Robot Wisdom WebLog Jul98waning

Robot Wisdom WebLog for July 1998 (waning)

Thu, Jul 23, 1998 (New Moon at 8:45 CDT)

Wed, Jul 22, 1998
This Week in Joyce History: In 1904, James finished "The Sisters" for the Irish Homestead, along with an "awful chapter" of Stephen Hero.
TV 2nite: Plane Crazy (PBS, Cringely builds a plane) (Did he really learn anything about himself?)
New New Scientist
Project for the day: I'm going to try to build my own portal by the end of the day. Here's the main contents so far: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/smart/smart.html
Wretched excess: Chicago TV has helicopters following the car of the new Bulls coach from the airport.

Japan's version of WebTV flops: http://www.variety.com/article.asp?articleID=1117478676

Problems with rival formats, new software and complicated remote controls are partially to blame for Net TV's failure, it said.

Observation: Dave Winer has been using grey bgcolor, I think since Frontier went commercial. He's said these colors reflect his state of mind. http://www.scripting.com//

Clueless-est quote of 1998: http://nt.excite.com:80/news/bw/980721/gartner-group-2

"What the Web needs -- and what it will have within two years -- is a handful of sites that serve the same purpose as today's major TV networks. Users of the Web will migrate toward these sites, known today as portals," said Patrick Meehan, research director at Gartner Group.
(Let's see: rushlimbaugh.com, howardstern.com, 700club.com, spicegirls.com, leodicaprio.com... any others? ;^)

100-best corruption? http://www.mostnewyork.com:80/NEWS/072198/BEYOND_T/63989.htm

"My understanding was that we were recommending 100 novels that ought to be in the Modern Library, not the 100 best novels of the century," said one board member, speaking anonymously.

How Nickelodeon became a 'CNN for kids': [long] http://www.phillynews.com/sunmag/719/feature2.shtml [OSRR]

Nick knows what appeals to its audience - sympathetic, familiar characters, hip design, authority-tweaking attitude - well enough to lock in its viewers, confidently enough to go, on occasion, right up to the edge of parental acceptance without ever crossing that line.
Each episode of Blue's Clues, for example, is tested for preschooler responses at four different stages during production - unprecedented in the annals of childrens' programming. Then the shows' producers actually incorporate the findings into episodes.
Nick appears to have found the elusive equilibrium between better-than-it-has-to-be children's television and gleeful commerce, each enabling the other in a free-market symbiosis that might make Newt Gingrich get up and shout and point at the screen.
...the network actually began in the ancient era of cable, in 1977 as part of Qube, a weird interactive-cable experiment in Columbus, Ohio.
In 1982, Nick was noncommercial, award-winning - and boring. Parents admired its collection of international animation and documentaries about famous people. To the few children who had cable, Nick was considered "the green vegetable network."
The brilliant, Spy-like Nickelodeon magazine, with a circulation of almost 800,000 and more paying readers than Forbes or Fortune, is among the fastest growing magazines in the country ... Nick has innovative sites on America Online and the World Wide Web, online chats with kids being another formal part of Nick's research.
The channel's success, and the envy it has roused, has arguably done more to improve the overall state of children's programming than the government regulation that has come down the pike in recent years.
Brown Johnson, the executive in charge of Nick Jr., says the British creators of Teletubbies offered the show to her before the PBS deal was announced. She declined. "I looked at it and I said, 'Oh. I don't know. Looks a little weird.' We'll see if I made one of the biggest mistakes of my professional career. I don't think so."

A very detailed report on a 1961 LSD 'lab rat': http://www.ottawacitizen.com:80/national/980721/1871564.html

To him, the inference in her file is clear: Prison officials, with the full knowledge of senior federal bureaucrats, were determined at all costs to test a dangerous drug on a defiant teenager, who had embarrassed the system by escaping the penitentiary and who openly defied authority every chance she got.

A real-world use of XML, for database only: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980721S0012?st.ne.fd.mnaw [SN]

Separately, Marshall has developed Extensible Markup Language connections with about 100 suppliers. If a user requests information on a product in the Marshall catalog, the system will go out to a supplier's site, access a data sheet, and present the information transparently via the Marshall site, Young said.

Tue, Jul 21, 1998 (A GREAT day for logging.)
This Day in Joyce History: In 1904, James gave Nora a new pair of gloves to replace the glove he stole (cf Bloom).
An obscure (1920) book of Graves's childrens (?) poetry: [60k] ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext98/csent10.txt

Henry, Henry, why do you love me?
Mary, dear, have pity!
I swear, of all the girls there are
Both near and far,
In country or in city,
There's none like you,
So kind, so true,
So wise, so brave, so pretty.

New Salon archives by date has okay looks at Ourfirsttime and 1968, plus a scary look at new depths of product placement: http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/poni/1998/07/22poni.html

For one of the most classically dull automakers in the country to cash in on the aesthetic of conspiracy ("No one has seen the whole picture -- until now," reads one ad) suggests that black-helicopter theorizing has become not merely widespread but dull -- another middle-class value shared by land yacht-driving burghers and readers of staid book-review tabloids. Randy Weaver, c'est nous.

Iris Murdoch swallowed up, slowly: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/22/12158.html

Alzheimer's has not brought out the negative aspects of her personality, says Bayley. Rather, it has served to "exaggerate the natural goodness in her". Her face, however, has assumed the "lion's face" ascribed to Alzheimer's sufferers, impassive and expressionless.
UK girl gangs: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/22/12323.html

The belief that violence does not compromise femininity has spawned the abandonment of hair-pulling in favour of fists, boots and bottles, said Antoinette Hardy, a postgraduate at Loughborough University.
Japanese heavy-metal gods: [w/audio links] http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/22/12150.html

Their fans are the most dedicated in the world - for the Monkey's London gig last year, 600 Monkeyettes flew over on a special package deal and jam-packed the LA2 venue till many fainted in the heat and had to be removed by ambulancemen.
An outsider's gossipy backstage view of Paris couture: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/22/12159.html

His painted ladies (half the face red always works well at cocktail parties, I find) slither and strut in outfits ranging from the breathtaking to the bizarre - the parakeet-festooned gown was on everyone's incredulous lips for days.
An another, theoretical look: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/22/12155.html

He is also the only designer to incorporate street fashion into this highest of craft forms, without appearing to be trying too hard to be hip. Gaultier just is hip.

A premier site for fashion gazing: [last season and back are free] http://www.firstview.com/designerlist/home.html
Or for the current shows, including the gorgeous parakeet gown: [multipage] http://www.worldmedia.fr/fashion/catwalk/hc/98ha/whosshow/calendar.html

Ana Voog on ANACAM-L:

this list is very positive and i'm so happy about that :) i think it's really shaping up into a very kind community...thank u!
      [To subscribe, send email to "anacam-request@blank.org"
      with the word "subscribe" in the message body.
      There's 10-20 messages per day.] 
Prepped to raise Kane? (asg)

Actress Jodie Foster is a mother for the first time. The Oscar-winning actress gave birth to a boy at 5:53 a.m. Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, publicist Pat Kingsley said. Charles Foster weighed 7 1/2 pounds and was 20 1/2 inches long.

Conspiracy Nation on black helicopters and other icons: [Deja URL]

The man on duty took my report, said he had had other such reports, and said the helicopters could not be tracked, as they fly too low. I then asked about what they are, and he stated, "a covert activity."
It was all there on page 71 and 72 of the Triangle Papers: #45, published by the Trilateral Commission of New York. David Rockefeller and his power group instructed the White House to renew MFN and not link it to "Human Rights."

Kibologist Bruce Ediger's found-art exhibit: http://www.denverpost.com/movie/husted0719.htm

Thus was born "NOT A BUM - JUST A PERSON NEEDING HELP!'' a collection of 38 signs from Denver homeless people collected by Ediger over the last 18 months.

120 minus 36 (grounded) is still greater than 80: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/science/DailyNews/microlight980721.html

A British financial journalist today became the first person to fly round the world in a microlight "bike with wings," landing in a southern England airfield 120 days after taking off.

