Today, I was in and out, mostly in, at the NHPRC Electronic Records Fellowships Symposium. Max and TJ did a great job taping all the talks and we’ll have them online in due time.
We also had a delightful Journalism and Mass Communications School meeting in which all searches were approved with little discussion. We are hiring excellent folks!
Then at lunch, I heard a brain-straining mind-openning talk by Lennart Bjorneborn of Denmark on his webometrics work and on Small World Phenomenae and distributed knowledge organization and self-organizing structures on the Web.
[more on this and on the Symposium later]
During breaks, I saw a gorilla, a giant rabbit, an armadilla also giant, and a large mouse running around on the quad between the Wilson Library where the Symposium was held and Manning Hall where I live and Lennart’s talk was given. They invited me over, but then had a disagreement with the armadillo. And we went our separate ways. They were not far from the place where I ran into the energy witching group a few weeks back.
Odd occurances continued. As I went to my car to go home, I found that a car the exact same make, model, year and color of my car had parked beside me. The only difference was that the other car had a parking ticket on it and mine didn’t.
Later Tucker and I went to Weaver Street Market where we ran into 103.5 WCOM’s Jacques Menache (he’s also the ArtCenter founder and an old friend) who took us on a tour of Carrboro’s new low power community FM station. The building is an old branch bank and Jacques has ingeniusly moved the drive-in window to the studio so that the on-air DJ has a great view of the street. The station’s antenna which has about a 10 mile range is up the road above our house. It’s on the high point of Southern Village in the soccer field behind Mary Scroggs Elementary where Tucker went to grades 1 – 3. If you are a music or radio person in this area, drop by and lend WCOM a hand.
Our evening ended with a trip to our favorite toy store Wootini [sorry their site isn’t up quite yet] [but they did great a good write up in the News and Observer] where a big party and art show were underway. The occassion was the release of a new comic-based toy designed by Jermaine Rogers. Jermaine was there signing posters and making odd faces — he is famous for his rock posters which include an ongoing story with some mysterious characters in them. A race of underworld bears called Dero are the subject of the toy. DJ Uzi was spinning and playing music too. The whole place was full of folks who could understand what was up with custom evil bear toys. Jermaine was kind enough to sign some posters for us despite Tucker’s antics. On the way out, Tucker found a freehand drawn sign directing folks to the show which had blown off into the corner of the building and brought it home (since it wouldn’t stick up any more). Our Dero likes to stand on it.
Author: Paul (Page 142 of 147)
The man who ignited himself in front of the White House and incidentally in front of my hotel and within about 20 minutes of doing it in front of me, Mohamed Alanssi, turns out to be central to several anti-terrorism arrests in the US and in Europe. Newsday talks about at least three investigations that involve Alanssi none of them minor. The NYTimes and Washington Post have lengthy coverage of the involvements of Alanssi. The story doesn’t seem to be ending.
The story that ended and in fact completely vanished is any explaination of the other man who not long after Alanssi’s self-BBQing, climbed the White House fence. He remains a mystery. This man I did see only minutes or seconds before he went over.
eBayers in the meantime were given a chance to bid on a toasted cheese that reveals a Madonna!
As an homage to Miles Efron, a true food hound, I offer these [not yet commented on although both meals were wonderful] menu listings from my eats in DC Sunday and Monday of this week.
at the Bombay Club at 815 Connecticut Ave NW
appetizers
Dahi Papri Chaat = Crisp puries topped with potatoes, chick peas, onions, and covered with yogurt, date and tamarind.
Vegetable Samosa Chaat = From East to West, the ever-popular vegetable samosa, served with date and tamarind sauce.
entre d’jones
Sali Boti = Tender pieces of lamb delicately cooked with dried apricots and topped with crunchy straw potatoes. A Parsi delight.
at Asia Nora M between 22 and 23
shared appetizer
Crispy Honshimenji Mushroom & Green Bean Tempura with truffled daikon dipping sauce
entry d’ jones
Seared Lemongrass Beef Roulade with Roasted Butternut-Scallion Gnocchi with shiitake mushrooms, seared spinach, Thai pesto stuffing
dessert d’jones
Warm Chocolate Five Spice Cake coconut sorbet, black sesame tuile
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility are putting together a panel and public dicussion on voting and vote counting in the US. (see below). This is especially timely since we may be facing a revote for several Council of State offices (at least Agriculture) in part because of the loss of over 4,500 votes in Carteret County. “[T]he county was told by the manufacturer of the voting system that its units could store up to 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.”
