|
By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
4.16.03/ Iraq news: Best sources
portal
4.04.03/
The Station Fire Weblog
April 18, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
Please reconsider the red-light
cameras, mayor: Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline
unveiled a plan on Wednesday (Cicilline
pledges to fight budget woes, reg.req.) to
address a $58.9 million budget deficit and a $526
million unfunded pension liability that, he says,
threatens to bankrupt the city within 10 years unless
drastic steps are taken.
One element of the plan is "cameras that would
photograph red light violators, enabling the city to
send them traffic citations and raising an estimated
$1.9 million in six months."
When I read this, I wondered how the registered owner
of the car could get a personal license violation no
matter who was driving.
I'm not the only one. From the Washington Times
yesterday, Suit filed against traffic
cameras:
Two D.C. lawyers have filed suit to force the city
to return all fines from traffic cameras because they
violate constitutional due process rights.
Thomas Ruffin Jr. and Horace L. Bradshaw Jr. filed
a class action lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court against
the city. The two litigators are seeking to represent
the entire "class of automobile owners" ticketed since
the red-light camera program began July 31, 1999, and
since the photo-radar program started Aug. 6,
2001.
"There is no proof that the owner is driving the
car and the only way to get out of the ticket is to
submit an affidavit identifying the person who was
driving your car," Mr. Ruffin said.
... The two lawyers said the city's camera program
is a civil rights violation that must not be
tolerated. Tickets are issued to car owners based on
photographs of the rear license plates as vehicles
speed past a radar camera or run red lights at
intersections.
"After a month, when you get the ticket, you may
have forgotten who drove your car that day, and if you
guess wrong, you could be charged with perjury," Mr.
Ruffin said.
... Former Executive Assistant Metropolitan Police
Chief Terrance W. Gainer said in January last year
that "300 or so errors" should be expected when tens
of thousands of tickets are issued monthly but that
would not be a "show stopper" for the program. Later
that month, the city was forced to admit wrongdoing
when it was found guessing license plate numbers and
issuing tickets to residents who didn't own the cars
in the photos.
AP |
| Jill Bucciarelli of Cardiff, Calif.
leans on her BMW and displays the 'red light
camera' ticket she received in the mail from San
Diego police. Bucciarelli's ticket shows photos of
her running a red light with statistics stating
she ran the light .05 seconds after it turned red.
A judge dismissed the citations against
Bucciarelli and some 400 other motorists who were
photographed running red lights at San Diego
intersections. | The
story notes that judges in San Diego and Denver halted
similar programs, and notes that AAA Mid-Atlantic withdrew its support
of the cameras in D.C.
In 2001, onetime House majority leader Dick Armey
wrote, in an essay entitled The Truth About Red Light
Cameras,
Two attorneys representing 290 motorists in San
Diego, California have taken on this system -- and
won. Arthur F. Tait and Coleen Cusak forced the city
to pull the plug on all nineteen red light cameras
after they uncovered evidence that the camera hardware
was being manipulated to entrap motorists.
Their lawsuit also forced the private company that
operates the cameras to release over 5,000 pages of
confidential documents about the program. These papers
describe what the real motivating factor behind these
cameras has been.
Safety was never the primary consideration. In
fact, none of the devices were placed at any of San
Diego's top-ten most dangerous intersections. Instead,
the documents tell us how the camera operators
consciously sought out mistimed intersections as
locations for new red light cameras.
Yellow signal time at intersections turns out to be
directly related to "red light running." Simply put,
when the yellow light is short, more people enter on
red. Inadequate yellow time causes a condition where
individuals approaching an intersection are unable
either to come to a safe stop or proceed safely before
the light turns red.
In San Diego, according to AP (Red Light Cameras Yielding Outcry),
"The police union denounced them after five on-duty
officers received citations."
I hope the mayor takes a longer look at what has
happened elsewhere and discards this idea -- playing
"gotcha" with citizens is divisive and mean-spirited,
and everyone who has to take a day out of work to prove
they don't own the green car allegedly sporting their
plates will remember that at the ballot box.
Link to this item | Comment
How male or female is your brain?