Another over-the-top Camille, on Tina and soccer and Demi and Kate Millett: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/pagl/1998/07/21pagl.html

I felt very much like Simone de Beauvoir on a tear as I sat alone in a smoky French bistro off Oxford Street, zestfully cutting up my thick, medium-rare, marinated lamb steak with a big, sharp knife and dissecting Tina Brown on page after page of yellow foolscap.
Yes, it is remarkable indeed to see the kissing, hugging, hand-holding, flower-giving and general tenderness that are perfectly permissible among heterosexual men in many parts of the world, particularly along the Mediterranean rim, European, Near Eastern and North African.
My interest in that starchy potato-head, Bruce Willis, is nil, but I am taking a new look because of his flirtation with bodacious free spirit Liv Tyler...
While I would love to take responsibility for Millett's unhappiness, I'm afraid she has only herself to blame. ... At least she's not demanding that the government support her, like that whining, talentless nincompoop, Karen Finley, with her retchingly hackneyed chocolate wallows.

How much of "To Kill a Mockingbird" was written by Capote? http://www.news-observer.com/daily/1997/11/12/day00.html

One of the legends that has grown up around the two friends is that Capote, who had published fiction since his late teens, actually wrote "Mockingbird," using drafts provided by Lee.

Tokyo tests digital cash: http://www.nikkei.co.jp:80/enews/TNW/page/cypage0006.html

Large retail outlets, including Tokyu Department Store Co.'s store in Shibuya Station, hospitals, fast-food restaurants, karaoke lounges, cafes, vending machines, game arcades and convenience stores will accept Visa Cash, the integrated-circuit card developed by U.S. credit-card company Visa International.

New Village Voice trashes Private Ryan: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/film/30taubin.shtml

Saving Private Ryan has the densest, most spatially complicated sound design of any Hollywood movie ever made, and just about the most unbearable score.
A catty update on Lilith: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/music/30weisbard.shtml

Hipsters say homosexuality is the only thing inoffensive about the often bland Indigo Girls, but I was surprised by the Springsteenian-Etheridgean fervor of "Shame on You."
Corporate welfare for Rupert; Salon shows some backbone: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/columns/30ledbetter.shtml

Last year, Murdoch's News Corporation had revenues of $11.26 billion. He needs my money about as much Papua New Guinea needs a rainstorm.
Editor Talbot said he "could care less" about Blumenthal's threat because he considered it "idle." He added: "Salon has a genuine American journalistic legend in Murray Waas. He follows his nose wherever it leads, and Salon fully backs him."

Nerve turns up an Updike homage to Molly Bloom: http://www.nervemag.com/JacksNaughtyBits/Updike/

...it feels like a falling, a falling away, a deep eye opening, a coming into the deep you, Harry wouldn't know about that, he never did dare dwell on it...

Archeologists confront Holocaust denial: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/world/072198/world14_13024.html

"The largest mass graves ... contained unburned human remains (parts and pieces of skulls with hair and skin attached). The bottom layer of the graves consisted of several inches thick of black human fat. One grave contained uncrushed human bones so closely packed that the drill could not penetrate," O'Neill wrote.

What's the truth-- is the FM-spectrum maxed-out or not??? http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/072198/info14_14813_noframes.html

"If the FCC were to find a micro-broadcaster that was interfering with an airplane or another station, I'm the first one to say go in and grab them. But most stations aren't interfering with anybody."

Richard Powers on ID-privacy: http://www.desnews.com:80/edt/wj0zwcex.htm

The audit trail of the individual life is closing in on that moment when each person's every living day will become a Bloomsday, recorded in complete detail and reproducible with a few deft keystrokes.

Heavy-metal sprouts fight pollution: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/072198/health2_27959_noframes.html

It may even be possible to recycle these metals by harvesting sprout leaves, burning them and then extracting the nickel or cadmium from the resulting ash.

Nanotech without bio: http://www.sandia.gov/media/memquar.htm

Unlike their quartz counterparts which expand or change shape, these polysilicon resonators physically move in much the same way as a tuning fork vibrates.

Meta: Variety's infamous headline-style is completely useless as anchortext: http://www.newshub.com/entertainment/bytime.html

Silver goes into 'Closet' Variety 11:10pm 7/20/98
A virtual hit Variety 11:10pm 7/20/98

Hacker stunts: http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/technology/story/13838.html

Optiklenz also claimed to have what he described as "full function control over the satellite [dish] including frequencies sent out by it." Using software he stole from Time Warner, the cracker said he was able to move the satellite dish left, right, up and down.

WinNT disables US Navy: http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/July13/cov2.htm [OS]

The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said.

Israel vs the United Nations: http://www.jpost.com:80/com/Archive/20.Jul.1998/Opinion/Article-0.html

This attempt to place the relocation of Israelis to Judea and Samaria on the same moral plane as genocide and ethnic cleansing is obscene, and approaches the 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution as a perversion of the UN's mandate.

The future of archeology is onsite analysis: http://www2.nando.net:80/newsroom/ntn/info/072098/info16_9874_noframes.html

"This is probably the only excavation in the world where we monitor in real time what is coming out of the ground," said Weiner, who also has participated in digs in China and Greece.
Weiner's laboratory stood in the back of the cave, next to a large work table where archaeo-zoologist Mary Stiner from the University of Arizona at Tucson examined tiny bone fragments.

Don't miss: John Berger's witty keyword-saturation story: (It worked exactly as advertised, for me) http://www.amcity.com:80/buffalo/stories/072098/editorial2.html

Our management team, upon discovering we had attracted at least one reader to our site, has ordered me to make all my columns "Internet-friendly" through the deft and subtle insertion of words and even phrases sure to attract any Web surfers -- while still, of course, retaining our business orientation.

100-best hullabaloo: http://www.accessatlanta.com:80/life/news/1998/07/21/best_novels.html

"...any time `Finnegans Wake' makes any list there's serious posturing going on. Most of the list is highly traditional and could have been set in place 50 years ago."
And: http://www.bergen.com:80/news/100books19980721.htm

" 'Ulysses' is a tough read," said Corey Fauer, assistant director of the Johnson Free Public Library in Hackensack. "It's a great book, but I wouldn't put it at Number 1."
Fred Appel of Ridgefield Park was an eye-roller. "I was 10 years old when I had to read [Joyce's] 'Dubliners.' I would never read another James Joyce novel again."
"These are quite boring," Bobby Braunworth, another Womrath's clerk, grumbled as he scanned the list. "Does watching the movie count?"
(Christopher Cerf wrote a wonderful bit of fluff back around 1970 called "The World's Largest Cheese" that included FW references.
These stories swamped half a dozen of my NewsTracker searches. It was pretty good for my Ulysses page though.)

The new director of the NEA: http://www.phillynews.com:80/inquirer/98/Jul/20/national/NEA20.htm

...the Clinton administration's choice of a folklorist and scholar from a populist tradition may help take the agency in a new, nonconfrontational direction.

Babelfish, etc: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0,3441,2121254,00.html

"The progress on machine translation is moving at Moore's Law -- every 18 months it's twice as good..."
(This claim is actually total BS. Improvements necessarily get harder and harder.)

A great issue of Obscure Store includes "Pax TV" getting off to a bad start: http://www.seattletimes.com/news/entertainment/html98/kay_072098.html [OSRR]

Meeting with critics, both said they had no idea the term "alternative language and lifestyle" could be construed as a reference to homosexuality, single motherhood, divorced parenting, unwed sex or any similar arrangement people choose or find themselves pursuing in 1998.
Microsoft Content98: http://www.nypostonline.com/business/4296.htm [OSRR]

The group decided that if Slate was going to use outside financial content, it should come from MSNBC or Microsoft Investor.
"Slate's reach is lower than that of Pathfinder (the site shared by all of Time Inc. magazines) and Hotwired, and higher than U.S. News, Salon and the Economist," wrote Kinsley...
Upside is really dumb: [multipage, very long but useful] http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=35ae33d00 [OSRR]

Portals are more than just gargantuan Web sites; they're the gilded entrances to the kingdom of the Web, and advertisers will pay dearly for royal placement.
Could it be that true cool is believing in what you're doing -- however wacky it may seem -- and doing it for yourself and those you love?
About midnight, "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," or Yahoo, came to them (the exclamation point popped up a couple of months later).
Yahoo paid real women and men to check out and make sense of the vast information sinkhole of the Web (a woman named Srinija Srinivasan, the "ontological Yahoo," runs the directory).
"Ninety-nine percent of the people designing for the Internet don't get that you're really building the creative use of white space."
In fact, Yahoo helped pioneer the sharing of online advertising revenue (critical when news and other content is free) and worked through the tricky question of how deals change when an interface is constantly evolving.
"Users wanted the merchant services conveniently placed within their normal consumption patterns," Mallett says of the recast Yahoo production. "We moved to the consumer-driven approach."

