By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
March 18, 2005, 7:00 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
(Updated Saturday, 3.19.05, 12:15 p.m. The wishful typo below did
not hurry spring. Waiting for spring this year is like waiting for Christmas
when I was 8.)
Spring begins at 7:33 a.m. Saturday, Sunday when the Sun
crosses directly over the Earth's equator. Easter always falls on the first
Sunday
after
the first full
moon (next Friday) after the vernal equinox. The Great
Sphinx of Egypt points directly at the rising sun on the spring equinox.
Online cigarette sales, Al-Qaida, Indians, taxes and the
ATF: Do these dots really connect? Let's start here...
Deal
aims to prevent Web cigarette sales: AP reports.
Major credit card companies will refuse to participate in Internet sales
of cigarettes nationwide under a government agreement made Thursday.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the companies
and state attorneys general agreed to work together to prevent the long
unchecked use of credit cards to buy cigarettes over the Internet across
state lines. The agreement is effective immediately.
The result is that virtually all credit cards will no longer participate
with Web sites based in the United States and abroad that sell cigarettes
and tobacco products in every state, said New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer. The card companies also agreed to take action against Internet
sellers that authorities identify as violating state and federal laws regulating
cigarette sales....
...Smokers can still buy cigarettes over the Internet, but they would
have to use checks, money orders or some other payment system that would
likely delay receipt in the Internet business built on speed.
Reaction: Senecas
cry foul: Buffalo News reports,
Local Seneca Nation leaders are calling Thursday's agreement between the
government and credit card companies that bars cigarette smokers from buying
their tobacco over the Internet with credit an "interference with
commerce."
Feds don't want cigarette tax hikes: This story gets weirder. Last
Friday the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune reported, Feds
fear cigarette tax may fuel acts of terrorism:
Democratic legislators from the Bay Area and Los Angeles, focused on quality
of life in the state, are pushing three bills that would hike cigarette
costs for litter cleanup or easing deficit pressures.
But federal terrorism investigators told The Argus on Thursday that such
seemingly innocent legislation, further hiking high cigarette costs in
California, would fuel their already tough battle against terrorist groups'
lucrative smuggling operations in the United States.
The disclosure by federal law enforcement officials comes as they are
beginning to crack down on illegal cigarette smugglers, who are providing
a growing and crucial part of funding to terroristgroups such as al-Qaida
and Hezbollah....
..."The illicit sale of cigarettes and other commodities by terrorist
groups and their supporters has become a crucial part of their funding
activities," said William Billingslea, a senior intelligence analyst
for the Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information in the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington.
"Raising the tax on cigarettes widens the difference between the
wholesale and retail price and inadvertently creates opportunity for traffickers,
who evade the tax and gain the profits," he said. "Cigarette
traffickers can make as much as $60 per carton."
"Illicit cigarette trafficking now rivals drug trafficking as the
method of choice to fill the bank accounts of terrorists," Billingslea
said. "Each state that raises its cigarette taxes is a new prospect
for illicit profits gained by trafficking in cigarettes."
Legislators
are unmoved.
California's tax on cigarettes is 87 cents a pack as
of Jan. 1. Rhode Island's $2.46 per pack is the highest in the nation.
Have the feds gotten here with their message, yet?
Are terrorists using credit cards to buy cigarettes online from Indians?
Does any of this make any sense?
Link
to this item | Comment
Sex,
Money and Meth Addiction: Part I: Inside the World of the 'Dasen Girls' by
Hal Herring at New West, a new online
When the police arrested Kalispell (Mont.) businessman Dick Dasen (head
bowed, at right) on prostitution charges last year, it seemed there had
to be more to the story than a wealthy man paying for sex. There was more.
A lot more.
...For years the local police paid little mind to the occasional rumors
that floated around about Dick Dasen. But the car crash that killed Angela
Guzman helped set in a motion a series of events that eventually ended
the bizarre underground world of Dasen and his girls. Guzman’s mother,
Connie, a sturdy survivor who had freed herself from an alcoholic husband
and a lot of bad luck to build a successful rock business in the Flathead
Valley, had been trying for years to get her daughter and her daughter’s
friends out of the meth death-spiral. After Angela died, Connie finally
took the girls’ stories and some photocopied Dasen checks and went
to the FBI and the Kalispell police.
