March 2003 Archive Page

"At this writing, SARS appears to have killed 49 people out of 1323 afflicted according to the World Health Organization, a death rate of less than four percent. In Hong Kong, that alleged 'worst medical disaster' has killed ten people out of 316 known victims. But since this only takes into account those ill enough to seek medical help, the actual ratio of deaths to infections is certainly far less." Michael Fumento

--"Super-Pneumonia" or Super Scare? (Fumento)

Mysterious diseases are exciting. And a disease that claims the life of its discoverer and sparks what may become an international incident is dramatic. But journalists are often wrong about science, so this opposing view is welcome. Nevertheless, look at the full title of the above article, which is prefaced by: "Bestselling author and syndicated columnist Michael Fumento reports," and which is posted on an eponymous website. There's nothing wrong with promoting yourself by giving away stuff for free, but that title is overblown.

"Every day, tens of thousands of people turn to the Web seeking updates from a mysterious scribe whose detailed accounts of life in besieged Baghdad have made him a cyberspace celebrity. | Little is known for sure about Salam Pax, whose nom de plume means 'peace' in Arabic and Latin. But his Web journal -- ostensibly written from his Baghdad home -- vividly criticizes the authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-British war on his nation." --Mysterious Baghdad Web log keeper captivates cyberspaceUSA Today)

An editor sat on this story too long. Salaam Pax hasn't posted in over a week.

"Unfortunately, teaching well doesn't mean that most kids will enjoy it, certainly not most of the time.... I describe the agony of Valley Forge. I show kids the simple genius of the Constitution. I let them test the principles in the Bill of Rights. I tell them about the Trail of Tears and Dred Scott. I read them Lincoln's words, 'charity for all and malice toward none.' I try to explain how our nation metamorphosed from an international joke to the world's preeminent power in just slightly more than one hundred years.... | I tell my students I won't live forever. I tell them to look around the room, that the nation is filled with classrooms just like theirs and students who care just as much or as little as they do. Then I ask how many of them will be ready to inherit the republic." Peter Berger wages a lonely war against teaching as entertainment. --History and the Heirs of the RepublicIrascible Professor)

"I get a perverse pleasure out of being here. CNN dumped me, and I think unfairly. Tailwind was almost a deathblow to my career, no doubt about it. (In 1999 Arnett was fired by CNN after delivering a report that U.S. forces used nerve gas on U.S. defectors during the Vietnam War. The story, dubbed Tailwind, was later determined to be untrue. Arnett defended himself by saying that he was only the story's narrator, rather than the reporter behind the story.) I've known all my life that you cannot afford to make a serious mistake in credibility in journalism. You are dead if you do. I felt that I had to dig myself out after Tailwind and I had to consider how best to redeem myself." Peter Arnett, trotted out by his new employers MSNBC/National Geographic, a few days before getting fired for a "stupid misjudgement" on Iraqi TV.

--Peter Arnett: Shortest Comeback EverNat'l Geographic)

Is this a free speech issue? No.... MSNBC and National Geographic should be allowed to hire or fire whomever they wish. Arnett's defense in the Tailwind scandal was that he was simply lending his celebrity name and voice to a lower-profile reporter's work. That was at the very least an error in judgment. By agreeing to be interviewed on Iraqi's state-controlled TV, where he offered his personal opinion on the progress of the war (something few journalists are qualified to assess), where the translation was provided by someone in military uniform, he demonstrates that he has not learned his lesson. Update: Not to be outdone, Fox's Geraldo gets himself ejected from Iraq. Update: Geraldo denies it.

"Miss Dahl was one of numerous students in her class who chose to make speeches about abortion, and most took the anti-abortion side. | 'I was shocked that there were that many students who felt strong enough and confident enough to speak about being pro-life,' said Nina Verin, a parent of another student in the class (whose oral argument was about war in Iraq). 'The people I associate with in town are pro-choice, so I'm troubled -- where do these kids come from?'" Elizabeth Hyatt

--Surprise, Mom: I'm Anti-Abortion (NY Times)

I really doubt that Dahl, the young woman referred to in the story's headline, would say "Mom, I'm anti-abortion," just as a young woman whose beliefs moved in the opposite direction wouldn't say, "Mom, I'm anti-fetus." Verin and several other non-journalists quoted in the story use parallel language to frame the issue: "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life". The article notes the rhetorical effectiveness of the phrase "partial-birth abortion" vs. the more clinical, less emotional "dilation and extraction". I was intrigued by the reporter's reference to new imaging techniques that make a fetus "seem more human." When weighing the rights of a pregnant woman against the status of a fetus, how much of the argument is rightly determined by perception, rather than scientific fact that exists independent of observation. A fascinating set of issues to ponder. One big question -- why is this in the "Fashion" section of the newspaper?

"Language bullying... advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky.... I suspect many of Bush's critics would want to avoid the distasteful varieties of prescriptivism that amount to little more than 'white speech good, black speech bad.' But once we 'go nuclear' on 'nucular,' it's hard to see how different we are from prescriptivists who sneer at the inventiveness of non-standard English. Lots of people other than Bush say 'nucular.' It even follows its own rhetorical logic..." Andy Lamey --Going Nuclear over NucularNational Post)

"Perhaps [the] most accurate metaphor for this war occurs whenever the news runs a feed from an Arabic language station. Our crawl runs in one direction; theirs runs in the other. You almost expect the crawls to twine like DNA and start fighting - and in that case, the English language would lose. Arabic is so spiky. However lovely the poetic sentiments might be, it still looks like knives and swords to me." James Lileks ponders the media-saturated war coverage. --Lileks Introduces Orality and Literacy Theory to the Battlefield:Bleats)

Via All But Dissertation, from whence comes the title.

"[T]he Civilization series is infused with an American ideology that is comforting insofar as it justifies genocidal practices and the stealing of land by positing an empty virgin continent....Among other ideological effects, Civilization III makes inevitable, natural and universal several Western-centered ideas of technological progress, the use of the land, and the opposition between 'civilization' and 'savagery.' In this way, historical specificity is forgotten, and the game reinforces the sense that those who have been displaced were only ever natural obstacles erupting randomly from the wilderness to block (American) civilization's advance.... A player playing the Iroquois nation, or India, for example, might dominate the game, crushing opponents such as the Americans and the British and the Chinese, and win by either defeating everyone else or by sending a colony ship to Alpha Centauri (Civilization II's and III's other 'winning condition'). In a lovely moment of irony and anachronism, a player playing Mohandas Gandhi (the game's suggested ruler name for one playing as India, whose robed portrait appears during the diplomacy screens), might face down and conquer Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and others. What would be revealed in such a narrative is the contingency of human history; that things might have turned out differently..." Christopher Douglas

--"You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!": Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming DisciplinesPostmodern Culture)

About six years ago, Chris and I were graduate research assistants, working on the University of Toronto English Library for Ian Lancashire. I recall he spent quite a lot of time playing Civilization II, and had figured out how to crush the computer at the highest level. "I never negotiate," he said.

"In health care, the visual clues about an institution'score values and the quality of care are particularly difficult to separate from the actual service because people spend significant time in the facility?some stay for days or even weeks. The physical environment is also connected to medical outcomes: The potential of design to promote healing through stress reduction has been documented in dozens of studies." Leonard L. Berry and Neeli Bendapudi --Why Docs Don't Wear White Coats Or Polo Shirts at the Mayo ClinicHBS Working Knowledge)

Via Webword.

I recently heard that the talk I proposed has been accepted to BlogTalk - A European Conference On Weblogs. Here is the abstract I sent:

I plan to examine the language bloggers use to describe their activities, in terms of the "meme" (or some variant, such as the virulent persistence of the "blogging urge") and the "conduit" (as embodied by metablogging tools such as Blogdex, or concepts such as "trackbacks"). If time permits, I would also like to examine the language journalists use when describing bloggers.

Because Vannevar Bush described his hypothetical document-association tool "memex" as a means for linking pages from disparate sources, the memex is frequently invoked in histories of hypertext; yet Bush also sees his memex as a means for a new kind of intellectual activity -- the free exchange of complex, annotated association schemas (what Bush called "trails"). Before the development of weblogs, hypertext as experienced by the vast majority of non-specialists (that is, those who are not professional hypertext theorists or web designers) only crudely implemented the "writerly" potential of electronic text. If bloggers can be seen as building their own trails of annotated links, then metablogging implements a crucial, interactive element of Bush's vision.

I will examine this premise in terms of Dawkins's "meme" (a free-floating bit of cultural knowledge) and Reddy's "conduit metaphor" (the means by which language transmits knowledge from person to person). According to Humphrey, "memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell." Reddy, a linguist, draws upon the metaphors people actually use when talking about knowledge, and observes two major implementations of a conduit metaphor. In the first, the communicator assembles ideas into a package (a sentence, a gesture), which is then transmitted to the audience, extracted, and interpreted. In the second, the communicator releases a flood of thoughts, words and ideas, which may or may not be picked up by an audience, but are nevertheless "out there".

