| By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
September 19, 2003 7:10 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
Dylan film opening here: Leila Seneca of Fall
River, Mass., wrote to remind me that Bob Dylan's movie, Masked
and Anonymous, opens tonight at the Columbus Theater in Providence.
The
trailer is here.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an
interview with director Larry Charles that begins,
"Everything begins with Bob," says Larry Charles, director
of "Masked and Anonymous," a film in which Bob Dylan plays
aging legend Jack Fate, sole performer at a benefit concert for the
casualties of a revolution in an unnamed Third World country.
Reviews have been mixed, for what that's worth. The Journal's Michael
Janusonis gave it two stars, out of a possible five, leading his
review (reg.req.),
Surround Bob Dylan with an all-star cast in "Masked & Anonymous"
-- Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Luke Wilson, Penelope
Cruz, Christian Slater, Cheech Marin, Angela Bassett, Val Kilmer, Mickey
Rourke, Ed Harris and Bruce Dern -- and he still comes across as a constipated
stiff.
.Roger
Ebert didn't like it either. But these are mainstream reviewers.
At Salon.com (look at an ad for a free day pass), Stephanie
Zacharek loved it:
See it in one glorious shot, grab as much from it as you can and run
like hell.
I say that not because I hated "Masked & Anonymous,"
but because I loved it. "Masked & Anonymous"... is an
exhilarating and sometimes puzzling jumble that explores the dangers
of power, the nature of Americana and the Bob Dylan myth, among many,
many other things.
People who bought the video at Amazon.com love
it or hate it; there are more
review links here, but you can only read so much before you go see
for yourself. It's playing at the Columbus at 2 p.m. (Sun only), 7 p.m.(Fri-Sat,
Mon-Thu) and 9:30 p.m.(Fri-Sat) .
Leila Seneca wrote, " I hope we 'get it.' We'll get it, I'm sure
of that."
Yes, we will.
Related: Michael Janusonis
loved The Weather Underground (reg.req.) documentary. Director
Sam
Green writes about the making of this film -- about "a group
of idealistic young people who tried to violently overthrow the US government
during the late 60’s and 70’s" and where they are now
-- at mediarights.org.
It's playing at the Cable Car: 1 p.m. (Sat-Sun) , 5 p.m. (Sat-Sun) and
9:30 p.m.
Link
to this item | Comment
Who owns your words? If you're at all following
the ongoing flap about sources publishing email interviews,
OJR's Mark Glaser is upset that Jeff
Jarvis published the transcript of their email interview before Mark
published his story,
News Sites Loosen Linking Policies. Mark thinks it was rude to scoop
him, since "Most bloggers are getting something out of being interviewed,
at the least exposure to their blog."
Jeff says, "When a source agrees to be interviewed by a reporter,
it is the source who is doing the reporter a favor. ... Without the source,
the reporter does not have a story." He then goes on to say that
he didn't like being on Oprah, so he only did it once, but he enjoyed
doing Good Morning America, so he kept saying yes to them. (Jeff
was a TV critic at the time.)
The current discussion is going on very transparently in J.D.
Lasica's comments and Jarvis's
blog posts, so you all get to watch, if it interests you. I'm in the
thick of it, for all the reasons I mentioned here earlier.
Here's my "value added":
It's not about us.
It's about the readers.
If we can publish transcripts, anybody can.
That's reality, and it's about sharing power with readers.
A reporter can select and discard the quotes he/she gets to fit the
theme of the story on the budget.
But the source gets to publish what was important enough to tell the
reporter. The source gets to publish what fell on the composing room
floor.
I think etiquette here is a construct.
There are different angles. They're different sides of the story.
Yielding control of the information seems evolutionarily next.
It's an important discussion, and one that's not over yet.
Link
to this item | Comment
Record label "gets it": At Metafilter,
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.
There's a
discussion about it here.
