress to consider the full implications of this new regulation. The ramifications of this reach far beyond p2p.

Horrified comments follow.

Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law professor, NYC: INDUCE Act introduced

...The content industry would like to overrule Sony, and sees an opportunity to do so before all legislative activity ceases for the election. This is the Hollings bill in another guise. It would potentially make some legitimate technology liable for secondary copyright infringement -- things you love, like the Apple iPod.

The industry will say "If you're not with us, you're against us," and if you're against this bill you must be in favor of child pornography. The bill's proponents will claim that this is all incremental -- an application of patent standards that have worked well for years. But the INDUCE Act is much more than that: it is no less than an attempt to ensure that any equipment manufacturer that makes money in an atmosphere in which some copyright infringement may be occurring will itself be liable for infringement. ...

...this is bad legislation that will have a negative effect on a part of our economy -- the IT sector -- that contributes much more in terms of jobs and revenue to the country's economic health than the content industry does.

Here's a Wired story about other reactions: File-Trading Bill Stokes Fury

It includes this, from Will Rodger, director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association:

"As we read it, reporters who wrote about peer-to-peer file-trading networks could well be charged with inducing infringement," he said. "Their definition of inducement seems to cover almost anything."

They're not going to drag me into this, are they?
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Satire: RIAA Claims Music On Car Radios Meant Only For Original Vehicle Owner!!!! Trade Group Vows To Go After Passengers Who Illegally Share Soundwaves. By Cory Deitz, who runs About.com's radio group.

It's funny, and a nice way to convey the absurdity of pay-per-song-per-listener -- and more

In a more serious vein, Cory reports, RIAA Worried Digital Radio Will Create New Peer To Peer Sharing

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) encouraging the adoption of rules that would protect music played through digital radio receivers from widespread piracy.

According to the brief, the technology offers consumers numerous benefits, including increased fidelity and more exposure to music.

But, the RIAA’s filing outlines the dangers of unprotected "HD radio". This includes the ability to create free libraries of thousands of CD-like quality songs by “cherry-picking” the music wanted through an automated search function and redistributing songs over the Internet.

The RIAA’s brief argues that unprotected high-definition radio could become a popular substitute for the unauthorized peer-to-peer networks, as consumers could acquire all the music they want from free over-the-air broadcasts with CD-like quality without having to download any software, expose their computers to viruses and spyware or themselves to a copyright infringement lawsuit.

The RIAA’s brief makes it clear that there is no intent to prevent consumers from enjoying “HD radio” as they would traditional analog radio: manually pressing a button to start and stop recording a song. Instead, the group argues for rules that would prohibit “cherry-picking” or the unfettered redistribution of the music.

They want this to be a crime?

We did it all the time with cassettes and tapes in the '70s: Whole albums were broadcast without interruption, and we recorded them. Everybody prospered.

If you wanted a song played (i.e. "cherry-picking") you called a radio station that played that genre (oldies, art rock, metal, progressive) and requested it, turning a lot of other people on to the tune.

At all but the largest stations, the on-air DJ even answered the phone.

With digital radio, there's no DJ to call.

(Just how are we to discover new music if it's all locked up, tacked down and illegal to possess until you have a receipt?)

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AOL Worker Is Accused of Selling 93 Million E-Mail Names: NYT.

An engineer working for America Online was arrested yesterday and charged with stealing 92 million e-mail addresses of AOL customers and selling them to spammers that were peddling penis enlargement pills and online gambling sites.

The engineer, Jason Smathers, 24, was arrested at his home in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., yesterday. Sean Dunaway, 21, who was described by prosecutors as a broker of e-mail lists for spam, was arrested in Las Vegas. The United States attorney in Manhattan charged them both with violating the new federal antispam law.

The case is among the first criminal prosecutions under the new law, which took effect Jan. 1. Each defendant faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from their activities.

According to the complaint, Mr. Smathers used the identity of another AOL employee, who is based in Tucson, to gain access to the list of the "screen names" - AOL's name for e-mail addresses - of its members in May 2003. The list also included the telephone number, ZIP code and the type of credit card used by each AOL member. It did not include the actual credit card numbers, which are kept in a separate database.

