projo.com

   Subterranean Homepage News

Advertising

2006 EPpy Winner -- Best multimedia

Providence, R.I., Overcast 35°

Customize | E-mail newsletters | E-cards | MySpecialsDirect


my passport photo
about me
garden blogs

the Station Fire weblog
Iraq news: best sources
personal site

Rhode Island
Library Lookup:

PPL
(Drag link to your personal toolbar folder/links toolbar; click from book page at Amazon etc. to search library catalog for book)

React
Email Sheila

back issues by week

SHeNews by email

Subterranean Homepage News can now come to you as email, weekdays at 8 p.m. You have to register at projo.com, so they know who to send it to. Here's the "email newsletter" page

-- the "shenews" checkbox is at the very bottom.

Indexes & Group blogs
Burp
Unmediated
CyberJournalist: News Weblogs
BoingBoing
Ms. Magazine blogroll
What She Said!
Southern New England bloggers
blogdex
Metafilter
Memepool
Slashdot
Slashdot Politics
Blog Sisters
Shell Extension City
Daypop Top 40 Links
Lost Remote
Mirror project
I Want Media
Blogcritics
Microcontent News
E-Media Tidbits
Through the Viewfinder
Daily Rotation
news we can use
Popdex
Blog Search Engine

Bloggers
Jim Romenesko
Burningbird
Doc Searls
JD Lasica
Tom Mangan
Tom Matrullo
Tom Shugart
Kevin Moore
Rebecca Blood
Cory Doctorow
David Weinberger
Lou Josephs
Dan Gillmor
Making Light
Paul Andrews
Jeneane Sessum
Liz Donovan
Tim Porter
Robot Wisdom
Grow-a-brain
J-Walk
Dave Winer
"Salam Pax"
Baghdad Burning
Ft. Boise
The Magnificent Melting Object
Henry Gould
Wayne Robins
peterme.com
FollowMe Here
kalilily time
Judy Watt
Obscure Store
plep
wood s lot
The Shifted Librarian
Steve Rubel
Buzz Bruggeman

Dormant
Ye Olde Phart
Dave Copeland
Craig's BookNotes

NASA image links
Multimedia gallery
Image exchange (search)
(link fixed)
JSC Digital Image

'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!

May 6, 2005, 5:52 p.m.-- Last week's weblog

Links for another rainy weekend. Happy Sunday, you other mothers!

Webby Award winners were announced Wednesday. Special Achievement Award Winners are:


The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award: Former Vice President Al Gore
Webby Person of the Year: Craig Newmark of craigslist
The Webby Artist of the Year: The Kleptones
The Webby Breakout of the Year Award: Flickr

Many fine sites to browse at the link.

Bootleg browser: Links to audio and video of live concerts. Some are recorded off the radio.

A huge list of online games: Might as well...

77 cool programs: Shopping without dollars.

Garden Blogs: Read if it's too wet to dig.
Link to this item | Comment

May 5, 2005

Could free or low-cost community wireless happen here? Here's what Providence's Chief Information Officer has to say:

This item is long, gray and important. I've front-loaded a lot of background, and links, so we'll all be on the same page here. If you want to skip ahead to an email exchange I had today with the Providence's Chief Information Officer, this link will take you there.

But if you are fairly new to the idea of low-cost broadband (fast) access to the Internet, I'd suggest you poke around the top here first. Here's the basic idea, from Wireless Philadelphia to Provide Free Internet, Access to Education, which begins,

In June, Mayor John Street and chief information officer Dianah Neff, unveiled a wireless Love Park, where park goers can sit down, have lunch, and log onto websites via their wireless-enabled laptops. Through a new initiative, the Mayor and Naidoff are expanding the borders with the goal of making the entire City of Philadelphia wireless.

With communications, business, and funding plans due in November, Wireless Philadelphia would provide open-air Internet access to students, business people, and citizens around the city. ...

Could that happen here?

Yesterday, I was set to blog a special report from news.com headlined, Cities brace for broadband war, that wonders whether access to the Internet should be treated as a public utility. It includes a map and information about cities where municipal broadband is in play.

