Subterranean Homepage News

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

July 11, 2003 5:55 p.m. -- (Previous edition of this weblog)

Festival's filmmakers seek lodging: With 10,000 police officers due in town for the FOP convention early next month, filmmakers and guests coming to the seventh annual Rhode Island International Film Festival are finding no rooms left at any inns.

So the festival is looking for folks in the Providence area willing to host young directors, actors and perhaps guests in their homes for any nights during the festival, August 2-10.

Hosts -- who need only provide a place to sleep -- will receive free passes, good during the festival or at any other RIIFF events.

Call Tattiana in the film festival office at 861-4445 or e-mail Flicksart@aol.com if you can help.
Link to this item | Comment

Canada: Hippie Nation? Naomi Klein in The Nation:

Canadians can't quite believe it: Suddenly, we're interesting.

After months of making the news only with our various communicable diseases--SARS, mad cow and West Nile--we're now getting world famous for our cutting-edge laws on gay marriage and legalized drugs. The Bush conservatives are repulsed by our depravity. My friends in New York and San Francisco have been quietly inquiring about applying for citizenship.

And Canadians have been eating it up, filling the newspapers with giddy articles about our independence. "You're not the boss of us, George," Jim Coyle wrote in the Toronto Star. "So much for nice; we're getting interesting," wrote conservative columnist William Thorsell in the Globe and Mail. Polls are showing that it's not just that Canadians are becoming more forward-looking and groovier, it's also that the United States is lurching backward, retrenching into more conservative values. ...

Link to this item | Comment

How that Google "weapons of mass destruction" 404 page came to be: In The Guardian, "Anthony Cox describes how his spoof error page turned into a 'Google bomb' for weapons of mass destruction."

He made it in February, and traffic built to the point where it really was the number one hit for the phrase -- without the quotes -- "weapons of mass destruction" if you click I'm Feeling Lucky at Google:

Google's page ranking treats links as votes for a website, and both the number and the importance of the link helps increase the ranking of a site. My site had steadily increased its ranking, including a link from the Channel 4 news website and the Guardian, but perhaps the majority were from personal pages, discussion boards and blogs.

However, this was not a deliberate attempt to use Google to make a political point. This Google bomb was slowly and unknowingly built, and only by chance coincided with the accusations that intelligence documents had been "sexed up".

...Anthony Cox is a pharmacist at the West Midlands Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring Centre and a teaching fellow at Aston University. He also writes a blog on drug safety at www.blacktriangle.org. (It's down, but here's the Google cache version.)

Link to this item | Comment

Toymaker finds librarian who's a real doll: A nice Seattle Times story about a librarian who was digitized for an action figure.

Nancy Pearl is already a woman of action: innovator, iconoclast, radio personality and author of an upcoming book with the word "Lust" in its title.

But in the next month or so, it will be official. She'll join the ranks of Jesus, Sigmund Freud, Rosie the Riveter, Nico the Barista and a striped-shirted hipster/philosopher named Fuzz.

What puts Pearl, executive director of the Washington Center for the Book, into such heady company? She's the model for a 5-inch-tall plastic "action figure" by Seattle-based Accoutrements, parent company of Ballard's Archie McPhee store, where zany meets kitschy meets glow-in-the-dark.

... No action figure can exist without action; Pahlow said talk boiled down to two options: Put the figure's hair in a bun that could pop off, or have her right arm rise to put a finger in front of her lips in a silent shushing gesture.

"The ejectable hair bun had many technical hurdles to overcome and we thought doing two clichés was over the top," he said. "So, we went with the shushing action. It gives the figure a certain dignity."

Pearl predicts that the shushing motion — triggered by a button on the doll's back — will determine "which librarians have a sense of humor." She likes to believe that today's librarians are secure enough in their work that they won't take offense at the old cliché.

Jennie Levine, The Shifted Librarian, is a bit disappointed about the cliche, but makes the best of it:

I am most confident that librarians will purchase the doll in droves and wreck much fun with them! Where is the best place to host the image gallery?

Link to this item | Comment

Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA: In the Washington Post,

Small Internet radio stations, angered over what they say is the recording industry's effort to wield royalty rates as a weapon to drive them out of business, say they are preparing to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America.

The Las Vegas-based Webcaster Alliance will send a letter today (Wednesday) to the RIAA, threatening to sue the group for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act unless the RIAA agrees to reopen negotiations over the royalty rates webcasters must fork over to artists and record labels, Webcaster Alliance attorney Perry Narancic said.