And a terrifying primer on book-marketing, aka the Midnight Paradox: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1998-07/21/065r-072198-idx.html

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil didn't start with a magazine piece, or a fat contract that Berendt was under instant pressure to meet. He had no contract at all, in fact. He was free to write and rewrite his story until he got it right, a process that took seven years. Maybe the 2.5 million people who have bought a copy were responding to its craftsmanship.
"I'm forced to conclude that this was one of those cultural phenomena where people buy something or go to see something because it somehow became fashionable," a Minneapolis reader commented to the online bookstore Amazon.com. "And, once having been duped, nobody wants to admit it, so they continue to recommend it to others."
But in these days of conglomerates, the paperback and hardcover publishers are often under the same corporate roof. That means that if a book is still ripping along a year after it was first published, the paperback can be postponed indefinitely. This happened not only to "Midnight" but also to Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" -- which is still on the hardcover bestseller list after nearly two years.
"Since he's going to be competing with himself, and since there's no way you can compete with this book, it defies all logic in the world of letters, in the world of commercial literature, to try to do it..."
"You don't know rejection until you've been rejected by a leper," the girlfriend said, so Berendt went and checked it out.

Laissez-Faire City Times has a great piece on the drug war: http://www.zolatimes.com/v2.21/Drugprop.html

He spoke of the "horrifying" prospect of "legalization", including "heroin being sold at the corner store to children with false identifications." But when was the last time that a child in this country, attempting to buy heroin, was asked for identification, false or otherwise, under the present system?
At the ceremony heralding the launch of the media campaign in Atlanta, President Clinton told students, "These ads are designed to knock America upside its head and get America's attention." ...who decided that kids, at whom the ads are primarily targeted, will respond to being "knocked upside the head" by their elders?

Mon, Jul 20, 1998
Microsoft stumbles on the killer videoconferencing topic: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/07/cov_21feature.html

But by no means did Microsoft intend to launch an orgiastic free-for-all, he says. "It is a problem," concedes Laemmel. "We're not comfortable with it, and we're not happy with it."
"Microsoft has done a good job -- it's free, it works well and it loads really easily," says Matt Skallerud, owner of gaywired.com. "Folks have a hard time with software. NetMeeting just kind of works."

Hangul's supporters (2 Jul below) stand up to Gates: http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/072098/info29_15857_noframes.html

The alternative funding came after Microsoft's decision to invest in Hangul & Computer sparked a national grass-roots campaign to protect the company's Korean language software, as many believed Microsoft had plans to make the company give up its word processing software business.

Good new stuff at the Progressive Review:

Washington Times reporting that Linda Tripp is among the nearly 1,000 improperly obtained FBI files obtained by White House operatives. . . So is Gary Aldrich, and big time spooks under Bush and Reagan such as then NSA director Admiral Studeman, and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, William Casey's top deputy. . .When the White House starts building dossiers on the spooks you know things are out of control.

Quote of the day: (IRE-L)

"When rich folks don't trust their sons with the family money they send them on down to the CIA." --LBJ

The 100 best novels of the 20th century, as chosen by the Modern Library Board: http://www.modernlibrary.com/modernlibrary/100best/ (rab)

76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling

Misogyny in 70s Hollywood, analysed: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980719/t000066037.html

"These men lived with a sense of entitlement that was almost Nietzschean, and felt they were above the law."
"It's not unusual for the creative element that comes from the feminine to be usurped by the masculine side of a partnership. Women as a group tend to be more humble, and they're covertly taught that it's necessary to feed the male ego..."

Sun, Jul 19, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1931, a German paper printed a story by Michael Joyce under the name James Joyce.
Net-pessimists caught in short-squeeze: [Messy URL]

The surge forced the short-sellers to buy shares at higher and higher prices, driving up the shares even more.
(That's all one URL:)
       http:/ /nytsyn.com/IMDS%7CCND7%7Cread%7C
        /home/content/users/imds/feeds/nytsyn/1998/07/19
                /cndin/2114-0047-pat_nytimes%7C
        /home/content/users/imds/feeds/nytsyn/1998/07/19
                /cndin/2126-0050-pat_nytimes%7C
        /home/content/users/imds/feeds/nytsyn/1998/07/18
                /cndin/144
Living thru a tsunami: http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_135000/135579.stm

"I was right there in the village next to the coastline when the waves, after the earthquake, ten minutes after the earthquake, we heard a loud bang and then we just saw the sea rising up and then it started moving towards the village so we had no choice but to run for our life so I decided to run with my family across to the river."

After a long, dumb flamewar, I finally got a decent intro to quantum dots: http://itri.loyola.edu/nano/us_r_n_d/04_05.htm

This cell represents a new design in solar cells and is very efficient, despite the fact it is made from inexpensive, poor electrical quality oxide semiconductor nanocrystals presently manufactured in huge quantities for the ceramic and paint industries.
In the nanocrystal regime, the unit cell is present, yet the electronic states are strongly quantum-confined in three dimensions. The excited electronic states and the band gap variation with size can be quantitatively calculated with advanced theory.

A very weird patriot-conspiracy Woodstock: [URL with commas!?] http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/home.pat,local/30da3da5.718,.html [IRE-L]

"This is where we sort of congratulate ourselves for being an American," he said. "My hope is to turn this into an annual patriotic Woodstock."
Precious Moments founder Sam Butcher, a religious conservative, created the first Precious Moments figurines 20 years ago. The business has grown into a 1,500-acre complex southwest of Carthage that includes a gallery museum, a Fountain of Angels, a chapel, a hotel and a convention area.
Many of those in the patriot movement say that a fringed flag represents the New World Order.
He raised a blue United Nations emblem, set it on fire and held it while it burned. "You embrace an unrighteous system, and you're going to end up a crispy critter," he said.

A long list of computer books you can apparently use online for a limited period: http://www.mcp.com/personal/ebooklist.html [Slashdot]

A hilarious 900*600 jpg of Julia's hideout: http://www.snowcrest.net/childers/luna/Julia03.jpg

Tips for effective protests: http://proactivist.com/opinion/observe.html

"Had the protesters been more disciplined -- more Gandhi-like -- they could have achieved their objective of shutting us down. All they had to do was lie on the pavement around the building. We would have found it impossible to remove enough of them fast enough to keep the Pentagon open."

Foresight Exchange: Is this bad karma? NewsHub just reported Castro is ailing, so I spent virtual-$80 (against an $800 payoff) on the claim that he won't keep power thru January 1. http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Ticker?claim=Cuba

The Washington Post Book Review seems to have skipped this week: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/m-bookworld.html

This nifty little 'hoo for activists includes 25 links about Julia Butterfly: http://www.proactivist.com/links/

AIDS Awareness (10) Alternative Lifestyles (1) Animal Rights (7) Art (2) Calendar of Progressive Events (5) Cassini (5) Censorship (8) Children and Teens (9) Consumer Issues (3) Corporate Abuse (15) Death Penalty (4) Disabilities (3) Economics (8) Employment (4) Environment (18) Experiental Education (9) Feminism (16) Gay and Lesbian (10) Government Reform (4) Grants and Funding (3) Gun Control (4) Healthcare (5) Housing and Homelessness (15) Human Rights (18) Humor (10) Hunger and Poverty (6) Indigenous Peoples (9) Information and Resources (7) Investing (1) Iraq and the Gulf War (11) Julia Butterfly Hill and the Luna Tree Sit (25) Labor (10) Land Mines (5) Law (4) Marxism and Socialism (1) Medical Aid (3) Mens Groups (3) Miscellaneous Issues (9) Movies and TV (12) News and Media (21) Nuclear Power (2) Organic Foods and Gardening (2) Organizing (7) Ozone Depletion (1) Peace and Disarmament (17) Political Parties (2) Progressive and Liberal Ideology (3) Racism (8) Rape and Domestic Violence (6) Recycling (6) Religion and Spirituality (13) Reproductive Rights (6) Separation of Church and State (3) Solar Power (3) Student Activism (19) Taxes (3) Toxic Chemicals and Waste (4) Vegetarianism (12) Water Pollution (1) Welfare (6)
Nice Julia pix: https://www.asis.com/kmud/lunavideo/

This helicopter, sent in to harrass her and make her give up her tree-sit, did not intimidate Julia Butterfly.

Elvis tries a makeover: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/ASECTION/t000066054.html

For those who remember Costello as the angry young man of the late '70s and early '80s, the strategy that helped make Tony Bennett a favorite of the MTV generation might seem like a strange fit.