While blogging does not encourage the kind of careful, studied reflection traditionally associated with the construction of monolithic knowledge, blogging culture involves a system of checks and balances, relying upon ready access to full text versions of cited sources and full access to archives, in order to keep bloggers intellectually honest with one another. While bloggers may be non-experts at programming or hypertext theory, they often become experts at blogging their subject of choice (even when that subject is intensely personal), and thus participate in the exchange of annotated links that Vannevar Bush imagined would be a vast boon to the professional's intellectual life. In such an environment, blogging permits non-programmers to experience, with much greater ease, the power of hypertext authorship.

Dennis G. Jerz --(Meme)X Marks the Spot: Theorizing Metablogging in Terms of Dawkins's Meme and Reddy's Conduit (Literacy Weblog)

"Dennis Jerz asked me a question about the length of time it takes for a Google query to be performed. We resolved this with a series of 50 tests to determine an answer." Elwyn Jenkins

--Google Search Speeds: Overpopulation and Underpopulation ComparedMicrodoc News)

Thanks, Elwyn.

"The year 2000 marked a turning point, with the population’s 'momentum' becoming negative; there will be fewer parents in the next generation than in this one."

--Europe Shrinking as Birthrates DeclineTimes)

This is a straightforward summary of an article to be published in Science. It might have been a more interesting article if it interviewed someone from one of the overpopulation scare groups. Let's try a little experiment:

• Google hits on "overpopulation": "about 121,000. Search took 0.05 seconds".
• Google hits on "underpopulation": "about 1,170. Search took 0.11 seconds".

Hmm... why did it take Google take 100% longer to find 1% of the hits? Is it because the "underpopulation" websites are more obscure? Help me, Elwyn (who, I see, has now broadened his focus from Google in particular to "exercising personal power in the Information Age").

A current headline on an Australian news site: "Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim".

--Ambiguous HeadlineLiteracy Weblog)

The news here is that Al-Qaeda forces appear to be in Iraq, but the phrase "fighting with" has two contradictory meanings. How about "Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Fighting Coalition, British Claim".

"THE world's biggest rubber band ball has been dropped from an aeroplane a mile up... Experts thought the ball would bounce hundreds of feet into the air.|Instead, it created a massive crater..." --This is Very DumbicWales)

"'With few exceptions, modern scholars see the witch as essentially female,' write Lara Apps and Andrew Gow. 'The male witch vanishes quickly from view, as he is made invisible by a combination of rhetorical strategies.' Male Witches in Early Modern Europe is the first book on the subject, and it is an outstandingly good one. You will find no suspiciously neat theories here. But it is provocative - savagely so in places, as these two young Canadian historians blaze away at an older generation of doctrinaire feminists." Damian Thompson reviews Male Witches in Early Modern Europe by Lara Apps and Andrew Gow --The Victims of the Witch Hunt History Would Rather ForgetTelegraph)

My book on American drama has a few bits about the anti-communist "witch hunts," and in researching them I recall coming across the following rebuttal to those who compared medieval (and later) witch hunts to the House Unamerican Activities hearings. Despite what new-agers say about the supposed religion of Wiccans, there is no such thing as witchcraft, and hence, no such thing as witches. Yet, in America in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, there really were communists at various levels of the government and in Hollywood. But the review ends by admonishing today's readers not to forget the context in which these witch hunts took place: "It is easy to exaggerate the pathological dimensions of the anti-witch panic; we need to remember that, for early modern Europeans, the existence of evil magic was a foregone conclusion, as self-evident as the earth's orbit around the sun is for us. They did not 'believe' that witches existed: they knew it, and they acted accordingly."

"Field Guide to Stains is a lovely little book. It's beautifully produced and designed. The writing is sharp, the advice is good and the photos are appropriately illustrative. You just have to wonder: Who the hell cares?" Sienna Powers reviews some dumb books. --What Were They Thinking?January Magazine)

Via KairosNews.

"In much of the 20th Century, there was a widespread denial of the existence of human nature in Western intellectual life, and I will just present three representative quotations. 'Man has no nature,' from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett. 'Man has no instincts,' from the anthropologist and public intellectual Ashley Montagu. 'The human brain is capable of a full range of behaviors and predisposed to none,' from the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. | I think, however, that in recent times there has been a rediscovery and a reacknowledgement of the idea that humans have a nature as well as a history." Steven Pinker

--Human Nature and Its FuturePresident's Council on Bioethics)

The first question from the audience raised important issues about the public understanding of science, especially when the public at large is asked to make policy decisions (by electing representatives with particular stands on issues relating to bioethics). Jim, who suggested the link, rather cheekily asks, "Could we breed journalists?"

"A few years ago, Tony Alleyne's marriage broke down. In search of solace, Tony turned to his love of science fiction. Star Trek was particularly good at helping him cope, so much so that he transformed his flat into a replica of the Starship Enterprise." --The Final TouchBBC)

The apartment's currently being auctioned on e-bay. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

"If Canada's security had been threatened, he said the United States would respond immediately. 'There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation. We would be there for Canada, part of our family.' | It was that reference to family, hokey though it might sound, that rang most true of all. 'Canada is not there for us,' he said, at a time when U.S. security is threatened. What made it ring true is this. The greatest threat to Canadian security in recent decades has been Quebec independence. And when Quebec separatism last threatened Canada, via the 1995 referendum, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien did indeed make that 'family' call to the United States for assistance." Terence Corcoran responds to comments by US Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci.

--The US Was There for CanadaCanada.com)

I lived in Canada for six years, and saw plenty of ill-informed knee-jerk anti-Americanism (from rabid fans of the transplanted Toronto Blue Jays and folks who were unable to define Canada in any way other than identifiying it as not American). But I'm reminded of how much it meant to me and my fellow Americans when Canadian Gordon Sinclair's 1973 radio editorial spread via e-mail after the 9.11.2001 terrorist attacks. Whether you agree or disagree with the ambassador whose comments are quoted above, Corcoran's analysis is worth pondering seriously.

"It started as a routine downtown patrol. An officer cruised a sports bar, then went behind the bar to rinse off his hands and looked up as a fight broke out in the crowd. As it grew, tavern employees intervened, trying to muscle the combatants outta the bar. The officer helped, and even in the cooling outside air, the antagonists continued to go at it. Arcata Police asked for help and before long were hosting their own fairly formidable badge 'n' acronym party, guests being HSUPD, HCSO and the CHP. 'Have HSUPD head this way with a taser,' reads the narrative. Confronted by a phalanx of glinting badges, the watering-hole warriors slammed their car doors in wussy surrogate defiance and drove off."

--Arcata Eye Police Log (Arcata Eye)

A stunningly beautiful police activity report from a small town newspaper. Weeks and weeks of backlogs, with some reports written up as limericks. Thanks for suggesting yet another another alternative to productive work, Matt.

"The arrogance of technology companies knows no bounds. Consider the Terms of Service at a new company called Mailblocks, which says it'll block spam (unsolicited commerical e-mail) for you, for a price that includes not just money but also the right to send you commercial e-mail."

Note: Dan Gillmor has posted an update/correction from Mailblocks: "This was boilerplate we got from attorneys many months ago, and was supposed to be replaced at launch." --Terms of Disservice [Mailblocks]Dan Glimor)

Paying for a spam-blocking service and then giving it the right to spam your mailbox is absolutely stupid. If it were free, well maybe it would be worthwhile to clear the clutter from your in-box and limit your spam to a few topics of your choosing.... but using the service described above is like paying for thugs to beat you up. I didn't see this little detail trumpeted in the company press releases.

--My Poor Life: The Tales of a Web EditorMPL Comics)

So far there are a total of 3 comics in the My Poor Life archives. Looks promising. Via WebWord.

"Gemini Elementary School teacher Stacy Stinson told school officials she gave assistance to her fifth-grade students on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, citing the extreme pressure teachers and students are under to perform well on the test."

--Teacher admits helping students on FCAT Florida Today)

When teachers cheat to help their students (and thus protect their job), what kind of messge are they sending about the value of an education? We need more heroes like Christine Pelton, who failed a quarter of her students for copying sentences or paragraphs from web sites and submitting them as their own work. (One student who says he split a sentence he found on a website into two shorter sentences says that shouldn't count as plagiarism, since he didn't use the sentence word-for-word.) Pelton resigned from her teaching job, and the last I heard she was opening a daycare center in her home. What a loss to the students who might otherwise have been in her class, and what a loss to the society those students will one day join.

A rather sobering response to a hard-working teacher's request for advice for how she can increase her teaching evaluation scores:
"Simplest of all, you can give higher grades, which do correlate with student ratings. You can use more hand gestures, modulate your voice more, and walk while you talk. Students give higher evaluations to teachers who are good-looking or very dramatic. This is called 'the Dr. Fox effect,' named for a hired actor who purported to be 'Dr. Fox' and who gave a nonsensical university lecture in a wildly entertaining style, and got outstanding student evaluations for his brilliance."