Kalispell Police Chief Frank Garner pondered his options. “I had
a hard time categorizing these women as victims, or suspects,” he
said. But as more information came in from his detectives, he made a decision. “I
had to make the decision whether to be the Chief of Police who knew about
this and let it go because of the prominence of the offender, or act, and
take the consequences. I had to act, even though there were a lot of people
who thought I shouldn’t. As more of this story has come out, more
of them are starting to agree with what I did, but not at first.”...
This is a terrific beginning to a six-part story. Part
2: A Mother's Worst Nightmare ran today. You'll probably have to check
in at their homepage to see if Part 3 runs tomorrow or Monday.
The Daily Inter
Lake in Kalspell is the hometown paper, covering the pre-trial motions
and jury selection: "Dasen was arrested in February 2004 on a charge
of prostitution. Since then, charges have multiplied. They include 10 counts
of prostitution and one each of sexual intercourse without consent, promotion
of prostitution, aggravated promotion of prostitution, and sexual abuse
of children. He is scheduled for trial in April."
Thanks to J.D.
Lasica for the pointer.
Link
to this item | Comment
New garden blog Added to the Garden
Blogs list: Old
Country Gardens. Melanie gardens in Long Island, N.Y. ("1.3
acres, a paradise for a girl who grew up in Queens on a tiny postage
stamp sized lot"). She has just begun this blog and promises photos
after she climbs the learning curve. She's writing about voles now, and
she writes well.
Like us, she's longing for the weather to catch up to the calendar: spring.
I so envy the southern garden bloggers right now. Can-U-Dig-It from
Plano,Texas (where it's 76 degrees and sunny right now) has potted up her
tomatoes, even though she has to bring them in at night for a couple of more
weeks. (Ours can go in around Memorial Day.).
Up to this week's nasty weather, the march toward spring has been pretty
spectacular. The leaves are coming out on many of the trees (including
my Japanese Maples) and the daffodils are giving way to vibrant masses
of tulips.
My tasks for this weekend tentatively include mowing the yard and applying
beneficial nematodes and corn gluten meal (if it's ok to put them both
on...I have to check), and planting some 50 dahlia tubers, as my Dutch
Gardens order is supposed to arrive today.
But I couldn't live in air conditioning five months a year. I have to keep
repeating that.
Link
to this item | Comment
Friday cat blogging is a blog tradition I haven't
taken part in, till now. That's me reflected in a cat's eye as I take his
picture. Max was sprawled on the deck steps in the sun, so that's blue sky
behind me.
Link
to this item | Comment
Garlic blog:
Recipes. Yum.
March 17, 2005, 7:20 p.m.
Tiger
snaps back at hidden camera: NewScientist includes
amazing photos. The one below resulted when the flash went off in the
tiger's mouth while the animal was biting the camera.
A camera hidden in the Sumatran rainforest has survived the rage of a
tiger attack unscathed, and captured some fascinating images of the nocturnal
assault.
The sequence, captured in February, even features one image taken while
the camera is clamped inside the big cat's mouth.
The photos, released on Tuesday by conservation group WWF, first show
a male tiger walking along a logging road. After the first flash, it approaches
the camera, swiping it with his paw. It follows up with a crunching bite,
before calming down and slipping off into the jungle....
There are photos of the rest of the tiger, too, at the headline link above.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
People's Telescope: Wrangling Over Hubble's Fate: At space.com,
The
Hubble telescope is the Ansel Adams of space photography. Its crystal-clear
keepsake images have brought great insight into the grand majesty of the
cosmos.
While offering clues as to the ultimate fate of the universe, Hubble's
own fate now rests within a murky swirl of risk assessments, shuttle safety
guidelines, novel telerobotic hardware and, of course, politics and budgetary
wrangling.
Next week, NASA will hold a major review regarding the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) with dozens of engineers and other experts. The gathering is seen
by some industry sources as a make-or-break event for any possibility of
saving the observatory.
The meetings will cap months of heated exchanges between politicians,
NASA officials, astronomers and the public.
HubbleSite, the official
home. Here's the Hubble
Heritage Image Gallery at the Space Telescope Science Institute.The photo
above is Planetary
Nebula IC 418.
