I've been trying to find the words to express exactly why I feel that media consolidation is such a bad thing.

Then I found this elegant Businessweek Online commentary by Catherine Yang, Tom Lowry and Ronald Gover that explains it pretty well:
Commentary: Media Mergers: The Danger Remains
Despite 100 channels and the Web, softer ownership rules will put the major outlets in Big Media's hands .

Meanwhile, media consolidation is well under way, even without massive deregulation: In 2001, 311 deals valued at $113 billion were announced, the highest amount for any industry. Scale is the name of the game. Already, the big three networks are aligned with conglomerates led by Disney, Viacom, and General Electric.

The AOL Time Warner (AOL ) merger only raised the stakes for bigness. If the FCC's rules evaporate altogether, "we would be trading some greater profitability...in return for undercutting the very pillars of separate media ownership that our democracy is built on," says Gene Kimmelman, co-director of Consumers Union.

It's up to regulators to decide whether more consolidation will hurt the range of viewpoints available to the public. But they need to tread carefully. Once gone, an independent press and media won't be easily recreated.

The public at large would prefer to have a large number of diverse stations over huge conglomerates that play the same crap over and over again.

The survey, conducted by the Future of Music Coalition, is part of a larger research study on the effects of radio consolidation on musicians and the public that is being conducted in partnership with the Media Access Project and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Consolidation of radio station ownership is not popular. Eight of ten favor congressional action to protect or expand the number of independently owned local stations By a better than ten to one ratio - 76 percent to 7 percent - radio listeners believe that DJs should be given more air time for songs they think will be of interest to their audiences rather than be required to mostly play songs of artists backed by recording companies.

If it can be substantiated that radio stations are paid to give air time preference to the music artists supported by record companies, the public approves by a 68 to 24 percent ratio for Congress to consider passing laws to ensure that all artists have a more reasonable chance of having their songs heard.

Half of the respondents - 52 percent - say radio would be more appealing to them if it offered more new music, less repetition and more music of local bands and artists.

By a ratio of six to one, radio listeners prefer a long, rather than a short, playlist that provides them a greater variety of songs and less repetition during the week Seventy-five percent would like to see low power FM stations (LPFM) expanded in their communities, especially if they offer (a) the music of local bands and artists, (b) talk shows on issues of local interest, and on local issues and (c) health, science or fitness programming. Additionally, 74 percent favor legislation to expand the number of LPFM stations in the United States.

The public opinion research firm Behavior Research Center conducted the survey from May 13-20, 2002 via 500 in-depth telephone interviews on a random sample of adults throughout the United States.

Jonathan Rowe has written a great commentary for the Christian Science Monitor:
Tollbooths of the mind.

Share money and you have less; share an idea and you still have it, and more. Jefferson practiced what he preached, in this respect at least. As the nation's first commissioner of patents, Jefferson did not grant these monopolies easily or eagerly. He accepted the need for copyrights and patents, but strictly limited in extent and time.

The aim always was to enrich the public domain – the commons of the mind – not to line the pockets of a privileged class of monopolists of ideas. Jefferson actually refused to patent his many inventions, because he believed invention to be the property of humankind.

This vision prevailed in America for two centuries, more or less. The result was more enterprise, research, and invention than the world had ever seen. The nation had its share of patent hounds, Thomas Edison not least of them. But in the realm of science, the Jeffersonian ethos prevailed. Jonas Salk, who discovered the first polio vaccine, once was asked who would own the new drug. "There is no patent," Salk replied. "Could you patent the sun?"

Today, that question would not be rhetorical. Fences and tollgates are rising rapidly on Jefferson's commons of the mind. Copyright and patent monopolies have gone far beyond what he and other Founders intended. Corporations now are claiming ownership of everything under the sun, if not the sun itself: body parts, business practices, the genetic code. They even are claiming ownership of the English language. McDonald's has asserted trademark claims to 131 common words and phrases, such as "Always Fun" and "Made For You."

The Economist has a new article on "emerging wireless" technologies (smart antennas, mesh networks, ad hoc architectures, and ultra-wideband transmission):
Watch this airspace.

Although I just heard about the Spider Goat story yesterday for the first time, it turns out that Forbes had written a full story on it over a year ago. ABC News also covered the story in detail a while back.

(And here's the poop straight from the source at Nexia Biotech.)

Here's the Forbes story by Christopher Helman:
Charlotte's Goat.

Nexia is tackling a materials-science conundrum that has stumped even DuPont for 20 years: how to synthesize spider silk. Milking the spiders themselves is out of the question—they're cannibals. "Put a bunch of them together and soon you end up with one big, fat, happy spider. It's like trying to farm tigers," says Turner.

By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia bred she-goats whose mammary glands are able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk. Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are filtered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread.

Here's the ABC.com story:
Here Comes Spider-Goat?: Genetically Altered Goats May Lead to Strong Silk-like Threads.