Genetic algorithms enter industrial design: http://www.usnews.com:80/usnews/issue/980727/27evol.htm

Thus there emerged, from 15 generations and 4,500 different designs, a truss no human engineer would design. The lumpy, knob-ended assembly reminds Keane of a leg bone, irregular and somehow organic. Tests on models confirm its superiority to human-designed ones as a stable support.
Their QuickTimes-link is great, too: [best if single-stepped] http://GARAGe.cps.msu.edu/demos/flywheel/index.html

Sat, Jul 18, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1881, Jack Joyce (father) was appointed to the Civil Service. In 1895, brother Frederick was born. In 1917, 10yo daughter Lucia (an "absentminded beggar") lost a letter from James to Harriet Weaver on her way to the mailbox. (L1-106)
Ah, it was an unrecorded ballot: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/19/11972.html

The only other state to admit voting against the treaty in the unrecorded ballot was Israel, which objected to a provision on the forcible movement of populations.

Larry Guzman disses the Joycean 'Precious Moments' (20 Feb below): [Deja URL]

Is English your third language or are you typing with a spoon?

I feel a responsibility to keep at least half an eye on Linux and Mozilla, as their source is explained to the public: http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/doc/layout.html

Pushing: When reflowing mapped children, if a child frame doesn't fit within the available space then the child frame is "pushed" to the next-in-flow.
Pulling: When reflowing mapped children, if all the existing child frames fit and there's still room left, child frames are "pulled up" from the next-in-flow.

More from April Oliver: http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=372559286

5. April said Arnett became interested in the story and took it over. She said he is at least 30% responsible and interviewed 3 of the main witnesses.
6. The US Govt would ignore this story if it was phony. April said every general in the pentagon called Ted Turner to threaten him. She was there when a very agitated Gen Colin Powell called. Was it Shakespeare that said "Thou protesteth too much"?

An actual story about the ICC: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION/t000065884.html

When the American defeat was announced, the conference of diplomats became more akin to a rock concert as delegates and onlookers erupted into loud, rhythmic applause.
"The United States is a leader in promoting international justice, and it is truly tragic that we have reached a juncture today that our desire to be in the leadership, our desire to be an engine of this court, has been derailed," Scheffer said afterward.
"Because of our special responsibilities, we do attract a lot of flak out there," a senior U.S. official said.
Approval of the treaty, which still must be signed and formally ratified by at least 60 countries before it takes force, a process that could take years, was hailed by most delegates here and by human rights advocates.
(Still no list of no-voters.)

Tornado-induced nuclear power-plant panic in Ohio: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/nation/071898/nation1_15869_noframes.html

"For a few minutes your heart goes up into your throat," said Bob Donnellon, the plant's emergency director when the generator alarm sounded. "But you have a gut feeling that it's OK. Your guys confirm it. Your comfort level comes back a bit."

Slashdot surveys the classics of source code (for learning to program): http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/980718/1321229.shtml

GNU Emacs is very readable. It is interesting for its clear separation of abstraction layers (low- level C, Lisp interpreter, Lisp programs).

This story is very Finnegans-Wake-like: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/world/071798/world28_25734.html

The man -- defending himself because it is against Hutterite doctrine to hire a lawyer -- cross-examined her and disputed various points in her explicit testimony. In his closing argument, the man said he had no explanation for his behavior other than the status he had achieved as manager of a livestock barn. "I believe my success ... led me astray," he said. "I started thinking and acting that it was all my doing. God had to find a way to bring me down a few notches."
FW: "...the first King, Festy, declared through his interpreter on his oath and before God and all their honours that he did not fire a stone either before or after he was born down to that day and this he supplemented by postasserting what he would impart that he might never ask to see sight or light of this world or the next world or any other world if ever he up with a hand to take or throw the sign of a stone at man, sheep or salvation army either before or after being baptised down to that holy and blessed hour."

Kibo does SlamMan: [Deja URL]

TAKE THAT, SLAM-MAN! TASTE MY LASER FUNKY MOVES!

Quaint courtroom reporting from Sydney, Australia: http://www.theaustralian.com.au:80/state/4376403.htm

But Mr Terracini said: "Sure you weren't putting a Hollywood gloss on all of this, mad crazy eyes, almost like a robot." Mr Green answered: "No."

If you can handle 2 hours of streaming RealAudio, there's a great Chicago public affairs show every Saturday morning from 10am to noon. Funny abrasive progressives, doing news commentary and phone interviews with local activist heroes: http://www.wnur.org/content.html

The Blue Screen of Stock Advice: "Microsoft Investor" on Amazon: http://investor.msn.com/prospect/articles/company/754.asp?ID=754 [OSRR]

Ownership is so highly concentrated in the hands of insiders -- especially founder Jeff Bezos with his 41% of the 48.3 million outstanding shares -- that there is almost no "float," or shares available for trading in the market.
Navellier calls the recent rises and plunges of 6% to 10% a day "unreal" and believes that other momentum players in the market are milking the stock -- all the while preparing to unload.
"Amazon has hit our reward-risk criteria, and it's on our 'buy list,'" says Navellier, "But it doesn't pass our fundamental screens -- most notably it scores very poorly on our growth-to-relative P/E screen."
(In other words: we don't know why, but we keep on buying it...)

Fri, Jul 17, 1998
TV 2nite: PJ Harvey on Letterman (Righteous! When did she cut her hair!??)
Meg Worley on rec.arts.books:

I take the following, found in the latest O'Reilly catalog, which arrived in today's post, as another sign of the end times:
AOL in a Nutshell, by Curt Degenhart & Jen Muehlbauer. $19.95
Of course, Tim O'Reilly could just be trying to one up WebTV for Dummies (another real title, I kid you not).

If I read this right, the seventh 'no' vote on the ICC was Israel: http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/national/0717/d_rt_0717_74.sml
(Funny that USA Today would drop just the one.)
International criminals unite unsuccessfully against world court: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nws28.htm

Joining the United States in denouncing treaty provisos were nations like Libya, Algeria, China, Qatar and Yemen.
Court will prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, aggression and war crimes, including rape, forced pregnancy and forced recruitment of children.

New Science News reports on poker AI, cattle-antibiotic abuse, and here, dolphin infanticide: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/7_18_98/fob1.htm

"...these results are remarkably similar to those for large terrestrial carnivores like lions." Young males sometimes jump-start their dynasties by killing off another's offspring...

Excellent new Risks Digest includes an interesting contrast of flight-sim programmers and air traffic control programmers: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.87.html

I always have this same reaction when issues of air traffic control come up, too; a Pentium or G3 dedicated to each plane in the air, and a 100baseT network, should be able to handle both the calculations and dataflow . . . combat would admittedly be harder.

No The Nation this week? Also waiting for July Boardwatch

Detailed critique of Mitnick script by 2600 editor: http://www.kevinmitnick.com/review.html [NTK]

the federal agents are made to look endearing and helpless when targetted by mitnick.

More great stuff on HoneyGuide

NewsHub crashes big: [15 hours with no updates] http://www.newshub.com/world/bytime.html

Culture notes from all over: http://www.bostonphoenix.com:80/archive/music/98/07/16/OTR/DANIELSON.html

It sounds like something from a Thomas Pynchon novel: a Christian rock band made up of five siblings (ages 14 to 26) who hail from Jersey, dress in vintage nursing costumes, and are led by eldest bro Daniel, who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Luke Skywalker...

The technology of yesterday.. tomorrow! [multipage] http://www.bde3d.com/

But with Multipath Movies, you do more than just watch, and that's where the real fun begins! In one movie, you might direct the hero to "blast" the villain. In another, you might choose to follow the story from a specific character's viewpoint, and watch a totally different scene unfold based on your choices.

A disgruntled Amazon employee vents: [longwinded] http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/howard0716/index.html

While the Stepford Wives analogy might be going a bit overboard, it did seem that management employed an almost Skinnerian system of psychological rewards and punishments in training its new devotees... er, employees.
...for all the well-intentioned idealism around Amazon, a sense of humor was in strikingly short supply there; people were too busy taking themselves and their corporate mission oh-so-seriously.

Mitnick protest update: http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/culture/story/13792.html

"The only thing that's missing is, like, giving him a mechanical arm," said Phil. ... "This is more of a Larry Flynt story," said Phil. "Kevin is a modern-day political prisoner who has been put away for something people don't understand."

Robot tourguide: http://www.star-telegram.com:80/news/doc/1047/1:COMP52A/1:COMP52A071698.html

The robot, which made its debut last month, leads visitors on a narrated 15-minute tour through Dinosaur Hall, taking them from one fossil to another while displaying video and providing narration. "The kids just stare at it in awe," museum spokeswoman Sandra Lepri said.

