By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
March 12, 2004, 6:30 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
Garageband: Musician
David Was test-drives the software that makes everyone a composer. At
NPR,
Using a $49 computer program called Garageband and
a Macintosh computer, novice musicians are now able to create sounds that
only a few years ago would have required the services of an expensive studio,
loads of instruments and lots of money.
Garageband is rapidly becoming the latest high-tech living room craze --
mostly because it makes it easy for even the most musically challenged among
us to make tunes that sound like real music.
Day to Day senior producer Stephen Proffitt wanted to find a professional
musician and composer who would try out Garageband -- and found a world-class
volunteer: musician, producer and composer David Was, one of the Was-es from
the group Was (Not Was).
His verdict? Garageband could very well change the way we think about music
and the way music is created. It's easy to use, powerful and very flexible.
The page has links to the audio and to three cuts Was created with Garageband.
Thanks to my colleague Mike Foran for the link.
Link
to this item | Comment
Parody
of N.Y. Times decentralizes in the face of lawyer's letter: The
National Debate had a wicked parody going of a corrections page for
New York Times editorials, a dead ringer except for its February 30 date.
A letter arrived from Times lawyers, followed by a notification from his
internet service provider, Verio, that they were going to cut him off after
having recieved a notice of copyright infringement, a violation of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He pulled it, but put up a page of other
sites now hosting the parody.
(You may recall this is how the
leaked Diebold voting machine memos were kept alive on the net, until
Diebold finally withdrew
its objections in the face of a furor.)
Link
to this item | Comment
mp3
blogs: "There are quite a lot of blogs out there which host
mp3s or links to mp3s somewhere on the internet and whose authors usually
write something about the music. A small selection:"
Link
to this item | Comment
FCC
proposes $247,500 indecency fine against Clear Channel: From The
Hollywood Reporter,
The FCC wants to fine the company for a broadcast of the "Elliot in
the Morning" show that on WWDC-FM, which was rebroadcast on three different
stations. By the FCC's count three were nine alleged violations "that
involved graphic and explicit sexual material, and were designed to pander
to, titillate and shock listeners." The FCC proposed the maximum fine
of $27,500 per incident.
"Elliot in the Morning" is heard on WWDC in Washington; WRXL in
Richmond, Va.; and WOSC in Bethany Beach, Del....
Nearly all news sites are using the AP story that doesn't tell you what happened
on the show to draw the fine. This Hollywood Reporter says a bit more.
But Howard Stern is toast, if this is what they're levying fines for.
Link
to this item | Comment
You're fast, Rhode Island: J.D.
Lasica is surprised how fast: He emailed,
...The Mercury News reports on the Top 10 broadband markets in the nation.
Here is the percentage of Internet users with high-speed connections:
1. San Diego, 52%
2. Boston, 50%
3. New York, 49%
4. Providence, R.I., 47% (who would have thought?)
5. Kansas City, Mo., 46%
6. Detroit, 45%
7. Tampa/St. Pete, 45%
8. Orlando, 44%
9. San Francisco Bay Area, 44%
10. Los Angeles, 44%
Here's the press
release on this.
Link
to this item | Comment
Eye
of the beholder: For two days now, Google News has been using the photo
at right on its main page.
I showed it, along on the page, to the person next to me here. She thought
it was a Cabbage Patch Kid..
The photo actually hails from HealthDay,
where it illustrates a story about obesity.
Link
to this item | Comment
Don't they all have aging parents? Iona Watson Lott changed her son
the senator's vote. One down... From
the Times:
Supporters of legislation to allow imports of low-cost prescription drugs
gained a significant convert on Thursday when Senator Trent Lott, the former
Republican leader, said he would back the effort.
"I cannot explain to my mother any longer why she should pay twice
or two-thirds more than what is paid in Canada and Mexico," said Mr.
Lott, of Mississippi. "I'm switching my position."
Mr. Lott's comments came at a hearing where senators of both parties criticized
Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the commissioner of food and drugs, who has led a
campaign by the Bush administration to block drug imports as a risk to public
health.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 11, 2004, 7:20 p.m.
House
of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger: Salon is
excerpting it (watch an ad for a free day pass); it will be published
March 16.
Publisher Scribner describes
it as "a political counter-narrative to official explanations."
Today's excerpt: The great escape
Immediately after 9/11, dozens of Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden
family fled the U.S. in a secret airlift authorized by the Bush White House.
One passenger was an alleged al-Qaida go-between, who may have known about
the terror attacks in advance. Our first excerpt from "House of Bush,
House of Saud."