Link
to this item | Comment
Broadcast
Flag: Tell Us Again About Your Standing: Law professor Susan
Crawford interprets a surprising opinion this week that could affect
the FCC's attempt to control PCs, the Internet and your personal electronic
devices through Digital Rights Management software. I'm quoting the whole
post because it's important:
Good news from the DC Circuit today, which issued an opinion asking
for further facts about petitioners' right to be in front of them complaining
about FCC's jurisdiction in the broadcast flag matter. Everyone (including,
apparently, the FCC) assumed quite reasonably that the petitioners had
every right to be there -- in other words, everyone thought petitioners
had "standing."
But the DC Circuit wasn't so sure about it. Under the applicable
legal standard, you have to show a concrete, particularized, actual/imminent
harm from an administrative rule in order to complain about it. The
petitioners in this case include the American Libraries Association, Public
Knowledge, and EFF. (Things would have been simpler if a single consumer
electronics manufacturer had wanted to face the ire of the content community
and join the lawsuit.)
At oral argument, petitioners' concrete etc. harm was sharply questioned
-- how was one consumer's harm any different from that of the rest of the
populace?
The court has given petitioners two weeks to provide statements of facts
showing special harms caused by the broadcast flag rule -- and has
provided some helpful hints: show us whether any of your members
are engaged in storing TV broadcasts and sending them to distant locations;
show us whether you'll be hindered in lawful copying and distribution;
show us whether your member-educators (if you have any) will be hindered
in distance education efforts.
I think this court wants to find standing. Once this legal threshold
is in place, the court can walk right in and declare that the FCC had no
jurisdiction to adopt the flag rule. And we'll be back at Congress.
The implications of this case are much broader than they may appear on
the surface. FCC is asserting very
broad jurisdiction over anything associated with the overall circuit of
messages sent and received via all interstate radio and wire communication. The
Madison River flap of
two weeks ago is part of this overall picture. I don't think the
FCC's powers extend beyond what is specifically given them by Congress
-- and Congress hasn't given the FCC the internet, PCs, or consumer electronics
devices.
When this hot potato is back in Congress's lap, it should act to lead
the world in self restraint. Don't do it. Don't let one industry
(content, law enforcement, or telecom) control another (high-tech innovation)
without a strong social consensus to do so.
Link
to this item | Comment
Female
X chromosome 'cracked': Chicago Tribune reports,
CHICAGO — An international team of researchers said yesterday that
they have cataloged all the genes on the female X chromosome, a feat
expected to enable fresh insights into women's health and add a genetic
component to the debate over differences between the sexes.
Described by the head of the Human Genome Project as "a monumental
achievement for biology and medicine," the genetic map should help
scientists better understand more than 300 X-linked diseases — such
as hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy — that mothers pass
on to their sons. ...
In humans and other mammals, sexual identity is governed by a pair of
chromosomes known as X and Y. Every female has two X chromosomes, inherited
from both parents, while all males have one X from their mother and one
Y chromosome from their father.
With more than 1,000 genes and 160 million base pairs of DNA, the X looms
like a giant next to the stunted Y chromosome that produces males. The
Y chromosome — 78 genes, 23 million DNA subunits — was sequenced
in 2003.
Because males carry only one X chromosome, they are particularly vulnerable
to diseases carried by defective X genes. Women who carry such defective
genes are usually protected by their backup copy of the X, but if their
sons inherit that disease-causing X they are in trouble.
...Researchers also compared the human X chromosome to the equivalent
in other animals, opening a window into the evolution of sex chromosomes.
Until mammals began to replace reptiles and rule the Earth about 300 million
years ago, the X and Y were of equal size and able to swap genetic material.
But over eons, the male-producing Y has been riddled by mutations, and
the trading of genes trailed off. The chromosome withered away in size,
and its function became limited to establishing maleness, ordering the
building of male sexual organs and conferring the ability to produce sperm.
The X acquired more responsibilities and genes while the Y "slowly
but surely dropped off the face of the Earth," said Dr. Steven Scherer,
director of mapping at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing
Center.
"Although it contains a few important genes, it's almost like the
appendix of the human genome."...
Slashdot adds,
Nature
reports two new studies; one on the complete
sequencing of the X chromosome for humans, which sheds some light
on how sex evolved and how women differ from men, and another on how
women express many genes from X
chromosomes previously thought dormant.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
New York that might have been: At Gridskipper..
