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2.24.03. I'm blogging the fire at The Station nightclub in a separate
blog outside registration on the open Web at http://projo.com/blogs/stationfire.
Shenews will won't post a regular update later in the day. Tomorrow, the catch-up blog.
By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Feb. 21, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
The Station tuned into '80s bands
02/21/2003
Sheila Lennon
projo.com
For three weekends after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, The Station
Concert Club hosted "Tunes Against Terrorism" -- 25 bands raising
money for the Red Cross to help the families of victims.
Three months earlier, well-known local rockers John Cafferty, and Steve
Smith & The Nakeds played a benefit at the club on Cowesett Avenue
in West Warwick for the Make-A-Wish foundation.
It was a club that had hosted shows by bands such as Dead Kennedys, Quiet
Riot, Union (Bruce Kulick, formerly of Kiss, and John Corabi, formerly
of Motley Crue), Mick Taylor (former guitarist for The Rolling Stones),
Black Label Society (featuring former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde),
Blue Oyster Cult, Roomful of Blues, Dave Davies of The Kinks, Honeymoon
Suite, The Threats and even a Shania Twain lookalike called Shania Twin.
If it had a theme, it was bands who were big in the '80s, such as hard
rock/heavy metal band Great White, best known for hits such as 1989's
"Once Bitten, Twice Shy," a cover of an Ian Hunter song. One
concertgoer called it a "hair-band" club. Its exterior was covered
with paintings of rock stars, and stars and stripes.
Sean Sands records concerts by local bands for his company, RattleHead
Records. In an email today, he said, "I know the acoustic foam insulation
that covered the place is fire-retardant, but I remember last time I hung
mics in the place and the foam was dry and brittle and crumbled when I
touched it. I even thought, "wonder what would happen if there was
a fire in here...
"Both Missi and I played at the Station when it was Crackerjacks,
then the Filling Station, then just The Station. RattleHead recorded more
shows at the Station than I can think of right now. We knew all of the
staff, and were often in there when not working. All in all, we've probably
been connected to that place for almost 10-15 years. I haven't identified
anyone we know directly as having been injured; but we knew so many people
there and so many were hurt, I can't see how that will remain the case.
"
Steve Smith, keeper of the Journal music listings, is lead singer of
a band called Just Say Yes that last played The Station in June of last
year. He recalls, "I always enjoyed playing at The Station. It was
an intimate setting and had an awesome sound system. The other bands that
I've played with there were always the nicest people. The people who worked
there were always nice to the bands; they did whatever they could for
you. I don't relish seeing the list of people. I'm sure some were my friends.
Updated 3:30 p.m. Names have not been released yet; bodies are still being
pulled from the
ashes, and many are probably unidentified.
We'll post them when they're available.
(I'm writing about the club, blogging will be sporadic) Memorial
service at 5:30 p.m. at Fleet Skating Center; IceFire events cancelled.
Nightclub fire burns fast and fatally: At least 95 people died
and 137 were injured last night in a fire at The Station nightclub in
West Warwick, RI, during the first song of a set by the L.A. band Great
White. Rhode Island band Fathead and tour band Trip opened for them.
Pyrotechnics displays -- spraying sparks -- reached a ceiling and spread
quickly through the old wooden structure..
The local CBS affiliate, WPRI,
was filming a story on nightclub safety in the aftermath of the recent
Chicago nightclub disaster. Their footage shows the fire starting. (.wmv,
Windows media required).
Guitarist Ty
Longley of Great White is still missing. Mike
Gonsalves, known to listeners as "The Doctor," was hosting
the concert for radio station WHJY. He's also missing.
projo.com ongoing
coverage; photo
slideshow (reg. req.)
The Station
• Message
board, where condolences are already appearing
Link
to this item | Comment
Feb. 20, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
"This
Wei's for you"? Czechs win battle over 'Bud' name: BBC reports,
The American beer giant Anheuser-Busch has lost a long-running legal
battle over the use of its trademark "Bud" name in the UK.
