Subterranean Homepage News

Fair and balanced, too!

October 10, 2003 7:30 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Samorost is a stunning, surreal puzzle game by a group of flash designers at Amanita Design in the Czech Republic.

There's a long intro during which you just watch. When it stops, click around and observe. I made some things happen so intuitively I don't know how I did them.
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Rush Limbaugh's statement today on his addiction (mp3) from kgw.co; raw transcript at Fox News.
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Recommended radio stream: My colleague Frank Carnevale writes,

Hey Sheila -- a great radio site.

KEXP 90.3 FM (http://www.kexp.org/) in Seattle grew out of the University of Washington. Now it's "listener-powered" (they have fund drives two or three times a year). and got some help from Paul Allen, and are associated with the experience music project http://www.emplive.com/

This station has renewed my interest in music. The djs pick the music that is played, combining all sorts of genres. You'll always here something great. The daily schedule has a variety of shows, like a "true" country show in the evenings. But I mostly listen here at work to the two morning shows. John Richards's John in the Morning show has gotten lots of press in Seattle.

Give a listen.

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The Atget Rephotographic Project: How 75, 100 years changed Paris.

The photographs displayed here are the result of an ongoing project begun by students in the first Paris program group in 1987, the rephotography of sites photographed by the French photographer Eugene Atget who, between 1900 and 1926, made approximate 6,000 photographs of Paris. Using reproductions of Atget’s photographs, students attempted to locate his “tripod holes” and to replicate the exact view and framing of his original scene.

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Comedian Margaret Cho has a blog. It's not for little ears, and is guaranteed to raise some hackles. No permalinks, but her rant yesterday on conservative author (and tall skinny blond) Ann Coulter is a classic.
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Bill Nye, the Sundial guy: Interview at Astrobiology Magazine.

Summary: Early next year, the first interplanetary sundials will be tested on the surface of Mars if all goes according to plan. The sundials, inspired by a flash from Bill Nye, the Science Guy, also will allow scientists to calibrate the pink color of the martian sky. Astrobiology Magazine interviewed Nye on how the sundials came to ride on the Mars science package, called Athena.

Dummies and their ventriloquists. Great photos of Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff (my early childhood favorites, now in the Smithsonian Institution), Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, toys, kits, wooden unknowns and much more.

I didn't know know that Doctor Winchell "is also credited with inventing the prototype for the artificial heart and he donated the patent to the University of Utah."

via MeFi.
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Apple customer resells iTunes song: Update on George Hotelling, who last month tried to sell an iTunes song on eBay; eBay yanked it for "for violating our Downloadable Media Policy."

"Apple's position is that it is impractical, though perhaps within someone's rights, to sell music purchased online," said Peter Lowe, Apple's director of marketing for applications and services.

Hotelling said he accomplished the transfer by changing his account credit card to a prepaid card he purchased at a 7-Eleven store. After spending most of the money on the card, he gave Elder his iTunes account information and password.

"Not that I didn't trust him, but I wanted to show how this could be done by someone selling a song to a complete stranger," he said, regarding the use of the prepaid card.

Hotelling said he paid $29.95 for the card, including a $9.95 service fee and a minimum $20 balance. He said he used the card to donate $19 to online legal activist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, effectively losing $1 dollar when the card wouldn't allow him to expend its full value.

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(((D+CON/trol))) :: Online Art Gallery ::
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Blogging for research: Liz Donovan, a blogger and news researcher at the Miami Herald, wrote a smart, informative intro to weblogs for the summer issue of News Library News that I've just discovered.
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To you who read this: At the very end of Liz Donovan's article, she says some nice things about this blog, which I won't quote.

Sometimes email from readers starts with a compliment, then gets to the meat of the message. When I publish the author's comments, I usually blog the meat of it, skipping the polite phrases. I may be violating the integrity of the email by not publishing it in its entirety, but it seems self-serving to repeat the praise (which may just be a way of saying "Nice doggy" to a journalist).

Today, though, I got a thoroughly wonderful email from Eric Lilius of Eagle Lake, Ontario. I've edited out his address, but otherwise here's the entire message:

Hi,
I just want to say again how much I enjoy your catches of the day.
Eric
--
Eric Lilius
Eagle Lake, ON

----------------------------------------------
`·.¸ ><((((º> .·´¯`·.¸.·<º))))><¸.·´¯·.¸
`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> ¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>
<º))))><·.¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸
·..·´¯`·. <º))))><.¸.·´¯`·.¸.·<º))))><
"In Africa, when the body of an antelope, which all its life ate only leaves and grass and drank nothing but wild water, is first opened, the fragrance is almost too sweet, too delicate, too beautiful to be borne. It is a moment which hunters must pass through carefully, with concentrated and even religious attention, if they are to reach the other side, and go on with their individual lives." Mary Oliver, "White Pine"

Thank you for reading this weblog, for following along on this trail through unlikely news sources. And thank you for writing, you who do. There are tribes of consciousness, I think, and through this blog I've met, in spirit, many far-flung members of mine.

