Subterranean Homepage News

By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

June 20, 2003 5:50 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Comment till June 30 on proposed changes in overtime rules: Proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) would exempt employers from paying mandatory overtime to millions of workers who make between $22,101 and $65,000 a year, including police officers, nurses, and journalists, reclassifying them as professionals. At the same time, workers who make under $22,100 a year would have to be paid for overtime, no matter what their job titles.

(Don't you love mandates that simultaneously help the poor and hurt the middle class?)

Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va.) writes in a op-ed in the Falls Church (Va.) News-Press,

Under the proposed rule changes that define exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, millions of Americans who earn between $22,101 and $65,000 could be re-classified as executives, administrative, or professional employees, thereby exempting them from being paid time and a half if they work more than 40 hours a week. Those making $65,000 or more a year would also be exempt from receiving overtime pay, regardless of their classification.

One rule change expands the definition of "supervisory duties," or management responsibilities, so that more people can be placed in the exempt categories of executives, administrative, or professional employees. The proposed rule makes the definition so broad that relatively low paid workers such as retail managers, police officers, nurses, and fire fighters, would no longer be eligible for overtime.

Another rule change that could impact journalists expands the definition of creative work and gives employers more leeway in determining whether or not a journalist is engaged in creative work, which is exempt from overtime protection. More newspaper reporters and radio and televison commentators, for example, could be deemed exempt from receiving overtime under this proposed rule change.

This is an affront to the American worker. Millions of Americans who make modest wages and depend on overtime to make ends meet will now struggle even further if these rules go into effect.

Public comment on the rules ends June 30, 2003 and I encourage individuals to write to the Department of Labor, protesting the action. The public can submit comment to Tammy D. McCutchen, Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, Employment Standards Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, Room D-3502, 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20210. Comments can also be faxed to 202-693-1432 or email sent to whd-reg@fenix2.dol-esa.gov. ...

Moran cites a study by the International Union of Police Associations "that estimates a minimum of 200,000 police officers in the United States would no longer be eligible for overtime, thereby losing more than $150 million in possible pay." IUPA offers a comment form at unionvoice.org. As you would expect, the AFL-CIO also opposes the changes.

The other side of the argument is represented by a Chicago Tribune story,

Failure to update the FLSA's Depression-era job-duties test has tripped up employers and exposed them to lawsuits, said Michael Eastman, director of labor law policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In recent years, several large companies have been slapped with multimillion-dollar jury awards from class-action lawsuits filed by employees who are eligible but were denied overtime pay. Many of the employers said that they believed they were in compliance.

"We don't think the FLSA should be used as a sword to go after employers for what might be a technical violation of an outdated regulation," Eastman said.

The restaurant and retail industries have been hardest hit by large jury awards, including Starbucks ($18 million), Taco Bell ($13 million) and Radio Shack ($29.9 million).

"This is long overdue. Our members are crying out for clarity," said Katherine Lugar, vice president for legislative and political affairs for the National Retail Association. "Trying to comply with labor regulations that are 50 years outdated has been a source of great confusion and frustration."

Specifically, employers want clarity to the job duties that describe which employees are exempt, or ineligible, from overtime. Under the proposal, those who direct the work of two or more employees, have authority to hire or fire, hold positions of responsibility, or have a combination of education, training and work experience equivalent to a college degree would be exempt.

"An assistant manager who makes (more than) $22,100 is going to be subject to the same duties test as a manager of some high-end place who makes $50,000 or more. They've eliminated any differential approach to looking at people subject to exemption who are paid less than those who are subject but paid more," said Christine Owens, a public policy lawyer for the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million union employees.

But employers say they are encouraged by the proposed changes, calling them a major improvement over the existing regulations.

"It's a big win for business," said Andrew Schultz, president of Pro Unlimited, which advises Fortune 500 technology companies on overtime issues.

Among those supporting the changes is the National Funeral Directors Association. A press release on the group's site explains,

Under current law, funeral directors are not considered professional employees and must be paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week. They cannot be paid fixed salaries or receive bonuses. Employers are also prohibited from offering compensatory time off to employees instead of overtime. As a result, some funeral home owners employ only part-time assistance to avoid the financial strain caused by paying overtime to key employees.

Congress.org, which is not affiliated with the U.S. Congress, hosts a "Take Action" link to a blank form for those who wish to comment either way.

(Thanks to journalist-blogger Dave Copeland for the heads-up on this one.)
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Victorian Visions of the Year 2000: Extremely cool postcards of what the Victorians thought life would be like 100 years later. They thought we'd walk on water, aided by "Personal Buoyancy Balloons." (That's the image at right.)