A ruling by the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, allowed rival
Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar to continue to use the trademark "Bud"
name.
The UK is the only country where both Anheuser-Busch and Budvar can
sell their beer products using the Budweiser brand.
Link
to this item | Comment
Altered
books: (Very slow to load, lots of big Victorian book images)
"no stress about making incredible works of art.... just play in
each other's books."
Link
to this item | Comment
Letter
from Davos: it's a letter from a woman identified only as Laurie
who writes for Newsday. She had a pass to the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, where she hobnobbed with the world's elite, and learned
a lot. Excerpts:
-- US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S.
cannot behave in partnership with its allies -- especially the Europeans
-- it risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS, as well. Company
leaders argued that they would rather not have to deal with US
government attitudes about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate
change, intellectual property, rights of children, etc.) -- it's easier
to just do business in countries whose governments agree with yours.
-- Serious Islamic leaders (e.g. the King of Jordan, the Prime
Minster of Malaysia, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic
world must recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means
finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places
of learning.
--When Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win
over the nonAmerican delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments
came
not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative -- it
came
from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands!
Fascinating stuff: There's much more.
Link
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Overview
Iraq, by a military man: From Rebecca
Blood: "I asked a .mil reader for a view of the situation with
Iraq from where he sits. His account of the attitudes which prevail inside
the military caught me by surprise." Me, too.
Among his observations:
Starting with Federal employees, I'll say that those that I know of
and work with in the base operations and training communities view Iraq
as an enormous waste of time, money and resources. We're all praying
that it gets put off past the summer, so that the funds for our projects
aren't sucked back into the black hole that is Desert Storm II or whatever
they're calling it. The political leadership is not held in esteem.
No one is planning on them being around past 20 January 2005.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
5-line self-portrait gallery
Link
to this item | Comment
Feb. 19, 2003
Iraq satellite TV website gets anti-Saddam religious
messages, photos of Middletown aircraft carrier: Doc
Searls blogged today that Lou
Josephs noticed that iraqtv.ws
seems to have been hacked. The site contains photos of the aircraft carrier
USS Saratoga, now berthed in Middletown (disclosure: My brother Frank
heads the effort
to bring the Saratoga to Quonset as a museum), and anti-Saddam messages.
I started doing some digging, found that
register.com listed a new owner of the site, and Google's
cache showed a page that suggests a lapsed domain registration. Elsewhere,
I
had seen mention that some domain registrars and hosts got in trouble
for violating UN sanctions on Iraq when they did business with Iraqi sites.
I emailed Lou and we started looking around, and exchanging what we found.
Many
sites, including the
Iraq News Agency, still point to iraqtv.ws as the Iraq Satellite Channel
link.
The page contains an email link. I sent an email and questions to the
domain owner -- James Poole, who usually goes by Robin, he told me later,
explaining the discrepancy between the names in the email address and
the domain registration -- and just received a reply:
Subject: RE: iraqtv.ws
From: rpoole@techtraininginaudio.com
Date: 6:48 PM
I don't know if they let it lapse or just never got it up off the ground.
I was scanning their sites looking for some weakness/vulnerability and
discovered that they had a link to their satellite link that was not
registered at that point so I registered the link and put up my own
site. As far as the material I posted it is my belief that Saddam has
misled and murdered his own people and that they know this, even if
they don't want to admit it. I registered the site last Sunday on Feb
16 and the fact that my link is still imbedded on his site tells me
that God is giving me a strong hand and that someone over there is helping
me, either out of fear or agreement. I have received one threat by email
but many positive messages of encouragement, even one in French and
one short letter of appreciation from an arabic sounding name. I did
tell the Tallahassee Democrat down here in FL where I live about the
link on Monday am but they didn't seem that impressed (although they
did write a short piece about a Pakistani giving a speech on "The
Iraqi Side of the War from a Muslim Perspective"- appears they
would have been more interested if someone had "hijacked"
an American website.) I think we are involved in a battle of ideologies
and maybe "good vs evil" is too simple for some people but
I do believe more in the Christianity doctrine of the golden rule and
"love thy enemy" than I do in the doctrine of might makes
right and killing whoever disagrees with you. I hope my site encourages
the Iraqi people to avoid all of the killing on both sides by giving
them the faith and hope to stand up and remove Saddam themselves.