Good weekend to you all.
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October 9, 2003 7:20 p.m.

EMusic buyer to kill off unlimited download offer: At The Register (U.K.) today (the European date format looks like Sept. 10, but means Oct. 9),

Online alternative music service EMusic will next month scrap its unlimited download service and replace it with a rather more limited offering, the company told its 70,000-odd subscribers this week.

The change follows the company's acquisition by Dimensional Associates (DA), privately held venture capital firm focused on the digital music arena.

On 8 November, the $9.99-a-month unlimited download service will be limited to a maximum of 40 downloads each month. Subscribers can increase that figure to 65 downloads a month, but that will cost them $14.99. A monthly payment of $50 will buy them 300 downloads each month.

The company blamed the move on the "intense financial, legal and technological pressure" the music industry currently finds itself under. "As a provider of music downloads, EMusic is subject to a complex system of intellectual property rights and technological challenges that impose high costs and often uncertain risks on the company," it told subscribers.

DA clearly wants to beef up EMusic's income, but its possible that having seen the success of pay-per-download services like Apple's iTunes Music Store, EMusic's label partners have decided they want a better deal from the online service. That said, 40 songs for $9.99 works out at 25 cents a download - much less than the Apple-set standard of 99 cents a track.

Subscribers have received word via email that the Terms of Service agreement has changed. "Under EMusic Basic, you will be billed $9.99 per month for access to the service with no minimum monthly commitment, but you will be limited to no more than 40 downloads during your monthly billing cycle."

Related: The San Jose Mercury News takes a look at the new Napster, which formally launches Oct. 29. Thanks to J.D. Lasica for the link -- his move to a new domain really isn't working, so New Media Musings is still at http://jd.typepad.com/
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Recognition: Projo.com is a finalist for an Online Journalism Award for our Station Fire coverage. The category is Creative Use Of the Medium.
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Judge Rules KKK Can Adopt Mo. Highway / Commission to appeal ruling

Prior to 2001, the St. Louis-based KKK group was allowed to participate in the program, which asks volunteers to pick up litter, mow or beautify a stretch of highway and includes roadside signs recognizing each group's efforts. Signs bearing the Klan's name were eventually placed along Interstate 55, but protesters cut them down twice.

The state then renamed the adopted section the "Rosa Parks Highway" in honor of the black woman arrested in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. In April 2001, the state dropped the group from the highway program, saying it failed to pick up any trash.
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Pennant rant: Whatever happened to "the pennant race"? It got a formal new name in 1969 but "pennant race" never died in the speech of the people.

But now it's "the Red Sox beat Oakland in the ALDS and face the Yankees in the ALCS."

ALCS, ALDS -- sounds like a disease. (There's never a first reference, especially in the titles on TV, so you have to be born knowing these acronyms: American League Divisional Series, American League Championship Series; there are National League equivalents.)

The future: Will there be naming rights, leading to the CMGI ALDS?
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Cosmetic surgery ends in death: Doc Searls writes movingly (Burying treasure) of his late friend, Susan Camusi (photo gallery), who died Monday after plastic surgery at 50. Here's the AP report:

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- A 50-year-old woman died hours after a facelift and tummy-tuck surgery.

Susan Marie Camusi was found dead Monday within three hours of leaving the Santa Barbara office of plastic surgeon John Padilla, authorities said.

Caregiver Jackie Scanlan, 74, told police she picked up Camusi after the five-hour surgery and took her to Scanlan's Hidden Valley home for postoperative care. She found Camusi dead at about 6 p.m. and called police.

The county coroner's office said it was awaiting results of toxicology tests before determining the cause of death.

Six medical malpractice suits have been filed against Padilla in the past eight years and he was placed on probation until 2006 by the Medical Board of California and the New York State Board of Medicine.

On July 10, another Padilla patient died after facelift and tummy-tuck surgery. Martha Oliver, 59, went to Padilla's office a day after her July 9 surgery and later died after collapsing in his office.

The coroner's office determined Oliver's died a natural death "with known complications of surgery from multi-pulmonary emboli."

Padilla said in a statement Tuesday that he and his staff were saddened by Camusi's death.

"The patient had a completely uneventful surgery and a smooth and uneventful recovery and left the office awake and alert. She was taken to a postoperative facility where she reportedly was very comfortable and recovering appropriately," Padilla's statement read.