Link
to this item | Comment
Document
extends secrecy on Area 51 in southern Nevada: AP reports,
CARSON CITY, Nev. -- Invoking national security, President Bush has
renewed an exemption allowing the Air Force to keep mum about top-secret
operations at a southern Nevada base.
Bush's memorandum said it was of "paramount interest" to
exempt the Groom Lake base about 90 miles north of Las Vegas from disclosing
classified information.
Also known as Area 51, the mysterious base sits on a dry lake bed and
is heavily patrolled. The area is in a no-fly zone.
The secrecy has fueled speculation about UFOs, aliens and other strange
occurrences around Area 51. Residents of the nearby town of Rachel say
the UFO talk began years ago when a Nevada Test Site worker claimed
he saw alien ships there.
Here's The Long
Road to Area 51, a nice site documenting a trip from Roswell, N.M.,
to Area 51 -- with a stop at the Devil's Tower from Close Encounters of
the Third Kind. There are satellite
photos of Area 51 at Terraserver.
More: Area 51
database, Area
51 Headquarters. The truth is out there. Somewhere.
Bonus: E.T.
and God. In The Atlantic, physicist Paul Davies wonders, "Could
earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe?"
Link
to this item | Comment
Anger
over adultery stoning case: At CNN,
Pressure is mounting on the Nigerian government to spare the life of
a Muslim woman condemned to death by stoning for adultery.
n Islamic court in the northern Nigerian city of Katsina will next
week rule on whether to acquit 31-year-old single mother Amina Lawal
on charges of adultery, or uphold the sentence of death by stoning.
Protesters in South Africa and Nigeria have demanded a reversal of
the decision first handed down in March last year and unsuccessfully
appealed in August.
Lawal gave birth on January 6 last year, more than two years after
her divorce but only six-and-a-half months after Katsina formally reinstituted
Islamic Shariah law.
Link
to this item | Comment
Street art: The fourth annual Providence Street Painting Festival
is tomorrow: artists will use pastels on their own patches of South Water
Street (between downtown and the South Water Street gazebo) from noon
to 10 p.m. Rain date is Sunday.
This is one of the coolest things that happens here each fall. Drop on
by.
September 18, 2003 6:55 p.m.
Quick blog today. Storm's comin', there are hatches to batten, and
bread and milk to buy!
Word
Pirates: Take
back the meaning. Dan Gillmor and David Weinberger invite you to nominate
words that have been hijacked:
For instance, the word "pirate" itself has been taken over
by the Big Content companies. They mean "anyone who shares files."
Real pirates murdered, raped and stole. They didn't share music, rightly
or wrongly.
For instance, "intellectual property" refers to ideas. Ideas
aren't property. Not only one person can "own" them. It's
a bad metaphor leading to worse laws.
For instance, "hotel guest" pretends that people who pay
money to stay in a building are somehow guests.
Bonus: Sarah
Lai Stirland interviews the duo, so I'll let her give you the bios
and their other sites' links.
Link
to this item | Comment
1903 film documentary
of a New York sidewalk: Manhattan blogger Teresa
Nielsen Hayden serves up an amazing little movie.
One windy day in October 1903, cameraman A. E. Weed of the American
Mutoscope & Biograph Company set up his camera at 23rd Street and
Broadway and Fifth Avenue—that is, near the northernmost point
of the Flatiron
Building—and took this
film.
The Flatiron Building (or, more properly, the Fuller Building) had
only been completed the year before, but its north end had already acquired
a reputation as the windiest corner in the city. Naturally, this led
mashers to congregate there on blustery days, hoping to get a look at
ladies’ inadvertently bared ankles. ...
If you have the bandwidth, Teresa has more historical film to show you.
Link
to this item | Comment
JetBlue
Shared Passenger Data: From Wired,
JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided
5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept
testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with
help from the Transportation Security Administration.
The contractor, Torch Concepts, then augmented that data with Social
Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including
income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling
systems such as CAPPS II are feasible.