Ounce for ounce, spider silk is five times stronger than steel and about three times tougher than man-made fibers such as Kevlar. And that makes the material ideal for all sorts of interesting uses — from better, lighter bulletproof vests to safer suspension bridges.

But "harvesting" spider silk hasn't been easy. Unlike silkworms, spiders aren't easy to domesticate. "Spiders are territorial carnivores, they eat each other if placed in contact of in close proximity," says Jeffrey Turner, president and CEO of Nexia Biotechnoloies, Inc. "It's like trying to farm tigers."

Now, researchers at the Quebec-based Nexia along with scientists at the U.S. Army's Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) in Natick, Mass., say they may have figured a way out of the sticky situation.

Here's a summary of the Librarian's determination and the full text of the regulations adopted by the Librarian (http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates_final.html).

To subscribe to the U.S. Copyright Offices Newsletter, fill out the form at:
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/newsnet/subchange.html.

The Register's recommendation and the Librarian's order will be available to the public next week.

**********************************************************
* CALENDAR *

July 1: Expected effective date of Copyright Office fee changes (67 FR 38003)

July 1: Beginning of 60-day period when, in the absence of a license agreement, a party with a significant interest in establishing reasonable terms and rates for certain statutory licenses may file a petition to initiate a rate setting proceeding (67 FR 4472)

October 7: Initiation date should arbitration proceedings be necessary in adjustment of rates and terms for noncommercial educational broadcasting compulsory license

I met a bunch of cool comics, poets and writers last weekend at Charles Ander's Writers With Drinks spoken word variety show at San Francisco's Cafe Du Nord.

Heather Gold gave an awesome and spontaneous stand-up performance with lots of uncomfortable political material I don't even feel comfortable repeating in print :-)

Analee Newitz had some insightful thoughts on the rather fundamental differences between stem cell cloning and human cloning.

I also bought books by performers Daphne Gottlieb (Why Things Burn) and Lynn Breedlove (Godspeed).

More on them later...

Anyway, if you're in San Francisco, my advice to you is to check out the next Writers With Drinks on July 13th at the Cafe Du Nord...

Ran into a cool site, Textploitation (while looking for http://www.techsploitation.com).Textploitation has some kind of government money for an SMS project. Those interested in such things might want to check it out.

Here's an article for more backround about this situation, of which I just heard of today for the first time, and am not claiming to know anything about.

Nevertheless, I found the letter below (that was forwarded to me on a mailing list) pretty interesting:

To whom it may concern,

It seems like a real "Weird Nightmare" to be writing you this email. For the last two years I have been involved in a suit because the Beastie Boys sampled a part of my composition "Choir" and did not contact me for permission. They did not change in any way what they sampled from "Choir". It begins with the sampled six and a half seconds and loops in the song over forty times. "Pass the Mic'" has appeared in CD, MP3, LP, and DVD formats.

The law clearly states that to use someone else's music one must contact and receive permission from both the record company and the copyright owner. "Choir" was registered with the copyright office and ASCAP in 1978. My publishing company JANEW MUSIC controls 100% of the rights. Nevertheless the Beastie Boys only contacted and received permission from ECM Records and ignored me.

The case went up for summary judgement one month ago and Judge Nora Manella of US Federal Court ruled against me!!!!!!!!!!! She stated as a fact of law that my music was unoriginal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The liner notes of Axum begins with a quote from the New York Times that "James Newton is the most accomplished and original flutist now playing Jazz".The year that Axum was released (1982) was also the first year that I won the Down Beat International Critics Poll as the best jazz flutist. The judge must feel that her opinion is more significant than all of the experts in the field.

The six and a half second sample consists of three sung notes C,Db ,C and a held flute harmonic C2, as a result of the combination of voice, harmonic and a balanced distribution of each a series of shifting multiphonics are created. She ignored the multiphonics because they weren't written on the score and said that there are just three notes in the score which aren't protectable. If you go to the Beastie Boy's DVD of the piece "Pass the Mic" to signify the song their is only my flute sample and a drum beat . There is a spectrograph that moves wildly when my multiphonics are played. If there was only one pitch the movement would be minimal. She also consistently used European paradigms to judge my music. An aria from Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" and Cole Porter's "Night and Day" were examples of what is protectable. "Choir" is about four black women singing in a church in rural Arkansas. This work is a modern approach to a spiritual. As you well know, one would be hard-pressed to find multiphonic fingerings in most jazz scores, even when multiphonics are used!!!! If I'm writing for a classical ensemble I'll write out the multiphonic fingerings because of how notation is used in that culture of music.