Doc writes, "None of Susan's friends wanted her to go through with this procedure. One surgeon advised against it. But Susan was so determined to go through with the work that she proceeded in spite of premonitions so severe that she asked friends to pray for her."

Damn.
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FBI Says It Regrets Letter to AP Reporter:

WASHINGTON - The FBI has apologized to an Associated Press reporter for demanding that he preserve records in a criminal case against a computer hacker.

The apology to reporter Ted Bridis says there was no legal mandate that he safeguard records pertaining to Adrian Lamo (news - web sites), who is accused of hacking into The New York Times computer system. Instead, the letter asks Bridis to voluntarily comply with the request.

In a letter to Bridis last month, the FBI ordered him to preserve any documents relating to Lamo, citing a criminal law that applies to Internet providers. The bureau sent similar letters to reporters at 12 other news organizations.

In a letter Tuesday, FBI deputy general counsel Patrick Kelley told Bridis "we have determined" that the law the bureau cited "does not apply to you under the circumstances presented in this case."

"We regret this misunderstanding and any inconvenience that it may have caused you" and "we ask ... that you voluntarily take appropriate action to preserve relevant records," the apology stated.

It could not immediately be determined Wednesday night whether apologies had been sent to the other media outlets.

Background here.
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The Apostrophe Protection Society: Charmingly correct.
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Esquire: 70th anniversary issue: Free, online, are all 857 covers (that's the first at right, from October 1933) , and (five of) The Greatest Stories Ever Told:

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? by Richard Ben Cramer, June 1986.
Hell Sucks by Michael Herr, August 1968.
Superman Comes to the Supermarket by Norman Mailer, November 1960.
M by John Sack, October 1966.
The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes! by Tom Wolfe, March 1965.

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How to Road Trip by Leslie Harpold at The Morning News has some great, true lines:

• This isn’t about looking good, it’s about feeling something new; all new feelings worth their salt eventually mess up your hair.

• You’ll never see those people again. This means it’s perfectly okay to let go, ask for directions, look a mess, visit the Mystery Spot, or play Journey on the jukebox.

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Giant Grocery "loyalty card" swapper: (Note to marketers: People will not behave as you want them to behave. This sort of cooperation against control is built into the web, like it or not.)

Cory Doctorow writes: Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet is a site where you enter in your Giant grocery-chain "loyalty card" number and the site responds by serving you a printable barcode for someone else's loyalty card number. Paste the barcode over your own and help poison the Giant database.

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How does Skype get through Firewalls and NAT Routers? At the Register,

If, like some of our readers, you are either confused about how the new Skype Voice over IP system gets past firewalls and NAT routers, or you are skeptical about it, it's worth noting the answer that Niklas Zennstrom, one of the key architects of both Kazaa and Skype gave us on the subject.

Technical reassurance follows.
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More text games: Responding to Tuesday's item about old text-adventure games, Justin Katz of Newport writes,

Thanks for the link to the text games. I forget which Zork I had, but it was one of the biggest frustrations of my childhood. I'll have to see if I can do better now.

I thought I'd mention, though, that those who don't want to download games can play Zork on a 404 error page here:
http://thcnet.net/error/index.php

I've also come across Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the game) here:
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

Thanks, Justin -- and that's a great use of a 404 (File not found) page, don't you think?
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October 8, 2003 6:55 p.m.

It's a music and politics day here, soon to yield to the Red Sox game...

Napster's back, but not sharing: The Los Angeles Times reports,

The technology behind Roxio's Napster was built around an overhauled version of Pressplay, the online music service that Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment sold to Roxio in May. Subscribers of the new Napster would pay $10 a month to play an unlimited number of songs from an Internet jukebox or download "tethered" versions to be played when they're not online. It would cost about $1 to move a tethered song to a portable device or burn it onto a CD.

USA Today adds,

Pressplay shuts down Tuesday — its estimated 100,000 subscribers and purchasers of a new Samsung "Napster" MP3 player will be among the first to test Napster 2.0 when it launches Thursday — and the rest of the public will be invited later in the year.