Here's
the crux of the matter:
...the bin Laden family epitomized the marriage between the United States
and Saudi Arabia. Their huge construction company, the Saudi
Binladin Group,
banked with Citigroup and invested with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
Over time, the bin Ladens did business with such icons of Western culture
as Disney, the Hard Rock Café, Snapple and Porsche. In the mid-1990s,
they joined various members of the House of Saud in becoming business associates
with former secretary of state James Baker and former president George H.W.
Bush by investing in the Carlyle
Group, a gigantic Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm. As Charles
Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Wall Street
Journal, "If there were ever any company closely connected to the U.S.
and its presence in Saudi Arabia, it's the Saudi Binladin Group."
Transcript of
CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewing Unger, Oct. 20, 2003
While you're into Salon for free for the day, you might want to check out The
new Pentagon papers.
More leftish links today:
Why
I'm working for Nader but casting a vote for Kerry: The Seattle Times
Bush
alienating some military voters Knight Ridder
Military
Families vs. the War WaPo. "Vietnam on speed" is how a veteran
describes the swiftness of the turning away.
"Unknown
Soldier" Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home - Intervention Magazine.
Beware the anonymous interview, bring your own b.s. detector.
Link
to this item | Comment
Hubble
images: One-minute flash slideshow, with music, from Australia's news.com. Can't
help but feel like a tiny cell in an unimaginably large and complex being...
Link
to this item | Comment
Morph is
the running blog of a conference (oh, a "leadership
retreat" in Newport Beach,
Calif.) called MediaMorphosis, running now at the American Press Institute
Florian T. Brody: Jim Kennedy, Associated Press, points out that the group
of experts gathering at the conference is amazed but what DJ
Spooky is doing, shows that we are
out of touch with cutting edge development.
Susan
Mernit: ...Evolving consumer behavior patterns trump prior executive
experience...just
watch what place you pick in the curve.
Mary Hodder: And the network is down. Oh for the love of transparency.
The
network always goes down when hundreds of people show up at a conference
with wireless laptops all clamoring for a piece of the pipe! I'm listening
to the loop on that DJ Spooky page right now, it's mesmerizing dub.
Link
to this item | Comment
Obesity
Obsession: Fox News faults the CDC's latest statistics.
My view on most of the "health studies": 100 percent of us die. Don't forget
that. No lives are ever saved by behavioral changes, we just die of something
else.
I don't
begrudge
most of those
who earn livings and reputations by these studies, I just wish they wouldn't
take their conflicting results so seriously, jerking the culture and our doctors
around with them. Drug companies, they're a whole other ball of wax.
Link
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News
14 Carolina pranked: TechnicianOnline, the North Carolina State
student newspaper, reports that school and business closings that ran along
the bottom of Channel 14's screen took a very
strange
turn
the night
of Feb. 27 (screenshots
at your own risk):
Bring 'Em Young Daycare was closed due to the snowstorm Friday. Parents needed
to contact R. Kelly for more information. So was Tutone, Inc. They urged their
employees to contact Jenny at 867-5309.
Melvin, Sherrill and Watkins, LLC was closed and only needed essential personnel
only. Contact: Wi When Sun.
According to News 14 Carolina, these and other "businesses" were
closed. The joke was on News 14 Carolina.
Users of The Wolf Web, a message board created and used by N.C. State students,
submitted fake closing information to News 14 Carolina's online automatic closing
information system. From 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., the fake closings were run across
the bottom of the screen.
Some of the business names had sexual innuendos in them. A chicken restaurant
run by a cousin of Colonel Sanders was opening late and a sex toy emporium
run by a fellow named Cecil closed as well.
Others were public service announcements. One read "Windows 32 Exception
Error" and urged TV viewers to reinstall Windows on their home computers.
...
Link
to this item | Comment
Bubble
Struggle: This game is simple, and kind of fun. It's not
in English, though. Click the top choice (it reads "1
igrac")
to begin a one-player game. Use the mouse and the right and left arrow
keys. Hint:
If
you shoot
upwards with
the
up-arrow key,
any
bubbles
coming
from
the
side that hit the stream will harmlessly vanish. The rest is up to you.
Link
to this item | Comment
Full-size
harpsichord in LEGOS: Two years in the making, the process well
described. Listen.
Video clip.
With the exception of the wire strings, this instrument is entirely constructed
out of LEGO parts--the keyboard, jacks, jack rack, jack rail, plectra, soundboard,
bridge, hitch pins, tuning pins, wrestplank, nut, case, legs, lid, lid stick,
and music stand are all built out of interlocking ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene)
plastic bricks and related pieces.
