By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
August 27, 2004, 6:45 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Convention coverage, street reporting and R.I.'s "Blues
Vote"concert: I'll leave our local gig on top, filling in below.
This should get you through the weekend. More Monday. Permalink
to this coverage
Blues bash for Kerry Monday night: America
Coming Together -- the same "527" group that's getting the proceeds
from Bruce Springsteen's Vote
For Change tour -- will be the beneficiary of a Night of Blues,
a fundraiser to elect John Kerry, at the Hi Hat, in Davol Square, Providence,
Monday from 7 to 10 p.m.
The musicians are the cream of the blues players in the state: Duke
Robillard, Carl Querfurth, Doug James, Barry Fleischer, Jack Moore, Tom
Ferraro, Roger Ceresi, Dave Howard, Mark Taber, Marty Ballou, Lois Greco,
Joe Grove, Dick Souza, Chad Souza, Keith Munslow and Diane Blue. Rudy
Cheeks will host.
Suggested donation is $20. |
AP
|
| Setting the
stage at the GOP convention, which opens Monday. |
Conventionbloggers.com is a rolling log of posts from "sites written by people
who
are actually covering the RNC from inside the convention." On the left, links
to those blogs.
Mainstream media politics coverage: ABC, CBS, (MS)NBC,
CNN, FOX, NPR Newspapers
everywhere: newslink.org.
Unconventional TV: Manhattan
Neighborhood Network streams (RealVideo) this coverage nightly (courtesy
of Free
Speech TV)
by more than 100
independent filmmakers roaming the city., a collaboration of The Independent
Media Center, Paper Tiger, Deep Dish TV and other media collectives.
Sunday, 10-11 on Ch. 34 (streamed at the MNN link); Tues-Fri, 9-10 p.m. It's
also live
nationally on FSTV (not here, though), Dish Network Channel 9415.
NYC IndyMedia: a
blog, and stories, pictures, and video, from wherever the street reporter may
be.
AP / Diane Bondareff
|
| Eva Ruse, 2, left,
and her sister Hope, of Brooklyn, wait to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
today as part of a protest
organized by the group "Mothers Opposing Bush. |
Republican
convention photo feed at Yahoo News
Convention
protest photo feed at Yahoo News.
Protest events: CounterConvention.
5:20 p.m.
NYU's Jay
Rosen, blogging the convention for Knight Ridder under a Sky
Box label, takes
on the array of fears in the city -- from a week as a fat
terrorism target to the possiblity of a rerun of the riots outside the Democratic
convention
in Chicago during the Vietnam War in 1968:
The New York Observer's Joe Hagan reports this week that for TV news organizations,
the main concern is not how to cover all the possible protests around town.
It's "inciting disruptive behavior by showing up with cameras."
The people who run network television don't want to be "causing" street
politics in New York City. They are willing to take stealth action to avoid
it.
"The fear is that the presence of that causes it," said David Bohrman,
the executive producer of CNN’s convention coverage. "That’s
really a fear. We’re reluctant to pull our cameras out if there’s
a crowd of people. You don’t want to galvanize a crowd by pointing a
camera at them. You want to report on them, but you don’t want to be
the cause of them."
Mr. Bohrman said that was one of the reasons that most national news organizations
didn’t mark their equipment with logos.
Interesting, Stump Connolly at The
Week Behind in Chicago takes on the same
topics (The
Republicans From
a Distance).
Props
to
Stump:
He was
in
Chicago
back then. And he raises a lovely point:
What bothers me most about the preliminary reports on the anti-Bush protests
is a descriptive phrase in news reports that says they are “organized
by anarchists.” Isn’t that an oxymoron? Who are these “anarchists” and
why are they intruding on our political process?
I suspect the good Democrats and anyone else with a general feeling that
this “Iraq
situation” can be solved by better leadership will swallow their anger
and stay out of the streets. So who does that leave? The few, the proud, the
anarchists. But don’t for a minute think the TV cameras won’t
cover them, and, if Karl Rove has anything to do with it, make them the centerpiece
of the fall campaign.
I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen in New York this
week. [Ed note: that’s why we call it The Week Behind.] But since the
expiration date on my gas mask from ’68 has passed, I think it’s
best to watch this thing from a distance.
