|
By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up'
journalism from the pros
Lynne McCormack | | Convergence
art: David Cole used two backhoes and 20-foot knitting
needles to create this Kevlar flag. Click image to o see details |
September 13, 2002 Art
in the streets: If you're in Providence this weekend, the Convergence
2002 Arts Festival continues. (Some of projo.com's
coverage listed below may require registration.) Street
Sculpture: Outdoor art in Providence, Pawtucket, Newport;
Review
• Slideshow
Film
festival, Sept. 12-15;
Video clips
• Review
Free
Jazz Festival, Sept. 13-14 ; Video:
Kendra Shank
We earlier
previewed artist David Cole, who was to knit with backhoes and 20-foot knitting
needles. What he made leads this page. Next weekend, there'll be street
painting and the hurricane barrier will be lit.
Link
to this item | Comment Robot
to explore pyramid mystery: CAIRO, Egypt - A
robot the size and shape of a child's toy train is exploring one of the enduring
questions of Egypt's Great Pyramid: What lies at the end of a shaft first discovered
by explorers in the 19th century? Engineers from the Boston firm iRobot
and researchers from National Geographic and the Egyptian government's Supreme
Council of the Antiquities showed the robot to reporters Friday. On Tuesday, it
will crawl 200 feet up the 8-inch-square shaft before a live, international television
audience.
I hope the meaning of life is behind that tiny door,
but it's probably turned to dust.
Link
to this item | Comment Florida
Follies: Carl Hiaasen,
when he's not writing wonderfully wacky novels about South Florida, writes for
the Miami Herald. His take on the closeness of the contest between Janet Reno
and Bill McBride, posted last Sunday, before the flawed voting, adds a whole new
layer to the story:
Bush
campaign gave McBride a big boost The surprising ascendance of Bill
McBride was partly ignited by those with the most to dread from his candidacy,
the wizards running Jeb Bush's re-election machine. Nearly three weeks ago,
they uncorked a television attack ad that singled out the Tampa lawyer, who was
then trailing well behind Janet Reno in the race to become the Democrats' gubernatorial
nominee. You couldn't miss the anti-McBride commercial, which featured the
dancing legs of a briefcase-toting man in a business suit. The Bush people were
so proud of this concept that they aired it about every nine minutes, or so it
seemed. ...If the Bush team was nervous before, they're sweating buckets
now. Reno is a known quantity about whom most voters already feel strongly one
way or the other. McBride is a fresh face with no Clinton baggage and a Bronze
Star from the Vietnam War. Should he win the primary on Tuesday, McBride
ought to send roses to the geniuses in the GOP who dreamed up the dancing-legs
commercial...
Bonus satire: "EU
DEBATES MEASURES TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY IN FLORIDA" by blogger Max
Zawicky
Not so funny: Angry,
frustrated voters fault officials for lapses
Link
to this item | Comment Hunter
Thompson is still all-Gonzo: A CBS MarketWatch (?) reporter treats us
to a dazzling slice of HST's stream of consciousness: When our
interview began, Thompson was watching a classic bit of Americana, circa 2002:
a live CNN report about the police closing Alligator Alley, a stretch of highway
in Florida, as they investigated a vague but worrisome report from a waitress
in Georgia about a possible terrorist bomb threat. Thompson said he was
stunned by the attention stemming "from a conversation a woman overhears
in some diner in Calhoun, Ga." She then phones her fear in to "some
tip line." Thompson didn't even try to conceal his amazement that the
police would go so far as to "shut down the interstate highway" and
BLOW UP PEOPLE'S LUGGAGE!"
Oh, and he thinks George W.
Bush should quit...
Link
to this item | Comment 'Concentration
of Media Ownership Is Eroding Our Democracy': I Want Media publishes the
opening address by Frank A. Blethen, publisher and CEO of the Seattle Times Co.,
at a public symposium, "The Independent Family Newspaper in America: Its
Future and Relevance," at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Sept. 8-10. Excerpts: The false benefits of large size and concentration
in newspapers and media are geared solely to the short term. They have been devastating
to our journalism and our inclusiveness. They have created serious and unnecessary
hardships on our local communities and the journalists and employees of our newspapers... Media
moguls preaching convergence and synergism are preaching falsely.... When
you carefully examine what they say and what they do, they are talking about ways
to reduce costs by disinvesting. Saving money by eliminating the breadth of reporting
and editorial voices. They are talking about getting monopolistic control of local
markets, so that they can further reduce competition, reduce news expense, control
advertisers and increase advertising rates.
