Picking up the Pace with a New Cafe

Once again the pace is picking up here at the Computer Cleaners/GoNOMAD office. We've committed to moving four buildings up, to an old fashioned storefront with big bay windows, space for five public computers, more desks, more storage, and parking in the back. We are going to open the GoNOMAD Cafe, where you can check email, browse the web, buy coffee and juice and talk to us about computers. We are also looking into hooking up a powerful Wifi router that will blast our signal in a wide fifteen-hundred yard radius. The possibilities are endless and we're on top of them!




Our techs will be in the back working on computers, and we will sell memory, network cards, upgrades and a whole bunch of other products..maybe even Ipods! We will design and host websites and do website search engine optimizing. We might use our network of terminals to teach classes.

Our new landlords the Rotkiewiczes are easy to work with and happy that we chose their spot. Now it's time to find out what South Deerfield thinks about us serving coffee and pastries. This is gonna be fun.

The Most Intriguing People....and the Winner

Barbara Walters has transcended the role of television show host to that of an icon, a decider....now that she has retired, we only see her on special occasions, like last night. She presented the top ten most fascinating people....and made us wait until the very end to know that her MOST intriguing and interesting person was the wife of Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles.

She drove fast in a Mustang with Tom Cruise, (who refused to take back anything he said about Ritalin, and denied that Scientology demands women keep quiet during childbirth) and kicked it around with Kayne West. Singer West got into hot water when he said Bush didn't care about the black hurricane victims, but like Cruise he was polite and erudite speaking to America's Grand Dame. And didn't deny anything.

But Bowles...is she the most intriguing person? Maybe she is because she and Charles loved one another way back before the glittering ill-fated wedding to Diana. But they both bided their time, and after decades, she now goes to America and scores our top prize. I mean Babs saying you're number one...that's an honor here.

They're Lining Up to Buy the Body Farm

Iowa's rich topsoil and climate have nourished some of the nation's most plentiful corn and soybean crops. Tyler O'Brien wants to learn more about their influence on rotting corpses. {Associated Press}

"A biological anthropology professor at the University of Northern Iowa, O'Brien envisions turning some prime Iowa pasture into a body farm, where human bodies -- buried, stuffed in car trunks or exposed to the elements -- can provide scholars and criminalists with new benchmark data on human decay.

If approved, the body farm would be just the second in the nation and closely modeled after the work pioneered by O'Brien's mentor, William Bass III, at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center.

Inside a secure, three-acre parcel near the Tennessee campus, Bass and his team have spent more than 30 years painstakingly documenting the decay of bodies buried in coffins and shallow dirt graves, partially submerged in a pond, or exposed to bugs, rodents and hot, muggy summers.

"Do you have any idea how much heat is generated in the middle of a cornfield in the summer?" O'Brien asked. "It gets awfully hot in there, with little air. It could be very important to know how a microclimate like that affects decomposition. Different environments can change the rate of decay and tell us new facts about what happened."

If O'Brien's grant is approved -- and he has been rejected before -- the site would be owned by the university and secured by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire around a taller privacy fence.

Despite the mass appeal of TV crime shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, O'Brien knows persuading the public to see beyond the grim details will be a hard sell. Bodies used at the farm would be donated by families in the region much the same as they donate a body for medical research.

Everybody Loves Roger

Chicago Magazine ran a profile on a writer who is often more famous than his movie star subjects, Roger Ebert. Here's a bit about the olden daze.

"After work, the gathering place in those days was a bar called O’Rourke's, a hangout with the look of a shabby Irish pub. The typical slog went from the newspaper office to Riccardo’s for dinner and drinks, to O’Rourke’s until closing at 2 a.m., then down North Avenue a block to the Old Town Ale House, which stayed open until four. The trek became known as the Bermuda Triangle. “Night after night, year after year, all the time,” says Ebert, whose drinking crew included Zonka, Galloway, and John McHugh.

Ebert, who drank Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, could finish off a bottle by himself. Later, when he worried that he might be drinking too much, he told Galloway that he had his drinking under control—the night before, he had consumed only 15 highballs.

The more Ebert drank, the jollier he became. “He might just start singing or reciting a poem,” recalls Marshall Rosenthal, who was then working as a reporter at the Chicago Daily News. Ebert and McHugh would quote Yeats, sometimes in unison, and Ebert would also compose limericks. When he stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a rumpled carbon copy, the regulars knew that he was about to read them his review for the next day."

Look! Up in the Sky! Conjoined Monorails!

Just weeks after voters struck down plans for a new monorail, a design glitch and a communication mishap immobilized the old one. Seattle's PI reported today.

Like conjoined twins, the Red and Blue trains remained frozen on the track above Fifth Avenue and Olive Way after the two sideswiped each other in a tight curve authorities have known about since 1989, when the inclusion of Westlake Center changed the original 1962 track design to taper at the point leading into the mall.

"It's too narrow for two to be there," said Seattle Center spokesman Perry Cooper "There was some sort of communication problem."

There are supposed to be signal lights on the track and communication between drivers when both trains are running, he said, suggesting that one or both of those safety measures failed Saturday night.
"We're very aware of the pinch point in the line, but it's never happened since it's been put in," Cooper said. "It's an unfortunate accident.

Among the Most Embarrassing Moments - Ever

The following cautionary tale must surely rate in the top five of "most embarrassing things that can happen to you in public - ever". According to UK tabloid the Sun, a 33-year-old Welsh housewife ended up in hospital after wearing Ann Summers vibrating Passion Pants to her local Asda supermarket in Swansea.

Unfortunately, she became "so aroused by the 2½-inch vibrating bullet inside that she fainted" then "fell against shelves and banged her head". This prompted the attendance of the paramedics who "found the black leatherette panties still buzzing". Having disabled the orgasmatronic underwear, they then whisked the senseless shopper to hospital where she made a complete recovery. Staff handed her back the Passion Pants upon discharge, discreetly concealed in a plastic bag.

To its credit, the Sun does not name the woman. We assume, however, that she will be shopping at her local Tesco for the next ten years or so, or until everyone in the Asda who witnessed her ordeal is dead or has succumbed to total amnesia - whichever comes soonest."

Horse and House in Patagonia

Putawapi Chile. photo by Paul Shoul 

The Decadence of Organic Candied Lark's Tongues

Columnist Neil Steinberg just lived through the ultimate publicity and personal nightmare: He got drunk, slapped his wife, and ended up in jail and in rehab. His Chicago Sun-times come-back column promised he'd pull no punches, sober or not. "Some readers expressed concern that sobriety will wreck my acerbic view of life. Fat chance. Having your beloved crutch kicked away before being dragged backward by your heels through hell is not an experience designed to make one giddy at life's rich pageant.

...I couldn't read descriptions in Whole Foods of the coddled apples and happy chickens fed only natural grains without thinking of the Romans, and their candied lark's tongues. Organic food is decadent, even worse than the excesses of the past because it is disguised as virtue. The whole world is eating beans grown in the sludge of old bauxite mines and gnawing meat that has hung on hooks in the market for three days, while we're paying $10 a pound for maple mustard roasted turkey from birds raised on Mozart.

We're not paying for the food, really, we're paying for the packaging, and its implication that our lettuce was grown by pueblos and delivered by ox cart. I stood in gaping wonder at "American Flatbread," an "all-natural pizza baked in a primitive wood-fired earthen oven." At first I focused on "earthen" as the marvel. "I tried pizza from metal ovens but it tasted so ... technological."

And we, we are not charmless suburbanites yapping on our cell phones as we roar up to Whole Foods in monstrous vehicles that burn more money in gas each month than most people in the world earn in a year. No, we are gentle, rainforest folk, crouching under the lush green canopies of our self-regard, using our fingers to eat organic groats from wide bowls, groats gently washed with spring water, a bargain at $7.99 a pound."

Video Rentals Toasted

Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He wrote a commentary in the Miami Herald today about the newspaper business and other doomed species.

"The Internet does threaten some revenue franchises, especially classifieds. But it also offers a new way to reach audiences by going paperless and shedding 60 percent of operating costs.

By contrast, consider the video rental business. Now there's an industry that's toast. Or the plight of your local TV stations, the richly profitable affiliates that depend on the flow of network shows -- and those programs are heading to the Internet. Now that over half of U.S. online users have high-capacity broadband connections, the Web is mutating: no longer the electronic extension of print that it has been, it's becoming a televisual medium built around pictures and sound.

Newspaper circulation is down? Look, a half-century ago 90 million people went to the movies every week; now theaters draw barely a quarter that many. So what? Hollywood rakes in five times the money from DVDs and the like that it gets from theatrical release, which now is little more than advertising for lucrative home entertainment sales.

Just as Hollywood adapted to a new business model, so must news industry chieftains look beyond their sluggish newsprint sales and realize that the audience for quality news, information and commentary is robust and vital. That public may want to buy stories instead of subscriptions, and advertisers may demand something more effective than colorful pop-ups.

But depopulating newsrooms -- ownership's current response -- will enfeeble the industry, not transform it. What's needed is a business imagination commensurate with the editorial vision the public demands and deserves."

My smiling little grandson Nathan. 

Winner? I Don't Think So...