Now, advice that doesn't require teachers to get plastic surgery or take acting lessons:
"Learn students' names, create discussion circles, assign hands-on group projects, require in-class presentations, encourage role-playing. Today's students learn by doing -- making a Civil War-era quilt from info they find on the Internet, writing a sonnet or song, cooking the quail in rose petal sauce from Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. You may fear that you're somehow denying your students access to The Expert (you). But especially if they are teenagers, most of them would really rather interact with each other than listen to you." Ms Mentor --The Torment of Teaching EvaluationsChronicle)

"Today, tens of thousands of underused computers, neglected Internet modems and turned-off TV sets gather dust in classrooms. Meanwhile, many teachers continue to rely on fill-in-the-blank workbooks, overhead projectors, chalkboards and 50-minute lectures. Electronic technology has revolutionized 21st-century work, but not 21st-century learning....Students seldom used modern, interactive instructional software. I did see teachers get e-mail during their breaks and a library aide watching afternoon soap operas on a big-screen TV." James Guthrie --Computer Idle in Public SchoolsUSA Today)

"They file real-time reports with equipment that is a fraction of the cost and size of conventional, shoulder-mounted cameras and other gear. They file primarily for the Web, with images they've edited themselves at the scene, and occassionally contribute to television. | The technology has resulted in streaming video from the most remote places on earth. It has also enabled a new breed of reporter, known as a 'backpack journalist,' who often has greater mobility and flexibility than a camera crew."

--New Technology Breeds the "Backpack Journalist"WashPost)

If more mainstream reporters start using this kind of equipment, perhaps the mainstream media will publish fewer Internet scare stories. Still, note that the article presents television as the medium that the backpack journalists must compete with. I'd rather see this as a professionalization of an ethos already well-established by the efforts of hundreds of thousands of lone-wolf bloggers. The links comes from Rosemary, who also suggests an article on how text-messaging may change the patient-doctor relationship.

"Students rarely post the default away message that comes with the [instant messenger] program. ("I am away from my computer right now," for example, comes with AOL Instant Messenger, the program of choice on college campuses.) Instead, they create their own, transforming the away message into a kind of personal bulletin board available to anyone who cruises by. | They post a little of everything: news, quotes, schedules, song lyrics, birthday greetings, party invitations, jokes, veiled insults, confessions, exclamations, complaints. The messages may be meaningful to everybody, somebody or nobody."

--Making a Statement, in AbsentiaNY Times (Registration req'd))

The article refers to the pressure that some youths feel when they gain a reputation as someone who writes good away messages. I suppose that pressure is something like the pressure bloggers feel. It might be interesting to compare IM "away messages" with the static pictures that webcam operators use for much the same purpose. When I was an undergraduate in the late 80s, I recall the amount of time my friends and I spent personalizing telephone answering machine messages, sometimes enlisting groups of four or more people to take different parts in little dramas. But our parents had to use the telephone to contact us, and most of us shared telephones with our roommates, and when we started looking for summer jobs or internships, we had to ensure that our answering machine message appeared serious and professional. Perhaps youths don't really expect adult emissaries from the real world to get in touch with them via IM -- though of course, Mom or Dad might have taken up the habit in order to be a part of their kids' lives.

"It was Milton's Satan and Dante's Inferno that made them two of the most powerful Christian artists of all time. Because they understood evil and did not shrink from it, their depictions of goodness had power. In order to be redemptive, art has to convince us there is something real from which we need redeeming. | Conversely, much secular art in the last half-century illustrates confusion and pain brilliantly but provides no antidote." Eric Metaxas --To End All Christian FilmsChristianity Today)

Waking Ned Divine is a charming movie about a tiny Irish community that schemes to support a plot involving impersonating the dead winner of a lottery. While surfing around to find context for a posting on Richard Rorty, I came across this surprising article by Crystal Downing. Here's an exerpt:

"Rorty's neopragmatic ethic is grounded in "we-intentions": immorality is "the sort of thing we don't do"2?like defy the "intentions" of an entire village to share a dead man's lottery winnings. Of course, these weren't always the "we-intentions" of the community in Waking Ned Devine; the new solidarity of Tullymore is shaped by the two protagonists who see potential for positive change. Jackie and Michael thus illustrate Rorty's concept of irony: a force that brings into view the contingency of a community's vocabulary. Ironists prevent a community from stagnating or becoming legalistic, providing "new metaphors" for new contexts. A metaphor, of course, is when one object represents another: "My love is a red, red rose." In Waking Ned Devine, one person represents another: Michael O'Sullivan is Ned Devine, an incarnated metaphor that benefits the entire village." --Richard Rorty for the Silver Screen: Waking Ned DevineChristianity Today)

"You do not have to be very conservative to find him startling... How could anyone, for instance, seriously hold, as Rorty has, that "truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with," or that "no area of culture, and no period of history, gets Reality more right than any other"? Is it really possible to hold that only "old-fashioned metaphysical prigs" talk unblushingly of truth any more?...His hostility to the notion of "representation" is that for him it goes along with the idea of an objective reality - which has replaced God in peoples' minds - as constituting this authority." Richard RortyProspect)

Rorty is either a pragmatist or a moral relativist, depending upon whom you ask.

"What's wrong with Google? Well, it's boastful. It can't keep itself from telling you how inconceivably fast it is. Ask it for information on Chinese archaeology and it compiles 29,400 links, adding: 'search took 0.14 seconds.' Please, not so pushy, Google. Sometimes I don't feel like being reminded that Google both thinks and acts faster than I can even imagine." --Agog over GoogleNat't Post (Canada))

"Coalition Forces are prepared and well trained to defend themselves against chemical weapon attacks. | Your comrades and innocent Iraqi people will be victims if Saddam uses chemical weapons." PsyOps leaflet

--Leaflets Dropped 23 March 2003Information Warfare Site)

And here's an amusing satirical piece on The Wacky Iraqi: "United States Changes its Name to 'Coalition'." (According to the website, the author is an American who happens to be of Arab descent.)

"My mother started keeping the list when I started the first grade. My school asked parents to keep track of what books we read as part of its reading program. She kept the list until 1977 and I've kept the list since I was in the fifth grade." Eric W. Leuliette --What Have I Read Since 1974WhatHaveIRead.net)

?For many Americans, French'smustard IS Americana. It'sall about baseball, hot dogs, family and fun,? says Elliot Penner, president of French'smustard. Via Dave Barry. --In Case You Were Boycotting French's Mustard...Press Release)

It's amazing that people have time for stupid stuff like this, when there are far more important things to worry about.

"It's not about us, and never was. We just run an amateur news and commentary website, and sell bumper stickers to try to make ends meet (which they never do). Being "disallowed" by Google was only a minor inconvenience for us.|For a lot of people, though, it would be a much bigger problem. And it has implications that seem worrisome." --Google Refuses "Who Would Jesus Bomb" AdUnknown News)

"Whatever anyone may say about weapons of mass destruction, or about Saddam's savage brutality to his own people, the reason Bush can now get away with his war is that a sufficient number of Americans, including, apparently, Bush himself, see it as revenge for 9/11. This is worse than bizarre. It is pure racism and/or religious prejudice." Richard Dawkins --Bin Laden's VictoryGuardian)

"Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to face. I told a few journalists who I knew. They said that this sort of thing often happened - spontaneous, emotional, and secretive outbursts imploring visitors to free them from Saddam's tyrannical Iraq." Daniel Pepper --I Was a Naive Fool to be a Human Shield for SaddamTelegraph)

I've been cut off from the Internet almost all week, sadly reduced to switching between CNN and FOX to get differing views of the war. That's nothing like what I've gotten in the last few hours I've been skimming the blogosphere. CNN and FOX never comment on each other.

On FOX, Ollie North's account of watching the helicopter crash that killed 4 Americans and 8 Brits was quite moving. The video footage of the US soldier cutting down the picture of Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi guy bopping the beloved leader on his nose with his sandal, was priceless, though I was annoyed by the clownish Steve Doocey's smirking weather reports and his pointing out, seemingly every five minutes, how amazing it was to see live pictures from the war zone.

Over on CNN, Wolf Blitzer looked rather embarassed and foolish ending his reports by reading e-mails from TV viewers, and inviting folks to surf over to "www.cnn.com/wolf" (why not "/blitzer"?)for the personality-driven infotainment of death (not in those exact words, of course).Catching Up on the WarLiteracy Weblog)

"If he starts reporting US soldiers are raping civilians and noone else reports it his authenticity becomes an issue, but so far, he's only given plain reports of what it's like being in Bagdad during bombing. If that's propaganda, I think I'll take it." Jill Walker offers a good summary of war-related blogging links. --The Bagdad Bloggerjill/txt)

I've been on a short hiatus from blogging because I spent Spring Break house-hunting in Pennsylvania.