December 8, 2004
7-9pm
Chapel Hill Town Hall
306 North Columbia St.
Is Your Vote Counted?
Panel presentation and Community Speak Out on the question of voter integrity.
Panel:
- David Allen, Systems Engineer, publisher and tech consultant “Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century”
- Justin Moore, Computer Scientist, member National Committee for Voting Integrity
- Lewis Pitts, Legal Aid Attorney, Advocates for Children’s Services
Introduction by Joyce McCloy, Founder, NC Coalition for Verified Voting
I’m in DC learning how to report on the folkstreams.net grant. The good news is that we have a great rate on a great hotel. All mod cons and most of them in gold looking metal with muted gold tones repeated throughout the hotel and the rooms. They even leave slippers by the bed for you. The bad news is that the facillitator hates our meeting room and swears not to meet here again. We, the attendees, are fine by the meeting room, delighted with the rate, and more than happy with our own rooms.
And we have learned a lot today. 80% of learning a new discipline is said to be about vocabulary. 80% of success is about showing up (says Woody Allen). But in our training, 90% of reporting on our grants is about syntax. We do not say “the public will have access to these wonderful materials;” we say instead “the public (or better ‘citizens’) will use these wonderful materials.” We do not say “students will learn about their heritage from these materials;” we say “students will know about their heritage from these materials.”
[added later] The point I should say is that “access” and “learning” are “processes” whilst “use” and “knowing” are outcomes that may be measured. Or so we were told.
In the meantime, a man set himself on fire less than a block from here in front of the White House. He reportedly shouted “Allah, Allah.”
Then just after I passed by Pennsylvania Ave and the new barricades. Another man scaled the fences and was pounced upon by Secret Service officers. I think I saw this guy a few minutes before he went over. He was in black with white ties around his pants at the ankles and was pulling gently at the fence when I passed by.
TV news was on the spot to report. One block away in front of the Hay Adams.
DC still has a ways to go to catch up with NYC where a man jumped naked into the Caiman tank at the Bronx Zoo.
UPDATE: I woke up to read a long story in the Washington Post (registration required but Google News will have you find other versions) that 52-year-old Mohammed Alanssi who set himself on fire at the White House yesterday evening was a Yemeni federal informant on terrorism upset over how the FBI had managed his case.
NBC4 has pictures of both the burned man and the jumper. The jumper was definitely the man I passed yesterday afternoon. He went over not long after I saw him.
Last night, we drove way out in the the darkest (read no streetlights) part of the county to go to a house concert given by Peter Kramer and Susan Gladen. Susan and Peter weren’t the musicians – the Weems-Gerrard band did that work. Alice Gerrard, who recorded 3 great LPs with the legendary Hazel Dickens and who founded the Old Time Herald, was the lead attraction. She was joined by a surprising (to me) guitarist — News and Observer Features Editor Tommy Goldsmith who turns out to have a rich musical past and some strong current licks. Mark Weems joined this edition of Alice Gerrard and band to play mostly honky tonk music. The band was fine and the music called for dancing which came later on. Too late for at least one of us (who is not inclined to honky much tonk anyhow), but the general ambiance was wonderful and the sound, handled by novelist and top knotch Elvis impersonator Bill Henderson was just right for the small hall that Peter has built on the farm.
I’m now packing and heading out the door for DC for training in support of our grant for the folkstreams.net project from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The downside is two full days sitting in a hotel meeting room. The upside is that it’s in the Hay Adams Hotel. They have “high-speed Internet access” in the rooms so I may be able to post from there if the meeting lends itself to that.
I’ve loved Viking Kittens since they first showed up on the net. I can’t find what the guy at Rather Good did with that bit of Flash, but he has wonderful kittens doing White Stripes, Public Enemy, a little latino?, Laibach, etc. Completely silly interludes on a rainy cold day.
