By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Nov 22, 2002 - (Last
week's weblog)
Today, I'm flat out, producing the projo site. Headlines only:
The
apple of Apple's eye, Ellen Feiss: Brown Daily Herald interviews the
sloe-eyed
switcher.
Left
gets nod from right on copyright law
Iraq, etc:
The movie poster
Osama
is Under Your Bed
Veterans
Against The Iraq War
The
Final Frontier: How the snooper database can frame you.
An Apology
to All Muslims... (Nigerian newspaper apology for the comment set
off the riots -- it sounds a little like all the spam...)
Future
of Wi-Fi: Fast, Fast, Fast
New
Yorker's Einstein primer
Dick
Armey considers post with ACLU
Jesse
Helms: Web radio's hero
The
lure of velour (early painting on velvet)
Play
your favorite 1980s arcade games online. FREE! Shockwave...
Beatles Bowing to Indian Hit in World Music Poll
Museum
of Hoaxes
Dream
Anatomy
Googling: Searched the web for commerical. Results: about 227,000.
Searched the web for commercial. Results: about 29,600,000.
Link to this item | Comment
Nov 21, 2002
DMCA as marketing tool? The world gets
more bizarre. A discussion group frequented by bargain-hungry shoppers
posted early listings of what's on sale at what price at big retailers
next Thursday, the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally the biggest shopping
day of the year.
Wired
takes it from here:
After receiving legal threats from Best Buy, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart,
FatWallet removed
several user postings in its Hot
Deals section.
Scooping sales circulars by several days, the postings, apparently
from site users who had access to proprietary sales information, included
lists of products, along with reduced prices, that will go on sale Nov.
29 -- the day known as "Black Friday" for U.S. retailers because
it kicks off the holiday buying season.
According to FatWallet owner Tim Storm, the retailers all cited the
1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as the legal basis for serving
FatWallet with "takedown" notices.
"We don't think sales prices can be copyrighted, or that the DMCA
was meant for this type of thing," said Storm. "But it would
cost us a heck of a lot of money to be right." He added that he
decided to comply with the retailers' requests "as a business decision."
But wait, there's more! The horde of bargain shoppers tooks its hot price
list yesterday to Yahoo Groups, where the Black
Friday Ads Group is open to all, and the responsibility of none.
The New York Times wrote about it (Internet
Sites Delete News of Sales by Big Retailers). The Wall Street Journal
wrote about it (Web-Savvy
Shoppers Get Sneak Peak at Holiday Sales). Slashdot wrote about it
(Retailers
Swing DMCA To Stop "Black Friday" Sale Info).
I just spoke by telephone with Ron Lieber, author of the Wall Street
Journal story, who explained that he had posted a message which he thought
would be emailed to the Yahoo group's members, but messages may be read
online as well. He deleted it when he saw it was public, but someone who
had received it as an email thought it would be a good idea to make it
public. Then Lieber's phone number was posted to Slashdot, and he received
15 or 20 calls, on deadline. A most gracious man, he did not stop answering
his phone.
Despite the protests of retailers -- to whom, Lieber writes, "these
posts threaten to disrupt the carefully laid plans and pricing schemes
of the nation's largest retailers, since they tip off competitors and
alter consumer behavior" -- it seems to me a marketing coup.
I would ordinarily never peruse long lists of prices at megachains, some
available only early in the morning, but I found myself noting some items,
and thinking I'd tell my daughter about others.
Best Buy, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart must be crowing all the way to
the bank.
Link
to this item | Comment
Bobby Fischer, anti-semitic and living in Japan:
Rene Chun writes a long, strange tale in the December issue of Atlantic
monthly, Bobby
Fischer's Pathetic Endgame: Paranoia, hubris, and hatred—the unraveling
of the greatest chess player.