Assuming there are no glitches in the closing process, shortly after the semester ends I'll be moving to the new house just outside of Greensburg, PA, just 6.5 miles from Seton Hill University, where I will take "a leadership role" in the creation of a new media journalism program.

It's our first home purchase. We rented in a high-rise apartment in Toronto when we first got married, then we rented a duplex when we came to Wisconsin. We flew from Wisconsin to Pittsburgh with our two small children, and my parents drove from the Washington, D.C. area to meet us at the airport and drive us around all week. They were a great help. As far as the house-hunting goes, my wife actually did all the work (pre-approving the loan, finding a realtor, pre-screening the houses the realtor suggested, etc.). I just tagged along.House Hunting in PennsylvaniaLiteracy Weblog)

"I sometimes wonder whether I am really being effective in my job spending half the time in e-mail, half the time on the phone, and the other half doing real work. | It's no surprise that entrepreneurs have seen that there's money to be made in taming this e-mail mess. The most innovative products I saw at Demo were programs designed to keep e-mail away from me, organize it, or make the information it contains accessible to colleagues who need it." Stewart Alsop --There's a Killer App on the Loose--But I'm on the CaseFortune (beware popups))

"Media note links between 'weblogs' and 'Iraq'" Jorn Barger --Google: Weblog + IraqRobot Wisdom)

"[A] growing group of military thinkers is questioning the U.S. military's reliance on gadgetry.|U.S. precision weapons, Predator drones, and the like were less responsible for recent victories in Afghanistan and in the first Gulf War than is generally assumed, they argue. And increasing American dependence on technology leaves U.S. troops dangerously vulnerable to low-tech attacks." --Taking Aim at Military TechnologyWired)

"This leaves two channels: Iraq TV and Shabab (youth) TV. They are still full of patriotic songs and useless 'news', they love the French here. We also saw the latest Sahaf show on Al-Jazeera and Iraq TV, and the most distressing minister of Interior affairs with his guns. Freaks. Hurling abuse at the world is the only thing left for them to do.|On BBC we are watching scenes of Iraqis surrendering. My youngest cousin was muttering 'what shame' to himself, yes it is better for them to do that but still seeing them carrying that white flag makes something deep inside you cringe." Raed

--Dear RaedDear Raed)

This appears to be the weblog of a young Iraqi in Baghdad. Thanks for the suggestion, Jan.

"The cost to burrow down is dropping, while the price (and hassle) of erecting a skyscraper in a dense urban area just keeps rising. The breakthrough comes thanks to tunneling technologies that are now being used on huge transportation projects, like Boston's Big Dig and Moscow's Lefortovo highway tunnel project. Over the next 10 years these techniques will be used to hollow out space beneath the world's great cities." [Elmer Rice's 1926 play The Subway prefigures some of these observations. Here's a passage from Technology in American Drama:

[The Subway] opens in a windowless office at the Subway Construction Company, which builds tunnels far below the ground and skyscrapers high above it.... The office manager, Bradley, who disapproves of the rose on Sophie'sdesk, is a committed futurist: ?The light is artificial and indirect. Its color and intensity have been determined by a long series of expert tests. It never varies: day and night, summer and winter, rain or shine, it is always the same; unvarying in its brightness and efficiency? (16). He praises a working scenario much like the one Tom Wingfield [the hero of The Glass Menagerie] finds unbearable and which social historian Lewis Mumford --Sub-Urban Renewal: Thanks to new tunneling technologies, real estate trends are down. Way down.Wired)

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, 1961.] would later critique: "With air conditioning and all day fluorescent lighting, the internal spaces in the new American skyscraper are little different from what they would be a hundred feet below the surface. No extravagance in mechanical equipment is too great to produce this uniform internal environment: though the technical ingenuity spent on fabricating sealed in buildings cannot create the equivalent of an organic background for human functions and activities" (480?81).

See also the underground worker cities in Metropolis.

Silly title for a news summary of a University of Pittsburgh study. The study found students who used spell- and grammar-check made more errors than students who just used their head. Of students who were asked to revise a passage without the spell checker, those with higher SAT's did a much better job (5 errors) than those with lower SATs (12 errors). But when students used Microsoft's grammar- and spell-check, both groups made more errors, and the students with higher SATs (16 errors) lost their advantage over the rest (17 errors).

--Spell Czech, for Better or Wurst? (NewsObserver.com)

I should note that the study sample was a whopping 33 students. I wish the reporter would have included a reference to where the study was/will be published. Via KairosNews.

"Now that almost all of her books are out of print, however, she may be best known as the Doris Day character in the treacly 1960 film version of Please Don't Eat the Daisies, which erases Kerr's extraordinary literary career and morphs her into a home remodeling-obsessed, suburban stay-at-home mom. While the movie's producers may have been trying to streamline Kerr's discursive collection of essays into a standard-issue Hollywood plotline, the result completely misses the point of Kerr's work: She wrote about combining work and family at a time when that was still an unusual choice for an upper-middle-class mother." Elizabeth Austin --Giving Mirth [Appreciation of Jean Kerr]Washington Monthly)

Ron Zeno has posted a summary of and a few comments on Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (Justin Kruger and David Dunning - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).

People are generally pretty bad at estimating their own performances (the people who are worst at a skill grossly overestimate their ability because they don't know enough about the skill to recognize their own mistakes) and those who are best tend to underestimate their ability (probably because they know enough about the subject that they're aware of how much they don't know, and they can more easily spot their own mistakes). --Critical Thinking, Human FactorsRon's Ramblings)

"Time and again the public has shown its willingness to help produce happy endings. Citizens' use of the Amber Alert is credited with saving 47 kidnapped children. In its 15-year history, America's Most Wanted claims viewers have helped capture 746 criminals featured on the show. | Those successes aren't merely the result of miracles. They happen when an alert public gets clear and timely information."

--To Crack More Crimes, Arm Citizens with InformationUSA Today)

A feel-good essay for a jittery and weary nation. Information is powerful. Information in the hands of trained experts is more powerful. Information in the hands of armies of amateurs is more powerful still -- provided the experts have a good mechanism for filtering the good info from the bad. Police were slow to act on a tip provided by Elizabeth Smart's little sister (who witnessed the abduction and fingered a suspect). Shortly after they publicized the sister's info, they had their suspects and Elizabeth was back in her family's arms. In the Beltway sniper case, police didn't release their information about a burgundy sedan, and the public went wild chasing down white trucks. Shortly after the news about the burgundy sedan was leaked, the police had their suspects. But releasing information to the public has its downsides, too -- remember Richard Jewell, the security guard whom the media nearly crucified in connection with the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing in 1996.

"Crafting pages that work well with search engines and users is a black art. Chris Sherman sheds some light on the subject, and offers some SEO writing resources. Dr. Dennis Jerz, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire also has some excellent blurb and headline writing advice." Andy King

--Writing for Search EnginesWebReference)

I gave Andy some publicity yesterday, and now he has featured some of my work in his newsletter. Spread a little "link love" when you get the chance.

"Ridiculous comments, such as Dan Gillmor's claim that 'with the advent of weblogging, the readers know more than the journalists' only stoke the fires of hyperbole and do not help us understand this new tool. | Blogging is not journalism. | Often it is as far from journalism as it is possible to get, with unsubstantiated rumour, prejudice and gossip masquerading as informed opinion." Bill Thompson --Is Google Too Powerful?BBC (Feb 21))

Thompson is right. Blogging is not the same thing as journalism. But often, blogging is better than journalism.

"It is becoming clear that millions of people are turning to weblogs for news, information, commentary and entertainment -? just for the pure joy of taking in writing that's vivid, vibrant, telegenic, emotion-laden, and driven by personal experience rather than the formula of detachment that deadens far too much traditional journalism. | What does it take to be an online journalist? You don't need a professional publication with a slick Web site behind you, though it doesn't hurt. All you really need is a computer, Internet connection, and an ability to perform some of the tricks of the trade: report what you observe, analyze events in a meaningful way, but most of all, just be honest and tell the truth." J.D. Lasica --Random acts of journalism: Beyond 'Is it or isn't it journalism?': How blogs and journalism need each other (JD's New Media Musings)

The "group hug" tone of this article is perhaps a bit... treacly. But I can't say I disagree with any of it.

"Roughly 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the United States is spam, up from 8 percent in late 2001 and nearly doubling in the past six months, according to Brightmail Inc., a major vendor of anti-spam software. By the end of this year, industry experts predict, fully half of all e-mail will be unsolicited." --Spam's Cost To Business Escalates: Bulk E-Mail Threatens Communication Arteries WashPost)

Be sure to forward this link to all the people on your mailing list.

