By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
March 26, 2004, 6:45 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
No blog next week. I'll be here.
A
New Moon for Earth? AFP reports,
Earth has acquired a "quasi-moon" — an asteroid that will
encircle our planet for the next couple of years while it orbits the sun
on a horseshoe-shaped path, according to a report to be published on Saturday
in New Scientist.
The asteroid, 2003 YN17, "is probably a chunk of debris" from
an impact between a larger space rock and the surface of the moon, the British
weekly said.
2003 YN17's orbital plane is roughly the same as the earth's, but its unusual
path, compounded by a corkscrew-like track, means that sometimes it is ahead
of us and sometimes it is behind.
Puzzling:
The photo accopanying this story at discovery.com is captioned "The Asteroid "2003
YN17" To Orbit Earth," but it's a photo of an asteroid dubbed Ida
(potato-shaped, get it?) that was NASA's astronomy
photo of the day nearly two years ago. Here's some of its caption:
...The robot spacecraft Galileo currently exploring the Jovian system, encountered
and photographed two asteroids during its long journey to Jupiter. The second
asteroid it photographed, Ida, was discovered to have a moon which appears
as a small dot to the right of Ida in this picture. The tiny moon, named
Dactyl, is about one mile across, while the potato shaped Ida measures about
36 miles long and 14 miles wide....
So is Ida 2003 YN17? Did it get here from Jupiter in two years, to be named
an honorary moon while it's in the neighborhood? Is there a name for a moon
with its own moon? It's too late on a Friday evening to find anyone to answer
these questions. We'll probably
find
out tomorrow
in New Scientist.
Link
to this item | Comment
Weekend fun: The
Wonderful World Of Larry Carlson.
From Clifford
Pickover's Reality
Carnival.
You'll like his puzzles even
if you're square.
100 Movies That Deserve More Love
Link
to this item | Comment
Lobster
Trap Video: Action/adventure from the University of New Hampshire.
New to me. The videos are built into the page. As usual, click the triangle
at the left below the still photo to start them scrambling.
LTV consists of a traditional two parlor lobster trap equipped with a time-lapse
video recording system (see figures below). We are able to obtain 24-48 continuous
hours of video during each soak, depending on whether we use lights and videotape
at night. We can then take this data and analyze the movements and interactions
of the lobsters around the trap. LTV was first developed as part of a UNH
Ocean Projects course, and then Sea Grant funds were used to improve it.
...
...A large number of lobsters approach and enter traps, yet typically we
only catch 1-3 because the vast majority escape. We estimate that 10% of
the lobsters that approach a trap enter, and of the ones that enter, only
6% are caught. Over 75% of the lobsters that escape the trap do so through
the entrance. The following video shows a lobster escaping through the entrance
to the kitchen.
Nature, hardly a sensational publication, headlined a story about
this Crustacean
brawls caught on camera.
Link
to this item | Comment
Some Bush Supporters Want Rice to Testify: Reuters reports,
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of President Bush's fellow Republicans said on
Friday that he should let national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify
publicly to confront charges by a former aide that Bush was lax on terrorism
ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Under oath? Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post points
to this David
Gregory clip at MSNBC:
"So
why not testify under
oath?
"White House counsel Alberto Gonzales says it's unnecessary, because
administration officials are duty-bound to tell the truth anyway."
Gregory shows a clip of Gonzales saying: "This is not a question about
hiding information or not providing information, quite the contrary. You
know, we've provided unprecedented access."
Then Gregory continues: "But despite that defense, tonight sources
familiar with the 9/11 commission's thinking say the panel may actually push
to get
Dr. Rice under oath, particularly if she wants to contradict another witness."
"Under penalty of perjury" would level the playing field. When a lawyer tells
you to be the only one not testifying under oath, ask a politician for a second
opinion.
Related: Finally, a
chunk of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies is on the
web.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 25, 2004, 6:35 p.m.
At
the end of the
day... we're fed up with clichés: From the Plain
English
Campaign,
Plain English supporters around the world have voted "At the end of the
day" as the most irritating phrase in the language.
Second place in the vote was shared by "At this moment in time" and
the constant use of "like" as if it were a form of punctuation. "With
all due respect" came fourth.
The Campaign surveyed its 5000 supporters in more than 70 countries as part
of the build-up to its 25th anniversary. The independent pressure group was
launched on 26 July 1979.
Spokesman John Lister said over-used phrases were a barrier to communication. "When
readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning
out and completely miss the message - assuming there is one! Using these
terms in daily business is about professional as wearing a novelty tie or
having
a wacky ringtone on your phone.
