Hot Backyard Action

We woke up to a grey morning in Holyoke. Outside the picture window, the feeders were alive with avian activity. A giant piliated woodpecker knawed on the suet, so long and aggressive with a big beak chomping down the beef fat that hangs next to the seeds. Then a bit later came a catbird, known for its feline sounding song and reddish and then yellow finches.

Then a bird we have never seen before...with a cardinal's short fat beak, a bright red breast and black and white wings. It was a rose-breasted grosbeak, according to our bird books. While we enjoyed watching this big male chomp down on seed, suddenly, a commotion over by the fence. A red fox ran by with a squirrel clutched in his mouth, a fine breakfast to be enjoyed in her den.

Burning the Cellphones in Seoul

Frank Rose is one of my favorite reporters, each month's Wired usually has an informative, only-in-wired type of story. He writes about Samsung's supercharged rise to the top of the consumer electronics world.

"Even today, people talk about the "voluntary incineration" at Gumi. A drab factory town in south-central Korea. Gumi is home to one of Samsung's cellphone biggest plants. Samsung president Kun-hee-lee sent out phones as his 1995 New Year's gift. Word came back that they didn't work. So that March he paid a visit to Gumi.

At Lee's command, the factory's 2000 employees donned headbands labeled "QUALITY FIRST" and assembled in a courtyard. There they found their entire inventory piled in a heap--cell phones, fax machines, nearly $50 million worth of equipment.A banner before them read "QUALITY IS MY PRIDE." Beneath it sat Lee and his board of directors. Ten workers took the products one by one, smashed them with hammers, and threw them into a bonfire. Before it was over, employees were weeping."

Manhattan, 1609 vs 2005

Eric Sanderson has documented the changes in Manhattan's physical landscape from 1609 to the present. Wired this month showed a map with black outlines around the green familiar shape of the island, the gap between is where fill has created new land for the wharves and piers. He also compared the number of species of birds (400 then 400 now), and the other animal species (100 then 170 now) and square miles (17.4 vs. 19.3).

Lost was 67 miles of stream, (now there is only .5, manmade) and the Natives, who spoke the same language with different dialects. Today there are people from about 200 countries, speaking at least 170 languages. And 1.5 million people instead of between 400-4000.

No, this is not a Yacht on Lake Michigan

The entrance to Milwaukee's Art Museum, the wings are opened up during museum hours and they gracefully sweep down when it is closed. 

The Genius of Cleaning the Dirt

Ed Ring writes in the ecoworld website about a California man who has come up with a big idea.


EarthWorks Continues Crusade to take their
Revolutionary Soil Treatment Worldwide

Wouldn't it be better to clean and reuse contaminated soil?

What if toxins could be inexpensively removed from soil, on-site, instead of being hauled to a landfill? This is the vision that inspired Jonathan Brewer to found EarthWorks Environmental in 1998, and in barely four years his small company has treated over 50 million pounds of contaminated soil. Based in Sacramento, California, Brewer's company offers a unique and patented innovation, whereby mining equipment used to crush ore is adapted to grind up soil so that chemical or biological reagents can be sprayed onto the fine particles, neutralizing the toxins.

This new approach to soil remediation is again attracting customers faster than Brewer can serve them, allowing him to live his dream of "growing and becoming financially successful by cleaning up the planet."

Mainstream methods of soil remediation either require permanent, and very expensive, removal of the contaminated soil, or they require "washing" the soil in cumbersome tanks. Brewer's machines are fully self-contained, and can be easily transported directly to the contaminated sites, where the soil requiring treatment can be scooped onto a conveyance hopper and fed through the grinders and sprayers, coming out the other end completely treated.

Where a soil washing system might be capable of cleaning 500 tons of soil per day, Brewer's latest machine can clean 200 tons of soil or more per hour! "We can eliminate any toxin for which there is a chemical or biological methodology to degrade," said Brewer, and that's almost everything out there.

Why Don't YOU Try Writing the News?

The local newspaper in Greensboro, N.C., is trying a new approach to help its readers feel more connected to the newsroom: The paper is asking readers to go out and write some articles themselves.

At the Greensboro News & Record's Web site, registered users can submit their own stories by clicking on a link. An editor gathers submissions, makes a few small edits, then publishes the articles online -- sometimes within hours. Among recent stories written by readers: a feature on an upcoming cotton-mill convention and a primer on Social-Security reform.

The Northwest Voice, from the publisher of the Bakersfield Californian newspaper, includes news articles and photographs submitted by readers.

In the past year, a handful of small newspapers have launched variations on that model. Newspaper publishers are eager to find new ways to connect to readers -- daily newspaper circulation dropped 11% between 1990 and 2003, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. Now, as do-it-yourself Web publishing tools are making it easier for laypeople to create blogs, newspapers are borrowing ideas from those informal Web journals in an effort to make their own coverage more accessible, and, they hope, attract more readers.

You Think You Can Be a Talk Radio Host?

I took the most recent issue of The Atlantic to the gym today and finished reading David Foster Wallaces' "Host", a long and very detailed article about AM Talk Radio. Here he explains what faces someone who "thinks they can host a radio show."

"To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want--with the proviso that your topic and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential--a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you are saying--which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way (but you cannot do this much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.

Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting, but compelling, stimulating, which means your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction from listeners, which in turn requires you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself--your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being."

How Crackberry Came To Be Known

The Wall Street Journal gleefully reports on the man who started the Blackberry revolution. Or, as some have said, "crackberry." These little handhelds are becoming very popular among those who want to be truly connected.

"Mr. Lazaridis, who was born in Turkey, emigrated with his family to Windsor, Ontario, where his father gained work on a Chrysler assembly line. As a boy, he loved to tinker with gadgets and recalls building a toy record player out of Lego blocks, a Dixie cup and a pin when he was 4 years old.

He started RIM over 20 years ago in a strip-mall office after answering a General Motors Corp. ad. The auto maker wanted someone to make an electronic-sign system to monitor plant operations. He won the contract and quit his engineering studies at University of Waterloo. Later, RIM developed a barcode reader used in a film-editing process employed on Hollywood movies such as Godfather III. It won Mr. Lazaridis an Emmy and an Oscar for technical innovation.

After finally getting the baby to sleep around midnight, Mr. Lazaridis turned on his computer in the basement and listened to some rock music. In a three-hour blur, he wrote the blueprints for a reconfiguration of BellSouth's network that supported a sleek, one-piece, battery-efficient device smaller than a deck of cards, with a thumb-wheel for scrolling and clicking.

It would become the first BlackBerry. He e-mailed the plans to Mr. Balsillie at 3 a.m. and said he'd likely be in the office late. "No problem," Mr. Balsillie e-mailed back later that morning, "I've already turned it into a presentation" on PowerPoint.

Days later, the two flew to Atlanta and gave their pitch to a group of BellSouth executives. Watching Mr. Lazaridis as he waved a wooden model of the proposed device, "I was thinking he was full of it," recalls George Pappas, a former BellSouth executive, who was at the meeting. But he adds: "What was so impressive was they were determined to make it happen."