More prescient: They foresaw "Moving Pavement" -- most airports and The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. have them now

I won't spoil more of it, but they're all cool.
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Virtual Primary Faces Vote-Rig Concerns: AP reports,

More than a million Internet users will be invited to vote in a virtual Democratic primary next week, but this most modern of elections is facing age-old allegations of vote-rigging.

Howard Dean, who has built an extensive network of Internet-savvy supporters, is expected to get the most votes in the MoveOn.org primary. Organizers of the site say any advantage for the former Vermont governor is due to his appeal among their members, and not any misdeeds in their process or because one of their employees worked on his campaign.

The primary begins Tuesday and voting runs for 48 hours. If one candidate gets more than 50 percent, MoveOn.org will endorse the campaign and ask its 1.4 million members to donate. Last year, MoveOn.org members contributed $4.1 million to the congressional candidates highlighted on the site, said Wes Boyd, one of two former Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who started it five years ago.

The Democratic presidential campaigns have sent e-mail messages to their supporters, asking them to register at MoveOn.org and vote.

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Margaret Atwood: Orwell and me: Atwood "cried her eyes out when she first read Animal Farm at the age of nine. Later, its author became a major influence on her writing, " says the subhead in the Guardian (U.K.):

The majority of dystopias - Orwell's included - have been written by men, and the point of view has been male. When women have appeared in them, they have been either sexless automatons or rebels who have defied the sex rules of the regime. They have acted as the temptresses of the male protagonists, however welcome this temptation may be to the men themselves.

Thus Julia (in 1984) ; thus the cami-knicker-wearing, orgy-porgy seducer of the Savage in Brave New World; thus the subversive femme fatale of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1924 seminal classic, We. I wanted to try a dystopia from the female point of view -- the world according to Julia, as it were. However, this does not make The Handmaid's Tale a "feminist dystopia", except insofar as giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered "feminist" by those who think women ought not to have these things.

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Ralph Nader may run for President again.

June 19, 2003 7:13 p.m.

Senate Committee rebukes FCC, votes to overrule change in media ownership rules: John Nichols in The Nation writes today,

...In a sweeping rejection of the agency's decision to provide already large media conglomerates with opportunities to extend their dominance of the nation's political and cultural discourse, the (Senate Commerce Committee) on Thursday endorsed a legislative package that would:

* Bar individual corporations from buying up television stations that reach more than 35 percent of the nation's households. Under pressure from big media companies such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns the Fox networks, and Viacom Inc., which owns the CBS and UBN networks, the FCC had voted to lift the ownership cap to 45 percent.

* Bar individual corporations from buying up the daily newspaper and television and radio stations in local markets. By restoring key aspects of the old "newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership" rule, the committee made it harder for the Gannett, Tribune and Knight-Ridder media corporations to gain control of most media in a community and then create a single newsroom to feed one-size-fits-all news to newspaper readers as well as radio listeners and television viewers. (This measure still needs to be strengthened to assure that a loophole that allows for some cross-ownership in small markets is not exploited.)

* Prevent radio conglomerates, such as Clear Channel, from exploiting confusion about recent rule changes in order to maintain control of radio stations in markets where they are in violation of ownership caps. Sponsored by Commerce Committee chair John McCain, R-Arizona, this measure could result in Clear Channel being forced to sell off many of its more than 1,200 radio stations.

* Require the FCC to open up its decision-making process by holding at least five official public hearings, at locations around the country before changing media ownership rules. This is a clear rebuke to FCC chair Michael Powell, who allowed only one official public hearing before the June 2 vote.

* Indicate that Congress wants the FCC to consider not just proposals to loosen ownership rules that are promoted by big media corporations but also steps to strengthen and broaden limits on consolidation and monopoly. This is a signal to the federal courts that Congress wants them to define the public interest more broadly, rather than simply pressuring the FCC to ease ownership rules. ...

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The Woman in the Moon: "There is a Woman in the Moon but many people have never seen her. She is much more obvious than the "Man in the Moon." Seen in profile, the appearance of The Woman in the Moon changes with varying light." A Tufts chemistry fellow made the page. Not sure if I buy it/see it.
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The MP3 Economy: How labels and artists divvy up your MP3 dollar, at Business 2.0. The artists' cut: 12 percent is average, superstars can deal for more.
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The world's smallest guitar: The photo is right was made by a scanning electron microscope. At oddmusic.com, whose gallery teems with photos of cool instruments.