And is playable. ...
Link
to this item | Comment
Marge
Schott's afterlife: The photoshoppers at Fark have a field day.
via Prints the
Chaff via
Side Salad (Sounds like
horse genealogy, doesn't it?)
Link
to this item | Comment
Robot builder could 'print' houses: From New Scientist,
A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction
industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised
drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other
to build
up vertical walls and domed roofs.
The precision automaton could revolutionise building sites. It can work round
the clock, in darkness and without tea breaks. It needs only power and a constant
feed of semi-liquid construction material.
The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line
of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached
to the nozzle then move to shape the deposit. The robot repeats its journey
many times to raise the height and builds hollow walls before returning to
fill them.
Engineer Behrokh Khoshnevis, at the University of Southern California, has
been perfecting his "contour crafter" for more than a year. "The
goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home
on site, in one day and without using human hands," he says.
Here's a Times
story, with a couple of photos, and the Contour Crafting site
at USC (loading slowly today).
Link
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Blogosphere
reaction to 03/11 Madrid
attacks: here and here,
by Xeni Jardin at
BoingBoing.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 10, 2004, 7:35 p.m.
Help write a journalist's net-savvy book: Dan Gillmor, blogger and tech
columnist for
the San
Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, has posted a draft of the
introduction and first
chapter his upcoming
book Making the News.
And he's inviting your feedback on his first drafts. Dan writes,
My editors and I are most interested in your immediate feedback on:
• What's missing -- that is, a topic or perfect anecdote that absolutely
has to be included.
• More important, what's wrong. If there's a factual
error I want to fix it before the book is published.
In both cases I'll ask that you send me e-mail at j3@gillmor.com.
Link
to this item | Comment
Salon.com
teaming up with MoveOn, The Guardian, Air America
Radio: From Media Channel,
Salon.com announced Tuesday
night a series of ambitious election-year initiatives, including the opening
of a new Washington D.C. news bureau as well as strategic partnerships with MoveOn.org, The
Guardian of London and the new progressive radio network, Air
America.
The Website, which bills itself as "the largest independent news organization
in the country" will also make the announcement via an email to MoveOn.org's
2-million plus members, MediaChannel has learned from a memo sent on Monday
to Salon board members from company editor and founder David Talbot.
Air America Radio is to debut March 31, a counterpoint to conservative talk
radio.
Link
to this item | Comment
Big
String promises to delete or let you edit that email you wish
you hadn't sent, even after it's landed in someone's inbox.
Link
to this item | Comment
Nielsen
Recognizes New Ad Reality: From Wired,
Nielsen is accelerating plans to count TV viewers who use TiVo and other personal
video recorders to record and watch programs after they're broadcast.
"What prompted us to move forward our time frame is the rapid expansion
of PVR technology," said Anne Elliot, a spokeswoman for Nielsen.
The company will keep track of shows that are recorded and watched within
seven days but will not collect information on "trick modes" like
fast-forwarding, rewinding or pausing, Elliot said.
Link
to this item | Comment
FCC beat goes on:
First the good news:
Consumers challenge
FCC antipiracy rules: CNet reports,
A lawsuit challenging new digital television antipiracy rules is moving ahead,
with consumer groups fighting communications regulators' foray into the copyright
realm.
A coalition of groups, including the American Library Association, the Consumers
Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is suing the Federal Communications
Commission over rules
adopted last year aimed at blocking digital TV piracy.
Last week, they filed the first documents with the United States Court of Appeals
in Washington, D.C., outlining their case.
In its decision, the FCC said that any devices capable of receiving digital
television signals must include support for a "broadcast flag," or
digital marker within a broadcast that would prevent copies from being made
without some kind of copy-protection being added. The consumer groups say
the FCC has overstepped its mandate by getting into the copyright protection
arena.
Senate
Panel Proposes Stiff Fines(for offensive programs), Delaying Media Consolidation.
WaPo today:
With the House scheduled to vote Thursday on its version of an indecency
bill, Congress is moving swiftly in the wake of public outcry over a Super
Bowl halftime show in which performer Janet Jackson's breast was bared by
singer Justin Timberlake. President Bush has indicated he supports the House
legislation, which would allow fines of up to $500,000 per incident that
could be levied by the Federal Communications Commission against violators
of its indecency rules.
But the Senate Commerce Committee sharply raised the stakes for the entertainment
industry, which has pledged to police itself and has been careful not to
openly oppose tougher FCC regulation.