But even the Fischer apologists had to throw up their hands when he
took to the Philippine airwaves on September 11, 2001. In an interview
broadcast this time by Bombo Radyo, a small public-radio station in
Baguio City, Fischer revealed views so loathsome that it was impossible
to indulge him any longer. Just hours after the most devastating attack
on the United States in history, in which thousands had died, Fischer
could barely contain his delight. "This is all wonderful news,"
he announced. "I applaud the act. The U.S. and Israel have been
slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them for years. Robbing
them and slaughtering them. ... Now it's coming back to the U.S. ....
I want to see the U.S. wiped out."
You can hear an mp3
of that call and others here.
More Fischer links are at the bottom of "I
Was Tortured In The Pasadena Jailhouse!," a 1982 rant by Fischer.
Link
to this item | Comment
Miss
World riots escalate: BBC reports,
The authorities in the northern city of Kaduna have declared a curfew
with immediate effect after protests at Nigeria's hosting of next month's
Miss World contest descended into violence....
Civil rights activist Shehu Sani told the French news agency, AFP that
the city was in "pandemonium" and the streets littered with
burning tyres.
"Schools and public offices are shut. Business is paralysed, everybody
is staying at home and the security forces are trying to avoid contact
with the demonstrators," he said.
The riot started after the paper published an article on Saturday which
said that, if he had witnessed the beauty pageant, the Prophet Mohammed
would probably have chosen to marry one of the contestants.
The newspaper later retracted the story and published an apology on
two separate days.
Muslims are also upset that the pageant is taking place during the holy
month of Ramadan.
AP |
| Amina Lawal
and her child, Wasila. |
This all comes after the pageant contestants had threatened a boycott over
the Sharia court's sentence of death by stoning against Amina Lawal, who
had a child out of wedlock.
The Nigerian Government has moved to calm fears by promising it will
not allow any Nigerian to be stoned to death and about 90 Miss World
contestants have arrived in Nigeria, ahead of the final contest in the
capital, Abuja, on 7 December.
Link
to this item | Comment
Creme de la card: American Express calls it
the Rewarding
Lives Exhibit and Charity Auction. Portraits of card-holding celebrities
taken and signed by photographer Annie Leibovitz (and sometimes by the
celebrity) have been on display since Oct. 11 at American Express's Vesey
Street headquarters in Manhattan, and they'll be auctioned online (details)
starting Sunday.
Since the exhibit runs through Dec. 31, you probably shouldn't expect
to wrap these for Christmas.
Proceeds go to benefit the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council or to a charity
specified by the the portrayed celebrity..
These are the subjects:
Muhammad Ali
Woody Allen
Laurie Anderson
Lance Armstrong
Kevin Bacon
Drew Barrymore
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Sonia Braga
James Clavell
John Cleese
Francesco Clemente
Joel & Ethan Coen
Dennis Conner
Hume Cronyn & Jessica Tandy
Cameron Crowe
Tom Cruise
Penelope Cruz
Merce Cunningham
Sammy Davis Jr.
Oscar De La Hoya
Robert DeNiro
Ella Fitzgerald
Renee Fleming and Vicky Tanner
Frank Gehry
Whoopi Goldberg
Wayne Gretsky & "Mr. Hockey" Gordon Howe
|
Ann
Hamilton
Tom Hanks
Tony Hawk
Helen Hayes
Eric Heiden
Beth Henley
Al Hirshfield
Ron Howard & Brian Grazer
Lauren Hutton
Mick Jagger
Jasper Johns
Philip Johnson
James Earl Jones
Quincy Jones
Robert Trent Jones
Barbara Jordan
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Anthony Kiedis
Alan King
BB King
Henry Kissinger
Sherry Lansing
Ang Lee
Jay Leno
Maya Lin
Greg Louganis
|
Yo-Yo
Ma
Steve Martin
Gretchen Mol
Demi Moore
Tip O'Neill
I.M. Pei
Rob Reiner
Isabella Rosellini and David Lynch
Arnold Schwarznegger
Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas
Carly Simon, Ben & Sally
Neil Simon
Sissy Spacek
Bruce Springsteen
Barbra Streisand
Meryl Streep
Susan Sontag
Paul Taylor
Emma Thompson
Rose Totino
Randy Travis
Gus Van Sant
Andy Warhol.
