Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 134 of 147)

Zeroing History

President Bush’s proposed budget completely zeroes out the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
The Society of American Archivists explains the Commission and recommends actions at their website.
If you have been using the web to do personal or professional or scholarly or family research, you will be poorer for this. Access to our history in the form of primary documents is one of the keystones of our democracy.
Unfortunately this is not a new behavior by this Bush’s administration. Ashcroft’s resistance to Freedom of Information Requests and Governor G. Bush’s move of his records from the Texas Archives to the G.H.W. Bush Library where they are sealed are two examples of removing access to immediate history.
The official language killing the National Historical Publications and Records Commission reads:

“National Historical Publications and Records Commission Grants.—This program provides funding for grants that the Commission makes, nationwide, to preserve and publish records that document American history. The Budget proposes no new grants funding for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission in 2006.”

Gladin to see you (twice)

Susan Gladin showed up in two different newspapers with two different pieces of writing today. Susan and her husband Peter Kramer let me use their chicken house as a place to work on poetry — well, the house is a small room writer’s cottage that Peter built in the middle of the chicken pen. Note to self: Get your schedule set so you can get out there at least once a week.

In the News and Observer’s Sunday Journal, Susan has a short piece of fiction, “Lips like Wine.”

In the Chapel Hill Herald where Susan is regular Sunday columnist, she writes of giving up sugar in sympathy with her sister’s giving up smoking. (for whatever reason, the Herald doesn’t put their correspondants’ articles on-line).

At first, I was sure this would be a Lenten article. Afterall Susan is a Methodist minister and this Wednesday coming will be Ash Wednesday. But it seems that Susan has instead chosen a substitute for sugar, stevia, with no season or penitential excuse offered.

Susan notes that the history of stevia and the FDA has not been an easy one as does Henriette’s Herbal Medicine site.

I’m now trying to reconcile the two writings. One chastizing sweetly a Baptist preacher about his unnuanced attitude toward wine. One drunk with information about a herb that caused more than a little reaction from the FDA. Is there a mapping between the preacher and the FDA, between wine and sugar or stevia, between the first person narrator of the story and the personal journalist of the column? Have I been reading too much Paul Auster?

Looking for Senior Citizen Discounts

I just received a box of socks from my parents. At least in their minds, I may celebrate birthdays, but I remain stuck in my teens and in need of assistance in maintaining my stock of acceptable personal apparel.
In the mind of the White House, I am among the last to be entitled for Social Security benefits.
In the mind of AARP, I should have joined 5 years ago.
In the mind of the intelligent treadmill at the gym, my heart rate should not exceed 165.
In the mind of my son, I am already in my dotage and have been since he had his 10th birthday.
In the mind of the North Carolina Employee Retirement System, I have to keep working if I want full benefits.
What I want to know is: where do I go to collect those famous senior citizen discounts?

Ossie: I’ll remember him as JFK

Ossie Davis died at age 87 still acting and still an activist. He’ll be remembered for his part in bringing new black movie making to us in “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” for advising Spike Lee on “Malcolm X,” for his parts in “Malcom X” and other Lee films, for his long marriage to Ruby Dee (1948 – present) and more. He was a tireless worker in his art and in politics and social change. He gave eulogies at the funerals of both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

For me, oddly enough, his turn as John F Kennedy in the wonderfully touching story of aging, dignity, and Egyptian Soul-sucking mummies, “Bubba Ho-Tep” is the most memorable. The story could not have been carried off without Ossie’s ability to bring something deep out of something potentially so shallow, something surprising out of something so potentially predictable. He has great help from the main lead, Bruce Campbell as a man who might be Elvis, writer Joe R. Lansdale, and director Don Coscarelli. But for me Ossie is the presence that keeps Bruce/Elvis on his toes, that keeps you believing when it’s obvious you shouldn’t be believing, that takes the movie where Lansdale’s story wants to go. Ossie like his character in Bubba Ho-Tep was active to the end, never stopping to be involved, Unlike his character, Ossie was never confused about who he was. He never accomodated and never wavered.