Five years ago, Virginia Metcalf Merida, 51, won the Powerball jackpot lottery. She told the press after she won the $65.4 million prize that she was going to quit her job making corrogated boxes, and buy a house. Her husband, a forklift operator, wanted to quit too, and make a fresh start in Australia. The AP told this sad tale today.

Mr Metcalf died in 2003, while living in a replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate built in Corbin, KY. He had been charged with drunk driving, not paying child support, and other run-ins with the law before his sudden death.

A man's body was found in a 5000-square foot custom built geodesic dome house she had built, coroners said he died from a drug overdose. Later the wealthy winner bought another house, but when she tried to evict the tenant, the renter sued her.

When the police found Mrs Merida at their home overlooking the Ohio river, she had been dead for many days before anyone found her.

Money in the Bank to Fix Tsunami Ravaged Lands

It's unusual in the history of disaster relief: today NY Times' Stephanie Strom writes about the surplus facing the NGOs who raised more than $1.3 million after last December's Tsunami.

"From our point of view, this is like dying and going to heaven," said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children. "It allows us to put together a coherent and systematic long-term plan, rather than living day to day and year to year as we normally do. Save the Children has never before gotten this much money to sustain a five-year recovery plan.

The overflow of funds provides a bonus: For the first time in its 58-year history, Direct Relief established a separate account to hold the $14.3 million it received after the Tsunami, and pledged that 100 percent of the money would be spent on recovery work. Of the $568 million raised by the American Red Cross, just $167 million has been spent...leaving millions for the work that will take many more years.

No Car Payment? Sorry Your Car Won't Start

''People come in the door and can't get a car loan and can't get a cosigner," Doucette said. ''What do I tell them, to go get a bus pass? We're in a tough economy. People don't have a lot of money. They need cars." Doucette was explaining a new device that shuts off the engines of cars whose owners are late with their payments.

Payment Protection Systems Inc., the privately held company in Temecula, Calif., that manufactures the engine-shutoff devices, says it has sold more than 200,000 of them since 1999, and sales are growing 40 percent a year.

More than 1,500 dealerships across the nation are using the On Time devices, including eight in Massachusetts and 10 throughout the rest of New England, the company said.

Mike Simon, chief executive of Payment Protection Systems, said the device isn't meant to be punitive. He said drivers unable to obtain financing or forced to pay astronomical rates for a loan are often able to strike a much better deal if they agree to have the shutoff device installed in their cars.

''We're here to help you, not to shut you down," Simon said. ''We help people continue driving and help them get better interest rates and cars."

Simon said his On Time device has been installed in everything from a Mercedes-Benz to a Ford Taurus. He said drivers aren't stigmatized by the units.

''These people know they've had financial trouble," he said. ''It's not a secret to them."

The device, which costs about $250, is typically installed just under the steering column. The keypad on the device flashes the number 3 three days before the next car payment is due and then the number 2 two days out. On the last day before payment is due, the number 1 flashes and a beep sounds.

At the end of the third day, if a payment is not made, the engine is disabled. It won't shut off while driving, but once the vehicle is turned off it won't restart. Codes are available in case a payment is not made but the vehicle owner has a temporary emergency requiring the use of the car.

Francisco's strong hands.

 
 

Strong Hands Massage has opened at 9 Mountain Rd. S. Dfld. 

HEY NOW! Hooking Up in Seattle

Bloomberg carried this story last week.

"Geeks, Single and Proud, Turn Seattle Into Online Dating Mecca: To find a date in Seattle last April, Allstate Corp. attorney Steve Takahashi carried a stick of salami around a Trader Joe's grocery store. He was following the instructions posted on a chat board, called Trader Joe's Love, frequented by devotees of the trendy food chain. The item was a signal to female shoppers he was available.

``This city is really good for being single, going out, flirting,'' says Takahashi, 43, a Seattle native who estimates he has been on 250 dates since 1979.

Seattle is rapidly becoming the computer-assisted dating capital of the U.S. as chat boards and online services like Match.com help to transform local dating traditions. In the process, the city that has long had a reputation as being populated with computer geeks is turning into something of a singles paradise.

The Web-based BestPlaces guide this month ranked Seattle the No. 1 place in the U.S. to ``hook up,'' based on 33 factors, including male-to-female parity, membership in online dating services and the number of coffee shops and dog parks in the city.

Match.com, owned by New York-based IAC/InterActive Corp., chose Seattle as one of four cities in the country to test a new dating site called chemistry.com, designed for people ``actively seeking meaningful long-term relationships.'' The company says there are 186,480 active members of Match.com in the Seattle area, equal to roughly 6.1 percent of the population of 3 million. That's the highest proportion of online daters among the 12 largest metropolitan areas, based on 2000 U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

Not all Seattle singles are interested in embarking on a long-term relationship, of course. For some, dating itself is the objective."

Pillars Fall, Beau Winds Up in Jail

Rico, an instructor on a Semester at Sea Voyage, writes a blog about the trip.
Here is a story about an unfortunate student travelern named Beau.

"What would you do? One of the students in the trip you lead gets a little silly and while running after a monkey, knocks down a pillar in an ancient Siem Reap temple. It starts a chain reaction that destroys several hundred years of civilization in a matter of seconds.

Poor Beau. Stuck in a Cambodian jail. All other 57 students made it back to Vietnam. Did the one thing you don’t do in a Buddhist country: mess around in a Buddhist temple. Bad things are bound to happen.

Or so the ship thought. You see, Beau lost his passport in Phnom Penh. He wasn’t sure where it was in the afternoon. He might have lost it in the morning at the hotel. Or he might have been pickpocketed the night before. Whatever, he was really stuck in Cambodia. It is one of the worst things you can do on Semester at Sea, losing your passport. Because you need a visa to enter Vietnam, and you need an exit visa to leave Cambodia, and because it takes a few days to get a new emergency American passport, and because it was a Cambodian holiday, Beau didn’t make it to the ship. It wasn’t that big of a deal, just an expensive pain in the arse. He’s an adult who can take care of himself; he would meet us in Hong Kong once the paperwork was straightened out.

But the ship didn’t know this. So we agreed as a trip to tell the story that Beau was arrested in Cambodia. We would be vague with the details, “I didn’t see it, but I think was climbing the temple to take a picture,” or, “I saw him pretending to be Sarah Croft earlier and next thing I know you hear this crashing sound.” But he had knocked something, and didn’t come back to the ship."

Hot Older Gals for Fun

The Village Voice's Lusty Lady with advice on older women and sex.

"For her, it's still a meat market in some respects. "I can date younger or older men. It's a question of do they want to date me? Men want younger, hot-looking women to boost their egos and impress their friends." Some women have taken the same route and turned to virile younger men. There's even a website for such couples, agelesslove.com, a "community for age gap relationship support."

These authors have shown me life doesn't necessarily begin at 40 but can be just as passionate, fulfilling, and yes, infuriating. Unlike Maureen Dowd, who's trying to figure out why men might be scared away, they've seen the thrill of being true to themselves, and it's a guy's loss if he lets a woman's age deter him.

Austin's advice? "I no longer care about being embarrassed; I only care about not being bored. Enjoy every minute of every day, and don't worry about what anyone else thinks. Women, and a fair number of men, will envy you and want to be with you, just to figure out how you do it."

Mellowing out on Mountain Rd.

A warm Thanksgiving....the Franklin stove was crankin all day and the result was a warm house, while the snow blew outside. My sister and family are all joining Steve for a 38-person feast in the hills outside of Hopewell, NJ. That's too many people around a turkey for me...

We only had a group of six. As the effects of the triptophane sunk in, we watched tv and held the baby, who at dinner wore a tiny oxford dress shirt and corduroys. Tiny ones. We hadn't done anything all day except for Kate who had cooked so much food, so it was a day to just relax. rare. nice.

Spurning Gifts from Iranian Captors

Mark Bowden wrote an article about the Iran hostages in December 1979, including this dispatch about one prisoner's defiant gesture.

The hostages and guards were having a Christmas party, allowing Rev. William Sloane Coffin and others to come into the embassy and cheer up the hostages. But Michael Metrinko would have none of it, he wanted no part in a propaganda show. "When his guards brought him a gift of a plate of turkey and stuffing, cookies, and marshmallows, the food was tempting. He was hungry but galled by how self-congratulatory his captors seemed. He accepted the plate and stared at it. Then he said he needed to use the toilet, and emerged carrying the gift plate before him. He marched down the hall into the bathroom and dumped its contents into the toilet bowl. He made sure the guards saw him do it.

They were furious with him. He had insulted their hospitality and kind intentions. He was crazy! When they shoved him back into his room and slammed the door shut, Metrinko felt a momentary pang at having lost the meal. What a glorious treat he had denied himself for. But his remorse was nothing next to the pleasure he took in delivering the insult. It had hit home and wounded them, and that was something that gave a more lasting pleasure than the food ever could have."

Goodbye to Britain's Fabled "Lock In"

It's a tradition that had been enjoyed by generations of drinkers, with even the likes of Prince Harry enjoying a few covert pints. The BBC reported today on the new effect of longer legal hours at pubs, and the fading away of the "lock in" a British pub tradition.

While publicans risked losing their licence by allowing them, police often turned a blind eye if things were kept low key.

They did crackdown when things started to get out of hand, with police recently finding 140 patrons enjoying an illegal after-hours drink in one County Londonderry pub they visited.