So I’m a freak. I collect images of New York, not just as it once
was, and as it might one day be, but as it was once thought the city might
one day be. It’s an alternate universe, in which history took a different
course. The Empire State Building, with a zeppelin docking, as imagined
in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Bryant Park, if they’d
never taken down the Croton Reservoir. The Gaudi building, if the Catalan
architect’s plans for the American Hotel had come to anything. As
magnificent as the real New York may be, it still doesn’t compare
with what might have been.
I wish there were more Gaudis.
Humor note: Gridskipper bills
itself as,"Scouring the world for discount flights, chic hotels—and
pretty people. Gridskipper, the decadent travel guide." The page leads
with an ad for Quikbook, whose slogan is "Not every hotel, just the
cool ones. " I had visions of the sleek Hotel@MIT or
exotic resorts I'm not cool enough or pretty enough to go to.
Where would that be, here in Providence, I wonder. I click. The sole
result for Providence? The venerable Biltmore,
visible from this newsroom, and site of many a prom and wedding reception.
Link
to this item | Comment
A
Painting a Day: A Paintingblog by Duane Keiser... Beyond the
discipline involved, these small paintings are excellent, and seem to
sell well, if the Sold signs on older ones are real.
Link
to this item | Comment
Braingle: Brain
Teasers, Riddles, Games.
Link
to this item | Comment
Missing
Friends - Information Wanted, a database of advertisements for
Irish immigrants published in the Boston Pilot. From group blog Metafilter,
Boston
College has posted more than 31,000 historical entries of Irish Immigrants
who were looking to reunite with family and friends between 1831 to 1921
in a searchable database. The ads were published
originally in the Boston
Pilot.
Link
to this item | Comment
1:30 p.m.
The
Leprechaun Companion by Niall Macnamara:
Despite their world-wide fame, few people now know much about leprechauns
beyond their fondness for rainbows, crocks of gold and shoemaking. Few
people still believe they even exist, or ever did. But only a hundred or
two years ago they were taken very seriously indeed in the Irish countryside
and there were rumours of them everywhere.
The Leprechaun Companion aims to refresh everyone's memories by gathering
as much as has ever been recorded about these sprightly elfs, and then
a bit more. We also throw in a board game that leprechauns have played
for hundreds or even thousands of years....
Wonderful art. You may start
here, at the introduction, if you like...
March 16, 2005,
Irish webcams:
Lower
Gardiner St. Four cameras stream views of Lower Gardiner St. In Dublin,
Ireland. The link goes to Cam 1; links to the others are below the large
image.
Lake at
UCD Live Cam A streaming view of the lake at University College Dublin,
Ireland. A place where people hang out during lunch or just in general.
Ireland's
Eye Ghost Watch Try to see the ghost of the young lady who walks in
an old Belfast linen mill in Ireland. 30 second updates.
Galway Cam A
view of High Street and Kennys bookshop, Galway Woolen Market, and Assets
Gifts in Galway, Ireland. Updates every minute.
Remember, it's five hours later in Ireland. I culled these from Earthcam.com,
which has a webcam search function.
Link
to this item | Comment
J.D.
Lasica asks smart questions of Napster CEO Chris Gorog: Napster
-- which brought music file-sharing to the masses, before it was made
illegal -- today charges $15 a month for unlimited downloads of the million-plus
songs the company offers. The files are wrapped in Digital Rights Management
software, so if you stop paying you lose evrything you've downloaded
to your hard drive. You're renting. If you want to burn a track to CD,
you must buy the song: 99 cents each.
(These are the parts that leaped out at me; there's a lot of hype to steer
around. Also, I've reordered some of these questions. Readers may comment
and read others' comments at the full interview -- that's the link on the
headline above.)
Of that $15 a month, how much goes to the artists?
We take some costs off the top and then we split the balance with the
record labels. And then the record labels pay the music publishing out
of their share and they pay the artists out of their share, which all depends
on each artist’s contract with the labels.
Generally, though, it would fall in the 5 percent range?
Five to 10 percent, depending on how powerful the artist is.
What we really want, though, is the jukebox in the sky -- all the
music anytime.