In a later message, Poole explains why he put the photos of the Saratoga
on the page:
I thought the photo of the Sara was appropriate for the site as the
Sara demonstrates the tenacity and strength of the American people.
Even though she actually sunk a few times (one of her many nicknames
is "The Sinking Sara" she always managed to revive and come
back. I was on the Sara and saw many onboard fires and even one collision
(about 20 feet away from me a freighter collided with the port hangar
elevator and scraped down the side). But she did her job well and always
bounced back.
He "hacked it" legally. Now we know.
Link
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The truth is out there: Once-bizarre
concept of extra dimensions showing hints of scientific revolution
is the headline on a U. of Chicago press release at spaceref.com:
The concept of extra dimensions, dismissed as nonsense even by one
of its earliest proponents nearly nine decades ago, may soon help solve
seemingly unrelated problems in particle physics, cosmology and gravitational
physics, according to a panel of experts who will assemble from 8:30
a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 15 (Saturday) at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver.
"It doesn't happen often that you get a confluence of ideas and
experiments that come together and it's something that obviously would
change your whole way of looking at the universe," said one of
the panelists, Joseph Lykken, Professor in Physics at the University
of Chicago and a scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Slightly more light is shed on this by a current
Harvard Gazette story on professor Nima Arkani-Hamed:
Physicists describe our everyday world as having four dimensions. The
first three are the familiar width, length, and height. The fourth dimension
is time, because something has to have a life span - just as it needs
the three dimensions that give it shape - in order to exist.
Arkani-Hamed is investigating fifth, sixth, and higher dimensions to
see what they'll tell him about the universe. He's looking for clues
to the mysteries of why gravity is so weak compared with other basic
forces in the universe. He's also searching for missing pieces in our
understanding of the physical laws of nature.
Current theories are too neat, he said, to fit our messy world and,
though they explain what has been observed so far quite well, they also
require everything to be finely adjusted just right in order to work.
In a 2000 article in Scientific American, he used the analogy of a pencil
balancing on a tabletop on its sharpened tip - possible if all the forces
on it balance out just right - but not highly likely.
P. D.
Ouspensky posited six dimensions: A site by John Raithel (author of
"On
the Fourth Way" -- essays based on the ideas of G.I.
Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Rodney
Collin) tries to explain The
Six Dimensions in Modern Physics:
In modern physics and science in general, the first three dimensions
are the same as those described everywhere. But then things get a little
confused. The fourth dimension, which is time, is sometimes described
as space-time, which is actually the fifth dimension - as Ouspensky
points out, the fact that space-time is considered to be curved requires
another dimension.
The sixth dimension, all possibilities, is essentially the "many
worlds" or "multiverse" interpretation of modern physics.
The many worlds explanation is an attempt to explain a curious property
of quantum phenomena that has been observed. It basically goes like
this: At every moment when you seem to choose among multiple possibilities,
you actually choose each possibility, and different universes fork off,
the one you are in now is the one in which you made the choice to read
this, for example. There is another universe where you chose not to
read this, another where you read part way and stopped and so on.
As the theoretical physicist David
Deutsch writes as he is explaining the theory of parallel universes
containing their own David Deutch's:
"Many of those Davids are at this moment writing these very words.
Some are putting it better. Others have gone for a cup of tea."
David Deutch, The
Fabric of Reality
Whew. How many of me are there?
Link
to this item | Comment
Celestial jukebox: Sean
Polay sends along a link from Steve Klein at Poynter's E-media
Tidbits:
Favorite singer/songwriters of mine like Lui
Collins, Sally
Rogers, and Mike
Cross have learned how to better market themselves through the Internet,
and now, the Smithsonian's
Folkways Recordings label is using CD-R's to further its business
-- even as most of the music industry is trying to limit the technology's
use.