Friends may have foreseen the end when the government announced back in 2000 that it was considering the biggest overhaul of drinking laws for 90 years.

Licensing laws in England and Wales had changed little since 1915, when they were tightened to stop factory workers turning up drunk and harming the war effort.

While some said the shake-up was long overdue, lock-in regulars knew time would be called on their exclusive after-hours drinking club.

No flowers.

Mag tells 'Nazi' singers: Heil, no!

The NY Daily News reports on a pair I wrote about here a month ago. "Teen People nixed a story about Hitler-loving teenybopper twins Prussian Blue - amid outrage that the glossy had promised to avoid the words "hate," "supremacist" and "Nazi" in its piece on the racist singing sisters. A Web-based teaser for the February story originally called the hatemongering duo "aspiring musicians" and compared them to wide-eyed sensations Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

The only hint that 13-year-old Lynx and Lamb Gaede praise Hitler, call the Holocaust an "exaggeration" and count former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke among their fans was a watered-down description of their message as "white pride."

The freckled twins from Bakersfield, Calif., call nonwhites "muds" and play a video game called "Ethnic Cleansing." They wear tartan plaid skirts and Hitler smiley face shorts - and croon songs that glorify the Third Reich.

"The last thing we need is to celebrate hate in this country," said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who helped lead a Monday demonstration outside the office of Teen People's parent company Time Warner. "I'm absolutely thrilled it's not running."

Partying Naked at Columbia

Following in the footsteps of their exhibitionist peers at Brown and Yale, Columbia undergraduates are staging parties with one basic ground rule - all guests must part with their clothes upon arrival. The invitation circulating around Morningside Heights bans three additional items: cameras, masks, and "spikey things." The NY Sun had the story today.

"Join us for a night of champagne, martinis, witchcraft, psychedelia, syncopated rhythms, thin bass lines, and body paint," reads the invitation, which was obtained by The New York Sun.

While it's too early to say whether a tradition has been born, the naked party appears to be taking root at Columbia, a school better known for its stringent sexual misconduct policies and grinding course work than for its freeloving co-eds.

Students who have mustered up the courage to go to one, however, are more likely to downplay the sexual nature of the event. It's more of a social opportunity, they say, to lose one's inhibitions, to engage in interesting, more personal, conversation, and to feel comfortable in one's own skin.

A student who attended the party in the spring, Richard Lipkin, said about 80 to 100 naked people - including a fair number of law and business school students - were concentrated in one apartment. Clothes were dumped near the entrance. Women slightly outnumbered men, and people were generally - if not exclusively - good looking, the type who are often more willing to flout culture's restrictions on nudity.

Mr. Lipkin said he had no recollection of the music that was played.

"It was surprisingly comfortable," he said. "Most of the people were quite comfortable. Everyone was pretty mature about it. I don't think anything inappropriate went on. ... People were definitely networking, but there wasn't anything bad going on."

Damn! I Wish I Could Remember that Joke!

Douglas Rushkoff has written a new book called "Back in the Box: innovation from the inside out," and it includes this sage observation.

"Observe yourself the next time you’re listening to a joke. You may start by listening to the joke for the humor - because you really want the belly laugh at the end. But chances are, a few sentences in, you will find yourself not only listening, but attempting to remember its whole sequence. You’ll do this tentatively at first, until you’ve decided whether or not it's really a good joke. And if it is, you'll commit the entire thing to memory - maybe even with a personalized variation, or a mental note to yourself to fix that racist part. This is because the joke is a gift - it's a form of social currency that you’ll be able to take with you to the next party.

So is the great majority of the media we watch and even the products we buy. HBO understood this well enough to base an entire season’s advertising campaign on the "water cooler" effect. In a series of fake ads, the water cooler industry thanks HBO for giving workers something to talk about the next day at the water cooler. The message of these ads was clear: watch these shows to gain social currency."

Progress. Real Progress.

RIght ON! I love reading newspapers on line but HATE having to register. I'm not alone.


"Houston Chronicle website drops registration requirement

"In response to passionate pleas from many readers, we no longer require you to register to read stories or access most of the site’s content," says a chron.com note to readers. "Registration is only necessary in specialized areas -- to post comments in our forums, access our newspaper archives, get breaking news alerts or build your own comics page."

When the Worst Happens, He Cleans Up

Today's NY Times answered a question I've often asked myself. Who cleans up after gruesome murders and grisly deaths? The answer in Andrews Jacob's piece is Ronald Gospodarski, a former paramedic who runs a company called Bio-Recovery Corp, in Long Island City.

"I've had guys left dead for months where fluid seeped down six floors and everything had to be torn out...you can't leave one drop of blood or body fluid or the place will stink." He went on, explaining a $3000 technique used on the most dreadful of deathscenes, where superheating an entire apartment kills every odor producing microbe. But mostly they just use industrial strength cleansers and wear protective gear.

One of the hardest crime scenes Gospodarski had to clean up was a house in the Bronx used for Santeria, the South American religion that involves ritual slaughter of animals. Amid razor blades, animal hoofs, bottles of poison they unearthed what looked like a clump of human hair. "I'd rather be dealing with a gunshot victim," said one worker, "I don't like this one bit."

Eleven is the Number for Rebuilding Cities

While I was spending big bux at Whole Foods this week, I added a copy of the Atlantic Monthly to my cart. Inside was a short story called "Cities Rising." They compared recently demolished New Orleans with other flattened and destroyed cities. Here are some other tales of cities coming back to life.

* Tangshan, China was entirely destroyed in 1976, losing 97 percent of its buildings and 78 percent of its industrial buildings. More than 240,000 of the one million inhabitants died. Within a decade the city was completely rebuilt with drably uniform concrete apartment buildings.

* Galveston, Texas, 1900. With 8000 residents dead, over eleven years the city was raised by as much as seventeen feetand sheltered by a seawall, big enough to cover the incredible sixteen-foot storm surge.

* Warsaw, Poland, 1944. Destroyed by Hitler, 80 percent of the city turned to rubble, and 800,000 of the 1.3 million people died. Within eleven years, it was returned to prewar level of population. But the Soviets never rebuilt any areas with religious ornamentation, and old style buildings replaced with modern ones.

*Chicago, 1871. It took just two years for real estate developers, seizing the fire as a great opportunity, to rebuild whole blocks back. About ten or eleven years later, Chi-town pioneered the vertical city of steel-framed skyscrapers.

Inside new space. 

Vacant space that might be our new office. Downtown South Deerfield. 

My beautiful daughter Kate with Nathan. 

Gentlemen, Start Your Mice on Cyber Monday

After Black Friday comes Cyber Monday: The Monday after Thanksgiving is a big day for e-commerce; consumers will see more deals this year, reports CNN Money, breathlessly.

"While the "official" start to the 2005 holiday shopping season kicks off for most retailers on "Black Friday," or the day after Thanksgiving, online merchants have their banner day on "Cyber" Monday.

Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, is quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

According to the Shop.org/BizRate Research 2005 eHoliday survey released Monday, 77 percent of online retailers said their sales increased substantially last year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is expected to drive serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year.

"On Cyber Monday, consumers set their sights on surfing for holiday gifts and shopping online," Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, said in the report. "This year, online retailers will be capitalizing on the increased traffic by offering special promotions and discounts."

More than one-third of the 1,890 consumers surveyed for the report said they will use Internet access at work to browse or buy gifts online this holiday season. More than half of young adults the ages of 18 to 24, and nearly half of those aged 25 to 34 said they would shop online during work hours.

Mexican Things

Kelly and Quang publish a new blog we've added to the GoNOMAD blog network. here is a dispatch upon leaving Mexico.

"The police are proud of their guns, and I’m not talking a handgun stuck in a holster and worn about the belt. I mean semi-automatics. I mean M-16s. I mean shotguns. Rows of bullets are slung about shoulders or looped about the waist. After a month, we are used to it, but the first few times we rubbed shoulders with an M-16-toting officer in a crowd, we both let out a little yelp.

6. School children run about in their school uniforms all day long. So much so, that Quang and I started joking that kids never actually went to school. They just got dressed up to look like they were going to school. Eventually we asked someone what school hours were.

There are an awful lot of Notary Publics. In every town we’ve passed through, on just about every block we’ve walked down, there is a sign outside a building advertising a Notary Public. Sometimes there are two Notary Publics in one office building and another one across the street. We figure this probably says something about the amount of red tape and bureaucracy in Mexico. Plus, in all our Notary Public talk, I learned something I never knew about Quang: he used to be one—that is until he let his license expire.

I think he should definitely renew when we get back to the States. I told him I’m going to hang a Notary Public sign off our mailbox and see if we can attract any business from our neighbors."

Look Mom, Clean Clothes and No Water!

Researching a column I am writing for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I came across this news from The Gadget Blog.

"A waterless washing machine that removes stains from garments in a few minutes has been developed at the National University of Singapore, the facility said on Wednesday.

The appliance uses negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes.

Industrial design students Wendy Chua, 21, and Gabriel Tan, 23, said they were inspired by the technology in air purifiers, which uses negative ions to clump dirt and bacteria, making it easier for the particles to be sucked out. The ions are a natural cleaning agent.