The current battleground
in the war to save diversity is the FCC. Specifically, their push to repeal the
newspaper and television cross-ownership ban. If the public loses this battle,
and cross-ownership is repealed, it will be a major blow to the preservation of
independent journalism.
Blethen offers other parts of a solution,
including repealing the death tax that forces families to sell newspapers they
may have inherited. via JD
Lasica Why this matters now: FCC
Begins Study Of Media Ownership at Editor & Publisher.
Link
to this item | Comment Prior
Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend: Insight on the News,
which describes its site as a "Conservative current events magazine published
by Washington Times," published this story on its website Sept. 10. The author,
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a freelance investigative reporter, lays out his tale of
trying to get to the bottom of reports of New York children who mentioned the
WTC attacks to teachers in advance. He details several incidents confirmed by
teachers and police.
It impossible to know what is real here, but what's
fascinating is Shapiro's experience with a story nobody knew how to tackle:
I turned in my story to my editor who, after reading it, hesitated and then opted
to pay me a kill fee instead. [Publications pay a kill fee when the author delivers
but the publication chooses not to print the story.] I called the New York Times
Magazine. "I don't doubt the boy actually said these things," a top
editor told me. "But we don't know why he said them." I received
a similar wave of responses from a variety of national magazines. I reflected
on a conversation I had had with someone I knew at NBC who told me that Dateline
actually had known about the New Utrecht incident before I published my story.
"No one wanted to follow up on it," he told me. "They figured it
either wasn't true or it would be too hard. They were only interested in the story
after you broke it first."
Of course it would be hard
to report -- newsrooms have only paid lip service to diversity, and reporters
with family, close friends and trusted sources in the mosques of Brooklyn must
be exceedingly rare. Before the attacks, who would think anything of a child saying
the towers soon wouldn't be there any more; after the attacks, who would dare
admit such knowledge? Shapiro is out of leads and out of resources. He's
laying the story out in hopes of eliciting new information. What he documents
so far is definitely worth a read.
Link
to this item | Comment
Journal / Steve Szydlowski | | Cow
Express: Is it art, or just
a sign? Click
to enlarge | Blue
cow revisited: There's a rally tomorrow to save
Barrington's blue cow.
Link
to this item | Comment A
very, very stupid quiz by somebody with a very, very limited CD collection:
the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com. Nevertheless, the result wasn't too far off... You
are 26% geek
You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can
hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often
have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks
and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud.
In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.
Link
to this item | Comment Back
late Monday! September 12, 2002 Keo:
Send a message 50,000 years into the future. Since 1994, French artist
Jean-Marc Philippe has been assembling a team that will launch a satellite that
will orbit Earth for 50,000 years. It will contain a "collective art project"
-- messages from those of us alive now to those who find the time capsule. What
kind of messges? Don't try to reach your descendants. The messages will be anonymous.
What Philippe hopes to evoke is contained in the questions on KEO's homepage: What
reflections, what revelations do your future great grandchildren evoke in you?
What
would you wish to tell them about your life, your expectations, your doubts, your
desires, your values, your emotions, your dreams?
Space.com
wrote about the project two years ago: The core sphere,
just 32 inches in diameter, will be engraved with an image of the Earth. Keo’s
backers hope the sphere’s discoverers will crack it open to reveal its contents. The
bulk of the payload will be 100 glass, radiation-resistant DVDs, each containing
the millions of messages that Keo’s backers have been busy gathering. "The
challenge to get messages from all around the world is harder than actually building
the capsule," Philippe joked. Along with the disks, Keo will also contain:
* a collage of portraits of human beings;
* an astronomical clock showing
the current position and rotation speed of different radio pulsars that will allow
the sphere’s finders to calculate when Keo was launched;
* a library
of sorts that will sum up the state of affairs in the present;
* an artificial
diamond containing seawater, air and soil samples and a drop of human blood.
That
last item -- human blood, human DNA -- sets off futuristic fiction plots in my
mind: An advanced civilization finds the capsule orbiting an empty planet, and
brings to life the creature whose DNA it finds. ... Launch is now slated
for June 2003.
Link
to this item | Comment  Jimmy
Cliff |  Dave
Stewart |
Peace
One Day was founded by British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley in 1999 to promote
a global cease-fire day; launch was at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.