Mr. Dunaway bought the list from Mr. Smathers to promote his own Internet gambling site and, in turn, sold the list to other spammers for $52,000. Later, last March, Mr. Dunaway paid Mr. Smathers $100,000 for an updated list. ...

Related: Blind Get Earful of Spam Daily: At Wired. You get it.
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The 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made by the film critics of The New York Times. I'm not sure how useful this is -- Invasion of the Body Snatchers isn't on it.

We've been building our own list here for about five years. -- "Browse hundreds of reviews written when the movies were new by Providence Journal film reviewer Michael Janusonis and his colleagues."

These aren't the best movies, just 657 reviews (and counting) in this searchable, browseable archive, including the really bad ones. We save everything.

You'll need a password from a Belo site to get in.
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Cardinal Says Denying Communion May Hurt: AP reports,

The head of a U.S. bishops' task force studying Roman Catholics in public life told fellow bishops that withholding Holy Communion from politicians or others could hurt the church in its efforts to stop abortion and euthanasia, according to documents released Wednesday.

But Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the task force leader, and a top Vatican cardinal who advised him, also indicated that the sacrament could be withheld under some circumstances.

McCarrick made the comments during the bishops' closed-door spiritual retreat last week in suburban Denver. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops disclosed details of the task force presentation Wednesday.

"Disciplinary actions are permitted," McCarrick said. "But they should be applied when efforts at dialogue, persuasion and conversion have been fully exhausted."

McCarrick said keeping the sacrament from defiant Catholic lawmakers could turn Communion into a "partisan political battleground," create a backlash in support of abortion rights and raise concerns about the loyalties of Catholic politicians.

"It could be more difficult for faithful Catholics to serve in public life because they might be seen not as standing up for principle, but as under pressure from the hierarchy," McCarrick said. "We could turn weak leaders who bend to the political winds into people who are perceived as courageous resistors of episcopal authority."...

That last paragraph warns of a backlash that recalls the anti-Catholic sentiment John F. Kennedy fought in 1960:

Kennedy addressed the "religious issue" in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1960:

"I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me.

"Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

"But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same."

..."I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

Before this speech, many non-Catholics feared that Rome would dictate American policy to Kennedy if he were elected. His eloquence largely calmed their fears.

(I blogged this and more back in April, when the issue first came to light. It's worth hauling out again in the light of Cardinal McCarrick's remarks.)

It would be tragic for America and, ultimately, for Catholicism if Catholic politicians were forced to represent the views of Rome or face rejection by their church. There might never be another Catholic president.

The bishops' decision didn't please abortion opponents either:

Pro-Life Group Criticizes Bishops' Abortion-Communion Decision:

(CNSNews.com) - The American Life League has released the first of several newspaper ads criticizing U.S. Catholic bishops for letting individual bishops decide whether to deny communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion legislation.

Last week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement saying, "We recognize that such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles."

The full-page ad released in Thursday's Washington Times as part of the American Life League's Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church, reads: "By approving their 'freedom of choice' statement, 183 American bishops have implicitly decided that either the Holy Eucharist is not all that good... or that abortion is not all that bad."...

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Samoa moves to deport fugitive priest: This is an update on the Dallas Morning News's Runaway Priests series, which I blogged Monday ("Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children are hiding abroad and working in church ministries, the Dallas Morning News has found").

The Samoan government, prompted by a Dallas Morning News investigation, is moving to deport a fugitive Catholic priest because he failed to disclose his conviction in a previous child molestation case when entering the country.

The priest’s superiors in the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order also face an immigration inquiry because they, too, failed to make the same disclosures, said Auseuga Poloma Komiti, the senior adviser to Samoa’s prime minister and Cabinet.

Oscar Martinez, senior editor at Dallas News, emailed, "We weren't really expecting breaking-news on the "Runaway Priests"
front, but here you go..."

His subject line was "Power of the press..." Sometimes people ask me why the Journal "doesn't do something" about a situation.

The press's job is to tell you about something; once the information is out, those who are actually in a position to " do something" about it feel pressure from readers, and act. That's how it's supposed to work. This is a classic example.

Into Gmail: Google's Gmail is still in beta, and to get an account, someone already there has to send you an invitation. Blogger Shelley Powers invited me in today.