You may know that many communities are establishing municipal wi-fi "clouds" or zones that offer free outdoor and low-cost indoor public access to the Internete. Athens, Ga., was a famous early example, and Philadelphia has a plan underway that will blanket the city. Here's the Globe on the Boston effort. In many cities, there's a nonprofit administering it for the city, and competition among Internet service providers to deliver it. In some places, community groups acquire and recycle computers, train new users, train repair people, etc., and help bridge the "digital divide" that leaves older and poorer folks offline.

There's a site devoted entirely to documenting the growth of this phenomenon -- MuniWireless. Check out its Municipal Wireless, Hot Cities and Community Wireless sections. Its founder, Esme Vos of Amsterdam, was interviewed (A Vos of reason in wireless plan) Tuesday in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Q: You've had a chance to read Wireless Philadelphia's business plan. What do you think? Are we going about it the right way?

A: I think the plan is quite sound. The use of a nonprofit organization between the city and the Internet service providers means the city itself will not be delivering Internet access. That is the model a lot of cities, particularly in Europe and Japan, are following. It is quite rare for the city to act as an ISP, except in instances where there is no high-speed access or where the city is small.

It's a model that promotes many service providers who compete with one another, and that's why the EU and Japan are way ahead of the U.S. in broadband access and you get more speed for less money. That's what we have in Amsterdam.

Q: And so how does it work for consumers in Amsterdam?

A: There are dozens of ISPs and the competition is absolutely murderous, but that's good for the consumer, and that's what Philadelphia is trying to do. I get broadband in Amsterdam for the same amount of money my friends in California pay, only my connection is 15 times faster, and the prices keep dropping....

Here's an excerpt from the news.com piece, which actually begins with a tale about Louisiana's Cajun country, where Lafayette "plans to lay out its own state-of-the-art fiber-optic broadband network." But here's the crux of the issue:

Across the country, acrimonious conflicts have erupted as local governments attempt to create publicly funded broadband services with faster connections and cheaper rates for all citizens, narrowing the so-called digital divide. The Bells and cable companies, for their part, argue that government intervention in their business is not justified and say they are far better equipped to operate complex and far-flung data networks.

As part of this special report, CNET News.com has created an interactive municipal broadband legislative map that details the major battlegrounds on the issue. At stake is the fate of high-speed Internet access for millions of Americans, hinging on a fundamental question of civics and economics--whether the government or private industries should take the leading role in building out what's considered this generation's critical infrastructure challenge.

"Is broadband fast food, or is it power?" said Doug Lichtman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. "The answer might be: 'We don't know. Let's experiment with it.' It might give us great information about what risks the government assumes, once it gets into it."

In some cases, local governments have simply stepped into a vacuum left by commercial providers that have proved slow or unwilling to bring broadband to their residents. But the situation has grown more complicated with public broadband proposals in major cities already served by private industry. These projects highlight a growing conviction that broadband is not merely a luxury of modern urban life, but rather an essential public service that could increase tourism and commerce while squeezing new efficiencies from services such as health care, education and even sanitation....

The Rhode Island section of their municipal broadband legislative map includes,

Rhode Island
Municipal wireless
Functioning projects: None

Projects under development or consideration: Providence

Municipal fiber-to-the-premise
Functioning projects: None

Projects under development or consideration: None

Municipal broadband laws
Laws limiting communications networks: None

Pending legislation to limit communications networks: None

So I asked Charles Hewitt, CIO for the city of Providence, a simple question:

...CNET News.com... created an interactive municipal broadband legislative map, and the only listing on it for R.I. was

"Projects under development or consideration:
Providence"

No more detail, but I'm certainly pleased to see it mentioned. I've been tracking muni wi-fi since Athens, Ga. What can you tell me about what's envisioned here?

He replied,

Briefly, Providence has advertised for proposals to upgrade the mobile data communications network that we use to support public safety operations. The current network (CDPD) transmits at 19.2 Kbps. We hope to replace it with a network that transmits at 1-10 Mbps. Initially the network will be dedicated to public safety uses (i.e., police, fire, emergency medical). However, we expect eventually to apply it to other municipal applications (e.g., public works, parks, recreation, and building inspection) as well. Proposals are due May 16. We hope to award a contract by the end of June and to have the network operational in October.

There are no plans to use the network to enable public access to the Internet.

I am also indirectly involved in the RI-WINs project, an initiative the RI Economic Development Corporation is sponsoring. The project is evaluating the feasibility of making the entire state of Rhode Island a “hot spot”.

(Here's a description of the RI-WINS project: html or pdf .)

