Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Catching up with three Benton Headlines: INDECENCY COMPLAINTS PLUMMET IN 2Q According to the FCC's quarterly report, released Wednesday, indecency and obscenity complaints against broadcast TV and radio dropped from 157,016 in the first quarter of 2005 to 6,161 in the second. That latter figure compares to 272,818 complaints in the second quarter of 2004. The drop since January has also been precipitous, from 138,652 in January to 14,480 in February, to 3,884 in March, to approximately 2,000 per month from April through June. January and February totals were boosted by Parents Television Council complaints against CBS' CSI (infantilism) and Without a Trace (teen orgy). [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton] (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers) * See the FCC release FIRST PRIVACY OFFICER CALLS 'EXPERIMENT' A SUCCESS Nuala O'Connor Kelly, who won praise for protecting Americans' privacy rights at the Department of Homeland Security but drew criticism for her office's lack of independence, announced she will step down this week after two years as the department's first chief privacy officer. The ombudsman-like job was created by Congress in 2002 to uphold the Privacy Act within a department that launched a series of ambitious security programs that affect millions of people, including airline travelers, truck drivers and foreign visitors. Many groups that advocate greater privacy protections feared the chief privacy officer could have become a rubber stamp for the administration's homeland security agenda, but they credited O'Connor Kelly with establishing an office that won respect within and outside the administration. Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said O'Connor Kelly deserves "high grades," but her office could do better if it had power to issue subpoenas. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Sara Kehaulani Goo and Spencer S. Hsu] IN BOGOTA, VOX POP IN A BOX Anyone can step up to a kiosk in Colombia's capital and record a message on any subject to be aired on TV. The weekly show, "Citycapsula," is a big hit. The show's inspiration came from a sister channel in Toronto, home to "Speakers Corner," a program named after the famous spot in London's Hyde Park where people station themselves and declaim on any subject under the sun. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Henry Chu] (requires registration) 11:56:14 PM    comment []

And The Julie/Julia Project is #1 on the day and should capture #5 all-time Monday. 6:42:51 PM    comment []

Our reporter asks, Is this the rhythm of a world in step?. Salsa music steps out in Arabic, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Hindi, Indonesian, Thai, Sinhalese, and Nepali. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 6:40:25 PM    comment []

Harriet Miers and that bin Laden warning. The president's Supreme Court nominee is the one who handed him the infamous Aug. 6 PDB. [Salon.com] 6:40:19 PM    comment []

Google Maps zipcode mashup. Several folks have blogged this today, but I couldn't help myself. Type in your zipcode and you'll see a red line showing its boundries. It's the simple things that thrill me. (Note to, well, you know who you are: wikipedia entry for mashup.) (via: programmableweb which has lots more mashups and directories of services that with APIs that allow them to be mash-upable.) [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 7:12:24 AM    comment []

More Helicobacter pylori coverage: Australians Win Nobel in Medicine [Washington Post: Top News] "Even though no definite answers are at hand, recent data clearly suggest that a dysfunction in the recognition of microbial products by the human immune system can result in disease development," the committee wrote. "The discovery of Helicobacter pylori has led to an increased understanding of the connection between chronic infection, inflammation and cancer." Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, said: "I think this is a perfect example of how excellent science triumphed over conventional dogma. The prize affirms that we must keep true to our scientific principles of exploration, and continually question our assumptions." 7:11:49 AM    comment []

New, On-Line Philosophy Conference for Young Philosophers and Grad Students. Details here. Thomas Nadelhoffer (Philosophy, Florida State) has done a splendid job putting this together. [Leiter Reports] 7:07:58 AM    comment []