Approaching Triangle Bloggers Con

The upcoming Triangle Bloggers Conference has grown far beyond what we originally invisioned. And this is a good thing. The new room in Murphey Hall (aka the Classics Department where you are greeted on entering by Ashcroft offending statues) is one of the best small auditoria on campus. If you had been in 166 Murphey before the renovation, you will not recognize the room now. It’s a padded seat odium full of techno-magic.
The good folks at Bob Young’s new company, lulu.com, are bringing the coffee and pastries.
George Morgan of the Bull’s Head will have plenty of Dan Gillmor’s books to be signed and sold.
We have very very good folks signed up including, Dave Winer, John Robinson, Ed Cone, Ruby Sinreich and more.

Blink – the tag, the book

Of Blink.

Back in the day when Netscape was Mozilla or even before, the most annoying HTML tag known was blink. ESR put Blink as the number one way that you knew you were in HTML Hell. Blink has few supporters.

I blame Jamie Zawinski because he has spent so much time denying that he had anything to do with the annoying tag.

Blink (as I have mentioned here before) is the name of a new book by Malcolm Gladwell which has been widely reviewed and advertized — most recently on SlashDot where the comments are more interesting than the review itself (the purpose of a good Slashdot review is to generate comments ;->). Blink, the book, which I have only flipped through but have read as it appeared in the form of articles in the New Yorker as Gladwell’s Tipping Point had appeared before it. To cut to the obvious, the book is a collection of well-written, easy-to-read New Yorker articles with some glue added. The result is another highly anecdotal strongly narative book that draws on research that is not footnoted or cited well. Like a blink, the book is fast, subtle, alluring to the right person, but mostly on the shiny unchallenging surface and without links to what is beneath it.

Note: Microsoft managed to invent something even more annoying than blink, the infamous MARQUEE tag. Talk about something really annoying, distracting and obnoxious. You can see what’s wrong with MARQUEE in a blink.

Triangle Bloggers Update – Feb 12

Please come to any or all events and please repost as appropriate. Also if you or folks you know would like to help out, please contact me, Paul Jones (jones at unc.edu) and/or Anton Zuiker (anton at zuiker.com)

The Triangle Bloggers Conference has grown to nearly 100 registered participants including representatives from local and regional presses.

Three Blogger Events are coming your way in the next week. Triangle Bloggers Conference in Murphey Hall (Saturday 2/12), Dan Gillmor talk in Carroll Hall (Monday 2/14) and in Greensboro Dave Winer at the News and Record (Wednesday 2/9). Details and links below.

Triangle Bloggers Conference
Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – noon:30 (and beyond) Murphey Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Learn more

Dan Gillmor public talk
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People
Monday February 14, 3:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall, UNC
Learn more

Dave Winer, community journalism discussion
Wednesday February 9, 7 p.m.
200 East Market St., Greensboro
Learn more

Jumpin in the Garden of Eden

One of the joys of working with the Folkstreams Project, in which we are digitizing nearly 40 documentaries shot mostly in the mid to late 20th century, is that I get to watch and listen to a lot of wonderful music and stories that I have managed to mostly miss out on or only pay scant attention to.
Right now, as I’ve cleaning up some smaller tasks and getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, I’m listening and watching “Jumpin’ in the Garden of Eden” about the rebirth of klezmer music in the USA. Shot in 1987, the film focuses on two bands major to the klezmer revival, Kapelye and Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Chris Abani at NCSU March 27th

South African friend, Andie Miller, writes to say that one of her favorite poets, Nigerian Chris Abani author of “Graceland” (a new novel which has just been shortlisted for the Africa region Best Book Award of The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize) and others, will be the keynote speaker at NCSU’s Human Rights Week on March 27th. Nothing yet on the NCSU website, but it’s listed at Abani’s site.
You can hear Abani on the March 22, 2004 show at the Cat Radio Cafe, which has a number of other really interesting shows with great writers.