"During the course of this semester, you'll have ample opportunity to explore the Star Trek Universe, beginning with an essay about your journey through hyperspace, an involved research paper, and a final assignment either comparing the Star Trek Universe to another area of Sci-Fi, or creating your own part of the Star Trek Universe by writing a short screen play or short story adaptation." Charlie Lowe

--ENC1145: Writing about Star Trek: The Original Series (Florida State U/Cyberdash)

So, Charlie... how did it go? It's courses like this that make me want to be an undergraduate again. "Wesley Crusher... I envy you. For you, the adventure is just beginning." -- Picard, "Final Mission"

"My personal business card says I'm a Digital Medievalist. | It's the best way to describe my training, my occupation, and my interests. | I am trained as a medievalist. I started studying medieval English literature as an undergraduate, and am currently completing a doctoral dissertation in Medieval English and Celtic literatures (I'm writing about fairies, really). Though my academic training predisposes me to work in the realm of codices and manuscripts, my professional life has frequently been in the silicon realm....The combination of digital technology and medieval studies isn't as unusual as you might think. We medievalists are surprisingly technologically savvy; there's a lot you can do with a scanner, some manuscripts and a computer." Lisa Spangenberg --What's a Digital Medievalist?Digital Medievalist)

Lisa also keeps an instructional technology blog.

My book, Technology in American Drama, will be published shortly. I have no intention of flogging it endlessly on my blog, but as I was doing some final (I hope) paperwork and checking the page my publisher devoted to the book, I spotted the "printer friendly book flyer" link. When you click it, the browser opens up a new window, with a pop-up informing me that, in order for the flyer to print properly, I'll have to go to my browser's "Page Setup," change all four margins, and delete all headers.

This is "printer friendly"? It's certainly not user friendly. Re-design the darn flyer, guys. Making users jump through hoops isn't good for sales.

And.. uh, yeah, I know my book is ridiculously expensive, but libraries are spending so much on databases nowadays that there's little money left to purchase academic monographs. (See McGann, "Literary Scholarship in the Digital Future".) Fewer sales mean smaller print runs, which mean higher prices, which means fewer sales."Printer Friendly Book Flyer" Isn't.DGJ)

"Teens and twentysomethings usually do not bother to set a time and place for their meetings. They exchange as many as 5 to 15 messages throughout the day that progressively narrows in on a time and place, two points eventually converging in a coordinated dance through the urban jungle. To not have a [portable phone] is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place...Just as Weblogs are distributing journalistic authority on the Internet, mobile media further de-centers information exchange by channeling it through networks that are persistently available to the mobile many." Mizuko Ito [Via KairosNews. -- DGJ] --Japan Media Review -- A New Set of Social Rules for a Newly Wireless Society OJR)

The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. | The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease." Duncan Graham-Rowe --World's First Brain Prosthesis Revealed New Scientist)

"Everyone say it with me. I will not get bad luck lose my friends or lose my mailing lists if I DON'T forward an e-mail..." --The SoapboxSmilePop)

An amusing flash animation. Thanks, Danielle.

"The Web is only limited by the hard drive(s) your site is stored on, print is strictly limited by story inches. Have you noticed a tendency to ramble on a bit online? If you want to retain your readership you've got to curb that urge, at least on your front page. The way around that dilemma is to give them tight descriptive teasers that link to longer stories.|Writing compelling headlines and decks, or 'blurbs' as we call them, is an art form in itself. At WebReference we used to see who could 'out-blurb' each other in one or two sentences." Andy King

--Optimizing Online News SitesHolovaty)

Andy King is the author of Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization. He sent me a free copy of his book, and has been doing a pretty good job publicizing himself online -- sending me what looks like pretty darn much like an personalized e-mail (from a keyboard that apparently lacks a shift key) when he's been interviewed on a topic that might feasably be of interest to me. The article above, from Adrian Holovaty's weblog, is presented like an interview -- but the diction of King's responses sounds much more like pre-written prose lifted from another source -- it doesn't have the breezy, conversational tone one would expect to see in a weblog interview. Still, it's nice to see a designer pay so much attention to blurb-writing. (See my "Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages.")

--I Will Use Google...The Flow?)

We're in midterm crunch time... I don't want my students to read anything into the timing of this posting. I just thought it was funny. I'm unsure where this is "really" from. While using Google in the hopes of tracking down the source of this image, I found this creative ASCII portrait of Bart Simpson, from alt.ascii-art.

"You've never seen anything like St. Patrick's for bringing the Irish out in people," said P.J. O'Doyle, owner and proprietor of O'Doyle's Pub in Pittsburgh. "For one magical night, all the wonderful things you hear in all the grand old stories come true: the glorious thirst for drink, the endless singing, the pining for the fields of lost Erin. And, of course, the inevitable rollicking donnybrook that ends with a beer glass getting smashed over some poor lad's head. It's possibly the most appalling display of seasonal ethnic conformity you're ever likely to see, and that's including Christmas Mass." --Irish-Americans Gear Up for "The Reinforcin' O' The Stereotypes"The Onion)

"According to a videotaped message airing exclusively on CNN, media mogul Ted Turner has sent himself back in time to January 2000 to avert the catastrophic merger of America Online and Time Warner." --Ted Turner Sends Self Back in Time to Prevent AOL Time Warner MergerThe Onion)

"Benetton's Sisley line of clothing will contain a Philips Electronics radio frequency ID tag that will replace ubiquitous bar codes, which have to be manually scanned.....While there is no indication Benetton intends to track its customers with the tags, privacy advocates are worried that the technology could lend itself to unauthorized customer monitoring." --Benneton Clothing to Carry Tiny Tracking TransmittersSF Gate)

"Losing your clean credit history is one thing; losing your freedom is another. And victims of America'sfastest-growing crime are discovering they often have much more to worry about than the hundreds of hours of paperwork necessary to clean up the financial mess associated with ID theft. Sometimes, they have to worry about ending up in jail -- again and again." Bob Sullivan --The Darkest Side of ID TheftMSNBC)

"Trying to compare the blurbs on a book of poetry to the contents is like trying to compare a description of angel wings to actual angel wings. The blurbs employ extravagantly unverifiable descriptions of the contents (what is ?intensely somatic?? a ?one-hundred ring verbal circus?? who says it's?brilliant? and why?) to contents that are themselves indescribable. How do you determine the accuracy of a description of the indescribable?"Joan Houlihan

--The Sound of One Wing Flapping: The Art of the Poetry BlurbWeb Del Sol)

Now I remember why I don't read this site anymore: it's not blogger friendly. First of all, the website uses frames, thus making it hard to link to a specific internal URL. Even if you find the internal URL, all the navigation is in another frame, so the readers you send to the internal page will be stranded. Second, the above article is part of a running feature called "The Boston Comment". Whenever the next feature comes out, I presume it will be posted at the URL I've linked to above. The previous articles are then moved to a new, permanent location. Here's Boston Comment 5, but when I type the URL for Boston Comment 6, I get 404. The current content hasn't already been archived. I like the content of Web Del Sol, but I think their website design could be improved. For instance, their features page includes a long list of recurring columns, each introduced with a big colorful logo. But you can't click the logo -- instead, you have to look beneath the logo, and beneath the blurb, for a text link. Really, how hard would it be to make the logo into a link? If I hadn't planned to write this comment describing my difficulty blogging an article on Web Del Sol, I certainly would have given up. Perhaps the editors don't want outsiders to link to their features.

"This time around, many observers predict that the U.S. will also deploy viruses, government-trained hackers, and special electromagnetic pulse bombs to knock out Iraq's computers and other sensitive electronic equipment. But if the U.S. wants to cut off Iraq's access to the Internet, it need only give a nod to operators of a satellite farm in the woods west of Atlanta, or to a similar facility in the English countryside.|An analysis of network records and routing patterns shows that Iraq's only Internet service provider, the State Company for Internet Services (SCIS), appears to send and receive nearly all of its traffic over satellite hookups provided by Atlanta International Teleport of Douglasville, Ga., and by SMS Internet of Rugby, Warwickshire." --Unleashing the Dogs of Cyberwar on IraqSalon)

"The great majority of the readers who adore the warm and relaxing bath of their accustomed New Yorker were very upset by the 'shock treatment' of my covers. Those readers will feel more at ease with the calm and submissive New Yorker of the tradition which, since the 1920s, mixed intelligence, sophistication, snobbery, and complaisance with the status quo." Cartoonist Art Spiegelman slams the New Yorker after his departure. --Art Spiegelman, Cartoonist for The New Yorker, Resigns in Protest at CensorshipElectronicIraq.net)

Thanks, Jim. The quote above is from an "unoffical translation" of an interview published in Corriere della Sera (Milan).