More
"anarchist planning": At NPR, "NPR's Luke Burbank reports on
how much planning goes into one anarchist group's protests at the Republican
National
Convention."
Related: Radicals
planning to cause mayhem at the GOP convention should accept this
sad fact: Murdoch’s minions are waiting. East Bay Express.
Humor: Cabbies Against Bush.
The Convention Kicker at NY
Metro.
4:45 p.m
Street memorials: Stretching it... but while I was cruising NYC blogs
I found these photos of giant, amazing murals on Watson Avenue, in the Bronx
River
section
-- memorials
to young people who've died. MetroPlus has
more of these, including three to "Headache Nelson," with the note,
As you can see memorials to loved ones are kept close to home. Headache Nelson
must have been a very popular and loved young man.
2:55
Gotham
Gazette's metabloggers include a Republican delegate and a volunteer,
a protester, and more.
The Gothamist's convention coverage includes Jen Chung
wrapping Local media's convention coverage:
- New York magazine's convention
guide hit the stands and will be publishing daily updates...we are
so loving their photographs of Bloomberg and the elephant (right).
- Village Voice's
convention guide; the Voice reports on fear that protesters acting
out will only help the Republican effort.
- NY1's
Convention Survival Guide; LIRR commuters are being told they should take
the subways when commuting into the city and you can see
anti-war posters at a Chelsea gallery
- Newsday's convention
guide; we like the story about the expensive
fundraising events,
like the $30,000 ticket for "Martinis in Manhattan." Even at the
expensive price of $15 for a high-end martini, that means some people
are drinking 2000 martinis, which means a messy messy hotel bathroom in
the morning. And the poor volunteers whose Social Security numbers,
amongst other info, was emailed
out.
- NY
Times Convention 2004; there's an article about how Pataki
will be center stage today and about yesterday's article on Lynyrd
Skynyrd performing and how the celebrities for this convention are deliciously
B- and C-list (hello, Stephen Baldwin).
- The Observer published its convention
issue; in a page 1
story, this line - "What’s
interesting is that the delegates come from the same places we do, the
places we left to move here, and so we are—more than we care to
admit—like them" - rings true until Gothamist remembers that we live here
everyday now.
- Convention coverage from ABC
7, CBS 2, and NBC
4.
Finally, here it from the horse's mouth: The GOP's Republican National Convention site. And if you get tired of that, here's the Democratic National Commmittee's site.
Posted by Jen Chung in
News: NYC
Special
RNC coverage from the editors at CityGuide New York.
The
GOP convention bloggers (again, to keep all this together.)
Link
to this item | Comment
August 26, 2004, 6:55 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Short blog today. I'm working on some other projects here, and have some
half-finished ideas in the hopper. Tomorrow, I hope, they'll be fully baked.
Added: a QuickTime
link to Tuesday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart and John Kerry.
The
GOP convention bloggers: The Wall Street Journal again profiles the
bloggers chosen by the party for its convention. The GOP invited 15. All
white, all
but one
male.
Exactly a month ago, they profiled the DNC bloggers.
Related: The
Real Convention? Suzi Parker at Washington
Whispers, out of
U.S. News & World Report,
Republicans will be showcasing their "compassionate conservatism" at
next week's convention in Manhattan by featuring moderates like former
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
in key speaking roles. But this week, true-blue conservatives are
getting together in Gotham City to flex their own ideological muscles
and exert their own influence on the GOP. The supersecret Council for
National Policy, founded at the onset of the Reagan era, will be
meeting in New York at an undisclosed location in hopes of avoiding
protesters. The thousand member group includes political heavyweights
like John Ashcroft, Bill Frist, and Tom Delay, religious
leaders from Pat Robertson to James Dobson, media moguls like Steve
Forbes, and conservative billionaires Howard Ahmanson and Nelson
Bunker Hunt.
Conservative Republicans boast that the council's meeting is the "real"
convention. "It's the old smoke-filled room, but I wouldn't say it's
corrupt," says a source. "Rather it's just where the work gets done."