Misc.activism.progressive quote of the day:

"Educating Americans through the means of library service could bring about a change of their political attitude quicker than any other method. The basis of Communism and socialistic influence is education of the people." -- Harold Velde, former FBI man and later chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee, speaking in 1950 against mobile library service in rural areas From "Declarations of Independence" by Howard Zinn

Today's Zippy the Pinhead is uniquely sentimental: http://www.sfgate.com/sf/zippy/

That's flat: http://www.nsplus.com/nsplus/insight/mars/flatlands.html

Large parts of the [Martian] plains of the north -- the Vastitas Borealis that circles the pole, Arcadia Planitia, Acidalia Planitia and Utopia Planitia at mid-latitudes, and Amazonis Planitia reaching down to the equator -- are flatter than any pancake you could ever hope to see. There is the occasional crater and apart from that, nothing; cover the place with felt and you'd have the Solar System's biggest pool table.

Thu, Jul 16, 1998 (Last Quarter)
This Day in Joyce History: In ?1894 in Ulysses, Bloom visits the Tranquilla Convent, possibly leading to his firing from Hely's.
TV 2nite: Karen Finley on Politically Incorrect
A great detailed psychoanalysis of Morrissey: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/17/11716.html

"When you see children together, they're entirely contained in their bubble and don't speak. Suddenly they've stepped out and they're playing together. Morrissey never developed that."
Whatever will happen to Morrissey? "I suspect it'll be the lonely garage with the poison..."
Amazing tidbits about "Psycho" http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/17/11710.html

The shower scene has more than 90 splices in it. It didn't involve Anthony Perkins, who was in New York.

Ourfirsttime gullibility: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980716S0012

"We've surpassed the Mars landing and the Heaven's Gate site combined," he said.

Good formula for a sci-fi apocalypse: http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/uf-gchsyn.html

The chemists use bacteria that occurs naturally in soil to transform harmful chemicals like benzene, found in oil and oil products, into useful compounds that can be turned into drugs.

An update on Lilith: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/4122.htm (agc)

Merchant took the stage in a rainbow striped skirt that made her look a little like a highway barrier. But her performance was compelling.

Norman Solomon predicts the media spin on Paul Wellstone: http://www.fair.org/media-beat/980716.html

At the '88 convention, where Michael Dukakis prevailed, Jackson urged that the platform call for freezing taxes on the middle class and poor while only hiking taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. Journalists routinely described it simply as a plan for higher taxes. When the Jackson plank went down to defeat, many pundits hailed a victory over "special interests."

Kids' Frequently Asked Questions about the death penalty: [TN Dept of Corrections] http://www.state.tn.us/correction/kidsfaq.html [PF]

Do kids get sentenced to death row?
[Back to the Kid's Fun Zone]

A nice business model, critiquing web design: http://www.news.com/News/Item/Textonly/0,25,24270,00.html?pfv

"Since a typical SiteTest uses 100 respondents and can be completed in 24 hours, clients get a lot of information in a very short period of time."
($2.50 per site is a joke, though!?!)

When Sam added frames to the Progressive Review, he broke my radar, so I missed a week of great stuff. But by linking to the content-pane, I finally get full screen-width for his text! http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/indexa.htm

"The pattern is all too obvious. Clinton's allies are using the identical M.O. whenever they need to discredit a threatening accuser. . .Within weeks of [Stodala's] announcement, contributions from Clinton allies began pouring into Stodola's congressional campaign...
Sixty percent of all U.S. jobs created since 1979 pay less than $7,000 a year

A wonderful, difficult essay on math by Eugene Wigner: http://www.mcs.net/~wcooper/Unreasonable.html [Whump?]

Thus, the rules for operations with pairs of numbers are obviously designed to give the same results as the operations with fractions which we first learned without reference to "pairs of numbers." The rules for the operations with sequences, that is, with irrational numbers, still belong to the category of rules which were determined so as to reproduce rules for the operations with quantities which were already known to us.

Even Mac users can find good stuff via PC Mag's daily news page: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/whatsnew.htm

Anticlimax Dept: Joyce Maynard meets Hillary Clinton: http://www.joycemaynard.com/wwwboard/

My guess is, this woman has developed a pretty impenetrable veneer of smiles and bland greetings, by this point, although she did seem to have some genuine feeling about Frank McCourt, whose book Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer prize this year.
When I think about the teenagers we've read about lately, opening fire in school cafeterias, or the ones here in my town who racked up hundreds of dollars worth of phone calls on my calling card, from pay phones in Mill Valley, I have to guess, these are kids who haven't found something they love and believe in, something that gives them a sense of accomplishment and joy.

Honeyguide features ape-art, including this long, detailed piece: http://www.austin360.com/news/11nov/08/apes8.htm

"Do you prefer to paint or to eat?"
"Eat, paint, eat, paint, painting good!"

Great Pigs & Fishes weblog: http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/links/weblog/index.html [Whump]
An amazing discovery about Richard Condon's literary expropriations: http://www.spies.com/~ceej/Journal/June98/980621.html [PF]

Then I read on. My jaw muscles lost their control and I gaped at the book. Condon didn't stop with just that sentence. He went on and on with the Graves material. I wondered if I was remembering incorrectly, because I couldn't believe he'd lift that much.
And a fiendish trick for getting email addresses of web surfers: http://www.glenns.org/ftpgrab.html [PF]

The FTP protocol doesn't require an email address, but standard procedure on most FTP servers for anonymous access is to send the user's address so the access is slightly less anonymous.
Tom Hanks IS Steve Jobs: http://www.variety.com/search/article.asp?articleID=1117471435 [PF]

HBO, charged up by its subscribers' response to the Tom Hanks miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," is developing minis on the civil-rights movement in the 1950s and '60s; the effect of drugs on the day-to-day life of an urban community; and, with Tom Hanks, the history of the Apple computer company.
Silly religious gear: http://www.infidels.org/infidels/web.scan/1998/scan05.html [PF]

You know how it is... you've just finished a game of squash and you're in the hot, steamy locker room, trying to keep your mind pure. What you need is sports clothing with a Christian message. What you need is... Jesus socks!

Somebody finally picks up on the WebTV-CE scandal (9 April below): http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/moody60.html [OSRR]

Insiders tell me that the company's vaunted effort to replace WebTV's software with Windows CE is not going well, largely because Windows CE was not designed for use on TV sets.

Where the money is: http://nt.excite.com:80/news/pr/980715/ocean-fund-cohen-appt

Ocean Fund International, a British Virgin Island International Corporation announces today the appointment of Stephen Michael Cohen at a record salary of 17,000,000.00 a year and $100,000,000 in stock options to run its' wholly owned subsidiaries SEX.COM and Sand Man Internacional in Tijuana, Mexico.

Anonymizer targets lawyers: [banner ad] http://www.callaw.com:80/stories/edt0714h.html

Kibo on ark:

I like okra because okra has seven sides so you know there won't be any bees inside.

More on the Mitnick movie-smear: http://www.wired.com:80/news/news/culture/story/13712.html

Protests from the hacker community are expected Thursday outside Miramax's offices in New York and Los Angeles over the impending production of the movie Takedown.

Wed, Jul 15, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1904 in Ulysses, Alec Bannon was scheduled to leave Mullingar. In 1931, James sang at a London garden party.
TV 2nite: Cowboy Junkies on Letterman.
In a promising webzine called Albion Monitor, a great interview with tree-sitter Julia Butterfly: http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9807a/butterflyinterview.html

I thought I was going to die, and I grabbed onto Luna, and I was just like "Luna," -- you know I talk to everything in life; I talk to the air, to the water, anything that's a part of life I talk to. And I grabbed onto Luna and I said "Luna, I'm terrified I'm going to die!" And I said, "I want to be strong for you and I want to be strong for the forest, but I can't even be strong for me right now. I don't know what to do. I'm flippin' out."
And the circumstances explained in detail: http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9807a/butterflyprofile.html

"Why are we going to give him $380 million when he already owes us $1.6 billion? We've already bought Headwaters Forest. In fact we already bought the entire holdings of Pacific Lumber Co. when we bailed that bank out for $1.6 billion. We don't need to buy Headwaters because we already own it," Cherney concluded.