Catchy, that. It's a hot story in The Guardian (U.K.)
now, that comes with an irresistible two-part quiz
designed by Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism
Research Centre at the University of Cambridge:
His theory is that the female brain is
predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the
male brain is predominantly hard-wired for
understanding and building systems. He calls it the
empathising-systemising (E-S) theory.
Read the full article here.
Okay, I took the tests. You can boil them down to "Do
you cry at movies?" -- You're a girl. "Do you want to
know how engines work?" -- You're a guy.
Problem is, I'm so empathic I can't take a splinter
out of someone else's finger, but I do like to know the
names of flowers. I'm in a hot race with Mark Patinkin
for who has the most cluttered desk around here, but I
do care about the processing speed of my computer
purchases.
I think I broke the system.
Baron-Cohen says most women score about 47, most men
around 42 on the empathy quotient quiz. Me: 41.
On
the systemizing quotient, most women score around 24,
men around 30. Me: 48, like autistics.
It's a lousy quiz, I say. Now you try it.
Link to this item | Comment
Public nixes proposed public art in
Tucson: Remember the outcry in Tucson over the
public art that residents thought looked like sewage?
The Tucson Citizen reports the result of a poll of the
neighborhoods:
Residents of three neighborhoods along the North
Mountain Avenue corridor have decided not to go with
the flow.
By a 2-to-1 margin, voting in response to
questionnaires from the city's Transportation
Department, they rejected the public art sculpture
under construction on Mountain between East Grant and
East Fort Lowell roads, in the Mountain and First,
Samos and Hedrick Acres neighborhoods.
An option to complete the art, which features
sculpted depictions of flood water and drainage pipes,
received 275 votes.
The other option, to raze the sculpture and put in
something different, got 558 votes.
Twenty-seven
residents were undecided, said Michael R. Graham,
spokesman for the department.
There's a follow-up story, headlined, Should public art appeal to public?
A more sober take from the Arizona Daily Star, Survey: 'Sewage' art should be flushed
away includes a link to the "contestants"
in a StarNet poll on the worst public art in Tucson.
Bob Rizzo, director of the Providence
Parks Department Office of Cultural Affairs, mounts the
Convergence Festival each fall, which
includes public sculpture that spends a couple of years
in place.
I asked him if he wanted to comment on the Tucson
flap. Here's his response:
"Sorry, not much to say...from what I could see the
work selected is not worthy of a comment...it's what
happens when you select art by committee.....
"
Link to this item | Comment
Office workers give away passwords for a
cheap pen: From The Register (U.K.),
The second annual survey into office scruples,
conducted by the people organising this month's
InfoSecurity Europe 2003 conference, found that office
workers have learnt very little about IT security in
the past year.
...Nine in ten (90 per cent) of office workers at
London's Waterloo Station gave away their computer
password for a cheap pen, compared with 65 per cent
last year.
,,,The most common password was "password" (12 per
cent) and the most popular category was their own name
(16 per cent) followed by their football team (11 per
cent) and date of birth (8 per cent).
Link to this item | Comment
Web zen: Easter Zen. Games.
Zany. Irreverent.
April 17, 2003
So who really did save Private
Jessica? From the London Times, a story that
would be heartbreaking if it hadn't turned out well in
the end. Despite some unpleasant memories, even the
doctor is alive to tell the tale:
... Far from winning hearts and minds, the US
operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked
their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi
victims of the war. “What the Americans say is like
the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a myth,” said
Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life
after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi
military intelligence.
...The Iraqi intelligence officers told the
hospital that Private Lynch would soon be transferred
to Baghdad, a prospect that terrified her.
After her condition stabilised, they ordered Dr
Harith to transfer Jessica to another hospital.
Instead he told the ambulance driver to deliver her
to one of the American outposts that had already been
established on the ouskirts of the city.
“But when he reached their checkpoint, the
Americans fired at him,” he said.
Link to this item | Comment
Diet Doctor Atkins Was Popular,
Controversial: Dr. Robert Atkins died at 11:01
this morning at Cornell University Medical Center from
head injuries received April 8 when he slipped on ice
outside his Manhattan office. This story from Reuters
seems more clueful about his namesake diet than
most:
 Long
a household name for his popular diet that advocates
eating freely of meat and fat while shunning starchy
foods, Dr. Robert Atkins found little acceptance in
the medical community for ideas considered nutritional
heresy.