Jody Williams
Tiger & Kultida Woods
Jamie Wyeth |
(Thanks to Sean Polay
for the link.)
Link
to this item | Comment
Creative
Commons » Featured Commoner: Doc Searls. The Cluetrain
Manifesto co-author and prolific
blogger plumps his favorite meme -- "markets are conversations"
-- and more. He ends by pointing to a free copy of the entire Cluetrain
Manifesto posted by fellow co-author Chris Locke (there are four authors
in all -- Searls, Locke, David
Weinberger and Rick
Levine) . There's also a link there to buy it from Amazon, if you
want it in real book form.
Related: Beliefnet
is back from bankruptcy, notes
Weinberger.
Link
to this item | Comment
Book-A-Minute
Classics: When there's no time for Cliff's Notes.
Link
to this item | Comment
Nov 20, 2002
Violent,
Unhappy and Brief --The Life of a School Bully: Wall Street
Journal reporter Jonathan Eig writes a compelling tale about the origins
and fate of the tough kid who long ago made life hard for him.
Link
to this item | Comment
Hope
springs eternal: Columnists Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn suggest
that the Democrats could take back the Senate, if Sens. Chafee and McCain
jump parties, and Mary Landrieu wins her runoff election in Louisiana
Dec. 7.
Link
to this item | Comment
Comment
now:
The Copyright Office is preparing to conduct proceedings mandated by
the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, which provides that the Librarian of Congress
may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention
of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works.
The purpose of this rulemaking proceeding is to determine whether there
are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely
to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses
due to the prohibition on circumvention.
Link
to this item | Comment
'NY
Post' Staffers Create Headline Game: Editor & Publisher reports,
"Angry Nun Stabs Jealous Urologist." This headline, not surprisingly,
isn't real, but anyone in the hinterlands craving a slice of big-city
tabloid humor now has a place, or rather a card, to turn. New York Post
TV Editor Michael Shain and retired Post crime reporter Mike Pearl have
created Man
Bites Dog, a game that challenges wannabe editors to transform random
words into a killer hed....
Players are dealt a hand of five cards, each containing a tab-friendly
word or phrase. But not all are created equal. "Sues" is worth
five points, while "Drugs" scores 25 and "Bizarre"
goes for 50 points. Playing a hand such as "Romantic Mob Boss Falls
For 340-lb Judge" would earn you a whopping 150 points, if not
a copy-desk job. The first player to score 500 wins.
"The one thing we really noticed in developing this is that most
people who played the game, including journalists, ended up trying to
make funny headlines, and not even worrying about points," Pearl
said. Released this month, Man Bites Dog has sold out (at about $10
a game) from many online distributors."
Link
to this item | Comment
Hoax
Photo Test: "All of these images have circulated widely both
in the media and on the internet. A number of them have probably shown
up in your e-mail. Can you guess which are the hoax photos (i.e. those
that have been digitally manipulated or staged in some way) and which
are real?"
Link
to this item | Comment
Bond
gadgets: fact, fiction, fun: Real spies wouldn't be caught dead
with them, but they were the best part of the 007 movies.
Link
to this item | Comment
Tracing
Baby Boomer Attitudes Then and Now: A Comparative Look at the
Attitudes of Baby Boomers in the 1970s and 2002. AARP tells us what
we already know -- we're more like our kids than our parents. And, although
boomers are more supportive of the military than 30 years ago, we still
think the government lies:
In the 70s, only 3% of boomers said they were very confident in what
government leaders tell them. Thirty years later, 6% of boomers now
say they are very confident that they can generally depend on what government
leaders tell them.
Link
to this item | Comment
Nov 19, 2002
Searching
for 'Ms. America': Best and Worst States for Women Emphasize
Economic & Political Disparities Among States. A story about the
report, released last week by The
Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), begins,
The 2002 Status of Women in the States report finds that not only have
women still not achieved equality with men, the disparities in women's
status among the states have not improved either. ...
