Creepy Calvin Stickers on Boat Backs

My neighbor used to have a boat. He loved this little sticker that was on the back of the boat. "I love that guy," he said. The nugget below is from
boingboing.net


Folkloric history of those "Calvin peeing" car stickers. This site explores the evolution of those annoying and ubiquitous "Calvin peeing" stickers stuck on truck windows all over America. Explores the variations and corruptions, includes an excellent photo gallery.
My favorite part: the "generate-a-Calvin-peeing" engine, where you select who he hates (la Migra? The Navy? Ford trucks? "Fat chicks"?), whether it's the real Calvin or not, then generates a sticker for you on the fly. At left, the variant I probably see most often when I'm tooling down the freeway between L.A. and the border. OK, that and the "praying to Jesus" one, which actually does not involve peeing, rather, praying.

Outside GoNOMAD's office on a Monday morning January 2005. Ready to start the week. 

Welcome to the Office

Got into the office early today, so I could write some blog and catch up on the weekend's email. What a trove of treasure awaits me here, every single day. Katherine Tanney, who wrote a piece in the Times Magazine that I admired here, gave me kudos on my taste in writers. Funny. Then a story from a couple who live in Indonesia and want to share information on the undamaged regions still very much worth traveling to. Then another story that needs some photos about the un-touristed parts of DC. The author is Saundra Latham, and here is a great sentence she includes:

Daunted by tales of seedy neighborhoods and Los Angeles-caliber traffic, visitors often stay tethered to an invisible leash permitting little exploration beyond the Smithsonian, Capitol and White House.

Other email includes a story about gruesome foods travelers have enjoyed eating around the world such as live 'drunken shrimp' who swim around in rice wine, cock's combs, bird's nest soup and various entrails served roasted or grilled. We still await the photos to go with this story.

Nuclear Reality

Nuclear power is set to make a comeback. To some hardcore Greens, this is good news. One longtime trustee of Friends of the Earth, Hugh Montefiore, has stated that he believes the solution to global warming is to make more use of nuclear energy. Ditto for Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who left the group because of this stand. The fact is that in other countries nuclear is dominating-- In Sweden 45%, South Korea 40%, and in France a whopping 77% of total energy produced is from nukes.

Yet here the last nuke built was in 1973. Things are changing and the technology efficiency has never been higher. A company called Exelon that makes nuclear generating equipment has seen huge stock price increases, using a new generation of fuel efficient, far safer reactors. Simple fact is that our ever increasing need for power can never be sated by wind, hydro nor coal. There is a place for the nukes and more and more scientists are looking in this once feared direction for the answer.

A Domain Name to Dream About

I spoke with Gary Blumenstein, who lives in Hawaii. Back in 1993, he registered a domain name. Then he spent more than 10 years in defense department supercomputing, often meeting in windowless rooms all day long. He told me that he was glad to be in this business, where pleasure is the commodity being traded. He's opened a new travel website called fly.com. The name had been gathering dust since then, but now they are finally ready to bring it out.

Every day he gets calls from people who want to buy the domain. I spoke with Gary at length and we shared stories about the travel business. He had kind words about GoNOMAD. His site has some interesting features, is bloggy looking, and apparently will soon be made over and they have four people working on making the site bigger and better. We wish him well--and if he ever wants to sell that domain...

Meeting Wiser People

Came in from the cold, muffled up, bracing the winter winds, to meet Melody, a friend visiting from Colorado. She was warm and charming and we enjoyed a well made fire. Later we talked about Social Security, her business being financial planning. She explained that from the 7.5% we pay off the top, about 1.5 goes to widows, handicapped, needy, that leaves about 5. It is here that Bush and the GOP wants to slice "only two percent" to set aside to invest privately in the market. That's actually FORTY percent of the 5 , not a tiny fraction as some have lead us to believe. (Rush for one).

But the numbers won't add up. Melody has done the math and from what she said the current path of the right, if they succeed, will not be good for the USA's economic health. Now there are three paying in for one...a few decades, like Japan, it will be nearer 2 to 2. CRUNCH...but surprisingly, many nations have done ok despite the hysteria about it. they learn to adapt, and there are just many less young men to shovel snow or dig ditches or water the gardens.

