Posts from — May 2006

The Stranger | Seattle | Columns | Savage Love | Savage Love:
New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health-care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon,” reports the Washington Post. “[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control… [I]t’s important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

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yes… we know what they think is best for women….. and somehow i think what they think is best is likely a very pernicious nostalgic fiction.

LAMPPIX // Welcome!:
This is the website of LAMPPIX, the Linux Live CD booting a webserver. LAMPPIX allows you to burn your web projects (i.e. PHP presentations or Perl scripts) onto a CD-ROM and give them away to others. They will only have to insert the CD and reboot — if you configured LAMPPIX right (and this is really easy!) they can view your project.

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this could be an excellent tool for distributing student projects for digital archives.

Film Your Issue: Vote for your favorite short film – U.S. Life – MSNBC.com:

Orphans in Africa
Tim Leaton,
22
Midlothian, Va.
Virginia Tech

12%
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that’s who i voted for, you should vote too.

Article: U.S. Orphan Works Bill Introduced:
Gigi Sohn wrote very early today:
Late yesterday afternoon [May 22, 2006], Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Court, Internet and Intellectual Property introduced HR 5439, the Orphan Works Act of 2006. The bill, which seeks to limit liability for artists, educators and others who make a “reasonably diligent search” to find a copyright holder but cannot, is a significant improvement over the draft bill proposed by the Copyright Office in February.
Go here to read the entire post. I hope others like Larry Lessig and K.M. Dames will provide their opinions of this.
Related: Article: U.S. Orphan Works Bill Introduced
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I hope they do too. Orphan works are a significant problem for us today, but moreso for the next generation of scientists who will lose access to a ton of closed research because things will go out of print but stay in copyright. my favorite solution is that the copyright should expire 10 years after the last major print edition(1000 copy) is published. this does two things, it encourages publishers to keep publishing things or it forces them to relinquish the rights.

Information Policy: Evaluation Report on UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre Initiative:

UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre initiative is contributing “to improving quality of life through access to information” according to an independent evaluation report carried out by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

UNESCO’s CMC initiative promotes sustainable local development through community-based facilities that combine traditional media like radio, television and print with new information communication technologies (ICTs) such as computers, the Internet, and mobile devices.

Since 2001, UNESCO has established more than 87 CMCs in over 22 developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean with major funding provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The evaluation describes the initiative’s main achievement: “The CMCs are accepted by and fully integrated into the communities and can in many cases be sustained beyond the pilot phase without core operating grants. The effort and funding that UNESCO has channeled into this transformative initiative have been exceeded by the hard work and commitment of the CMC staff and the communities where they are based.”

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this report has some significant findings. one of which i want to reaffirm…. people matter more than technics.

Just published: “What UNESCO for the Future”, UNESCO, 2006: UNESCO SHS:

‘What UNESCO for the future?’ proceeds from a reflexion on current and future trends and potential gaps that must be filled, on future scenarios and on ‘What UNESCO?’ in terms of its role today as a participant that could influence the processes of global transformation.

‘What UNESCO for the future?’ reflects on UNESCO’s possible responses to the rising global challenges it faces today. In other words, what role could our Organization have within the United Nations system, and what contribution could it make towards resolving the main challenges and threats of the twenty-first century?

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i wonder what unesco we’ll have. i look forward to working with more people from unesco…. we’ll see.

Hooooo-boy….:

How to Truly Honor Our Dead:
Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay off the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this tragic fiasco is brought to an end.
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this is about as true as it gets. this would end it.

YouTube – The Death of The Internet?:
The Death of The Internet?

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worth watching…

now is the time to become involved.

let me know if you have problems.