With the welcome message, four text ads were displayed on the right of the screen. Here's the first:

Related Pages
The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its ...
www.thisdayonline.com

That's not too offensive, is it?

(This Day Online seems to be a Nigerian news site, but for this Mozilla user, only its headlines work as links. The navigation links on both sides -- including Who Are We? -- are not clickable.)

As I play with Gmail more, I'll blog what I find.

Related: Getting More Out Of Gmail. Mac-friendly blogger Justin Blanton has collected the links to Gmail-related sites and apps. (He does Windows too.) Tuck this away for the day Gmail gets to you.
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June 23, 2004, 6:52 p.m.

Librarians: Free CDs too much of a good thing: Settlement of music industry price-fixing case yields some odd lots At MSNBC (I can't read this Microsoft-owned page with Mozilla; if you can't, try this link in the Google cache.):

Public librarians aren’t prone to looking gift horses in the mouth, but many have nevertheless been taken aback by the odd and in some cases overly generous allotments of free music CDs that have begun arriving in the last week as the result of the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against major record companies.

The CD cornucopia — consisting of approximately 5.6 million compact discs — was billed as a windfall for libraries and schools when it was announced in September 2002 as part of a $144 million settlement of the lawsuit, which alleged that music distribution companies illegally inflated the price of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set level in order to qualify for substantial advertising funding.

But when the first shipments began arriving last week, some librarians suspected that the companies — the Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment — were dumping CDs that had been gathering dust in warehouses when they received hundreds of copies of some titles for which there is little or no demand....

... librarians at the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library, ... last week received a shipment of 1,325 CDs that included 57 copies of “Three Mo’ Tenors,” a 2001 recording featuring classically trained African-American tenors Roderick Dixon, Thomas Young and Victor Trent Cook; 48 copies of country artist Mark Wills’ 2001 album “Loving Every Minute,” 47 copies of “Corridos de Primera Plana,” a greatest hits compilation by Los Tuscanes de Tijuana (2000); 39 copies of “Yolanda Adams Christmas” (2000); 37 copies of Michael Crawford’s “A Christmas Album” (1999) and 34 copies of the Bee Gees’ “This Is Where I Came In” (2001). ...

The public library in Worcester, Mass., with a main library and two branches, received 150 copies of “Nastradamus,” a 1999 album by the rapper Nas, and 148 copies of “Entertainment Weekly’s Greatest Hits of 1971.”

The Des Moines (Iowa) Public Library was on track to take the lead in redundancies, though the identification of the programming bug may come in time to avert what might have been a record overkill. Its crate of 2,647 CDs, due to arrive in the next couple weeks, was listed as containing 430 single-song discs — 16 percent of the total -- of Whitney Houston singing “The Star Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl, according to Steve Cox, of the Iowa State Library. ...

Officials blamed the odd lots on a programming glitch which will soon be fixed. And it sounds as though these first libraries are stuck with their windfalls unless they can exchange them themselves.

Thanks to my colleague Rick Massimo for the heads-up on this.
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Mobile Phone Masts Go Undercover. From Deutsche Welle, Germany,

European companies are finding ingenious ways to disguise ugly, but necessary, mobile phone antenna masts. Customers can pick everything from trees to crucifixes.

Those willing to set up mobile phone antenna masts on their property can get good money for their cooperation -- along with grief from their neighbors.

The masts are typically unwanted in neighborhoods, either because of fears that they can damage your health or due to their ugly appearance. There's an answer to that last objection, simply dress the masts up as trees, chimneys, or even crucifixes....

...The latter crosses the line for some congregations, who are not willing to see Christ on a cross, with antennae sticking out here and there. ...

However, some houses of worship have managed to make their masts part of their identity.

"Everyone recognizes the church now," said Johannes de Fallois, pastor at a church in Neuburg.