"It's almost like a little bootlegger's operation going on,"
said Dean Blackwood, owner of Revenant Records, an esoteric Americana
label, in
a story by Chris Nelson in the New York Times. (reg.req.) How
successful has Folkways been? Business was up 33% last year as the label
pursues is mission: making all music in print available forever. The
label is creating a virtual 21st-century "celestial jukebox"
where nothing recorded ever goes out of print, using recordable CD-R
to ensure that each release in its extensive catalog (the Folkways inventory
includes 2,168 titles dating to 1948) is always available. It might
be a labor-intensive solution for a major label, but for a roots operation
like folk music, it works just fine.
Polay adds, "Now if they'd just do it mp3-style..."
Exactly!
Link
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Seeking
neutrality in the media's war of words: Jim Romenesko
points today to a story by Robert K. Elder in the Chicago Tribune, noting
that "U.S. newspapers and wire services have mentioned 'impending
war' in reference to Iraq 725 times in the last six months, according
to Robert Elder's search."
Here's Elder:
In recent months, magazines, TV news networks and newspapers -- including
the Chicago Tribune -- have used the term "impending war"
when referring to the U.S. position regarding Iraq.
The phrase's permeation in news culture raises questions about the
media's word choice and objectivity, said Michael Josephson, president
of the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a non-partisan, non-profit organization
based in Marina del Rey, Calif.
"Used by politicians, [the phrase] may be part of the political
negotiation that goes on . . . ," Josephson said. "But when
the journalists do it, accepting it as a given, it creates the impression
that, in fact, neutral or objective people are concluding that war is
inevitable."
Link
to this item | Comment
President
Bush: Job Ratings at pollingreport.com.
(They're dropping.) The latest is by Harris, before that, Fox, before
that, the NYT. A site to link if you're watching such numbers.
Link
to this item | Comment
More from the "Bomb Iraq" author:
Barbara Harms Geist replies in a follow-up to Monday's
post:
Thank you for explaining the term "blog". Your line of work
is absolutely fascinating to me. I am not a writer; "Bomb Iraq"
wrote itself in about an hour, as I sat in front of my keyboard fuming
about the ridiculousness of, well, bombing Iraq. To answer your question
about whether I wrote to the sources who did not credit me ... I wrote
an email to Phil
Proctor, who used "Bomb Iraq", uncredited, in his column.
He responded that he will send me as recompense his latest Firesign
CD "The Bride of Firesign". Fine. Firesign Theater is nationally
known; I just heard a skit from them on NPR. I'd prefer credit for my
work, but, to quote Mick Jagger, "you can't always get what you
want".
You asked what else I write. Well, lots of stuff, but just to friends.
In fact, it was a friend who sent "Bomb Iraq" to newspoetry.com
and got this whole thing started. There is no audio file of anyone singing
"Bomb Iraq" that I know of, although I suppose someone else
who saw it on the the web could decide to record it. That would be a
hoot!
Link
to this item | Comment
How
to love the United States: "Has the current tide of anti-Americanism
blinded many to the United States' many positive contributions?,"
ask the BBC's Ryan Dilley, who then counts our blessings, among them the
space program, football helmets, Santa Claus and the Internet.
My favorite part is that readers are invited to add their own favorite
American contributions to culture. I didn't know we invented yellow mustard!
(Who ever thought it would come to this?)
Link
to this item | Comment
Feb. 18, 2003
Bono
(and 150 others) nominated for Nobel Peace Prize: Reuters reports,
The governor of the U.S. state of Illinois who spared all inmates
on death row, Pope John Paul, a Cuban dissident and Irish rock star
Bono are among a near-record 150 nominees for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.
"We have a total of 150 nominees so far, of which 21 are organisations,"
Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told Reuters
on Tuesday after compiling a list of names sent by a February 1 deadline.