The Senate bill would temporarily roll back controversial rules passed by
Congress late last year that allow some media organizations to get larger.
By a 13-10 vote yesterday, the panel passed an amendment sponsored by Sens.
Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine)
that would put the rules on hold for a year until the General Accounting
Office can study the relationship between indecent programming and media
consolidation.
FCC's Powell Worried About Extras in Indecency Bills:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation meant to crack down on indecency on the
nation's airwaves could run afoul of free speech rights and undermine the overall
effort, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said on Wednesday.
The U.S. House and Senate Commerce committees have both passed bills that
would sharply boost fines of television and radio broadcasters who violate
indecency regulations. They would also require the FCC to hold a hearing to
determine whether a broadcast license should be revoked after three violations.
"There are a number of things that give me pause because I don't want
to see enforcement remedies being captured by constitutional litigation," Powell
told reporters after speaking to a group of state regulators.
"Things like three strikes and you're out, I think is an understandable
idea but when you think it through, I can imagine scenarios where it can be
more problematic than not," he said. ...
Stern
won't be leaving Infinity anytime soon: Radio Business Report
reports that a source at Infinity -- Infinity Broadcasting is Stern's employer,
owning WKRX-FM in New York -- adds that the FCC is
expected to crack down on satellite radio soon, too, so there's nowhere
to run..
The most
interesting
part
is a comment
after
the brief report that begins,
Good. Infinity plans to stand behind Howard. No matter what the FCC finds
to fine Stern, it still will pale in comparison to the money he's made, and
continues
to make, for the Viacom unit. When Howard realizes Infinity is going to
stand behind him after all, he'll likely focus his ranting more on the FCC,
Bush
and Right-wingers and less on traditional radio. Stern said on his radio
show yesterday he hopes his show gets pulled - - so he'd be free to travel
'round
the country with anti-Bush and anti-Right wing voting rallies. Said Stern: "A
source at the FCC tells me [FCC Chairman] Michael Powell is freaking out
right now. He realizes he still has to fine me, but knows it could all
backfire for
him and the Republicans."
Stern should have no beef with Infinity or anyone for that matter. He needed
the publicity and he could not have set himself up as the self proclaimed
King of Radio even if he dressed in drag and gave Chairman Powell a dozen
of roses. We've said it before 'Zen Master' Karmazin's first call was probably
to Clear Channel thanking them for pulling Stern off the air. Now Stern broadcasting
he has weeks left, even if he's not booking, has made him a more controversial
price tag for his agent when negotiations arise with any company. It's all
about the money! (via I
Want Media)
I've stayed out of the "first amendment" flap about this for now
-- just a
suspicion we're all being played. Stay tuned.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
MONDRIMAT: Play like Piet
Mondrian.
Link
to this item | Comment
One
File Swapper, One Lawsuit: Wired reports,
A federal judge ruled on Friday that the music industry cannot sue over 200 alleged
file sharers in one swoop and that the companies must sue each defendant individually.
The Recording Industry Association of America grouped 203 so-called "John
Doe" defendants -- "John Doe" because their identities are
not yet known -- into one lawsuit when it sued them in federal court in Philadelphia
last month. All of those sued use Comcast as their Internet service provider.
Link
to this item | Comment
HP's
invention, due in drives soon, lets users burn labels. PC World.
...A technology dubbed LightScribe enables drives to burn a silk screen-like,
high-contrast label on the upper side of CD or DVD media bearing a special
coating. After completing a data burn, users will be prompted to flip the disc
over to burn a label onto the other side.
The first LightScribe drives and media are expected to hit the market about
six months from now, from leading manufacturers such as Hitachi-LG, MicroVision,
Mitsubishi Chemical, Moser Baer India, Sonic Solutions, and Toshiba. HP estimates
that a drive that uses LightScribe will carry a premium of about $10 over the
going price today, and that a disc will cost about a dime more than today's
discs.
Link
to this item | Comment
Beautiful Bugs:
Frank Phillips of Birmingham, Ala., photographs the faces of bugs, close
up, mostly bugs on plants. The cicada at right is one. Who knew what
a firefly looked like?
I'm glad some of them aren't bigger, they're the stuff of horror movies.
Even
the ones
that
aren't
menacing
are truly
alien.
I know it's projecting on my part, but many of those with "expressions" look
surprised to see him.
The next item destroys all the romanticism.
Link
to this item | Comment
Pets
who prey: Man eaten by his pet spiders, blares the Mirror
(U.K.) headline. Seems a man in Dortmund, Germany was fatally bitten
by his favorite black widow, and then...