Cardiologist and nutritional expert Atkins, who
died in New York on Thursday nine days after suffering
severe head injuries in a fall on an icy sidewalk,
first drew widespread attention with his best-selling
book, "Diet Revolution," published in 1972.
He developed the "Atkins Diet" -- now referred to
as "the Atkins Nutritional Approach" -- that blames
carbohydrates, a major energy source, for weight
gain.
The Atkins diet claims to change the body from
burning carbohydrates to burning fat. The book, one of
the 50 best-sellers of all time, was updated and sold
millions of copies, including "Atkins for Life"
published in January 2003.
The medical establishment said it flouted accepted
nutritional advice and warned its followers risked
disease, but several recent studies have shown that
the diet can help people lose weight without damaging
their health.
Atkins said carbohydrates including grains, pasta,
fruit and potatoes caused weight gain. Instead of
carbohydrates and sugar, the Atkins plan allows plenty
of fat and protein such as meat, eggs and cheese. The
system also encourages dieters to eat vegetables such
as lettuce and broccoli and a few
fruits.
Blogger Cory Doctorow, another sedentary
blogger slimmed by low carbs, notes Atkins' passing and
quips "I think he was secretly offed by the grain
lobby."
C'mon, Cory, Atkins' frozen low-carb bread is at my
local supermarket, so the grain guys are off the hook.
The sugar folks, on the other hand...
The Atkins
Center's usual webpage has been replaced by a
memorial to its late founder. Readers are invited to
share stories of how Dr. Atkins affected their
lives.
Link to this item | Comment
Shades of Abbie Hoffman in pranksters'
barcodes site: Print some barcodes for your
favorite products at re-code.com, take a
little glue to the store and bingo, you're an electronic
shoplifter. Sounds simple, right? Walmart was not
amused.
I didn't point to the site -- responsible journalism
doesn't tell you how to break the law. Now that the
catalyst is disabled, the concept is free to start a new
life with a lot of publicity.
The most succinct version of the tale, Walmart takes action against site offering
fake bar codes, is a post by Bill Royle at
TechFocus:
LITTLE ROCK - The very technology that
revolutionized retail checkout — the bar code — is now
being subverted by anti-capitalist protesters who
fancy themselves cyberpranksters.
The activists drew the ire of Wal-Mart Inc., the
world's largest retailer, with a Web site that
encouraged people to "name their own prices" by
offering hundreds of substitute bar codes.
Wal-Mart considered the ploy an incitement to theft
and sent a cease-and-desist letter dated April 2 to
one of the companies that was hosting the Web site,
Re-code.com.
Re-code.com's operators responded by disabling the
link on their Web site that allowed users to print
sheets with a selection of bar code labels that could
be slapped on store items.
But Re-code had to go further than that. The original
homepage now exists only as a .jpg image. The current homepage is an
explanation of the incident, headlined Corporations
Win Again! Excerpts:
The goal of Re-Code.com is to encourage everyone to
reflect on the real costs of the products that we
buy.
... Our site was intended to be satirical; however
many legal and corporate officials failed to see the
humor and we were attacked, first with a legal letter
from Wal-Mart and subsequently with a series of very
persaonal threats that came from a consortia of lawers
associated with WalMart, Kellogs, and other unnamed
companies. When the personal threats started rolling
in, we decided to shut down. We are ceasing to operate
this site, but we would first like to explain our
position. ...
And then...
Our Formal Apology:
Sorry Wal Martİ and
Kellog'sİ (sic). We hope we didn't cost you any
hard earned cash. We need jobs - want to hire us?
You know we never actually switched any barcodes
and we have the footage to prove it!
This service was brought to you by the members of
the Carbon Defense League and
Conglomco.org.
AP has the whole saga: Prankster Web Site Draws Wal-Mart Ire.
A bit of this:
We were advised by our lawyers it would make sense
to remove those for now," said one of the activists,
who identified himself only as Nathan Hactivist and
responded by telephone to an e-mail request for an
interview.
... Hactivist said he lives in "upstate New York"
but refused to be more specific. The Web site is
registered to Mike Bonnano in Loudonville, outside
Albany, N.Y. Bonnano said he was not among activists
who created the site but was willing to risk being its
legal owner.