The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices.

The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms. If plucked -- by an atomic force microscope, for example -- the strings would resonate, but at inaudible frequencies. The entire structure is about 10 micrometers long, about the size of a single human blood cell.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. For comparison, the diameter of a human hair is about 200 micrometers, or 200,000 nanometers -- positively huge compared to these newest structures, where the guitar string is about 50 to 100 nanometers in diameter.

Via Travelers Diagram.
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Genetically modified fish glow in the dark: From the Guardian (U.K.)

Scientists have created the ultimate pet: genetically modified fish that glow in the dark. In future, there will be no need for aquarium lights - fluorescent fish will provide their own illumination.

And that is just the start. Scientists believe Night Pearl bio-fish represent the shape of pets to come. Our household animals will come with extra genes that will stop them shedding fur or triggering allergic reactions. And when one dies, its owner will simply clone it.

But the prospect of GM pets has outraged pet dealers. The nation's aquarium industry last week said it had backballed the Night Pearl. 'This is the thin end of the wedge,' said Keith Davenport, chief executive of the Ornamental Aquatic Trade Association. 'You could put all sorts of different genes in animals and do all sorts of damage.'

The Night Pearl began as a research tool created by HJ Tsai, a professor at National Taiwan University. He was looking for a way to make fish organs easier to see when studying them, and isolated a gene for a fluorescent protein that he had extracted from jellyfish and inserted it into the genome of a zebrafish. To his astonishment, the jellyfish gene made whole zebrafish glow.

... The Night Pearls glow in different red and green patterns thanks to genes from jellyfish and marine coral. Now the team is working on a glowing dragon fish, which many Asians believe is a lucky species.

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Roger and Martyn Dean is (sic) probably the most famous of all organic designers since Gaudi, chiefly by virtue of their fame derived from a rock music cultural presence. But they have virtually no body of built architectural work, their only piece being a demonstration vacation cottage developed for a defunct theme park project.

The Classic Rock Realm of Ferro-Cement by Eric Hunting.

The peculiar title of this article originates with the equally peculiar source of my introduction to this building technology. You see, rather than learning about this from books or by examining some building first-hand, I was first exposed to this, and the exotic styles of architecture commonly associated with it, through the album covers for classic rock bands created by the artist Roger Dean. A number of these album covers featured glimpses of very fanciful buildings designed with a sensual non-Euclidean geometry, buildings which hinted at some fantastic biorganic technology able to grow structures like plants or animals. Thinking this was just fantasy art with no basis in any real architecture, I later discovered a couple of coffee-table books on the Dean's work and was surprised to learn that the talents of Roger, and his brother Martyn, went far beyond album covers and included stage set, architecture, and industrial design concentrating on this same organic style. Even more surprising, I discovered that they had actually prototyped buildings with this unusual architecture, which they referred to as 'tectonic architecture', using simple fiberglass and planned to realize a great variety of such buildings based on the use of a form of sprayable concrete called 'shotcrete' and a system of modular inflatable forms. ...

The story above is part of Shelter: Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing. This is the blog link, with fascinating photos and text about alternative homes. The motivation: The author suffers from environmental illness, as he details in his autobiography.
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Beetle sculpture: Photorealistic metal bugs on assorted pedestals.

Top 100 Greatest Online Games: At fhm.com.

Control freaks everywhere: In a post titled "Metacracy," the always interesting Doc Searls links to the 1995 essay Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust by Berkley linguistics professor George Lakoff. (Lakoff delves more deeply into these ideas in a book called Moral Politics — What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't.)

Lakoff's thesis is that both liberals and conservatives view the nation as family. Conservatives use the "strict father" approach, liberals the "nurturant parent" (overprotective mommy?) model.

Doc quotes cogent parts of this, if you want to get up to speed quickly.

He also points to Eric Raymond, who makes two lists: Top Ten Reasons I'm Not A (Left-) Liberal and Top Ten Reasons I'm Not A Conservative. (I consider myself neither, by the way.)

Doc adds,

[Later...] I just got an email from a blogging friend who recalled for me why I dislike ideologues from both parties: they treat us like children. On one side they restrict individual rights to protect the country's household. On the other side they legislate fairness by regulating the crap out of everything.

That "blogging friend" was me, from home late last night. Here's roughly the email I sent him:

My problem with living in one of George's models is they presuppose a nation of children.

On the one hand, the socially conservative Republicans are touting sexual abstinence, anti-abortion forces would make women (and girls) who "fall" from abstinence bear children if pregnancy results, and they'd shoo us all into church.