Link
to this item | Comment
 Stefanie
Nagorka, Do-It-Yourself Sculptor: Artist Makes Her Studio in the Aisles
of Home Depot Stores. At NPR, with audio and photos:
The New Jersey-based sculptor has been working largely in concrete
for the past three years, starting with cinderblocks. And she knows
just where to find the materials she needs: Home Depot.
Her plan -- already well under way -- is to build sculptures in Home
Depots in 50 states, using the basic supplies she finds in the stores.
The idea emerged after she lost her New York studio space a year and
a half ago.
The sculptures usually have a short lifespan, since Nagorka generally
goes to work in the aisles without prior permission from store officials.
Part of her artistic vision, she says, is to challenge the homogenized
look and feel giant chains have brought to the American landscape.
Link
to this item | Comment
Newspapers
Execs Clueless about What Women Want: A commentary at Women's
eNews by Sheila Gibbons, who publishes the quartrly journal Media
Report to Women (check out its depressing Industry
Statistics page):
Just peer through the plastic cover on any newspaper rack and you'll
see the body count from Iraq or from corporate America, personal profiles
of male political leaders in distant countries, photos of despairing
women and children caught in war zones, the scores of professional sports
teams and the scandals of their players' personal lives. Not much there
to make a woman stop and pick up a copy.
There's a larger story here. I'll revisit this soon. The link comes from
Jim
Romenesko.
Link
to this item | Comment
What
the highway said: From Scott McCloud, who uses voice-dictation
software:
I accidentally left my microphone turned on while I went on an errand.
My voice dictation system listened to the highway and ambient noises
for 40 minutes and came up with this:
"WHY GRATEFUL LACK CHOICE HE PUT THOUGHT ON TO HAND AND HE MOVED
@ HOW TO ENHANCE AND OF WILL HAVE TO SLASH THE HOT AIR BY SIDE FOR AND
YOUR NOT WEAR-IS THAT WHOEVER WAS A RESCUE VICTORY THE HELL HAD SEEN
IT ISN’T EASY TO STAFF THE WHERE LEN LAWYER AND AS CAN TO THAT
AS THE SOLUTION TO HIT A BACKHAND AND LUBE AL IN-HEAD TO THE HE HAD
HER AND THINK IN A THIN AND IS THAT A AND WHO LIVE HERE AND HAVE NOT
THE GHOSTS LET ALICE THOUGHT HIS DEATH HAD TO ALL OF EL DE EIGHT THE
LINE AT A WHILE OUR ACTIONS AND HAVE HUNDRED 6 L B AT LAST I THINK OF
YOU AND A HIT WE’VE WHERE AND WHERE LEN AND AN 62 1/2 OF AN ODDLY
THIS ADHESIVE OF HIM AT THE HALF AND CAN HAVE A HAND THE, AT HIS DEATH
THE 8TH TO A LACK OF HAVE LIE HAVE HIT HE HAD BEEN HER AND HIM THAT
I’M TO HAVE ALL THE ENTIRE AND NOON OF YOU HALF OF HIGH END OF
HIT AND HAVE 5TH THOUGH"
Link
to this item | Comment
September 17, 2003
Outsider journalism: Me and my different drummer.
I had to chuckle when I read
this item from J.D. Lasica:
News sites, linking, and opening the doors: Mark Glaser in today's
OJR: News Sites Loosen Linking Policies. News sites that once staunchly
refused to link offsite -- especially to competitor sites -- are now
testing the waters with offsite links in blogs and e-mail newsletters.
Among those whom Mark interviewed are Jeff
Jarvis, Adrian
Holovaty and Jonathan
Dube, all of whom posted transcripts of their interviews -- in at
least one case (Jarvis') before the article came out.
It was just about a year ago that my posting the full transcript of my
interview with N.Y. Times contributor David Gallagher made a big, groundbreaking
splash in the blogosphere and beyond. (Only one sentence of the long
exchange appeared in the Times, and it seemed a waste not to publish it
somewhere.)