...Bonnano, the Web site registrant, belongs to The
Yes Men, a group of "satirical impostors" that
lampoons organizations with a perceived globalization
bent.
One of the group's more well-known pranks was to
send a member masquerading as a representative of the
World Trade Organization to a textile conference in
Finland, where he delivered a satirical speech.
If you go the Carbon Defense League site, you'll
just see a bit of text, "Gone fishin' ."
Over at The Infrastructures of Digital Design,
though, scroll down to "Nathan M. Martin and Hans Meyer,
HACTIVIST.ORG" and you'll see,
The Carbon Defense League (CDL) is a tactical media
arts and engineering collective that began in
Pittsburgh, PA in 1997 as a way to combine technology
subversion, critical theory, and punk activism. The
CDL functions as a tool provider, skillsharing
network, and writing collaboration whose projects have
taken the form of radical software, electronic reverse
engineering, media intervention ,and direct
action.
The whole time I've been blogging this story, I kept
thinking about Abbie Hoffman's "monkey warfare" --
he'd be pleased with this prank.
Link to this item | Comment
Blogroll stands alone: Finally! The blogroll
is now over on the far right of the page, which will
make it possible to use photos more easily. Sean Polay
made it happen, and has my thanks.
April 16, 2003
Film critic Roger Ebert Talks About Michael Moore and
Much More: Transcript of a radio interview at
the Progressive Radio (MP3
file / RealAudio):
On Moore's Oscar speech:
I would propose to you that if Michael Moore had
taken a deep breath, and looked straight at the
audience, and said, "I am a nonfiction filmmaker
during a fictitious Presidency," and stopped, I think
he basically would have gotten a positive response to
that. But his whole delivery was wrong. I think his
delivery prompted the audience. They were not ready to
assimilate that much that quickly. You know, they
didn't boo anyone else, and there were several other
anti-war speeches that were applauded.
On the criticism of Hollywood celebrities for
speaking out against the war:
I begin to feel like I was in the last generation
of Americans who took a civics class. I begin to feel
like most Americans don't understand the First
Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of
speech, and don't understand that it's the
responsibility of the citizen to speak out. If
Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other
people.
On church and state:
The Bush theory, of course, is that he has a
personal dialogue with God: God talks to Bush, Bush
talks to God. And Bush gets God's message, and Bush
really believes that God's on his side. The problem
with that is Bush then can't change his mind because
God isn't going to change his mind. And so what we
have here really is a rather alarming situation where
religion in the White House has crossed the line
between church and state. It's funny that there was so
much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White
House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion
in the White House that's causing a lot of conflicts,
and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people,
it's in the Bush Administration.
On the difference in style between the left and the
right:
When I write a political column for the Chicago
Sun-Times, when liberals disagree with me, they send
in long, logical e-mails explaining all my errors. I
hardly ever get well-reasoned articles from the right.
People just tell me to shut up. That's the message:
"Shut up. Don't write anymore about this. Who do you
think you are?"
Related: 'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This
Nation...' Transcript of the speech given by
actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003. Excerpt:
The journalists in this country can battle back at
those who would rewrite our Constitution in Patriot
Act II, or "Patriot, The Sequel," as we would call it
in Hollywood. We are counting on you to star in that
movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as
publicists by this administration. (Applause.) The
next White House correspondent to be called on by Ari
Fleischer should defer their question to the back of
the room, to the banished journalist du jour.
(Applause.) And any instance of intimidation to free
speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence or
intimidation at this point will only lead to more
intimidation. You have, whether you like it or not, an
awesome responsibility and an awesome power: the fate
of discourse, the health of this republic is in your
hands, whether you write on the left or the right.
This is your time, and the destiny you have
chosen.
Link to this item | Comment
Japanese firm buys ReplayTV,
Rio: InternetNews.com reports,
Japan's D&M Holdings will take the
digital video recorder and MP3 business units --
including the Replay TV and Rio brands -- off
SONICblue's hands for $36.2 million.
D&M Holdings, parent of audio equipment makers
Denon Ltd. and Marantz Japan, won the business units
in an auction of SONICblue's assets in the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court in San Jose, Calif. Tuesday. D&M
said it expects to close the deal in about 10 days.