More than 200 spiders, several snakes, a gecko called Helmut and several thousand
termites gorged on their former master for days.
... (Police) found the remains of 30-year-old loner Voegel draped across
a sofa, covered in giant cobwebs.
There's more if you want to go there. (Thanks, sort of, to Dave
Copeland)
Link
to this item | Comment
March 9, 2004, 7:15 p.m.
Outsourced
in Mass.? Blog asks you to call Gov. Romney Wednesday: Gina
Minks
of Milford, Mass., wants action:
On Wednesday, call Governor Romney's office. Tell him your story of unemployment,
tell him you want him to start worrying about protecting the little guy, not
just cushioning the blows for the the big guys.
The phone number is (617) 725-4005
Here's why: The Globe last week reported (Mass.
Gov. Romney seeks to cut benefits for jobless),
Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that employers are "outsourcing" jobs
out of state because of the state's relatively high unemployment insurance
costs, an assertion disputed by legislators, economists, and some of the
governor's business supporters.
Romney urged lawmakers to lower employers' payments to the unemployment insurance
fund by approving his plan to cut the number of weeks that workers would be
eligible for benefits to 26 weeks and by extending to 20 weeks the period that
employees must work to qualify for unemployment checks.
The governor said his proposal, which lawmakers rejected last year, would
dissuade companies from moving jobs out of state or overseas.
Here's the Governor's press release.
Are you wondering whether Mitt Romney is on the same page with the rest of
us? So does Minks, whose blog, No
really, focuses on outsourcing:
Jobs are not leaving MA for other states, they are going overseas to areas
with low cost labor. Highly trained citizens in Massachusetts are competing
with labor in places such as India who make $6000 annually to do jobs that
would pay $80,000 here. Companies are bringing temporary immigrants on H1-B
and L-1 visas to do jobs here in the state, effectively not even giving citizens
of the Commonwealth a chance to compete for any new jobs created in the state.
By lowering unemployment benefits, effectively the governor is punishing
the victims (the workers) for the indulgences of the employers of the state.
The Governor claims that his office was bombarded by calls from employers
who protested having to pay more into the dwindling unemployment compensation
pool. Perhaps he needs to hear from the workers who are unable to secure employment
in our state, sometimes after searching for as long as two years.
This is a call to action. We are calling for all citizens of the state of
Massachusetts to call the governor's office on Wednesday, March 10, 2004. Tell
him that if he truly wants to solve the problem of jobs leaving Massachusetts,
he has to look at more solutions that lowering unemployment benefits. He must
look at how the businesses in the state misuse visas to replace American workers.
He must understand that jobs are going to other countries because the people
are paid a rate with which no American is able to compete.
Minks is a coder who earlier emailed, "I have been personally affected by
this, as have many of my friends. I graduated from college in 2001, was recruited
and moved
up to New England from Florida, and let go after 11 months. At the time I
left, the company was bring H1B visa holders in for entry level jobs. There
seems to be a business model of using the cheaper H1b labor to gather corporate
climate information, in preparation to outsource the work to India and other
countries that have low labor costs along with lax labor laws."
If you want to get up to speed quickly on outsourcing issues, Cynthia
L. Webb has a great wrapup today on the Washington Post site.
My favorite link from
her
is Maybe
We Could All Deliver Pizza . . . , a Sunday opinion piece in the
Post by Jodie Allen, managing editor of U.S. News & World Report:
"Snow
Crash" ...was a turn-of-the-21st-century cyberpunk novel
by Neal Stephenson, who foresaw a nightmarish future in which the "Invisible
Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a
broad global layer of what a Pakistani brick-maker would consider to be prosperity." And
what the inexorable forces of comparative advantage thus revealed was that
the U.S. economy would evolve to the point where Americans excelled at only
four things: "music, movies, microcode (software), high-speed pizza delivery." Well,
maybe we should scratch the microcode, since software companies have been
outsourcing programming jobs to Asia at an accelerating pace.
What comes afterwardes is regrettably not fiction, including
In the long run, though, the thing even execs should fear is this: What would
happen if America's once-prosperous middle class, the sine qua non of a vibrant
democracy, grew too strapped to purchase the goods and services that businesses
produce?
The essay ends with,
...its aptly named main character, Hiro Protagonist ....in the globally
corporatized world of tomorrow, has lost his prized pizza delivery job -- "the
only pointless dead-end job he really enjoys." His last resort? Freelancing
as a stringer for the CIC, the Central Intelligence Corp. of Langley, Va.