"We're trying to negotiate with these people, but with a big stick," Narancic said.

The existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged, Narancic said.

The Webcaster Alliance has more than 300 members ranging from tiny hobbyists to small broadcast stations with accompanying Internet sites. The group's members include stations specializing in trance, bluegrass, classical and other genres.

At Mi2N, the Music Industry News Network, Webcaster Alliance, Inc. Alleges Anticompetitive Conduct In The Internet Radio Market includes this amazing quote:

Ann Gabriel, president of Webcaster Alliance, Inc. stated: "Today is the culmination of many months of frustration. After being told by RIAA attorney Gary Greenstein back in January that he didn't care if ‘25,000 webcasters went out of business because then people would have to get their music from AOL,’ we became deeply disturbed by the anticompetitive attitude and actions of the RIAA and its members."

Background: The Post offers a link to a Leslie Walker column from last August, Web Radio Waves Drying Up.
Link to this item | Comment

House of (not much) blues: Blues music continues to disappear from its traditional venues. At Town Online (a Massachusetts community newspaper),

In the beginning, there was the blues and nothing but the blues.

In fact, during a big opening-night party no less an authority than Elwood Blues ("Blues Brother" and club co-owner Dan Aykroyd) stood on stage of the jam-packed House of Blues in Harvard Square and declared: "For blues musicians and fans, this is their home."

But somewhere between that promising night in November 1992 and now, the dream of Aykroyd and the other House of Blues investors to create a chain of nightclubs "dedicated to exposing and preserving the blues" has been lost.

Last month, of the 29 acts that headlined the Cambridge House of Blues, only four - The Yardbirds, John Mayall, slide guitarist Roy Rogers and Roomful of Blues - are artists that make their living moanin' the blues.

... Lisa Bellamore, marketing and publicity manager for HOB Cambridge, says that the club is "still very committed to our original mission of embracing the culture of the blues," while at the same time admitting that such former HOB staples such as the weekly blues jam and the strong focus on local blues acts have been discontinued in favor of a booking philosophy that includes reggae, pop, rock and jam bands.

Bellamore says that HOB's corporate offices in California have never imposed any directives on how many blues acts to book in a month. But she also believes the blues attracts a niche audience - a lot of the same people show up for blues shows.

"We always have to wonder, will this same audience come out six or seven times a month if we book that many blues shows?" says Bellamore

Link to this item | Comment

Art blogs ahead: At ArtsJournal, this interesting announcement:

Next Monday (July 14) ArtsJournal introduces a new feature: AJ Blogs, written by some of the best arts writers in the business. Among our new bloggers are: Greg Sandow, classical music critic for the Wall Street Journal; Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and music critic for Commentary; Andrew Taylor, director of the Bolz Center of Arts Management; and Tobi Tobias, formerly dance critic for New York Magazine.

Link to this item | Comment

Wardriving made simple? Kensington WiFi Finder promises, "Just press a button and the Kensington WiFi Finder lets you know if your location is 'hot'...instantly. No software or computer needed."

WiFi Networking News headlines it "Geiger Counter for Wi-Fi?"

Kensington says the pocket-size gadget can detect 802.11b and 802.11g signals up to 200 feet away; three lights indicate signal strength.

No price is indicated, but we found it listed at Tech Depot / Computers4Sure for $21.95, although none are in stock yet.

(Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing notes that "Idetect offers another similar device, WiFiSense does, too.")
Link to this item | Comment

July 10, 2003 6:35 p.m. -- (Previous edition of this weblog)

Wal-Mart abandons radio ID chips rollout: Hot on the heels of yesterday's announcement of CVS pharmacies' plan to test "radio frequency identification" chips comes Wal-Mart's decision to drop their test of the chips with Gillette products. Its Brockton, Mass., store was to have been the testbed.

The Globe reports today (Gillette, Wal-Mart drop plan for radio ID chips),

Customers at the Wal-Mart store in Brockton won't be getting miniature radio transmitter chips with their Gillette Mach 3 razors, after all.

Boston-based Gillette Co. and giant retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have backed away from plans to test the controversial chips at the Brockton Wal-Mart store. ''We didn't do the test, and we're not going to,'' said Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams.

Williams said the decision reflected a change in business strategy, rather than a reaction to an Internet-based campaign against the technology, known as radio frequency identification, or RFID.