In September last year, UN GA Resolution 55/282 was unanimously adopted
by U.N. member states at the General Assembly, formally establishing Sept. 21
as an annual day of global cease-fire and nonviolence. Today, reggae legend
Jimmy Cliff and former Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart announced they have written
a song called Peace One Day, which they will be asking radio stations to
play (and asking DJs to discuss its meaning) on Sept. 21. The song is to
be available on the Peace One Day website, but it's not there yet.
Link
to this item | Comment
Win-XP
Help Center request wipes your hard drive: This is progress? Thomas C.
Greene at The Register has the bad news, and describes a fix: A
malicious Win-XP Help Center request can easily and silently delete the contents
of any directory on your Windows machine, we've learned. Worse, MS has rolled
the fix silently into SP1 without making a public announcement. A good sketch
of the problem in English, along with a harmless self-test, can be found here,
thanks to Mike at http://unity.skankhouse.org, who did some tinkering after noticing
a tip on a BBS. ... To get rid of the vulnerability, you have two choices.
You can install XP's new SP1, which will give Billg remote root privileges on
your box by virtue of his new, Trojan EULA (and silently re-enable some services
you may have disabled like 'automatic update'); or you can just go to C:\Witndows\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\SYSTEM\DFS\
and find the file uplddrvinfo.htm. This you can simply delete or rename. But beware
of installing MS patches later on: these have a funny tendency to restore files
and settings outside their immediate purview, back to Redmond defaults.
Link
to this item | Comment Phone
& kitchen sink: Japanese phone/flash camera/email/GPS shows up on
the 3G site. via Travelers
Diagram
Link
to this item | Comment 802.11b
Wireless LAN Networking Roundup: PC Stats tests three manufacturers' full
802.11b wireless networking setups separately to see how well they performed against
one another.
Link
to this item | Comment The
First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra begins its nine-date debut European
tour Saturday. Reuters
reports,  The
orchestra, which consists of eight musicians, one sound technician and one cook,
plays vegetable-based instruments they make themselves... It takes the band
about half an hour to make a carrot flute, and under 15 minutes to make a cucumberophone,
which has a pepper bell and cucumber tubing. Other instruments include celeriac
bongos, eggplant cymbals and pumpkin drums. The sounds are amplified using
a variety of microphones. At the end of a performance, which can include
free jazz, experimental music, or the Radetzky March by Austrian Johann Strauss,
the stage is cleared and a cook uses the instruments to prepare a soup for both
audience and musicians.
There are photos and mp3s at the orchestra's
site. Be patient -- it takes a while for the sounds of veggies to make it over
from Europe. via Robot
Wisdom
Link
to this item | Comment  | | AP |
Protest
today: AP moved the photo at right today with this caption, but no story:
Musician, songwriter, poet and activist Patti Smyth, right,
speaks to the crowd of protesters gathered near the United Nations in New York
today. The protest called for a halt to any U.S attempt to wage war on Saddam
Hussein and Iraq.
The Independent Media Center has advance
information on a rally to have been held at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza, but no
report as of now (6:35 p.m.)Link
to this item | Comment September
11, 2002  AP/Anat
Givon | HONG KONG -- Members of the
Committee for Peace Not War braved a severe tropical storm today to hold a candlelit
vigil in remembrance of the victims of last year's Sept. 11 attacks on targets
in the United States. In a statement read during the vigil the group called on
all peace-loving people around the world to work for a new year ahead without
war, without hatred and without terrorism.
|
September
10, 2002
Finger
Phones: An Earful of an Invention. The Standard reports, "NTT DoCoMo
has created a wristband phone that lets people hear incoming calls by sticking
a finger in their ear." via
Ft. Boise
Link
to this item | Comment Mystery
object in earth orbit: Its name is J002E3, it orbits earth every 50 days,
doesn't reflect as much light as might be expected from a metallic object, and
it was discovered just a week ago. How might we have suddenly acquired a new "moon"? My
colleague Robert Cocroft
passes along this post from Roger W. Sinnott, Senior Editor at Sky & Telescope
magazine, on its AstroAlert mailing list:
MYSTERY OBJECT Since September 5th, the Minor Planet Mailing List (MPML)
has been abuzz with speculation about an unidentified 16th- magnitude object.
During the next 10 days the object will be moving rapidly across Aries and then
Taurus, passing between the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters. Bill Yeung
discovered the object September 3rd in CCD images taken with an 0.45-meter telescope
in Benson, Arizona. The fast-mover was "auto detected" when he analyzed
his images with DC-3 Dreams' PinPoint software. Yeung e-mailed the positions to
the Minor Planet
Center (MPC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which quickly posted the object
on its Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page under the temporary designation J002E3.