"The mood at the Game Designers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Ten years ago, you could find a dozen publishers to pitch to; today, perhaps five. And of the remaining, half are on their last legs... The only companies with evident strength are the manufacturers--Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft (included on this list not because they make any money in games, but because they have deep pockets)--and EA, despite the fact that it has utterly failed to make a go of online gaming which, two scant years ago, they claimed was the future." Greg Costikyan

--A Specter is Haunting GamingGames * Design * Art * Culture)

The games industry is becoming more and more like Hollywood. Costikyan laments that new games take 3 years and a 3 million dollar investment, and that the publishing companies involved are only willing to support sequels or unimaginative adaptations of movies. He points to a growing "indie" game developer movement. Recently, my son has enjoyed a "Rainbow Fish" game, and we are both playing "Syberia". Grrr... I've spent the last 10 minutes trying to find out where these games were developed, but my Google searches are all freezing. The credits had lots of French surnames, so I'm guessing both were developed in Europe (possibly Quebec?). "Rainbow Fish" is based on the books by Marcus Pfister, but Syberia seems competely original. Anyway, both are more creative and... well, just more moody and beautiful than the other game I am playing, "Neverwinter," which with its "camera following along behind a running hero" console-style gameplay, feels like it wants to be an action game, rather than the RPG I expected.

"dad@hvn,ur spshl.we want wot u want&urth2b like hvn.giv us food&4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz.don't test us!save us!bcos we kno ur boss,ur tuf&ur cool 4 eva!ok?" Matthew Campbell

--RFather: The Lord's Prayer as a Text MessageShip of Fools)

"The Ark - setting virtual sail on Easter Sunday - is billed as 40 days and 40 nights of games, challenges, topical discussions and arguments about mucking out the gorillas: "Theology meets showbiz meets cowpats - and there are no lifeboats"....Dallying with kitsch low culture - far from debasing the Church - could be the salvation of organised Christianity, says Ship of Fools editor Stephen Goddard."

--Reality TV, Featuring God... OnlineBBC)

The headline refers to TV, which is silly. This is a multiplayer role-playing game set on Noah's Ark, judged by a panel of theologians.

Granddaddy blogger Dave Winer has moved from Silicon Valley to Harvard, where he will head up a major initiative to use blogs in an academic setting. The Harvard Crimson has a small article; see also CNET and Business Today. I haven't blogged this for some time becuase I was looking for a really good article about it. --Harvard Blogging InitiativeDGJ)

"Spam is the best kind of email to get, because you look at it quickly, see that it's spam, and delete it. Then you get back to work. Personal email is the second best kind of email to get, because you either respond quickly ("Hi Jane, great hearing from you. See you at the club tonight.") or set it aside for later. Task-oriented work email is the worst kind of email to get. It often requires thought, and because it is work there is some immediacy to it. But as soon as you take the time to respond, you've interrupted yourself. You've shifted back to "left brain mode", and you've lost the thread of your concentration." Ole Eichhorn says: don't keep your e-mail reader open while you work on other stuff.

--The Tyranny of EmailW=UH)

This article is written by a programmer, who refers to shifting between left brain mode (to communicate with others) and right brain mode (to get programming work done). Presumably, then, his advice doesn't hold if one's work is primarily "left brain". Maybe I have to shift even farther left when I need to block out some time to read a literary text for enjoyment. Since my undergraduate days I've enjoyed being able to swing between brain hemispheres when one gets tired.

"The unread American books in our collection, along with those from Germany and France and Italy and Mexico, still look brand-new. But even a 4-year-old English hardback has warped covers, a binding that snaps like a saltine when you open it, and pages so brittle and brown that the act of pulling it from the shelf leaves a little confetti pile of paper chips on the floor. It's not just that these English books are junky (aesthetically); it's that they're often unreadable (logistically). They're dying." Christopher Caldwell --Bargain-Basement Literature: Why are English books made so badly?Slate)

"Nobody expects Google, or any index, to be perfect, since the Web is growing and changing so fast and many parts of it are generated from databases and therefore essentially impossible for a search engine to find or classify. | However, researchers at the highly-respected Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University have found that the company is actively removing sites from its database, and that this censorship is going unnoticed." Bill Thompson

--Google Censoring Web Content (Oct 2002)BBC News)

Thanks for this link, too, Jim.

"A secretive team of AOL Time Warner executives has begun talking with other major cable operators and media companies about speeding up and co-opting the potential revolution that TiVo kicked off. The company's system, called Mystro TV, is AOL Time Warner's gambit in an imminent battle over the future of the television business....While a program is paused or rewinding, networks can insert new commercials during the process or display them around the periphery of the screen. On the CD-ROM demo, for example, a viewer pausing "Charmed" might see a commercial for Special K or Pizza Hut. The demonstration also promises advertisers new ways to target viewers. A viewer watching a car commercial might be able to select an additional view of the interior or safety features. Or one household might see a commercial for a luxury car while another sees a pitch for an economy model." David D. Kirkpatrick

--AOL Is Planning a Fast-Forward Answer to TiVoNY Times)

But people who watch TV don't want to interact. They want to veg out. If they wanted to interact, they'd use their computer. No button for skipping ads? Forget it. This is another ham-handed "old media" attempt to postpone the inevitable.

"The American public is apparently turning away from the mostly US-centric American media in search of unbiased reporting and other points of views. Much of the US media's reaction to France and Germany's intransigence on the Iraqi war issue has verged on the xenophobic, even in the so-called 'respectable' press. Some reporting has verged on the hysterical - one US news web site, NewsMax.com, recently captioned a photograph of young German anti-war protesters as 'Hitler's children'. "

--US public turns to Europe for news Jounalism.co.uk)

Thanks for the link, Jim. I think it's a little dangerous to generalize from the statements presented in this article. NewsMax is hardly a mainstream American news source -- it's a sleazy tabloid (as kuro5hin notes); its home page does feature links to news and commentary, but on the same menu bar is a link to transcripts of the jokes made by late-night talkshow hosts. Should America judge all of British journalism according to what the trashiest UK gossip rags publish? Further, I would guess that, in light of recent global events, more people are spending more time reading news online. The article does not investigate how much traffic from US readers may have increased at US news sites. I also wonder whether GoogleNews is introducing more US readers to a wider array of news s0urces. I know that before GoogleNews, I read the online sites for USA Today every day, CNN when I wanted updates, and The Washington Post when I wanted backgrounds. Now I only check those pages when I'm bored, because GoogleNews serves up a broader range of fresher news -- and I'm definitely reading more news from the UK. This time frame also includes a time period when a bunch of major US newspapers started requiring user logins, which means I am less likely to link to those sources. If UK papers are less likely to require user registration (and I don't necessarily know that they are), then I'm more likely to link to them, and return to them. I think it's important to note that the above story was published by a commercial site for UK online journalists.

"[H]abitual early exposure to TV violence is more strongly linked with aggression later in life than other factors often cited as leading causes, such as IQ, social-economic status and parental TV viewing." Peter Calamai

--New warning on TV violence: Early viewing, adult aggression linked; Study criticizes entertainment industryThe Star)

Here's a nice touch, that you don't usually find when reporters summarize academic articles (kudos to Calamai): "University of Toronto psychology professor Jonathan Freedman, who reviewed the report at The Star's request, said the Michigan researchers did not have 'a shred of evidence' for their claim that exposure to even one violent TV show or movie increased the risk of aggressive behaviour as an adult.|Freedman acknowledged he has not done research into media violence. He also confirmed his book on media violence, published last year, was supported financially by the Motion Picture Association of America."

NASA has released an orbital image from an impact crater on the Yucatan Peninsula, reportedly from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs: "The existence of the impact crater, Chicxulub, was first proposed in 1980. In the 1990s, satellite data and ground studies allowed it to gain prominence among most scientists as the long sought-after "smoking gun" responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs and more than 70 percent of Earth's living species 65 million years ago."

--NASA Releases Image of Crater from Asteroid that Killed the DinosaursNASA)

Note how the press release I've linked to buries the crater impact story after not one but two paragraphs glorifying the "Shuttle Radar Topography Mission". You can see that National Geographic's version of the crater story cuts right to the important stuff. This release is good timing, since public confidence in NASA (and possibly in technology in general) has been shaken.

"Phrases like the population bomb and the population explosion breed racism. Few Americans know that, on average, woman round the world have less than three children each. They don't breed like rabbits. And by 2050 a majority of the world's population will be likely to live in countries with fertility levels below what demographers regard as replacement levels. It all avoids looking at the real issues on our own doorstep - of over-consumption, for instance." Betsy Hartmann, interviewed by Fred Pearce

--The Greening of HateNew Scientist)

I've been a fan of the late economist Julian Simon for some time. Hartmann, as a radical feminist, agrees with some of Simon's philosophy, particularly the notion that more population does not equal poverty, since more population (under the right economic and social conditions) means more hands to work. It's impossible to tell from a printed transcript, but does Pearce seem... well, almost stunned when he asks Hartmann, "How can you be pro-choice and anti-population control?"

"Searls and Weinberger are hippies, and they see a Free and Open Internet as a key building block of a free and open world, in much the way that Timothy Leary saw LSD in a previous generation. They're concerned that commercial interests will spoil their metaphor through misunderstanding, and somehow pervert it into a tool of control, oppression, and Big Brother. But they fall into the trap that they warn about, by romanticizing the 'Net and making it more metaphor than reality." Richard Bennett

--What we wish the Internet were Ophalos)

One of several "get real" responses to Doc Searls and David Weinberger's "World of Ends" manifesto.