The sleek and compact design is modelled after a waterfall, a natural negative ion generator. It does away with the expensive task of sending clothing to be dry cleaned and protects favourite garments, said Chua. No detergents are used.

"It's not meant to replace the traditional washing machine, but it's more a hybrid of the washing machine and the dry cleaner," The Straits Times quoted Chua as saying."

Fanning's Snocap:File Sharing with a Twist

"I hate mornings," Shawn Fanning said as he arrived one bright day last spring, dressed in torn black jeans, a black ribbed pullover and gray sneakers, looking much as he did five years ago on the cover of Time magazine. He was profiled in the NY Times on Sunday about his new venture for file sharing called snocap.

"Now Mr. Fanning is on the verge of settling, somewhat reluctantly, into a more adult phase of his life. He left the house he shared with two buddies in Silicon Valley and moved into a loft on Potrero Hill in San Francisco with his girlfriend, who works at Apple Computer.

Neither she nor the neighbors are quite so accommodating as his old roommates when it comes to his desire to play drums and guitar; when he really wants to cut loose, he says he now has to visit a friend's music studio.

When Mr. Fanning starts to explain the details of the complex software and business arrangements behind Snocap, his eyes glow with the intensity of many of the 20-something entrepreneurs of the dot-com boom. But he is living their dreams in reverse: first he revolutionized an industry, then he made the cover of Time and now he is figuring out the PowerPoint presentations for the business model.

The heart of Snocap is its sophisticated registry, which will index electronically all the files on the file-sharing networks. "Rights holders," which are what he calls musicians and their labels, will use the system to find those songs on which they hold copyrights and claim them electronically. Then they will enter into the registry the terms on which those files can be traded.

It could be just like iTunes - pay 99 cents, and you own it - or it could be trickier: listen to it five times free, then buy it if you like it. Or it could be beneficent: listen to it free forever and (hopefully) buy tickets to the artist's next concert. Of course, the rights holders could also play tough: this is not for sale or for trading, and you can't have it."

Leaving Eggs in Other Duck's Nests

Sitting in the kitchen looking out the window watching wood ducks float on Cindy's pond. That made me think about where their nests are. Found out some more about these ducks including this item from Google.

Interesting notes: The female wood duck has the unusual habit of laying some of her eggs in other wood ducks' nests, leaving the raising of the nestlings to another female. Called "brood parasitism" or "dump nesting," one study showed that over 50% of wood duck nests may contain eggs from more than one wood duck (Semel and Sherman 1986). Some nests have been reported to contain eggs from as many as four or five different wood ducks (Belrose 1976). What would cause this behavior? The most obvious answer is that the female is then relieved of child-rearing duties, however, this doesn't explain why a female that has dumped some of her eggs in another wood duck's nest will still make her own nest and raise young.

A currently accepted theory, for all animal behavior, is that each animal is driven by the need to leave offspring. In contrast to the old, and no longer accepted, idea of "survival of the species," most animals act in ways that will insure their offspring's survival. If the female wood duck leaves some of her eggs in another wood duck's nest and also raises her own, she increases her chances of leaving more offspring (Davies 1991).

Sweet Truck in Hadley, MA

Find the Perfect Match--One of Us Maybe!

Trolling the 'Net on this cold New England Saturday morning, and voila, found this nugget on the very reliable boingboing.net. Edited by Cory Doctorow, this site always has blogworthy material.

"Users sue Match.com for date fraud: Frustrated Match.com users are suing the online dating service over complaints that company employees posed as interested date prospects -- online and in-person! -- to trick accountholders into re-upping paid subscriptions.

Match.com is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.

"This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in," said H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm which brought the suit.

In a separate suit, Yahoo!'s personals service is accused of posting profiles of fictitious potential dating partners on its Web site to make it look as though many more singles subscribe to the service than actually do. "

Blogs, Vlogs and Ipods

Computer geeks gathered recently and had the conversation below. Mike McDonald writes in his Webpronews column about this at a Las Vegas convention.

"When our conversation steered towards blogs, and podcasts etc. she (internet expert) posed the following question:

"A year or two from now; blogs up or down?"
I said down.

"Podcasts. Up or down?"
I said up.

"Video, or Vlogs. Up or down?"
Again I said up.

Nobody disagreed with me.

To me, blogs reek of a trend to some extent. Podcasts and video blogs on the other hand, I think they have feet for a long run.

Think about it in terms of offline progression of media. Print was first, changed the world for hundreds of years. Then, along comes audio (radio) and after that video (TV) nothing kills print and there will probably always be a place for it but look at the ratio of people that get their news and information in today's world from the radio or television compared to those who actually read a magazine or newspaper. On a protracted timeline, I could easily see internet media following a similar progression."

Stunning Costs that Started at Fort Devens

Reading the Republican newspaper and found this information in their science section.
The source is Harvard College.

"In September 1918, at Fort Devens, outside of Boston, the world's worst pandemic flu got its start. The Camp hospital, built to house 1200 soldiers, was overflowing from the war injuries with more than 6,000. These previously healthy and fit young men began to feel ill. Within 12-24 hours they were choking to death, their lungs filled with fluid.

Suddenly after the Fort Devens outbreak, 250 people a day were dying in Boston. The epidemic spread to NYC, within a few weeks 21,000 children were orphaned. In less than one year, nearly 1 billion people were infected worldwide. Between 20 million and 40 million eventually died--many or more than have died of AIDS in the past 25 years.

In 1968, another pandemic flu struck, and it killed one million--only a fraction of 1918's toll--but it cost the economy $70-167 billion. That's about the cost of the war in Iraq, or of rebuilding after Katrina and Rita.

A Smoker's Suggestion

Sweden May Have the Answer says ABC news. A friend of mine is trying to quit, this might be helpful.

"Sweden has developed a safer, less toxic kind of smokeless tobacco called "snus," and sales are booming. "In two or three years, we're going to sell as much in cigarettes as snus," said a Swedish store owner.

With far fewer dangerous chemicals than American products, many Swedes have made the switch from cigarettes to snus. Cancer rates, including oral cancer, are on the decline.

"There's a tremendous amount of debate about it," said Sweanor. "There are some Americans who have published studies saying that this would clearly be a part of the solution to the smoking epidemic."

Surgeon General Admiral Richard Carmona says he cannot endorse any smokeless tobacco until there are a lot more studies about its relative safety.

"What I do know is that smokeless tobacco has carcinogens and can cause oral cancers and can cause nicotine addiction and can cause significant problems," Carmona said. "So I couldn't possibly recommend that because I'd really be asking you to substitute one form of carcinogen for another form of carcinogen."

Many fear that if smokeless tobacco is endorsed as an alternative to smoking, companies could use that to draw in new customers.

Since tobacco is unregulated, it would be up to tobacco companies decide what the products contain.

"The level of trust with the tobacco industry is virtually nil, and if this is the industry we're going to rely upon to come up with safer products, we are going to be very, very cautious, very cautious," said Maureen Connelly of the Harvard School of Public Health.

That caution is necessary. But in the meantime, every year, nearly half a million American smokers who can't quit die — nearly all of them from the smoke."

How to be a Popular Professor

Michael Agger wrote in slate about what happens when student ratings for college professors are viewable on line...and what they want from their profs...

"Don't play favorites, yet don't deny students extra credit or a second chance on a paper or test. Don't "get sidetracked by boring crap." Don't refer to yourself in the third person. Don't ever call on students. Don't be "mean," "hateful," or "ambiguous." Don't take attendance. Don't be "high on Viagra and full of yourself." Don't be "distractingly spastic." Very important: Don't talk about stuff in class and then put other stuff on the test.

Most important: Don't give low grades. Do show slides. Do offer easy assignments. Do crack jokes and "provide a fun teaching atmosphere." Do show up at your office hours. Do give A's on all group projects. Do walk your dog around campus. Do resemble a celebrity of some sort. Finally, try your best to be "awesome."

A lovely Idea: Build A Damn Fence!

Mimi Hall writes in USA TODAY about a grand idea.

"A once-radical idea to build a 2,000-mile steel-and-wire fence on the U.S.-Mexican border is gaining momentum amid warnings that terrorists can easily sneak into the country.

In Congress, a powerful Republican lawmaker this week proposed building such a fence across the entire border and two dozen other lawmakers signed on. And via the Internet, a group called weneedafence.com has raised enough money to air TV ads warning that the border is open to terrorists.

Even at the Homeland Security Department, which opposes building a border-long fence, Secretary Michael Chertoff this fall waived environmental laws so that construction can continue on a 14-mile section of fence near San Diego that has helped border agents stem the flow of illegal migrants and drug runners.

“You have to be able to enforce your borders,” says California Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He's proposing a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. “It's no longer just an immigration issue. It's now a national security issue.”

Colin Hanna of weneedafence.com says “there is incredible momentum on this issue,” fueled by the specter of another Sept. 11. His group aired TV ads in Washington, D.C., this fall and plans more next year.

Fencing the border, originally proposed in the debate over how to stop illegal immigration, is controversial. The Bush administration argues that a Berlin Wall-style barrier would be a huge waste of money — costing up to $8 billion.

Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar says it makes more sense to use a mix of additional agents, better surveillance and tougher enforcement of immigration laws — and fences.

But Hunter points to the experience in San Diego, where the number of illegal migrants arrested is one-sixth of what it was before the fence was built.