The Democrats make seat belts mandatory, want to ban smoking even in bars where the staffs are all smokers, and Joe Biden threatens live music clubs with the RAVE act.

I'm an adult, I don't want to be protected from life in the name of public health or somebody else's morality.

The core groups pushing both these agendas want me to live just like them. The fight seems to be over "Whose rules?"

If I get hit by an SUV from the side, I'll die for sure if I'm wearing a seat belt. If I'm not, I might get pushed to the other side of the car and live. Why can't I let my instincts make the decision about which risks to take today?

Is there a party for grownups? I really don't need a lot of regulating, have no small children to scandalize or protect, and generally consider the consequences of my acts.

Enter Watchblog: "a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party (covering everything outside the two major parties)."

They display in three separate but equal columns.

My prediction: Watch the middle grow.
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Related: An online Democratic presidential primary: "Register to vote in the MoveOn.org PAC Primary. Voting begins Tuesday, June 24. You will be sent an email with a unique one-person/one-vote link. Voting will take place Tuesday, June 24th 12:00 am to Wednesday, June 25th 11:59 pm (Eastern time.) "|
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The Grand Post-It Art Contest 2003: The Post-It Gallery became so popular that its owner has exceeded his allotted bandwidth and is now paying for going over. So... he's asking for $5 entry fees to be split among winners and his host. You can still upload your Post-It art to the gallery for free, only the contest requires a donation.

This watercolor Tree is by Adam Smith of St. Louis.
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Judge: Millions of CD buyers owed money. I hope you filed your claim -- we won!

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- A judge has approved a settlement agreement in a music antitrust lawsuit that will result in more than 3.5 million consumers receiving nearly $13 each.

Judge D. Brock Hornby issued a 51-page ruling Friday in the case that began in 1996 when attorneys general across the country began investigating whether distributors and retailers had conspired to inflate CD prices.

"This settlement will put cash in the hands of millions of consumers and music CDs in libraries and schools throughout the country, and will ensure that the challenged distributor/retailer practices will not resume," Hornby wrote.

The ruling, however, does not stipulate exactly how much consumers will receive or when the checks will be distributed. More than 3.5 million consumers filed claims, now estimated at $12.63 each.

Hornby asked lawyers to present him with a report by the end of the month on how much it will cost to distribute the checks and how much each check will be.

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Will We See Gore TV? "The former Veep is assisting in an effort to create a liberal alternative to conservative talk radio, and is exploring a cable television venture," Karen Tumulty writes in Time.

Wow. And Ted Turner is cranky and available...
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US Senator would destroy MP3 traders' PCs: There's a sober AP report of the surprise announcement by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) that he's interested in destroying the computers of those who violate copyright laws by illegally sharing files.

But I'm going to quote a story with attitude by Thomas C. Greene, Washington correspondent for The Register (U.K.), because he -- like me -- wonders exactly how that could be done. (In italics, I've explained some of the technical terms):

...While there may soon be an excuse for willful destruction of property, "there's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch explained.

We can't quite picture the sort of attack our visionary Utah Senator has in mind. Obviously there is little danger of actually destroying a PC remotely; in spite of great advances in malware (malicious software), it remains the sort of business for which a hatchet comes in most handy. You could wipe the HDD (hard disk drive) or re-flash the BIOS remotely (Basic Input/Output System; chip(s) that can read a drive or a keystroke before your operating system loads; "re-flashing" could reprogram it so the machine wouldn't boot), but victims can recover from this sort of thing.

One has to wonder how much evidence of wrongdoing a copyright owner would need before their exemption from prosecution would kick in. Would they have to maintain copious records of their investigations and findings? Or would they be granted a blanket benefit of the doubt and therefor not have to justify it at all? And what happens when an innocent person is victimized? If their HDD were wiped by some malicious program, they would have an awful time seeking a legal remedy with no data to challenge the media pigopolists' evidence.

Perhaps Hatch is imagining of some sort of Mission-Impossible-style DRM (Digital Rights Management) self-destruct regime, possibly one mandated by a law like the one contemplated by Senator Fritz Hollings (D--S.C.) known as the CBDTPA.

A mandatory DRM scheme of this sort could monitor the copyright status of content being accessed, and after a set number of 'violations' sabotage the PC with a Hatch attack. To further inconvenience copyright miscreants, the DRM mechanism could be tied to some sort of Win-XP-style 'product activation' discipline, possibly requiring users to purchase and install a new copy of their operating system to regain full control of their computers.

