July 25, 2003
Bush by the numbers
A friend just sent this fact sheet:
$5,600,000,000,000
Budget surplus when President Bush took office
(Office of Management and Budget, 2001)
$1,900,000,000,000
Bush deficiet over the next five years
(Office of Management and Budget, 2003)
3,100,000
Jobs lost since Bush took office
(Bureau of Labor Statistics)
83,000
Monthly job loss since Bush took office
(Department of Labor)
3 out of 5
Number of unemployed Americans who live in Senate seats up in 2004
(Bureau of Labor Statistics/DSCC release)
$1,000,000,000
Weekly cost of Iraq campaign to U.S. taxpayers
(Department of Defense, 2003)
1,000,000
Number OF US Military personnel not receiving child tax relief checks
(Children's Defense Fund)
250,000
Number of children who have a parent on active duty
(Children's Defense Fund)
10
Number of nuclear devices North Korea is expected to have by year's end
(William Perry, former Secretary of Defense)
8%
Percent of non-US troops serving in Iraq
(Department of Defense, 2003)
War, peace and Nieman Reports
Jeff Jarvis has a followup to his one-sided war of words with the editor of Nieman Reports. Based on that red flag, I was wary about turning in my article last night. But it turned out that today I had a very amicable and cordial editing experience with her. Was she scared straight by Jeff, or did Jeff just have a bad experience? I suspect the latter, but perhaps we'll never know.
I'll post my article when it's closer to the magazine's publication date.
No lock on the door at digital home
Internet.com: No Lock on the Door at Digital Home. According to a Jupiter Research Home Networking Report, one-third of broadband users are interested in installing a home network to listen to music files on a home stereo.
Digital Mix/Illegal Art gathering tonight
I'll be heading to Oakland tonight to attend this:
Digital Mix: A special night celebrating 'illegal art'
On July 25, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will host a night of music, art, and conversation to celebrate digital culture. Hosted at the Black Box in downtown Oakland, this special BayFF will bring up-and-coming artists of electronica, digital film, and illegal art together with leaders from the cyber-rights movement. Lawsuits and legislation have become the weapons of choice for dealing with file-sharing and cultural recycling ("sampling"); come out and discover what all the hype is about. Between laptop music, hip hop, and industrial performances, you will hear from people who are fighting to protect new forms of expression and cultural distribution from the attacks of the entertainment industry. This is an all-ages event.
Performers:
~ Kat5
~ Meanest Man Contest
~ Uprock
~ Mochipet
~ Freshblend
Speakers:
~ Fred von Lohmann (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
~ Glenn Otis Brown (Creative Commons)
~ Ray Beldner (Illegal Art)
Where: Black Box at 1928 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
When: Friday, July 25th, 8 p.m. - 2 a.m.
Cost: $5 suggested donation.
Easy BART access @ 19th St. Station in Oakland.
For more information please contact: katina@eff.org
iTunes Music: do not cross the border
From Shawn Yeager (via both the Politech and Interesting People lists) comes this bit of news:
I just received a harsh lesson in DRM and record label-driven policy that may be of interest to those on your lists who are Apple customers and may be leaving the United States in the future. Having purchased a number of songs from the Apple Music Store while in the US and using a US funds credit card, I regrettably didn't read the fine print. I've now discovered that if you leave the country, your songs may just disappear, as mine have.I've recently moved to Canada and just this week had a problem with my PowerBook that called for me undertaking a reinstall. After firing up iTunes and attempting to play purchased songs, I was asked to reauthorize those songs, using the Apple ID associated with the purchase. No problem, I thought. This is the Apple Music Store, not PressPlay or MusicNet. I paid for these songs and they're mine. Silly me. Apparently, if you change your contact address and/or have your US credit card address changed, as I did, you are no longer able to play the songs you paid for while on US soil.
After going back and forth with AMS customer support, they pointed me to the terms of sale policy, and there it is in the very first paragraph.
So, shame on me for not reading the fine print. But if you're spending money with Apple and plan a departure from the States any time soon, your
money would be better spent on little round platters.
Shawn Yeager said:
Fortunately, the problem has been resolved, and the policy is not as I was told. Details here.
David Brooks gets plum NYT column
David Brooks, a contributor to the New York Times and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, has been named an Op-Ed page columnist for the paper. Brooks, also a regular on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is usually wrong on the issues, but at least he's intellectually honest, unlike the George Will/Bill O'Reilly/Robert Novak/Rush Limbaugh/Cal Thomas wing of right-wing commentators.
Jayson Blair's next bold move
NY Post: Jayson Blair, the fiction-writing former New York Times reporter, has landed writing assignments from Esquire and Jane magazines. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Everything is watching you
New in Salon: We're well on our way to a world where every product has a tiny radio transmitter embedded in it. Privacy activists are not happy, but big corporations are licking their lips.
RIAA, Colleges Seek Piracy Fix
Katie Dean in Wired News: Universities are collaborating with the music and movie industries to bring entertainment to college dorms legally.
The latest on enhanced TV
Click on Jennifer Aniston's dress to buy it, or watch a Friends episode with seven different endings. Wired News looks at the latest on interactive television, or enhanced TV.
TechTV producer accidentally goes topless
Allyourtv.com has the story of TechTV producer Cat Schwartz, a blogger who gained Internet fame this week in an unintended way:
... Several days ago, Schwartz posted some comments on her weblog, along with a couple of artfully cropped photos of herself. They're a little flirty, and very appealing.Now here comes the embarrassing part. Photoshop generates small preview images for the pictures it produces and hides them in the original image. If you change the image drastically, the preview thumbnail is changed too. But if you don't make a major change, and just crop the photo without changing the file name, the preview thumbnail stays the same. Which means someone can open up the cropped photo in Photoshop, and see a thumbnail version of the original picture.
So if you (or in this case, Catherine) used a couple of topless photos as the basis for pictures you cropped with Photoshop and posted on your weblog....well, let's just say that the online world seems to be filled with lonely techno geeks with too much time on their hands. And it took a couple of them about ten seconds to discover her mistake, and begin posting copies of the original topless photos. ...
Bustamante takes a pass on governor grab
Saw my bud and poker partner, veteran Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters, on PBS' NewsHour last night being interviewed on the Gray Davis recall election. His latest: Bustamante embraces -- then shuns -- a bold grab for power.
Baby Louise turns 25
 | Louise Joy Brown as a teen with her parents, John and Lesley Brown in Britain. |
Baby Louise, the world's first test tube baby (who points out she was actually conceived in a petri dish), turns 25 today. Here's an account in the San Jose Merc about the legacy of Louise Brown, born in Oldham, England, on July 25, 1978.
As the author correctly notes in "There's a line to be drawn -- before we get to 'enhanced' people," the public is quite capable of holding a fairly sophisticated set of opinions on the subject of genetic engineering of humans. Excerpt:
We've had five years to get used to the idea of human cloning -- and a Gallup poll in May shows 90 percent opposition.Most people have no trouble drawing firm distinctions between technologies that help families and those that work against our common humanity. Overcoming infertility is a good thing; fiddling with our genetic heritage is not. The fact that a slope may be slippery does not mean we need to go careening down it.
Absolutely dead on.