So I followed up:

Is anybody -- the mayor, a community group -- even floating a Philadelphia-type saturation? The EDC project doesn't seem intended to address the "digital divide" or even tourism needs, as far as I can tell from the RI-WINS pdf. Am I reading this correctly, that, although the entire state may be hot, access won't be available to the public except through resellers?

I'm lost when I travel and can't get on the Web, and always pleased when I find a free hotspot, such as the Gainesville, Fla., airport.. What I never do is pay hefty fees per half-hour or hour. Never.

And Hewitt replied,

To the best of my knowledge, nobody is floating a Philadelphia-type saturation. We considered the idea and decided we had more pressing needs in other areas, such as public safety.

However, we would be willing to make physical infrastructure available – such as light poles – to a network builder, provided there was appropriate compensation to the City. Moreover, if the network equipment support multiple radio bands (say, 2.4 GHz for public access and 4.9 GHz for public safety), we probably would be willing to make this available also.

I expect any solution in Rhode Island will involve resellers. Even Philadelphia plans to have resellers service the retail end of the business. I see no serious prospect for statewide free access such as you experienced in Gainesville.

Here in Rhode Island there are a lot of potential competitors: Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cingular. The Verizon EV-DO service is pricey right now, but this is likely to change as the other players roll out broadband wireless service. An affordable, high-quality solution from any of these players will kill those that charge hefty fees by the half-hour.

So there you have it. Please comment at link below.
Link to this item | Comment

May 4, 2005, 7:33 p.m.

May 4, 1776 - Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

How a Bookmaker and a Whiz Kid Took On an Extortionist — and Won. Facing an online extortion threat, Mickey Richardson bet his Web-based business on a networking whiz from Sacramento who first beat back the bad guys, then helped the cops nab them. If you collect revenue online, you'd better read this.

This is at CSO (Chief Security Officer) magazine. Long, interesting -- despite being very geeky, since it was a denial-of-service attack that was threatened, executed and countered by an online gaming site in Costa Rica. The perp turned out to be in Russia.

I learned about it at Slashdot (where else?).
Link to this item | Comment

Backfence launches two citizens media sites in Virginia
Link to this item | Comment

Woman who turns (dead) pets into pillows faces death threats. The story is from the Telegraph (U.K.). Odd that I had to add that word to the headline. Anyhow, I blogged her creations a while back. If you bought one, it's now a rarity.

The story offers a glimpse into the world of the single female taxidermist:

Even before she went into hiding, she admitted that her profession had taken a toll on her love life. "I have run off boyfriends so much, it's not even funny," she explained, saying that some were put off when they opened the freezer to find a bear head.

When she does manage to persuade a man to spend an evening in her company, Miss Hall says that she follows her golden rule for an off-duty taxidermist looking for love: "Never pick up road-kill on the first date."

Link to this item | Comment

Geek gift for mom? This caught my eye: LoungeLight LED Candles at ThinkGeek:

The LED light can be switched to either slowly cycle through its entire color range or it can be paused on a specific color. The candles can be used with or without flame and have a burn time of about 14 hours (short candle) and 24 hours (tall candle).

Link to this item | Comment

Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy: One man's experience.
Nontoxic Lawn Care: Products and How-To's: In depth, comprehensive, linkful, from the Green Guide.
Link to this item | Comment

Dogme 95: Plep points to this at Wikipedia,

Dogme 95 is a movement in filmmaking developed in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. This movement is sometimes known as the Dogme 95 collective. The goal of the collective is to instill a sense of simplicity in filmmaking, free of postproduction modifications and other gimmicks. The emphasis on purity in the formation of the film places a focus on the actual story and the performance of the actors. For someone experiencing the film, there is an increase in engagement as the viewer realizes the lack of overproduction, and becomes more concerned with the narrative and mood. In order to further this goal, von Trier and Vinterberg developed a set of ten rules that a Dogme film must conform to. These rules, referred to as the Vow of Chastity, are as follows:

Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being filmed).

The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the film takes place.)

The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

Optical work and filters are forbidden.

The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

Genre movies are not acceptable.

The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)

The director must not be credited.

It should be noted that from the first dogme film, these rules have been both circumvented and broken.

I haven't actually been able to see a clip of one online yet, though. If you know of clips, please write.
Link to this item | Comment

Actual Expert Too Boring For TV: This is from The Onion (i.e. it's satire) but you know this must happen, given the quality of the blather from cable's talking heads.