Jeremy: Complementary Currency: For Bootstrapping, But Not For Everything. There's a growing movement afoot to have alternative money systems, or "complementary currencies", as they're called. The people involved are not cranks or tax-evasionists, they include people like Bernard Lietaer (called "the father of the Euro" by some, and in 1991 named the best currency dealer in the world by Business Week). We've mentioned local currencies before, and there are many great resources, link lists, and in-depth articles elsewhere. More recently, Lietaer did an interview with Ode magazine, and at last spring's Doors of Perception conference I saw Margrit Kennedy talk, who has basically all of her presentations and papers online. But I wanted to mention it here because it would be helpful tool for hurricane Katrina redevelopment in the long term. Also, I disagree with Kennedy and Lietaer about some of the potential of complementary currencies--like whether they make money more environmentally responsible and redistribute wealth--and I wanted to describe why. Maybe it will cause some interesting discussion on what "green" money would really be. For those unfamiliar with it, alternative currency is someone printing their own money. You've all used some kind of complementary currency before--frequent flier miles, gift certificates, etc.; maybe you've bartered an hour of your time for an hour of someone else's time. Many different systems have sprung up to formalize these exchanges, from Japan's Hureai Kippu to New York's Ithaca Hours to Germany's Weimar Regio. Generally these systems only work when trusted groups do it (like town governments, large companies, or specially-constructed high-transparency organizations), and generally it’s done to limit people’s spending in certain ways (like frequent-flier miles, which can mostly just be spent on plane fare). The greatest success stories of complimentary currencies are in picking up ravaged communities and helping to get them on their feet. A primary example that Lietaer and Kennedy cite is the Worgl, a currency created by a small Austrian town during the great depression. The town of Worgl had high unemployment and lacked the money to pay for its normal infrastructure services, so they killed two birds with one stone by printing a local currency they could pay people to do civic work with, and which could only be used in the local area. They also made the value of the currency time-decaying (or "demurring", as it's properly called) by 12% per year, which caused people to spend it rapidly--increasing the "velocity of money", which in a sense multiplies the amount of money in the community. In about one year, Worgl dropped its unemployment rate by 25% and increased public-works investment by 220%, while the rest of Austria slid further into depression. The experiment was only stopped because the Austrian government was worried that its control over the national money system would be threatened. Today in the Brazilian favela of Palmeira, a local currency called the Palma is helping to lift the residents out of poverty; it is working much more slowly than the Worgl did, but it does not circulate as much because its value does not demur over time. New Orleans and surrounding areas could benefit greatly from creating a local demurring currency. It would help people who have no "real" money and no jobs to start working and spending to rebuild their lives. It would also help keep relief money local, instead of going in one pocket and out the other to large national contractors.  . . . [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 7:07:53 AM    comment []

Subway maps. This Washington Post article says "a few months ago, New York-based Web designer William Bright came up with a simple idea: Take digital images of subway maps, slice them into pieces and make them viewable on color iPod screens.Two months and almost 100,000 downloads later, Bright has subway maps from 22 cities -- from Vancouver's SkyTrain to Berlin's S-Bahn to Washington's Metro -- available for download on his Web site, The Metro's system map -- which is broken into several easier-to-read maps -- has become the third-most-popular download on the site, he said.Bright's maps became so popular that they caught the attention of transit authorities in San Francisco and New York City, whose lawyers informed Bright that he was distributing their copyrighted map images without a license."Take the NYC subway map off your website and confirm to me by email that you will not do this again," read a terse letter from an attorney for that city's subway system, according to a posting on Bright's Web site. San Francisco officials also sent him a "cease and desist" letter for the iPod version of their subway map, he said.In Washington, transit authorities gave Bright their blessing last week."I can't stress how cool that is," he said about Metro's response". Lost Underground? Check Your IPod [Smart Mobs] 7:04:52 AM    comment []

Behavior: Stopping for a Smoke on the Road to Popularity. Popular students appear to be more likely to take up smoking than their less popular peers, a new study of sixth and seventh graders in Southern California shows. By NICHOLAS BAKALAR. [NYT > Education] 7:04:38 AM    comment []

Some Links. . . . I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but Ask Philosophers is apparently a website where members of the public can send questions to philosophers and a crack team will provide answers. I for one would like to know where the semantics/pragmatics distinction is, but I suspect I won't like their answer.  . . . [Thoughts Arguments and Rants] 7:03:48 AM    comment []