A far better choice is Magnatune, whose slogan is "we are not evil." (Wired: Music Label Cashes in by Sharing)
When I blogged about it last month, writing,

Magnatune is a killer new record label that is doing everything a cutting-edge record label should be doing. They offer music from a wide range of genres that you can download, stream, and listen to, but like shareware, you only buy stuff you like after trying it out first. The label splits profits with artists 50-50, and even offers a sliding scale when buying through paypal. After paying for an album, you get both high quality MP3 and uncompressed WAV files for download,

I got an email from Magnatune's founder and owner, John Buckman, thanking me for the link. Here's Buckman on Why I created Magnatune. He's smart, and sounds real.
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The Indie 100 at RIAA Radar: The 100 highest-selling albums on Amazon.com that are "RIAA-safe" (i.e., whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America.) Updated every day.
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Different Frequencies: I'm late on this, but Brooke Shelby Biggs (whose blog is the bitter shack of resentment) wrote a fine piece for The Nation, reproduced at Alternet, on indie radio:

KPIG, near Santa Cruz, Calif., is one station already reaping the rewards of Clear Channel exhaustion. By its own admission, KPIG has one of the weakest signals in its market. Yet it consistently ranks in the top five against all formats in all demographics in its market, and first in the 25-54 demographic and in the Triple-A (adult album alternative) format. It has owned the ratings charts there for six years. What makes KPIG unique is that in an age of format consultants and universal playlists, live deejays at KPIG still pull records off the shelves and play practically whatever occurs to them, whenever they feel like it. They even answer the phone. This is old-school rock radio. "You scan the dial and you know when it's the PIG. You may not know the song, or even the artist. You know it's us because you've never heard it before and it's good," says program director Laura Hopper. "That's our strength. There is no one else like us out there."

To listen, you need to subscribe to RealOne RadioPass at $5.95 per month.

Shelby also plugs WOXY near Cincinnatti, the highest-rated modern-rock station on the Internet, which streams for free on the Web. (No explanation how it handles the royalty payments that have driven other stations offline or into commercial services that pay the royalties for all.)

There's also high praise for WNCW, a public radio station in Spindale, N.C., "where in a single set you may hear Flatt and Scruggs followed by Jimi Hendrix followed by Edith Piaf followed by Omara Portuondo." It streams, too.
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California from afar: David Broder, writing in the Washington Post, summed it up:

The recall ended with voters facing a rotten choice among two Democrats, (Gray) Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, both widely viewed as corrupted by campaign cash, and one Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been repeatedly accused of being a sexual predator.

I was surprised, given all the advice Davis got from Bill Clinton and other savvy Democratic campaigners, that hr didn't simply, humbly apologize for the actions that had made Californians so angry at him.

I'd expected this recall attempt would have been a wake-up call: Davis would admit some mistakes, ask for a second chance, talk about what he could fix, what he couldn't fix without help from Washington, and how the people of California could pitch in and help.

Instead we got Sordid Arnold, Jerk With Women -- in spades. The parade of accusers kept the spotlight on Schwarzenegger. And Davis didn't even try to snatch it back by promising to be all that he could be, this time. Instead, he seemed to whine, "It's not as bad as you think, I did some good things."

Bustamante was unable to transcend the rock and the hard place. Only a visionary could have.

California's best hope is that there's some vision lurking under the macho of their new governor-elect, that he's more than a celluloid fiction.
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The other presidential candidates: There are listed at Vote-Smart lists dozens of declared candidates for President in 2004 (not including Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, listed separately as "potential candidates.") from all parties, and write-ins, too.

Politics1 expands on the raw lists (67 running Democrats and 20 Republicans) with some biographies. About some, little is known; about others, a little too much.

(D)Albert "Al" Hamburg (Wyoming): Perennial candidate Al Hamburg has lost 14 consecutive bids for President and for Governor, US Senate and Congress. He proudly describes himself as the "Very Independent UNPOPULAR Candidate" -- unpopular, he explains, because the special interests and bureaucrats hate him (well, that ... and maybe also because of the Nazi helmet he's wearing in his photo). ...

(D)James J. Prattas (Hawaii): Campaigning under the slogan of "Love is the Way," Jim Prattas described himself as "a poor ignorant soul who is just an artist, healer and disabled combat Vietnam veteran living on a stipend ... [and] uneducated and ignorant a compared to most of my fellow citizens." His unusual campaign website was decorated with his original art works throughout the various pages. His autobiographic story -- from his 2000 campaign site -- told of near death experiences (including meeting God and seeing angels), meeting celebrities, his fights with the US military after being wounded in Vietnam, death threats against him by the Hawaiian Mafia, a plot by President G.H.W. Bush's friends to have him arrested when he wanted to challenge Bush in the 1992 race, his past use of marijuana, his divorce, and more. ...

(D) Evelyn Louise Vitullo (Arizona): Evelyn Vitullo is a mother of four grown children, a widow of a retired military officer, a community volunteer, and a Sunday School teacher. She is pro-life, wants to cut foreign aid, and eliminate wasteful governmental spending. Her top priorities are education reform and protecting Social Security. ...