When I hear a TV talking head say, "At the end of the day..." I think less
of that person, no matter what else they might say.
Link
to this item | Comment
Noam
Chomsky has
a blog: The linguist is leftmost, of course.
Link
to this item | Comment
Free Culture: How Big Media
Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control
Creativity, by Lawrence Lessig.
FREE CULTURE is available for free under a Creative Commons license.
You may redistribute, copy, or otherwise reuse/remix this book provided that
you do so for non-commercial purposes and credit Professor Lessig.
Link
to this item | Comment
Heat rises on cable industry: At USA Today,
WASHINGTON — Senators said Thursday they will consider new regulations
for cable television unless the industry addresses soaring prices and allows
consumers more channel choices.
Members of the Senate Commerce Committee said pressure from angry constituents
is leading them to look at ways to hold down cable rates and let subscribers
choose individual channels rather than packages set by operators.
"You start acting irresponsibly, we regulate you," Sen. Trent Lott,
R-Miss., told cable industry executives at a committee hearing. "There
is a point where people will rebel. They're going to holler at us and we're
going to take it out on you."
Since Congress deregulated the industry in 1996, cable rates have increased
53% while inflation has risen 19%.
Cable operators said higher prices reflected higher programming costs, more
channels and improvements such as rewiring systems to provide digital TV....
Link
to this item | Comment
Group that called electronic vote secure got makers' aid: It's good to see
the press actively looking into these ties. It's important. This is from the
Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Election Center, which trains election workers and advises Congress and
government agencies on election process issues, has taken donations from manufacturers
of electronic voting machines even as it has issued strong statements supporting
the security of the machines.
The Houston-based nonprofit organization bills itself as a nonpartisan group
representing election officials from throughout the country.
Its executive director, R. Doug Lewis, confirmed this week that the center
had taken donations from makers of electronic voting machines - Sequoia Voting
Systems Inc. of Oakland, Calif., and Electronic Systems & Software Inc.
of Omaha, Neb. In addition, donations came from "probably Diebold" Inc.
of North Canton, Ohio, Lewis said.
The Sequoia donations came to light on the organization's latest 990 IRS filing,
a copy of which was reviewed by The Inquirer. It inadvertently revealed donations
of $10,000 per year from 1997 through 2000. The IRS usually removes such names
before documents are made public.
Meanwhile, the Sequoia voting machines, which in the Philadelphia region
are used in Montgomery, Gloucester and Burlington Counties, will be tested
by Montgomery
County officials today after two complaints were lodged about the machines
in the November elections....
Link
to this item | Comment
Last chance to shout out: I'll be off next week, speaking Thursday
on a panel at the University of Florida's Symposium
on Converged Journalism.
Kaye Trammell, PhD candidate and blogger, has patiently
handled the arrangements, and she has all
the details here. If you're in Gainesville
April 1 and want to come, it's all free and open to the public.
Tomorrow's the last day I'll be reading
email here for a week.
Link
to this item | Comment
1:35 p.m
Pats'
Weis, Crennel get no relief from NFL: From the Washington Post today,
The NFL's competition committee
has told Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel, in essence: We feel your pain, but
there's
nothing
we can
do
about
it.
The plight of assistant coaches on teams in the playoffs who are up for head-coaching
jobs elsewhere received plenty of attention in January during the New England
Patriots' run to a second Super Bowl title in three seasons because Coach Bill
Belichick's top two lieutenants, offensive coordinator Weis and defensive coordinator
Crennel, in effect were denied chances to become NFL head coaches by the current
configuration of the league's tampering rules....
...The powerful, eight-member competition committee, which wrapped up nine
days of meetings in Naples, Fla., last Friday by voting on which recommendations
it would make the NFL's team owners next week, was unmoved and will not recommend
any significant changes to the owners regarding the tampering rules.
Atlanta Falcons General Manager Rich McKay, the co-chairman of the committee
with Tennessee Titans Coach Jeff Fisher, said during a conference call with
reporters Wednesday afternoon that the committee will recommend widening the
window in which the single interview can take place during the playoffs from
five to seven days, and extending the rule so that it also applies to key front-office
jobs. But that's it. ...
The competition committee also made instant replays permanent (adding a third
challenge if the first two are successful); gave officials the option of a
15-yard penalty for excessively choreographed touchdown celebrations; declined
to change sudden-death overtimes to guarantee each team a possession; declined
expanding playoff berths from six teams to seven, and favored expanding
practice squads.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 24, 2004, 7:03 p.m.
