Monthly Archives: January 2007

Day 521: And Here I Thought They Meant New Orleans

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A CBSNews.com science-and-technology feed blurb announces, “… and bloggers buzz about a State of the Union omission.”  To find out which bloggers were cited regarding the glaring non-mention of New Orleans, I paged through the linked article and found:

When President Bush delivered his State of the Union address last week, he left out a small suffix that had a big consequence to many bloggers. After honoring Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Bush said, “I congratulate the Democrat majority,” he said, dropping the last two letters from “Democratic.”

So was the slip on purpose or merely a grammatical accident, many continue to ask. The president said it was merely an oversight, that he wasn’t trying to disparage the party now running Congress. But many liberal bloggers are not convinced.

How anti-climactic.  Moving right along, a Democrat is someone who belongs to or supports the Democratic party.  My theory: The Prez doesn’t know the difference, not unlike more than half of America.  Next.

Light blogging ahead: lightning strike trip to Wisconsin and Krewe du Vieux preparation.  Await pictures and low-downs.

Day 520: Google’s Moonshine

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a.k.a. the perks of having a large, well-funded PR department.

The New Yorker: Google’s Moon Shot – The Quest For The Universal Library

Google intends to scan every book ever published, and to make the full texts searchable, in the same way that Web sites can be searched on the company’s engine at google.com.

… Google’s is not the only book-scanning venture. Amazon has digitized hundreds of thousands of the books it sells, and allows users to search the texts; Carnegie Mellon is hosting a project called the Universal Library, which so far has scanned nearly a million and a half books; the Open Content Alliance, a consortium that includes Microsoft, Yahoo, and several major libraries, is also scanning thousands of books; and there are many smaller projects in various stages of development. Still, only Google has embarked on a project of a scale commensurate with its corporate philosophy: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Anyone heard of Project Gutenberg, the oldest producer of free eBooks on the internet, 20,000 at last count?  Scanning books, even destructively, is not a big deal, but proofreading them and converting them to universally-readable plain-vanilla ASCII text is.  Why do Google et al. think Distributed Proofreaders even exists?  Scanned images are not eBooks.  The concept of a universal library sounds lofty, but its purpose must be utilitarianism and not amassment for its own sake.

So, what is wrong with the mainstream press that they refuse to acknowledge, much less highlight, the longstanding eBook project that is Project Gutenberg, along with its scanning and proofreading efforts?  Founder Michael Hart’s answer is double-pronged, “There’s a fairly well-known saying attributed to Gandhi, and often used by activists battling injustice: ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’”  Then he said, “We don’t have a PR dept . . . hint, hint. . .”

Tonight, as I lay me down to sleep, prayers will be dispatched for two extra arms and four hours added to each day.

Day 520: Mardi Gras Madness!

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This time of the year is all about fun, relaxation and living up your vices before Lent, right?  Wrong.  Enter the season when D and I are overworked, sleep-deprived and make like headless chickens trying to get all things done before our respective krewe appearances.  Add to this D’s computer debris, our never-ending pile of winter laundry and the baptism of our Wisconsin-dwelling godchildren, not to mention day job obligations.

This year, D and I are again in Krewe du Vieux and Krewe of King Arthur.  Our KduV subkrewe, Krewe de C.R.A.P.S. will bring up the rear, the end, the behind, the rump, the posterior, the veritable fundament of the parade.  In other words, wait up and look for the last float of the parade if you want any throws from us.  So far, D’s costume is unfinished (and won’t be if he keeps adding on to it), mine will be done when gold fringe is affixed to the velvety derriere and our throws still sit in their wrapping.  Getting our costumes and home work done is not aided by the fact that we are on practically every single krewe committee and subcommittee (in keeping with the credo that if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself).

As for Krewe of King Arthur, we will be on the St. Patrick’s Day-themed float and haven’t yet chosen between either side of the float.  We shall see – I prefer the riverside, but many friends opt to stand in the neutral ground.

Finally, my Mardi Gras Day costume is fabulous in theory – it looks simply great sketched out on engineer’s drafting paper – but requires a good six hours for execution.  Six hours?!?!  When will I find that kind of time between now and February 20th?  Where’s my artistic stage manager and props king of a dad when I need him?  He would get a huge kick out of constructing my mask and head gear.  For next year’s costumes, I’m sending him the raw materials way ahead of time with a note that says, “Have at it!”  Of course, the beauty of Mardi Gras is not just dressing up and walking/riding, but the creative process leading up to it. 

At the least, D and I are covered in the makeup department.  Between his theatre makeup box and expertise and my diligent collection of and experimentation with colorful face paints and glitter through the year, we are set.

This leaves me with my Mardi Gras Day dilemma: Should I attend Zulu and Rex, walk in St. Ann’s or join the Krewe of Chartreuse and parade with them from Uptown to the Quarter?  Decisions, decisions.

Day 519: Photo Backlog

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1.  Saints vs. Bears NFC Championship Game Viewing At Fahy’s

2.  Dinner with Earthlink’s Dave Coustan & Ken Womack at Liuzza’s on Bienville

Wherein Loki and dangerblond pooped out and Karen, Becky, Alan, Ken, Dave and I talked about New Orleans latest woes and scandals – the Uptown Gabrielle brouhaha, Mr. Russell a.k.a. chop shop owner a.k.a. city towing subcontractor, the great abyss of Magazine Street, Squandered Heritage (property rights vs. buying into a historic community) – and technology, i.e. our new cameras and cellphones and Feather by Earthlink.

According to Dave and Ken, no one should require to log in to the Feather network.  Once I get more accurate Customer Service info from Dave, I will post it here.