Canoeing in South Africa

Last night's PBS viewing brought an evocative show about a pair of canoeists. One was a white guy, American, and in the front of the boat was a black South African. They wend their way down the Lethoso River, and all of the while the black man is talking about wanting to see the ocean, since has never been there before. During the show we get to see the border with Zimbabwe, where scores of impoverished men try every day to get across the border. It is much like our Mexican border, they just want to get to South Africa because there are jobs there, and nothing but misery back in their villages. So they keep coming, and the man in the canoe is Zimbabwean, so he feels for them. There are subtitles even though they speak English, their strong accent and choices of words are quaint, like "chap." It is a sad fact that so many millions are living in place where there are no jobs at all....scary when you think they all want to come here, or to South Africa.

Toward the end of the show, the white man is hurt when the black one says, "you're a stranger here," as if that is an offense. It's just true...and for the same reason, some villagers didn't allow them to shoot video in their town. Finally, both men reach the ocean and plunge in with their clothes on, laughing and lying in the waves.

An Scandal in Egypt

In Egypt if you are a rich young woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock, there is a simple solution: you have an abortion, you get your hymen "refurbished" and your parents marry you off to the first unwitting suitor they can find. An article in the NY Times described a woman who took a different tack...having the child, and now suing the TV star father and forcing him, gasp!, to take a DNA paternity test.

Egyptians of all stripes are following this case with rapture, and outside the family courtroom has "become a commentator's souk" where everyone has an opinion to share. One young woman said that she thought the woman's case would help defeat the conservative values brought over from Saudi Arabia in the '60s. "These values are from Wahhabi Islam, this is petrodollar Islam, where women are considered objects for sex....we need to give women the same rights as all citizens." Others accuse the mother of being a gold-digger, and a tramp. As a result, urfi marraiges, where couples marry in secret and avoid the required dowry expense and rituals, have become a hot topic on TV soap operas, and this case may indeed move Egypt's society in a new direction.

Theeeeerrre's Johnny!

Who doesn't have a fond memory of old Johnny? While nobody really knew him, we all felt like we were his pal. Yesterday's New York Times had a piece on Carson's relationship with The Big Apple, where for ten years he played host to Truman Capote, Tony Randall, Mayor John Lindsay and so many more icons who made the era. New York was the Center of the World, and when the show departed for Burbank in 1972, to be nearer the Hollywood guests, it left a hole that would take a decade and David Letterman to be filled. Skitch Henderson, the Tonight Show's musical director, recalled:

"The New York show had an edge to it that was healthy. Hollywood was like chocolate syrup; it smothered you. When the show went to California, it became their world."

I'll never forget the poignant last show in 1992, that I watched with my father Nat in New Jersey. Johnny sat on that stool in front of the curtain he used to leap through, said goodbye and choked up just a bit, then told us how much fun he had had all of those years...And he never came back.

The People You Meet

A get together with beers and a weak assortment of cheesy hors d'oeuvres brought out the men and women of hidden tech, a group of stay-at-homes who gather to commiserate and network every few months.There was a web designer, a handsome twentysomething from Brazil, who works with his partner in Rio and makes up sites for local businesses. He didn't have a card (a faux pas at a network event!) and he didn't have pen, but we exchanged numbers and I gave him a GoNOMAD notebook for the next event. He teaches Portuguese at the University. The second business card-enabled gent I met was a man who sells books and ebooks on line, and dispenses advice about being frugal.

Then I returned home to find some friends here. One was a gregarious, tall, loud young man whose voice boomed and he repeatedly wanted to show me some doodles he had drawn. His companion was a sharp featured, slender young woman in her late twenties. She enjoyed the warmth of the fire and told me our house was cozy. After they had left, I found out that the woman is a stripper who works in Palmer. That was quite a surprise, she looked so ordinary to me. But she told a friend she had "an amazing ass," and I guess that explains it.

Why Wilco is the Future of Music

Lawrence Lessig, of MIT once again makes a whole lot of sense writing about the band Wilco in the February issue of Wired. He posits that the band, led by its "quiet, haunted leader" Jeff Tweedy, has turned the paradym of music downloading on its head...and come out on top.

"After its Warner label, Reprise, decided that the group's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was no good, Wilco dumped them and released the tracks on the internet. The label was wrong, the album was extraordinary and a sold-out 30 city tour followed. This convinced another Warner label to BUY THE RIGHTS BACK! at three times the original price.