Or perhaps Congress will realize that Hatch is talking utter nonsense and ignore his bizarre suggestion. It all depends on how much money the MPAA and RIAA lobbyists can slip into the pockets of their Congressional lapdogs.

Citizens are welcome to e-mail Senator Hatch here to offer him their kind words of support.

Of course, for every technological attack there would be an opposite and equal software defense released immediately. The Internet was designed to tunnel around obstacles.
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Google logo inspired by M.C. Escher.

June 17, 2003 6.12 p.m.

If Dali had made a Web clock... It looks a bit like a living thing, slouching and lurching its spaghetti-strand legs around the clock face. Called a cable clock by its creator, Andre Michelle, it's a digital descendant of Dali's Persistence of Memory for a 2-D screen.

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The Disturbing Trend in Browsers: Atlanta developer and designer Todd Dominey puts Microsoft's latest bombshell -- that, having cornered the browser market, it's going to abandon you -- in perspective.

By now, most people have heard the news: Microsoft is killing development of Internet Explorer for the Mac. Not only that, but the free, standalone version of IE for Windows.

Now, as a Mac OS X user, I couldn’t care less about IE. The browser was very necessary a few years ago in the “dark days” of Apple (when it seemed like they would go out of business at any moment), and was actually quite solid and ahead of its time in CSS support, but with the release of OS X, the development of competing browsers (Mozilla, Camino (Mozilla for Mac) , OmniWeb), and then the hammer-in-the-coffin known as Safari, the need (and technological relevance) of Internet Explorer has slid downward to where we are now. The writing is on the wall, and Microsoft is yanking the plug.

What is most disturbing about the two bits of Internet Explorer-related news isn’t the Mac story, but Microsoft’s Windows strategy, and the impact it will have on web standards and the progress of web development technologies.

If IE truly does become an OS-only product, then the common web request of “Please upgrade your web browser” will become completely irrelevant. Instead, web developers will have to politely ask, “Please get in your car, drive to Comp USA, and purchase the latest, greatest version of the Windows operating system.” Ass-backwards technological progress.

The move hardly impacts those who buy a new machine every couple of years. What it will impact are those millions of computer users that use legacy operating systems, and the web developers responsible for serving content to them.

The residual effect will go one of two ways - either web technologies will continue to develop, and browser developers (including Microsoft) will continue to support more advance layout techniques and functionality (thus forcing Windows users to upgrade their operating systems), or web development will stagnate, standardize on 2003 technology, and we will be stuck coding for buggy browsers for far longer than anyone initially envisioned.

Internet Explorer 6 - the last standalone version to be offered for free - will become the code base for web development. Which, I should add, wouldn’t be too big a deal if the browser was nearly bug-free. But it isn’t. And Microsoft has hardly updated the browser over the past few years.

Most people don’t give a damn about web browsers, operating systems, and who controls what. I realize that. Mac users will always defend Apple, and those who love Windows (there are some, right?) will continue to support their operating system as well. But the dilemma here is so much larger than that - it is about one company changing its internal product strategy and converting the portal 90% of web users use to access the internet into a boxed, shrink-wrapped product, with a $100+ price tag smacked on the front. ...

Related: Apple says Safari 1.0 coming soon

Related: Safari Enhancer 2.0.3: Safari Enhancer is an application for enhancing the functionality of Apple's Safari web browser.

Safari Enhancer current has the following features:

* Enabling the debug menu
* Removing underlines from hyperlinks
* Making the status text in the downloads window more readable.
* Disabling Safari's cache entirely
* Setting a minimum font size for webpages
* Changing colours of hyperlinks
* Removing and restoring the brushed metal appearance
* Wiping the site icon cache
* Importing bookmarks from any HTML file, and directly from Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Camino, OmniWeb (imperfect), and iCab.

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FDA approves injectable neutering drug for puppies: The good news: Puppies 3 to 10 months old can now be neutered without surgery.

The bad news: The alternative, a drug called Neutersol, which was recently approved by the FDA and is now on the market, involves injections in each testicle.

Sarah Casey Newman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had the same first reaction I did. Here's her lead:

It may look like a puppy's nightmare, but it sounds like the proverbial dream come true for animal lovers hoping to stop the killing of society's unwanted pets.

Newman asked Don Polley, a spokesman for Addison Labs, which manufacturers Neutersol, about the procedure.

"...because there are no sensory nerves in the testicles, only pressure receptors, and because you give the solution at a very slow rate, you don't have to use anesthesia. With most puppies, you need no sedation or tranquilization at all."