... D&M said the assets it won in the auction
include inventory, receivables, intellectual property
and capital equipment. The company said it will also
take over "selected contractual relationships and
liabilities." D&M did note that it intends to keep
all ReplayTV customers and will design, manufacture
and distribute a line of ReplayTV and Rio
products.
No word yet on whether this means they'll honor the
"lifetime subscription" that came with earlier Replay
TVs.
Related: Time Warner Cable Introduces Digital
Video Recorder: From WXIX in Cincinnati,
If you're already a digital cable subscriber - and
about 39 percent (140,000) of Time Warner's 360,000
customers are - you can upgrade to the DVR box without
paying any additional equipment fee. But digital
customers must pay a one-time $19.95 installation and
tutorial fee, plus a $9.95 monthly programming fee.
Link to this item | Comment
Doc Searls has a very
cool idea: A barn-raising for civilization. He's
talking about this civilization.
Link to this item | Comment
I don't have any cash. Do you take
mackerel? The Guardian (U.K.) has an
appropriately surreal story about the Paris auction of
Andre Breton's collection:
I had gone to Paris to witness the "death of
surrealism", to watch what was being called "a great
national humiliation", the Passion of André Breton.
That is how French intellectuals see the sale and
dismemberment of the astonishing collection of
surrealist masterpieces, letters, books and
bric-a-brac the leader of the 20th-century's most
important art movement crammed into his small
apartment above the clip joints of the Rue
Fontaine.
Dali, Miro, Duchamp and Max Ernst all climbed the
stairs to Breton's studio, hard by the Moulin Rouge,
to take part in surrealistic experiments and pay
homage to the man who wrote the Manifeste du
Surréalisme in 1924. All left work behind on the walls
next to the Picassos, the Magrittes, and the
photographs and collages by Man Ray and the rest of
the gang.
The dreams and fantasies that poured out with the
absinthe were recorded and stacked away alongside
Breton's collections of curiosities, religious kitsch
and "object poems" made from bottles, buttons and bits
of string. By the time he died in 1966, and the door
of 42 rue Fontaine was locked, there was only room
inside for two people. It had become a museum to a man
and a movement that loathed museums. It was the
perfect surrealist conceit - a museum no one could
enter except in their dreams.
Related: Surreal prices at Andre Breton art
sale: The outcome, at expatica.com via AFP,
PARIS, April 15 (AFP) - The first batch of modern
paintings belonging to Surrealist master Andre Breton
to be sold at a controversial auction in Paris has
netted EUR 13.2 million (USD 14.2 million), with five
record sales.
Link to this item | Comment
Baghdad Did Not Fall - It Was Handed
Over:
What do you think?
Related: Arab Suspicion
Link to this item | Comment
Earth Day: Local cleanups, by community, at
Rhode Island DEM. Many are next weekend, perhaps bowing
to the competition from Easter. R.I. Earth Day Festival
is Saturday, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. at Roger Williams Park.
There's a free bus -- RIPTA’s "Earth Day Express" --
from Kennedy Plaza downtown to Roger Williams Park Zoo,
with the first 500 riders getting free zoo admission. Schedule and more are here.
Link to this item | Comment
Mozilla morass: The
cooperatively developed Mozilla browser,
based on Netscape code, got too big for some, and a
spinoff is the sleek Phoenix, which lacks a mail and news
client but is configurable, fast, and, like Mozilla,
lets the user open many tabs in one window and block
popups. In the latest Mozilla roadmap, the team announced it
was going to shift its efforts from Mozilla to building
Phoenix and Minotaur, a a cross-platform
standalone mail app.
But there were problems with the names -- there's already a Phoenix browser. Oops. So
the pair will be renamed Firebird and Thunderbird. Oops.
There's already a Firebird. Stay tuned.
(No, I have no idea why they're dipping into cars for
these names.)
If you're into experimenting, lots of folks love the
Opera
browser, too.
Link to this item | Comment
April 15, 2003
Brief blog today -- lots going on with the other
part of my job today, producing this site.
And the winners of Jefferson Muzzles
are...: The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection
of Free Expression awards Jefferson Muzzles to " to
those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr.
Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech 'cannot be
limited without being lost.' "
Link to this item | Comment
The 2003 Iraq War &
Archaeology: Links, photos, videos of what
remains, what's gone, what's destroyed. via
Burningbird
Link to this item | Comment
Folk Explosion: Loving send-up of
aging hippies is a real gas. This is a rave review
of A Mighty Wind,
the latest from the Christopher Guest ensemble
(This is Spinal Tap, The Big Picture, Waiting for
Guffman, Best in Show), at New York Press:
A Mighty Wind, about 1960s-era folk
musicians reuniting for a benefit concert in New York,
is a treasure chest of human oddity, brimming with
deluded, myopic but mostly decent people all nursing
pet obsessions.
... (The broken-souled Mitch, played by Eugene Levy
with magnificent control and mystery, best exemplifies
this sense of longing; he recognizes the concert for
what it is—a doomed attempt to relive vanished times.
"There’s a deception here," he says of the concert and
its potential audience. "They’re expecting to see a
man who no longer exists.")
I saw a hilarious clip of the film in which Levy says
fans still come up to Mitch to say, "I dig what you do,
man!"
Haven't heard that one in a while.
Link to this item | Comment
Online Catalogue of Jamaican
Records: From the National Library of Jamaica in
Kingston, mon.
Link to this item | Comment
Free Comic Book Day is May
3: Take the kids to a participating comics store and
get a free comic. I found six of them when I plugged the
downtown zip code in to the store locator. Easy. via BoingBoing
Link to this item | Comment
Electronic filing has sure killed the party at
the post office. No party tonight.
April 14, 2003
There's a new "She Who Must Be
Obeyed": Friday, a new African queen was installed,
the latest in an interesting line of Rain Queens -- said
to have mystical powers as rainmakers -- who were
immortalized by H. Rider Haggard in his 1887 novel She (Text at Project Gutenberg / web version at Classic
Reader):
"Pardon me, my father," I interrupted at this
point; "but if, as I understand,
'She-who-must-be-obeyed' lives yet farther off,
how could she have known of our approach?"
Billali turned, and seeing that we were alone--for
the young lady, Ustane, had withdrawn when he had
begun to speak--said, with a curious little
laugh--
"Are there none in your land who can see without
eyes and hear without ears? Ask no questions;
She knew."
According to The Guardian, Makobo
Modjadji, 25,
was crowned Queen Modjadji VI at an elaborate
ceremony held in the highland bushveld of South
Africa's Limpopo province.
Last Friday, the day of the ceremony, hot sun gave
way to clouds and light drizzle: a welcome omen for a
drought-ravaged realm. Government dignitaries,
traditional leaders and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the
former wife of ex-president Nelson Mandela, joined
well-wishers at the royal court to watch the
coronation.
SABC News, in South Africa, noted,
...before the coronation, the proceedings were
briefly disrupted by the arrival of Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela fully clad in Xhosa tradition. The
crowd became very excited when she was escorted to the
stage to pay courtesy to the queen.
VOA reports,
At 25, the new Rain Queen, Modjadji VI, is not only
the youngest ever crowned. She is also the first Rain
Queen to have a formal education, and in a break from
tradition, she has vowed to continue her schooling,
possibly even accepting Mr. Mandela's offer to send
her to university abroad.
Although Haggard's "She Who Must Be Obeyed" was
described as white, others ascribe the African queen's
pallor to being hidden away, seldom seen by her people.
 |
SABC photo
Queen
Modjadji VI
| Makobo
succeeds her grandmother, Mokope Modjadji V, born in
1937 and crowned in 1981. (Princess Maria, Mokope's
daughter and Makobo's mother, died two days before
Mokope in 2001: Mourning for Rain Queen of Lovedu)
The Worldwide Guide to Women in
Leadership describes Makobo's grandmother, who ruled
from 1881 to 2001, this way:
According to custom and the strict laws of the
tribe, she was not allowed to have a husband but did
have around 15 wives. These were chosen for her by the
Royal Council and in general are from the household of
the subject chiefs. This strange ritual of ‘bride
giving’ is strictly a form of diplomacy to ensure
loyalty to the Queen. The queen did have three
children of whom two daughters have died. (A) subject
with the right royal credential was chosen by the
Royal Council to father her children. Discreet
arrangements were made to ensure that her natural
desires were fulfilled but the queen was not expected
to confine her sexual activities. Modjadji’s daughter
and intended successor, Princess Makheala, died two
days before she did. Modjajdi is survived by a son and
it is not known who will succeed her. The selection of
a heir is expected to take up to a year, but the only
female in the family is Modjadji V's granddaughter,
Princess Makobo Modjadji, who is 23.