Tweedy is thoughtful and seemed genuinely confounded by those (like the RIAA) who use the courts to punish their fans. "We are just troubadours," he said, "the audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging the collaboration, not treating them like thieves." LINK

A Scientist in Wendell

Went up to Wendell to watch the Patriots trounce the Steelers. Good fun. A room heated by wood, toasty like a sauna...and a scientist who had just gotten her PhD. Her name was Heather and she wanted, actually, to go back to school some more. She is an ecologist, studing soil biodiversity. Her subject, that she feels is a big problem, is ecology and she teaches in this field. She said that the world is ignoring is the excess of nitrogen in the soil. It is being added by both man and mother nature, and this is very bad. She studies this subject and will soon study molecular micro biology at Brown University.

It is always impressive to meet people who study complicated sciences for a living, we should heed her warnings.

Laura and GWB: Outsourced Emotions

Tina Brown's January 20 column about Barbara Walter's interview with Laura and George Bush was once again full of quotable 'graphs. Here she talks about how GWB relies on his wife.

What was striking in the Walters interview was how often the president looked over at Laura for validation. Even with his amped-up second-term cockiness, she's still his security blanket. When Walters asked him, "Do you think you've changed very much in four years?" he immediately replied, "You better ask Laura" -- as if he has outsourced emotional self-reflection to his wife. It's always been one of the paradoxes of W that his rigid worldview and inflexible routines are born of a fragile sense of his own worth. It's the baggage of having to compete all his life not just with such an accomplished father but also with the superior gifts of younger brother Jeb.

I am nearly always impressed with how Brown can so exactly get the tone of the moment right. Do you agree?

Snowed in Thinking about Folksonomies

What could be cozier than to be snowed in on Green Lane with plenty of coffee, beer, food and a broadband connection? Watching CNN, while airports are closed down and weather forecasters pose with mufflers, gloves and shiny blue parkas. We are setting some kind of record here, I guess....well Sunday morning is here and that is fine with me.

Folksonomies are the next Big Thing you will be hearing about....Web Pro News reported on this website trend when readers of blogs and of websites can add their own comments and links to create an ever-changing, on-going dialogue. The word is clever, folks meaning people, and it is the people who put up the posts, not the Media Titans, or the Publishers of the Newspapers. One example is the Wikipedia, the web's dictionary of terms that anyone can change, update, or add to. GoNOMAD is listed in here for our story on Ethiopian food. We'll take any good link we can get!

Leapfrogging Technology

NPR had an excellent commentary on Friday about a man who just came back from the Tsunami zone. He was detailing some of the good that can ultimately come from the misery there. New technologies can be put in place to purify water, provide electricity, and provide work for the thousands of displaced and jobless. In the US, he said, we are so entrenched in our power grid, our fossil fueled cars and heaters, making the leap to solar, small scale wind, and other clean technologies would require a sea change and take decades. But in places like Sri Lanka's coast, where nothing is standing, here is a chance to jump to the next generation.

Simple water purifiers are being used to provide water for one or two houses at a time, (compare these with the massive chlorinating plants we use here), and simple solar panels, wires and a battery can easily electrify a house for less than $50. Villagers spend $4-8 per day just finding kerosene, wood or other fuel to cook with...So jumping in with our assistance to provide these new systems means cleaner energy, plus thousands of jobs for locals to help service and sell the new systems. These countries will be far ahead of us in the long run.

There is a silver lining in this dark, dark cloud, however painful the path is to get there.

Howard Hughes Horrors

Diving back into the Charles Higham biography of billionaire wacko Howard Hughes, I found this nugget. In 1953, when Hughes was planning one of his dreadful '50s movies, "The Conqueror," about the life of Genghis Khan, he decided to do the filming in the Nevada desert. At this same time, the US government set up a series of more than 100 nuclear explosions at Yucca Flat, and radioactive ash fell over a wide uninhabited region. Yet Hughes kept his plan to film in a little Mormon town called St. George. All of his bodyguards and aides at the time were Mormon, since he felt that they wouldn't try to sleep with his girlfriends and would be of "high moral character."

The temperatures during the filming were 120 degrees and 5,000 extras with 1,000 horses were trucked in, while Hughes himself never set foot in this dusty, godforsaken nuclear polluted town. The end result was that all of the stars of the film, including John Wayne, died of cancer, and half of the film crew died. Later Hughes had 60 tons of radioactive dust shipped to Hollywood so they could finish filming the Gobi desert scenes.