Oh, but that would never happen here, would it?
Link
to this item | Comment
Digital
Democracy was the lead story on the TV show CBS
News Sunday Morning this week. If you missed it, at 9 a.m., here's
a chance to see and hear blogger Doc
Searls in a suit; Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meetup.com and
Wes Boyd, who founded
MoveOn.org with his wife
Joan Blades and the ubiquitous Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean.
That headline link is to a .mov file; there's a transcript,
too, on the same meetup.com site, in which you'll note Doc's last name is
misspelled.
It will seem a little "gosh, golly" to regular blog readers, but
fun nevertheless.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Blogosphere: Boys 'n' Their Toys: Brian Montopoli at Campaign
Desk went looking for women in all the wrong places in the blogosphere, and
couldn't find us.
I sent him the Ms.
Magazine blogroll, a vetted list of links to of blogs, zines, columns
and more by women, which is how I came upon the next item.
Link
to this item | Comment
Volvo
by and for women: YCC -- Your Concept Car -- a sedan designed by
an all-female team of Volvo employees, debuted last week at the Geneva
Auto Show.
I meant to blog this last week, but Christine Cupaiuolo at Ms.
Musings is all over it. Not much left but to show you a picture of it
and point you her way. The
Car Connection has a photo of the design team, and there's also a
slideshow here.
Link
to this item | Comment
Brilliant,
just brilliant: From Jeneane Sessum (in Georgia),
WELCOME TO PhoneCon, 1876!
Please join us at the second annual PhoneCon conference in Boston, April 18-22,
where we'll be bringing together some of the smartest minds from across the
Harbor to talk about talking on the Telephone.
As you know, the emerging power of the Telephone as a tool to shape democracy,
our flour and cotton mills, and our understanding of Rhode Islanders, is
just beginning to be understood. That's why it's so important for telephoners
to
get together in person to talk about talking on the phone. ...
There's more. Anybody who wants to understand Rhode Islanders, just
give us a call!
(via David Weinberger)
Link
to this item | Comment
Women
should vote … as instructed: Karzai: Afghan president
says men should let women vote, but tell them who to vote for;
Move is an attempt at compromise
KABUL (CP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered Afghan men a trade today
in an attempt to convince them to let their women vote in upcoming elections.
"Please, my dear brothers, let your wives and sisters go to the voter
registration process," Karzai told a gathering to mark International Women's
Day. "Later, you can control who she votes for, but please, let her
go."
Karzai's plea set off a murmur in the crowd of about 500 women and illustrated
the fragile grip the democratic process holds in Afghanistan.
"Now that is a bad idea," said Simi Nakbari, a teacher and mother
whose husband reluctantly allowed her to attend the meeting....
You said it, sister.
Link
to this item | Comment
Wood
That Works: Kinetic
Sculpture Portfolio: Cory
Doctorow calls them "spring-loaded
wooden kinetic sculptures." They're large, the parts move and may remind
you of the works of a watch, in wood.
The animation links are wonderful -- watch the wood move
The artist is David C. Roy of Ashford, Conn, -- that's him at right. He has
a physics degree from Boston University, and documents his process in a techniques
link. All the links are worth clicking.
The works begin and $995 and go up....
Link
to this item | Comment
Want
tattoos only on Saturday nights? Sleeves sells clothing that's
tattoed only on the sleeves. And a full body suit..
Link
to this item | Comment
March 8, 2004, 7:05 p.m.
Journal
a finalist for Pulitzer Prize? Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher
reports today,
NEW YORK Just days after the Pulitzer
Prize juries completed their annual
choice of finalists for journalism's biggest awards, the annual leaking
of purported finalist lists is naturally occurring. E&P has obtained
what we feel is the first credible list that includes all 14 journalism category
nominees. ...
PUBLIC SERVICE
The Seattle Times -- "Coaches
Who Prey"
Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal -- "Justice
Denied"
The Providence Journal -- "Rhode
Island Nightclub Fire"
The Public Service category is the only one that may include an online component,
and the entry is a joint one on behalf of The Providence Journal and projo.com.
The Station
Fire Blog is part of the entry. If the
leaked list is accurate, a blog may share a Pulitzer. (Is that a first?)
Winners
are to be named April 5.
(It's unfortunate that so often recognition comes to our work in response
to horrible tragedies. I hope someday a news organization can celebrate with
its sources and subjects over its series on Peace On Earth -- At Last.)