Others mentioned: Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed
ElBaradei (if they help avert war in Iraq); the European Union, peace
group Women in
Black, Bono,
Chinese dissident Wei
Jingsheng, Cuba's leading dissident Oswaldo
Paya and human rights group Global
Witness; George
Ryan, the former governor of Illinois who commuted the sentences
of more than 150 people on death row in January; former Czech President
Vaclav
Havel and French President Jacques
Chirac.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Sad Saga of Bob Greene: Chicago Magazine looks at the discredited
columnist in depth, and one of the sources is Alan Rosenberg, Chicago
native who's long been the assistant managing editor for features here
at the The Journal.
Rosenberg looked up to Greene, and he was curious about the 1974 column
that Greene had written about President Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon.
“It was so extreme in its emotionalism,” recalls Rosenberg.
“It was very virulent—‘We got this guy Ford and the
one thing people had wanted of Ford was that he must not pardon Nixon.
And now he’d gone and done that and now he’d have to pay.’
I had wondered if Greene had felt that angry when he wrote it, and when
it was time for questions, I asked him.”
Greene said no, he had not felt that way. “He said that he had
sat down and thought about what he should say. And that that was the
way he normally conducted his business—calculate what the right
reaction was, what would make a good piece.” Then Greene went
on to tell the story about how he had written his column about the Israeli
athletes. He said he had been watching TV and having a drink when he
heard the news about the murders. And the thought that had crossed his
mind was, If I handle this right, I could be famous.
“It seemed so ethically bankrupt, to have this wonderful forum
and to just calculate it, to weigh it, and to say what you think would
bring you to prominence,” says Rosenberg. “I could never
look at him in the same way again.”
The untold story in this piece is that of Susan
Greene, the long-suffering wife who died Jan. 25, 2002 after being
treated for a respiratory illness. “She was a quiet woman,”
one former colleague recalls, “totally dominated by Bob.”
Link
to this item | Comment
Telepathy
with wires: Swissinfo reports,
Researchers in Switzerland are developing cutting-edge technology that
uses human brainwaves to tell computers what to do.
Last autumn, scientists at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual
Artificial Intelligence (Idiap) in canton Valais began experimenting
with ways of harnessing brainwaves via electrodes to send simple commands
to a computer.
According to director Jean-Albert Ferrez, the institute has developed
technology that can roughly identify what a person is thinking about,
based on his or her mental activity.
“The computer can detect whether you are thinking about a calculation,
a place, a colour or even what you want to eat for dinner,” he
told swissinfo.
“But it’s not good enough yet to detect exactly what colour
you’re thinking of.”
The process works by attaching electrodes to a patient’s scalp,
which record the electromagnetic activity of the brain.
These electrical signals are sent to a “neuro-classifier”
which is trained to recognise specific patterns of brain activity.
The computer then matches this activity to a corresponding task such
as turning on a light or even writing a letter using an on-screen “virtual
keyboard”.
Link
to this item | Comment
170
Pictures from over 110 protests around the world on February
15/16, 2003: The links are in seven tables, one for each continent --
yes, even Antarctica is represented, by protesters
at McMurdo station.
Related: Baghdad
folks. Smiling people!
On February 13, 2003, teams of artists and activists postered New
York City with thousands of copies of snapshots from Baghdad. Quiet
and casual, the snapshots show a part of Baghdad we rarely see: the
part with people in it.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Salon Interview: Molly Ivins. (You'll have to click a lot through
an ad, but you can still read this for free.) I love this lady, a thinker
who's wickedly funny, the Texas journalist who nicknamed George W. Bush
"Shrub."
I really do think that when you read through his speeches and what
you consistently get are words of peril, danger, threat -- that seems
to be, when he looks at the world, what he sees. Long term, this kind
of policy is so not in our own interest. You look at the large problems
that we face -- that would be overpopulation, water shortages, global
warming and AIDS, I suppose -- all of that needs international cooperation
to be solved.