Men's and women's brains are different. Found this on boingboing.net, a directory of wonderful things. Indeed! Here is more from the scientists explaining this fascinating photo:

Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers. This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.Link

Blog Rolling Along

Just found this great list site that shows all of the blogs that have updated in the past 60 minutes...it is called fresh blogrolling. It was here that I read a blog by a woman from NC who used to live in WV named Jennifer. She's a marketing person who admits being a Nascar fan who still smokes...what's not to love!?

What interests me is why we blog, and how little things can bring you in. She wrote today about the music she loved, all of this '70s stuff like Roxy Music, Jackson Browne, Carly Simon etc, and yes, I can dig them too. She also wrote about this little white house that she passes by each day, and how she would like to fix it up. She imagined a party with forty people, all enjoying themselves in it, with the tinkling of glasses and laughter, with her as the hostess if she ever bought it and fixed it up. In my email I told her how I had thought the same thing three years ago when I drove by the little office in the center of town that has now become our office.

We're all connected somehow I guess.

First Week as Veep

This week I started a new position as Vice President/Business Development for Airportparkingreservations.com. My business cards came and so it is official. It is all a part of my plan to stop driving two hours every day and to focus my attention fully on website work, which I love. I have been in the rag business since 1995, but truth be told, I do not shed tears about leaving it in my wake. It's moving time and I'm always happy to switch gears.

Working with website owners is not the same as with retail owners. They hide behind email addresses and voicemail, and it is not often that you catch them live, able to talk. But the nice thing is we're offering something that makes them money....we can help them make gobs of dough without having to sell them anything more than a link...so my job is to make contacts wherever these webmasters are, and spread my new gospel. I'll share with you as the new job unfolds, and report here about my success---and yes--my failures.

Van Horn Ain't Seen Nothin Like This

Jeff Bezos, Amazon 'multibillionaire' has big plans for Van Horn Texas. This tiny burg of 3000, smack dab on Interstate 20 in West Texas, is where he's purchased 165,000 acres for his ranch. Seems Jeff grew up on his grandaddy's ranch in South Texas, so he wants to show his kids the same. But the real reason that he's drawn to these wide open spaces is space. Bezos is another technology wizard/richdude who wants to go into orbit. He's launched his own aerospace company called Blue Origin, and in six or seven years they will be able to take trips into the earth's atmosphere. Others playing the same tune are Paul Allen and Paypal's Elon Musk.

We met a woman at the travel show who had a similar idea. Their company, Space Travel, planned manned flights up to 65,000 feet for a mere $200K, or a trip high enough to lose gravity for a few thousand. Stay tuned, you'll be reading about this soon on GoNOMAD.com

Cindy, Joe, Kent and Lisa in front of our new favorite NYC Italian joint, "Osterria Gelsi" on 9th Avenue. We liked it so much we came back twice in two nights! 

Which Balls Are Worthy?

from The Note, on ABCnews.com, a super insider political place to find good stuff...

On Thursday:
7:45 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Constitution Ball
8:30 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Freedom Ball
8:45 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Texas-Wyoming Ball
9:05 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Liberty Ball
9:25 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Independence Ball
9:45 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Stars and Stripes Ball
10:05 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Patriot Ball
10:25 pm ET: The President and First Lady attend the Democracy Ball

Swirling in and out of each ball, like the royalty, not sipping a drop of booze.

Big Plane Will Rule the Skies Over Boeing

Airbus Passes Boeing
Thirty-five years ago, when Boeing introduced the 747 in Seattle, the 350-passenger plane that was the first jumbo jet redefined air travel. It gave Boeing a competitive edge no one successfully challenged, until now. But now comes the 555 seat JumboLiner.
"The A-380 really has no competition right now," says Leahy, Airbus President, who believes it will become a cash cow for Airbus, just like the 747 became a "cash cow for Boeing — the one aircraft that they really made money with because it had no competition."

But Boeing hasn't sold a 747 passenger plane for two years. And for two years Airbus has done the unthinkable — selling more planes than Boeing to become the market leader. In 1999, the peak of world commercial aircraft production, Boeing had 117,000 employees who delivered 620 airplanes. Airbus delivered 294 that year. Last year, Boeing had fewer than 53,000 employees who delivered just 285 planes. Airbus delivered 320.
Many of Boeing's problems, its executives say, can be traced to 9/11. The collapse of air travel then hurt it more than Airbus.