Wednesday's
9/11 Commission Hearings Transcript: From the Washington Post.
Related: Yesterday's transcript.
Link
to this item | Comment
The Front-Runner’s
Fall: The
Dean implosion up close, from the vantage
point of the candidate's pollster. This is a straightforward rundown of the last
days of the Dean campaign, in The Atlantic.
Link
to this item | Comment
Floor Statement of Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle on the Administration
Attacking Good People for Telling the Truth.
...The purpose of government isn't to make the President look good. It isn't
to produce propaganda or misleading information. It is, instead, to do its
best for the American people and to be accountable to the American people....
Link
to this item | Comment
Electronic
Voting News: This news feed from VerifiedVoting.org indexes
all the voting-related news stories it can find, and archives them.
Related: An alternative system from the Open
Voting Consortium. Here's the lead of the press
release (pdf):
The Open Voting Consortium will demonstrate a version of its free election
software on the 1st of April at 10:00 AM in the Santa Clara County government
office building, 70 W. Hedding St., room 157, San Jose. The Open Voting Consortium
intends to make free voting software available for use in public elections
to begin a process founders hope will transform the voting system from a
fraud-prone, blackbox, proprietary, expensive, idiosyncratic, unreliable
system to a technically sound, accurate, secure, inexpensive, uniform and
open voting system.
You can try out the sample
ballot here (the listed candidates are pretty funny).
Via Slashdot, where
the comments always add so much.
Link
to this item | Comment
Folk
Hero: A new biography of Woody Guthrie. David Hajdu reviews Ramblin’ Man:
The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray in The New Yorker.
Here's the lead:
The
folksinger Arlo Guthrie likes to tell a story about his father, the legendary
Woody Guthrie, who died in 1967, at the age of fifty-five. (Pictured at
right) When he was a toddler,
Arlo says, Guthrie gave him a Gibson acoustic guitar for his birthday. Several
years later, when the boy was old enough to hold it, Guthrie sat him down
in the back yard of their house—they lived in Howard Beach, Queens—and
taught him all the words to “This Land Is Your Land,” a song
that most people likely think they know in full. The lyrics had been written
in
anger, as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which
Woody Guthrie deplored as treacle. In addition to the familiar stanzas (“As
I went walking that ribbon of highway,” and so on), Guthrie had composed
a couple of others, including this:
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people—
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God Blessed America for me.
“He wanted me to know what he originally wrote, so it wouldn’t
be forgotten,” Arlo Guthrie has explained....
Hadju himself has written a biography of Billy Strayhorn and, most notably,
Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi
Baez Farina and Richard Farina.
Link
to this item | Comment
Cincinnati
Radio Promotion Strikes Out with Reds: At fmqb.com,
With Major League Baseball's April 5 opening day games approaching, WEBN/Cincinnati
was getting ready for the Reds home opener against the Chicago Cubs by giving
away tickets via a Throw Out the First Bitch promotion.
The promotion used on air ads that stated, "You get to throw out the
first bitch. You get opening day, and your wife or significant whatever sits
on the bench - and we don't mean Johnny.'' Winners of tickets to the game would
also get diamond earrings to give to their female significant other "to
soften the blow, so to speak.''
While the promo fit WEBN's stationality like a glove, it didn't sit well
with Reds announcer Marty Brennaman, who broadcasts the games on Clear Channel
sister
WLW.
In the promo, Brennaman could be heard saying, "Spank you very much,'' "Beats
the hell outta me'' and "It sounds good.'' The soundbites were lifted
from Reds broadcasts and Brennaman said they were used without his or MLB's
permission.
"This has been running without my knowledge. It really crosses the line,''
Brennaman told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "I feel like I have a good reputation
in this community. I don't need this. ... I am very ticked off about it.
I'm going to get on the phone right now and tell Clear Channel to take my
voice
off that thing. The last thing I would ever do is reflect poorly on this
organization."
Losers.
Link
to this item | Comment
Remember this from yesterday?
1. Enter your first name only into Google.
2. Click on "Images".
3. Pick your favorite image and post it in your blog.
A colleague emailed, "I hold you responsible":
Thanks a heap, Sheila. Now look what you've done!
-- Donald
Link
to this item | Comment
Light
transmitting concrete is set to go on sale later this year: At optics.org,
The days of dull, grey concrete could be about to end. A Hungarian architect
has combined the world’s most popular building material with optical
fiber from Schott to create a new type of concrete that transmits light.