The group met in San Diego earlier this year and will meet again soon
after the November election. One issue sure to be debated is whether a
legitimate democracy is achievable in Iraq; some on the right believe
that part of the Bush administration's rationale for war was flawed. –Suzi
Parker
Link
to this item | Comment
Old
wounds: Buzz
Bruggeman who's 58 now, writes honestly about the choices of young men
in the Vietnam era.
I won't spoil it by telling you his outcome. But he concludes,
...We have somehow created a society, wherein on a repetitive basis, when
the citizenry says, “We want the truth” our leaders respond by
stating that “You can’t handle the truth”…
My friend Jim Kunstler has suggested that Kerry doesn’t have any more
vision that Bush…I don’t really disagree, yet I find Bush’s
vision deplorable.
Why in a country with somewhere north of 275,000,000 people can’t
find better candidates is a mystery that I will never understand.
Why don’t the old wounds heal? Why can't we handle the truth?
The truth seems to be that for some segments of our population it isn’t
convenient to let them heal, and allow us to focus on the real problems
that we are facing.
Reader Matt comments,
Buzz, we can't find better candidates because of the way candidates treat
each other and are treated by others, such as the press. Would you subject
yourself to the buzzsaw that is the electoral process in America today?
Link
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This
land is our land: AP reports,
This song is my song, this song is your song. That's the agreement reached
between the publishers of Woody Guthrie's classic "This Land is Your
Land" and JibJab Media, creators of an animated
Internet short that uses the tune in a comic sendup of President Bush
and Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaigns....
... The creators also agreed to provide a link on their Web site to the
song's original lyrics and to donate 20 percent of any profits to the Woody
Guthrie Foundation.
"The
settlement accomplished Ludlow's goals, which was to bring people back to
the immediate message of Woody Guthrie," said Paul LiCalsi, an attorney
for the firm. ...
Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son,
writes,
GO SEE THE "THIS LAND" animation if you haven't seen it yet! It's
the best damned commentary on the election to date. http://www.jibjab.com/
Thanks to my colleague Dan Johnsen for that last little kicker.
Link
to this item | Comment
Very local news: The Fort Myers, Fla., News
Press, the hometown paper of some
areas hard hit by hurricane Charley last week, has a
forum labeled, "Use
this forum to communicate with displaced friends, family and neighbors"
Its more than 300 messages are raw, public, kind, and very basic. Here's a
typical recent one:
Debi from Ipswich, MA writes:
I finally got in touch with my dad in Port Charlotte. The way I did it was
to send a Fedex letter and ask for a signature. As soon as he got the letter
he picked up the phone and realized that he had a dial tone. He can make
outgoing calls, but cannot receive incoming calls. He is fine and the house
sustained little damage. The pool cage is completely gone. He says what he
wants most is a shower. They are not expecting power to return until at least
the 28th. Hope everyone else's loved ones are doing as well as my dad
The earliest messages, of course, were from people not in the area wondering
about family, friends and property. Those in Charley's path lacked electricity,
and couldn't connect.
Some other forums include,
Where is the money? Post here where you know of ATMs that have cash.
Where is the gas? Post open stations here
Where are supplies like ice, water, food and hardware available?
Theoretically, a generator or a large supply of (expensive) laptop batteries
and a cable net connection could keep you online through a storm that pulled
the
plug.
via Liz Donovan
Link
to this item | Comment
August 25, 2004, 7:35 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Ventura
helps launch organization 'Operation Truth'; Ventura
criticizes use of National Guard in Iraq: Pick your headline, it's the same story:
St. Paul, Minn. — (AP) - Former Gov. Jesse Ventura, who during his
time in office diligently avoided commenting on military decisions, joined
the fray
over the war in Iraq on Tuesday.
"Now that I'm a civilian, I'm here to speak out that I think the current
use of the National Guard is wrong," Ventura said Tuesday.
Ventura is serving as an advisory board member for a new group called Operation
Truth, a nonprofit organization set up "to give voice to troops who
served in Iraq."
Emphasizing that he is an independent, not a Republican or Democrat, Ventura
said the National Guard was designed to protect the homeland, not fight overseas.
Here's an earlier story by Joseph Galloway (senior military correspondent
for Knight Ridder and a Vietnam veteran himself) about Operation Truth (Soldiers
Use Online Resources to Make Voices Heard):
Two young Army officers with time in Iraq are the brains behind a new Web
site called Operation Truth that will be launched later this month.