How many years away are we from a true celestial jukebox?
The major impediment to a true celestial jukebox in the legal world is
the complexity of the rights clearances. This remains an important challenge
for everyone involved in the business. The biggest problem, frankly, are
the music publishers. It’s just the sheer clumsiness of the way the
music publishing organizations are set up.
In the United States, about 50 percent of music publishers’ rights
are cleared by one agency, the Harry Fox Agency. The other 50 percent are
represented by 50,000 individual music publishers. So this is where it
becomes a complex task for anyone to get out there and clear this stuff.
We’re trying all kinds of things to make the process simpler....
What about a blanket license rather than doing it one by one?
You know, a compulsory licensing of the music publishing would be a tremendous
windfall for digital music. It would be a win-win-win for everyone. It
would get more content out there for consumers to enjoy. It would help
propel our business, letting us get closer to that celestial jukebox. All
of these teeny little music publishers from all over the world would have
an opportunity for substantial income. Compulsory licensing is being discussed
in Washington, and we’d love for it to happen.
It used to be during a weekend with the original Napster you could
find songs from really obscure labels and eclectic artists. Now that
Napster’s gone legit, it’s harder to find more obscure material
legitimately online. What’s the holdup with signing up the smaller
indie labels?
Usually it’s just the logistics of doing it. We have a pretty comprehensive
music clearing operation. It’s pretty rare that you run into someone
who’s not interested in licensing their music for digital distribution.
But I’ll emphasize that 85 to 90 percent of the top 100 searches
on Napster are successful. Consumers, nine times out of 10, will find what
they’re looking for....
I think that got turned around. If you already know what you're looking
for, it's not obscure material you've yet to discover. J.D. follows up,
Say I’m a musician and I want to get my music on Napster. What
do I have to do?
At this point, we are only accepting music by signed artists. So we’d
suggest that their record label contact
me, and I’ll make sure our music programming folks jump right
on it. We are very, very interested in getting into every nook and cranny.
Couldn't musicians bypass the record companies and keep about 40-45 percent
of the money stream from Napster by associating themselves with an indie
label run as a co-op?
Bonus link on compulsory licensing: NMPA
Mulls Blanket License For Sub Services, published March 9 at Billboard
Radio Monitor:
The head of the National Music Publishers' Assn. told House lawmakers
yesterday (March 8) that the group is open to licensing changes and has
entered into discussions with labels and online companies that could lead
to a blanket license for subscription services.
“We’ve come a long way in the last year,” said David
Israelite, the new president/CEO of the NMPA. “We’re open to
new ideas, including the concept of blanket licensing -- starting with
subscription services first.”
He added: “I am pleased to report that NMPA has been engaged in
discussions with the Digital Media Assn. and the RIAA regarding the licensing
of [digital phonorecord downloads] by online subscription services.”
...Online companies have complained that music publishers interpret the
section to require more than one payment per distribution -- an additional
fee for making an “ephemeral” copy of a work to store on a
computer server, for example. DiMA’s executive director calls this “double-dipping.”...
Link
to this item | Comment
Interview:
Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales: Mark Hurst blogs at Good
Experience, "Wikipedia is
a free online encyclopedia whose entries are written by a worldwide community
of users. Constantly adding and refining entries, this community has
created an encyclopedia that rivals any other ever written."
Q - What's one aspect of Wikipedia that excites you?
The Wikipedia community. Our big-picture vision is to share knowledge
with all of humanity. That was the original dream of the Internet before
the era of pop-ups and spam, and it's now being realized. It's exciting.
We're learning huge lessons about harnessing community, treating communities
well, and seeing the results.
Q - How does Wikipedia stack up to Britannica?
By number of entries, we're about six times as large, but that's an
unfair comparison, since we slice up entries differently. The fairest
comparison is by number of words, and we're twice the size of Britannica
by that count.
An interesting comparison, not to Britannica but to other top sites,
is traffic. We now have more traffic than Paypal, more than USAToday.com,
and we're close to NYTimes.com. We're doing this all with volunteers
who are managing the servers and doing everything themselves, and that's
pretty astonishing....
More at the link; and here's Wales's
own site, with more about him
Link
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2:02 p.m.
Spring! The Proof: Snow still covers most of
my backyard, but in a sunny spot near the deck steps, it's melted and new
shoots are up.