SECAUCUS, NJ—Dr. Gary Canton, a professor of applied nuclear physics and energy-development technologies at MIT and a leading expert in American nuclear-power applications, was rejected by MSNBC producers for being "too boring for TV" Monday.
Canton at the MSNBC studio where he failed to make the cut.
Above: Canton at the MSNBC studio where he failed to make the cut.

"We could deal with Dr. Canton being so short," said Cal Salters, a segment producer at MSNBC. "And we could've made him up so he didn't look like he spends all day in front of a computer. We even considered cutting away to stock footage so our audience didn't have to look at him for too long. But when it turned out that listening to him is about as interesting as picking the lint off his lapels—well, there was nothing we could do about that."...

Link to this item | Comment

Who would buy that? Auction oddities from all over the Web. Reader Karlyn Haub sent this along in an email titled, "Something in the 'I have ceased to be amazed' category," adding, "Sheila, I found this on coffee break; you have to check this site out - Anybody will buy anything anyone will sell."

That's Homer the eggplant chicken at right -- with "an eggplant body, pea pod wings, and radish tail."

The woman selling her 5 feet of hair is certainly onto something. The bidding is up to $2,550, with the reserve not yet met.

There's even a Providence-related item there:

Signs that you read too much H.P. Lovecraft: 1) You put a "Cthulhu on Board" bumper sticker on your car. 2) Your auctions get a little overly dramatic.

It may be a bit hard to find this eBay item, since the description is "Begone, Foul Denizen of the NetherWorld!" But you can browse to it (and other timewasters) in the Everything Else > Weird Stuff > Totally Bizarre category.

And if you've never been to Lovecraft's grave in Swan Point cemetery, don't forget that that 'P' stands for Phillips, and that's the name on the large family monument. H.P.'s stone is smaller, part of a cluster.

Thanks Karlyn. They always told us that what goes on in people's heads is far weirder than we want to know.
Link to this item | Comment

Study: Fewer Commercials Lead To More Radio Listening: Well, yeah. Especially on my car radio. That's what the buttons are for.

But I'm in the minority third who think that, according to FMQB, a radio industry site:

With many stations taking on "less is more" initiatives when it comes to commercials, Arbitron and Edison Media Research have released results of a new study that says 47 percent of consumers would listen to a radio station "a lot more" if that station had noticeably fewer commercial breaks, while 44 percent would listen "a lot more" if that station had shorter commercial breaks. Twenty-three percent of respondents said that they are aware of radio stations that play noticeably fewer spots than they used to and noticeably shorter commercial breaks than they used to.

Furthermore, the study notes that more than eight in 10 Americans consider listening to commercials a "fair price to pay" for free radio programming. Sixty-three percent of listeners say they "never" tune away from radio commercials while listening at work, and 49 percent said they do not tune out at home. Even while listening in the car, only one-third of listeners say they "always" or "usually" change stations during a commercial break....

Link to this item | Comment


Cream, once: From left Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton playing Royal Albert Hall in London last night.

May 3, 2005, 7:10 p.m.

Clapton, Baker, Bruce: Cream again, for one night. Influential British 1960s band Cream reunited for a concert on Monday - 36 years after the group split. BBC reports,

Clapton, 60, is said to have agreed to because of the failing health of the other former members of the band.

Bassist Jack Bruce was reunited with guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker

Bass player Bruce, 61, has had a liver transplant, and drummer Baker, 65, is said to suffer from arthritis.

Cream last played at the Royal Albert Hall in 1968. (November 26)

Although the band were only together for less than three years, they recorded three albums which sold more than 35 million copies. ...

Singles included Crossroads and Born Under a Bad Sign, I Feel Free and Strange Brew....

Their set included all their most famous songs, including Crossroads, Spoonful and White Room. The encore was Sunshine of Your Love - their biggest hit single....

There are more concerts tonight, Thursday and Friday, all sold out, of course.

Tales of Brave Ulysses was always one of my favorites, and they did not perform that last night, according to Where's Eric!, the Clapton Fan Club Magazine, which has great photos, some reviews and comments, and links.

The Cream Reunion site -- designed to remind -- has a gallery of the old photos, a store (outsourced to Rhino records) at which you may listen to clips, and buy, of course.