But within a few days the MPC removed the object from that listing; preliminary
orbit calculations suggested it was traveling in a large, 50-day orbit around
the Earth, not the Sun. It had all the earmarks of being a spent rocket casing
or other piece of "space junk" instead of a true minor planet. But
what exactly is it? Efforts by Tony Beresford in Australia and other satellite
experts have failed to match this object with any known artificial satellite.
Photometric measurements by Peter Kusnirak in the Czech Republic failed to show
much variation in brightness, as would be expected of a small metallic object,
especially if cylindrical. But the big question is, if it is really in Earth orbit,
why has it not been detected before? In Yeung's words, 16th magnitude should have
made it "a piece of cake" for survey telescopes like LINEAR and NEAT,
or for CCD-equipped amateur instruments, to locate long ago. Finally, late
on September 9th, Paul Chodas (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) weighed in with this
posting to the MPML: "The unusual object J002E3, formerly on the Minor
Planet Center NEO confirmation page, has been loaded into our Horizons system
so that interested observers can generate ephemerides.... Further observations
of the object are highly desirable to help characterize the nature of the object:
we will update our orbit solution as they become available. "Telnet
and email users of Horizons can access this object by typing 'J002E3'. Web users
of Horizons can access the object by going to the Major Body Menu, selecting the
Spacecraft list, and choosing the entry 'J002E3 Spacecraft (UNCONFIRMED)'. The
available time span is currently August 1 through December 1, 2002. The telnet
address of Horizons is <telnet://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov:6775/>, and the web address
is <<http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph>>." For the full
text, or to subscribe to the Minor Planet Mailing List, please visit these URLs: MPML
Home page ( http://www.bitnik.com/mp )
MPML FAQ ( http://www.bitnik.com/mp/MPML-FAQ.html
)
MPML's Yahoogroups page ( http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/mpml )
Link
to this item | Comment  Al
Kooper & the Funky Faculty update: Sunday was warm and sunny, in the low
90s, and our family spent the day in a small boat on Narragansett Bay till dusk,
when I went to the Hot Club Waterfront Festival. Too late to have to pay a cover
-- the bash started at 2 -- and we missed what I heard was a hot set by Dino Club,
but arrived just in time for Kooper's set. The man makes his keyboards do things
mine only dreamed of.
He was rocking the shore, folks dancing, and after
covering that great singalong, You Can't Always Get What You Want, they
segued into Season of the Witch, flashing me back to the self I was in
1968 when I first heard it on the Super Session album. Kooper looked
exactly like the photo at right, except his hair was reddish-blond and the shirt
was red. After the last note, he bolted from the stage, through an opening in
the chain-link fence and into a waiting car. From the passenger seat, he looked
up, waved once at the fans lining the fence, and sped away.
Link
to this item | Comment
Mad
Magazine's Al Feldstein: "In an article spoofing the idiocies
of some of the board games being produced at the time, we created several new
ones that jumped from reality into satirical fantasy. One was called "Draft
Dodger" and, as part of our point of departure, ended with the winner
earning the title of "Official Draft Dodger"...and instructing him to
send his name to J. Edgar Hoover for his "Official Draft Dodger Card."
I mean, who in heck would ever expect any MAD reader to actually do that?! But
obviously, many did...much to the consternation of Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director
of the FBI." (More
FBI files on MAD: All of the FBI records were obtained under the Freedom of
Information-Privacy Acts [FOIPA]. A total of 239 pages were obtained, this included
copies of two complete MAD magazines.)
Link
to this item | Comment Earthlink
founder foresees his Boingo
as a nationwide Wi-Fi network: The actual headline at Wired is Sky
Dayton's Long Road to Internet Nirvana, which makes sense only after you've
read the story. The colorful young entrepreneur comparess wi-fi to electricity
in terms of penetration and limitless potential. But
the prices are high -- $75 a month subscriptions, $7.95 for onetime use, and eventually
an $895 startup kit to turn burger shops, bookstores and bowling alleys into nodes
-- and the logistics are difficult: If Boingo is going
to sell access to a far-flung wireless network, it first needs a far-flung wireless
network. That's not as easy as scattering cellular transponders along the highway.