(R) Mildred "Millie" Howard (Ohio): Millie Howard, who ran previously ran for President in 1992, 1996 and 2000, is making a fourth bid in 2004. In fact, her flexible slogan of "Millie Howard for President USA 1992 and Beyond" is easily adaptable to as many runs as Howard desires to make. A medical office receptionisty and 66-year-old mother of four grown children, she earned her B.S. degree in Finance in 2003 from Northern Kentucky University. Arguing that politics in America is "corrupt" and our current system is "socialistic," Howard calls for smaller government. In a very libertarian vein, she also demands the elimination of any laws that codify immorality (which Howard defines as "abortion, bankruptcy, divorce").

(R)Donnie Kennedy (Louisiana): Donnie Kennedy is a longtime activist in the "Southern Heritage" movement (i.e., seeking to keep the Confederate battle flag flying in the South and incorporated within the design of Southern state flags, opposing the MLK Holiday, etc.). Politically, he describes himself as a "conservative, limited government, free-market, Christian." Kennedy is the former Commander of the Louisiana Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A nurse anaesthetist by profession, Kennedy is the co-author several books including The South Was Right!, Why Not Freedom!, and Was Jefferson Davis Right?

(R) Louis J. "Louie" Rapuano Jr. (Connecticut): Louis Rapuano is making his second run for President in 2004. In 2000, he briefly flirted with a White House run. This time, he's partially filed FEC paperwork four times to run -- four times, that is, because he's yet to file a completed form with the FEC. Usually, he takes the first page of the form, writes his name and address on it, and then attaches various handwritten notes about how his campaign is coming along. From his notes, he attended some college and "helps out" with his local town GOP organization. As for his net worth, he stated on questionnaire: "$25 in savings account." ...

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October 7, 2003 6:45 p.m.

So far, the complaints range from poll workers' not requiring IDs to touch screens not working and machines that count votes before voters got to the Proposition 54 screen. (Prop 54 would ban public agencies from collecting racial data.)

Max of Berkeley writes,

I voted at the Catholic church in Berkeley at College and Dwight.

I asked for a paper ballot, but they didn't make one available. They said they didn't have any.

"Provisional ballots" are for people who screwed up their registration and they undergo "a different process", i.e. THEY DON'T COUNT.

So we were forced to use the Diebold machines.

So I used the feared Diebold machine. I was unable to vote on prop 54 because the program is tricky and asks you to cast your ballot after the first two issues. So I voted on the recall and on a candidate, but I that was it:
"poof!" thanks for voting! better luck with democracy next time!

I asked the volunteers to help, they said it was to late, nothing could be done.

Alot of other people were confused by the machines and wanted paper ballots but could not get them. The poll workers were nice but unhelpful.
After all, they are just volunteers.

This is all so messed up.

Related: Time to Recall E-Vote Machines? Wired reports,

However, information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering.

Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software won’t be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically.

Related: Diebold Machines and Your Vote: Part II. Timeline of the Diebold Case; Susceptibility to Election Tampering Revealed; Legal Battles Ensue. From the Agonist. (Part 1 was published Sept. 28: Diebold Machines and Your Vote -- "outlining the susceptibility of electronic voting machines to tampering and election fraud.")
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iTrike: The World's First Solar-Powered Internet Rickshaw! A humorous contraption that provided serious "mobile Internet access over a large area of the festival site. "

The festival was the Big Green Gathering 2003 (held in the heart of the Mendip Hills, near Cheddar, Somerset, England.

Go there for lots of details and hard tech info as well as a chuckle.
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Trickle down? At the Washington Post today, a well-reported and beautifully written story whose headline doesn't tell the half of it: A Slave to Health Insurance refers to a 58-year-old North Carolina woman who works 50 hours a week at Hardee's -- rising at 3 so she can open -- all to pay for health insurance and a passel of prescription drugs that seem to create chemical warfare in her body.

Her husband runs a catering truck outside a furniture factory which is about to close:

For 14 years, he has been parking in the same spot on a thin road that winds through the factory's 31 acres of old brick buildings, selling drinks and sandwiches and "a sweet roll that's enormous and tasty." In the beginning there were 1,600 workers in the plant, then 1,000, and then 500. Now the factory is about to close for good, and in these last days all of the employees who stop by the catering truck on their way into the plant are as grim as the man who says to Sechrest, "It's called the Tar Heel State; it ought to be called the Layoff State. People in Washington don't give a damn about people down here."

"They better look out on down the road," says another. "The people with money, pretty soon they'll be pushing up daisies because the people without money, they're going to have to feed their kids somehow."

"Where's the real war? Who's the real enemy? The enemy is within," another says. "I got two weeks till I'm laid off. Two weeks to go, after 11 years."

I hope some of those in Washington whose decisions create -- and can fix -- such conditions bother to read this.
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Text adventure games: "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." (Open the mailbox, dummy!)