“People have made stupid editorial comments about the Great Wall of China,” he says, “but the only thing that has worked is that fence.”

The Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman

Helene Cooper wrote an op-ed piece in yesterday's NY Times titled "Waiting for their Moment in the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman." She discussed the recent election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in her native Liberia, Africa's first woman president, and she contrasted that country with another miserable place, Bukavu, Congo.

"I've been unable to get one image from Bukavu out of my mind. It is of an old woman, in her '30s. I saw her walking up the hill out of the city as I drove in. She carried so many logs that her chest seemed to touch the ground, so stooped was her back. Her husband was walking just in front of her. He carried nothing. Nothing in his hand, nothing on his shoulder, nothing on his back. He kept looking at her, telling her to hurry up.

I want to go back to Bakavu to find that woman, and to tell her what just happened in Liberia. I want to tell her her this: Your time will come, too."

They Just Can't Seem to Finish College

The AP today ran a story about how hard it is to get students to finish college. While for decades higher education leaders focused on getting more and more high schoolers to enroll in college, today, just 54% of them ever get a degree--six years later! The era of the perpetual student has given way to a mass 'I give up," when it comes to college.

Graduation rates have been stagnating for years, especially in the lesser known 'non elite' schools. Minnesota, for example, barely graduates 40 % of its students, while Penn State sends 80 percent packing with sheepskins. Some take issue with the fact that high schools with similar graduation rates get taken to task, while people don't seem to be as upset with this happening in colleges, even though high school is free and college leaves you with loans.

The Retail Business

Steve stopped by Computer Cleaners yesterday. A shaggy haired fellow computer geek who owns a shop in Hadley, he was coming to visit his northern brethren, and he chatted for a while.

He said that old style computer monitors use about 100 watts each, like a big lightbulb burning all night. And that the sleek new flat screen displays use just 15 watts. The electric company will pay a rebate if you change dozens of these screens, so he easily sells many many of them. He keeps the old screens in his dusty crowded shop on Route 9 in Hadley. Then he gets rid of the CRTs by offering them free to college customers if they put up 100 flyers in their dorms.

The retail business is one thing I remember well from my days as an ad rep for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Working with hundreds of shopkeeps, I learned their techniques. Now we have a quasi-retail storefront of our own, here in busy South Deerfield village. With that comes the need to advertise, and we've done a lot of that. We mailed out letters to all of the P.O. boxes and did two Valpak mailings. We run buttons on the Daily Hampshire Gazette and Recorder Websites, and run regular print ads in the Greenfield daily. We are finding out which ones work, and pumping lots more into the ones that do.

Orphans Go from the Streets to Jihadi Camps

Pakistan’s leading human rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, said jihadi groups fighting the Indian government were taking orphans off the streets and putting them in training camps. The Times on line and little green footballs had this story today.

The organisation said it also had evidence that sympathetic government officials were passing children on to the jihadis to be looked after.

The popularity of the Islamic militants has risen sharply since the earthquake struck on October 8, killing more than 87,000 people.

The militants were among the first to arrive with aid at some of the worst affected villages. Their organisation and ability to commandeer lifting equipment and tents have generated significant new support. But according to human rights campaigners they are using their new popularity to smuggle weapons and recruit the young and vulnerable.

“We have heard from very reliable sources and seen with our own eyes that orphaned and lost children are being taken by jihadi organisations in northern Pakistan to be trained,” said Fahad Burney, of the trust.

Jamaat-ud Dawa, one of the largest jihadi groups in Pakistan, has called openly for orphans to be handed over for an “Islamic education”.

Unwittingly Sending out Viruses

Woe to the shoemaker whose children have no shoes, or the baker who is without bread. I felt like this tonight when I stupidly clicked on an email claiming to be giving me a password and found my computer hijacked by the evil worm that turned out to be a malicious virus. The w32 Frethem attachment proceeded to email everyone in my Outlook mailbox the same 'password' file virus and I got three calls from folks telling me I had sent them a bad thing. I know, I know, never download these things.

But...I own a computer cleaning company...so I quickly got to work. I Googled the words 'password in email' and found the name of this bug, then got to Symantec's website where there was a long description of the problem and a button to download the removal tool. All was fine until I couldn't find where the downloaded solution had ended up...but then, I thought again--Just find the name of the program I used to download it, (Flashget) and look under programs to find that directory. Voila, there was my file.

This is all a good lesson but it still felt good to be able to fix it. Apologies to anyone who got the evil email I didn't send. Just don't open the damn thing!

Everything Else is Anticlimactic--after N. Korea

Bruce Wallace writes in the LA Times (thanks World Hum) about the trip of a lifetime--to North Korea--for a group of hard core world travelers, including Joe Walker, whose been nearly everywhere else on earch.

"This is definitely the weirdest trip I've been on," he said as the Ilyushin headed back to Beijing. "I would love to go back for another five days. I want to get into the mausoleum to see Kim's body.

"Everything else is anticlimactic after North Korea," he said with a sigh.

But I think it's your obligation as a visitor, and as an American, to leave a good impression," Walker added. "You have to try to do everything you can to not come across as the Ugly American."

It is a syndrome he sees frequently in his travels.

"I used to think it was the bad 10% of Americans who ruined it for the other 90%," Walker said with a rueful smile. "But now I think it's the bad 50% ruining it for the other 50%."

Anderson says he sees himself as a diplomat when he travels, trying to win people over one at a time. But trying to strike up a candid conversation with North Korean officials about their lives was frustrating. "We'd buy them drinks at night, and I'm pretty good at being charming," he said. "But this is the first country I've been to — and I've been to 125 — where I couldn't get past the official statements. Nothing worked."

Perhaps only people as widely traveled can understand the appeal of a city as austere and superficially joyless as Pyongyang. Each of the five understands the instinct to see something different in a world that keeps shaving the edges off its differences and variations.

"These are the only people that really understand me," Altaffer said of the other travelers. "You get home and you can't talk to your friends about Pyongyang. They don't know, they don't understand, and they don't care."

The Flight to Quality--Trying to Escape Lousy DSL

Boy what a bad idea. I thought I'd save some money by switching my home internet to cheap Verizon DSL for $14.95. More than a few times I wondered if the $42.95 Comcast clipped me for each month was worth it...hey it's all high speed, right? WRONG! Verizon suckers people in with this pathetic 758 mps speed 'high speed' internet that is terrible. I feel like I used to back five years ago when I first surfed the 'Net on a dial-up.

I talked with Brian who works for a Wifi Equipment company on Long Island last week. He talked about the 'Flight to Quality,' meaning that people will pay more for better services, even when they begin at a low price. Well I'm dying to make that flight...and now Verizon's number is eternally busy, and their website does not allow me to change the DSL to a faster speed on line.

After so many decades, I thought (briefly) that we might have left the dark ages of unreachable companies and unresponsive customer service call centers behind. But Verizon has got to be the worst example I've ever had to deal with.

What's Up in Mainstream Media? Nothing!

Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired and publishes a blog called The Long Tail. Today he posted a grim list for Mainstream Media, showing all of the indices that are down and the ones that are up.

Down:
Box Office: down by 7% this year (tickets per capita have fallen every year since 2001).

Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Music: Sales are down another 5.7% this year; although digital downloads (still just 6% of the business) are climbing nicely.

Radio: down 4% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.

Books: down by 7% in 2004

Mixed:
DVDs: sales growth is slowing dramatically, from 29% last year to single digits this year.

TV: Total viewership is still rising, but as channels proliferate and the audience fragments the rating of the average show continues to decline.

Magazines: Ad revenues are up a bit although the number of ad pages is flat (they're charging more per page). Circulation is also flat, while newsstand sales are at an all-time low.

Videogames: it's the final few months of the current generation of consoles, which tends to the trough of the buying cycle. Sales were down 20% in Sept, but will probably pick up by Christmas with the launch of the Xbox 360.

Up:
Internet advertising:
--Banners: Up 10% this year
--Keywords: Google revenues up 96%

Newsvine: The Power of the Public Brain

Newsvine is a new way to look at the news, being developed for rollout early next year. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that the company will be offering a news site with feeds from the AP, ESPN and other sources and users will be able to rate the importance of individual stories, creating a reader generated editing system that boosts the most popular articles to front-page prominence.

"The Newsvine Web site, he said, will have a slick front page where readers view top stories of the day. Dozens of other niche pages will be set up, with users responsible for "seeding" those sites with interesting stories they find on the Web or their own stories.

"Depending on what your reputation is within the Newsvine community, your submissions can make it to the top of the page fairly quickly," said Davidson, adding that those users will share in the advertising revenue generated by the stories.

Steve Outing, a senior editor at The Poynter Institute, said that unlike Google News, which relies on an algorithm to determine what stories get top play, Newsvine uses the "group intelligence" of readers. Outing dubbed this concept "citizen editing" and he said it holds much promise.

"I think among many people there's some distrust of computers deciding what's the most important news. ... Some people are distrustful of professional editors making those decisions," he said. "So if 'the people' are deciding what's the top news and what are the best sources, that's appealing to a segment of the news audience."

While that is a concern, Davidson said there is real power in creating a news site that taps "the wisdom of crowds" and uses "the public as a giant brain."