Former Capt. David Chasteen and 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, who is still serving
in the Army National Guard, hope to "educate the American public about
the truth of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the
soldiers who have experienced them first-hand."
Toward that end they hope that their Web site, www.optruth.org, will provide
a forum for soldiers and Marines still serving in Iraq or just returned, to
tell their stories, post their digital photos and voice their complaints....
At the Operation Truth site there's a very
short video of Ventura saying,
"Welcome to Operation Truth, thank you for supporting our troops."
Link
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Bob Dylan's memoirs -- Part I -- due in October: Great
lead at the N.Y. Daily
News:
What Simon & Schuster once called "the
most-awaited book of 2002" will finally be published, on Oct. 12.
Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume One" will be "the first in
a series of the artist's self-penned personal histories," the publisher
said yesterday.
The initial volume will consist of "first-person narratives focusing
on significant periods in Dylan's life and career."
When Dylan's writing plans first became known in 2001, he told USA Today
his memoir would include a "take on people who've had takes on me" and
recollections of his breakthrough in New York's folk music scene of the early
1960s....
Link
to this item | Comment
 Screenshot/Sheila
Lennon (Use freely with credit)
|
John Kerry on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: AP: "As
Kerry launched into a monologue about why President Bush avoids talking about
issues like the economy, jobs and the environment, the comedian interrupted.
"I'm sorry," Stewart said. "Were you or were you not in Cambodia?"
Stewart and Kerry then leaned in and stared each other down over the host's
desk before Stewart asked about some of the other things Kerry's opponents
say about him."
AP did not move that photo, though. After I saw that only the very copyrighted
Getty Images seemed to have it, I shot it off my low-def home TV during this
morning's rebroadcast of the show. (Screenshots are fair use.) Use it anywhere
you like.
That's Mary Dalrymple of AP, who played the story straight. Other TV critics seem incensed that Kerry chose Stewart's show, which, despite its being voted the best news
program by TV critics this summer;.
Heads up from Howard
Kurtz at WaPo:
Here's why Kerry's Comedy Central moment
is important. It's not about "connecting" with "young people" --
that's the kind of thing an old person would write. It's about demonstrating
that your humor gene is not missing, that you deserve regular-guy status,
that you get the joke.
I suspect (no rigorous scientific studies back me up) that many people who
spend a lot of time on the Web are Jon Stewart fans. Because that group probably
includes more young people, TV writers -- who watch TV while we're online --
think Stewart is a youth phenom. It's more
than that.
Updated: Here's a QuickTime
video of the interview.
Link
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 AP/Pablo
Martinez Monsivais
|
Former
Georgia Senator Max Cleland, left, and former Green Beret Lt. Jim Rassmann,
center, approach a Secret Service Agent, right, at the checkpoint the
entrance to President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch today. Cleland tried
to deliver a letter protesting ads challenging John Kerry's Vietnam
service to President Bush but the Secret Service stopped Cleland short
of his goal. R.I. Sen. Jack Reed was one of the signers. NYT: Campaigns
Continue to Focus on Kerry's War Record
|
The senators signing the
letter (pdf.) to Bush included Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings
of South Carolina, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Tom Carper
of Delaware and Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg, both of New Jersey.
Most photos of Max Cleland don't show so starkly how difficult it must be
to be him.
Link
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Be here now: As I write this, the story is moving
of a father, Carlos Arredondo of Hollywood, Fla., whose reaction to the news
that his son, Alexander Arredondo, had been killed in combat in Iraq Tuesday
was to douse the van of the Marines who came to his house, and himself, with
gasoline and torch both. It was Carlos Arredondo's 44th birthday.
The
Miami Herald reports that he is in serious but guarded condition this
afternoon with second-degree burns over 30 percent to 50 percent of his body.
The
South Florida Sun-Sentinel has an audio
interview with Hollywood Police detective Carlos Negron
Nothing like a wake-up call to wrench us back to the present: Let's talk about
Iraq.