A wall made of “LitraCon” allegedly has the strength of traditional
concrete but thanks to an embedded array of glass fibers can display a view
of the outside world, such as the silhouette of a tree, for example.
“Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to
each other between the two main surfaces of every block,” explained its
inventor Áron Losonczi. “Shadows on the lighter side will appear
with sharp outlines on the darker one. Even the colours remain the same.
This special effect creates the general impression that the thickness and
weight
of a concrete wall will disappear.”
The hope is that the new material will transform the interior appearance of
concrete buildings by making them feel light and airy rather than dark and
heavy....
Link
to this item | Comment
3:03 p.m.
Rather than publishing once at the end of the day, we're experimenting with
periodic updates during the day. Here's the first.
Four
9/11 Widows Watch Rumsfeld And Grumble: Gail Sheehy in The New
York Observer today:
In the predawn hours of Tuesday, March 23, Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van
Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza dropped off their collective seven
fatherless children with grandmothers and climbed into Ms. Breitweiser’s
S.U.V. for the race down Garden State Parkway to the Hart Senate Office Building
on Capitol Hill. It’s a journey that they could now make blindfolded—but
this one was different. On March 23, testimony was to be heard by the commission
investigating intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others.
These four moms from New Jersey are the World Trade Center widows whose
tireless advocacy produced the broad investigation into the failures around
the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks that now has top officials from both the Clinton and
Bush administrations duking it out in conflicting testimonies at this week’s
high-drama hearings in the Hart Office Building before the 9/11 commission.
After two and a half years of seeking truth and accountability, they had
high hopes for this week’s hearings, which are focused on policy failures.
Instead, packed into the car at 4 a.m. in what has become a ritual for
them, their hearts were heavy.
The Four Moms had submitted dozens of questions they have been burning to
ask at these hearings. Mr. Rumsfeld is a particular thorn in their sides.
...
The punch line here:
The irony is that two of the Four Moms voted for George Bush in 2000, while
another is a registered independent; only one is a Democrat. But until they
felt the teeth of the Bush attack dogs, they were either apolitical or determinedly
nonpartisan. Now their tone is different.
"The Bush people keep saying that Clinton was not doing enough [to
combat the Al Qaeda threat]," said Ms. Kleinberg. "But ‘nothing’ is
less than ‘not enough,’ and nothing is what the Bush administration
did."
An unnamed spokesman for the Bush campaign was quoted as saying of Sept.
11, "We own it." That comment particularly disturbed the Four Moms.
"They can have it," said Ms. Van Auken. "Can I have my husband
back now?"
Link
to this item | Comment
Wires -- a new blog from Baghdad:
My name is Fiona. I install lighting and sound systems in TV Studios and Theatres,
in the UK and abroad. Currently I am contracted to install a TV studio in the
Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. It is the first of over a dozen being installed for
a London - based Iraqi client who has recently returned to the country for the
first time in over 20 years. I got this job on the strength of photographs I
took of riots in Belfast.
Read it from the bottom. It just started.
Link
to this item | Comment
Da
Reggae Name Generator: Type your name in the form and trade it
for a Rasta name.
Fun idea, but I'm just not comfortable with
my ... Beenie Roy.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 23, 2004, 6:37 p.m.
Where's the Department of Peace when you need it?
Chicken
Tikka Masala gets busted in England: The Scotsman reports (at
length), using a backwards-we-speak headline -- Curry Dye Danger of Ultra Pink
Chicken Tikka. (If you don't know what it is, it's explained at the end of this
item.)
Curry lovers were today warned that the British taste for brightly-coloured
foods was driving levels of dye in the UK’s favourite dish, chicken
tikka massala, to potentially dangerous levels.
Chefs, curry connoisseurs and food safety experts united in a bid to re-educate
the public as a study found that 57% of Indian restaurants tested in one
county used illegal levels of three colourings linked to hyperactivity, asthma
and even cancer.
The study conducted on behalf of Surrey Trading Standards department involved
sampling chicken tikka massala from 102 curry houses – around half
of the total in the county.
Of those, only 44 were using colourings below legal levels and one restaurant
was found to be using four times the limit in its dish.
Chefs blamed it on the British "palate" (eye appeal?) which wants its masalas
red. Indians make it a pale orange color.
The undercover survey involved trading standards officers calling unannounced
at randomly selected restaurants across Surrey and ordering chicken tikka massala,
which was then sent to an independent laboratory for analysis.
The department is now planning to test all the remaining curry houses in the
county and has not ruled out carrying out similar tests in other types of restaurants.