Pure Poker, No Wildcards, With the Regulars

Today is a lovely day. A day to rake leaves, or walk in the woods. Or play poker with my pals. I've opted for the latter, so today I will join Donny, Dave C, cousin Steve, and Eddy V over at Steves for some good old fashioned seven card stud.

Nobody here tries to make us play silly games with wild cards, if you do that you're given the hairy eyeball from the elders. No way, it's straight up poker, and we all know eachother well enough so that it's harder than it used to be to bluff.

One thing I noticed since I began my two-drinks per week regimen, I'm better at poker. I don't make as many dumb bets and I am slyer and it isn't as obvious to tell what I've got in my hand. Poker is a pure diversion, and there's nothing to match it, though bridge comes in very close. But try to find three other people who can play bridge, the only way you can is to do it online with strangers from China or Europe. No, today's it's pure poker, and I can't wait.

"Who ARE These Guys?"

Charles Cooper of CNET writes about blogs and newspapers and the clash of the two.

"During a panel discussion on Internet versus traditional media that I attended this week in Santa Clara, tech columnist John Markoff of The New York Times and tech columnist Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal sounded like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as they repeated the mainstream media's general suspicion of the blogosphere: Who are those guys?

Markoff and Swisher are smart cookies who are clued into the technology business. But there's a shift under way in which authority is being transferred to authors with no accountability other than to themselves and their readership. Does it matter? Should it matter? The mainstream media can look down its nose at the blogosphere, but the numbers tell a different story. More people than ever are reading blogs because of shared affinities and it's coming at the expense of print newspapers.

Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig, who was also on the panel, put it succinctly to traditional media:

"We don't know who your editors are. All our lives we read stuff written by people we don't know that's edited by people we don't know, who might have an agenda."

It's all a matter of perspective, but while these debates drone on, newspapers continue to lose readers and advertisers. If that's not a wake-up call for a new approach, then what is?"

Sardinia--No Lapdogs and Tough People

You know those books you keep trying to finish, that languish on your bedside? One of mine is Paul Theroux' "The Pillars of Hercules," about a journey around the Mediterranean. His observations of people are keen, below is a section about what he saw in Sardinia.

"It was a marketplace for the nearby farms, and the townies measured themselves against the peasants who turned up to sell vegetables or meat at the market. These peasants, Barbagians to their gnarled fingertips, were toothless and skinny and undersized people. The women wore shawls and four skirts and argyle knee socks and were more whiskery than their menfolk, who chewed broken pipestems and look oppressed. After the Oristano market closed, I imagine them scuttling back to the hills and sheltering under toadstools. But they were also noted for their toughness--ferrigno, they were called, made of iron.

Italy had allowed Sardinia to be self-governing, and given it a degree of autonomy that prevented the island from nursing the sort of political grievances that were so common on Corsica. There were no bomb-throwers in Sardinia. It was a rugged place--none of the poodles and lapdogs of France, only functional mutts that had to work to earn their keep--sheepdogs and guard dogs."

Brown Watches as Miller and Dowd Come to Blows

The most depressing thing, writes Tina Brown in the Wash Post, about the spat between Times reporter Judith Miller and her colleague/nemesis Maureen Dowd was the tired old debate it kicked off about who's the bigger vamp, Mo or Judy? "According to Dowd in a lethal column that put her away, Judy had an unfortunate "tropism" (the lower the blow the loftier the word) for powerful men. Meanwhile, the cover story on Dowd in last week's New York magazine featured a smoldering shoulder shot of the 53-year-old columnist, along with flutters about her "dangerous charm" and "the little black dress with spaghetti straps" she wore on a Letterman show.

Dowd's new book, "Are Men Necessary?," is a fun rant about how women have dialed back their hard-won independence to become alpha geishas servicing the craven weenies of inadequate males, but the elephant in the room is the way Dowd's promotion for her book turns on an onerous, retrosexual pitch for what hot stuff the author is. The more her PR plays up the flame-haired temptress angle, the scarier and more desperate it feels. It's made me put away for good the long, black, stiletto-heeled Jimmy Choo boots I unwrapped with racy squeals on my 50th birthday and start seriously considering rhinestone reading glasses.

Dowd's hunt for who or what to blame for her vaunted datelessness recalls Bush's correspondents' dinner routine about looking for Iraqi WMD under his Oval Office desk. The thought of Dowd's girls' nights with fellow Times sirens Alessandra Stanley and Michiko Kakutani sounds about as soft and yielding as Macbeth's three witches on a club crawl.

The bummer of it all is that Dowd is right about the female need to use aggression only as a stealth weapon. The hazard of hitting the big five-oh and beyond is an erroneous sense that you've earned the right not to play by the same rules. Once the hormonal brakes come off, it's easy to crash. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Martha Stewart, 64, tells Fortune. "I fell in a hole."

But she dug her hole herself as surely as Mapes and Miller dug theirs. Since women who are smart and aggressive about their work have to conceal it with charm, when they fall on their faces everyone forgets the smarts and the charm and talks only about the aggression."

Fifty Cent Throws his Money at his Fans

When I was making a fire I used Sunday's NY Times holiday films section. I read a story about the new 50 cent movie called 'Get Rick or Die Tryin'. He and the director, a famously short Irishman, were filming in New York on location. A bunch of Fifty Cent's fans gathered, and the rap star wanted to thank them for being his fans and making him rich.

Curtis Jackson then began emptying his pockets of cash, throwing twelve thousand dollars up into the air, creating a frenzy among the young fans. The Irish director was shocked, he was afraid someone would get hurt as the crowd went wild. He yelled at the rap star, putting him on notice that this was not a good idea, but no one paid any attention.

Later Fitty was contrite when the reporter asked him about it. "I guess it wasn't the greatest idea," he said sheepishly.

Go Ahead, Walk Out onto the Glass

The new skywalk at the Hualapai Indian Reservation, sticking 70' out and 4000 feet above the Grand Canyon. 

Good News for Francisco Cosme

Francisco Cosme got good news yesterday. My future son-in-law has proven himself at Yankee Candle Company, where he got a temporary job several months ago. He's going to massage school now, weeknights and Saturdays, so he has to report to work at four am to make up hours. Every morning I hear him driving out at before the crack of dawn, and he comes home late at night after his classes. But he always has a smile on his face and a laugh in his heart.


Francisco 

Francisco has a lot of reasons to be proud. He's got beautiful sons, a fiancee Kate who loves and cooks for him, he's just gotten a raise and good benefits from YCI, and he's about to begin a part time massage practice with a studio in the renovated basement. I am proud to have Francisco, the burly, former body building champ, as part of my family here in our cozy clean home at 9 Mountain Road.

Hold On I'm Getting a Call--Give me the Money!

When it comes to multitasking, it's hard to beat the woman who can rob a bank and never interrupt her cell phone conversation. Today's Washington Post reported on a woman who robbed banks while on the phone.

"In an act of either incredible cool or something much more sinister, a young woman has robbed four Wachovia bank branches in Northern Virginia in recent weeks, all while seemingly immersed in cell phone chats, police say. In the most recent holdup, on Nov. 4 in Ashburn, video footage shows the woman to be almost uninterested as a teller hands her a stack of cash, and she continues talking on her phone as she turns and walks out of the bank.

"This is the first time that I can recall where we've had a crime committed while the person was using a cell phone," said Loudoun County sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell, echoing comments by officials from other law enforcement agencies. "The question would be whether anyone is on the other end of the line or not."

The cell phone bandit first struck in Vienna on Oct. 12. A woman in her twenties with dark hair, about 5 feet 2 to 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 120 to 130 pounds, walked in carrying a box and talking on a cell phone. She moved directly to the teller counter and displayed the shoebox-size box, which had a note taped on it demanding cash. Police would not disclose the wording of the note."

Dusty and Billy Keepin' it Real after 35 Years

They are two icons, almost cartoon characters, who have been doing the same thing for 35 years. They are Billy F. Gibbons and Dusty Hill, whose trademark foot-long beards and sunglasses make them instantly recognizable as Texas' famous rockers ZZ Top. The pair were interviewed by Alan Light in today's NY Times, and Gibbons explains how experimenting with equipment and new songs keeps things fresh.

"The novelty of new gear helps to lubricate those pitfalls," he said. Frequently a new setting on an amplifier, a new guitar, that's enough to keep things energetic. Just tonight I got a call from Dusty, he's all excited, he's got a new bass. I asked what have you got? and he said, I don't know but it's red."

The band leaves their set list open each night, where they let one of the trio make a call...the other night Dusty pulled out an old Muddy Waters tune, "Two Trains," a song they hadn't played for two decades. Gibbons was also impressed with a young metal band he sat in with. "They had Watkins Dominator amps. They haven't made those since 1963, you can't find them, and they had two of them!"

The Mainstream Media on Blogs

I had an interesting exchange with a local newspaper editor about blogs today. I answered his email out loud, NO NO, I said, newspaper reporters are NOT the ones who should write blogs.

"Blogs are something else. Some are erudite and accurate. So many are narcissistic drivel. I think our site should be involved, in some way, with blogs, if for no other reason than that they can be one point of entry to readers who prefer to hop in through the portal of one writer's musings.

But who should write them, and what should they muse about? Shouldn't they be people who work for the newspaper? Readers will rightly infer that their words, flowing amid all the news, are part of the same fountain.