Link
to this item | Comment
Soldiers'
Iraq Blogs Face Military Scrutiny: NPR:
Military officials are cracking down on blogs written by soldiers and Marines
in Iraq, saying some of them reveal sensitive information. Critics say it's
an attempt to suppress unflattering truths about the U.S. occupation. NPR's
Eric Niiler reports.
A blogger with the pen name CBFTW,
stationed near Mosul with the First Battallion, 23rd Regiment, says he began
his My War Web log to help combat boredom. "I'm just writing about my
experiences," the soldier says. "I'm pretty much putting my diary
on the Internet -- that's all it is."
CBFTW says he has avoided describing sensitive information, such as U.S.
weapons capabilities, weaknesses and scheduling. But earlier this month,
CBFTW was lectured by commanders about violating operational security. Two
other popular blogs run by soldiers have been shut down recently. ...
Regular readers here may recall this post from Aug. 12 (A
strong voice... changes). It was obvious that something had happened
to CBFTW:
The other day, we went somewhere, and did something. ...
I would like to take this time now, to say a nice warm "Mar-Haba" (that's "Welcome" in
Arabic) to all my new readers down at M.I. (Military Intelligence) who are
now reading this site and have this bookmarked on their computers. Glad to
have you all aboard, and I hope you all like the site. Hopefully you'll find
this site more entertaining than most of that other boring crap I'm sure
you guys have to sift through all day.
There's a silver
lining for CBFTW, though:
The National Endowment for the Arts has a great program available right
now called: Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, I encourage
everybody to check out the site and be a part of this. I've known of this
program for awhile now, but never considered submitting my personal written
accounts of this war to them, thinking there's no way in hell they'd consider
my stuff. But then I recieved an e-mail from the people involved with that
program saying that some of you have been e-mailing them alerting them about
my this website and of my writting , and they also said that they were interested
in me submiting some of my work for consideration to the project. I would
like to thank everybody who did that, sent them an e-mail. Way cool of you
guys to do that. Tango Mike.
One more note: The name of Mike's blog used to be MY WAR - Fear and Loathing
in Iraq" -- a tribute to Hunter Thompson. Now it's just My War.
Link
to this item | Comment
Amazon to reviewer: Too much expertise.. J.D.
Lasica's review of
Dan Gillmor's We
The Media was removed from
Amazon.con "because your comments in large part focused on your personal
opinions of the subject matter, rather than reviewing the title itself."
He
reacts:
Wow.
So instead of an informed review that places the contents of the book in
context, they'd rather have ramblings such as: "I looked up what the
author had to say about chat rooms, Yahoo!, free speech, etc. and was always
amazed to
find merely a sequence of vacuous ramblings offering nothing new. I find
it even difficult to write a critical review because there is almost nothing
to
here to criticize."
Link
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Google
to pay bloggers: J.D. also points to this at Internet.com: Looking
to lure new users to its Blogger publishing platform, Google plans to give
up a
slice
of
its
own
advertising
pie. The company announced
plans to share the profits from its AdSense self-service program that helps
publishers serve up contextual advertising, although it did not say how much
of a split bloggers would get.
Related: What
if Google were to release a Mozilla-based browser? at Kottke.org.
Link
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August 24, 2004, 6:35 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Liberation
Drive-in: In Oakland, Calif.. The
blurb at Oaklandish begins,
Movies on the wall - all night long...
BYO RADIO to receive fm ((( stereo ))) transmission.
showing the Big Lebowski, followed by afterparty at Oaklandish!...
It sounds cool, and
a little underground (" > free pirate movie theater in downtown
Oakland"), but it's how movies are usually shown
in
some
parts of the
world: On
a wall, with rows of benches in front of it. A sit-down no-car drive-in?
Here's a report from blogger Dav, at AkuAku:
Posted by dav at 2003 July 26 10:36 PM:
I'm sitting in my car, ragtop down and sipping a horchata, in a downtown Oakland
parking lot which normally at this time of night would be empty and dark, but
tonight it is filled with cars and lawn chairs, all facing the windowless back
wall of an adjacent building where a 40 foot tall indie documentary about Bay
Area graffiti and hip hop artists is being projected.
Liberation Drive-In is a guy named Jeff with a station wagon, an LCD projector,
a low power FM transmitter and an assortment of video equipment. He takes over
empty downtown parking lots to show a mix of documentaries and music videos
with a themes of social activism and/or underground culture.