Privacy advocates were concerned that the technology would be used to track consumers' purchases without their knowledge or consent.

But a leader of the campaign against the technology, Harvard University graduate student Katherine Albrecht, said she thinks public pressure drove the decision. ''I think they're running scared,'' said Albrecht, founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). ''I think they're retreating because they've realized that they've got a real dog on their hands.''

That group is touting the abrupt end of Wal-Mart's RFID plan as a consumer victory:

CASPIAN visited the Brockton store, photographed the "smart shelf," and pointed it out to Wal-Mart shoppers -- who were horrified. We got the word out to thousands of CASPIAN members where it spread like wildfire across the Internet. For several days in June Wal-Mart was so overwhelmed with angry email and phone calls that they actually had their PR executives answering the phones.

A front page story in the local paper, the Brockton Enterprise, fueled the fire, and by the next day the shelf had miraculously vanished and both companies told the Enterprise there were no plans to do a test -- with Paul Fox of Gillette actually claiming he knew of no plans ever to do an RFID trial in the Brockton Wal-Mart, despite acknowledging it just the day before. (*guffaw*) The rest is history.

Meanwhile The Register reports (RFID spy-chippers leak confidential data on the Web) that CASPIAN found the confidential plan on the website of the MIT Auto-ID Center -- a coalition of almost 100 global companies and five universities:MIT; the University of Cambridge in the UK; the University of Adelaide in Australia; Keio University in Japan, and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland -- and leaked it. You can find copies here.

An interesting overview on the technology (beyond inventory control) comes from Jon Markman at MSN Money:

...RFID broadly enables an Internet of things rather than computers, drawing civilization closer to the day when computing devices connect every object to every other object in pervasive and ultimately unthinkable ways. “We like to imagine a world where there are billions of small computers not on desktops, but embedded in the real world,” says Ravi Pappu, co-founder of Boston-based computer engineering firm ThingMagic, which advises several RFID manufacturers.

Markman, writing this before the Wal-Mart announcement, suggests that the current cost of 30 cents each for the chips is too high, that Wal-Mart was hoping for nickel chips. This jibes with Wal-Mart's decision to focus on warehouse uses of chips, perhaps waiting for prices to drop before "chipping" everything in its stores.

An earlier story in The Register, RFID Chips Are Here, is a good place to learn about this technology in plain language. If you want to delve further, Privacy Digest and RFID Journal track it all from vastly different angles.

If you just want the bottom line, it's about putting tiny versions of those "inventory control tags" that come on big-ticket clothing items on just about everything. Like tiny radios, they can broadcast their locations -- and yours -- and, eventually, much much more.
Link to this item | Comment

The 2003 Redwood Review has launched: The annual arts and culture magazine of Newport's Third Thursday Writers’ Group is at the press, with hard copies expected in a few weeks, but the work itself is online now.

I haven't had time to read it, but glancing through it, the image at right grabbed my eye.

It's by Gary Bolstridge, with the wonderfully literary title The Writer’s House of Rough Drafts.
Link to this item | Comment

The Anonymity Doomsday Factor: John C. Dvorak writes, at PC Magazine,

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may become indirectly responsible for our inability to stop the next terrorist attack on the US. Hear me out on this one. The association's recent move to bust individuals, mostly students, for music trading will spark a movement toward anonymous computing unlike anything we've ever seen. Already two anonymous music swapping systems have appeared: Filetopia and Blubster. This is just the beginning.

We can expect to see the development of new stealth technologies that will be used routinely by everyone. A massive trend toward true Net anonymity will have repercussions that are all bad. Child porn rings will be harder to uncover. E-mail sources will be harder to find. Spam will rule. Virus coders will remain in the shadows. Terrorism can flourish in such an environment. And the RIAA still won't win the battle over file swapping. But it will have set off a bad chain of events.

Link to this item | Comment

Art finds:

Via Plep: Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop, devoted to toy theaters; Political Posters from the United States, Cuba and Viet Nam, 1965-1975; X-ray art and more.

At J-Walk, "Apply an annoying background image by clicking a number below." Annoying, as in op art that hurts the eyes. fortunately, there's an "Enough!" link that will end your misery.