Croatia Bound

We're going to Croatia in early June, per invitation of Nena Komarica, the tourism manager in NYC. I have always wanted to see this place, since I've told so many writers in interviews that this is the hottest destination around. Our trip will be to many vowel-challenged places, like the Plitvice Lakes National Park, Istra, and sea kayaking in central Dalmatia. We hope to take in agritourism, tour farms, and see the coastal regions.

This will be my first press trip with Kent St. John, my buddy who is almost always traveling somewhere, and we have a good routine that we've developed over the years we've been friends. We always set up our mobile office, we always laugh over bottles of red wine, and we always call our wives/girlfriends to tell them we love them. I don't think Kent has ever been anywhere that he didn't enjoy; he's the quintessential travelin' man. His sunny disposition makes people smile and it will be fun to board that charter plane from JFK and make the trip with him.

The Downside of Cheeky

NY Times on the Today Show's Woes...

"Viewers - and most of them are women - like Ms. Couric's cheeky, easygoing manner; affection grew into admiration after her husband died of colon cancer in 1998 and Ms. Couric made early detection her cause. (In 2000 she underwent a colonoscopy on the program.)

But "Today" has turned her popularity into a Marxist-style cult of personality. The camera fixates on Ms. Couric's legs during interviews, she performs in innumerable skits and stunts, and her clowning is given center stage even during news events. "Today" hit a low point in July, when Saddam Hussein appeared in a Baghdad courtroom to hear the charges he will face when he goes to trial as a war criminal. All the networks interrupted their programming to show live images of Mr. Hussein - all except NBC. "Today" stayed on Ms. Couric swatting shuttlecocks with the United States Olympic badminton team.

Success on television can be as brutal as failure; the job of a network anchor, and particularly a morning anchor who must banter for hours on end, is more harmful to the ego than almost any other kind of public performance. Musicians play music, actors play parts, but anchors must play themselves - their looks, personalities and aplomb are on trial before millions of viewers every morning. It's the kind of scrutiny that distorts even the sunniest, healthiest disposition."

Che Guevara's Congo Nightmare

Alma Guillermoprieto writes for the New Yorker and published a collection of essays about Latin America called "Looking for History," and includes a story about Che Guevara, the hero of Cuba. She recounts his life that began in Argentina, where he was to study medicine, but soon left to begin the journey that would become "The Motorcycle Diaries," an eight-month voyage on motorbike. Fidel Castro was a big admirer and on the day he announced that Che was dead, his cry was "Be Like Che."

One of the last missions Che was sent on took him deep into the jungle in the Congo, to start a guerilla movement there in 1965. "As things turned out, the Congo episode was a farce, so absurd that Cuban authorities kept secret Che's rueful draft for a book on it...he was abandoned from the beginning by leaders like Laurent Kabila, and was plagued by dysentery and subject to fits of uncontrollable anger, and returned forty pounds lighter. Castro, unwilling to reveal the African foray, declared him dead, and Che would never return to Cuba. He would die in a hail of bullets in Bolivia in 1967.

Typing in the Car

Milwaukee has decided to leap ahead into the 21st century by wiring up a few of their city parks for WIFI. That gives those of us with laptops the chance to peck out emails and surf the web sitting at the tables in the park, or in my case, in my parked rental car here next to Cathedral Square park downtown.

The ease with which this can be done changes the equation....no longer is blogging something you do at your desk, and being able to blog on the fly opens up intriguing possibilities.

Milwaukee is a city of optimists, people who believe that things are looking up, and the flat accents and cheery dispositions are refreshing, coming from the cynical and uptight Northeast. Meeting people like Jeff Sherman and Peggy and Marty gave me a full helping of their charming and unforced hospitality. I look forward to writing my guide to Milwaukee, and to return here, but hopefully it won't be 43 degrees and blustery on my next trip.

Manute's Sad Story of Sudan

In the late '80s, I remember seeing the tallest basketball player I've ever seen play at the Springfield Civic Center. He was Manute Bol, who at 7' 7" would later become the tallest man in the NBA. He played with many teams and made millions, but his heart was back in his native Sudan. Arabs were killing Africans in the villages of the Darfur region, and Bol wanted desperately to help. He traveled there, towering over his countymen, donated millions of his own money, and testified before 53 senators and congressmen to try to get them to help.

After arthritis forced him from the league, his mission became a full time job. But he was barely able to walk, and wanted to live in Sudan where he was born. He flew over and was about to become minister of sports, but they said he had to convert to Islam--and he said no, he was a christian. Then he was forced into exile in Egypt, and became guardian of his brother's child. He spent years trying to help get her into the US, then 9/11 hit and he was an enemy in his adopted land of Egypt. He was beaten in the streets, and in pain from arthritis. When he finally came back to the US, a car accident left him almost paralyzed.

Years of therapy later, and he is optimistic about his tough life. And hoping the rest of the world will wake up and see the suffering in his Sudan.

Pam and Marty of Milwaukee

Tonight I dined with two distinguished people from Milwaukee. I always make a point to ask the tourism board where I am traveling to try to set up dinners with interesting people. Wendy Haase, of Visit Milwaukee obliged when she sent Martin Hintz and Pam Percy to pick me up at the Hotel Metro in downtown Milwaukee. This retro hotel has glass sinks and cool '60s furniture. We drove to the Lake Front Palm Garden Brewery, where a cavernous room was packed with people eating fried fish, and in the backm a polka band played. We enjoyed a fish fry, a tradition in this lakeside city of 700,000, where the German and Polish roots are strong.

Pam used to produce a radio show called "Hotel Miwaukee,"complete with paid actors, musicians and script writers. She used to raise $150,000 to cover her costs every year. She published a coffee table book about chickens, with color photos and just yesterday, she found out it was coming out in paperback.

Martin Hintz edits the Irish American Post on line, and writes for many travel magazines and does books for Scholastic and others. They are a couple who laugh easily, articulate their many opinions in that facile way you find with people who read a lot and are able to listen and learn as well as talk.

What Makes a Pair of Jeans cost $635

Yesterday's NY Times included a story about the newest fashion trend--high priced jeans. What makes any pair of denim pants worth SO much?

"To start with, Evisu weaves its cloth on shuttle looms that, unlike the projectile type in widespread industrial use, leave clean edges on the fabric. They are then dyed using what the label's Web site terms "rare and ancient" equipment, meaning machines that are roughly 40 years old.

Each Evisu garment is given 16 and sometimes as many as 30 "dips" to achieve the proper rich shade of deep indigo blue. And, because the old looms are narrow, each pair of Evisus requires at least three yards of fabric. The end result, with a stylized gull stitched onto the rear pocket, costs in the vicinity of $635. Not for nothing, it would seem, is Evisu named after the Japanese god of loot.

"We sell through everything we get," Joseph Laurenti, the manager of Atrium in New York, said, adding that other brands like Nudie, True Religion, Antik, Slab by Rick Owens and All Saints spend only the briefest time on the shelves before migrating onto some of Manhattan's more fashionable backsides."