The
States report ranks and grades the best and worst states for women,
presenting data for each state (and the District of Columbia) on 30
indicators of women's status and ranks each state for women's overall
status in five areas: political participation, employment and earnings,
social and economic autonomy, reproductive rights, and health and well-being.
Here's how the Rhode
Island report (pdf), released today, begins:
Rhode Island illustrates both the advances and limited progress achieved
by women in the United States. While women in Rhode Island are seeing
important changes in their lives and their access to political, economic,
and social rights, they do not enjoy equality with men and lack many
of the legal guarantees that would allow them to achieve it. Women in
Rhode Island, and the nation, would benefit from stronger enforcement
of equal opportunity laws, better political representation, adequate
and affordable child care, stronger poverty reduction programs and other
policies to improve their status.
Thanks to News
We Can Use for the link.
Link
to this item | Comment
Send
a free fax to President Bush saying this (and whatever else you
want to add),
I am writing to ask that you renounce and take all action necessary
to terminate the new Defense Department “Total Information Awareness”
program that would provide government officials with the ability to
snoop into all aspects of our private lives without a search warrant
or proof of criminal wrongdoing.
Related: A New York Times editorial (A
Snooper's Dream) opposing "Total Information Awareness."
(reg.req.)
Link
to this item | Comment
"The
International Children's Digital Library is a place where kids
all over the world can find lots of books from many different countries.
It's a place where kids can read as much as they want without having to
pay a lot of money or travel very far to find the books. "
The site will launch tomorrow with with more than 200 books from 27 cultures
in 15 languages. The five-year goal is 10,000 books -- 100 books from
100 cultures around the world. Very cool.
kids
| Comment
Atkins
diet beats low-fat fare: What do Doc
Searls, BoingBoing's Cory
Doctorow and I have in common, besides our blogs? We gave up flour,
sugar, pasta, rice, carrots and peas, and we're losing inches like crazy.
Now the controversial high-fat, low-carb way of eating has been formally
studied and the results presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association:
The latest (study), conducted by Dr. Eric Westman of Duke University,
was presented Monday at the annual scientific meeting of the American
Heart Association, long a stronghold of support for the traditional
low-fat approach.
Westman, an internist at Duke’s diet and fitness center, said
he decided to study the Atkins approach because of concern over so many
patients and friends taking it up on their own. He approached the Robert
C. Atkins foundation in New York City to finance the research.
Westman studied 120 overweight volunteers, who were randomly assigned
to the Atkins diet or the heart association’s Step 1 diet, a widely
used low-fat approach. On the Atkins diet, people limited their carbs
to less than 20 grams a day, and 60 percent of their calories came from
fat.
“It was high fat, off the scale,” he said.
After six months, the people on the Atkins diet had lost 31 pounds,
compared with 20 pounds on the AHA diet, and more people stuck with
the Atkins regimen.
Total cholesterol fell slightly in both groups. However, those on the
Atkins diet had an 11 percent increase in HDL, the good cholesterol,
and a 49 percent drop in triglycerides. On the AHA diet, HDL was unchanged,
and triglycerides dropped 22 percent. High triglycerides may raise the
risk of heart disease.
While the volunteers’ total amounts of LDL, the bad cholesterol,
did not change much on either diet, there was evidence that it had shifted
to a form that may be less likely to clog the arteries.
But the American
Heart Association is voicing concerns about the study
I had ballooned recently, and low-fat just wasn't working no matter how
little I ate. It made sense to me that sharply reducing the carbohydrates
would force my body to burn fat -- and fat is what I'm trying to get rid
of.
I find it very easy to stay on this diet: It's meats, fish, chicken,
eggs, butter, oils, salads, most vegetables (not potatoes or carrots or
peas, though) till you're full. If anything, the hardest part is finding
ways to get enough fat, since I can't eat the toast I'd slather the butter
on, or sugar-packed desserts, and I tend to go for protein like sashimi
or chicken, neither of which are high enough in fat alone to deliver the
proper ratio.