"The Apothecary's Drawer is the 'play page' of writer and science journalist Ray Girvan. Here you'll find the Web equivalent of stuffed alligators, brass astrolabes and jars of leeches: an eclectic choice of links to scientific and artistic sites worldwide (along with a little original material)."

iconomy has astonishing images. And it led me to apocryph.net *disturbed projections of reality*.

Finally, via Judy Watt, the Found Art Group, which even has Meet-Ups. Providence isn't one of the cities, yet... Members put art on playing cards, luggage tags, stickers, whatever and leave them on buses, in library books, on bulletin boards, on waiting-room tables as good surprises for those who find them.
Link to this item | Comment

Looking for a job in journalism? There's a Quick Topic thread called Tipoff: Journalism Jobs where anyone may enter a job -- or just comment on one -- for free, without registering. Major papers, including the Dallas Morning News, are posting openings there.

Quick Topic threads aren't available to search engines, and, unlike Yahoo Groups, you can't search through the topics. Someone has to pass you the url. The success of this one is quite amazing, considering this.

(Google does archive this blog, so this link will now go public, as it should.)
Link to this item | Comment

Wags at Google: This spread while I was on vacation, but a colleague passed it on today, suggesting it hasn't reached everyone yet.

Go to www.google.com. Type: weapons of mass destruction (without quotation marks). Do NOT click Google Search. Instead, click: I'm Feeling Lucky. Then read the whole error message carefully.
Link to this item | Comment

July 9, 2003 7:20 p.m.

Novelist pleased to be "plagiarized" by Dylan: Now we know what Bob Dylan reads. The "victim " is delighted -- I would be, too.

From India's Sify.com:

Tokyo -- A 62-year-old Japanese novelist says he is just happy US folk rock legend Bob Dylan may have lifted a dozen lines from his obscure book about a "yakuza" gangster for one of his albums.

"I am not thinking about taking any legal action against him," Junichi Saga, who is the same age as Dylan, said. "The words may have taken on a new life in a new age after they were sung."

"I remember listening to his song Blowing in the Wind in the '60s," said Saga, who practices internal medicine at his father's clinic in Tsuchiura, a small city north of Tokyo. "It's exciting to imagine my words may have inspired him and he has turned them around so wonderfully."

The US business daily, the Wall Street Journal reported that a dozen passages in several songs in Dylan's most recent album Love and Theft (2001) have striking similarities to lines in the English translation of Saga's book.

The Japanese original of the book, based on interviews with a real-life gambler in Japan's underworld before World War II, was published in 1989 but had gone out of print.

"It is quite an unexpected thing that what I aimed to tell many people in words will go on in songs," Saga said.

About 25,000 copies of its English version, entitled Confessions of Yakuza, have been sold since it was published in 1991. The book has also been translated into French, German and Portuguese.

Mainichi Daily News gives the book's title as Asakusa Bakuto Ichidaiki (Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan's Underworld) and adds,

Chris Johnson, a Kitakyushu-based American, reportedly noticed similarities between phrases in Saga's book and Dylan's lyrics in several songs featured in his most recent studio album. He reported the findings to a Bob Dylan fan website, "My Back Pages (www.dylanchords.com)."

Dylan's manager has insisted to the Wall Street Journal that the singers-songwriter's lyrics were original, but the website showed that phrases used in his songs Floater, Po' Boy, Summer Days, Honest With Me and Lonesome Day Blues have unmistakable similarities to phrases in Saga's book, which was translated by John Bester.

Johnson's Textual sources to the "Love and Theft" songs is here.

No response from Dylan yet.

Headline writers are not having their finest hour on this story, as they wrack their brains for Dylan lines to parody. Some samples:

Bob Dylan's lyrics: Just like a Yakuza? - Utusan Malaysia Online, Malaysia
Dylan Tangled Up In War Of Words - CBS News
Is this a real case of love and theft? - Calendar Live, CA
The freestealin' Bob Dylan - Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Bob Dylan Sings Like A Japanese Author - Chart Attack, Canada

Vaguely related: The Best Bob Dylan Tribute CD Yet? is a rave review at Mi2N, the Music News Network, of a double CD of covers of Dylan tunes, including many by little-known artists, titled May Your Song Always Be Sung - The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol.3:

"May Your Song Always Be Sung - The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol.3" is the third in a world-renowned series of Dylan tribute albums from the BMG label. The first two in the series concentrated almost exclusively on rare Dylan covers from the extensive BMG catalogue. This latest, a double CD (triple on vinyl), is based on a different concept: along with famous names such as Martin Simpson, Eric Andersen, Julian Dawson, Rick Danko (The Band), Elliott Murphy, Steve Gibbons and Chris Whitely, this new project features some of the best "unknowns" around. There's so much to discover here, from Billy Goodman to Elin Sigvardsson, from Wendy Bucklew to Alexandru Andries.