"The president of a California college is sending a letter to President Bush apologizing for an instructor who gave students extra credit for writing anti-war missives to the White House. | 'Students were clear in their understanding that they would only receive credit if they wrote 'protest' letters...' " Lou Marano

--College to Apologize to Bush for Professor UPI)

I'm sure Bush has more on his mind right now than feeling miffed that a college professor abused her authority in this manner. There's nothing wrong with giving students an extra credit assignment to send a letter to an elected official, and when the course subject matter touches on a political issue I think it's perfectly appropriate for a faculty member to take a stand and defend it. But students should not be coerced into producing texts that advocate a particular ideology, no matter how passionately the instructor feels about an issue. What's the point of trying to hold class discussions if only the people who hold a certain point of view will be rewarded? The faculty member in question should quit her job and run for political office if she can't separate her activism from her instruction.

"In the fall of 1958 Theodore Kaczynski, a brilliant but vulnerable boy of sixteen, entered Harvard College. There he encountered a prevailing intellectual atmosphere of anti-technological despair. There, also, he was deceived into subjecting himself to a series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments -- experiments that may have confirmed his still-forming belief in the evil of science. Was the Unabomber born at Harvard?" Alston Chase has turned this 2000 article into a book: Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist --Harvard and the Making of the UnabomberAtlantic)

"Twenty Broadway theaters fell dark tonight, as more than 1,000 musicians and actors took up picket signs and went on strike to protest producers' attempts to reduce the minimum number of orchestra players at each musical.|From "Rent" to "The Producers" to "Chicago" to "Hairspray," the biggest moneymakers on Broadway closed down." Michael Powell and Christine Haughney --The Lights Go Out on BroadwayWashPost [resgistration; will expire])

"Yesterday I had midterm grading conferences with my journalists. (Just for the record, I abhor grades, for a list of reasons too long to post here.) It was interesting to me how Web logs have changed the whole process, and it has me thinking more seriously about the assessment issues that come along with this technology." Will Richardson contemplates teaching with weblogs. --Assessing WeblogsWeblogg-ed Vol. 2)

"Massively multiplayer games require a huge world to support and sustain a user base (few people would keep playing if they can explore everything in the game in under a month). The amount of content required is IMMENSE. Walton estimates that creating a world 3 times bigger than a single-player game is at least ten times harder. 'It takes a ton of content to make a believable world,' he says. Bigger teams, of course, require more management - the complexity scales up dramatically." Dave "Fargo" Kosak reports on a Game Developers Conference presentation by Gordon Walton (Ultima Online & The Sims Online) --Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Run a Massively Multiplayer Online Game Game Spy)

"If Google went in this direction with the Blogger acquisition, it would hearken back to one of the seminal documents of the computing age: Vannevar Bush's 1946 'As We May Think' essay, which envisioned a new tool to augment human memory. Bush's imaginary device, called the Memex, would help manage the ever-accelerating explosion of information in the world. Bush imagined the Memex as a machine of connected documents that from one angle looks a great deal like the modern, Web-enabled computer. But in one crucial respect, Bush's vision differed from today's Web: He placed great importance on the trails created as the user moved through information space, assuming that a record of those trails would be of great use in amplifying the signal of human memory. In many ways, our networked computers have wildly exceeded Bush's vision, but our trail-recording tools are still woefully undernourished." Steven Johnson

--Google's Memory Upgrade: How Blogger could do more than improve Google's Web searches.Slate)

Johnson has been observing the connections between the Memex and the Web for some time now. His article expands thoughtfully on some of the issues I raised rather hastily in "On the Trail of the Memex," which I had mostly written before the news broke, but revised in order to include the speculations about Blogger.

Fortunately, the true nature of Internet isn't hard to understand. In fact, just a fistful of statements stands between Repetitive Mistake Syndrome and Enlightenment?

The Nutshell

1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet?s three virtues:
   a. No one owns it
   b. Everyone can use it
   c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

Doc Searls and David Weinberger --World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.WorldOfEnds.com)

"The advocacy organization that crusades for the protection of privacy rights sent its online 'Safe and Free Newsletter' out to about 860 people last week but mistakenly made every recipient’s e-mail address available to everyone else.|The ACLU sharply criticized pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly for making a similar error two years ago." --ACLU in Hot Water for Potential Privacy Violation">Fox News)

What kind of a sicko uses keywords such as "teddybear hamster cages teddybear invitations miniature teddybear kits teddybear" in order to draw traffic to a website featuring haiku about masturbation and child rape? The sickos at www.harmlove.com, that's who.

Teddybear Keywords = Sick StuffHarmlove)

While I can't say I care much for the content of the site, I was amused by the following disclaimer: "If at any time you find yourself becoming offended by the content we offer, please take precautionary measures and sterilize yourself to prevent passing on of dangerous malfunctioning genetic code. And feel free to bitch and moan for a while so we can laugh at you." Suggested by "Mack the Knife."

"Merely the fact that the dirty piece of paper that wrapped the old man's parcel was covered with Arabic writing was enough to give Mr. Sladden the ideas of romance, and he followed until the little crowd fell off and the stranger stopped by the kerb and unwrapped his parcel and prepared to sell the thing that was inside it. It was a little window in old wood with small panes set in lead; it was not much more than a foot in breadth and was under two feet long. Mr. Sladden had never before seen a window sold in the street, so he asked the price of it.|'Its price is all you possess,' said the old man." "Lord Dunsany"

--The Wonderful WindowThe Book of Wonder)

A pleasant little fantasy short story. Thanks, Jim, who calls it "An older picture of Baghdad."

"The Java Morse code translator translates to and from Morse code and can play the Morse to you as sound. It runs on your computer and therefore is very quick." Stephen Phillips --Java Morse Code TranslatorStephen's Home Page)

My father was a radio operator when he was in the army. He described trying to send messages while in the back of a jeep. When he received a long message, he was very good at getting it all right the first time, but it was standard procedure to ask for a repeat. When the other operator was repeating the message, he would stretch out on a couch and take a nap. (- .... .- -. -.- ... / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / .-.. .. -. -.- --..-- / .-. --- ... . -- .- .-. -.-- .-.-.-)

I AM THE WIDOW OF THE LATE SANI ABACHA OR HEAD OF THE PAN-AFRICA BANK IN LAGOS OR EXECUTOR OF THE WILL OF THE LATE SIR WALDO POPPYSOCKS.|I AM IN THE UNFORTUNATE POSITION OF NEEDING TO MOVE $315 MILLION OF SOMEONE ELSE?S MONEY OUT OF MY COUNTRY. AS THIS IS HUGELY ILLEGAL I NEED THE HELP OF AN ACCOMPLICE BASED ABROAD. OBVIOUSLY I HAVE CHOSEN YOU, A COMPLETE STRANGER....FINALLY, COULD YOU FLY OUT TO AFRICA SO THAT SEVERAL LARGE AND VIOLENT ACCOMPLICES OF MINE CAN BEAT SEVEN SHADES OF SHIATSU OUT OF YOU AND HOLD YOU HOSTAGE UNTIL YOUR POOR RELATIVES PAY US A HUGE RANSOM FOR YOUR GULLIBLE CARCASE. --Nigerian Scam BaitingScotsman)

It is amazing to think that people actually fall for the real Nigerian scam... the spoof above is quite amusing.

"With millions of résumés now online, identity thieves and marketers are turning to online résumé databases to poach data such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other personal information.|Identity thieves have also been known to post fake job listings, then require that applicants submit additional personal data, such as social security numbers, credit card numbers or bank account information..." Kendra Mayfield --The Perils of Online Job Sites (Wired)

"Despite one website creator's plea to stay away from his site, people just can't stand not clicking on the Don't Go There button. The site, programmed to go dark after 100 visitors, stayed live just shy of one hour." Michelle Delio --Keep Out Sign Irresistible OnlineWired)

"On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of eccentrics live in houseboats. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they belong to one another. There is Maurice, a homosexual prostitute; Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man; but most of all there's Nenna, the struggling mother of two wild little girls. How each of their lives complicates the others is the stuff of this perfect little novel.The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo, Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish." --Unusual Collector's Edition of The HobbitWal-Mart)

Somebody needs to proofread the Wal-Mart catalog a little more closely.

"The Lunatics, as they occasionally dubbed themselves, lived in an age when the magic of science gripped the popular imagination. Crowds flocked to demonstrations of newly discovered forces like "ELECTRICITY"?in the words of one advertisement, "that branch of Philosophy which engrosses so much Conversation everywhere." Using strange-looking contraptions, showmen conjured "lightning" inside huge glass globes, or conducted electrical charges through volunteers' bodies. One electrified boy was suspended sideways above a heap of metal shavings, which immediately shot up and clung to him; a man in Germany kissed a charged woman and caused "fire" to flash from her lips. Oddest of all, a French lecturer lined up several hundred Carthusian monks..." J.Y. Yeh reviews Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World --Chemical BrothersVillage Voice)

"Attendance is up. Detentions are down. Just six months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology." Sarah Mahoney

--Laptops Win Over the Skeptics, Even in MaineNY Times)

According to the article, the plan was instigated as a way to draw buisiness to Maine, at a time when states had lots of money. But one critic says, "There's a certain degree of irony in giving all the seventh graders laptops in a day when we're talking about cutting state employees back to four-day work weeks."