Whereas a single cell switching station can cover an entire town, most Wi-Fi signals
peter out after a few hundred feet. As a result, we'll need tens of thousands
of nodes nationwide before coverage can be considered even minimal. Wi-Fi's first
big commercial venture, MobileStar, went bankrupt while putting access points
— which can cost $4,000 each — in 550 Starbucks. Deploying a network
powerful enough to cover a good-size airport can run well over $500,000.
Link
to this item | Comment Loyal
opposition (cont.) : • Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia brings Questions
for the Commander in Chief from the regulars of Mary Ann's Restaurant, up
the road form the senator's home in Young Harris, Ga. And he prints the whole
warm, folksy thing in the Washington Post. Several of these
folks have previously worn the uniform of this country, some in combat. Not an
Ivy Leaguer in the bunch. Not a single one reads the New York Times, The Washington
Post or the Weekly Standard. And their television time is devoted mainly these
days to the evening news and to watching the Braves, who are close to clinching
another division pennant. I jotted down some of the questions that they
want the president to answer in building a case for going to Iraq.
The
last four are particularly interesting: (7) At Mary Ann's Restaurant,
Tony (Blair) is all right. But Putin is not. Why are we putting so much trust
in him? Is he still with us in the war on terrorism, or was that just so much
talk at a photo op? (8) The people at Mary Ann's know very well who fights
our wars -- the kids from the middle-class and blue-collar homes of America. Kids
like their grandchildren. They want to hear the president say that he knows and
understands that. (9) Forgive my bluntness, but these folks also want to
hear the president and the vice president say that this war is not about oil. (10)
They also want to hear an explanation of why we didn't take care of this in the
Persian Gulf War, and why it is on our doorstep again so soon.
 •
Helen Thomas, pioneering UPI White House correspondent, writes
in her most recent column for Hearst Newspapers,
What other
arrows do Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft
have in their quivers? Who or what might stop them? Maybe the courts will. They
seem to be more combative as more constitutional rights are being set aside. In
this atmosphere, many Americans have become wary of dissent and criticism of the
administration. Many Democrats, in particular, have lost their voices as the loyal
opposition. In the post-Sept. 11 era we have ventured into uncharted territory.
But I don't believe we have to lose our traditional spirit of tolerance or undermine
the primacy of our constitutional rights to win the war on terrorism. In
fact, if that happened, we would lose much more than we would gain.
•
When Vietnam Veterans Against the
War marched in Washington's peace demonstrations, it was no longer possible
for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew (both of whom would leave office in disgrace
before finishing their terms) to dismiss the antiwar movement as unpatriotic misfits.
In as essay headlined Ten
Reasons Why Many Gulf War Veterans Oppose Re-Invading Iraq, an anonymous Gulf
War combat veteran notes, "Our opinions should be solicited and heard before
troops deploy for battle, not after they have returned wounded, ill or in body
bags." Related: Veterans
For Peace ("Veterans Working Together for Peace & Justice Through
Non-violence. Wage Peace!") • Chickenhawk
Vs. Chicken Little: Many Iraq Hawks Have Never Seen Military Service. The
Washington Post pushed an underground concept into the national debate: Steve
Fowle, the editor and publisher of the independent bimonthly New
Hampshire Gazette, tracks the issue and keeps a compendium of hawkish politicians,
media personalities and government bureaucrats called the "Chickenhawk
Database". Fowle, a Vietnam veteran who said he is a registered independent,
created the Web site earlier this year on a lark, after chatting with fellow veterans
who developed a theory that war talk was being dominated in Washington by people
who never served in the military. "I sat down and did Google searches
on people that I thought were conspicuously vocal on the subject, and I suspected
didn't have military service," said Fowle, arguing that his theory proved
true. The list he came up with includes people who "think war is the solution
for whatever problem we've got. Yet there's a conspicuous absence there in the
late 1960s, of service among a lot of middle-aged guys now who tend to think war
is fact the answer to every problem we've got."
SmirkingChimp.com,
never one to pass up a broad opportunity, is offering Send
a Chickenhawk to Iraq swag (T-shirts, mugs, etc.) • War as
a product launch: Are advertising jingles next? In an interview
with the New York Times, Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff
who is coordinating the rollout of "a meticulously planned strategy to persuade
the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from
Saddam Hussein," discussed its timing: "From a marketing
point of view," (said Card,) "you don't introduce new products in August." A
centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's
speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq,
which could come early next year.
Mozilla
rising: "Netscape won't dislodge Internet Explorer from its
hegemony over browser space. But its open-source sibling is aiming at even bigger
game: Windows." Mozilla is a platform, not just a browser.