Jeff Sherman: Wringing Out the Good in His People

Jeff Sherman is a dynamo I met last night in Milwaukee. He runs a website about the city called onmilwaukee.com, and has racked up an impressive record of achievement in his 33 years. The site has become the city's meeting place, and the most important source of local news here. Jeff built it up back in 1998, when few believed they could make a go on the web. With a partner, he worked for little or no pay and kept at it, putting up good content, posting stories about local people, soliciting opinions of local leaders, and doing what the web rewards you for. Providing quality content in large doses. Last night over beers at the Nomad World Pub, we talked about our businesses and about what it takes to be successful.

Jeff has twelve employees, and for every month of the year, he asks one of them to take on their own special fundraising event. He let's them run it, take credit for it, and so each month there will be another event that brings attention to the website and helps out a local cause. They just did a cheese carving event where they brought 80-pound blocks of cheese to a warehouse and had sculptures carved out of cheddar.

Meeting Jeff was inspiring; he loves this city and he is one of the reasons the city is dynamic and full of energy.

Cooling Off from the Bottom of the Sea

The Associated Press ran a fascinating story about using seawater for air conditioning. Technology's answers to life's challenges are indeed clever.

A $100 million system proposed for downtown Honolulu could reach about 65 buildings, including several state office buildings, said David Rezachek, associate development director of Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning, which is working with Kailua-based Makai to put cold seawater technology to work in Hawaii.

Once underground pipes leading from an oceanside plant are in place beneath the city streets, buildings would be able to tap into the system and save about 75 percent of the electricity used by conventional cooling systems, said Rezachek.

The technology is relatively simple. Cold ocean water is pumped up to the plant through a closed system, cooling down fresh water in an adjacent system. That cold fresh water is then used by buildings to bring down the temperatures of their interiors, similar to a conventional air conditioning system.

The University of Hawaii has built a similar system using deep seawater wells for its new oceanside medical school buildings near downtown Honolulu.

Close But No Cigar

This was the unsuccessful entry to be in a Levi's Jeans ad last Friday. They were looking for a publisher, caucasian, age up to 45.  

$3 Billion for those Paper Tickets

Travelmole.com reports that the end is near for paper airline tickets.

"E-ticketing is the top priority because it would generate the most savings. Each air ticket costs nine US dollars, so eliminating paper tickets could save the industry three billion US dollars per year. It will also be more convenient for customers and give greater flexibility to travel agents.

Currently, 19% of tickets processed through IATA are ticketless and this is expected to rise to 40 per cent by the end of 2005. Mr Bisignani said IATA would work with airlines over the next three years to help them prepare for 2007, the self-imposed deadline for scrapping all paper tickets."

Times Square station on Sunday morning. 

The New Pope's Smoke

AOL news reports on the ongoing smokestack watch happening at the Vatican.

"Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said smoke from burned ballot papers enhanced by special chemicals likely could be seen at about noon (6 a.m. EDT) and about 7 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT) on each day of voting by the cardinal electors, all of whom are under age 80. At some point soon after the new pope is chosen, the Vatican also will ring bells.

The cardinals spent their first night in the super-secure Domus Sanctae Marthae, a $20 million hotel that John Paul had constructed inside Vatican City so they could rest in comfort in private rooms between voting sessions.

Conspicuously missing from their quarters were cell phones, newspapers, radios, TVs and Internet connections - all banned by John Paul to minimize the chances of news influencing their secret deliberations and to prevent leaks to the outside world. The Vatican's security squad swept the chapel for listening devices, and cooks, maids, elevator operators and drivers were sworn to secrecy, with excommunication the punishment for any indiscretions.

No conclave in the past century has lasted more than five days, and the election that made Cardinal Karol Wojtyla pope in October 1978 took eight ballots over three days.

Cardinals faced a choice that boiled down to two options: an older, skilled administrator who could serve as a ''transitional'' pope while the church absorbs John Paul's 26-year legacy, or a younger dynamic pastor and communicator - perhaps from Latin America or elsewhere in the developing world where the church is growing - who could build on the late pontiff's popularity over a quarter-century of globe-trotting.

Is Norway Rich or in "Denial?"

Bruce Bawer wrote in Sunday's NY Times about Norway's perception that is it the world's richest country.

"In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as participants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.

In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. Few, however, question whether it really is the world's richest country.

It is not simply a matter of tradition, or a preference for a basic, nonmaterialistic life. Dining out is just too pricey in a country where teachers, for example, make about $50,000 a year before taxes. Even the humblest of meals - a large pizza delivered from Oslo's most popular pizza joint - will run from $34 to $48, including delivery fee and a 25 percent value added tax. Not that groceries are cheap, either. Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards. And this isn't a great solution, either, since gasoline (in this oil-exporting nation) costs more than $6 a gallon

Paying the Rwandan Weavers or the Bank

Today's NY Times includes this story about Eziba, a failed dot com that used to sell African handicrafts until it went belly up last year.

"Since its debut in 1999, Eziba was never shy about publicizing the benefits it bestowed on vendors around the world. The company said it paid a total of $10 million to groups like Rwandan basket weavers, many of them widows of that country's war, and South African papier mâché artists.

But when Eziba's financial fortunes soured late last year, the company paid off a $500,000 bank loan instead of paying hundreds of artisans more than $100,000 it owed them.

Eziba said that paying off the loan was the best business practice - a contention disputed by some bankruptcy law specialists. Shortly after paying the loan, the company entered a voluntary liquidation process in hopes of paying off creditors like the New York public relations firm Ruder Finn, among others. (According to Emmanuel Tchividjian, a Ruder Finn senior vice president, his company, which was owed $11,000, was more concerned with protecting the interests of the Rwandan artisans, whose work Ruder Finn publicized, than recovering its money.) The bankruptcy proceedings are continuing.

Overstock.com, the publicly held online seller of discount merchandise, bought Eziba's assets from the bankruptcy trustee for $500,000, a price unrelated to the bank loan, and announced that it would pay the artisans in full, even though it is not legally obliged to do so. Overstock further said that it would try to revive their businesses by selling their goods on Worldstock.com, an Overstock division with a mission similar to Eziba's.

The Sahel--Where Terrorism Breeds

Robert D. Kaplan is perhaps my all time favorite author. His non fiction accounts of travel blend the politics of today with the history of the ages, and it makes for compelling reading. I picked up a copy of April's Atlantic and found his report from Niger, called "America's African Rifles."

He talks about the many places around the world where the US Military is training forces, such as in Niger and Chad, and about the dangers that are breeding there.

"The countries of the Sahel--which runs through Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan, are among the world's poorest and most unstable, with some of the highest fertility rates and lowest quality of life anywhere. Governments have little control beyond their capitals, and throughout the region are many of the ingredients that breed terrorists and their sympathizers; a population disillusioned with its political leadership; a dangerously high number of unemployed young men; Islamic orthodoxy on the rise. Sahelian Africa provides the two conditions essential for penetration by al Qaeda and its offshoots: weak institutions and the cultural access afforded by an Islamic setting.

The US is training troops around the world, he says, so that these troops can fight their own wars against terror in places like the Sahel and Latin America, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I Wish I Could Remember You

Women are better than men at remembering people. I learned this last night, when I took a time travel train back 35 years to my days at summer camp in Vermont. The reunion took place at Kevin St. James, on 8th Ave in Hell's Kitchen NYC. The bar was lively and I got there early. Next to me at the bar sat two pretty young ladies and four men. They were drinking Jagermeister shots and loudly toasting, and later the girls danced suggestively with one another.