Just put the bottle of red dye on the table, and label its contents:
Tartrazine, which is made from coal tar, is banned in Norway, Finland and
Austria. Scientists believe it can cause blurred vision and purple skin patches
and is particularly hazardous for asthmatics and anyone allergic to aspirin.
Sunset Yellow is banned in Norway and Finland but elsewhere it is used in
juices, sweets and sauces. It has been linked to chromosome damage and kidney
tumours as well as abdominal pain, nausea, hives and vomiting.
Ponceau 4R, also illegal in Norway as well as in the USA, is believed to
cause cancer in animals.
The Hyperactive Children’s Support Group believes that all three dyes
are linked to hyperactivity in children.
Chicken tikka masala made without the dye is perfectly safe. It's made from
leftover tandoori chicken, baked in a clay oven.
If you want to try this at home, here's Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for chicken
tikka masala and the tandoori
chicken that starts it off. Yes, it's time consuming.
There's a much easier version here and
another if you click the photo below.
 What
is Chicken Tikka Masala?
Tikkas are the bite-sized chunks you cut chicken into and these
are marinated and cooked in the tandoor. The masala part is where
things become difficult. Masala means spices but no exact recipe
for these seems to exist. CTM can be yellow, red, brownish or even
green and can be very creamy, a little creamy, chilli hot or quite
mild. In restaurants it tends to be a creamy sauce - not too hot;
a bit tomatoey; very smooth and, all too often, quite sweet and very
red.
|
Link
to this item | Comment
The Apparat: George
W. Bush's back-door political machine. This is at Media
Transparency: The Money Behind the Media, sponsored by cursor.org
It's anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, and is working to create a one-party
America
As America's mainstream media focuses on President Bush's campaign war chest,
it's missing the story of some 350 right-wing political organizations loaded
with manpower, money, and momentum, that are marching in lock-step to support
the Republican Party and the president's re-election.
In "The Apparat: George W. Bush's Back-Door Political Machine," veteran
reporter Jerry M. Landay details how this anti-democratic, anti-constitutional
network, that operates outside of campaign funding constraints, is pursuing
its unprecedented goal of a one-party state.
Link
to this item | Comment
Only in New York: A
photo worth clicking.
Link
to this item | Comment
Interesting: Judy Watt suggests,
1. Enter your first name only into Google.
2. Click on "Images".
3. Pick your favorite image and post it in your blog.
Okay. I'm glad I did:
Link
to this item | Comment
Touch-screen
suit to be heard before vote: The Palm Beach Post reports,
FORT LAUDERDALE -- U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's federal lawsuit challenging paperless
electronic voting will go to trial before the November elections, a judge ruled
Monday.
U.S. District Judge James Cohn agreed with Wexler's request for fast-track
consideration of his suit and scheduled a trial to begin sometime between Aug.
16 and Aug. 27. Attorneys representing Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood
and county elections supervisors had wanted the trial delayed until after the
November elections.
If Wexler prevails, he wants ballot printers or paper-based voting systems
in place by November. Wexler said elections officials should begin making
multimillion-dollar "contingency
plans" to buy new voting equipment in case he wins.
Wexler, D-Delray Beach, claims the paperless voting machines used by 15 Florida
counties violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because
those votes can't be manually recounted while the votes in 52 other Florida
counties can be reviewed by hand.
Wexler favors adding ballot printers to the touch-screen voting machines,
but his lawsuit does not suggest a specific remedy. At Monday's hearing,
Wexler attorney Jeffrey Liggio raised another possibility: scrapping touch
screens
and forcing counties to use optical-scan ballots....
Related: LePore
dodges vote of confidence, a PBP editorial.
If Florida finds itself this November in a 2000-style election brawl, the
public could be denied one of its most precious civic possessions: the right
to inspect the ballots.
Blame it on the newfangled electronic voting machines. Blame it on the state.
Blame it on 2000.
Whatever the cause, one of the only ways to assure confidence in the system
is in danger of being stamped out. Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa
LePore, who emerged from 2000 as perhaps America's best-known elections official,
said she doesn't have to provide ballots for public review. Ms. LePore, seeking
reelection to a third term, said she's following the advice from the Florida
Division of Elections. The division says it has passed the matter to the Florida
Attorney General's Office, which has had the question since December but has
yet to rule.
Ms. LePore says providing the ballots would be too onerous. She knows onerous
from 2000. But fishing through 5,000 voting machine cartridges to find the
sought-after ballots, plugging them in and producing something the public could
inspect doesn't compare to the hardship of hand-counting 460,000 punch cards.