Link
to this item | Comment
How
long can you hold the button? There is no reward.
Link
to this item | Comment September
9, 2002
The loyal opposition:
• September
11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Peace Events - As the anniversary of the
September 11 tragedies that took our loved ones lives approaches, we ask for your
help to make this day a time to reflect on peace and healing. Peaceful Tomorrows
is organizing, participating in and promoting events that honor the universality
of grief and the hope for a peaceful world. • "News Dissector"
Danny Schecter,
blogging at mediachannel.org: "September 9: Only two days to go to the
round of September 11 commemorations I am dreading, as we drench ourselves in
memory without much perspective. The CNN Question of the Day is "who do you
want to lead the war on terror?" It is as if there is no other alternative.
War is what made CNN a global brand and cheering the next one on seems to be the
game plan in Atlanta." (The TV networks planning megacoverage must
have swallowed hard at First
Lady Laura Bush's asking parents to turn off the television on Sept. 11 and
instead read to their children and perhaps light a memorial candle, during in
an interview Friday with Univision, a Spanish-language cable TV network.) •
Cynthia Hoffman, September
11, 2002: Reflections from a Year's Distance You remember:
that freedom stuff we have that they all are supposed to hate us so much for.
Seems to me that those freedoms are at risk from precisely those peoples we elected
to protect them, not from a terrorist attack that never struck me as an attack
on freedom in the first place... I got hassled at work for not having a
flag at my desk; I got hassled on the road for not having a flag on my car; I
got hassled at home for not flying a flag on my front door. The last time I was
bothered at work about my patriotism, I pulled out my voter registration card
and demanded to see the other guy's. He walked away muttering under his breath,
but he never did show me one. So tell me, is it more patriotic to vote,
or to wave a flag?
Link
to this item | Comment Vote:
Tomorrow is primary election day in Rhode Island, the day candidates for various
offices vie to become the single candidate of their party in November's general
election. Here in R.I., a registered voter may become a Democrat or a Republican
for a few minutes -- just long enough to vote in one of the primaries. You'll
be asked which party's primary you want to vote in, and given that party's ballot.
If you want to keep your options open, you must "disaffiliate" after
you vote -- sign a form making you an independent voter again. (Officially, it
goes into effect after three months.) If you don't disaffiliate, you're a member
of that party. Where to vote:
Type in your address here and you'll be told where to vote. It's worth checking:
My polling place changed this year. Who's running: Profiles
of R.I.'s top-of-the-ticket candidates on projo.com. Much more info is available
here.
Link
to this item | Comment Imaginations
run riot: Selected folk art
environments in the U.S. Also cool: narrow
Larry's links page.
Link to this item
| Comment
Magazines
that think: Not all publishing is going the way of Rolling Stone lite.
Media Life reports, It looks like those who like to have their
neurons stimulated along with their retinas haven’t been totally forgotten. This
summer saw the debuts of two new magazines for book lovers, Bookmarks and Speakeasy.
A third one, the Readerville Journal, launches this fall, along with Common Good,
a new non-partisan political magazine... Two established intellectual magazines,
Lingua Franca and the Oxford American, are in the midst of resuscitating themselves
Link
to this item | Comment
Ambitious Plan To Give Sight To The Blind: "A
Thousand Points Of Light" No Longer A Metaphor Enabling
the blind to see - a task once thought the province of miracles - is the goal
of a technical team that includes Sandia National Laboratories, four other national
labs, a private company, and two universities. The idea, funded by a $9 million,
three-year grant from the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental
Research, is to create 1,000 points of light through 1,000 tiny MEMs [microelectromechanical
systems] electrodes. The electrodes will be positioned on the retinas of those
blinded by diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.
These diseases damage rods and cones in the eye that normally convert light to
electrical impulses, but leave intact the neural paths to the brain that transport
electrical signals. Eventually the input from rods and cones ceases, but 70 to
90 percent of nerve structures set up to receive those inputs remain intact. "The
aim is to bring a blind person to the point where he or she can read, move around
objects in the house, and do basic household chores," says Sandia project
leader Kurt Wessendorf. "They won't be able to drive cars, at least in the
near future, because instead of millions of pixels, they'll see approximately
a thousand. The images will come a little slowly and appear yellow. But people
who are blind will see."
Link
to this item | Comment
Subterranean
Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features
& interactive producer of projo.com | 