Real Friends

You find out who your real friends are when you put out a call for a weekend's worth of help....and they all come through with smiling faces. Lisa, Kent and Cindy joined us for the weekend of schmoozing and chatting up the website at the booth in NYC. They once again brought energy, enthusiasm and fun to the task of showing and telling the GoNOMAD story.

I often get weepy when I think about how far we've come, and of those many long nights when I sat downstairs in the "maxcave" putting up stories, updating listings, and strategizing about how we can be successful. Now that we've moved into our new street-level offices, and I've ditched my other sales job, I think back with gratitude that it was worth the long hours and all of the work. Because we've got a mark to make on the world of travel, and I'm bringing all of these fine folks with me for the ride.

What One Man's Enthusiasm Can Bring

The Adventure Expo travel show was a spectacular success where we were able to show thousands of travelers what GoNOMAD has to offer them. It was, again, so great to be in the Biggest City in the World, and to have new faces like Joe O join the GoNOMAD girls in the booth. A natural salesman, Joe has the wisdom to ask what he doesn't know and the confidence to tell you when he disagrees. Whether it is the polite thing to do or not. This refreshing candor has worked well for him in his radio sales job, forming many strong relationships and leaving trusted customers in his wake. His belief in the vast potential of the website is what drives him and it makes us proud to have him join us in our endeavor.

The tradeshow of course was exhilarating, and also a lot of physical work. Taking down the booth, dragging boxes miles to our car, standing on our feet for 10 hours, talking endlessly saying the same thing, (the answer to "what is GoNOMAD?") takes your voice away and makes your feet sore. But at the end of the day, our readers are what makes us successful, and talking to them one at a time is how we build our brand and will continue to prosper.

A swirling snowstorm on the way home complicated things, but a steaming bowl of seafood noodle soup at Pho Saigon, in Springfield, made it all ok.

Dinner with the Competition

We met up with two accomplished webheads at our Times Square hotel tonight. We are here in the Big Apple through Sunday for the Adventure Expo, and we thought it would make sense to get together with the owners of Bootsnall.com, one of the most successful alternative travel websites. We invited Sean and Donovan to our hotel here and talked about our businesses.

The most important comment of the night came while we were in a cab heading down to the Half King, the bar in lower Manhattan owned by writer Sebastian Junger. I was telling a story about how one website owner I had talked to wasn't interested in anyone else's ideas...that in fact, since he felt that he knew more than anyone, any idea from somebody else was quickly rejected.

This brought a strong reaction from Sean, who said that he feels like everyone has something to offer, and this solidified my respect for him. I thought, who really knows it all and if someone is closed to ideas, they won't go far. Sean's philosophy revolves around making the web experience positive for his readers and to creating win win situations for all. That's why Bootsnall is so successful.

It was a powerful experience to share our ideas and to spend time with people who actually live and breathe the web like we do. We are sure that this partnership will prove fruitful to both of us in the months ahead.

Musical Name Grooves

Music that I often like to listen to comes from the computer, actually the garage of this great guy named Rusty out in California. He runs soma.fm, and streams forth the 'groove salad' and 'detective and spy' music channels, among others. The names of the songs are amusing and sound like the cool riffs that come from these great channels.

music by...
duffer club...electraglide
shantel...letter from the editor
gerd....far away places
jet jaguar...traffic islander
seks bomba...two to tango

and of course....pumpkin roll. not sure by whom

Travelin' with Kal

On Wednesday morning we'll be traveling with Kal, on the Kal London travel show broadcast on a Connecticut radio station. We were glad when the host, an old travel pro, decided to give us the whole 6-8 minutes to talk about GoNOMAD, the upcoming Adventure Expo show in NYC, and the effects of the Tsunami on Sri Lanka and other areas. Ok, well, time for a little research. So I went to the web and got some great info and graphics from BBC, and hopefully I'll sound like I know something more than the average TV viewer still stunned by the scenes of devastation in Western Sumatra and hard hit Sri Lanka.

This also reminds me of an interesting snippet of conversation today. Speaking with one of the PR folks for the Expo, I brought up my thoughts on the whole tourism and Tsunami issue. I said that what we all can do, besides contribute money, is to travel to South Asia and spend some of our tourism money there. At first she thought that even putting tourism in the same sentence as Tsunami was wrong, bad, and crass. But upon reflection she agreed that tourism holds the economic key to ultimately helping this badly damaged area. So we'll talk about it and hope it helps.