How things change. Mark Glaser also asked me about (in Jarvis's words)
"news sites linking out to other sites on the Internet, including
even competitors."
We exchanged a couple of emails, and he published not a single word of
it. (No big deal, except I had given up a sunset by the water to be polite
and reply to his query.)
Or maybe it's because I said stuff like "Why go on the web if you're
going to act like you're in a dark closet with only the information your
own newsroom generates?"
It gets even stranger. Jarvis published his transcript in the same post
as this:
I got a call yesterday from the executive director of the Online
News Association, Dianne Lynch, who bravely walked into the lion's
den (and stuck her head into the cursing lion's mouth) regarding my
pissy
complaint about their invitation to speak at a conference panel,
for it came with a bill to pay for admission to said conference. I vented.
She explained. ...
As it turns out, the the reason the committee decided to charge panelists
to register is that most of the panelists are also members of the organization
who otherwise would come to the confererence and otherwise pay (and
they didn't want to give up that revenue).
But don't you what that really means? It means that you're just talking
to each other, mirror to mirror, online newsperson to online newsperson.
I've never been to a conference in my life, but I was invited to be on
the weblogs panel at the ONA convention in Chicago next month.
I was told a different reason for the need to charge: because ONA doesn't
have much money; news budgets are notoriously tight, so sponsorships aren't
flowing, I gather. (Belo,our parent company, isn't going to pay anyone's
way because too many journalists at their nearly two dozen news sites
want to go, and they aren't going to fund some and not others.)
But I've never been to Chicago, never been to a conference, and it's
tax-deductible. The $299 includes two days of conferences and the Online
Journalism Awards banquet -- it's pretty reasonable as new weekend experiences
go. So I'll be there, and Jeff won't.
It could be the Outsider Conference insider Jeff is longing for.
Now, back to the news...
Link
to this item | Comment
NASA to webcast Galileo's crash into Jupiter Sunday:
NASA's official
'Galileo Dies' page has much more, but the End
of Mission webcast this Sunday is planned for approximately 2 p.m.
Link
to this item | Comment
 "Restrooms
as functional art" is the name of an exhibit at Smith College's
Brown Fine Arts Center by Ellen Driscoll and Sandy Skoglund. Very nice
washrooms, indeed, with mosaics, painted basins, and more.
Or you could say the newly expanded museum includes wi-fi connectivity
and washrooms commissioned as works of art.
The washrooms got a big boost from the Kohler plumbing people, who donated
the hardware fixtures.
Locally, the washrooms at the new Big Fish restaurant on Richmond Street
feature video screens and audio of an aquarium. The screens are over the
urinals in the men's room, but less obvious in the ladies'. When I entered
the stall, I just heard bubbles...
Link
to this item | Comment
Open history: The Seattle Times has made its
news archives (since 1990) free
to registered users. And it's linking to the stories in them, as in
this
timeline of events leading up to the establishment last week of a
halfway house for chronic sex offenders.
Link
to this item | Comment
Ashes
to ashes, Sand to sand: Great headline and nice writing in this
Guardian (U.K.) story about the flap over honoring novelist George
Sand (born Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin) by digging her up and sending
her to the city.
At the beginning of the summer, some 80 French citizens and one or
two extras crowded a small village hall ( salle des fêtes ) a
mile from the house where George Sand lived and died. Their aim, almost
to a man and woman, was to voice their opposition to digging her up
and moving her to Paris.
...Novelist, early feminist, wilful eccentric, public figure, scandalous
trousered icon, lover of de Musset and Chopin, champion of the oppressed,
chronicler of the peasantry, George Sand has been in a rural cemetery
now for almost 130 years. And not any rural cemetery, but her own family
one, in Nohant near la Châtre in the old province of the Berry,
in central France. ...