The party was upstairs, and the turnout was impressive--more than 100 people whose roots went back to 1969. We wore nametags stating the years we were at camp, mine said 1969-73. The women I met at the party who did know me, I couldn't recall at all, and when I ran into the one girl that I remember having a serious crush on, she drew a blank about me. I also caught up with Cookie Freeman, the first girl who ever kissed me 'in the french style' and I told her so.

Other men I spoke with there had the same foggy lack of recollection, and yet we all shared warm memories of the place we had summered those decades ago.

Back to Camp Kokosing

Kay oh, Key Oh, Ess eye en gee, Kay Oh, Kay oh! ess eye en gee. That was our song long, long ago when each summer I boarded a bus in Brooklyn with forty mostly New Yorkers and traveled to Thetford Center, Vermont to camp. It was not just any camp, it was Camp Kokosing, and there was a lake, and cabins and pretty girls and more black people than I have ever hung out with. There were plays, and music, and driving to field trips in the back of a stake truck, and a comraderie that reflected the '60s. We used to sing antiwar songs in the back of that truck.

Heading down to New York City tonight...to a reunion of the Camp Kokosing crowd. What is it like to go see people you haven't seen in more than 35 years? No way I am gonna recognize them, but hey, they have a place in my heart so I am going to go and catch back up.

Why I like Being an Internet Man

The NY Post reports on Business, just like sports;

"The head of The Wall Street Journal's empire, Peter Kann, could be sweating over his job, again. Earnings plunged by 54 percent at the newspaper's parent Dow Jones & Co., with its fledgling online operations earning more money for the first time than the flagship Journal and the weekly Barron's.

Feinseth said the company "doesn't earn enough to cover the cost of the capital they use — its average profit is 4.2 percent but the annual cost of its capital is 8.4 percent.

"They're having a much harder time than other media," he said. "Its growth rate is lower than other media in the sector — at 5.4 percent vs. a 7.7 growth rate for the sector.

"They're simply losing market share to other media. Print publishing is not a profitable business for Dow Jones anymore," said Feinseth. Kann is hoping that the company's long-range growth also comes in online publishing, which has profit margins at least 20-fold higher than print.

The Wall Street Journal Online is signing up thousands of new subscribers, up 5.2 percent for the quarter, to a total of 731,000.

But some readers say they're just switching from buying the more expensive print editions of the Journal and Barron's to the lower-priced online versions.

One market watcher said, "Instead of paying about $356 a year for the print version of the Journal and Barron's, I'm gettng it online for $84 a year."

Flavorpill--You Like it Filtered

The New York Times magazine comes in a $4.50 wrapper, so I read it on line. This was included in last week's issue.

"Flavorpill now has scores of contributors who straddle the line between critic and fan. A recent issue of the New York version included a ''stoner/psych rock'' show at the Mercury Lounge with the bands Dead Meadow and Jennifer Gentle and Growing, a comedy performance at the Kitchen by ''the folks behind queer feminist journal LTTR'' and the Found Footage Festival at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg (''Note: The festival is followed by a dance party''). The occasional ''iconic'' event, like the New York City Marathon, also makes the list. ''We don't want to be esoteric,'' Mangan says. ''We don't want to be hip.''

But, of course, there is no hipper sentiment than that, and it's likely that Flavorpill has a devoted following not just because of its enthusiasm but also because the e-mail format lends a vaguely secretive, in-the-know vibe. The key, however, is not whether subscribers are simply aware and telling their friends about, say, a Hollertronix D.J. show but whether they're actually showing up. After all, being in the know is much more satisfying if you can do it in a crowd."

Sudanese Ambassador Confronted by Students

From Littlegreenfootballs.com today: One of the best stories I’ve read today is this account of the confrontation at Belmont University in Nashville between anti-idiotarian students and the ambassador from Sudan’s “Islamic republic:” Sudan’s envoy gets hostile reception at Belmont. (Hat tip: Bill Hobbs.)

An unusual gathering at Belmont University featured the ambassador of Sudan, more than 300 students who came to express their anger at genocide in that East African country, and a professor who led a walkout in protest.

Many in the crowd — including one student refugee from the Sudan — accused the government of supporting atrocities such as murder and rape and what former Secretary of State Colin Powell has called “genocide.”

Sophomore Amr Ali said his family escaped Sudan after the government harassed his mother and beat his father. He told the crowd he was proud that he would soon be an American citizen. But he told Sudanese Ambassador Abdel Bagi Kabeir that he would not forget his native country.

“I want you to look at me,” the 19-year-old told the ambassador. “This is the future. The people that you have oppressed, the people that your government has kicked out of the country will go back. We will make the country greater than it has ever been since you have raped it since 1989.”

Ali received a loud ovation for his statements."

Camilla Will Be Queen

Tina Brown is a royal-watcher with credentials, she's British and knows what the signals mean. Her recent Washington Post column surmises what will take place in the years ahead of Charles and Camilla.

"The prince's intentions to crown Camilla have actually been clear all along. Item: the gift of the queen mother's platinum-and-diamond ring. Item: the insistence on a grand wedding at Windsor Castle rather than sloping off to Scotland, the way his sister Princess Anne did for her second marriage, to Rear Adm. Timothy Laurence. Most telling item of all: the sly insertion of the words "it is intended that" she will be known as the Princess Consort -- which every royal watcher knows should be translated as "That's what we want you to think now, but not how it will turn out in the end."

The more we see of Mrs. Parker Bowles in pictures that are not stolen moments of disarray or heading for her front door in Gloucestershire with a plastic bag over her head, the more obviously queenly she has started to appear. At her first official engagement at the prince's side, on Monday at the Solemn Vespers for the Pope in Westminster Cathedral, her broad-brimmed black beribboned straw hat, knee-length black dress and fat, luxurious pearls gave her the regal air of big-time grande dame. With Camilla you have to reach for Edwardian adjectives. She is a Handsome Woman. A Real Charmer. A Fine Figure of a Gel. Promoted to the front page, she exudes the stately presence of the royal yacht."

Doing What You Love--Now THAT's Real Money!

Tne NY Times keeps track of the stories that are emailed the most; often this is where you'll find the best stories. This one was about a millionaire who decided to work as a train conductor in NJ.

"Walter Joe O'Rourke, who never wed, is married to the rails. Despite earning more than what he estimated at $2 million last year from his investments, he chugs along as a conductor, earning a base salary of $52,000 a year.

"Pocket change," Mr. O'Rourke said. "But it keeps me doing the one thing I enjoy doing most."

The engine, like most things running along the tracks of his life, rested at a junction where one man's passion meets his profession. Mr. O'Rourke came to New Jersey Transit in 1999 as a conductor, a job from which he will retire at the end of this month. Asked why he joined, at age 60 and wealthy, he gave an answer befitting two people: the worldly veteran of the rails he has become, and the high school buff in Miami who fell in love with the workshop.