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International Election Monitors Take on Florida: Reuters reports,
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - An international group that usually monitors
elections in developing democracies said Monday it would take up posts at Florida
precincts in November in hopes of averting another debacle when voters pick
the next U.S. president.
Four years after Florida became the object of international ridicule, officials
for the Catholic group Pax Christi USA will place monitors from 30 countries
at polls in four Florida counties that were at the center of the 2000 U.S.
presidential election dispute.
The Washington-based group will ask its international organization to send
monitors to Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Duval counties, where voting
irregularities kept the outcome of the 2000 presidential race in doubt for
more than month.
Related: U.S.
legislator to sue for election printers. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
reported Friday; the Reuters link above confirms it happened today:
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler will file a federal lawsuit Monday against Palm Beach
County elections supervisor Theresa LePore and Florida Secretary of State Glenda
Hood as part of his continuing effort to get printers for electronic voting
machines, a Wexler spokeswoman said Friday.
The lawsuit will mirror legal action Wexler took against LePore and Hood in
Palm Beach County Circuit Court, said Wexler spokeswoman Lale Mameux.
Wexler's lawsuit in state court was dismissed last month after Judge Karen
Miller ruled he didn't have legal grounds to file his case. Before the case
was tossed out, county commissioners agreed to spend $3.2 million for printers
for 5,400 electronic voting machines. ...
"I think as we get closer to the general election, it's a huge concern," Mameux
said. "We don't want to be scratching our heads in November, saying,
`Oh my God, we don't have a way to do a recount.'"
Aaronson said the lawsuit would argue that voters in 15 Florida counties,
including Palm Beach, that have electronic voting machines are being treated
differently than the voters in 52 counties with optical-scan machines. That's
because a recount in a close election is possible with optical-scan machines
but not with the electronic devices, Aaronson said.
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Garden
Blogs updated: I came in Saturday to update and clean up the Garden
Blogs list, since spring seemed to be on its way last week. (It snowed today
of course, but it didn't stick.)
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Mike
Barnicle signs on as Herald columnist: The Globe reports today,
Barnicle departed the Globe in August 1998 after engaging in a tumultuous
battle to save his job. The effort began after the Herald revealed that some
jokes in a Barnicle column resembled those in a 1997 George Carlin book, "BrainDroppings." He
resigned two weeks later after he was unable to verify the facts contained
in an Oct. 8, 1995, column about two children being treated for cancer at
Children's Hospital.
And, from Dan
Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News),
The Boston Herald hires the discredited Mike Barnicle to write a column. Sheesh.
To its credit, the Herald chapter of the Newspaper
Guild find the idea repulsive.
To those who think journalists are trying to sell newspapers, the outrage
won't make any sense. But any journalist with an inclination to sell anything
could make a lot more money doing so elsewhere. Newsrooms are expenses, maintained
for idealistic reasons having to do with the value of an informed society.
Mistakes are inevitable, and corrections are issued,
but any journalist who deliberately makes up stories, quotes, sources taints
us
all.
There's more on background on Barnicle here and here.
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A
mind of her own: On
the Kerry blog, staffer Pamela Leavey
writes of a Dec. 7 house party-rally in San Francisco, including the "shocking
news" (to
detractors) that
When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses
of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding
it.
I find Ms. Heinz Kerry refreshing so far, a smart, real woman with a wicked
wit. This campaign is going to be fun. Her husband's take on her bluntness,
from a Knight-Ridder story (Teresa
Heinz Kerry says what she thinks and means what she says):
"I'm not going to worry about it," the Massachusetts senator recently
said. "She is my wife. She is who she is. I love her for her outspokenness,
and I think it's kind of charming and honest. I think people like honesty."
And I like
this savvy
comment from that December blog post:
A PBS producer working on a documentary on MoveOn interviewed Teresa. He
asked, “Just
as radio was for Roosevelt, and television was for Kennedy, the Internet
has been defined as the new political grass-roots organizing tool for this
era.
What is your reaction to that?”
“The Internet is a great grass-roots organizing
and political tool; but it is still an adjunct.” The producer asked her
to clarify. Teresa responded, “Until EVERYONE has access to a computer
and knows how to access the Internet, it will still be an adjunct political
grassroots
organizing tool”.
Many never will type, can't spell, can't keep a mouse from skiting all over
the screen. Until it's all as easy as talking to the Star Trek computer, don't
expect universal computer literacy.
(I would probably like Laura Bush, too, but she seldom speaks.)