Looking for the Perfect TV Host

Note: This is still in the idea stages 10/07 and we are not actively seeking a tv host at this time.

We broke in the new GoNOMAD office last night with a terrific 3-hour meeting to discuss the new TV show. Sony Stark and Kent St. John drove down from NY state; Joe O'Rourke and Paul Shoul rounded out the group. The energy and synergy in the room were palpable. At this point the ideas are flying but the gist is to develop a TV show using some of the elements of GoNOMAD. So now, we've got a concept, and we're looking for a host. The host, as Sony said, is a key element to making the show a success:

. Qualified hosts need the following characteristics:

1. Attentive and good listener- the ability to reciprocate thoughtful exchanges with locals and organization volunteers.
2. Resourcefulness when adapting to weather conditions.
3. Bring a high-spirited energy and charismatic youthfulness to the show.
4. Someone who can add elements of reflection, levity and personality to a show. Someone who can stay focused on the sense of purpose volunteer trips achieve for the traveler.

Know anybody who might fit this bill? Ask them to send us their tape or email us.

Not Painting Your Girlfriend Naked

Back reading the NY Times Sunday again....snowstorms, that always seem to blow in on Fridays, continue to make cozyin' up next to a fire a required part of each day. Sunday's Styles had a piece about a woman whose partner was painter. He met beautiful girls in his studio and painted them in the nude. She wanted to be there. She felt like she was missing something. He refused to let her pose for him, since other girlfriends of painters he knew had struck him with the canvas upon seeing the result, or beaned him with the brushes. But she kept asking and he didn't have the money to pay the model, so he finally agreed. She didn't like the experience...and ended up thinking she was closest to him than any of the other naked models since she knew his scents and intimate habits.

Montana Tales from Last Winter

Western Lore and Cowboy Songs

One evening we returned to Big Mountain for a special Western treat. Two teams of Clydesdales were hitched up to big sleighs and we took a short ride through the starry darkness to the cowboy hut. There a chuck wagon was doling out hot cider, delicious pot roast and potatoes, and to our surprise, a tasty vegan Portobello mushroom soup.

A group of about 50 men, women and young'uns enjoyed this big feed and then cowboy singer Gene Gordner took the stage. His voice was sweet and clear and he played just about every cowboy song anyone could think of, from Jimmy Rogers to Gene Autry and some of his own songs as well. He mixed in salty tales about cowboy life in a warm and funny patter. It was a mellow and enjoyable evening. The sleigh ride, dinner and show cost $52 for adults, $39 for children (5 – 12) and $19 for tots. website.

Max in our new GoNOMAD offices in South Deerfield, MA 

Max on CNN talking with Kyra Phillips about Delta's new low fare program. 

Copyrights....Forever?

Lawrence Lessig writes in the recent issue of Wired about the silliness of continuing to extend copyright protection to every word published or note of music...and how in the EU, on New Year's Day, copyrights on music and tv recordings will expire.

"Now the public will get its justly earned free access to an extraordinary range of both famous and forgotten creativity....songs from 1953 the seniors across Europe wooed their first loves to can be streamed across the Net for free."

But in the US, this won't happen because Congress keeps extending the term of existing copyrights. The last one was titled "The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act," in 1998. Lessig makes a bold and not-likely-to-happen suggestion that would benefit many more people in general:

"It would be easy for governments to narrow term extension to those who want it by requiring holders to pay a small fee. Even a very small fee would filter out the vast majority of works from automatic term extension....but there's no reason to extend terms when no one--not even record companies--could possibly benefit."

GoNOMAD Featured on CNN

This is just one of the stories that people will enjoy reading on GoNOMAD.com. CNN's Kyra Phillips interviewed us in a segment about Delta's new less restricted fares, and we pointed them to the story by Kent St. John on the subject. The people at CNN are very cool, very professional....and like us they are all about the big bad world. "Tell our viewers what they can find on GoNOMAD," and of course, that prompted a plea: If you want to help the Tsunami victims, TRAVEL! The affected countries, it should be stressed, are all in need of tourism revenue. You'll find excellent examples of this by reading GoNOMAD.com.

Only a small part of Asia has been affected, for example 90% of Thailand is in fine shape. So there are wonderful places you should visit, and if you do so you'll be helping out these battered economies.

CNN boosted our regular readership from average 1785 visitors to 3621 visitors that day. That's a what we want!