In fact, Florida law gives Ms. LePore no way out. It says, "The official
ballots... shall be open for public inspection... at any reasonable time." It
doesn't exclude electronic ballots. Why didn't state officials think of that
before approving touch-screen systems now in place in 15 counties, including
Palm Beach and Martin?...
Link
to this item | Comment
Airport
Codes: The ABC's A History and Explanation. Finally.
From ABE (Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton, Pennsylvania) to ZRH (Zurich, Switzerland),
airports around the world are universally known by a unique three-letter
code: the "Location Identifier" in aviation-speak. It's obviously
much easier for pilots, controllers, travel agents, frequent flyers, computers
and
baggage handlers to say and write ORD than the O'Hare International Airport
in Chicago, Illinois -- but how did this practice start, and why are some
airport codes easy to understand (ABE and ZRH) while others seem to make
absolutely
no sense (ORD)?
Link
to this item | Comment
March 22, 2004, 6:25 p.m.
American
Candidate: Your chance to run
for president on TV: Think you'd be a better President
of the United States than those officially running? Here's your chance
to get your platform out there.
On Showtime this summer, a new reality TV show called American
Candidate will pit 12 virtual presidential candidates in a campaign
that shadows the actual election. The winner, after debates and eliminations,
will get $200,000 and a chance to address the nation.
The show has been cleared by the Federal Election Commission, and boasts a serious
advisory board that includes former Sen. Bob
Kerrey (D-Neb.) -- a member of
the real 9-11 Commission --
.and former Sen. Alan
K. Simpson (R-Wyo.). Its aim, according to its FAQ,
is to "provoke discussion and debate about what our nation is really
looking for in a president and involve more people in the political process."
If you want to run, there's a 26-page application where
you'll detail your platform, and you'll have to submit a 20-minute video. Deadline
is April 9.
There are some eligibility
requirements. Originally, entrants were limited to those legally able
to run for President, which meant 35 or older. Not enough applied, so that
requirement was dropped and the deadline extended. It's only TV, after all.
The winner will not move into the White House, unless a last-minute write-in
campaign overtakes the traditional party nominees.
Disclosure: My
brother Frank is one of the early entrants. I'm reporting this early,
while you still have a chance to run against him.
It's not clear yet which is more embarrassing -- a journalist with a virtual
candidate for a brother, or a candidate with a real journalist for a sister.
Link
to this item | Comment
Providence homeowners get revaluation results: Photos and assessed
values of all houses are searchable by street here.
If you want to contest the evaluation, call (401)-228-8000 to schedule an
in-person or telephone meeting with representatives of Cole Layer Trumble Co.,
the firm that conducted the statistical revaluation of property values.
Review meetings will be held at 591 Charles St., Monday through Saturday,
and some evenings.
Property owners may also send their
comments in writing by April 7 to Cole Layer Trumble, in care of the City
Assessor, City Hall, 25 Dorrance St., Providence, RI 02903.
There's more information in
this Journal story.
Link
to this item | Comment
Transcript of
CBS News' 60
Minutes interview last
night with Richard Clarke, national coordinator for Security, Infrastructure
Protection,
and Counterterrorism
under
Clinton and Bush, and author of Against
All Enemies. (Short
excerpt from teh book at CBS News; short
AP summaries of Clarke's opinion of central figures.)
Link
to this item | Comment
Builder.com outsourcing content production to India:
It's not just programmers anymore; now it's the people who write for them
too. NewsForge.com has learned that Builder.com, CNET Networks' site aimed
at application developers, plans to begin offshoring authoring of many of its
articles to India shortly.
Related: Dan
Gilllmor, reporting from the PC
Forum conference in Phoenix:
The first PC Forum panel consists of people relentlessly promoting free trade
and offshoring. There was lip service to job losses, but not a word about the
big question sitting out there.
There's a reasonable chance that the flood of well-educated, technically astute
and English-speaking people into the work force will be a disaster for the
American economy. This isn't because U.S. workers are bad; it's because the
several hundred million people I just mentioned are happy to work for a quarter
of what American can afford to work for at this point.
We could have a domestic economic implosion, even as more wealth accrues to
the small group at the top. When will we talk about this?
When politicians pay lip service to "better education" for the American worker
as a solution to outsourcing, I wonder what kind of education can be had here
than
can't
be had in India?
Link
to this item | Comment
A very different sort of game.
Link
to this item | Comment