Humongous version (420k)
Humongous version (424k)
Link
to this item | Comment
March 15, 2005, 7:55 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Corned
beef and cabbage recipes
Colored pencils
did this? The winners of the Twelfth Annual International
Exhibition of the Colored Pencil Society of America were announced in Memphis,
and they're amazing.
The award for exceptional merit went to Jaclyn Wukela of South Carolina for
Nassau Lady VIII, pictured above. The quality of all the winners
(reproduced at the link on the headline above) is amazing.
Link
to this item | Comment
Hidden hotspots: Following up on yesterday's wi-fi hotspots post, I got an
email today from someone pointing me to a Providence restaurant with free wifi.
Its website made no mention of the service, so I telephoned. The conversation
went like this:
Hi, is it true you offer free wi-fi?
Yes.
I didn't know about that -- I don't see it on your website.
Well, we're being low-key about it because we have limited tables and
don't want them all filled with people who've come for the wi-fi.
It's the unadvertised special, and I suspect it's more widespread than we
know.
Link
to this item | Comment
Attack of the She-Blogger! Via
Shelley Powers, who traces its lineage
on this
post.
It comes just as gender wars have broken out in the blogosphere. The day has
been too long, and sleep too little, for me to comment today. But it's
ugly.
Shelley takes it on: Steve Levy, Dave Sifrey, and NZ Bear: You are Hurting
Us
I knew as soon as I saw the Steve Levy article (Blogging
Beyond the Men's Club, at Newsweek) that we would see a backlash about
the domination of whites and males in the weblogging ranking systems.
... Levy’s was guaranteed to first of all get notice (after all,
he is a white male journalist); get credibility (after all, he is a white
male journalist); and, lastly, generate a great deal of guilt.
First, to the white guys who have been proclaiming your race and sex with such pride:
It would seem that not only are you not content with being king of the
hill, you also want to be chief underdog, too. Not content to being the
center of too many dialogs within weblogging, you also want to be the
center of one discussion that, oddly enough, doesn’t center around you:
being a weblogger who is not a male, or is not white, or both.
So
you’ve perverted the discussion until it is all about you, effectively
shutting it down, while making sure that the bits you so desperately
need understand that their rightful place is forming a swarm about you.
You see, White Guys, it’s all about you.
And you’ll do everything in your power to destroy even an effective conversation,
unless it is all about you.
When
Levy mentioned ‘lack of diversity’ and pointed a finger at the grouped
white males, you cried out ‘foul’ and hastened to point out that Glenn
Reynolds and Atrios may be white and male, but they have different
opinions, and hence any group they’re in, is diverse. All I can say is
that George Wallace would have been proud of your verbal footwork, and
supported your distinction.
When a gentle
and curious question about having a conference focused on women in
weblogging is proposed, you come into comments and you harrangue and
harrass and manipulate the
discussion, until the concept is tainted almost beyond repair, and yes,
the conversation does flow around ‘you’. I, being tired, fell for the
trap. Again. I forgot that the greatest hurt I can do to you, the most
effective weapon I have, is to ignore you; by not feeding this
insatiable and sad need you have, to have all of this be about you....
Frank Paynter (Since
she aks me): "I do admire the impulse that these women
have to topple an authoritarian structure and perhaps get a word in edgewise
at
a non-Winer
dominated
gathering of bloggers."
Jeanane Sessum: "...all in all, really feeling like this place resembles someplace I don't
belong right now." (item
link)
Related: The naughty Wonkette gives today's keynote speech at SXSW Interactive. Fishbowl
DC attends and blogs,
IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS: This post marks Fishbowl D.C.'s first non-family
friendly post. We apologize in advance for the use of the expletives in this
post, but felt that preserving the original language was critical to telling
this story. Minors and those easily offended should NOT read the jump.
But she doesn't say anything worse that she writes every day on her blog.
You elevated her, guys, you invited her, you gave her the Bloggie for
best political
blog.
Is this the best you can do?
At this rate, the blogosphere will sink in the stew of its own sour juices.
Link
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How
we work: Fascinating vignettes of how famous (mostly) white males
work(ed). For example,
Ray Bradbury, author
Bradbury wrote The Fireman, an early version on Fahrenheit 451 in novella
form, on a rented typewriter (at 10 cents per half hour) in the basement of
the UCLA library, in nine days.