The story ends with public officials -- and the British author -- questioning
the hygiene of moving "remains." Ah, Europe... Via Maud
Newton.
Link
to this item | Comment
Eating
crow at world table: From former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite's
latest column,
We are in trouble, and the world knows it. We are going hat in hand
as we seek means to cut our losses in the Iraq debacle. We are pleading
for help now from those very same Security Council nations that we belittled
before by claiming we didn't need their help anyway.
No matter what they do with our new request, those nations are going
to wear a wry, "I told you so" smile as they listen to our
appeal. This might be about as embarrassing a position as this nation
has ever suffered in international affairs.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
'homeless hacker' talks: 22-year-old hacker / wanderer Adrian
Lamo told companies exactly how he exploited their security vulnerabilities.
But when he broke in to a databaseof op-ed contributors at The New York
Times, the Gray Lady was not amused. Lamo was arrested on two federal
criminal charges; he was released on $250,000 bail on condition that he
live with his parents.
Declan McCullough at CNet interviews Lamo. Here's a excerpt:
Is any of this a lesson to other folks, like younger would-be hackers,
who might look up to you?
I like to think that nobody would see me as a role model because I don't
think there's necessarily value in repeating what's already been done.
They should do something that's not been done before.
It sounds like you think the law is there, but it's irrelevant when
you feel it interferes with what you want to do.
Not at all. I understand that the law applies to me and actions have
consequences. I'm here today because I'm willing to face the consequences
of my actions--that is, my alleged actions.
So you're willing to violate the law as long as you accept the consequences.
Is that right?
I'm holding out hope that it will be found at the trial that I have
broken no law...With the charges as they stand, I do not find them to
be factual. I will not plead to charges that are not factual.
You only have two counts against you. Do you have any fear that
the FBI will investigate other incidents and add more counts?
If that's the case I'll deal with those as they come. However, if they
want to charge me for intrusions into companies that have thanked me
for alleged intrusions, I don't know what kind of career they're trying
to make for themselves.
Link
to this item | Comment
The Gallup
Brain is a searchable archive of more than 60 years of public
opinion.
Link
to this item | Comment
Freewayblogging: Guerilla art is popping up,
signs that read "Nobody
Died When Clinton Lied." Some signs move around. There's a page
looking for sightings.
Link
to this item | Comment
September 16, 2003 6:31 p.m.
The
prank call to the RIAA: John Hargrave at the comedy site zug.com
made the call. Here's a small piece of the exchange:
...The RIAA's contact information is just buried. Now, they've been
fighting vigorously to uncover file-swappers' addresses
and phone numbers, developing tracking
codes that can be embedded within MP3 files. And yet, they have
an unlisted phone number. Paging Dr. Irony. There is a phone call for
Dr. Irony.
It took hours of searching before I finally found a phone number and
was able to get through to someone. I spoke with a young, mild-mannered
executive who patiently answered my questions, which I delivered in
my best "dumb guy" voice.
JH: Hello. I just downloaded some illegal MP3s and my friend told
me that the RAII is going to sue everyone who downloads music. What
should I do?
RIAA: Hold on just a sec.
[There was a hold of about two minutes. I was desperately afraid
they were tracing my call, and that Agent Smith would come smashing
through my door at any moment, wielding the severed arm of Jimmy Carter.
But I courageously waited it out.]
RIAA: Sir?
JH: Yes.
RIAA: The best advice I can offer you at this moment is to go
to dub-dub-dub-musicunited.org and you can learn there how to uninstall
your peer-to-peer software or file-sharing service.
JH: But I don't have a pee service. Someone just e-mailed me a
song and I listened to it. Am I going to jail? ...
Link
to this item | Comment
You asked for it! Salam
Pax -- the Baghdad blogger's first name is real, but not his last,
he has written -- sounds
a bit overwhelmed by the book tour, the phone interviews and the pseudonymous
celebrity that have followed the publication of
The Baghdad Blog:
Salam Pax has developed a life of his own, he is not me anymore. and
I miss baghdad like hell.