An astonishing number of movies have been made based
on Haggard's legend of She Who Must Be Obeyed -- Ursula
Andress played the title character Ayesha in the 1965 version. From the Internet Movie Datebase:
Great photos of the valley can be found at this site:
The Ethnographic Lens: Images from the
Realm of a Rain Queen. Between 1936 and 1938 social
anthropologists Eileen and Jack Krige undertook
intensive fieldwork in the north-eastern regions of
South Africa among the Lobedu people whose chief
Modjadji was widely acclaimed as a rainmaker.'
'In
1943 their book 'The Realm of a Rain Queen' was
published and has remained in print ever since. Some of
the photographs taken by the Kriges were used as
illustrations in the book but many remained unpublished
and little known ...' Via this collection of archaeological and
anthropological resources from the South African
Museum.
Link to this item | Comment
Man who got Belo to invest millions in
CueCat has a new gig: Webby Award nominee Jim Romenesko at Poynter.org, the
journalists' first daily stop, is leading his column right now with this
item from the (alternative weekly) Dallas
Observer:
J. Jovan Philyaw, the Texas
entrepreneur who convinced Belo to sink nearly $40
million into the failed CueCat scanning device, is calling
himself J. Hutton Pulitzer these days, according to
Eric Celeste. His new job is peddling
crystals.
Meanwhile, Philyaw asks on his site, Who Is J.
Hutton "Jovan" and replies, "Jovan believes so
strongly in the depth and stronghold of "Generational
Curses" that he even changed his birth name (as his 33
Great Grandfather did in 1470) to shake the hold he felt
his "Family Name" had over his life."
This is apparently why he changed his name. No clue
how he chose J. Hutton Pulitzer, though.
CueCats (which whisked you to websites when you used
one to scan barcodes in print) are available on eBay, some modified to scan ordinary
barcodes.
Link to this item | Comment
 |
David Mach's Bangers
and Mash, made of four
abandoned cars and 150,000
newspapers. | Bless this reader: Back on May 3, I
blogged,
• Too big to hide: U.K. artist David
Mach's latest creation -- a 50-ton sculpture made
from four abandoned cars and 150,000 copies of The
(Glasgow, Scotland) Herald newspaper -- is something
any ink-stained wretch would want to see. But I can't
find it. I can read about it, I can see many
other Mach works (such as a full-size train made of
red brick, sculptures made of match heads, others made
from coathangers). But I can't find a photo of Bangers
and Mash, the newsprint behemoth. If you can, please
email
me.
Today I got an email from a reader in Wisconsin, John
Bergman, who sent along the photo above and added, "I
personally saw this exhibit in Glasgow last summer, and
was quite impressed. If you've received any better
photos, I'd be interested in seeing them."
Now we all know.
Link to this item | Comment
Diet doctor Robert Atkins remains in coma,
on life support: AP reports that Atkins' doctors
said his chances of a "meaningful recovery" are slim
after the the doctor slipped on the ice outside his
Manhattan office last week.
This story, like most others, says, "The Atkins diet
emphasizes meat, eggs and cheese and discourages bread,
rice and fruit." I find on this diet that I eat an awful
lot of salads drenched in blue-cheese dressing and, in
restaurants, double veggies while the rest of you are
scarfing down fries. Wonder why they never mention
that?
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Persian Blogger Chronicles is
by Alireza Doostdar, an Iranian getting a master's in
education at Harvard. Doostdar is blogging in English
and translating the highlights from other blogs that
aren't. via Dave Winer.
Link to this item | Comment
The BunnyBass archive of amusing bass
guitars.
Link to this item | Comment
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila
Lennon
features & interactive producer of
projo.com | 
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