No unnecessary words for him!
Virginia Woolf is here:
Here's Woolf, who
apparently wrote standing at her desk
...
And she foreshadows the cut-up: "Arrange whatever pieces come your way",
and so bitter-sweetly suggests: "I would venture to guess that Anon,
who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
Link
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March 14, 2005, 7:52 p.m.
Free
wi-fi hotspots in R.I.: My colleague, photographer Andy Dickerman,
stopped me the other day and mentioined his surprise at passing a Panera
Bread store and discovering they offered free wi-fi -- short for broadband
Internet access -- to anyone whose laptop has built-in capacity to network
or a card that provides
the same thing.
Panera
Bread and Chelo's restaurants lead the pack. Other free hotspots include
the East Greenwich Public Library on Church St., Bagelz Bagel Bakery on Fortin
Road in Kingston, the Empire Cafe in Newport, Tazza Cafe on Westminster Street
and Brewed Awakenings a Memorial Blvd., behind the old train station, and
the Hampton Inn in Warwick.
Here's the
Mass. list, although the only nearby offering listed seems to be Jaec’s,
a coffee shop at 68 Union Street that promotes its free access on its site.
The benefit for the business is the edge it might give them when laptop
users are choosing where to buy coffee, snacks and meals, so don't make the
waiter bug you to buy something while you're there sipping their bandwidth.
There are many other "open" wi-fi connections that are available
to those who find them. It's considered a friendly thing to do -- offer a
connection to passers-by who are looking for one. (You want to keep your
own computer off limits by using a free firewall program such as Zone
Alarm, which lets you decide what you'll share. Just share the pipe.)
My daughter used to share her connection with a close friend and next-door
neighbor who was temporarily out of work In some apartment buildings, everybody
uses one connection.
The range of most wi-fi is about 300 feet, able to penetrate two walls --
as long as one of them doesn't have a refrigerator on it, like the path from
my router to my back porch.
As always, if your business offers free wi-fi and isn't on this list, holler.
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'Orphan'
works: Books, letters and documents whose original copyrights
expire go to limbo. The U.S. Copyright Office -- which is charged with
maintaining a public culture -- is examining what to do when there's
no one to renew the copyright.
For designers, academics, artists, musicians, and filmmakers, using copyrighted
works can be a huge headache. It can be impossible to find out if a particular
work is still under copyright or not. And even when people would happily
pay to use a copyrighted photo, passage, or video clip, it's often impossible
(or extremely costly) to find the copyright holder. When this happens, everybody loses.
Artists can't realize their creative vision, academics can't clearly communicate
their ideas, and copyright holders don't get paid. Even worse, important
pieces of our culture get needlessly locked away.
Right now, the US Copyright Office is asking for public comment on the "orphan
works" problem, so now's our chance to make the system work better. The
Copyright Office has specifically asked for comments from people who have
run up against the problem of trying to clear a potentially copyrighted
work -- either for use in a new creative effort or simply to make the work
available to the public once again. If you have a story like this, it's
essential you make your voice heard. Use
the form (at this link) to submit comments directly to the Copyright
Office - you type, and we'll take care of the formatting and submission.
Some examples of "orphans" are at Save
Orphan Works. They include fan mail and hate mail:
"It
can be almost impossible to determine who might own the copyright in a
letter with a chili recipe that a used car dealer sent to General Eisenhower
in 1946, and yet the Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower project at Johns
Hopkins University might wish to include that letter in the printed volume." (From
Peter Hirtle's "Unpublished materials, new technologies, and copyright:
facilitating scholarly use,"49 J COPYRIGHT SOC, 259-75 (2001).
Another example might be an obscure book whose author leaves no obvious
heirs:
Katherine Prest's ONE OF 9000 from 1934 (Boston, MA, Marshall Jones Co.)
She is not a well-known author. I have no idea when she died. I have no
idea if this work was renewed. It is forty-two pages. I use it as a key part
of my manuscript, quoting a good deal from it. Is this an orphaned work?
The deadline for offering your comments to the U.S. Copyright Office is
5 p.m. EST, March 25, 2005 --soon.