Note to Salam: Arthur Rimbaud, feeling the same way, wrote, "
'I' is somebody else." ("Je est un autre.")
Link
to this item | Comment
Stunning
photos from 300 miles up, at nowords.org.
Thumbnails can't convey the impact. "A maze in mashed potatoes"
doesn't either.
Link
to this item | Comment
On the right...David Brooks, the newest New
York Times columnist, has a story headlined "Republicans
for Dean" that isn't about the straightforward Republicans
for Dean site, but an interview with Republicans who think the Vermont
governor would be easy to beat.
What's interesting, though, is that he tosses out the traditional political
wisdom that the candidate closest to the middle picks up the greatest
number of votes on both sides -- the bell curve argument. Instead, Brooks
writes,
...There used to be many conservatives in the Democratic Party and
many liberals in the Republican Party, groups that kept their parties
from drifting too far off-center.
Now, there is a Democratic liberal mountain and a Republican conservative
mountain. Democrats and Republicans don't just disagree on policies
— they don't see the same reality, and they rarely cross over
and support individual candidates from the other side.
Such polarization cries out for a unifier.
...and the left: Todd Gitlin writing in The
American Prospect, has some
interesting questions for Brooks:
Question One for Brooks: Will his penchant for national greatness continue
to get in the way of his satirical eye -- which doesn't penetrate to
the spectacle of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld trying
to rule Iraq, or Bush purporting to stand for "no child left behind"
while leaving the states to their fiscal crises and tamping domestic
spending?
Question Two: How far does he want to go with his privatizing passion?
Brooks and Kristol wanted to "bust the great public trusts of our
time -- the education, health and Social Security monopolies."
How amusing it would be to see him defend Social Security privatization
now that the stock-market bubble is long popped. Brooks complained in
a June 2002 Weekly Standard editorial that "conservatism, even
with a conservative president, has lost some of its insurgent energy
and has become corporatist" -- though this is not one of his major
themes on the Newshour. Will he have the nerve to say so in front of
a larger public, and to name names? It's interesting that "mediocrity"
ranks high on the above list of evils. (Brooks is nothing if not a meritocrat.)
It would be even more interesting to see him wrestle with the problem
of what is to be done about the mediocre ambitions of the private economy.
Now that Brooks is off Rupert Murdoch's payroll, will he strike a blow
for the higher morality against the sleaze and lies that Murdoch pipes
into America every day? Or will such indignation strike him as a gift
to liberals?
Government lies and self-hypnosis do not seem to interest Brooks when
done by Republican chiefs. In fact, to date, he has shown himself to
be substantially innocent of the ways of American power. At his best,
he is a close student of something he often confuses with power: prestige.
The foundation executive, professor, journalist, banker, broker and
CEO are, to him, brothers and sisters under the skin. Together they
rule, and deserve to rule, for they do a good job for the yokels. "Unlike
Washington activists or academic polemicists, most Americans live in
the world of corporate America."
Thus -- and factually Brooks is right about this -- no populist revolt
materialized when the corporate scandals hit the fan. If meritocracy
is triumphant, all appeals to economic justice can be dismissed as class
warfare -- and the self-engorgement of the owning class can be defended
as the proper course of the propertied. But wouldn't more benefits for
the gardeners, nannies and Chinese sneaker makers who keep up the Bobos'
standard of living do wonders for national greatness?
Link
to this item | Comment
 Arbus
Reconsidered, by Arthur Lubow in the Sunday Times magazine is
an intimate portrait of Diane Arbus, a
photographer perhaps best known for photographing "freaks,"
but whose work was always about seeing:
...She was fascinated by people who were visibly creating their own
identities -- cross-dressers, nudists, sideshow performers, tattooed
men, the nouveau riche, the movie-star fans -- and by those who were
trapped in a uniform that no longer provided any security or comfort.