Most of the tunes are sung in English, but you'll also hear Spanish and Norwegian! And these versions have a special charm of their own. This double CD and digipack has a running time of 150 minutes and showcases 30 Dylan songs. The album contains a special treat in the form of a bonus track from the Californian band Cruzados, with Bob Dylan himself playing harmonica. Incidentally, another high profile musician on this excellent compilation is ex Rolling Stone, Mick Taylor who contributes his exquisite electric blues guitar stylings to Black Cat Bone's version of "Blind Willie McTell". This is a nice touch because it was Mick Taylor who played on Dylan's original version.

... It is wonderful to hear great acoustic guitar playing and acoustic instrumentation in general all over this CD. Of course, the acoustic is the natural instrument with which to express a Dylan song. It seems invidious to pick out individual performances at this stage because compliments are due to everyone involved with this project. Hand on heart, there is not one single filler or duff track here.

You can hear some full preview tracks here, and clips of all 30 tunes here.
Link to this item | Comment

Goodbye bar codes: Packages with transmitters on the way. AP reports on scrips with chips:

WASHINGTON -- Razor blades and medicines packaged with pinpoint-sized computer chips and tiny antennae that eventually could send retailers and manufacturers a wealth of information about the products -- and those who buy them -- will start appearing in grocery stores and pharmacies this year.

Within two decades, the minuscule transmitters are expected to replace the familiar product bar codes, and retailers are already envisioning the conveniences the new technology, called ``radio frequency identification,'' will bring -- even as others are raising privacy concerns.

A grocery store clerk will know immediately when the milk on the shelf has expired, for example, and replace it before a customer can choose it. Stores could quickly pull from the shelves tainted and damaged products that are recalled or have expired, especially important in health care items.

Rhode Island-based CVS pharmacy chain ... will soon test the chips and antennae on its prescription medicines. CVS's 4,000 stores fill millions of prescriptions each year but many customers forget to pick them up.

...The technology builds upon the UPC (Uniform Product Code) symbol and bar codes that, when read by a scanner, enable manufacturers and retailers to keep up with their prices and inventories. A computer chip smaller than the head of an ant and a thin antenna attached to a bottle, box, can or package will alert retailers and suppliers when a product is taken off a store shelf or moved out of a warehouse. A radio signal is beamed to an electronic reader, which then delivers a message to a computer in the store or factory.

Read the rest of this story -- the chips may track you:

Sanjay Sarma, the lead researcher at the Auto-ID Center in Massachusetts, says that by adding more functions to the chip, installing a battery and attaching a longer antenna, a receiver far away could read all the information on a chip, including its exact location.

Homes equipped with receiver-readers could alert consumers when they are running low on orange juice or their prescription for heart medicine is about to expire. Hooked up to a national network like the Internet, the at-home devices could also provide details to marketers about a family's eating and hygienic habits.

Sarma acknowledges that gigantic privacy concerns the technology raises, saying one way to address them would be letting consumers disable the chips once they leave a checkout counter.

I can track my own orange juice level, guys.

Vaguely related: At the Village Voice, Big Brother Gets a Brain: The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves
Link to this item | Comment

Scoop: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program: This item surfaced in Slashdot -- geek central -- but I've been reading about it in discussion forums for a while now. The story is by Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century, which, according to her site, http://www.blackboxvoting.com, is to be published this month.

I'm putting it out here because this will be a big story, if true, and we might as well start vetting it now.

Here's the Slashdot item; the comments below it are interesting:

Alien54 and several other people wrote in about a couple of stories published in a New Zealand webzine: an examination of an electronic voting system, and some less interesting political speculation about it. Diebold voting systems are in fairly wide use, and apparently provide zero security to keep election officials from writing in whatever election totals they want.

The only other story I see about it is headlined US election fraud scandal looms? at the British tech publication The Inquirer (U.K.), whose editor, Mike Magee, also founded The Register.
Link to this item | Comment

FCC media rules update: Dixie Chicks star in senate radio consolidation hearing:

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- During a Senate hearing on radio consolidation, senators grilled a radio industry executive about his decision to pull songs by the country band the Dixie Chicks from the air for a month.