Another film shown is a short based on the forthcoming feature documentary "A
Rose from Concrete" which documents the struggles of a rising hip hop
star Kev Kelley. The film follows Kelly's life in Hunter's Point, and was pitched
to director Sam Diego by film maker Kevin Epps who created the acclaimed documentary "Straight
Outta Hunters Point." Diego is here, armed with his camera, capturing
the audience reactions. It looks like another excellent cinematic work and
I'm looking forward to seeing the full final release.
People watch the films, listen to the music and walk around socializing,
just like the drive-ins of yesteryear, but all with a grittier urban atmosphere.
As the guy who just strolled by drinking malt liquor out of a paper sack
just
said, "this is the most happening place in the city right now.
When videotapes first went mainstream, we thought all sorts of films like
these would surface. Interesting.
Link
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Outsource
your own job to earn more! The Times of India reports,
...Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About
a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out
of the
$67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work
only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting.
Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing."
Smarter techies are working for three to four companies at the same time,
outsourcing all the coding and just supervising them for few hours a day. This
way they are able to earn four to five time more than what they used to.
This is called the principle of 'comparative advantage', whereby you concentrate
on you core strengths outsourcing the non competitive areas....
Gina Minks of Displaced Techies is gonna hate this one.
Link
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Browse happy is a guide
to alternate browsers by The Web Standards
Project, whose page about this guide
begins,
We're browser-neutral, and we support continued progress. We have no hard
feelings toward Microsoft, or even Internet Explorer for that matter. Many
of us happily used Internet Explorer until very recently.
Once, long ago, IE was a great example of a modern browser. But those days
have passed....
Browse Happy's first link is "Why is Internet Explorer unsafe?" which
links to four mainstream news stories. It moves on to tell the stories of six
men
(yup,
all men) whose
computing habits
and
needs
make
one
of the
alternatives a better choice for them.
Five of them switched to Firefox and
one to Opera. Safari,
for Macs, is another choice, as is Mozilla.
(These links go to explanations of their features at Browse Happy.) I think
of as a cross between Netscape and Firefox -- Firefox is a browser, period,
to
be
used
with
a standalone
mail
client (Thunderbird is
the
offering
cooperatively developed by the Mozilla team), and some features you may be
used to are added in as extensions -- little programs written by different
people,
so
they may
not all work well together.
Mozilla, like Netscape, comes with an integrated mail and news client, etc.
but has more user-friendly options (pop-ups are blocked by default, and there's
a teachable spam filter, for instance.)
Link
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Eat rocks: This is beyond vegetarianism, but prompted by the same impulse:
Plants have feelings too.
...Modern molecular genetics and biochemistry has proved beyond doubt the
interrelatedness of all living things, from the lowliest bacterium to the
tallest redwood. We
are scarcely less related to the wheat or the yeast in a loaf of bread than
we are to our fellow animals. We can no longer hide behind the idea that
these life forms are not our kin, nor can we rationalize our mistreatment
of them
by saying that plants, fungi, and microbes are incapable of suffering. The
instinct to avoid pain and noxious stimuli, and the restless search for favorable
conditions, which Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness, are as
universal among living beings as their DNA.
If we refuse to eat our relatives, what CAN we eat? Fortunately, the same
sciences of chemistry and biology that reveal our kinship to all life have
freed us at last from the need to kill. Although most people are suprised
to hear it, it is possible to live and thrive on a diet consisting entirely
of
foods of mineral origin. This is because every one of the several dozen nutrients
the human body requires - carbohydrate, amino acids, fats, vitamins, and
of course minerals - can be synthesized or extracted from air, water, and
rock
without the involvement of any life form, aside from the chemists who perform
these miraculous transformations. The Mineralarians are an international
association of people, diverse in other respects, who share the common determination
to
subsist on foods of mineral origin, thereby sparing our fellow beings the
victimization that has been their lot, at our hands for the last million
years, and before
that at the claws and jaws of previously dominant species. ...
No recipes.
The site is the brainchild of Charles Bennett, whose main
page also includes,
Other Links, not to be be taken entirely seriously
The Institute of Holistic Computer
Wellness
Minuteman Pizza
Toilets of the World
Via Xeni Jardin at BoingBong.