Arbus's friend Adrian Allen... recalls going through the layout of the
posthumous monograph that Doon and Israel put together and seeing with
shock the image of a woman she had known, seated on a park bench. In
her three-strand necklace and helmetlike bouffant hairdo, Arbus's subject
seems riven by secret hopelessness. ''I had never seen this woman look
like that before,'' Allen says. ''She was always laughing, smiling,
covering up what was underneath.'' Somehow, like a dowser of despair,
Arbus had picked up the signal of misery. Not long after the picture
was taken, the woman in the bouffant hairdo committed suicide.
Arbus herself committed suicide in 1971. Lubow quotes what it all may
have come down to:
''What's left after what one isn't is taken away is what one is,''
Arbus wrote in a notebook in 1959.
Link
to this item | Comment
Between chads and a harder place: Gaffe
casts doubts on electronic voting at CNN,
SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- The strange case of an election tally
that appears to have popped up on the Internet hours before polls closed
is casting new doubts about the trustworthiness of electronic voting
machines.
During San Luis Obispo County's March 2002 primary, absentee vote tallies
were apparently sent to an Internet site operated by Diebold Election
Systems Inc., the maker of the voting machines used in the election.
At least that's what timestamps on digital records showed.
County election officials say the unexplained gaffe probably didn't
influence the vote, and Diebold executives -- who only recently acknowledged
the lapse -- say voters should have confidence in the election process.
We reported
this Sept. 5, based on the work of Bev
Harris, author of the just
published book and website Black
Box Voting. Harris isn't mentioned by CNN, but blogs flashed this
story brightly enough that it caught CNN's eye, apparently.
Blogs seem to be functioning as capillaries, delivering news at high
volume to the big media arteries.
Link
to this item | Comment
'The
purple pill' heads over-the-counter: Also at CNN. At first, I
thought they were talking about Viagra. (What do I know?) Then, thanks
mainly to the headline writer, I got it that this is a heartburn drug
called Prilosec.
I wouldn't know the difference between heartburn, acid reflux and gas
pains, but there seems to be a dispute raging over how long this pill
will take to cure your heartburn -- tomorrow or two weeks from now.
Who needs heartburn relief tomorrow?
Oh, and the "purple pill" is actually pink.
I don't understand this drug culture.
(Antidrug tip: If you slice or dice big sweet onions, soak them in cold
water for 10 minutes and drain on paper towels before you use them, they
won't give you indigestion.)
Link
to this item | Comment
Senate
Opposes FCC Rules -- the Washington Post version:
The Senate voted 55 to 40 today to wipe out all of the Federal Communication
Commission's controversial new media rules, employing a little used
legislative tool for overturning agency regulations.
The resolution of disapproval, sponsored by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.),
is now put on the House calendar, where a tougher vote is expected.
Even if passed by the House, the White House has promised a veto.
Dorgan's resolution is the most sweeping of several challenges to the
FCC's rules, which make it easier for media corporations to buy more
newspapers and television stations but tighten radio ownership rules.
...
Link
to this item | Comment
Monday
Night Football: I stayed up way too late watching exciting business
-- or was that heart-stopping, passionate football? I didn't even really
care who won, and I was whooping.
All the "this is just a business" bull in the wake of the Patriots'
Lawyer Milloy contract dispute went out the window there. Pats quarterback
Tom Brady was quoted Sunday as trashing that meme, too. And Sunday, the
Patriots' defense looked just fine without Milloy.
Link
to this item | Comment
September 15, 2003 6:01 p.m.
40
years on, Yoko Ono goes naked again for peace (AP):
Avant-garde icon Yoko Ono repeated her legendary 1960s performance
"Cut Piece" on Monday, inviting the audience to cut her clothing
off with scissors in the name of world peace.