Polley also "said that the company is already in the process of obtaining FDA approval for use in older dogs, as well as in cats, with horses and other equines also targeted."

There is a downside, though: Even when approved for cats, Neutersol won't turn a Tom into a pussycat:

Polley believes some veterinarians will be reluctant to offer Neutersol because "the majority of them recommend neutering for health and behavior concerns, not population control," and Neutersol has been approved and is marketed only for sterilization, not for stemming aggression.

"That's why we targeted humane organizations and animal shelters to begin with," Polley said, "because their main interest in spay/neuter is in controlling pet overpopulation."

Thanks to Al Tompkins of Poynter for the link.
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The Fabric of Moroccan Life: via Plep

This exhibition is the first of its kind presented at the National Museum of African Art to focus exclusively on the tradition of beautiful embroideries, textiles and jewelry from the Kingdom of Morocco, located in Africa's northwestern region. The 67 works presented here are selected from the Indianapolis Museum of Art's vast collection. The nucleus of that collection came from a gift to the Indianapolis Museum in 1933 from the Niblack family of their entire collection of textiles, which was accumulated from Morocco and other countries all over the world.

Related: The Reverend Bunny's Secret Henna Diary. How to henna your hands, hair, free patterns, recipes, horticulture. (The relation comes through Moroccan henna lamps)
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Copyright for Collage Artists: Artist-blogger Judy Watt, who found the link, sums it up:

Lots of good info here. I've read law books for a living for years, but never much on intellectual property law. It makes me want to just paint and use nothing but my own photos and various non-image items in my mixed media pieces.

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Radiolovers.com - Free Old Time Radio Shows: They're doing them alphabetically, and they're only up to "O," so Sergeant Preston of the Yukon -- an indelible memory from my measles period -- isn't there yet.
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The Right to Party by Neal Pollack at The Brooklyn Rail.

June 16, 2003 6.02 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Seven tricks that Web users don't know: (link fixed!) Although written to warn web developers not to build in tools and features that users won't discover, this story at an IBM site works in reverse, too, informing readers how to use these features.

For instance, I often link to a story and assume that if readers want to go to the home page of that site, they'll edit the url in the location bar.

For instance, the url of this weblog is http://www.projo.com/blogs/shenews

I assume you'll know you can get to projo.com's main page by deleting "/blogs/shenews/" from the url and hitting "enter." Not so, according to consultant Carolyn Snyder, author of the story:

5. Navigation by hacking URLs
Only techie people glean information about the structure of a site by examining the words between all those forward slashes. Most users ignore the URL field except for typing in a top-level domain. In testing hundreds of users over a period of several years, I've never seen a non-technical user navigate by modifying the URL. Not once.

(There's no suggestion here; just an interesting factoid that "real people" don't do this -- they use the site's navigation and the "Back" buttons.)

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Wags at work: Worth 1000 held a Photoshop contest to decorate Martha Stewart's jail cell. The rules: Start with an image of a blank cell,

... and decorate it in a way that would be suitable for the queen of gracious living. Keep in mind you must simply redecorate this provided image of a jail cell for Martha, nothing more, nothing less (i.e. don't add space aliens to it). Have fun. Be clean. No cliches. As always, quality is a must. We will remove poor entries no matter how much we like you. You'll have 48 hours for this contest, so make your submission count.

The 27 entries are online, including this sample.
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Poll: Americans misinformed about Iraq, 9-11: Knight Ridder reports,

A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll, and 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.

Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers Sept. 11, 2001.

But such weapons have not been found in Iraq and were never used. Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None were Iraqis. ...

Before the war, the U.S. media often reported as fact the assertions by the Bush administration that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of illegal weapons. CBS News in December reported how Bush officials were "threatening war against Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction."

During and after the war, reports of weapons discoveries were often trumpeted on front pages, while follow-up stories debunking the "smoking gun" reports received less attention.

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One big media family: Critics of the recent change in FCC rules point to this N.Y. Times story about the wooing of Pvt. Jessica Lynch as a harbinger of the future: To Interview Former P.O.W., CBS Dangles Stardom.

CBS News, in addition to the usual personal touches, exhibited an apparent new gambit in its pursuit of an exclusive interview with the newsmaker of the moment, known in the television business as "the get." In its letters to Private Lynch's family and officials at the medical center, obtained by The New York Times, CBS News combined its pitch for a two-hour documentary with many other projects envisioned by the other divisions of its corporate parent, Viacom.

In the process, CBS renewed concerns among critics about the independence of news divisions owned by media giants.