I think poorly done blogs, of the sort I see excerpted from masslive, are ridiculous. They say nothing, most of the time. A universe of boring kids raising their hands in social studies class, not having done the reading, and talking just to hear themselves.

'The Leering, Gap-toothed Fife Player'

From the NY Times Book review came this quote from a review by Henry Alford of John Hodgeman's "The Areas of My Expertise."

"Many people know the Oscar Wilde lament, 'it is a sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information,' but how many people are actually DOING anything about it? Hodgman is...he writes early on in this collection of lists, advice, fake histories and trivia that it is "a compendium of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE." Here at last is everything you've always wanted to know about practically nothing:

* Short words for use on submarines to preserve oxygen
* idiosyncrasies of the Great Detectives.
* Diversions for the Asthmatic Child who Cannot Play in the Snow
* Colonial Jobs Involving Eels
* Nine Presidents who Had Hooks for Hands

The success of this and other titles like the Onion's Our Dumb Centuryprove that the fake reference book is 'having a moment;' Hodgman's book is the leering, gap-toothed fife player in that bumptious parade."

Sam Cooke's Sad Demise by Gunshot

Peter Guralnick was interviewed on Fresh Air recently, he wrote a book about Sam Cooke called Dream Boogie. The most interesting item I recall was his tale of how this music legend met his untimely demise. He said that Cooke for most of his life preferred the company of hookers to girlfriends, and that he spent a lot of time in seedy brothels while he was out touring.

One night Cooke was with a prostitute after a gig, and she decided to rob him of his wallet while he was still in bed. Cooke, whose temper Guralnick said was explosive, jumped out of bed and ran out of the hotel stark naked, trying to catch the escaping hooker. He was waving something that looked like a gun. The late night desk clerk, alarmed to see a raving, ferocious and naked Cooke, shot him as he lunged toward the desk.

It was a sad way for anyone to die, especially Sam Cooke, whose sweet voice and good looks had sustained him on a path to riches and glory--before he fell down dead at an early age.

A Sonic Blast Repels the Pirates

Last night we watched "Inside Edition," and among their breathless revelations were details on how the pirates were repelled last week from the Seabourne Spirit Cruise ship sailing off Somolia's coast.

A large, round device called an LRAD is mounted on the ship's upper deck. This machine emits a highly charged sonic blast that creates an uncomfortable area right in front of anyone it is pointed at. It makes a person unable to hear and causes them to immediatly want to get out of the way of the sound beam. The TV show included images of this sonic ray gun being used in NYC against protesters.

Inventor Gruenler compares the LRAD's shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. It can be as loud as about 150 decibels; smoke detectors are in the 80 to 90 decibel range.

"Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there," said Gruenler, adding that the device is recommended for a range of 300 yards or less.

Apparently the sound generator will soon become standard cruise ship equipment, since piracy on the high seas is unlikely to be going away soon.

The Fall of the Wall

Bloomberg reports on what happened after the wall fell in Germany.

"Today, on the 16th anniversary of the fall of the wall, not much is left standing. Finding the remnants requires patience and persistence -- or the help of an expert like Gunar Jaekel, who organizes bicycle tours along the wall's tracks.

``It's the most important tourist attraction in Berlin, and yet there's hardly anything left to see,'' says Jaekel, 30. ``It was idiotic to pull it all down.''

Streets were cut off in the middle, separating neighbors; even churches and graveyards were demolished. Over the years, the wall became more and more impenetrable.

That gradual erosion-by-chipping was too slow for the last, pre-reunification East German government, run by Lothar de Maiziere, which ordered the official demolition of the wall -- a job that involved shifting 180,000 metric tons (198,416 tons) of concrete, 6,000 tons of scrap metal and 15,000 tons of asbestos. The grit became road metal for new streets and paths -- many of them linking the east and the west.

``The perpetrators wanted to get rid of it,'' he said in an interview at the museum at Checkpoint Charlie. ``The victims also wanted to erase this reminder of their pain. I had to fight all these parties. My thinking was: If the wall is demolished, we'll forget it. We must keep some of it.''

Farming is a Hard Habit to Break

The NY Times included a piece with a photo of a farmer on a road almost covered with corn cobs drying in the sun.

"But Dai Shumin has learned that it is not. Ms. Dai, 54, is the grande dame of Xia Xin Pu, a tiny village being squeezed by an expanding Beijing. Her parents farmed corn, rice and sweet potatoes in this same village, and she learned to plant crops and pick cotton. In 1986, after China had started its rush toward a market economy, her husband got a job in a library. His income bought a car, and the couple started a transportation company.

In turn, that income financed a pig farm that later brought enough money to buy the restaurant now run by her son. Her daughter now works in the city. Her husband still works in the library.

Outside the restaurant, Ms. Dai's corn was drying in golden stacks beside the small road through her village. When she was a teenager, China faced starvation because of the failure of collectivization, and Ms. Dai said her village had survived by eating corn. Corn porridge, cornmeal. Now, she sells her corn to a nearby feed factory for pigs.

She no longer needs farming for income. Her house has new leather furniture, a computer and a wide-screen television. Her industriousness and ingenuity earned her a government award as a model worker.

But she still has a few dozen acres and cannot imagine not planting them. She hires migrant workers to do most of the work, though she helps on some days. "It's not about money," she said. "It's more of a habit. I've been farming since I was young, and it just pains me to see the land so empty."

Making a Million Selling Pixels

Pixels for Sale: David Pogue writes in the NY Times about a man who sells pixels on his webpage

"Dang, dang, dang! Either this is a hoax, or it's the most brilliant idea anyone's ever had on the Internet, and I'm furious I didn't think of it first: the Million Dollar Homepage.

Its sole purpose is to sell advertising space--$1 a pixel. Believe it or not, this guy's sold about 390,000 of them--that's $390,000, for those scoring at home. That's more than enough to put its 21-year-old British creator through college, which was the original intent of the site.

And what will he do with all the cash?

"First and foremost, if I make enough money, I will pay my way through University," he says. "After that, I would like to pay for my parents to have some time off because they work so hard and they deserve a break.

"Thirdly... socks! I definitely need some new socks. Whenever I buy new ones they seem to disappear, or they disintegrate. So I want to buy some really expensive, long-lasting socks."

Moss Covered Rocks, Dense Green Slopes

Elise Rana is the Travel editor of TNT magazine in London. I was traveling with her and the day I decided to sleep in, she got up early.

"At dawn, I left the cosy cabin and crackling log stove at Patricio’s lodge on the edge of Queulat National Park, in the remote Aisén region of Chilean Patagonia. Waterproofed from head to toe, we crossed a stormy fjord in a tiny rowing boat and have been clambering through lush rainforest that seethes with life, wading up streams and over moss-carpeted rocks and lichen-covered logs, tightroping over makeshift bridges. I feel like one of the Famous Five. We emerge at a thundering waterfall and sit on a rock in the spray, soaking up the view of dense green slopes and snow-dusted granite peaks. This place is worth getting up early for."

Worthington Bing with a Dogg. 

Rap Money Isn't Long...Just Ask MC Hammer

Snoop doggy Dogg's younger brother is named Bing Worthington. He was in Boston yesterday, promoting the rap star's latest offering, Snoop Dogg hot dogs.
Together, Chris Faraone writes in the Herald, their endeavors include Snoop Dogg Clothing, Cadillac Snoop DeVilles, Snoop Dogg skateboards and now, foot-long frankfurters

"Worthington earned the right to expand Snoop’s empire after proving himself to his brother. Even after Snoop went platinum with “Doggystyle” in 1993, Worthington insisted he buy his own car and pay his own dues. After what he describes as “a lot of falls,” Worthington finally learned to develop and carry out ideas that impress Big Snoop.

“Being a little brother I had to prove that I’m not just a little brother,” he said. “I had to get out there and hustle and bring Snoop the whole package wrapped up.”

High-profile contacts came in handy. For researching skateboards, Worthington went straight to Tony Hawk. For hot dogs, he linked with Platinum One’s Jeff Earp, the former owner of Joe & Nemo’s in Downtown Crossing.

Still, even with hot dogs, extreme sports and merchandising on the brain, Worthington makes time for the original family business. Along with partner-in-rhyme H.I.T., he’s a member of the hip-hop duo Lifestyle. Their debut album, “Lubrication,” drops in January, right around the time Snoop Doggs will arrive on grocery store shelves.

Like his big brother, Worthington pledges to leave no opportunities untapped.

“Snoop takes advantage of everything,” Bing said. “This rap money isn’t long. Just ask MC Hammer.”

Pine Needle Sized Radio Waves

Wireless, or Wifi, is hot these days. But rare is the person who actually understands anything about how this stuff works. Below is a chunk of text from a wireless manufacturer's website about how Wifi signals travel. I'm trying to learn all this for my future plans...

"A radio wave travels through the air about the size of a pine needle. If the antenna is vertically polarized the pine needle must remain vertical, as sent. If the signal hits an obstruction the signal will flip or rotate into multiple positions as it gets to the receiving radio's antenna where it will be seen as noise. The vertically-polarized antenna will not capture that signal. A multi-polarized antenna, one that sees rotating signal on all polarizations, will succeed at capturing that signal. Please see our WiFi-Plus line of multi-polarized, tree-penetrating antennas for these applications.