"I've always wanted to work on a real, professional railroad," he said. "And these trains can go really, really fast."

Who The Hell is John Bolton?

This from a lobbying website "The Center for American Progress" I found on google...

"He has been called a "treaty-killer" and a "guided missile." He is known as the "undersecretary for chads" and the "anti-diplomat."[ii] Recently he called concerns over how many nuclear weapons North Korea possesses "quibbling." [iii] And, former Sen. Jesse Helms thinks of him as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at the gates of Armageddon."[iv] And, if President Bush has his way, John Bolton will now answer to the title of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Though many on the left of the aisle do not agree with his views, few can claim him as incompetent. Indeed, Bolton has been effective: in his first one-and-a half years in office the U.S. pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, scuttled a protocol to the biological-weapons ban, ousted the head of the organization that oversees the chemical-weapons treaty, watered down an accord on small-arms trafficking and refused to submit the nuclear test-ban treaty for Senate ratification.[xv]

At this point it is clear that the world Bolton has left us four years later is one that is more dangerous. He can only do more damage from a position of greater power."

Hail the Cancer Vixen

The NY Times told a tale that included a long horizontal photo of Marisa Acocella Marchetto at her apartment. The story was about her reaction to breast cancer.

"The New York-based illustrator was dressed to turn heads one recent afternoon at Da Silvano, a downtown Italian restaurant frequented by the city's fabulistas. She wore mauve sequined and suede stilettos, fishnet stockings and a curve-clutching pencil skirt with a slit that promised a glimpse of thigh. But the most interesting portion of her ensemble was her black sweater, with its giant jeweled skull sporting Mickey Mouse ears.

"It's all about laughing in the face of death," she explained with a wry chuckle.

Mrs. Marchetto, 43, has had to learn to do something of the sort since she was found to have breast cancer last May. But rather than view herself as a cancer victim, Mrs. Marchetto prefers a snazzier, more empowering handle: Cancer Vixen.

Moments later, two women with closely cropped hair accost Cancer Vixen, wondering why she still has long blond tresses.

"I-I-I did the lighter chemo," a shrinking Cancer Vixen stammers.

"Change your doctor! Change your protocol!" one woman screams in response.

"You have to be aggressive and bomb the hell out of your body. ...I did," the other adds.

"Some of the moments were not funny when they were actually happening to me," Mrs. Marchetto recalled. "But my mom would be, like, 'Material, material!' "

Too Cheap to Fly to Europe

The Providence Journal 's Jack Coleman reports on a controversy about the proposed Cape Cod Wind Farm, found on poynter.org today.


"NEVER LET IT BE SAID that The Cape Cod Times is stingy. Unlike many newspapers its size, the 50,000-circulation Times has sent reporters to chase stories in South Africa, Belgium, Brazil and other distant locales.

Cape Cod's only daily is viewed as a cash cow in the Ottaway chain, a subsidiary of Dow Jones. Yet The Times turns downright miserly in covering the biggest local issue in decades -- one that commands more attention in its pages than any other: Cape Wind, the offshore wind-energy project proposed for Nantucket Sound.

If approved, Cape Wind's 130 turbines would form the country's first offshore wind farm -- as well as the largest local construction project since the Cape Cod Canal, of 1910-14.

While wind towers have yet to appear in American waters, they've sprouted in the waters of Denmark, Germany, Britain and Ireland. Given The Times's deep pockets and abiding interest in the Nantucket Sound proposal, you'd think the paper would send a reporter to Europe to find out what the locals there think of offshore wind energy.

Yet The Times's editor in chief, Cliff Schechtman, won't send his reporters anywhere that they might find people who overcame their initial opposition to windmills off their coasts.

Schechtman declined to comment on the story.

Watching the Chef at Black Eyed Susans

Nantucket is a famous culinary mecca, with great chefs opening expensive eateries and each season coming up with new and higher standards for dining....with the clientele that comes ashore from multimillion dollar yachts and sprawling summer homes, this is a place where prices can soar and smiles will still greet even the most exhorbitant checks. But at this time of year, most of these temples of gastronomy are shuttered until May. Black Eyed Susan's fortunately, was open last night. We sat at the bar and watched the chef make us seared halibut with wilted beet greens and perfect mashed potatoes.

The one thing I kept noticing was how the chef would cook up a full skillet of some delicious looking creation, and then plate the dish and leave so much in the skillet to be sent to the trash. It struck me, does this have to do with careful attention to portion control, to how it will look on the plate? Besides all this, our halibut was lovely and maybe that's why most restaurants keep the chef out back, not 2 feet away from the diners.

Long Long Lost

Saying goodbye to a favorite television series next week will take longer than ever. The hottest show on ABC, Lost, will feature a two-part final season episode that will last for three hours, says AOL News.

Early rumors about "Exodus" had it that one of the castaways would die during the finale. No word on whether these rumors were misdirection meant to leave viewers unprepared for the shocking death of Boone (Ian Somerhalder) on last week's episode, or if the islanders really will have to face another death on May 25.

Stanley's Literary Larding

Alessandra Stanley used to be a foreign bureau chief and high ranking reporter for the New York Times. Now she's the TV critic, and Broadcasting and Cable magazine recently had fun looking back at the obscure yet precise literary references she loves to lard her columns with. Below are a few of their choices from the story.

"Jan. 28: The A&E bio of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, See Arnold Run, Stanley points out, is "not a biography of Wittgenstein." That would be Ludwig Wittgenstein (1881-1951), the Austrian philosopher who did some heavy lifting to produce the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but never admitted to using steroids.

Jan. 21: Writing about the CBS crime drama Numb3rs, Stanley pauses a moment to mention: "There is an old Neapolitan expression meaning that someone is crazy, ‘Da i numeri’ (‘He gives numbers’). It comes from the lottery. Superstitious ticket buyers in Naples would ask asylum inmates to shout out numbers and then bet on whatever came to those unbalanced minds." Stanley is the former chief of the Times’ Rome bureau.

But aficionados of Stanley’s writing about television just nodded appreciatively, murmuring thanks once again for Stanley’s daring refusal to be bound by the conventions of TV criticism as she turns her Times platform into a sort of continuing-education course."

James Taylor at the Fenway Park Home Opener

Watching television in the hotel. Laptop enabled, high speed connection, bright sunny day, out visiting customers on Nantucket island with Todd. So many friendly people out on this isle 29 miles at sea. Sun glinting off the water. The Sox game is on and James Taylor sang the national anthem. While he sang in the sun, he was hatless. But later when he was a guest with the broadcasters, he had a navy blue Red Sox hat on, and was noticeably taller than Jerry Remy and the other broadcaster.

Taylor is everyman's rock star. As Remy and his cohort talked about their CD collection, Sweet Baby James, and concerts they had seen, avuncular James was a laid back Red Sox fan, still waxing eloquent on the big event. A close-up showed the 2004 World Series Rings, and James talked about how his wife in Lenox is a die hard Sox fan like him and that they go to Fenway three times a season.

Taylor sells out areanas in minutes, and is one of Rock's most successful artists. Yet like his brother Livingston, he is self reflective, modest, shy and introverted. But he has the star aura and the chops to back it all up.