Link
to this item | Comment
Bad
news for news: "Reuters posted a record loss today, and will
cut 3,000 jobs. I wonder how much of this is disintermediation from good-enough
distributed newsgathering in the blogosphere and in teeny journo outfits?,"asks
Cory
Doctorow.
Link
to this item | Comment
What
color is your terror alert? From subintsoc. net -- T h e S u b
v e r s i v e I n t e l l e c t u a l S o c i e t y -- comes,
Confused by the government's terror alert color codes? Help is at hand!
We've created 23 new Enhanced Terror Alert Colors, each one denoting
a precise threat condition -- so you'll always know exactly how terrorized
you're supposed be.
It's cyan at the moment (aka robin's egg blue) and the mood is "ennui."
Link
to this item | Comment
A
clue on Google's acquisition of Blogger: Google co-founder Larry Page:
It wasn't that we intended to build a search engine. We built a ranking
system to deal with annotations. We wanted to annotate the web - build
a system so that after you'd viewed a page you could click and see what
smart comments other people had about it. But how do you decide who
gets to annotate Yahoo? We needed to figure out how to choose which
annotations people should look at, which meant that we needed to figure
out which other sites contained comments we should classify as authoritative.
The fear: That Google's ability to quickly link to any newly updated
Blogger blog will leave users of other blog software -- and outsider html
pages like this one -- far back in the search results.
Nah, it's too obvious a pothole for a site as savvy as Google to trip
into.
Link
to this item | Comment
J.D. Lasica, OJR
senior editor, has moved his blog to Movable
Type software, and with it comes a new url: http://jdlasica.com/blog/
Link
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Feb. 17, 2003
Silent day, white peace: It's not a gale yet,
just silent tiny flakes that keep on coming, gently stopping everything.
Turkey bone broth is cooling and separating on a tray in the snow on the
deck. My daughter and 5 3/4-year-old grandson had planned to spend a week
or so with us while Joe rebuilt their kitchen, and they arrived on schedule
shortly after midnight. My telecommuting yielded to Pajama Sam at lunchtime.
We're all toasty with gas heat, a gas stove and two fireplaces. Yesterday
I bought a passel of flashlights in case the power goes out -- including
a cool forehead light for the kid -- but this snow doesn't look like the
wet and heavy stuff that snaps power lines.
As I blog, Joe and daughter Casey are reading on the couch across from
me, and grandson Dylan is chanting along with the Dragon Tales
cartoon on the TV behind me. (Years in a newsroom with phones ringing,
banter and background buzz make it easy to contract my attention to a
bubble with a radius of about two feet.)
It is wonderful to have a break from wars and rumors of war. The Weather
Channel rules.
Mindless
snowday fun: Letters. Type what you see.They speed up.
Link
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Google buys free blogging tool and bloghost:
The massive, innovative web search engine bought Pyra,
publisher of Blogger,
an early and free blogging software and web host for the blogs created
with it, staff and all. Blogger, which offers both free and $35-per-year
commercial versions, reports 1 million registered users and 200,000 active
bloggers, most of whom don't pay anything. It has suffered the outages
that come with success: The more popular you are, the more server power
and disk space you need. Google has plenty of both.
Dan Gillmor led his
blog with the breaking news Saturday night, a preview of his column
Sunday in the San Jose Mercury News (Google buys Pyra in big boost for
blogging).
Besides breaking the story, he defines weblogs -- frequently updated,
with items appearing in reverse chronological order (the most recent postings
appear first). Typically, they include links to other pages on the Internet,
and the topics range from technology to politics to just about anything
you can name. Many weblogs invite feedback through discussion postings,
and weblogs often point to other weblogs in an ecosystem of news, opinions
and ideas -- and adds context:
``I couldn't be more excited about this,'' said Evan Williams, founder
of Pyra, a company that has had its share of struggles. He wouldn't
discuss terms of the deal when we spoke Saturday, but he said it gives
Pyra the ``resources to build on the vision I've been working on for
years.''