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Listen to the Beats: The Internet Archive's audio archives have 142 "Beat Generation" recordings from The Naropa Institute (now a university). Burroughs, Ginsberg, Whalen, McClure, of course, but also poets Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka and Robert Creeley, frequent NPR essayist Andrei Codrescu, Jim Carroll (Catholic Boy, Basketball Diaries) and more. Lots of recordings, worth a look and a search is likely to yield a favorite.
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AP Sues for Access to Bush Guard Records. Why now?
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Magic text: You've probably seen the "Magic Eye" stereogram images -- unfocus and cross your eyes a bit and an image jumpse into the foreground. Now somebody has done it with text. Same process. Sentences will emerge.

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AP

"They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief...": Bob Dylan waits on the stage of the University of St Andrews in Scotland today, where he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Sir Kenneth Dover, chancellor of the university, left. His only other honorary doctorate was awarded by Princeton University in 1970. Story Link to this item | Comment

Help wanted: Ad sales for projo.com:

COMPANY: The Providence Journal
PUBLICATION: projo.com
JOB TITLE: Online Sales Representative
LOCATION: Providence

JOB DESCRIPTION
The Providence Journal Company seeks a full-time Internet advertising sales professional for its award winning Web site projo.com. We are looking for a proven online sales champion who is a self-starter and can excel in a team environment. Responsibilities include direct sales and integrated sales - with The Providence Journal newspaper advertising staff - to grow local, regional and national online account business. The successful Web-savvy candidates must have excellent prospecting and oral and written communication skills, be able to develop strategic planning, work with aggressive individual budgets and exceed monthly quotas. Requirements include a four-year degree, as well as, at least three years of related sales experience. Training in the consultative sales approach is desired. The Providence Journal Company offers an excellent compensation and an opportunity to work in a dynamic environment. Interested individuals should send a resume and salary history to: The Providence Journal Company Attn: Thomas McDonough, 75 Fountain Street Providence, RI 02902 An Equal Opportunity Employer

EXPERIENCE
3-5 Years Exp

STATUS
Full-time

Or you can apply online here.

There is also a temporary (up to one year) opening with the same job description.

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June 22, 2004, 7:52 p.m.

When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

-- In the Matrix, which pill would you take, the red or the blue?

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness: From BMJ (British Medical Journal).

A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative....

While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.

...The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."...

But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times....

...Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which, according to his whistleblower report, were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."

So here we seem to have a plan to screen all Americans for mental illness. The chief beneficiary is, BMJ points out, pharmaceutical companies. Aren't there easier ways to fund expensive research that don't involve us?

Be sure to read the comments linked at the bottom of the story. And the whistleblower's report.

What about us? If we "flunk," do we have to go on drugs? Do we want to be a nation of pill-poppers? Will we have a choice?

This could get scary.
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BLOCKED: Why writers stop writing, in the New Yorker. A good read, and relevant to what's above:

In today’s psychology of writer’s block, as in today’s psychology in general, the focus is less on the unconscious than on brain chemistry. Blocked writers are now being treated with antidepressants such as Prozac, though some report that the drugs tend to eliminate their desire to write together with their regret over not doing so.

In Happy Land, does anyone make art? Will we still wonder about the meaning of life, wrestle with the big questions?

Enthusiasm means "seized by the gods," and every artist, writer and musician knows the experience of inspiration, of being taken over by the work. Is this a mood disorder?

The New Yorker piece cites experts agreeing that writers aren't "normal" -- or else everyone would write -- but is this something we want to fix? Not me.
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Tech-heavy coalition supports fair-use legislation: Support grows to allow making a limited number of copies of restricted products. This just in, at InfoWorld,

WASHINGTON - A group of technology vendors, consumer rights groups and Internet service providers (ISPs) have banded together to support 18-month-old U.S. House legislation that would allow consumers to make personal copies of copyrighted digital products, including movies and music.

The Personal Technology Freedom Coalition on Tuesday kicked off its efforts to get the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, introduced in January 2003, through Congress. The legislation, sponsored by Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, would allow consumers to break copy controls to do such things as make personal copies of compact discs or movies. Supporters of the bill say it's necessary to protect consumers' so-called fair-use rights to make personal copies, which the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) curtails.

"We don't think it's illegal to buy CDs and videos and make a small number of copies for personal use," said Representative Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "Under the DMCA ... it's become virtually impossible to do that. We're not trying to make it open season for piracy or anything like that."