Zork was wildly popular and odd fun in the DOS days: You could only type compass directions and simple words like "open," "read," "pick up" and "drop," but the games were still compelling and addictive.

You can download Zork -- for Win95, DOS and Mac now -- at the Infocom homepage (linked on the headline).
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Hillary on the Hill: MsMusings writes, "The Oct. 13 issue of The New Yorker features an article by Elizabeth Kolbert on how the former first lady charmed the Senate. The article itself is not available online, but this interview with Kolbert about covering Clinton is.

What is the appeal of a politician like Hillary Clinton, who doesn’t rally crowds or create excitement?

I think one of the reasons many people are attracted to Hillary is that she has suffered so much to get where she is. Unlike a lot of politicians, who just seem to mouth the words, Clinton genuinely seems to appreciate how difficult life can be for people, how they have to get up every day and go to work even though their husbands are louts, or their parents are sick, or they just feel like crawling under the bed. Of course, this is precisely what she herself has done, so it can be a powerful message.

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Old Woodies: Some are lovely, some are even wicker, some look homemade.

But there's a beauty to wood with steel that makes anything a "touring" car.

Compared to the Darth-Vader-like SUVs of today, this Austin A70 Countryman from the '50s looks so civilized.

Here's another site, where the woodies are sorted by make.
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BBC: Male contraceptive '100% effective.' By needle, but not yet.

At the end of today's items, in reponse to an email from a reader, there's a very long look at American jobs being lost to workers -- many from India -- here on temporary "technical" visa,s and recent efforts to restrict such visas. It's at the end because it's so long, not because it is in any way "least."

Email from a Czech blogger: In reponse to last week's item adding links to the authors' blogs / sites from the Nieman Reports Weblogs & Journalism issue, a Czechoslovakian blogger emailed:

Hello,

I used your note about Nieman Reports. I gave you credit, linked to your post, but sorry for not asking you first. I added links to PDF files (+ twice HTML versions) of all articles and some additional info.

http://blog.vozovna.cz/2003-10.html#041226 (link fixed)

Adam Javurek, Prague, Czech rep.

---------------------------
http://vozovna.cz
http://naraznik.vozovna.cz
http://blog.vozovna.cz
http://hisvoice.cz
---------------------------

I emailed Adam, asking, "Are you a journalist?" His reply...

sort of... I'm student of journalism (now I'm preparing my bachelor's degree work about "Weblogs as alternative source of informations"...so Nieman Reports is great source of informations for me :-)).

The world is shrinking rapidly.

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Net radio recommendations: Friday, I blogged projo.com programmer and guitarist Joe Alba's disappointed review of XM Satellite radio, and asked if anyone knew of good alt-radio.

Tom Arrison of Providence responded:

This week, you've hit on a subject that's been near and dear to me for 32 years -- alternative radio.

My favorite internet radio discovery is Hober: www.hober.com

They broadcast eclectic, mostly acoustic, music "from a geodesic dome in the oak forest just outside Washington DC." They stream at ~60kbps for broadband users in decent-sounding stereo, and at a lower rate in mono for dialup users. They use RealAudio, and provide a link to download the RealOne player, but I recommend RealPlayer version 8, or earlier, back as far as G2, which work fine with Hober and are laced with fewer privacy-invading "features."

Real.com makes it very hard to find the "legacy" RealPlayers. They're at
http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html

Many fine broadcast stations simulcast on the 'net. My favorite two:

1) Possibly the nation's finest folk station, WUMB at U.Mass Boston: wumb.org.
They offer their stream in several formats, the most techo-politically correct of which is MP3 played with WinAmp. WUMB has a very helpful setup page at http://wumb.org/listenLive/setup.html

2) For *really* eclectic programming, the community-run WPKN in Bridgeport: wpkn.org.
It has a "magazine format" like most college stations used to, where each programmer brings his/her own tastes, and there's no homogenizing Program Director to make them all sound the same. You'll hear folk, rock, jazz, world music, blues, space music, and more, plus a dollop of locally and nationally produced left-of-center news and public affairs. The ReadAudio stream is at http://wpkn.org/live.ram

All three of these are commercial-free. Hober, apart from the rare and witty station ID, is actually talk-free. Playlist info appears in the RealPlayer window, and at the web site.

The biggest downside of internet radio is its unavailability in cars, but the upside is the ability to hear the remnants of pre-Michael-Powell-era listener-centered radio.

Thanks for the links, Tom. Anyone else have favorites?
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Mauritius: We want your call centers. A tiny tropical island in the Indian Ocean wants to be a tech hub. Rhode Island could do this, too. (We're a "tourist paradise," too!)