Part of that vision, shared by other blogging pioneers, has been to
help democratize the creation and flow of news in a world where giant
companies control so much of what most people see, hear and read. Weblogs
are also becoming a valuable communication tool for groups of people,
and have begun to infiltrate the corporate, university and government
spheres.
The
New York Times and everybody else is commenting. Here's the
Slashdot thread, and the
buzz at MetaFilter.
Dave Winer, whose Radio
Userland software competes with Blogger, is hopeful
but cautious:
I'm a little too close to this to say that Google has to be really
careful about tying their weblog hosting service with their search engine,
but it's true anyway. I've heaped praise on Google in the past for their
integrity, for not selling placement in search engine results. Everyone
is going to be watching to see if they tilt the search table to favor
their weblogs. And even if they don't we really do need a second search
engine, in case there's too much synergy.
Tom Matrullo
sees no reason to worry: (link fixed!) "Google uses algorithms
that explore what others - what The Other - is up to. It has never been
about itself."
He sees the two ends of the spectrum -- the very large and very small
-- coming together. "We have the macro web search thing going on,
and the micro with blogs is there. It's the middle ground - the community,
however defined - that is still uncharted," he wrote in an email,
and expands
in the link above.
I think Google will bring a comfort level to blogging based on the reliability
of the brand. This looks to me like a huge step towards giving everyone
a place to publish and participate as a freestanding node on a vast network
of linked individuals, exchanging information and opinions in a grand
public square that's robust enought to take the weight.
Winer, by the way, has recently sold his San Franciso-area house and
is looking for a rental in Cambridge, where's he doing a visiting weblogship
at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law, giving an interesting slant to
his comment,
It's probably a good thing for blogging, and probably also a good thing
for Blogger's competitors because it's likely to suck in other Google-like
companies. It's great that Google decided to buy rather than make. I
wouldn't be surprised if the other popular blogging tools had similar
deals cooking.
Link
to this item | Comment
Saturday's photos of peace demonstrations:
276
photos at Yahoo News; at the BBC, selected
user uploads.
From Xeni Jardin:
"A BoingBoing
exclusive: Breathtaking, full-screen panoramic photographs of Saturday's
massive peace rallies in San
Francisco, Sydney,
and London
presented in FullScreen QTVR by photographers Landis Bennett, Peter Murphy
and Douglas Cape on panoramas.dk.
Also from boingboing,
via Mark Frauenfelder: "Marc Brown of Jetpack.com took some great
photos of the war protest in Hollywood on Saturday."
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Kucinich
Weighs Presidential Run: AP reports,
U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) says he will file papers
this week to form a presidential exploratory committee. Kucinich tells
the Associated Press that he will announce in June whether he has enough
support and money to make a run for the White House.
...Kucinich, who is in his fourth term in the House, says he wants
to bring workers’ rights, fair trade policies and common sense back
to the Democratic Party. The 56-year-old
Kucinich was Cleveland's youngest mayor when he was elected in 1977
at age 31. In addition to serving in Congress, Kucinich has also served
in the Ohio Statehouse. Kucinich is chairman of the House Progressive
Caucus and has filed lawsuits seeking to block a war in Iraq and America’s
withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Kucinich is the author of the widely quoted A
Prayer for America. He's also one of the parties to this:
Suit by soldiers' parents, congressmen challenges Bush war authority.
At draftkunich.com,
where they're ecstatic, you'll find speeches, audio and video by the newest
candidate. Here's the
CNN take.
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Yoko
Ono to Release Dance Version of Lennon Song: Reuters reports,
John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono (news) has recorded a dance version of
the late Beatle's final song, her record label said Monday. Photo Reuters
Photo Ono has teamed up with British pop act the Pet Shop Boys for
a dance remix of her husband's song "Walking on Thin Ice."