In a circularly-polarized antenna, the plane of polarization rotates in a corkscrew pattern making one complete revolution during each wavelength. A circularly-polarized wave radiates energy in the horizontal, vertical planes as well as every plane in between. If the rotation is clockwise looking in the direction of propagation, the sense is called right-hand-circular (RHC). If the rotation is counterclockwise, the sense is called left-hand-circular (LHC). Please see our Luxul line of circular-polarized antennas."


GET IT?

MySpace: The Shape of Things to Come

Myspace.com was recently acquired by Rupert Murdoch for about $560 million. Wired ran a story about the site's founders, that explained in part why this type of community, networking website is now the hottest site on the web. Myspace gets more page views than Google--'nuff said. Jeff Howe wrote a profile of the founders, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.

"So that spring, the band, Hawthorne Heights, began posting a few songs on MySpace.com, which was becoming a hub for the indie music community. Fans began to find them. By the time the album came out, "we had 200,000 friends in our MySpace network," Bucciarelli says. But the bandmates were lavishing attention on them. On tour, each musician would spend four to five hours online every day, answering emails and "adding" new friends. (MySpace users must approve each person who requests to be added as a friend)

The fans loved it. "They can't believe they're actually getting a response. You've got a fan for life."

By frequently updating their blog and swapping in new songs on their page, the Hawthorne Heights guys were able to give fans a reason to return. That increased the online buzz, and the fan club grew fast, eventually topping 200,000--a direct marketing list that any major label act would kill for."

Mowing Their Way into Russia

Two Chinese men have been arrested after trying to sneak across the border into Russia on a lawnmower. Ananova had the story.

They tried to tell border guards at the Slavyanka border post in Khasansky County in Russia's Far East that they had got lost while cutting the grass.

Russian border police said it was not the first time they had had to deal with rogue gardeners from China.

A spokesman said: "We have issued a number of warnings to our opposite numbers in China, but despite that they seem to have no control over the apparent nomadic habits of their gardening nationals."

What Your Trash Says about You

One week after several Vikings players held a lewd party on a Lake Minnetonka boat, two players were seen throwing trash in a dumpster at a construction site in Eden Prairie. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS obtained exclusive access to the trash - and the information it revealed.

Viking players Bryant McKinnie and Mewelde Moore were seen throwing bags of trash in the dumpster. The eight bags contained what appeared to be remnants of a party, including aluminum tins of food, beer and champagne bottles, fireworks, disposable camera boxes, hollowed out cigars, something that looks like a marijuana bud, sexual and feminine hygiene products and Victoria's Secret underwear.

There was also a drink receipt with Bryant McKinnie's credit card number and boarding passes with his name on them, as well as a list of women's names.

The list was titled "Incoming Flights (pickups)" and was written on a piece of Minnesota Vikings paper. It contained women's names, airlines and flight times. The names 'Iris and Liris' are at the top, followed by 'Nivie + 5', 'Ayana and Dionne and Aisha', 'Sandra' and 'Tanika plus 3'. The total is 16

Pirates in our Midst--WOW!

The pirates who attacked a luxury cruise liner off Somalia's coast were likely to have been from the same group that hijacked a U.N.-chartered vessel in June and held its crew and food aid hostage for 100 days, a maritime official said Sunday.

Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast Saturday and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard.

The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course. Its passengers, mostly Americans with some Australians and Europeans, were gathered in a lounge for safety, and nobody was injured, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.

That group _ led by Mohamed Abdi Hassan and a warlord nicknamed Dhagweyne _ is one of three well-organized bands operating along Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline, the longest in Africa. Several other bands are in the country, Mwangura and U.N. officials said.

Mwangura said the attack on the luxury cruise liner shows that pirates from anarchic Somalia are becoming bolder and more ambitious in their efforts to hijack ships for ransom and loot.

Somali pirates are trained fighters with maritime knowledge. They identify their targets by listening to the international radio channel used by ships at sea, Mwangura said.

"Sometimes they trick the mariners by pretending that they have a problem and they should come to assist them _ they send bogus distress signals," Mwangura said. "They are getting more powerful, more vicious and bolder day by day."

You Gotta Spend Money to Make Money in Mass!

Today's Boston Herald had a story lamenting Massachusett's pathetically low spending for tourism and the results.

"The Bay State has fallen way behind other states in spending on tourism and it shows, say tourism industry executives. Massachusetts ranked 15th in tourism dollars spent here, falling behind the likes of Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Travelers spent $11.2 million in Massachusetts in 2003, the most recent year in which numbers are available for all states, according to the Travel Industry of America. California ranked number one, pulling in $71.6 million, followed by Florida at $56.2 million.

“We should be in the top 10 of total domestic and international spending and the fact that we’re not is directly tied to the fact that we’re number 35th in the U.S. in terms of our spending on tourism,” said Patrick Moscaritolo, head of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau. “You’ve got to spend money to make money. It’s an investment.”

The state spent $7 million on tourism in 2004, falling behind most states, including Maine, which spent $7.5 million.

Three Gals I'm Proud to Call Sisters

A friend asked me what I was doing this weekend. "My sisters are coming up," I replied, "they are so much fun everybody wants to come and see them." He said I was lucky, and I agree. My sisters are three women I'm proud to be related to.

Caroline is the youngest and thinnest. She had three kids, and goes to school for social work. She will be a great counselor some day. She has a sly sense of humor and is drawn to causes great and small.

Jenny is the sister two years older than I, and in some ways a lot like me. She's run a catering company and market, and has juggled this and raising her son Tom alone. She has recently fallen in love, and life is very good for her of late.

Brown, or her real name, Anne, is the oldest. She loves flowers, dogs, children and is fascinated by the lives of older people. Her three kids are all grown up, and she is about to move into a country farmhouse on her own.

We are having the sisters over to our house for a big party, with a fire, a potluck, lots of good conversation, laughing, and passing around little Nathan. I can't wait!

Google's New Ride in the Sky

Today's Web Pro News came through with some idea of how Larry and Sergey spend those billions they earn from the little text ads.

"Despite being billionaires, the founders of Google show some fiscal responsibility that will make their investors happy. The $15 million purchase of a used 767 runs about a third of what a choice Gulfstream 550 business jet costs, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Though it isn't definitely known, the Journal has collected some evidence on the plane's previous life: Evidence suggests that the 767 in question flew for over a decade in Qantas Airways' fleet with the airline's red-and-white kangaroo logo on its tail. Boeing delivered it to Qantas in 1987. The Australian airline took it out of service and stored it in the desert outside Tucson, Ariz., in 2004.

Federal Aviation Administration records show that the Qantas 767 was bought in March by a limited-liability company registered in Delaware. Larry Page, who was interviewed for the report, wouldn't confirm the jet's origins. He did confirm the financial aspects of the purchase being key: "We looked at this and we just did the economics and we said, 'you know, it makes a lot of sense.'" Page also provided some details on the jet's retrofitting:

Mr. Page says his plane will hold about 50 passengers when its refurbishment is complete. A top Gulfstream business jet typically carries 15 or fewer. He declines to give other details. People in the aviation industry familiar with the planned interior say it will have a sitting area, two staterooms with adjoining lavatories and a shower. Farther aft will be a large sitting-and-dining area. At the rear will be 12 to 16 first-class seats for guests or employees and a large galley

Seeing Under Ground with Sound Waves

In Afghanistan and Iraq, enemy command centers, weapons and terror leaders such as Usama bin Laden are often well concealed in underground caves or tunnels.
Fox News reported on a breakthrough.

New technology being developed at Silicon Graphics in Mountain View, Calif., will soon give U.S. forces a way to "see" what's underground. It's 3D technology that's already used by American oil companies looking for oil deposits.

With funding from Congress, the U.S. military is now tweaking the application.

In a wartime scenario, soldiers at ground-level would place sensors around an area of interest, then, by firing a blank into the earth, create a sound wave that would bounce back.

That sound wave would contain geophysical information that is color-coded and easy to decipher. A few keystrokes later, and the data translates into a 3D map that indicates pockets of air or metal, and possibly, enemy targets.

"When you're looking for underground bunkers, underground structures, buried ammunition stockpiles, anything that's below the surface that you can't visibly see, this gives the military the opportunity to get in there and try to find the stuff without having to pull away shovels and dig up every section of the ground," said Lt. Col. Bill Cowan.

Engineers at Silicon Graphics say there could be homeland security applications for their product as well, such as using the technology to help detect border tunnels. The military hopes to have it up and running by next summer, giving soldiers a new weapon in the War on Terror.

If the Olives are Gone, So Are We

The olive trees are dying in Cambil, Spain, and that is bad news for the town. The NY Times published a story by Renwick McLean about the terrible effects of a record breaking freeze and a very long drought. The result has been withered trees producing raisin-sized olives, with many trees cut down to stumps.

The town doesn't have much besides olives, the average family here owns about 2-300 trees. The region, the size of Connecticut, produces about 20 percent of the world's olive oil. One farmer here said "Their whole understanding of power and value is based on the olive tree."

With trees taking about 5-10 years to regenerate and produce again, things are grim here, where few young people live and many others will move to find jobs in cities. The trees have thrived so well that few other crops have been planted. "There is nothing else here," said a local bartender.