"Attached you will find the outlines of a proposal that includes ideas from CBS News, CBS Entertainment, MTV networks and Simon & Schuster publishers," Betsy West, a CBS News senior vice president, wrote to Private Lynch's military representatives. "From the distinguished reporting of CBS News to the youthful reach of MTV, we believe this is a unique combination of projects that will do justice to Jessica's inspiring story."

CBS Entertainment executives, the proposal said, "tell us this would be the highest priority for the CBS movie division, which specializes in inspirational stories of courage." Simon & Schuster, it said, "is extremely interested in discussing the possibilities for a book based on Jessica's journey from Palestine, West Virginia, to deep inside Iraq."

MTV Networks, the letter went on, was offering a news special, a chance for Private Lynch and her friends to be the co-hosts of an hourlong music video program on MTV2, and even a special edition of its hit program "Total Request Live" in her honor. "This special would include a concert performance in Palestine, West Va., by a current star act such as Ashanti, and perhaps Ja Rule," the proposal said.

Private Lynch was not the only recipient of such a proposal. Recently, the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" fashioned a proposal for Aron Ralston, who was hiking in Utah and was forced to cut off his arm to free himself from a boulder. The CBS proposal asked to film his rehabilitation and offered to help him contact other Viacom divisions.

If you need to get up to speed on the changes, Editor & Publisher talked to news industry officials about what they'll mean:

The newspaper industry -- at least, that part of the newspaper industry that has chafed under the cross-ownership ban since it was imposed in 1975 -- got virtually everything it wanted when the FCC voted 3-2 along partisan lines last week to permit common ownership of papers and broadcast stations in all but the smallest markets. "To have access to 85% of the markets is not bad," said Newspaper Association of America (NAA) President and CEO John F. Sturm.

The actual FCC regulations on cross-ownership have not yet been released, but based on analyses by NAA and others, here's how the buying combinations shape up for newspapers:

* In about 70 large markets with nine TV stations or more, newspapers can own a TV duopoly (two stations) plus as many as four radio stations.

* In 109 markets with between four and eight TV stations, a newspaper can own one TV property and half the radio limit for that market. Example: three radio stations, if the market's common ownership limit is six.

* In 31 small markets with three or fewer TV stations, cross-ownership is not permitted, except by getting a waiver from the FCC.

Meanwhile, efforts to overturn the rules change range from editorials by conservatives such as William Safire, who writes in the Times,

The Federal Communications Commission — in business to protect the public's interest in our nation's airwaves — has by a 3-to-2 vote opened the floodgates to a wave of media mergers that will further crush local diversity and concentrate the power to mold public opinion in the hands of ever-fewer giant corporations.

This troubles some readers, listeners and viewers who don't like homogenized news or one-size-fits-all entertainment forced down their throats. When I inveighed against this impending sellout a couple of weeks ago, thousands — no kidding, an unprecedented torrent — of e-mails came roaring in, many beginning "Though I consider you a rightwing nutcase on most issues, I'm 100% with you against this big-media power grab."

to Democrats with the power to roll back the rules change (by Geoff Earle via Featurewell);

Senate Democrats may employ a controversial and rarely used procedure to try to overturn a new Federal Communications Commission rule on media ownership.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), an opponent of the new rule who chairs the Democratic Policy Committee, says he is considering using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a 1996 law that provides a fast-track way for Congress to overturn federal regulations. "We do not use it often," Dorgan said. "That's what it's there for." By using the procedure, Democrats would have a good chance of forcing the issue to the floor and at least requiring senators to go on record on the issue.

to Republicans with the same idea (Attack of the Reregulatory Republicans? at Cable World):

An unlikely band of six Republicans stands poised to undo the new network ownership cap of 45%, voted by the Federal Communications Commission on June 2. A bipartisan bill, S-1046, sponsored by Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), would roll back the network cap to 35%. The bill will likely be voted out of the Senate Commerce Committee to the Senate floor on Thursday, July 19, unhampered by the committee's chairman, John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Every GOP waffler on that committee is now under the microscope, as lobbyists, FCC officials, reporters and smiling Democrats scrutinize their loyalty, deregulatory history, personal friendships, National Association of Broadcasters ties and actual telecom knowledge. The crew includes McCain, Stevens, Conrad Burns (Mont.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Trent Lott (Miss.).

The first question on everyone's lips is "Where is McCain coming from?" The answer: No one knows. As chairman, McCain could tie up this bill in committee. Instead, without supporting it, he is allowing it to move forward. Perhaps that's because it has 29 cosponsors, including conservative Republicans Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), Wayne Allard (Colo.) and Jim Bunning (Ky.) .