I've found that celery and cream-cheese dips, or macadamia nuts, make
a quick fatty snack. (If you're hungry, you're not eating enough fat,
fellow dieters say.)
Restaurant eating is pretty easy -- there's always something interesting
I wouldn't have chosen in the old days. (The New York Times reported earlier
this week on a
restaurant in NYC catering to the Atkins crowd that serves unsweetened
whipped cream for dessert!) But there's not a single thing I can eat in
the donut shop across from the Journal.
My funniest restaurant adventure came today at lunch. Lurking at the
alt.support.diet.low-carb
newsgroup, I had read that a Big Mac was okay without the bun. So I walked
up the street to McDonald's and ordered "A Big Mac, no pickles, no
bun."
The kid behind the counter did a double take. I repeated it. After some
conversation in the kitchen, I got my box and left.
When I opened it in the newsroom, it contained a piece of cheese on lettuce
and "special sauce."
I walked back to McDonald's and said, "I asked for no bun, not no
burger!"
They apologized and made me a hot fresh one, no pickles, no bun, while
I explained the low-carb diet.
As I left, I found they had put fries in the bag to apologize for the
error.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Saddameter at Slate, monitors the chances of a U.S. invasion of
Iraq. Today: 58 percent.
Link
to this item | Comment
Nov 18, 2002
Amazon
Takes First Segway HT Orders: From internetnews.com,
If you're fascinated by new technology, find walking an outdated mode
of transportation, and can spare $4,950, today is your day.
The much ballyhooed Segway Human Transport (aka Ginger or IT) self-balancing
scooter went on
sale this morning on a first-come, first-serve basis through e-commerce
giant Amazon.com.
Buyers, who are required to place a $495 deposit, can expect delivery
between March and August. Thirty customers will win delivery of their
Segway HT before Christmas by describing in 75 words what they like
most about the scooter. Winners will also tour Segway's Manchester,
N.H., facilities.
Related: N.H.
inventor Kamen eyes Stirling Engine. From the Manchester
union Leader,
Local inventor Dean Kamen is inching closer to the creation of a Stirling
Cycle Engine that can create enough electricity to run a few household
appliances, while at the same time making contaminated water drinkable.
Link
to this item | Comment
No more "stoking the starmaker machinery
behind the popular song": Joni Mitchell announced last week she's
quitting the music business in disgust. Tomorrow, her latest album
-- two CDs called Travelogue -- will be released.
You can hear, in its entirely, a cut a day at www.buzztone.com/joni/
(doesn't work in Mozilla); today's cut is The Last Time I Saw Richard.
Mitchell's voice sounds low, throaty and far more subtly expressive than
when she first belted out that song to the accompaniment of her own guitar,
but the full orchestral intro is superfluous.
Link
to this item | Comment
Top
100 Albums of the 1980s half-launched today at Pitchfork, which
posted the bottom 50. Minor Threat by Out of Step takes the cellar.
Number 51: Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man.
Link
to this item | Comment
Where life and art intersect: Crime novelist
Edna Buchanan is also a Miami Herald reporter, and yesterday she wrote
about the Miami-Dade morgue.
via Infomaniac: Behind the News
Link
to this item | Comment
Kunstbar
is a wonderful flash movie of what happens when a man walks into an art
bar.
Link
to this item | Comment
True generosity: Poetry
Magazine rejected Ruth Lilly's poems, but she
gave them $100 million anyway.
Link
to this item | Comment
Hear how dead poets sounded: The
Factory School Digital Audio Archive. Poets -- some of who still live
-- read their work.
Link
to this item | Comment
If you love it, set it free: Garrison
Keillor lambasted Norm Coleman, who beat Walter Mondale for the late
Paul Wellstone's seat, in subscription-only Salon Premium, but
the locked-away rant has been "liberated."
Link
to this item | Comment
Who's teaching whom?A
Geek Volunteer reports after two months in Kenya
Link
to this item | Comment
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
|