Link
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Selling
Junk Mail: Al Tompkins, at Poynter online, points to a wired story
about coupon clippers who sell their scraps on eBay:
Enterprising souls have taken to selling their junk mail on the popular
auction site -- and people are buying. Those pre-approved credit card
offers may not have much resale value yet, but auctioneers have swarmed
to resell the discount coupons that big retailers like Lowe's and Bed
Bath & Beyond send out every week. Discount coupons -- typically good
for 10 to 20 percent off a single purchase -- currently sell for about
$1 to $2 on eBay, plus shipping. Larger coupon lots can yield $20 or
more.
...Others have turned to unloading inserts from their Sunday paper.
One seller who goes by the nickname charleysangelgirl clips Sunday coupons
and sells them in lots of 100, typically earning about 30 cents, plus
a buck for shipping. I noticed lots of baby formula and tuna coupons.
Sean Polay, who
sent the pointer, and I both have trouble having the coupons with us when
we go shopping -- this looks like a hobby for dedicated shoppers and peddlers
only.
Link
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You may never have to pay new online sales taxes,
says
the New York Times,
...the largest portion of the $51 billion total online sales that Jupiter
is forecasting is expected to go to big Internet-only retailers that
have shown little inclination to collect sales taxes.
Holdouts like Amazon resist collecting sales taxes because they say
it would be too burdensome to collect and dispense them on behalf of
so many different jurisdictions. And they currently have federal law
on their side.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that a company selling only online,
or through catalogs or by telephone, is not obliged to collect local
sales taxes from customers, except in states where the merchants actually
have a physical presence, like a warehouse or a call center. In taxation
parlance, such physical presences establishes a "nexus" between the
retailer and those states.
Link
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Liberal
Radio Is Planned by Rich Group of Democrats: Also from the Times,
A group of wealthy Democratic donors is planning to start a liberal
radio network to counterbalance the conservative tenor of radio programs
like "The Rush Limbaugh Show."
The group, led by Sheldon and Anita Drobny, venture capitalists from
Chicago who have been major campaign donors for Bill Clinton and Al
Gore, is in talks with Al Franken, the comedian and author of "Rush
Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot." It hopes to enlist other well-known entertainers
with a liberal point of view for a 14-hour, daily slate of commercial
programs that would heavily rely on comedy and political satire.
The plan faces several business and content challenges, from finding
a network of radio stations to buy the program to overcoming the poor
track record of liberal radio shows. But it is the most ambitious undertaking
yet to come from liberal Democrats who believe they are overshadowed
in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television
personalities
Link
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Offline author finds her work everywhere:
Remember that great ditty called Bomb Iraq, sung to the the tune
of If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands?:
"If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi
And the bank takes back your Audi
And the TV shows are bawdy, Bomb Iraq. ...
It was circulating unsigned, but back
on Dec 19, 2002 I tracked it to
Newspoetry under the byline of Barbara Harms Geist.
I just got an email from Barbara Harms Geist:
I was just reading the March issue of Funny Times when I ran across
something I had written which I had titled "Bomb Iraq" but which they
titled, more cleverly, "Follow the Bouncing Bomb". They did not credit
the piece to me, which prompted me to get online and track down where
they may have seen it. I had given permission to Newspoetry.com to publish
it, as I had the magazine Xenofilkia. It was published a number of other
places, and I didn't mind because they did credit me as being the author.
One of those places was the Dallas Morning News' website, in your column.
(Belo syndicates this weblog to other sites.) You wondered if
I had been inspired by Tom Tomorrow's blog in September. No I wasn't,
though now I am curious as to what that was. Anyway, thought I'd say
hi, glad you liked my bit of doggerel. Incidentally, what is a blog?
I have no idea what she might have sent to those who didn't credit her.
Link
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Scrawl
to Screen, With a Pen: The Times made me giggle, with this sentence
in a story about pens that record what you write for later downloading
to a PC:
If Mead, 3M and Franklin ever stop making these pads, your Io will
lose its ability to capture handwriting. You'll have yourself a $200
ballpoint pickle.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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