M$googleKiller released

Microsoft announced their long anticipated Google Killer today. Announced as Beta, the search’s has several small innovations — you get to search your desktop and Encarta from the same bar the way on Google you can search for text, images and news (which you can also do on MSN Search).
I ran a little search, singing of myself as Walt would, for paul jones (no quotes). Below are the results.

Paul Jones MSN Search Google Yahoo
web 14,288,684 (0.19 seconds) 14,700,000 (0.21 seconds) 9,510,000 (0.08 sec)
news 1,982 (0.10 seconds) 8,010 (0.34 seconds) 6,822
images 840 (0.68 seconds) 16,000 (0.08 seconds) 13,069 (0.08 sec)
encarta 150 (0.01 seconds)
n/a
n/a
groups
n/a
677,000 (0.23 seconds)
n/a
froogle/products
n/a
7,590 confirmed / 223,000 total results (0.19 seconds) 1,424
video (test)
n/a
110 (0.02 seconds) 44 (0.32 sec)

Let’s Trim Our Hair According to Socialist Lifestyle

Proof that I am not a Communist:
North Korea’s formerly pompadoured leader Kim Jong Il declares war on long hair (on men only). An AP article on Salon reports:

Among the campaign’s hairdos and don’ts: Hair must be kept no longer than two inches. The only exception is for older men, who are given an extra four-fifths of an inch to hide baldness.

The dictum claims that long hair hampers brain activity by taking oxygen away from nerves in the head.

North Korea’s campaign does not mention any rules for women and gives no explanation as to why their long hair would not result in reduced brain activity.

The last Korean opponent of long hair, the South’s Park Chung-hee, managed to hold the hair down for a few years in the 70s, but as the AP story tells us:

Park was murdered by his own spy chief in 1979, and long hair — dyed in a variety of colors — is now widely accepted in South Korea.

So hands off the hair there, “Dear Leader”

Boing Boing beat AP to the story having a long piece on Jan 10.

I am not a Communist, but I am a member for the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Brain oxygen must be overrated.

Why I will never play poker

I blocked all the Texas Hold’em and Poker comment spam with AuthImage a while back, but starting early this morning I’ve been hit by Traceback spam! Grrrrrr.
Easy to delete, but like comment spam, a real pain and it bypasses AuthImage somehow.
Lots about this on the WordPress site. Hope to be reading through this and this and this later today.

Emerging Tech; Filled Hotel!

I’m all reved up to head out to San Diego in a little over a month to go to O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference. I lined up all my various discounts and got Tim to swear to his staff that I’m a faculty member so’s I don’t have to go through the hassle of faxing a bunch of verifications. (Thanks Tim I wasn’t really asking for that but I appreciate it). I got lined up to visit with Cory and with Tim and was chatting with Doc on AIM as I was trying to register at the Westin Hotel where the block of rooms for the conference was supposedly being held til February 18. The big word in the previous sentence is “supposedly.” I got back a message saying the block of rooms was entirely taken! Must be a broken reservation program, says I. I tell Doc who opens another AIM with Sara W of O’Reilly. Who tells us sure enough the conference is filling up fast and the hotel filled even faster!
There is no room for me or for Doc or for anyone registering after today. The good O’Reilly folks were surprised too and promise to have a list of alternative hotels on the website tomorrow.
The question is less whether I’ll be booked in a dive, but whether where ever I stay will have wireless, broadband, or any net.connections. Anyone familiar with the Horton Plaza area in San Diego? Or the Gas Light area?

Collapse-o-mania in NYTimes Books

There is no end to the reviewing and essaying on Jared Diamond’s new book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”
Today’s New York Times Book Review has a lengthy and thoughtful essay by Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook reviews Diamond’s career and touches on his other books including “Guns, Germs and Steel” and “Why is Sex Fun?” The first won Diamond the Pulitzer Prize and the second reflected the serious work that won him the National Medal of Science. Easterbrook is less enthusiastic than say Malcolm Gladwell or Steward Brand and in the end less thoughtful than David Brin.

I’ve written on Collapse and the mania surrounding it here and here and here.

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