Or, if you'd rather do it by email, here's how
to send it to the government:
All submissions should be addressed to Jule L. Sigall, Associate Register
for Policy & International Affairs. Comments may be sent by regular
mail or delivered by hand, or sent by electronic mail to the e-mail address orphanworks@loc.gov (see
file formats and information requirements under supplemental information
below). Those sent by regular mail should be addressed to the U.S. Copyright
Office, Copyright GC/I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington,
DC 20024. Submissions delivered by hand should be brought to the Public
Information Office, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building,
Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20540.
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Website and blog awards: Last week, the buzz
was over SXSW, the music
festival. But there's also an SXSW
Interactive going on in Austin (and a film
festival, too) with panels and blogging going on through tomorrow.
And the
winners of the 2005
SXSW Web Awards for Websites and The
Bloggies for blogs were announced there. (As fitting for an award for
creating a virtual masterpiece, the award isn't much on the material plane: "The
Weblog of the Year owner(s) will receive 2,005 US cents (US$20.05)." That
would be BoingBoing.
Xeni Jardin, one of the
five in the San-Francisco-based BB group, blogs
a breathless acceptance today. The others are sci-fi author and Electronic
Frontier Foundation employee Cory
Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, David
Pescovitz and John Battelle.
The People's Choice site award went to Dogster,
a pet site "Where Every Dog Has A Webpage!"
Notable in The Bloggies: Where
Is Raed?, the blog by Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger, won for Best African
or Middle Eastern Weblog. Best Weblog About Politics went to Wonkette.
So now you have a lot of new sites to check out. Don't ignore the finalists,
either.
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Battle
for the Belle of Amherst, in Wired. I'm late with this -- the
story was published last Thursday -- but it's too cool to ignore:
SAN FRANCISCO -- In this era of first-person shooters, successful video
games seem to require lots of shooting, explosions and other assaults on
the senses. But who says you can't write a game about the poetry of Emily
Dickinson?
That was the question put to some of the biggest names in gaming during
a special panel discussion Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference
here.
The Sims creator Will Wright, Black & White designer Peter Molyneux
and Splinter Cell lead designer Clint Hocking were set the task of developing
a game concept based on the reclusive poet....
Players of Hocking's fantasy game Muse would collect symbols from an environment
based on Dickinson's Massachusetts -- things that might have influenced
her writing, such as willow trees. Piecing the symbols together in a certain
order, players would form the poems. Because Dickinson's poetry evolved
conceptually over time, some symbols in the game would only unlock after
players had already crafted some poems.
...Wright, the speaker most people in the room had come to see, riffed
on Dickinson's reputation as a recluse.
"If she were alive today, she'd be an internet addict," Wright
deadpanned, "and she'd probably have a really amazing blog."
THE
Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--...
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Local tech democracy: My colleague Tim
Barmann has two local tech stories of note in today's Journal (reg.req.):
Cyberspace
civics: The secretary of state's office is using new software to make
it easy for citizens everywhere to download meeting notices of all kinds.
Meeting notices posted by cities and towns don't exactly make for exciting
reading.
But
you wouldn't know that from talking to Jim Willis, a technical whiz and programmer
at the Rhode Island secretary of state's office.
Willis and other staffers have been working for months to develop software
that automates the process of putting meeting notices on the Web.
What he's really excited about is how the software has the potential
to open up access to all sorts of government records.
"Nobody's done this before," Willis said during a demonstration of his
project last week. "This is a ground-breaking tool."
The tool he's talking about is a program called RSSonate (pronounced
resonate).
Essentially, it makes it possible for any Web site owner to fetch the
most recently filed documents at the secretary of state's office.
Willis and his staff have used RSSonate first to automate the posting
of meeting notices, which are filed periodically by cities, towns and various
commissions.
You can see it at http://www3.sec.state.ri.us/pubinfo/
openmeetings/upcoming_meetings.html
...All of the upcoming Providence-related meetings can be viewed at
http://www.providenceri.com/publicnotices/
public_notice.php?id=14 ...
The digital democracy is well under way. Tim's on it. (The thumbnail of
Jim Willis above is a detail of a photo by Kathy Borchers.)
Tim's second story:
R.I.
helping to develop open source software: The Government Open Code Collaborative
will allow state and local governments to share computer programs.
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