Sad: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/science/DailyNews/chimps_labbreak980715.html

For the first time in their lives, 12 chimpanzees used for biomedical research went out recently for a breather. ... The 12 chimps came out at once, not allowing the cakes or the toys to divert their attention from the new horizon that stretched out before their eyes.

Gallows humor: the 1998 Internet Death Pool: http://stiffs.com/98numbers.cfm (agc)

1. Frank Sinatra 447 x
2. Bob Hope 408
3. James Earl Ray 294 x
4. Strom Thurmond 270
5. Katharine Hepburn 236
6. Pope John Paul II 198
7. Boris Yeltsin 191
8. Ronald Reagan 185
9. The Queen Mother 154
10. Carl Perkins 129 x

The battle for the high ground: http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/071598/info10_14296_noframes.html

At least four companies in the United States are now developing stratospheric telecommunications networks using high-altitude planes or balloons to serve as sort of tall antennas or very low satellites, depending on your perspective.
Arnold said that finding pilots willing to fly for eight hours in the same spot is a potential problem...

New New Scientist includes a special feature on bioterrorism, plus this sad tale of surgical whistleblowing: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980718/forum.html

The ostracism that Stephen Bolsin, the anaesthetist who exposed the scandal, experienced at the hands of his colleagues led him to seek a job abroad.
And from the everything-you-know-is-wrong department: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980718/features.html

The idea that too much cleanliness is bad for you has crossed from folklore into mainstream immunology because of the mysterious epidemic of immune-related diseases now sweeping the Western world.

Alexa is watching you! http://cgi.netscape.com/cgi-bin/rlcgi.cgi?URL=www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblogs/weblog.html [SN]

Comp.text.xml will be created next week.

Unabomber handwriting scan from an interesting archive of documentary evidence: [multipage] http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/kaczynski1.shtml [via OSRR]
Another scan, of a flowchart for Customs' searches: [multipage] http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/customs.html
And the original of Drudge's $30M Blumenthal rumor: [multipage] http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/drudge2.html

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that top GOP operatives... believe they are holding an ace card: New White House recruit Sidney Blumenthal has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up.

I'm gonna be sick: http://www.twinkies.com/

Let Chauncey Chocodile, our own Hostess relic, guide you through the Hostess History Lesson. Clues will be placed throughout the site in the form of a blinking Sno Ball. Answer the questions correctly and you just might win your very own Planet Twinkie T-Shirt!

Sensible rejection of the recent agent-induced-chaos claims: [Deja URL, long lines]

What he is describing is an open loop control problem which has very very fast actuators. The real world isn't like that. In recent events when currencies have been hit by aggressive traders, governments have acted to slow the speculation e.g. the Swedich Government hiked up the overnight interest rate to 200% to prevent attacks on the Swedish Crown.

Tue, Jul 14, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1912, on his way to Dublin for the last time, Joyce stops to visit Yeats.
TV 2nite: George V Higgins on Tom Snyder (grizzled! Nanny Louise was the topic)
There must be 50 ways to kill Mandela: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/15/11481.html

The commission also heard how the Rev Frank Chikane, an adviser to President Nelson Mandela, survived attempts to poison him, including dusting his underpants with chemicals that seeped into his skin. When he collapsed in the US in 1989 the FBI concluded that his clothes had been dusted with phosphates supposed to trigger a heart attack.
The always intriguing Anais Nin: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/15/11376.html

Her private life was so thick with desire and the deception needed to express it to the full (she kept a little box of index cards, with a label on top marked "Lies"), and her public life so packed with famous names, that she stands as a fascinating, distorting mirror of her times.
Above the (international) law: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/15/11477.html

The American government has secretly threatened to pull its troops out of Europe in an attempt to curb the reach of a proposed permanent war crimes tribunal.

Kibo on ark:

Vanna, I'd like to buy a perjorative.

Spielberg treated the Private Ryan cast as bootcamp grunts: [multipage, really bad HTML] http://www.premiere.com/onthebeach/index.html

Dye compares Hanks's heart and spirit with those of another actor who makes a zillion dollars per picture and knocks himself out doing it, Tom Cruise, and says that he would soldier with Hanks anytime, a high compliment indeed.
The material seemed to dictate a nonstoryboard approach. Spielberg wanted to capture the sheer chaos of war, and this took its toll on the shooting script, especially after D-Day, which was the first thing they shot. There's actually a scene where a GI, maddened by the carnage, mows down surrendering Germans. In the wake of this bloodletting, all the knee-jerk World War II cliches went out the window, supplanted by dialogue and scenes often supplied by the actors...

Foresight Exchange: The Dow's surge today has set off a wave of buying of DOW10K, a claim that the Dow will break 10k before 1/1/00. I've bet virtual-$50 shorting it, that will pay $250 if it doesn't get there... but it's getting nervewracking! http://www.ideosphere.com/

Surveillance cams: No matter where you go... there they are: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jul/count.htm [Whump]

New MicroTimes surveys Internet telephony: http://www.microtimes.com/181/internettelephony.html

They're pricey, from about $200 to $300, compared to standard phone instruments that now go for as low as $20. How many long-distance calls will it take to amortize the cost of a Net phone, especially if you have to supply the devices to some of the people you call regularly?

New Village Voice does Y2K, Tina Brown, nano-munitions, TWA800, Lolita, and more, including Sadie Benning's PixelVision feature film: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/film/29taubin2.shtml

On the edge of live action and animation, Flat Is Beautiful is largely shot in real locations with real actors. But the actors all wear full-face masks that resemble children's drawings of faces--flat, with big, jagged-edged features and topped with helmetlike hair. Rather than obscuring the characters, the masks have the effect of externalizing their feelings of alienation, of being strangers in a strange land.

Nevermind: MacOS Rumors announced Netscape 4.5, but it's not really downloadable yet.

Summarising CS Lewis on sci-fi: [Deja URL]

In order to justify teaching modern literature (a new field when he was writing), academics had to find a reason why ordinary intelligent people of moderate education couldn't read current books by themselves, without instruction. Clearly they could read most of them...so the search was on for those so unattractive ("difficult" is the preferred term, because it implies intellectual superiority) that the average student would never read them without being forced to do so. These works were promptly promoted to high status (after all, they were being taught in university, and being written about in literary journals.) Students could then be taught "how" to read them, and shamed for preferring more innately attractive books.

Al Gore among the beatniks (1972): gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us/00/Community/gaskins.farm

Gaskin, the "Spiritual Leader" of the commune which is known simply as "The Farm" said of all the persons he has debated in San Francisco and around the country, "These Church of Christ folks are some of the toughest, a lot tougher than the Hare Krishna people".

Found thermo-art: [multipage, unhelpful index] http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/notebook98/heat3.html

Modern mesmerism: [chaotic tv transcript] http://cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/9807/11/rs.00.html [OSRR]

If you take the major magazine programs -- Ed Bradley and Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl -- they don't do a lot of the research that goes into "60 Minutes". They are the glue that holds "60 Minutes" together. They are the magnetic personalities whose travels we all sit down to watch on Sunday evening.

Sub-$1000 success: [short] http://www.news.com/News/Item/Textonly/0,25,24162,00.html?pfv

He said Compaq is paying 42 percent less for home PC components now than it was a year ago, the paper reported today.

Yesterdaily? It seems like Science Daily is just recycled NewsHub Science

Vatican Library tries limited hangout route: http://www.cbs.com:80/prd1/now/template.display?p_story=62767&p_who=network

A joint venture between the Vatican and IBM will eventually make it all available to universities on a special Internet route.

Yay! Somebody appreciates Karen Finley: http://www.kcstar.com:80/item/pages/fyi.pat,fyi/30da36fc.707,.html

The fact remains that much recent art funded by the NEA has been about holding democracy to its promise. Apparently, a lot of powerful people have a problem with that.

Mon, Jul 13, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1904, Mat Kane's funeral (Martin Cunningham in Ulysses) was held. Also in 1904, the painful case of Sarah Bishop killed by a train.
TV 2nite: Drudge on Letterman
"NY Review of Books" is skipping an issue
Linus talks: [long] http://www.bootnet.com/youaskedforit/lip_linux_manifesto.html [Slashdot]

boot: What do you hate about Windows 95?
Torvalds: What's fundamentally wrong is that nobody ever had any taste when they did it. ... They don't have anybody who takes pride in Windows 95 as an operating system.
boot: How long before MacOS disappears?
Torvalds: I think it will be completely gone in five years and I think it will be a really small niche market in two.
I've actually been disgusted how many non-serious universities there are. There are universities that are considered to be reasonably good, but teach people skills that must not be used in a professional capacity, except if they happen to be professionals at Microsoft. I find that to be fairly immoral for a school.
boot: Would you ever consider working for Microsoft?
Torvalds: Yes. I wouldn't say no to a job just because it's Microsoft, but it would have to be a real dream job and right now I don't see Microsoft having that kind of dream job.
...I specifically did not want my job to be Linux related, because I want to have the freedom to do whatever I think is the right thing without having a boss that says "Hey, we really need this feature in order to make a lot of money." I didn't want to be in that position.