Link
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You
are a better eyewitness if you were in a bad mood when you saw the event,
reports Medical News Today.
People in a negative mood provide more accurate eyewitness accounts than people
in a positive mood state, according to new research.
The surprise finding, which is to be published in the Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, is the first to assess the effect of mood on memory and
human thinking.
People in a positive mood such as happiness were shown under experimental
conditions to have relatively unreliable memories, and show poorer judgement
and critical thinking skills.
By contrast, those who experienced a negative mood such as sadness were shown
to provide more reliable eyewitnesses accounts and exercise superior thinking
and communication skills.
Those with insomnia were not included among those being better witnesses....
Link
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Correction from last week: Tom's
Summer
of Soul: (link fixed) Management guru Tom
Peters turned his life around, and doesn't care who knows it, or what they
think of his method.
via David Weinberger
Thanks to Eric Lilius for the heads-up on the link.
Link
to this item | Comment
1:15 p.m.
Conan who? The Washington Post's TV
writer, Lisa de Moraes, seems
blindsided by Kerry going on The Daily Show tonight. She's a big
Conan O'Brien fan -- thinking he'll get ABC's Nightline timeslot when Ted
Koppel retires, and simultaneously thinking CBS would love to replace Craig
Kilborn with Conan) -- and doesn't get it:
When John Kerry decided it was time to do his first national TV interview
since the Swift boaters for Bush launched their attack on the senator's Vietnam
War record, he did not choose CBS's "60 Minutes," ABC's "Nightline" or "NBC
Nightly News."
Kerry picked Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," where he will
appear tonight in an extended interview.
Now I bet you feel terrible that you dismissed as fools those TV critics
who, back in July, collectively crowned "The Daily Show" the year's
best news and information program. I know I do.
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August 23, 2004, 5:50 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
John
Kerry to be on Jon Stewart's Daily Show Tuesday: John Kerry is
a guest on The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart Tuesday night at 11 (EDT), on The
Comedy Channel. (It's Channel 58 on my cable box, but that's by no means true
everywhere.
Check
your local listings if you care.)
And yes, I was among the tiny group watching The Arsenio Hall Show the
night Bill Clinton first blew his blues horn with soul on national TV. A watershed
moment.
(Can we be the first to call Keith Olbermann's Countdown on
MSNBC a video blog?)
Vaguely related: Communion author Whitley
Strieber: My
High School Friend John O'Neill and
the Swiftboat Attack. Can this old-grudge story get any stranger? Sure it
can.
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Write your book! It's better than you think: Novelist Tibor Fischer
was a judge for the Booker
Prize -- a job which defaults to those willing
to read more than 100 novels in a few months -- and observes (Here's
how to get on my longlist),
...Once, on a slow day, a senior literary agent (Nobel laureate in his stable)
wagered his colleagues that he could sell anything to anyone. They could
pull any manuscript out of the slush pile and name any editor, he boasted,
and he'd
do the deal.
The deal was for "a substantial six-figure sum" – and the
book didn't fare badly in the end either. I kept thinking of this story (not
in the least apocryphal) as I digested the 126 novels that, as a judge for
this year's Man Booker Prize, I was required to read, because it's clear
most publishers don't have a clue what they're doing.
Ordinarily, when we say: "I think this book is better than that one," what
we mean essentially is: "I enjoyed the former more than the latter."
Taste: there's no escape. Nevertheless, there are books that I don't like,
but I can see they are proficiently written and that others might enjoy them.
Yet some entries were so execrable I reckoned they must have been submitted
as a joke.
Those that were a discredit to the industry numbered no more than half a
dozen. More remarkable was the number of novels that were pointless. Not
bad, not
reproachable in any way except one: they were utterly nondescript (mind
you, there's always been a clique in literary London who feel that real literature
should be dry, colourless, a bit of a penance – if you're enjoying
it, it can't be literature). I'd estimate nearly a third of the submissions
fell
into this category....
Nobody has asked me to judge anything, but we have a monthly giveaway of review
copies here called a "Book Grab." The Books editor and Pop Music writer empty
their closets of books and CDs they don't want. They haul them up to tables
in our fourth-floor auditorium and let the entire company have at 'em.
