Good Reputation Sleeping

Cry The Beloved Country

The New York Times - Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo.

"The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo."

The country I loved, The United States of America, has been stolen by torturers, murders, and war mongers. What, in the name of the God of Peace and Justice, can I do?

Sunday Morning Reads

The Dark Side of the Mountain - Michael Leahy, The Washington Post Magazine.

"Lisi wouldn't need to send Nils Antezana's effects anywhere. He wouldn't need to do a thing because Antezana's daughter, Fabiola, would be flying to Katmandu, Nepal, within four days to get both the effects and a meeting with Lisi, during which she would demand an explanation for what had happened. What she had heard in telephone calls made to other climbers led her to believe that Lisi had made mistakes no guide should make, and therefore was responsible at least in part for her father's death. Fabiola knew she wouldn't be bringing her father back, but she wanted to leave Katmandu with the truth about how his dream went awry."

Touching is Good!

Touch-DS.jp

Nintendo's new game machine has hit the streets - I snagged two for my kid's Christmas gifts, but alas, they are still in the boxes!

For enjoyment, I have been playing around with Nintendo's Japanese DS site which, as usual, leaves its American counterpart in the dust for 'touchability'.

Too much to mention - go play for yourself (you'll need the Flash player)- but one section I really like is 'My First Touch!', which features a series of short Flash videos of some first encounters with the DS. Neat, simple concept and execution - too bad its in Japanese!

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Wired News: Newspapers Should Really Worry.

Don't think for a minute that young people don't read. On the contrary, they do, many of them voraciously. But having grown up under the credo that information should be free, they see no reason to pay for news. Instead they access The Washington Post website or surf Google News, where they select from literally thousands of information sources. They receive RSS feeds on their PDAs or visit bloggers whose views mesh with their own. In short, they customize their news-gathering experience in a way a single paper publication could never do. And their hands never get dirty from newsprint.

All true, but what about the information have-nots? All this talk seems to ignore the vast number of people in this country and around the world who are not connected to the net; many of whom are poor and living in the inner cities or rural areas. Given that this is the majority of the world's population, I would hesitate to count traditional information sources out so quickly.

America's past election cycle should serve as a reminder of the influence things like local newspapers and radio still have with large segments of our population. The net's tools are perhaps one form of future info distribution; I think the jury is still out on what the others might be. Counting print out, however, is a big mistake in world which has a long way to go before everyone is 'connected'.

Tuesday's Guilty Pleasure

Newly purchased, Ely Guerra's new CD, Sweet & Sour, Hot Y Spicy!

Say Bye-Bye

Kodak projector, 67, slides into history. - Ben Rand, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

"(November 19, 2004) — The Eastman Kodak slide projector, that magical box of light and lens that turned snapshots into tools of family bonding, passed into history Thursday night in Rochester. It was 67.

Its financial health failing for several years, the projector succumbed to a variety of technological and societal factors. Families eventually got too busy for home slideshows and cultivated a preference for photographic prints, while businesses migrated to computer-driven multimedia presentations.

The end had been expected since September 2003, when Kodak announced it would stop making the money-losing projectors as part of a shift from film to digital imaging. The last projectors came off production lines to cheers and tears at Kodak Park on Oct. 22."

What Kevin Sites Saw

Link: Kevin Sites Blog - Open Letter to Devil Dogs of 3.1

"I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.

But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.

Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation."

Flickr!

I have been playing around with Flickr, a new online photo sharing application that is part weblog, part gallery, part file cabinet and all techie fun! It is hard to describe all that Flickr does, but essentially you upload your photos via a separate application or through their website (after registering for free).

Its quick and painless and once done you can give your photos titles, put them in groups, or assign them keywords or 'tags' which make them searchable and able to be cataloged with anyone else's images using the same or similar tags. Another cool feature is the ability to add notes directly to regions of the photos which appear when a viewer mouses over an outlined area - this is a great way to caption in detail without bogging down the casual viewer.

This already seems like alot, but the fun is just starting. Flickr can also post photos for you on another weblog, do automated slideshows from your photo groups, and connect you with other Flickr users allowing you to share your photos in larger groups or to post links on your Flickr page to your photo 'friends'.

Flickr's coolness factor comes into play, however, not just in its functionality but in how these tools are presented and interact with the user. In general Flickr is fast, using a combination of html, PHP and  Flash to give you an array of cool tools for uploading, organizing and sharing photos. There are also code snippits for posting teasers and streaming images on other websites and, of course, there is an RSS feed available for each member's photos.

Flickr is free for most users, with some limits on how many photos and groups you can have. They also have a pay version which, for around $50, gives you unlimited storage and groups.

Flickr is evolving (its still in beta) and as its popularity grows so do server and bandwidth problems (there were some problems in early November but they seem to have been taken care of). Flickr does, however, seem to have a very good idea of how to make technology and photography work and even if they don't survive, its safe to say that they have already made some great contributions to the data cloud of the net that are not likely to go away. Give it a go, see what you think.

As The Post Turns

Post Discusses Circulation, Diversity.

"Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. met with hundreds of newsroom staffers yesterday to outline management's latest attempts to combat declining circulation. However, the more intense discussion at the meeting involved diversity at the newspaper, as several minority staff members lamented that a white man recently was chosen over a woman and a black man as the paper's new managing editor.

Philip Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news, who is white, was selected by Downie to be the paper's No. 2 editor earlier this month, besting Eugene Robinson, assistant managing editor of Style, who is black, and Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news....

"We're crushed," said national reporter Darryl Fears at the meeting. Fears, who is black, organized two meetings of African American staffers in recent days in response to Bennett's promotion. "A lot of our worst suspicions were confirmed about the ability of African Americans and other minorities to rise to the highest level of the best papers in the world," he said....

Robinson is a 24-year Post veteran. He covered then-Mayor Marion Barry as a city reporter and had been city editor. He then took foreign assignments in The Post's Buenos Aires and London bureaus before becoming the No. 2 editor for the foreign staff. He has served as the head of Style since 1999. Style section critics Henry Allen and Stephen Hunter won Pulitzer Prizes during Robinson's tenure." - Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post

Blood on the Streets

Fallujah in Pictures.

"i created this site because I was angry at my country and couldn't understand how we could let this happen. i now believe it is because most americans haven't seen what this war really looks like. we have seen gruesome beheadings and we have seen saddam's torture chambers. this is what is being done in our name."