There are not that many famous computer security experts, but Bruce Schneier certainly is one. And justly so for Applied Crytography and for books since including Beyond Fear. He’s written a great piece from a computer security perspective on eVoting at his blog and on opendemocracy.org
I’m to talk to a class in International Journalism about Censorship on the Net on Wednesday. My plan is to talk about some specific instances and how they have played out. I’m not going back to the Scientology supression of USENET and of the anonymous remailers, but I may mention that. Here are the topics that I’m thinking of just now:
- great firewall of China — ibiblio’s specific experience
- Indymedia server siezure in UK — still ongoing Report from Nov 10, 2004
- Spain and Ogrish.com — is it or isn’t it
- Nazi materials in European countries
- porn in Australia (and other stuff by accident)
- Arresting techies from Open Society in Belarus
Is there anything I’m leaving out? Burma? err I guess I meant Myanmar. And don’t forget Wikipedia!
Technical solutions
- Tor: an anonymizing overlay network for TCP
- Funky URL ofuscation
- How to bypass censorship FAQ
- Peace Fire Circumventor
- Open Net Initiative’s Circumvention Lab
- Censorware Project
Resources
This morning the NPR show Morning Edition aired a show about the 1970 racially motivated murder in Oxford, NC documented in Tim Tyson’s book, Blood Done Sign My Name. The show didn’t run in NC’s largest and broadest NPR market, our own WUNC. Instead, WUNC took a fundraising break during the one segment that most directly reported on the history and life of North Carolina and in particular the listeners in Oxford.
WUNC does need to raise money, but missing this story is unexcusable.
What makes the story so powerful is that Juan Williams and Tim Tyson recorded large parts of the story while standing in the exact same physical locations where the events took place in 1970: The driveway where young Tim stood tossing a basketball when he heard of the murder from a playmate. The store where the confrontation began. The exact scene of the murder. The grave of Henry “Dickie” Marrow the victim.
I have a particular, if loose, connection to this story as I mentioned earlier on this blog.
This is the the book that Jonathan Yardley writing in the Washington Post called “A candid account of an ugly episode in the last days of Jim Crow North Carolina.â€
Read it soon and listen to the show at the link above.
UPDATE: WUNC did air the story this morning at 7:45. I understand they got a few phone calls and some email which brought the omission to their attention. In announcing the segment, Keith Weston (Hi, Keith) said that a segment on “Blood Done Sign My Name” had been aired also on the locally produced State of Things show. I thought I may have heard that some months back but I can’t find it in the Archives. Going through the Archives did bring back memories of some very good shows though.
UPDATE: State of Things producer (and excellent poet) Susan Davis says that SOT did a full hour about the Oxford murder on May 24, 2004. The Archive doesn’t go back that far tho. Susan says she’ll send me a CD of the show. I will try to write a bit about it once I get it.
This morning I did a talk about “Internet and Journalism” (in PDF about 10 pages) to visiting Jordanian journalists as part of The Role of Print Media in Forging Press Freedoms: An Exchange Program Between Jordanian and American Journalists program through the University Center for International Studies and the School of Journalism and the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists in Amman, Jordan.
It was my first time using Keynote as a presentation platform and it worked fine. I’m not sure how it compares to PowerPoint since I don’t use PPT, but it’s not that different than doing WWW pages really. Of course I tend to give pretty vanilla presentations as far as the slides go — no sounds, waddling ducks, video, etc. Even then I do and did tend to break out of the show to go to a WWW site to illustrate my points.
I spent most of my talk going on about Dan Gillmor’s We the Media book. The idea here is to give the visitors a good reference to take home which they may read at their own pace and translate as slowly or as fast as needed.
Listening to me if you at not an English listener poses several problems: I speak too quickly, I have a Southen accent, I slur words on top of that, I often overuse technical and slangy jargon. Other than that I am a perfect speaker.
My slides can be gotten from the link above in PDF format, but I particularly want to get down the measures of social capital for blogs that I’ve been thinking of lately (after hearing some comments from Fred) which are not in the slides.