Ginger Baker evenutually fled superstardom for Africa, building Nigeria's first multitrack studio and recording with many Nigerian musicians, including the legendary Fela. (Fela With Ginger Baker Live!)

NNDB, which describes itself as, "an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead," has a linkful page on Baker.

Once upon a time, everybody owned Disraeli Gears. When we all thought they'd always look like this:

Cover art for a two-CD anthology called Cream - Gold

Related: In time, anyway: R. Crumb was on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday.

That's Mr. Natural there, of course, perhaps Crumb's most famous creation.
Link to this item | Comment

1:57 p.m
10 citizen media experiments win grants: J-Lab's New Voices has announced,

College Park, Md. – Ten New Voices award winners from across the United States will receive $12,000 grants to launch innovative local media ventures, J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced today.

The 10 were selected from 243 proposals seeking inaugural New Voices funding, said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the program, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation....

Among the winners:

    • Lower East Side Girls Club in New York City. To train 32 young women, aged 15-21, to produce weekly podcasts on community news;

    • The kaPow! Web site, from kaPow! Inc. in Philadelphia. To create a “virtual home” on the Web for hip-hop culture in Philadelphia; enthusiasts will swap news, share advice and post their own music on the Web.

    • Friends of the Deerfield Library in Deerfield, N.H. To create a Web site to report on local news and activities, exchange opinions and showcase news, fiction, poetry, cartoons and photography from the 4,000 residents of this growing rural community.

    • A community news Weblog to encourage citizen journalism from the mostly African-American residents of one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. The blog will cover community tensions, concerns over gentrification and other local issues through print, audio and photos.

A common theme among all the winners is training and support for citizen journalists to publish news and information that they and their potential readers/listeners/co-creators care about. On these intensely local levels, they'll be inventing bottom-up journalism in their own communities.

It's also interesting that these proposals came from all sorts of existing groups who saw a common opportunity in these grants to give publishing tools to those who aren't likely to use them in traditional ways.
Link to this item | Comment

May 2, 2005, 6:09 p.m.

Time traveler convention Saturday: There's a joke about the first time traveler to meet Shakespeare suddenly finding himself surrounded by a crowd of journalists from the future who wanted to witness the first meeting between the Bard and the time traveler.

Something similar may be happening at MIT Saturday night, when the first ever Time Traveler Convention convenes in an MIT courtyard at 10 p.m.

The idea is that there only has to be one, but visitors from the future may attend as often as they like.

From the FAQ:

Can't the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and travel back in time to attend?

Yes, they can! In fact, we think this will happen, and the small number of adventurous time travelers who do attend will go back to their "home times" and tell all their friends to come, causing the convention to become a Woodstock-like event that defines humanity forever.

Unfortunately, we of the present (2005) don't have time travel, and so we only have one chance at observing the convention. If the time travelers don't leave us their secrets, we won't be able to go back in time and see our convention in all its glory unless it is publicized in advance.

Isn't time travel impossible?

We can't know for certain. The ancient Greeks would have thought computers were impossible, and the Phoenicians certainly wouldn't have believed that humans would one day send a spacecraft to the moon and back. We cannot predict the future of science or technology, so we can only make an effort and see if any time travelers come to our convention. If you would like to read more about time travel, check out our reading list.

I'm from the future, and I'd like to attend!

We're not sure how you're emailing us from the future, but we'd love to have you! Come as you are! No dress code whatsoever. We do request that you bring some sort of proof that you do indeed come from the future, and haven't just dressed like you do. We welcome any sort of proof, but things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty, or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated.

More at the headline link.
Link to this item | Comment

Bugs Bunny hijacked by evil cartoonists, children revolt: You may have seen the story on TV, or the AP version on a news site. Warner Brothers plans a new cartoon called "Loonatics" based on Bugs Bunny and other lovable Looney Tunes characters.

Thomas Adams, an 11-year-old Tulsa boy, started a website and online petition (asking Warner Bros. to create entirely new characters for the series instead of "ruining" the old ones) that succeeded, sort of, in saving the kid-pleasing good guys: Warner will make them less dark and spooky. But...

Bob Bergen, the voice actor behind Porky's stutter and Tweety's "putty tat" the past 15 years... cautions fans against rushing to judgment before it airs.