Driving in a Very Cool Car to ACK

We drove out to Hyannis to ferry across to Nantucket for a few days. The vehicle was unlike anything I've ever seen before. A 2005 BMW 6 series, sharp and full of space age gadgets...like the navigation system that shows you the map of the road, even showed the ocean when we were on the ferry. Eight cylinders and six gears. These cars ARE different. We passed a smiling young woman who eyed us longlingly. Did she? Or was it it the car?

Nantucket is grey and not yet awake. We dined at an excellent dark New England place called West Creek Cafe...woody beams and a fireplace. We're here to see our customers who will come and order hats and shirts here at the Dolphin Guest House. So many people I've come to know here, this trip should be a good one. Glad to be back again, my last trip was in November.

Watch out for the Leopard Seals

Last night we came home after dinner at a Thai restaurant and turned on the Discovery Channel. A show about Antarctica called Blue Planet showcased the lives of the Emperor penguins, and their daily struggle to avoid becoming lunch for the fierce predators just below the ice. The beasts they fear are the Leopard seals, who are called "the polar bears of the South."

It seems that there are no polar bears in Antarctica, just millions and millions of penguins. These rotund little birds swim at very rapid speeds, they get their speed up, flapping their flippers and soar out of the water to try to get on the land. The video showed them launching themselves up out of the waves, and sometimes successfully landing on the rocky shoal. Often the birds would be dragged back into the raging surf, to try again. The nice part of getting up there is that there is a volcano smoldering high at the top of the mountain, so the rocks are clear of ice, and quite warm. The penguins then have to walk many miles up and over to get to where they nest. But then they want to get back in the water....and the danger lurks. The leopard seals wait, knowing these fat creatures are about to dive in, and inevitably snare one or two to make a meal.

Love Marriages--Afghanistan's New Trend

Sploid.com is a blog with tabloid headlines and a drudge-like look. The excerpt below is from a story from Yahoo about the new freedoms being enjoyed by formerly burka-clad women in Afghanistan. "Love Marriages" are becoming more common, though most are still arranged by parents for their kids.

"Those who shun arranged marriages often meet in towns like Mazar, particularly at work or at university. "Hospitals too," says Ershad, 30, a doctor from the western city of Herat, the only one of the three wearing traditional Afghan dress. "Lots of people come to hospitals only to see girls. And all the doctors I know have a girlfriend."

After the initial meeting, young lovers have to make an effort to keep in touch. "But today, it's easy to contact boys or girls with mobiles," says 26-year-old Jamshit, the third of the young men at Sabur's pharmacy. "Before that, if you wanted to meet a girl and to send her a message, you had to give it to her little brother, with a candy for him. With one risk, the message being caught by the father.

"Now, 80 percent of young people in Mazar have a mobile. It's like a fashion, and with it you can set up meetings without any problem."

All that's left is to find a spot for a rendezvous.

The young pharmacist smiles. Quietly, he shows a red curtain behind the counter. "This is a very good place for secret meetings. And there's no risk: it's normal for a girl to come here to buy drugs," he says.

Spoleto on a Friday Night

Met Paul Shoul down at Spoleto's in Northampton about six last night. Friday night crowd, Bob Paquette of WFCR News manning the bar. Next to Paul was Moira from Family Fun magazine, and Grace, who also works there. A bit after I got there up came David Sokol, hat pulled down low, Dave had had a few. And he came with sad news. They folded the magazine he edits, Disney, and so he's out of a job. But he is well respected over at Family Fun, so I'm sure he'll land on his feet.

The scene there was lively and happening, with lots of laughs and the tinkling of glasses and that palpable excitement of a Friday night in early Spring. Paul ordered some mussels and we chatted with Moira and Grace, and talked about their magazine and GoNOMAD and Paul's encounter with a Village Voice editor. I thought about how connected people are who work in the media, how in this small fish pond of the Valley, it is easy to go places and run into the same people so often. I like it here.

Mailbox Clogging Son-of-a-Bitch!

Every morning I spend hours sifting through spam. So it made me feel great today to read this and see the mugshot of this Jason character, nailed for spam in VA.

"Jaynes, 30, who was considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services such as a "FedEx refund processor," prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his e-mails, and prosecutors said Jaynes' operation grossed up to $750,000 per month."

While prosecutors presented evidence of just 53,000 illegal e-mails, authorities believe Jaynes was responsible for spewing out 10 million e-mails a day. Prosecutors said Jaynes made millions of dollars from the illegal venture."

He said he was not going to ever enter the email marketing business again. Please. Don't!

Sure as Sunshine

Eric Suher is a legend in Northampton, and this week got written up in Fortune Magazine. The piece dragged details I could have never learned in the five years I worked for him. He is a hard working successful entrepreneur, and has done great things for the city.

"Suher may never equal the late Bill Graham of San Francisco as a music promoter. He can't hope to match Chicago's legendary Sam Zell as a real estate baron. His silkscreen business, E-S Sports, pales in comparison to any one of the long-shuttered mills that made red-brick, hydro-powered Holyoke a major center for paper and textile manufacturing in the 19th century.

It might be different if he could pick just one business and focus on it, but he loves them all too much. Suher hardly fits the B-school image of the CEO who relentlessly executes his company's core competency, but he is a familiar archetype in the landscape of American business. He's the classic small-town entrepreneur: patient, versatile, unconventional, less concerned with growth for growth's sake or even return on equity than with his own quirky ambitions—and deeply rooted in one place.

For Suher and others like him, it's not about roaming or seeing what lies beyond; it's all right here, wherever "here" may be. Every thrill, every opportunity, every outlet for passion that a life in business brings. Right here at home."

Your House is HOW Old?

Today's Wall Street Journal teaches a new word..."Dendochronology." That's how you find out exactly how old your olde, olde house really is. A technician takes samples from your wood beams and counts and measures the rings to determine when the wood was harvested.

Steve Nicklin bought a $750,000 old home built in Virginia in 1669. George Washington was supposed to have dined there.But after the 'dendo' was done, it was dated 71 years younger. So much for the GW legacy.

"It's very sexy to be able to know the exact year your house was built," says Walter R. Wheeler, architecture historian in New York.

Faster, Faster!

Broadband is marching along nicely. That is good because we feature so many photos and text on our website, GoNOMAD.com,. dialup connections take decades to load and people won't wait politely...they'll just leave. Here is a story from Travelmole.com, a good source of travel-related info that comes by email from the UK.

"The Internet population that accessed the Internet via a broadband connection grew by an astounding 24%, according to The Face of the Web. This resulted in less than a third of the Internet Users relying on narrowband dial-up as their primary access point.

The year 2004 also marked the year when the U.S. migrated over to a predominantly broadband country, where close to six out of ten users accessed the Internet through some high-speed connection. The highest broadband adoption, however, was seen in France, Urban Brazil and the U.K., growing by 59%, 50%, and 45% respectively. While dial-up access continues to be the prevalent access point in these economies, the broadband growth trend was particularly strong."