- Is the blog updated regularly? If so more social capital.
- Are there a lot of comments? The more the more SC.
- Are the comments mostly intelligent and on-topic?
- Does the blog have a high Technorati ranking? Crosspostings, references, etc.
-
And the final and acid test:
- Does the blog have at least one “open thread”?
- And does that thread have a lot of intelligent comments?
Last I looked bandwidth overage had killed this delightful bit of Americana, but the fine writer at The Wave Magazine does as good a job as can be done with words in describing the video from Wendy’s training department.
Important things first, the Bandwidth CD (23 songs and 1 historic commentary on webcasting from DRS-3 in Switzerland) is available for bittorrent downloading at http://torrent.ibiblio.org/. Thanks to John Reunning and Tim Ross.
The whole panel was broadcast and webcast on WXYC thanks to Fred Stutzman and the very special and very necessary help from Brian Russell. Brian’s mikes and DAT recorder stepped in when the Carolina Union didn’t show with the equipment that Fred needed and had asked for. If you heard the panel on air or on web, it’s Brian and Fred who made it real.
Bret Dougherty did a topnotch job of keeping us all talking and mostly on topic. John Streck of NCSU’s CENTAUR Lab did his best to keep me honest about how IPv6 works and what it has to offer. He was a good sport and a great resource speaking on the tech side of networking and more. David and Michael reminded me what fun it was to work with them. Both are passionate, wise and often intentionally funny. The audience was great too with good questions. PJ Disclafani of WXYC pulled the whole celebration together well. Nice to see friendly faces including Ruby Sinreich of Orange Politics.org, animated animator Eric Knisley of HellCar and Mickey Death fame plus nice people in David’s entourage too numerous and too nice to name here.
UPDATE: Fred and Max did a great job of digitizing the panel from Brian’s tapes and have it online!
Are. Don’t miss them.

Because it’s part of the 10th anniversary of the first webcast which was done by David McConville and Michael Shoffner with some help from Jonathan Magid and Chris Columb and some advice from me.
WXYC lists the events for the fun filled weekend on their website which includes:
- Tomorrow (Saturday night) a big party at the Local 506 featuring Jett Rink, Spectac, the Moaners, eNtet, Billy Sugarfix, and more cake.
- Sunday 11/7 there will be a panel discussion on the history and future of internet radio in room 3203 of the Student Union from 3pm-5pm. There will be pastries, but no cake. Featuring Michael, David and me.
Both these events will be broadcast live and webcast as well.
Watch the WXYC site for a revamp of the site and a CD download of great music. Prepare your bittorrent clients now!
[still working on this, but if you have additions or corrections please please let me know]
ibiblio, along with The North Carolina Networking Initiative (NCNI), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and the CENTAUR Lab at NC State University’s Centennial Campus, has a project to make WXYC and WCPE available using IPv6 and on Internet2.
What is IPv6?
The way computers talk to each other on the Internet is by a protocol called IP (or Internet Protocol). Many of the computers use an older version of IP called IPv4, or Internet Protocol version 4. IPv4 is now nearly twenty years old.
The latest and greatest, we’ll talk more about the differences in Why, is IPv6. IPv6 is available on some but not all ISPs and campuses.
Next you need to configure your computer with an IPv6 address and Router.
On MacOS X, you can set this up in Systems Preferences, by selecting Network. Then choosing TCP/IP. Then clicking on “Configure IPv6…” Most people will only need to select automatic configuration at this point. There is a very nice picture on the Apple site. You might also be interested in the Mac VLC Media Player which will allow you to play various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network..
Linux users should look at The Linux Documentation Projects’ IPv6 How To. Linux kernels version 2.2 and above ship with an IPv6 implementation built in.
Windows users should refer to the IPv6.org guide. WinXP comes with IPv6. See also Microsoft’s IPv6 Research Center.
Two sites will help you see if you have IPv6 working. Kame’s turtle will start dancing once you are doing IPv6 and SixXS will tell you a lot about your compter’s set up. Both are very good IPv6 technical resources.
Now select a station and format from the URLS below and you’ll be listening (if your ISP or campus supports IPv6).