Mauritius is trying hard to lure tech companies, as well as tourists, these days. The government has declared it wants to make Mauritius a "cyberisland," with information and communications technology becoming the "fifth pillar" of the economy, along with tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and financial services.

... Plans also call for its cybercity to have a broadband network--a key requirement of BPO companies whose processing or call center work depends on high-speed Internet connectivity.

Here's the clincher:

To NeoIT's Vashistha, Mauritius does have its competitive advantages. One is the solid telecommunications infrastructure offered by the fiber-optic cable running through the country. Another is the same thing that lures tourists to Mauritius -- it's a tropical island. "It is one of the most beautiful areas of the world," Vashistha says. "I would love to have an office there."

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Newspapers should be more about the future: "MO" at Rewrite! blogs,

Just got back (from) the Society of Newspaper Design convention in Washington D.C. where Juan Antonio Giner, a partner at Innovation International Media Consulting Group, tried to talk some sense into us about the role of newspapers.

He was harsh. But we needed to hear it.

His biggest criticism was that newspapers continue to clutch to the role they played in the past and are not adapting to people's changing information needs.

If people want to know what's going on now, TV, radio or the Web will serve them best. We come out once a day and cannot possibly compete in breaking news. When we cover an event, readers don't see our stories and photographs for eight to 24 hours. Yet, Giner estimates that 90 percent of the content in today's newspaper focuses on what happened yesterday.

Instead, Giner said, we have to focus most of efforts on telling people what's coming next. His recipe for a successful newspaper of the future: 20 percent past, 30 percent today and 50 percent tomorrow.

... We have to give readers what the haven't heard or seen before -- and not make them wade through old news to get to it -- if we are to be valuable and useful. As Giner said, newspapers "need to find news, not record it."

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Digital Prayer Wheels: "Praying with electrons you already have around the house." At Dharma Haven.

The animated prayer wheel image didn't move for my browser. Maybe it would on a desktop?

I do like the Dream Flag at right, though. The 16th Karmapa saw this flag in a dream, (writes DH). He called it Namkhyen Gyaldar -- "Victorious Flag of the Buddha's Wisdom" -- and announced "Wherever this banner is flown, the Dharma will flourish."
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We didn't win...:

• MacArthur Foundation "genius grants" -- $100,000 a year for five years to blow as you like. These folks won instead.

• The 2003 Ig® Nobel Prize: "Every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people LAUGH, then makes them THINK. Technically speaking, the Igs honor people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." These folks won instead.

• Q Awards from Q Magazine (London): These folks won instead: "Radiohead were voted Best Act in the World but refused to turn up after the magazine branded them "miserable". The band sent a video message instead. The film had no soundtrack, but in type at the bottom of the screen it poured scorn on Q magazine, ending with the line: "Radiohead aren't talking to Q". Radiohead beat favourites Coldplay to the award and Chris Martin's band, who did not turn up either, also lost out in three other categories they were nominated for - best single (Clocks), best video (The Scientist) and best live performers."

The bright side: We didn't win Darwin Awards -- which "honor those who improve our gene pool... by removing themselves from it."

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Tom Mangan's Busy Being Born is full of photos from Artcarfest2003 in San Jose, Calif., "a gathering of people who have done funny, absurd and inventive things to their cars." This has happened at Providence's Convergence Festivals, and is always a treat. More: Art Cars in Cyberspace.
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Where the jobs go...: Gina Minks of Milford, Mass., after some nice words about this blog, writes,

I actually wanted to pass a link along that is related to the "Will your job go to India" topic. The GAO released its findings from a study done to determine if H1B visa holders are replacing US citizen's jobs. Their findings were inconclusive because they don't track these visa holders, who are non-immigrants that are supposed to go back to their home country when their job is done here. Also, only 25% of the companies that bring in H1B visa holders agreed to participate in the survey.

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.

The GAO report is here is on their main website, here is a direct link to the pdf.

Later, in response to a query from me, she added,

The H1B visas were set at the 65,000 level at their inception, the software industry successfuly managed to have the numbers raised for the last several years. This year, with so many IT people out of work, it was hard to sell the idea that we need to bring in any additional IT labor from overseas.

Additionally, the software companies now use (and often mis-use) the L-1 visa, which is an inter-company transfer visa intended to allow companies to transfer managers across borders as they are needed. The visas are for a longer time period, they are renewable, and there is no requirement to pay the immigrants US wages.

The whole situation is about greedy companies wanting access to cheap labor.

The rules for H-1b visas, sometimes called "technical visas," are changing -- extensions which boosted the number available expired Sept. 30, and the allowable number dropped back to 65,000 -- but that may not matter, as Gina notes.