Ono, 70, sat in a chair onstage alone at Paris' intimate Ranelagh theater
and asked that each member of the audience silently cut off a piece
of her clothing and send it to a loved one.
One-by-one, the 200 audience members filed onstage and snipped away
pieces of Ono's outfit _ a long black silk skirt with matching long-sleeved
top. Among them was Ono's 27-year-old son, Sean Lennon.
At the end of the one-hour event, the Japanese-born artist was left
seated in her black undergarments until an aide came onstage with a
robe.
"I was just here to say imagine world peace, and to say I love
you," Ono told Associated Press Television News in an exclusive
interview after the show. "Let's create a peaceful world. I'm hoping
these things will help."
The unidentified cutting man above wears a T-shirt, apparently from
the event, that reads, "Give Piece a Chance."
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Demo
presidential hopefuls pick favorite songs: Okay, guess: Who picked
My Way? (Answer: Joe Lieberman.)
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Where in the world is Saddam Hussein? Worth
1000 -- the folks who held a Photoshop contest to decorate
Martha Stewart's jail cell -- are back at it: "Where's Saddam?"
drew 141 entries.
Many entrants chose to drape him in women's clothing, and one made him
a gargoyle.
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Foot in mouth: I suspect no irony was intended
here, but it nevertheless drips it. It's from the Reuters'
reaction story to the decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals to halt California's Oct. 7 recall election.
Attorney Charles Diamond, who represents Sacramento recall leader Ted
Costa, called the decision "wrong headed" and said Costa has
not yet decided on his next move.
"The fight has just begun," Diamond told Reuters. "If
(punch cards) were good enough to elect our president we don't see why
not they're not good enough to elect our Governor."
More irony: The fate of the recall election now goes to the U.S. Supreme
Court, which had a big hand in "electing" our current president.
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Farewell
to Journalism: Bill Keough, who bylines his J-Log story "Former
Newspaperman," details how he got fired after 18 years on the copy
desk of the Philadelphia Daily News: in a letter, due to "budgetary
requirements."
Then the rant begins:
You might wonder why a big-city tabloid like the Daily News doesn't
cure its economic woes by increasing its circulation rather than lopping
off newsroom staffers.
In Ellen Foley's five years as managing editor, the Daily News circulation
has tumbled from 175,448 in 1998 to 150,734, the Audit Bureau of Circulation's
figure for 2003.
In some years the paper lost more circulation than in other years.
But every year she's been there the paper has lost readers. On average
over her five years at the helm of the Good Ship Daily News about 5,000
readers a year have jumped overboard, or about 100 every week.
... Ellen Foley also goes nuts over rock 'n' roll stars who perform
in Philadelphia and Hollywood stars who die. When reaction stories about
Frank Sinatra's death dominated the front page for a week, Ellen Foley
sent an e-mail to the staff: "This will be the biggest story of
your career!''
She keeps putting entertainment puffery and reality TV on the front
page of the Daily News instead of the life-and-death struggles faced
by real people in a real city called Philadelphia. These people are
locked in daily battles for survival. They live and love and laugh and
die. And they don't spend their entire lives watching television.
If you cut them they will bleed. If you write about them they will
read. If you write front-page stories that affect them, they will buy
your newspaper. That's why the paper's founders named it the Daily News:
It had news in it.
Management that makes all the wrong moves, then takes the shortfall out
of workers' hides is disgraceful -- and all too common.
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 The
Ugly Couch Contest is underway again. Last year's winner, which
graces a living room in Bullhead City, Ariz., is at right.
You have plenty of time (I think) to photograph and enter your monstrosity.
There's no deadline clearly stated, but the winners will be announced
next July 4, and there seems to be a voting period.
Some of the competition is already up there, so you can see how yours
measures up.
They all look pretty familiar to me.
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Grid
Lock is a flash game that involves sliding rectangles out of the
way to get the target rectangle out the door. Think of them as couches,
if you like.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com |