WCPE – The Classical Station
WXYC – The Best in College Radio and the first station webcast on the Internet.
Why use IPv6?
For two very good future reasons.
First as the Internet connects more and more devices — computers, phones, PDAs, microwave ovens, music players, etc. –, it needs more and more addresses. Right now we have 0.0.0.0 through 254.254.254.254. But these are not enough. IPv6 will give the Internet more addresses and allow it to keep growing.
Secondly IPv6 promises greatly enhanced support for Quality of Service and for security. For Quality of Service, IPv6 does less retransmition and pays more attention to time. You should, in time, get better listening and better security.
For more about the case for IPv6, see the IPv6 Working Group and IPv6 Operations aka v6ops information from the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Could it be that one reason that the Kerry folks aren’t conceding Ohio (yet) is that there is another story waiting there to be told? Voting machine maker Ohio-based Diebold has been all over the news for the past year drawing the attention of the SEC and of Ohio papers ever since Diebold Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Walden O’Dell “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president” in an August 2003 fund-raising letter.
As computer security folks have noticed — and this concerns me much more –, Diebold’s other side has been to attack those who point out flaws in the voting machine integrity. In doing so, Diebold was found to have strongly overreached their copyright monopoly rights and was fined $125K. So even without the questionable political ethics, Diebold voting machines cast a shadow on the elections this year and possibly in the future. This last is reason for concern for both Republicans and Democrats as security flaws can be exploited by partisons and/or criminals with or without political affiliation.
If this long recount gives us a more open and more secure method of electronic voting, the wait and investigation will be worth it in securing democracy’s future. Verified Voting Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation are among the organizations on the case. And the country that invented secret ballots knows how to get eVoting done right.
UPDATE: Slashdot has this story on the subject “Blackboxvoting.org Raises Vote-Audit FOIA Request”
UPDATE: eVoting loses votes in North Carolina!
UPDATE: WISH-TV questions Indiana votes in interview with ES&S — the company formerly headed by surprise Senator Hagel of Nebraska. Among the nuggets in the interview: ” An investigation by the Palm Beach Post revealed ES&S had a secret agreement to kick back a percentage of its profits to the Florida Association of Counties.” and “The investigation also found that the lobbyist representing both ES&S and the Florida Association of Counties was Sandra Mortham, a former Florida secretary of state and former running mate of Gov. Jeb Bush.”
Fred Stutzman was a presenter and panelist at the American Library Association’s Information Commons conference in Cerrittos, California this week end. He’s filed a good outline/report of all the talks on The Explainer — Here are the postings in order:
- Fred’s talk – Explainer at the ALA Information Commons
- First Session – Commons spaces with Peter Levine, Brian Campbell and Dan Lee; Kathleen Imhoff, Wayne Pearson and Jessamyn West respondents.
- Comments and Suggestions – Panel One by groups. Mitch Freedman, Jeremy Frumpkin, Mary Kadera, Tom Phelps, and Barton Lessin leaders
- Panel 2 – Creation and Preservation of the Commons – Tom Moritz, Peter Hirtle, Mary Kadera with Ann Weeks, Fred (!), Howard Besser, and Tom Phelps respondents.
- Panel 3 – Policy Issues for the Information Commons Rick Weingarten, Lee Zia, Jeremy Frumpkin with Mary Minnow, Rick Emerich, Charlotte Hess, Nancy Kranich respondents
- Final thoughts (with more to come).
Other blogging attendees include:
Confessions of a Mad Librarian, Jessamyn West at librarian.net and
Peter Levine
But most everyone agrees that Fred’s postings are the best (Go Fred!).
Miles Efron sucks it in and visits a Mexican bakery in honor of Dia de los Muertos. Despite his experiences with bad LA Mexican bakeries, he takes in and refers us to pan de muertos. Was this a conversion experience?
In our neighborhood as the spooks were slowing down under the weight of their sweet loot, the power suddenly went out! There was a slow dimming then total darkness as we stood in the street trying to decide if people without lights would still be up for treating — or if tricking were in order. The good spirits prevailed and treats continued to flow until a few houses later the lights came back on. Had to reset all the clocks twice today.

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