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The
Mystery of Dalaro is allegedly an eight-minute documentary
exploring why 32 people in the small seaside town of Dalaro, Sweden all
bought the same
new Volvo on one Saturday morning in October. Carl Jung and Rupert Sheldrake
get in there, but the star -- to me -- is the town and the interiors of the
homes
of those interviewed.
It's interesting to see what Sweden looks like, what Swedish homes look like.
Everyone is speaking English.
But it turns out that filmmaker of "Mystery" smells a rat. Here's Carlos Soto's director's
cut.
It's all a sophisticated ad. Steve
Bell's blog lays it all out in a readable fashion. (Updated 03.09: In an
email, Adland
points
to
its Feb.
13
post containing the quotes below, as well as offering a link to Dalaro's
website and a tidbit we didn't know: "Dalarö is
a
small island, as the name indicates (ö = island) near Stockholm, Sweden.")
The Dalaro ad campaign was created by MVBMS Fuel Europe, an Amsterdam-based
ad agency that has been on contract with Volvo since 2000. Note that final
link-up with the Amsterdam-based domain registrant for the "Carlos Soto" website
which rounds things off quite nicely!
Tim Ellis, Global Director of Advertising at Volvo Cars, says: "Even
though it comes off as quite serious, the story is actually very playful
- once you think you've got it, we offer one more layer to the communication
to question that assumption."
Simon Pride, European Account Director at the agency, said: "People are
absolutely saturated with advertising these days and we need to find new ways
to capture their imagination and get them involved with Volvo. The internet
offers great opportunities to tell interesting stories about the brand, and
to do so in more innovative and entertaining ways." Their solution -
a spoof within a spoof!
Even suspicious director Carlos
Soto turns out not to be real. Adland reports that
the ad was directed by music-video and film (Being
John Malkovich) director Spike
Jonze.
Nice pictures, though.(And I never did really care whether/why 32 people would
buy a Volvo on the same day. Would you?)
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Low-Carb blog tracks
the new products and more. An interesting link here: Food
oligopoly goes low-carb from Oligopoly Watch.
According to a Wall Street Journal article ("Unilever's
Skippy, Wishbone and Ragu Go Low-Carb", 1/14/2004), the international food and household
products company, will release a line of 18 low-carb products bearing the company's
well-known brand names. These products will also be labeled with the "Carb
Options" label.
Among the products included are lower carb versions of Skippy (peanut butter),
Ragu (Spaghetti Sauce), Lawry's (steak sauce), Lipton (iced tea mix) and Wishbone
(salad dressing), along with diet bars and shakes, barbecue sauce and marinades.
Watch out for the prices, though. I was reading the labels on Ragu Double
Cheddar Pasta Sauce ($2.29 for a 1-lb. jar) and Ragu
Low-Carb Double
Cheddar Pasta Sauce ($2.79). The regular contained 3 carbs per serving; the
"low-carb," 2 carbs per serving. (The carbs in pasta sauce come from
the sugar and the tomatoes. You're not going to see either in cheese sauce.)
I bought the regular one.
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House
Passes Bill to Help 'Webcasters': WaPo, last week,
Small Internet radio stations are facing improved odds of survival after the
House of Representatives approved a bill yesterday to make it more affordable
for them to negotiate royalty deals with music publishers and the recording
industry.
The House voted in favor of the Copyright Royalty Distribution and Reform
Act, which would authorize a judge appointed by the Librarian of Congress to
hear royalty disputes, eliminating a system that webcasters say excludes them
from the process of determining the amount of money they pay to musicians,
songwriters and record companies for broadcasting their music.
Under the current system, arbitration panels decide the royalty rates that
Internet radio stations pay, but the cost of participating can run into the
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The new system would charge participants
$150 to argue a royalty case before a judge....
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Coca cola storm in a tap-water cup: Also
from adland,
Coke's Dasani launch in the uk isn't going well. As soon as the
Sun and
other tabloids knew that the "super pure" Dasani bottled water
is purified British tap water they ridiculed the drink, the
Sun labelled
it "the real
sting", it was also reported in the
Herald and the
Scotsman. Coke has
now hired Lexis PR to start a recovery strategy before Dasani goes down the
drain.
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Beagle
2 may have sped to its death: New Scientist reports,
The missing Beagle 2 lander may have crunched into the Martian dust after
plummeting through an unexpectedly thin atmosphere.
New measurements from the spacecraft's mothership, Mars Express, suggest
the upper atmosphere can be far less dense than anyone thought. This could
have been fatal for the lander because it relied on the atmosphere's braking
effect to trigger the release of its parachute. ...
It's just one of the possibilities, but this one is based on new information.
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