Nearby UW-Stout requires laptops for all first-year students. A recent article from the Leader-Telegram found that teachers had difficulty planning to use the laptops, because only the freshmen have them. While I love technology, I am amused by the Leader Telegram's reference to UW-Stout's English chair: "Thurin said the computers cut down on wasted paper and chalkboard drawings." We can't waste natural resources like paper and chalk, can we? Bring on the laptops!

"We struggle with what we own today. Our fingers are already too thick and clumsy to stab the buttons on our gadgets, and, as our eyes age, we squint even harder to see the shrinking screens on our stuff." Jefferson Graham --Hello, Tech Designers? This Stuff is Too Small.USA Today)

Maybe by the time today's designers start losing their eyesight, they will be motivated to design new methods of treating fading eyesight. Or is that just a pipe dream?

"In much of the world, after all, the popular conception of DDT is of a dangerous and toxic chemical that pollutes water and poisons the food chain; in the United States, DDT is remembered as the pesticide that helped put bald eagles on the endangered species list. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the popular conception is wrong. Older studies on the effects of DDT have been called into question, and newer ones militate against the notion that DDT is inherently dangerous. For the kind of use Muhwezi has in mind, in fact, DDT may not be dangerous at all." Alexander Gourevitch --Better Living Through ChemistryWashington Monthly)

Worth a thousand words:

Bob Gillis --Starting Fire With an Ice Lens (Primitive Ways)

"Most writing-oriented sites are focused on one area -- genre fiction, magazine writing, book publishing, newspaper journalism, etc. -- ignoring the basic fact that many full-time freelancers need to multitask to earn a liveable income." Mike Arnzen --Handy [Writing] Job HunterGorelets)

"Why aren't American scientists barking? Why do they remain mute?|First, most scientists feel more comfortable in labs and classrooms than on op-ed pages and TV studios -- and they have no real clue about how to go about challenging what they read and see. Second, in virtually 100 percent of cases where scientists have stepped forward to debunk the 'carcinogen scare de jour,' they have been subject to ad hominem attacks and labeled "paid liars" for industry. That threat of humiliation is enough to cause many to bite their tongues. Third, science these days has become so very specialized, that the overwhelming portion of our country's scientists have very narrow areas of expertise. Those with a Ph.D. in entomology, biology, veterinary medicine or physics might possibly be as duped as the average citizen when Mr. Cochran talks about the PCB-induced epidemic in Alabama." --The Case of the Mute ScientistsAmerican Council on Science and Health)

"There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?"

Here are Park's warning signs:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Robert L. Park

--The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus ScienceChronicle)

Park omits a very important sign: The discoverer has a tendency to shake his fist and shout, "Fools! I shall crush them all!"

"Richard Fletcher's fine, concise history of early Muslim-Christian relations.... calmly and effectively disposes of the popular myth that Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant faith, while at the same time showing that Christians could not be expected to see it in any other way. He shows clearly that far from forcing their subjects to accept their religion at sword-point, Muslim rulers did not initially encourage conversion. There seems to have been much "good-mannered discussion" between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East, where, after centuries of Byzantine oppression, many of the churches flourished as never before.|But in other parts of Christendom, Islam was experienced as a military threat." Karen Armstrong reviews The Cross and the Crescent by Richard Fletcher --A Question of FaithGuardian)

"This project, the Memex Simulator, examines the ideas of the Memex and implements them as faithfully to Doctor Bush's original specifications as is possible given the small amount of information available on the as-of-yet unrealized physical design. Because of the prohibitive complexity and cost of film and hardware for a device such as the Memex, this project uses modern software and computer hardware in the place of film, projectors, and analog mechanical controls. This allows greater flexibility for discovery of how a Memex might work, as well as making it easier to distribute for others to experience." --MemexSim: The Memex SimulatorSourceForge)

This is an open-source effort to simuate the hypothetical device Vannevar Bush described in his influential essay "As We May Think".

"Persuasion in itself is obviously not new. From Cicero's oratory to modern TV commercials, communicators have tried to persuade audiences. What's different is that websites and other computerized designs are going beyond one-way rhetoric and becoming interactive. For most people, doing something is much more engaging and thus potentially more compelling and persuasive than passively receiving messages." Jakob Nielsen --Persuasive Design: New Captology BookUseIT.com)

The best content to appear on "Alertbox" in a long time: a summary of B.J. Fogg's new book, Persuasive Technology.

"Such manuals are written at a tenth-grade reading level on average, according to a new study, while data suggest that nearly a quarter of U.S. adults read at or below a fifth-grade level, and at least 25 percent read at about an eighth-grade level." --Car Seat Instructions too ComplexMSNBC)

Thanks for the link Mark.

"A smart shopper can buy a 5-pound bag of Gold Medal flour for 69 cents. That's enough to feed three people for a day - 7,500 easy-to-digest, relatively nutritious, and potentially tasty calories. All for less than 0.7 percent of an average American's income.|Compare this American to one of our ancestors half a millennium ago, a typical person living in the span between 1400 and 1600. Back in those days, less than one-tenth of humanity lived in cities. The most basic problem of material life - the fight to put food on the table - took up the majority of everyone's working time and energy..." J. Bradford DeLong

--The Real Shopping-Cart Revolution: Five hundred years of progress packed into a sack of flour.Wired)

Just in case the threat of war and the poor economy have you feeling down, leave it to Wired to supply an editorial reminding us all not to fall out of love with the technology that made Western culture what it is today.

"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 : kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."|[T]he 13-year-old's teacher could not decipher what the youngster had written. "I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate," the teacher told the newspaper. --British Girl Baffles Teacher with SMS EssayReuters)

What kind of writing did this girl do when she was 12? I doubt she just sprang up out of the ground fluent in text-message shorthand. Is she incapable of writing a "my summer holiday" essay in conventional prose, or did she just write the shorthand with the intention of going back later and revising it? This is an alarmist piece, which makes the teachers look as silly as the student seems incompetent.

An excellent collection of images by a futurist illustrator. The website itself is rather difficult to navigate. First, it uses frames. Second, nothing happens when I click on the images that are supposed to be "portals". Third, there's really no text anywhere that I could quote in order to introduce the content of the site. Ah, well... the real strength of the website is its collection of images, and a linked daisychain begins with this sweeping retrofuture cityscape. --Radebaugh: The Future We Were PromisedLost Highways)

"The SCI FI Channel has cast the key roles of Starbuck and Apollo for its upcoming original miniseries Battlestar Galactica, based on the 1978-'80 TV series. Oregon native Katee Sackhoff (Halloween Resurrection), 22, will play a female Starbuck in executive producer Ronald D. Moore's reimagination of the series, SCI FI announced.|Meanwhile, British actor Jamie Bamber (HBO's Band of Brothers), 29, will play Apollo. In the original series Starbuck was a male character played by Dirk Benedict, while Apollo was played by Richard Hatch.|The four-hour Galactica miniseries, from Roswell and Star Trek The Next Generation veteran Moore, is slated to debut later this year." --SCI FI Names Galactica LeadsSciFi Wire)

Ah, those bushy manes from the 1979 show.

"The Congress Online Project will release its 2003 report about congressional Web sites on Monday, March 3. This report names the winners of the Congress Online Gold, Silver, and Bronze Mouse Awards and provides guidance to congressional offices on how to improve their own Web sites. We don't want to give away any secrets until the release, but we're certain you'll be surprised by our findings..."

--Best Web Sites on Capitol Hill (Congress Online Project)

While the report isn't public yet, the Washington Post reports: "The project still considers about one-fourth of the sites to be substandard -- only slightly fewer than last year. It is not naming names, but said those sites still tend to focus on promoting the boss, be weighed down by elaborate graphics that take too long to load and give users little opportunity to interact with their representatives."

Rosemary Frezza wants to make sure Literacy Weblog readers get their Peeps fixes: Lord of the Peeps (just what it sounds like -- Middle Earth with Peeps), PeepHenge (work it out) and Captain Kirk chatting up a green dancer in Star Trek Peeps.PeepsE-Mail)

"Ashcroft has assigned two attorneys to investigate the case of a Texas Tech University student who is miffed that Professor Michael Dini required biology students seeking his recommendation to get an A in his class, know him well and - here's the rub -'affirm' that there is a scientific answer to the question of how the human species originated." Marie Cocco --Ashcroft Makes Federal Cases Hither and YonNewsday)