30 million newspapers online

Boing Boing The Blog of Wonderful things

30 million public domain newspapers online By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: The National Endowment for the Humanities is working to put 30 million newspapers online in digital format. The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers published from 1836 through 1922 will be available in 2006. "Anyone who's interested - teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even newspaper reporters - will be able to go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history," said Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He announced the project in a speech at the National Press Club... The National Endowment for the Humanities is working on the project with the Library of Congress, which has embarked on a broader project to preserve records of American newspapers dating from the late 1600s... The span of the joint project is limited because type faces of printers used before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read, and copyright restrictions are in force on papers published after 1923. Link (via Whole Lotta Nothing)

owens lake from space

World Guide - Satellite Image - Owens Lake, California
click on link for larger picture

reading mary austin again writing about owens valley
when the lake was full and life was good.
this image has been haunting me since i first saw it.

WE the media, by Dan Gilmore

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

When we become the medium , October 13, 2004

Reviewer:
Dimiter Gerensky-Greene "Search engine marketing and web analytics expert" (Arlington,Virginia) www.websage.net

As I was about to write this review, Reuters published the news that: "Iranian authorities have arrested at least six Internet journalists and webloggers in recent days, colleagues and relatives said on Wednesday, in a further blow to limited press freedoms in the Islamic state. News-based Internet sites and online journals known as Weblogs have flourished in Iran where the disproportionately youthful population often turns to the Internet for information and entertainment."

How significant is this? It indicates that the power of internet publishing, today's equivalent of samizdat (which in most slavic languages means self-published), is being recognized not only by those who consume and produce blog-based news, but also by those who fear the power of media when in the hands of the people.

I grew up in a communist country where every typewriter (machine) had to be registered with the police department. A friend of mine from a different town had asked me to buy him a typewriter because in his hometown his name was on a list banning him from owning a typewriter.

Today, everyone can start a Blogger account or install a Movable Type on a web server and start publishing. With this power, of course, comes enormous responsibility.

This book, "We The Media", is a fascinating look on the way the internet self-publishing and blogging phenomenon has changed the way we produce, consume, and share news.

The author is more than respectable--Dan Gillmor, the business and technology columnist from SilliconValley.com. The publisher, O'Reilly, is more than knowledgable on the subject of the convergence of new technologies, business and society. The result is enjoyable, educating, thought-provoking. In my humble, unprofessional opinion, this book fully deserves 5 out of 5 stars!

Dolphin Jumps Again

slashdot.org

By michael on laser-not-included

Ant writes "This Yahoo! News story mentions Fuji, a mother dolphin that lost 75 percent of her tail due to a mysterious disease, being able to jump again with the help of what is believed to be the world's first artificial fin. The 34-year-old dolphin held at Japan's largest aquarium in the southern island of Okinawa wears the rubber fin for about 20 minutes a day allowing her to jump and to swim at the same speed of other dolphins."

more war

back-to-iraq.com

From Whiskey Bar :
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it -- that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
November 1972

go further down the above blog and watch the quick-time film called:
"Get Some, F--kers!". the background story is there & lots of comments.
Someone asked me the other day why so many
soldiers in iraq voted for bush.
old farts who never fought can always find young kids who want to.

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44th Rule of Acquisition: War is Good for Business
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