Ingmar Bergman's bedhopping and other madness: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/14/11191.html

Bergman spent only three weeks in the asylum. He was saved by his own aggression.
Dr Quinn, medicine man: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/14/11314.html

They found an old brace and bit in the school garden shed. "It was a very, very mediaeval looking drill," said Ms Hallam. The drill was sterilised and Dr Hindley performed 'burr-hole' surgery. "I knew how to do it and I went over the procedure on the telephone with a neurosurgeon," he said.

New Scientific American features fusion and irrigation, and this short piece on neutrinos: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898scicit1.html

Future historians may look back on 1998 as the year that particle physics got interesting again.
And this on gamma bursts: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898scicit4.html

Just as astronomers were reconciling themselves to the unexpected distance and brilliance of this burst, along came another on April 25 that was unexpectedly near and dim: nearly 100 times closer and 100,000 times dimmer than the December event. Even stranger, this burst was followed not by the usual afterglow of less energetic radiation but by a supernova--the first time an exploding star and gamma burst have been seen together.
And an interesting profile of Venter the genome pirate: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898profile.html

The sequencing building for Venter's new human genome company, now under construction adjacent to TIGR, should be a technological Mecca. It will produce more DNA data than the rest of the world's output combined, employing 270 Perkin-Elmer Applied Biosystems 3700 machines, which are now in final development. These sophisticated robots, which will sell for $300,000 apiece, should require much less human intervention than state-of-the-art devices.
Do unions raise productivity?!? http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898techbus3.html

One reason: most of the union shops had adopted formal quality programs, with up to half the workers meeting regularly to discuss workplace issues.
Permian extinctions: http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898inbrief.html

At the end of the Permian period, more than 85 percent of all ocean species and 70 percent of terrestrial species died out. A study in Science on May 15 shows that this vanishing act happened fast--in less than a million years. ... Erwin found that most species had disappeared between 252.3 million and 251.4 million years ago.

April Oliver gets to tell her side: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-07/12/144l-071298-idx.html

Another flaw with the Abrams/Kohler report was its upholding of the "repressed memory" canard, put forward in recent reports to discredit the story. But there was no pop-psych journalism at play here.

Feed explores why Americans don't get soccer: http://www.feedmag.com/html/feeddaily/98.07.11feeddaily_master.html

Like all things avant-garde, maybe soccer still doesn't appeal to us because the commentary has yet to catch up with the game.

Nerve has a lovely portfolio of nudes: [multipage] http://www.nervemag.com/Karsten/

We only stop when it's clear that the models aren't having any more fun, when they have already shown whatever desire in that situation they are able to show.

Sun, Jul 12, 1998
An excellent detailed update on biotech: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/12/10932.html

Last year one company, SmithKline Beecham (SB), identified 200 target proteins. SB said that until 1995 the entire industry had discovered only 500. It now has 70,000 protein sequences available to work on.
Not Just Another Tina Brown Story: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/12/10930.html

"The minute BBC America gets here, American television is going to be in trouble. With digital TV just around the corner it's a blank slate, and the BBC is going to come over here and completely reinvent documentaries, news and talk shows."

Yowzah! Even if this VR tale weren't for real, it'd make a lovely fiction: [multipage] http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1998/07/cov_13feature.html

Suddenly, people began to emerge from the work in tears, citing a similarity between this elegiac ending and near-death experiences; some wrote in the comment book that they were "no longer afraid of death."
Having smeared Mother Teresa, Chris Hitchens now sets upon the Dalai Lama: http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/07/13news.html

Steven Seagal, the robotic and moronic "actor" who gave us "Hard to Kill" and "Under Siege," has been proclaimed a reincarnated lama and a sacred vessel or "tulku" of Tibetan Buddhism.
An interesting piece on perverse beauty: http://www.salonmagazine.com/ent/music/vowe/1998/07/13vowe.html

"Police Pictures" doesn't just showcase the movie-star good looks of Bonnie Parker (who would be played by Faye Dunaway), it makes every last drop of blood, every dead body, equally attractive.
An update on Barry Diller's UHF experiment: (Didn't I link this topic already?) http://www.salonmagazine.com/media/1998/07/13media.html

"The only local TV that exists today is news, sports and cable access. [WAMI] doesn't fit into any of those three categories. It has a feel that comes from the street."

The most enlightened band of the 60s spent the 70s doing Scientology: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac455/isb_scn.htm

It is ironic in the extreme that the last, and worst ever, Incredible String Band album was a recording of a benefit concert for Scientology, held at the London Rainbow on 9/5/74. This was an unashamed advertisement from start to finish, with a massive picture of Hubbard and sales pitch for his Dianetics book on the gatefold sleeve. ... A Very Cellular Song was a chilling parody of its original self. If you can imagine this sacred anthem being shouted by a vacant punk band, you'll be on your way to understanding the horror String Band fans must have felt when they heard it.

New category: porn news: http://olj.usc.edu/sections/features/98_stories/stories_porn_lukeford_070998.htm

Brandy Alexandre, a former porn star who says she started the first porn news site in cyberspace in 1993, and whose site has been largely overshadowed by Ford's, says 90% of what Ford posts is erroneous. "...He's an evil little hack."

Freudian obsession? http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/071298/health21_10855_noframes.html

Geyser watching isn't always a blast. Between eruptions, Stephens reads science-fiction and history books or plays bridge with other volunteers. She taps eruption numbers into her laptop computer to keep up with the most active spouters.

Short Bjork interview: http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12921.html [HtB]

We can make rhythms from the sound of an ant running down a twig.

A 3mb RealVid of the Love Parade: http://cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9807/11/love.parade/index.html

Inside the Newhouse media empire: [multipage, very long] http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980720/nas.html [OSRR]

But at Conde Nast things are different. On close inspection, it turns out to be a company run on a model long since abandoned by other mainstream publishers.
Editors at Conde Nast didn't even have budgets; they were simply told to spend what they needed to spend.
The New Yorker was one magazine where circulation made money. Its basic rate was $32, and though it had a lower rate for students and teachers, it did not make cut-rate offers to gain new subscribers.
Here is where one could most clearly see the essential Conde Nast illusion: Page growth did not necessarily translate into increased profits.

The most detailed piece yet on Justice Kline: http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/07/11/MN11837.DTL

The California Judges Association was so alarmed by the state court's decision that it sponsored a bill that the Legislature approved in 1994 that overturned Neary. But Governor Pete Wilson vetoed the measure...

Pacifica's Saul Landau reviews the Gaviotas ecotopia book: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-07/12/030l-071298-idx.html

At one point, the Gaviotas hospital treated guerrilla and army wounded "in the same room." Weisman marvels that "they had been trying to kill each other; now the one who could still walk was bringing the other water."

Orgy of stupidity: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1998-07/12/004r-071298-idx.html

That sounds good compared with profitless Lycos or Amazon. But if that estimate becomes reality, then the price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) for Yahoo is 445, compared with a P/E of 28 for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.

Sat, Jul 11, 1998
Linking-law was tested by TotalNews and Ticketmaster: http://www.lawworks-iptoday.com/12-97/epstien.htm [Slashdot]

If such a site contains language to the effect of "By viewing this site, the user consents to these terms" (and the virtually all do) then the restriction could likely be held effective by a court, and you could violate it by creating a deep link.

Paglia's melodramatic eulogy for Tina Brown: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/12/10900.html

For example, that the retrograde poetry critic Helen Vendler was not kicked right back to her Harvard lair showed Brown knew little about the American cultural battlefield. It was the first sign of Brown's embarrassing deference to Ivy League credentials.

April Oliver (Tailwind producer) in the Drudge Report: http://www.drudgereport.com/1.htm

"They have gagged us. They have deceived us and they have misled us and every reporter in this room should know that. This is a corporate whitewash. This is a cave to the military establishment, to the secret army which is one step away from the secret police."

On chi.general, Tommy the Terrorist proposes a debate about genetic testing for babysitters: [Deja URL]

IF THERE WERE A WAY that you could tell whether a baby-sitter was more likely to be a bad care-giver, or abuse your children, COULD YOU TURN IT DOWN?