The Top Dogs Eat Well at the Post

It could well be the cushiest title in all of journalism: no job description, nice office, good pay, and the resources of a rich corporation at your fingertips. You're encouraged to write books and articles that tickle your fancy. The Washington Post's Associate Editors have it made, writes Erik Wemple in the Washington City Paper.

And what could possibly possess a Postie to pass up an associate editorship? Humility, perhaps. In 1998, 37-year-old Assistant Managing Editor for Style David Von Drehle considered an offer to move into this emeritus class. At the time, the associate-editor roster was headed by Broder, Kaiser, and Hoagland. "Those are some pretty big dogs....I mean, the dean of the paper and the former managing editor...so I though it might be a good thing to aspire to later in life." Von Drehle went to the national desk as a regular reporter.

Breathing in Taiwan

A writer named Joshua Hartshorne submitted a new story to GoNOMAD. Here is a page from his blog.

"Taipei is not as smoggy as some places (Beijing comes to mind), but it's pretty nasty. I though St. Petersburg was bad, but there it's more particulate matter floating in the air, more localized. In much of the city, you don't notice anything, but walk certain parts for a few hours and you find a film of dust or dirt or something along your teeth and in you mouth and, no doubt, filling your lungs.

Here it's more like a dry fog. It makes taking pictures difficult, as everything is washed out. It makes eyes red and throats scratchy. My allergies were so bad the other day that I woke up to find the room spinning. I tried sleeping it off, but hours later the room still spun.

Helen and I cleaned the apartment thoroughly to try to improve our home air as best as possible, but there's nothing to be done about the street. Last weekend we went to Singapore. Within hours we felt better. Upon rearriving in Taipei, both our throats began to hurt again.

It's a shame. Otherwise, Taipei's a great town. But it could use an air transplant.
Things may be getting better. Scooters a main source, are switching to 4 stroke, cleaner, (they're giving people time to get their scooters fixed). posted at 3/27/2005 8:54:49 PM by ardalin : link : 0 responses "

Smelly Cash Lands Dude in the Slammer

Reading Reading PA's local newspaper, and found this entry, file under stupid people doing silly things.

GREENSBURG, Ind. (AP) -- A man who went to the sheriff's department to bond out his brother-in-law also ended up in jail when police realized the money he handed them reeked of marijuana.

Timothy Richards, 45, of Columbus, went to the Decatur County Sheriff's Department and when he handed dispatcher Julie Meyers $400, she counted it and then noticed something unusual. "When I walked back toward the jail I noticed the money was damp and smelled funny," Meyers said. A jailer who sniffed the money told her it smelled like marijuana, she said.

China's Daunting Math

This month's Wired featured a souped up hybrid Prius on the cover and included a report by Lisa Margonelli on China's Next Cultural Revolution....in alternative fuels.

"After food, oil is the most important issue for Chinese economic planners. Without an increasing supply of oil, high GDP growth will be impossible, creating unemployment and social unrest, potentially threatening the government's hold on power. That's not all. Dependency on foreign oil inevitably leads to war. 'If you pump for oil, you have to fight wars for it.' (Pump and fight sound similar in Mandarin.)

Among the charts in the article one showed that China's demand for gasoline will be five time's today's figure in 2025. China now has 200,000 alternative fuel vehicles in service, and will convert 120,000 buses to run on natural gas before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Puppy Mills Are In the News

Reading Lancasteronline.com I came across this. It was a blog posted by a new resident.

"Recently my wife and I moved from Lancaster to Delaware County (for university reasons) and we just wanted to comment on the puppy mill situation in Lancaster County.

My wife worked for the Humane League of Lancaster County for a few years and she (we) are strongly opposed to the manufacturing of dogs for profit. I'm sure many of you saw the Fox29 report on Puppy Love Kennel (along with Joyce "I Kill Puppies for $" Stoltzfus smacking the cameraman's camera from him)...if anyone that reads these boards is interested, you can visit www.stoppuppymills.com (a highly recommended HSUS website).

Also, a meeting was recently had in the Lancaster-area concerning puppy mill legislation and the turn out was decent (about 100 people). Future meetings could benefit from more Lancaster county citizens. I'll post information about the next meeting here when I get it.

So...does anyone share our moral outrage?

Al Gore is One Step Ahead of You

Al Gore is a guy some of us like to beat up on. The "inventing the internet" the stupid staged Kiss, Tipper....but he's on to something pretty far reaching with a new TV network planned for an August 1 rollout. The SFGate.com website had the story.

"Current, the network's new name, plans to air short-form, fast-paced segments and snippets called "pods'' rather than shows. Tailored for the short attention span, they will be anywhere from 15 seconds to five minutes long.

The pods will include a job-market spot called "Current Gigs,'' a report on spiritual trends called "Current Soul'' and segments about parenting, technology, fashion, music, politics, the environment and relationships. The short-form format, pioneered by MTV, "is consistent with the fast- paced, two-screen-consuming-at-a-time nature of this audience,'' said a spokesman. Current will also air segments every half hour showing TV viewers what Google searchers are tapping into at that moment -- everything from current events to tourist destinations.

"This is an audience of media grazers, and we decided to create a network that didn't fight that but facilitated that,'' Neuman said. He introduced a snazzy, five-minute video -- "a taste of the tapas bar for young adults we call Current'' -- that offered snippets of video reports from Sierra Leone, the Middle East, the marijuana fields of Morocco.

The Long Drive in California

The new Google maps provide green and red markers, this shows how far I need to drive when I fly out to San Diego....De'Anza Springs is right on the border. 

The View From Here

This morning is clear, clean and Spring. Good day is on the way. 

Catfight on Wisteria Lane

Word is that a recent photo shoot with the ladies from Desperate Housewives got a little tense. This from AOL news...

"It looked like all smiles during the shoot, but Vanity Fair's Ned Zeman witnessed a real-life soap opera unfold between the ladies. He says the all-day shoot was filled with tears, tantrums and profanity.

"Finally Marcia had enough and started swearing at this publicist in front of dozens of people," he revealed.

Zeman says the trouble started before the shoot even began, when ABC demanded that Teri Hatcher not be placed in the middle of any group photos. "Teri Hatcher was always in the center, and I think that probably rubbed some people the wrong way," Zeman told us.

And Zeman claims the catfight made Teri weep: "She was talking on her cell phone in tears basically because she was, in essence, the cause of it."

But "Extra" caught up with Teri Sunday night at The Comedy for a Cure event in Los Angeles, where she was all smiles and just grateful to be on the cover. "I know what's in the article and, however it comes off, I believe that everyone is as grateful to be on the show as I am," she told us."

Fingers in the Dam on the Border

Scores of participants in the Minuteman Project began assembling late last week and clusters of volunteers began regular patrols Monday, in an exercise some law enforcement authorities and civil rights groups fear will result in vigilante violence. Many of the volunteers were recruited over the Internet, and some planned to be armed. Over the past few days, they have set off sensors, forcing agents to respond to false alarms, said Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Jose Maheda.

"Now we not only have to look out for aliens and drug smugglers, now we have to look out for these untrained civilians who are unfamiliar with the landscape," Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said.

Not a Poker Face

Poker on Mountain Road, Don Gibson looks happy seated next to GoNOMAD Web tech Stephen Hartshorne. 