About a critical side issue, Reuters reports,

U.S. Federal Communications Commission officials would be banned from getting reimbursed by industry groups to travel to attend conventions and conferences under a bill introduced in the Senate Friday.

A watchdog group said last month that FCC officials have received more than 2,500 trips costing some $2.8 million since 1995 paid for by the telecommunications and media industries which are regulated by the agency.

The limitation was included in legislation to reauthorize the agency's operations which was introduced Friday by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Sen. Ernest Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina.

Over at MediaChannel.org, there's a links page that's keeping track of stories and ways to make your views known.
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Virtual Mars exploration: My colleague Frank Carnevale writes,

A science friend showed this to me last night. It's an animation (Real Player) made by a 19-year old Cornell student that shows how the Mars Rover exploration will go (if everything goes right). It's really well done.

It certainly is. At nine minutes plus, I wasn't sure the video, which sits on this NASA page, would hold my interest on a busy Monday morning, but it's fascinating to watch.

Pieces fall off the rocket as it sheds what helps it break free from gravity; when it nears Mars, after seven months, a weighted parachute drops a pyramid of bounching balls which open, after it lands, to reveal the rover, which assembles itselfs and moves out to explore.

The animator is Dan Maas, a Cornell student, who now has his own company, Maas Digital. The Cornell Chronicle has an overview (NASA uses undergrad Dan Maas' video to preview its Mars mission) and CG Focus does a craft interview with Maas, for those who want the tech behind the graphics. Links to more of Maas's animations are here.

NASA plans twin Mars Exploration Rovers -- the first, called Spirit, launched June 10, and is expected to arrive on Mars the evening of Jan. 3, 2004; the second, Opportunity, is slated for launch during a window that stretches between June 25 and July 15. You can track Spirit at this NASA page.
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Justice for Allen: "When Allen Myerson jumped from the fifteenth floor of the New York Times building, it wasn’t just the tragic end to a respected editor’s life. It was the beginning of a ferocious battle between his estranged wife and the sisters who accuse her of “murdering” him."

This baffling story from New York Metro is hard to put down. Here's how it starts:

Three weeks before he took his own life, Allen Myerson, a New York Times business editor, and his wife, Carol Cropper-Myerson, a writer for Business Week, went out to dinner with their close friends Kevin Buckley and Karen Wirtshafter. A celebration was in order. That afternoon, last July 31, the Myersons had closed on their dream house, a $645,000 Georgian on the leafiest block in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Kevin and Karen, both surgeons and neighbors in nearby Montclair, took them to the area’s nicest restaurant, Liberté. Champagne was uncorked, but Carol, despite being “positively bubbly” all night, barely took a sip. Her friends remarked that that wasn’t like her—Allen and Carol fancied themselves wine connoisseurs—and Carol blushed. “Well,” she said in her sweet Kentucky accent, “we have some other news as well. I’m pregnant!”

Kevin and Karen were delighted. Like most of the Myersons’ friends, they knew the five-year hell of fertility treatments the couple, both 47, had gone through in their attempt to conceive. On July 5, they’d tried one last time, and, miraculously, it took.

“You must be thrilled,” said Karen. Carol was, but Allen seemed oddly subdued. Usually he was almost manically upbeat, but tonight, as his pretty wife gushed on, he picked at his Chilean sea bass. Later, on the way out to the parking lot, the wives were walking ahead, and Kevin Buckley turned to his friend. “Allen, you’re a little quiet,” he said.

“That’s because I’m getting a divorce,” Allen replied.

The next day, Carol met her husband at the Times after work. They often joined friends for dinner, or took in a show, before returning to New Jersey. That night, they had tickets to a Mets-Astros game at Shea. “On the drive home,” says Carol, “he said, ‘I filed for divorce today.’ ” Carol Myerson was one month pregnant, with twins. In four days, the movers were coming to deliver the couple’s furnishings to their new home, but only she would move in. And 21 days from the night of the baseball game, Allen would stand up at his desk, make his way to a window near the top of the Times Square building, and plunge fifteen stories to his death.

Thanks to Jim Romenesko for the link.
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Weird as it seems, green chocolate syrup isn't bad. Carolyn Wyman comments,

In this case, what's weird is that it doesn't taste like mint. Without the brown visual cue, this syrup also doesn't seem to taste as chocolaty, so you'll end up using more. That's probably why a bottle that at first seemed too big for anyone but the Hulk ended up being just about the right size for a small person with a big love of chocolate (yup, I'm talking about me).

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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com