"The kids who are going to be seeing this are not as versed in classic Looney Tunes as these fans are," he said. "Let the target audience be the judge."

The "Loonatics" -- scheduled to air Saturday mornings come fall on Kids' WB! -- is aimed at 6-to-11-year-olds. Test groups loved it, (Warner Bros. Entertainment spokesman Scott ) Rowe said.

Not so fast, Scott Rowe. Who are those kids? At our house Friday night, the family 7-year-old walked in just as this story was airing on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC Countdown. One look at these cartoon relatives of Darth Vader and Dylan was aroused -- and outraged.

"Too freaky!!," said Dylan, his face darkening when he saw the new, dark versions of the lovable cartoons. "Imagine if a 4-year-old saw that, he'd scream."

He watched the entire segment, then went to saveourlooneytunes.com to read about it. He wanted to do something about this.

And so, for the first time ever, soccer-playing math-whiz Dylan voluntarily wrote something. Here it is. (spelling corrected)

Save our Looney Tunes please

Do you believe, Warner Brothers thinks that kids are bored of the classic characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanaian Devil, Road Runner and Lola Bunny. And guess what, they're going to turn them into nightmare freaks.

If you don't want this to happen, go to www.saveourlooneytunes.com. Besides if a 4-year-old kid was watching it, he or she would probably scream.

Oh yeah did I mention they're wicked scary!!!!!!

Take that, Scott Rowe.
Link to this item | Comment

"What, if you could pick just one thing, would you teach the world about science... and why?" At Spiked Online,

2005 - announced as Einstein Year - marks the centenary of the publication of Albert Einstein's equation E = mc2. To mark this occasion, Sandy Starr at spiked and science communicator Alom Shaha have conducted a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators - including 11 Nobel laureates - asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing. Alom Shaha, who conceived the survey, has made four accompanying films in which interviewees talk through their responses.

All the responses are here.

Scientists who responded to the survey will debate the results in London May 10.
Link to this item | Comment

The Wired 40: They're masters of technology and innovation. They're global thinkers driven by strategic vision. They're nimbler than Martha Stewart's PR team. They're The Wired 40.

Apple leads, followed by Google Samsung, Amazon and Yahoo.

Microsoft is lost in the pack at number 28.

The usefulness of this story is in the brief text: It's a quick crib sheet on what the big cos. are doing now, in case you've been offline living your life lately.

(Phew. Faster than a speeding bullet, too, probably.)
Link to this item | Comment

New garden blog: Andrew Stenning, a gardener, garden designer and garden photographer from Brighton, U.K., wrote to tell me of his blog, poems and photos.

His is the first garden blog I've encountered not to mention gardening directly.

He's been added to the Garden Blogs list.
Link to this item | Comment

How to blow the perfect crime: AP reports, Man Says Buried Treasure Story Was Publicity For Band.

PLAISTOW, N.H. -- One of the men charged with faking a story about finding buried treasure gave an unusual motive for the alleged scheme Monday, saying it was a publicity stunt for his band.

Matt Ingham, 23, of Newton, N.H., was arrested at his house on Saturday. He was arraigned in New Hampshire on Monday and taken to Massachusetts. Police said Ingham was one of four men accused of stealing a cache of old money while doing a roofing job.

Ingham told reporters on Monday that he is in a rock band, and he claimed that the story of buried treasure was a publicity stunt.

"I just wanted to be on TV," Ingham said as he was led out of court.

A reporter asked if he wanted to be on TV for publicity for his band, and he said, "Yep."

Note to those tempted to broadcast news of a windfall: Behind the spotlight, there are crosshairs. Ken Kesey said that.
Link to this item | Comment

Designer bandages look like bacon strips. Wearing raw pork is appealing?
Link to this item | Comment

 

BACK ISSUES BY WEEK

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 & 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 |88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 || 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153| 154| 155

Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com

Advertising


Advertising
Table of Contents
Home page
PROJOCLASSIFIEDS | PROJOCARS | PROJOHOMES | PROJOJOBS | OBITUARIES | IN MEMORIAMS
Rhode Island News | Business | Lifebeat | Multimedia | National / World news | Opinion | Sports | Weather | Your Turn

News tip: (401) 277-7303 | Classifieds: (401) 277-7700 | Display advertising: (401) 277-8000 | Subscriptions: (401) 277-7600
© 2006, Published by The Providence Journal Co., 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.