A fine Beanie-Baby-conspiracy white-trash-pastoral fantasia from E Teflon Piano: [Deja URL]

So she gets a ride with her cousin, the long-haul trucker for Snap-On tools out of Newark, and she takes a houskeeping job in Ocala at the Days Inn on the Interstate, where everybody on her shift knows she's got this deep, dark secret past. And also she's got this little green knockoff "Zamsonite" suitcase full of "evidence", but it just looks like blue plush, really.

New Consortium includes concise reviews of two Contra-coke books: http://www.consortiumnews.com/consort8.html

The Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz mentioned Webb's book in a column on July 6, but only in the mocking way that the contra-drug issue is normally dealt with by the major media.

A great, technical-but-readable debunking of Windows NT: http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncw-06-1998/ncw-06-lastten.html [Slashdot, Whump]

One doesn't have to introduce any more pertinent factors to future Windows NT design to understand that Microsoft is either misrepresenting what it can and will deliver, or Windows NT is headed for almost certain disaster. That's because Microsoft is between a strategic rock and a hard place.

A thoughtful interview on charging for bandwidth: [multipage] http://webreference.com/outlook/column27/index.html [Whump]

"The science of tuning computer systems is the art of revealing bottlenecks."
Yet it seems consumers are not always rational when it comes to telecommunications. They pay $1.00 per minute while roaming on their cell phones while fighting to beat the dime a minute rate on home long distance. They pay 90 cents to call Dateline NBC just to participate in a poll.
Recently I heard a Bell Labs scientist joke that eventually every packet sent on the Internet will put itself up for auction, bidding to find carriers to deliver it. Are we headed for that sort of world?

Most popular search words: [multipage] http://www.searchterms.com/html/_91_through__100.html [Whump]

sex, mp3, warez, chat, xxx passwords, hotmail, titanic, spice girls, south park, yahoo...

English words already taken: [87k] http://pantheon.yale.edu/~ohm/already-taken.html

I ran a list of 25,000 English words against the Internic's database to find out which words, when appended with the ".com" suffix are still available [or not] in the slowly vanishing namespace of the internet.

Is this Barlow-fragment about the CIA for real? http://www.intrepid.net/~magmedia/PRevolting/barlow.html [NTK]

And while I'm standing there in this supposedly electronically-hardened environment in the nerve center of the CIA, my phone rings. (laughter) There was a terrible flurry of embarrassment.

US White Pages include reverse lookup: http://www.555-1212.com/whte_us.htm

SuperMax prison stories: http://www.latimes.com:80/CNS_DAYS/980710/t000063591.html

In January 1980, using a piece of wood, a pair of rose shears, a toothbrush affixed to a broom handle and a jar of Vaseline, he vanished from Lompoc, slipping up through a drain grate into the prison grounds and slicing the prison's razor wire fence.
Lee, with a life sentence, was paroled in January. Today he works for the Hollywood production company belonging to Sean Penn, the actor who played him in the movie.

Eccch: [Messy URL]

A company that removes hazardous materials for some of Silicon Valley's most prestigious companies has admitted very serious safety violations that left one of its workers permanently brain damaged.

A filmmaker to watch: [multipage] http://www.post-gazette.com:80/magazine/19980710bbuba1.asp

Tony is the Anti-David Lynch, the director whose 1986 movie "Blue Velvet" opened with serene scenes of picket fences and flowers ... and then the collapse of a man watering the lawn and a view of the insects churning beneath the grass. "Now, when you go through Braddock, there are a lot of boarded up buildings. I sort of use this analogy, it's the opposite of a David Lynch film. When you go to the clean suburbs, you dig down into the ground and you find worms and dirt where, here, the worms and dirt are above the ground and as you dig deeper, you find all the warmth and goodness that people have to offer."

Legal:

Best-selling British novelist Martin Amis, 48, author of London Fields, and American writer Isabel Fonseca, 36, married on June 29 in London. It was his second marriage and her first. The couple have an 18-month-old daughter, Fernanda.

Fri, Jul 10, 1998
This Day in Joyce History: In 1940, Joyce volunteered to tend a sick old woman, but she died on his watch. (Ellmann 733)
TV 2nite: The first movie John Carpenter made (four years) after the classic "They Live" was a banal Chevy Chase vehicle, "Memoirs of an Invisible Man"

New Science News tries to identify the seasonings in non-primordial soup: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/7_11_98/fob7.htm

From the ratios of right- to left-handed amino acids in seawater, McCarthy and his colleagues conclude that a substantial fraction of the dissolved organic matter comes from bacteria. This challenges the traditional view that algae produce most of the ocean's soluble biological material.

A nation of idealists? http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/11/10836.html

Guyana, said Mr Hoyte, would set aside nearly a million acres of rainforest, partly for conservation and partly for research into sustainable development. The international community took a while to recover from its astonishment.
Capitalism's no-heart: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/11/10891.html

"The artist is illiterate. She is happy. She has no need for money," trust spokesman Rein Dekkar declared.
...And how British Airways sees it: [pic source] http://www.british-airways.com/lsp/wgallery/frames/botswana.shtml

All nanotech must also be biotech! http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/univ/pots.html

He and Temple University chemist Trevor Douglas have discovered that the protein case that encapsulates a virus can be hijacked when empty and used as a "molecular cooking pot" of the nanosphere size.

Another blow to anonymity: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980710S0012

Philip apparently was able to track down the authors of the anonymous messages by tracing IP addresses obtained from Yahoo.

Extremely cool fractal music: [RealAudio] http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_128000/128906.stm

Phil Thompson has turned the Mandelbrot set into a composition he has called 'A Season in Hell'.

Trance dance wants a chance: http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/international/0710/i_ap_0710_11.sml

"I ran for close to 24 hours some days in the army without any sleep and no one thought I was taking drugs then,'' said Eyal Mirelman, a 24-year-old student working on a documentary about the trance scene.

EPA hides worst-case-scenario stats: http://www.news.com/News/Item/Textonly/0,25,24052,00.html?pfv

Driven by her experience, Nixon, along with a number of public interest groups, wants the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out its plan to post online reports detailing chemical manufacturers' "worst-case" accident scenarios with an estimate of how many people would die if toxic gases were released, if an explosion took place, or if dangerous liquids were spilled.

The Amazon.com story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1998-07/10/001r-071098-idx.html [OSRR]

Bezos, 34, doesn't act rich. He lives with his wife in a tiny rented apartment, drives a Honda Accord, works out of a shabby office that has a view of a pawnshop and wig store. His desk is a recycled door with some legs attached.
At one point, the company was spending an incredible $36 in marketing for every $100 in sales.
He wanted in by the smartest available route. Methodically, he drew up a list of products that could be sold on the Internet, including computers, software, music, videos, clothing.
Meanwhile, thanks to Amazon, the stores can get their hands on more titles faster. The distributor Ingram was stocking about 400,000 titles. Because of demand from the online booksellers, the title base is being increased to 600,000.

Teaching reading via movies: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/10/10484.html

The results were almost unbelievable - in seven weeks, the children in the experimental class improved their reading by almost two years against the control class.
A chatty kiss-n-tell about Mr Exorcist, William Friedkin, from a screenwriter: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/10/10471.html

"A few weeks ago, Stephen was eating gruel on a hillside in Wales. We only got him out here because Bill Blatty's too fat and too rich to do this kind of thing any more."
Stephen Berkoff vents on London phonies: http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/7/10/10587.html

He said that Cypriots had been his first audience in more than 30 years who had not punctuated his performance with coughing.

Chiquita rumors: http://www.amcity.com:80/dayton/stories/070698/editorial2.html

Instead, the reporter in this instance went to telephone booths and used a secret code he had obtained to listen and record Chiquita voice mail. Chiquita officials got suspicious about the reporter's work on such a volatile story, had the reporter followed and watched him make the illegal recordings.
And: http://www.citybeat.com/issue/newsarticle1.html [OSRR]

Rumors abound about the cash payment, with some sources claiming that the actual settlement is in the neighborhood of $40 million to $50 million. The additional value, they say, could be in the form of Gannett stock.
Al Neuharth, one-time Gannett CEO and founder of USA Today, recalled in his autobiography Confessions of an S.O.B. that [Chiquita CEO] Lindner tried to take over Gannett because he'd always wanted to give one of his sons a media company to run. After the takeover bid failed, Lindner sold his shares in Gannett.

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