The USA Jobs Protection Act of 2003, introduced in July by Rep. Nancy Johnson (D-Conn.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) would, among other provisions, require U.S. employers using H-1B and L-1 visas to pay comparable wages to immigrant workers and forbid them from displacing US workers for 180 days before or after the filing of an L-1 petition. More details are in a Dodd press release.

For a different perspective, I went to Indian sources for this info -- and found a post on how to get around the quotas.

At Newindpress.com, published Thursday,

US to further tighten H1B visa restriction

PTI

WASHINGTON: As the number of new H1B visas to bring skilled workers from India to US drop to 65,000 from 195,000, Congress may decide to further tighten provisions on the visas giving employers less flexibility in using them and making them a riskier bet for foreign employees seeking a long-term future in America.

There were 18,000 pending HIB applications in the fiscal year that ended on Wednesday, which will count against this fiscal year. The H1B visa is used to bring skilled workers into the US, many of whom are IT workers. The visa is good for six years, although it has to be renewed after three years.

Introducing legislation on the visas in July, Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd said that the loopholes in the current law allows companies to bring in foreigners, "pay them less and replace good paying American jobs, otherwise held by American citizens." His legislation (the USA Jobs Protection Act 2003) has a companion Bill in the Lower House and both have bipartisan support.

There is also separate legislation in the House of Representatives that would impose a 35,000-person annual cap on L1 visas and add other restrictions, The Wall Street Journal reported.

About 314,000 L1 visas were issued in 2002, both to workers and their relatives. Among the proposed restrictions are the elimination of the so-called blanket approval, which allows multinationals to avoid filing individual applications for each employee seeking an L1. A competing Senate Bill would be less restrictive and is aimed at weeding out abuses in the L1 programme.

Anti-migration laws, no mercy policy at indiaTimes, helpfully notes,

But is it the end of the road for those laid-off? "They go to body-shoppers who employ them and file for visas to ensure that they maintain legal status. They can then be sub-contracted to other companies with 10-20% of their pay as service fees. A last resort, but a valid way to remain in the US,'' says Vakil. Another option is that when both husband and wife have jobs and one loses it, the partner can file for H-4 dependent status for the other. Some people shift to countries like Mexico and Canada before applying for new H-1Bs.

Perhaps more ominous for workers like Gina, India Times reported Saturday, is that L-1 may be more important to Indians than H-1B: IT cos (firms) chip in to save L-1 from going H-1B way.

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: With the number of H-1B (temporary skilled worker) visas scaled down to 65,000, attention has shifted to the L-1 (intra company transfer) visa. Lobbying by the Indian IT industry is expected to focus on preventing any changes in the norms for issuing L-1 visa.

This follows the failure of lobbying efforts with the US Congress to prevent reduction in the number of H-1B visas. (Will L-1 visas go the H1-B way too?)

For Indian IT companies there are two concerns. One, L-1 visas are more extensively used by IT companies than H-1B visas. Second, there are more than five bills on the L-1 visa issue tabled and pending with the US Congress.

...The drop in the number of H-1B visas does not affect the top Indian IT companies as they have curtailed its use and shifted to L-1 visas. The L-1 programme is intended to allow companies to transfer employees from a foreign branch or subsidiary to the company’s offices in the US.

However, US trade unions claim that the programme was being used to bring workers into the US and these workers were then being contracted out to American companies.

... There is no upper limit on the number of L-1 visas which can be issued in a year, nor is there any limit on an individual company using these visas.

H1B.info offers resource links to petitions and more, but its news ends in June.

Related: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports (scroll down to MR. CRYSTLE GOES TO WASHINGTON?) that

Charlie Crystle ... the 36-year-old former chief executive of Bellevue-based Chili!Soft -- which was sold for $70 million to Cobalt Networks in March 2000 -- wants to be the next senator from Pennsylvania.

Crystle, a Democrat from Lancaster, is considered a long shot to win the 2004 primary against Rep. Joseph Hoeffel for the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.

... Crystle's grass-roots campaign certainly would resonate with some Seattle technology workers. One of his biggest issues is the abuse of H1-B and L-1 visas, the foreign-worker visas used by high-tech companies like Microsoft and Intel.

"This is terrible for America. The American technology worker loses his job to cheap labor, and then his replacement is paid a pittance and often works in sweatshop conditions," said Crystle in a recent challenge to other candidates about the issue. "The bottom line is clear: No one wins, except for corporate politicians and their corporate friends who fund their campaigns."

As part of his attack on the foreign-visa system, Crystle is sponsoring a petition drive at www.crystleforsenate.com/ visa.html.

Related? From the H-1B Frequently Asked Questions at (U.S.) immigration.gov,

"What is an H-1B?

"The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability."

I didn't know about importing fashion models! Who snuck that in there?
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com