The bill, which would roll back some of the DMCA's prohibitions against circumventing copy-control technologies, improved its chance of passage when Barton, a Texas Republican, was named chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in February....

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Ad glut rocks radio: From Variety,

The strategy of stuffing commercial radio full of ads has backfired, as a handful of investment banks predicted slower growth, downgrading six key radio stocks -- Clear Channel, Emmis, Cox Radio, Entercom, Citadel and Westwood One -- and the sector as a whole...

...As radio companies merged, the number of spots has surged to a high of 25 minutes per hour in some cases, said Goldman Sachs analyst Richard Rosenstein.

He and others said the ad inundation -- which consumers have bemoaned for years -- has eroded the value of the spots. Advertisers have started to worry that their message is being diluted by the sheer number of blurbs.

Radio stocks will be stuck, said Banc of America analyst Jonathan Jacoby, until the industry faces up to challenges.

Are you surprised? I didn't think so. Consolidation (buy up every station in sight) wasn't done for our pleasure. And now it's collapsing. Radio's flabby same-songs-all-the-time format combined with incessant sales pitches has driven us away, to the web, noncommercial stations and our private, portable music collections.

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Slashdot: Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites):

bonhomme_de_neige writes "Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce, but nor do they arrive in the recipient's Inbox - they vanish mysteriously into the aether. Joel Johnson writes in his Gizmodo weblog that invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced (this even received coverage from ZDNet). Search Engine Roundtable writes that several ISPs are blocking Gmail. It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking." Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.

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Your Lapel Is Ringing: Wrist-watch phones, minute handsets woven into clothes, and more are already on sale in Asia. Expect to see them soon in the U.S. At Business Week.

What cracked me up in this story is the sentence,

" A phone stitched into clothing or wrapped around a wrist could allow women to forego a purse."

1. Before phones, there was no need for purses? Can we keep our money in our phones?

2. "Forego" means "To precede, as in time or place."

"Forgo" means "to do without." A little editor humor there, watching the women and phones arrive before the purses.
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Looking up: Robert Haught of the Daily Oklahoma is also secretary of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and he sent along the photo at right, taken at the group's recent conference in New Orleans.

At right there, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times presents me with an award after the banquet at the Bourbon House restaurant.
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June 21, 2004, 6:47 p.m.

If you missed the weekend updates -- late Friday's scoop interview with Andrew Rasiej, the man behind the effort to Draft Bruce Springsteen to play Giants Stadium during the GOP convention, or Saturday's links to audio of Ray Charles's musical funeral at NPR , click for last week's weblog.

Milk: How a wholesome drink became a villain. At Slate.

But before milk was too expensive, it was too cheap. Milk was attacked as government-subsidized pork, propped up by economic Stalinism. It's committed other offenses, too. In our health-conscious times, the once-wholesome drink is fingered for fattening kids and clogging arteries. Or is it, as others would have it, corporate poison inserted into the food supply by rapacious Big Business? Or Frankenfood engineered by egomaniacal scientists? Does hormone-altered milk fuel teenage sexuality by causing early puberty in girls? Because Northern Europeans (and Saharan nomads) are about the only people in the world who can digest milk as adults, is it racist?

There's a national frenzy for milk reform. Some think whole milk and 2 percent milk should be banned from schools. The Congressional Black Caucus has blamed the USDA food pyramid for institutionalizing milk in the national diet. Others have sued the federal school-lunch program for racial discrimination for refusing to subsidize nondairy beverages without a note from a doctor. Animal-rights advocates attack dairy farmers for keeping cows in a state of permanent pregnancy and then selling off the calves for veal. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once put Rudy Giuliani on a billboard with the tag line, "Got prostate cancer?" The author of a book called Milk: The Deadly Poison blamed milk for the death of Florence Griffith Joyner. Even "Got Milk?" is under attack. Some dairy farmers claim that the mandatory payments they must make to fund government-supervised industry advertising is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately the author fails to address the exact opposite effect on health when addressing the beautiful health effects of drinking RAW milk. All digestive enzymes intact for digestion, all nutrients fully absorbed, natural fat content for flavour and stimulation of bile salts to absorb the calcium. RAW milk is a super nutritious food, and especially when fermented....