What amazes us all is how many truly bad books get printed. Books by graduate
students in writing programs, first novels by people with little life experience
and nothing to say; self-help books repeating pap; chatty mysteries with no
point, one suspect (who turns out to have done it!) and loose ends that never
get explained.
It should give you courage, if you're harboring a book in your brain. All
these bad writers got published because they lack what you have: A conviction
that other's thoughts and talent are far greater than theirs. You are not less
deserving
than this
bunch. You simply lack the broad perspective of how truly bad the national
output is.
Please, abandon your modesty, write that sucker and give us a whale of a tale.
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A
new way to shop online for travel bargains: A Wall Street Journal story
elsewhere about new travel search engines.
Rather than serving as online travel agents, the new sites are search engines
that scan as many as 150 other travel sites, including the majors, for prices.
That lets travelers do side-by-side comparisons rather than having to check
lots of different sites.
Mobissimo.com is the
new link to come out of it for me, and if you have a specific date in mind,
it works fine.
If you're looking for the lowest fare next month, you're better off first
checking the "flexible dates" box at Expedia or Travelocity, to get a sense
of peak and
nonpeak dates.
According to the story, Mobissimo plans to branch out, offering lowest
prices for those who want to get to a beach, any beach, for instance.
More are in the works, including
SideStep, a travel search engine that previously required installation of
special software, has two new Web sites that browse for prices - www.sidestephotels.com and www.sidestepcars.com. It plans to add Web capability for airline searches
later this year. (Airfare searches are currently available through its downloadable
software.)
One of the newest entrants: A group of former executives from three major
online travel agencies - Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity - have launched a
company, Kayak Software Corp., that next month plans to offer a test version
of a new search engine at Kayak.com. Yahoo Inc. has also recently gotten into
this business. Last month, it acquired FareChase Inc., whose FareChaser service
at FareChase.com searches about 150 travel sites.
Qixo.com is also in this mix. It's free to search, $20 to book.
Related: The
Hotels push back. The other side of the story, from Copley News
Service.
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Keyboard
optimised for BabySmash and its ilk is Cory
Doctorow's headline.
Here's his text:
This $60 strap-on baby keyboard is a pretty cool idea -- basically, it's a
hardware adapter for BabySmash-style
software.
It seems to be protecting a $20 keyboard. Hmmm... But it does come with 3
CDs. It's for 12-month-olds and beyond.
Two keyboards, two monitors at different levels might be optimum for parent-child
computer bonding.
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New
York set for citywide wireless: 18,000 new lamp post-based antennas
will blanket the five boroughs. BBC:
Some aren't happy:
There is already one patch of midtown Manhattan that provides an ideal glimpse
of what a more wireless-friendly New York will be like.
Bryant Park has been providing a free service to any laptop user who wants
access for many months now.
People come from all over the city to log-on and work in the sunshine, and
naturally, everyone I spoke to welcomed the idea of extending this kind of
coverage.
But when it came to the longer-term health effects, there was more scepticism
than perhaps the city would like to hear.
Lilly Martinez, from Brooklyn, was using the service for the first time, and
found it slow with the sheer volume of users logged on.
She said she was "freaked out" by the idea of a huge microwave
expansion.
"What does this mean for my brain?" she asked.
"The service is not for me, it's going to be all about them, and what
they can get out of it."
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E-Vote
Machine Certification Criticized: AP.
The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate
in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used
by nearly one in three voters in November.
Despite concerns over whether the
so-called touchscreen machines can be trusted, the
testing companies won't say publicly if they have encountered shoddy workmanship.
They say they are committed to secrecy in their contracts with the voting
machines' makers — even though tax money ultimately buys or leases
the machines.
"I find it grotesque that an organization charged with such a heavy responsibility
feels no obligation to explain to anyone what it is doing," Michael
Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and electronic voting expert,
told lawmakers
in Washington, D.C.
The system for "testing and certifying voting equipment in this country
is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent," Shamos added.
Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touchscreen
machines on Nov. 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing
of the
technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine
companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing
it. ...
Why isn't this a huge bipartisan concern?
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