Suitable for the 'Rents?

Casa Fontanella, Le Marche Italy. This is either the perfect place to take my parents for a long-planned vacation in rural Italy, or the out in the sticks trap that I made the mistake of thinking would be a great place to take my parents for vacation. 

Woman Breastfeeds Tiger Cubs--Ouch!

Drudge includes this snippet in today's report.

A Burmese woman is breastfeeding two tiger cubs at a zoo in Rangoon after they were removed from their aggressive mother.

Hla Htay, 40, who has three children, the youngest seven months old, offered her services after the Bengal tiger cubs' mother, Noah Noah, killed the third member of her litter. The two others, a male and a female, were taken from her and now receive bottle feeds as well as Hla Htay's milk four times a day.

"I felt sorry for them so I decided to feed them before their teeth grow," she told the Myanmar Times, a privately-owned English-language paper in the capital.

Podcasting into the Stream

I had my first podcast user experience tonight. Listened to a wise Stephan Stevens, who is from Wisconsin, but now lives in New Zealand. He is a self confessed RSS fanatic, saying that this platform will revolutionize the world of the net as we know it. I am also high on RSS, we send out our feed each week and hope to do more and more with this delivery system. I listened to Stephan speak out of my laptop and it was very comfortable, it was like having somebody in your living room just talking about their views on Search Engine Optimizing and how RSS can drive traffic to a website. It was a five minute report, and I was happy to listen to the whole thing.

We are going to begin our podcasting experiements soon, as we are adding two new interns to our staff and a possible 2nd paid web designer. Paula Morzenti worked with us a semester ago, as an intern. She is coming to chat with us about coming on board once again.

The Maxa Man

The last time we spoke with Rudy Maxa, he was in a terrific hurry. It had something to do with pipes, leaking urgent pipes, and he was not able to stay.

We reached him today, and told him about how we had seen his visage on dozens of similtaneous screens at Costco. He said everybody is telling him this....his show is shot in HDTV, so it is a perfect backdrop to sell these expensive devices, so there he is, any Saturday at the Big Store, talking about Venice.

Stopped by and saw Todd Adelson of Bolduc's Apparel today, a good company made up of solid folks who I enjoy working with. GoNOMAD's Joe Obeng created their website and I represent their products on MV and Nantucket islands. Like Ben Franklin, I like to juggle a lotta things at once.

Hooking Up in New York City

Today's NY Times Styles section offers a preview of a new book called by the provocative title, "The Hooking Up Handbook," that details what young stylish women in their 20s think about dating and sex in the 00s. Alex Williams interviewed a pack of women wearing low slung $200 jeans in a trendy Village bar:

"Yes, they take pride in having thrown off the shackles of earlier generations of single women. They are not waiting on Friday night hoping "he" will call. They make the first move. They happily see two or three guys simultaneously. Spontaneity is crucial, but even more is a good clean exit strategy from any guy who turns out to be Mr. Not Exactly.

"It's not that people aren't dating...it's that there's this weird gray area. People still want to be in relationships, but they don't want to be settling."

But even as they raise pink drinks in the air and roll their eyes at the absurdity of commitment, these are not women embracing sexual abandon. The courtship rites of this generation of urban singles seem to borrow from the mores of their grandmothers in the 1950's (date lots of boys; smooch, spoon, nuzzle or neck to your heart's content, but hold out for that pledge pin from Mr. Right) as much as from those of their mothers' love-the-one-you're-with 70's."

Who Will Be the Next Pope?

This question is floating all over the world, now that the Pope has passed. I heard a radio interview with a man speaking about how when he had an audience with The Big Guy, it consisted of him repeating back everything he said, with a "god bless" after it. Not a scintillating meeting. Anyway, here is what National Geographic said about the next Papa.

"There are several scenarios," Gillis said. "One is that, after having a Polish pope for 27 years, the cardinals want to return to one of their own and elect an Italian. Another would be that the pope would be a figure from the developing world. The other scenario is that they'll choose a European who can revive moribund Christianity in Europe—or try to, anyway."

"I think there's a good likelihood that the next pope will come from outside Italy," Gillis said. Father Richard McBrien is a theologian at Indiana's University of Notre Dame. He thinks it is more likely—though not a sure thing—that the next pope will be an Italian.

"With so many cardinal-electors—119 at this point—and so many possible candidates, it's practically impossible to do more than guess," he said. "No one seriously predicted the election of Karol Wojtyla of Poland last time around. It could be anybody."

Land of No Evenings

On the equator, there is no evening. Reading more of Jeffrey Tayler's Facing the Congo, I learned that in these stiffling, mosquito-filled areas, night just shuts down. There is no drifting, no slow descent to darkness. The lights virtually go off at 6 pm. The book chronicles the passage down the mighty and fearsome Congo River, by dug out canoe. Tayler provides some evocative details.

"The sun falls promptly at six, and rises at six; every equatorial day, a coin flipping now light, now dark, with a band of fifteen minutes of resplendent dawn or lustrous dusk in between. The sunsets in particular have no equal elsewhere on the planet; in their sudden meltdown of molten hues, in their drama and Gotterdammerung magnificence, they conjure up ancient feelings, making us tremble at the demise of the day as if it were the death of our world."

Batting Around the Tennis Ball

This morning we head over to Ludlow to hit tennis balls inside a huge green dome. It is a round robin affair, we get there and are given a list showing who we are playing against for 45 minutes of doubles. Then we switch and play a different pair. I grew up in a preppy family outside of Princeton NJ, so every school I went to had good tennis courts, so I am comfortable with the racquet. The ritual and lingo is pleasing to me, all of the "love 30's" and "deuces" flying back over the net. The people we play with are gracious, but competitive, they don't get mad when you plunk the ball into the net, yet cheer when you stick it in the far corner for a winning shot. I blast my Ivan Lendl serve as hard as I can, and sometimes I score an ace.

I was surprised at what a sweat you can work up when you're furiously hitting balls playing doubles....a good workout and a good way to begin my Weekend.

Life Caching: It's Catching On

Daniel Fallon writes about a new trend that is about to get BIG. It comes from Nokia, the ingenius Fins who have done so much for the cellphone handset.

"Nokia is tapping into an emerging trend that could potentially change the way we record, and ultimately remember, our lives. The new buzzword is life caching, a term that describes the information we capture about our lives using the various digital devices we are increasingly attached to.

Once organised, our life cache can be shared with friends or kept as a personal diary. From the snaps we take with digital cameras, to the calendar dates we set on our PDAs, to the video we shoot on camcorders, to the email we store in Outlook on our computer - the digital information we collect about our lives each week is growing exponentially and the capacity for technology to store it is keeping up. For Lindholm, it's just a matter of deciding whether to share the highlights. The new Nokia phones will organize it all on PCs in a "Life Cache."

Microsoft is planning to take life diaries to a new, more detailed level with SenseCam. This wearable device is designed to capture up to 2000 images a day on its 128MB memory. The company likens it to a personal black box that will be able to
tell what happened in case of an accident. "All the interesting trivial details of life can be recorded and shared with family and friends," says a Microsoft spokesman.