Senators also heard comments from an advertising industry executive, John Mandel, co-CEO of media services agency MediaCom, who told the Senate Commerce Committee today that radio consolidation has dramatically pushed up ad prices far above levels that competitive markets would allow.

The committee's chairman, John McCain, R-Ariz., sharply questioned Cumulus Media CEO Lewis W. Dickey Jr. if he felt his decision to ban the Dixie Chicks from all of Cumulus' country music stations demonstrated the political danger present in having too few owners of the nation's media.

... Mr. Dickey defended his decision, saying Cumulus had pulled the songs only on its country music stations, and that the decision had come as a result of a "hue and cry" from local listeners and requests for local programmers for direction.

Sen. McCain said that while individual stations have the right to pull songs, the decision by Cumulus (as well as by all stations of another media company, Cox Radio) to pull songs was a "total contradiction" of statements made by media executives that they were serving local markets.

Link to this item | Comment

July 8, 2003 5:18 p.m.

Back from vacation, another year older -- and newly wed. Nothing like 5,000+ spams to help me hit reality with a thud. "Stop Hillary's Book" may be the dumbest one. Why??? Is it sailing toward your head?

The Battle Over Media Ownership is Far From Over by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, columnists for The Nation:

The American people have already changed the character of the debate over media consolidation and monopoly. Now, they have a chance to win it. Just by going to the www.mediareform.net/stopthefcc website and taking a minute or two of your time, there is a very good chance we will change the course of history.

...What is the relevant legislation?

In the Senate, it is the "Preservation of Localism, Program Diversity and Competition in Television Broadcast Service Act of 2003 " (Senate Bill 1046). If your senators are already co-sponsors, thank them and ask them to put pressure on the Senate leadership for an immediate vote on the legislation. We have roughly 35 co-sponsors now. We need more than 50 to increase pressure on the Senate leadership to allow a floor vote.

In the House, it is Bernie Sanders' House Resolution 2462, the "Protect Media Diversity Act." It is the House equivalent of Senate Bill 1046. If your representative is already a co-sponsor of 2462, ask them to step up the pressure for action by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Ask them as well to cosponsor House Resolution 2052, a bill sponsored by veteran Democratic Rep. John Dingell and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr that addresses concentration of ownership of television stations at the national level.

According to mediareform.net, none of the Rhode Island delegation have co-sponsored the bills. For phone numbers, and suggestions about what to say when you call their offices, here are the direct links: If you live in District 1 (represented by Patrick Kennedy); District 2 (represented by Jim Langevin). Contact info for Sens. Reed and Chafee, who represent the entire state, are on both pages.

Related: FCC chief says tech is wild card. In an interview with The Washington Times, FCC chairman Michael K. Powell

...said he is wary of media companies becoming too big.

"It's really breathtaking. I mean, I'm almost to the view that one day there's going to be serious questions about whether one institution can have such a wide and deep portfolio without some rethinking of how these functions are handled and to what extent and by whom. I don't think that day's here, but I do think it will happen, and it will happen faster than people think," Mr. Powell said.

Link to this item | Comment

2004 American Presidential Candidate Selector: Looking for a President who represents your views of how the country should be run? At SelectSmart.com, you answer questions about your positions and the site tells you which candidate most closely matches your political views.

The candidates' positions have been determined first by the candidate's actions, then their public votes, followed by their public statements, and whenever possible, special interest group rankings of the candidate have been factored in.

You may be surprised, as I was, to find out which potential candidates are in your corner. (My results ranked 33 politicians, far more than are officially running.)

Link to this item | Comment

Words of experience on the new world of travel: Journalist-blogger Dan Gillmor, in his Sunday column in the San Jose Mercury News, offers travel tips from a 21st-century road warrior. Even better, by today quite a few of his readers have chimed in with their additions. (I didn't know American hotel clocks are rarely correct.)
Link to this item | Comment

Patrick Neate's top 10 hip-hop books: In the Guardian (U.K.). Topping the list: The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. ("Neate is the author of Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet. His second novel, Twelve Bar Blues, won the 2001 Whitbread prize for best novel.")
Link to this item | Comment

Weird fish: An Australian government site has assembled photos of some really strange bottom dwellers, such as these Black Corals ( Antipatharia ) and Serpent Stars (Order Euryalida):

Link to this item | Comment

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