Tina Brown's Icy Words

Few writers can turn a phrase like Ms. Tina Brown does every few weeks in the Washington Post. Here is some of a recent column on Bernard Kerik's flameout from his hoped for post heading Homeland Security.

That's why the real satisfaction of the flameout lies not in Kerik's fall but Rudy's chagrin. America's Mayor having to eat a little crow after three years of galloping hagiography is a classic case of karma coming due.

The city has become just a tad cranky about Rudy's naked branding of 9/11 for his own political and pecuniary ends. Increasingly, his speeches seem to turn New York's saddest day into shtick to dramatize his own heroism. It's been hard for some to feel the same about him since hearing him sell an invidious merging of al Qaeda with the war in Iraq right at the top of his Republican convention speech.

Read more of Tina's column here

Richard Gere Speaking for the World

From Little Green Footballs comes this gem. Gere got up with two associates, one a cleric who praises suicide bombers and vows to destroy Israel.


Peace activist/actor Richard Gere has appointed himself spokesman for the entire world, and in that capacity he’s urging Palestinians to get out the vote: Actor Richard Gere, ‘speaking for the entire world,’ urges Palestinians to vote.
A pro-peace group is hoping that a potent mix of Hollywood glamour and religion will motivate Palestinians to vote in next week’s presidential elections — and their star attraction is actor Richard Gere. ...
Gere, together with an Islamic cleric and a Greek Orthodox Church official, recorded a public service announcement calling on the Palestinians to vote in the Jan. 9 election to replace Yasser Arafat.
“Hi, I’m Richard Gere and I’m speaking for the entire world. We’re with you during this election time. It’s really important: Get out and vote,” Gere said, according to a transcript of the announcement obtained by The Associated Press.
Gere ended the 80-second announcement produced by the pro-peace group, “One Voice,” with an appeal in Arabic: “Take part in the elections.”

The Victims of the Victims

NoPajamas.com a bold blog, states something that few have had the nerve to say:

You might have noticed coming through the reports that there have been a LARGE number of dead tourists from Germany, Scandinavia and other Western European countries among the victims of this disaster, especially in Thailand and its beach resorts. The fact you are NOT being presented with is that these are predominantly MALE victims, and that this area is, or rather has been, the hotbed of child-sex-tourism and child-sex-slave prostitution in the world, mostly going on because "civilized" males from "civilized" ( not to mention UN"stingy" nations) have the cash and the desire and finance it with their criminal and immoral lusts.

So this does present a dilemma for these rich Northern countries. They need to find out where the bodies are of the men who have been on holiday preying on young Asians. It doesn't make their deaths any less tragic, in fact it makes it moreso.

Fareed's Point

Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek this week about finding hope in the sorrows of Tsunami land.

The scale of this calamity has shocked even those who are hard to shock.

People in this region, he said, are used to tragedy. But this time they are getting help and this is a change from before.

In fact, interestingly, the tsunami's greatest impact has been in three areas that have had secessionist movements against their countries: Aceh in Indonesia, the eastern parts of Sri Lanka and (a much smaller force) in Tamil Nadu in India.

But this is a point he makes that I strongly agree with...

The United States, and all outside countries, should try to encourage aid through coordinated action both by donors and recipients, not least because it will make relief efforts more effective.

Moving the office furniture in, the gas is coming on, and computers are being wired up for the new move to 14A Sugarloaf St. South Deerfield. Come by our office for a free tee shirt.

Phuket is still Open for Tourists

Despite what most people think, only a fraction of Phuket Thailand is destroyed. With the coverage of this, I feared the whole place was wiped out. This is what happened to Phi Phi. Read this more positive spin on AOL News:

Although much of Phuket escaped the waves' wrath with little damage, it is inextricably linked to one of the world's worst natural disasters. Its most famous beach, Patong, was one of the hardest hit and the island, with its airport and good roads, has become a regional hub for delivering relief to regions to the north that sustained far more damage and loss of life.

``Definitely less than 10 percent of hotel rooms in Phuket are closed,'' said John Everingham, who publishes Phuket Magazine, which gives tourists information about the island. ``A lot of people haven't left the island, a lot of people who were there have just continued having their holidays.''
By contrast, another popular but much smaller island, Phi Phi, was wiped out almost entirely, he said. The worst loss of life was on the mainland north of Phuket, where more than 3,000 bodies already have been found.

People were sunbathing right after the waves hit, within hours there were towels down, radios out and business as usual. Life goes on.