Update: Dave Coustan’s post on the dinner – Frenchulettas, The Magazine Canyon and WiFi

3.  The Birth Of My God-Twins

The two latest additions to the L dynasty are here; D and I are their godparents!  Does this mean I carry a sparkling wand now?  [Hint: look for me on Mardi Gras Day]

Day 516: Challenges To Copyright Law Rejected By 9th Circuit

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Brewster Kahle, Chairman of the Internet Archive and board member of Project Gutenberg, is shut down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  From beSpacific:

Stanford Center for Internet and Society: “Kahle v. Gonzales – In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an “effectively perpetual” term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote … Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution.”

Opinion, Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Brewster Kahle v. Alberto Gonzales, January 22, 2007

For a layspeak analysis of the issues, please read Christopher Sprigman’s post at the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society blog.

… particularly galling is Judge Farris’ utter failure to confront the central question in the case — i.e., whether in shifting copyright from an opt-in to an opt-out system, Congress shifted the traditional contours of copyright. The Supreme Court tells us that when Congress shifts copyright’s traditional contours in a way that might burden speech, that shift is subject to ordinary First Amendment review. Judge Farris proceeds as if the Supreme Court never said this.

For a clear understanding of American copyright law and why the public domain matters to you, read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity [PDFs available at Siva's site].

Day 515: Dignity, All They Have Left

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My fellow New Orleans blogger and father of Kalypso, Michael Homan, recently penned a Times-Picayune editorial on being treated with little respect when wrapping up paperwork at FEMA’s local recovery office, also known as the Welcome Home Center (everyone: shiny, happy now!). Note that many who have gone through the grueling process of acquiring rebuilding money from the federal government, for the past seventeen months, are the old and frail, many of whom had paid off their houses and lacked flood insurance prior to the Federal Flood. Those houses were their life’s savings. Someone would be in for a world of hurt should my parents or grandmother every undergo the treatment Michael describes.

Therese and I are educated people, and we have family and friends to help us out emotionally and financially. What if you had to navigate this process and you were illiterate, frail, without transportation, old or — God forbid — didn’t have e-mail?

We both agreed that if anyone ever asked us for advice on how to handle rebuilding their life after something like this, it would be to move far, far away, cut all ties with the place that flooded and never look back.

Day 515: The Resource Curse

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World Oil Production: ~83 million barrels a day
World Oil Consumption: ~83 million barrels a day

As easy drilling and production declines, and operations move into deepwater, will promises by the United States, European Union and China to slash hydrocarbon consumption keep the production to consumption ratio stable and drive prices down?

While we wring, wave and chew on the demand-supply question and continue to base our economy on a turbulent yet necessary product, political instability in major global producing regions may bring us to our knees, or at least to $5 per gallon, which the average American family can afford for only so long. This month’s Vanity Fair carries a long and informative article on the possibility of Nigerian rebels wreaking havoc on the American economy.  Combine this with Russia’s latest tantrums regarding deals with western companies and it isn’t hard to see energy becoming a bigger and bigger deal in the near future.  Why is oil so precious, you ask?

This is why oil is so valuable: one tank of gas from a typical S.U.V. has the energy equivalent of more than 60,000 man-hours of work—roughly 100 men working around the clock for nearly a month. That is the power that the American consumer can access for about $60 at the gasoline pump. If gasoline were a person, we would be paying 10 cents an hour for his labor. Easily accessible reserves are running dry, though, which means that the industry must develop increasingly ingenious—and costly—techniques for getting at the oil.

The article is so timely and multi-faceted – there’s even a mention of ol’ Dolla’ Bill’s ties to Nigeria – that I can’t possibly quote every sentence of interest. Junger’s reference to resource-rich, economy-poor nations, however, gave me pause to think beyond Nigeria and oil. [Emphasis mine]

… The resource curse holds that underdeveloped countries with great natural wealth fail to diversify their industry or to invest in education, which leads to long-term economic decline. The per capita gross national product of OPEC countries, for example, has been in steady decline for the past 30 years, whereas the per capita G.N.P. of non-oil-producing countries in the developing world has steadily risen.

… most of Nigeria’s oil wealth gets siphoned off by 1 percent of the population, condemning more than half of the country to subsist on less than a dollar a day. By that standard, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Since independence in 1960, it is estimated that between $300 and $400 billion of oil revenue has been stolen or misspent by corrupt government officials—an amount of money approaching all the Western aid received by Africa in those years. Former president Sani Abacha and his inner circle stole at least $2 billion.

… The Nigerian constitution stipulates that just under 50 percent of national oil revenue must be distributed to state and local governments, and that an additional 13 percent must go to the nine oil-producing states of the Niger delta. Last year that amounted to almost $6 billion for the nine delta states—plenty, it would seem, to take care of basic social services. The problem, however, is that the money goes to the governors’ offices and then simply disappears. A financial-crimes commission was recently formed to investigate all of the country’s 36 governors, and it wound up accusing all but 5 of corruption.

Great natural wealth – failure to diversify industry or to invest in education – wealth siphoned off by small portion of the population – money available for basic social services goes to local government and then disappears. Does this remind you of a certain city? Especially pay attention to where the money stops flowing and compare it to New Orleans’s financial blockades.

Whoever first called New Orleans America’s own Third World wasn’t joking. How much does the average American care about Nigeria? That is how much he or she is concerned about New Orleans. But, if most Louisianans and New Orleanians mirror the apathy of richer Nigerians, no federal government or intervention of any sort can save a dying economy. Tourism, historic elegance and the cultural mélange are all well and good, but if New Orleanians fail to invest in better schools and mentor their students in a variety of trades, it will not be the Federal Flood that doomed this city.