Spirituals come out of the oral tradition, and if they are notated they're in the most simplest form which is the way that I wrote out "Choir" On the same LP one can find "The Neser" which is influenced by Ravel and is a 8-minute work for flute quartet where everything is written out except a short alto flute cadenza. I certainly didn't become dumb when I dealt with my own culture in "Choir." The urgency of this letter is that after unjustly winning the case the Beastie Boys have filed a motion with the court for me to pay their legal fees of $492,000 after they stole my music. I have already spent a considerable amount of money for a creative musician and college professor. This would, of course, send me into bankrupcy, and I stand a chance of losing my home and all that I have worked for through the years. If you can spread the press release around to your colleagues in the European press, it will help the cause greatly. The more newspapers, magazines and journals that this is placed in will help. Please inform us of any press that appears so that we can use it in our legal endeavors. Also any of you that are heads of organizations or lawyers please contact my lawyer, Alan Korn (aakorn@igc.org), and he can give you the information of where to send Amicus letters.

This decision is a dangerous one that would affect jazz composers and other composers that choose to write in other ways. I have had plenty of training to write all of my scores in the most eurocentric Boulezian fashion but why should I be forced to to please a Judge who has very limited musical knowledge, certainly little of the Afro-American musical tradition. The strain on this trial and subsequent rulings have been immense. It has curtailed much of my artistic output because of the seriousness of this situation. For many years I have tried to give much as an artist and educator to the world community. This is a time when I have to now ask for your help. I have never sued anyone in all of my years on the planet up to this point. I am fighting for my rights and the abilty to express myself in my own and any other cultural perspective that I choose as an artist. Please spread this around as much as possible.

Yours in music and freedom,

James Newton

During our celebratory Creative Commons dinner a few weeks back, Cory and Aaron were arguing about the randomness of numbers that come after the first billion numbers after the decimal in pi (3.14nextbillionnumbershere...then what dammit?) (Specifically, they were arguing about whether the distribution of digits in a non-repeating number is also Gaussian -- the answer is no, because of distributions such as 1001110011001010 -- Aaron won :-)

At one point, Matthew Haughey commented: "Oh my god, they're arguing over pi over dessert."

I still don't really understand it completely, but something pretty cool happened over in Australia with regard to the hypothetical possibility of being able to someday transport matter instantaneously.

See the New Scientist article by :
Quantum Teleportation Technique Improved.

I just came a cross an unusually understandable CARP Fact Sheet over on the Future of Music Coalition website.

I am speechless. Just watch the cartoon.

The bad news is: this isn't a joke. It's a real product. (And it looks damn affordable.)

Marc Perkel was interviewed by Jennifer Liberto and asked if he knew about Media Whores Online, to which he explained he didn't. She then proceeded to print an article saying the project got started with some funding from him -- and now Salon won't amend it or pull the piece.

Here is the exact language in question:

As best can be determined, Media Whores Online originated in Tulsa, Okla., in 1996 when a self-proclaimed "ADD Catholic with an IQ of 64" began an irreverent left-leaning e-mail listserv called RL-LNW, short for "Rush Limba -- Lying Nazi Whore." Shy yet passionate, its low-profile editor, Terry Coppage, took on right-wing agendas with cutting and often crude humor. He received some financial help from Marc Perkel, an eccentric computer programmer who ran against incumbent John Ashcroft in the 2000 Missouri Republican Senate primary, garnering 10 percent of the vote with almost no campaigning. Soon Coppage began publishing his commentaries on a Web site called Bartcop, and adopted the moniker "Bart."

Since the HTML version of the article in question cannot be accessed by the public at large, I've also created a plain text version for everyone's convenience.

Here's the actual Letter To Salon from Marc Perkel, but he also explained some of the details to me in an email:

I talked to her as she researched the article. She came across as if she were doing a pro-media whores article and asked questions relating to how sites like mediawhoresonline.com were a reaction to the failures of traditional news media.

In our discussion she asked who was behind the site and I made it clear that I had no idea - which is true. We talked about Bartcop.com - a site that I am behind and founded - with a guy in Tulsa OK in 1996 and I talked about why I was doing that.

I do think Bartcop did coin the term "Media Whore" so there was enough of a connection for this writer to deliberately confuse the facts. I think that mediawhoresonline was a bartcop inspired publication as are many sites on the web.

As best I can tell - this all started with people on CNN crossfire started arguing about who is behind MWO and made it out to be some sort of mystery or secret. This reporter who wrote the Salon piece did it from the perspective of smearing the left and to out the secret author of MWO. Having failed to get the facts as to who MWO is - she decided to out me and Terry as MWO.

Bartcop has dedicated an issue to her with links to many other sites that reacted to Salon's story and Salon's refusal to pull the story after Salon realized it was a false piece.

Here's a Christian Science Monitor piece by James Turner on the countdown to James H. Billington's pending decision on the CARP webcasting rates:
Why Internet radio may fade.

The Librarian of Congress is usually not considered a magnet for controversy.

But on June 20th, the eyes of Internet broadcasters and music industry insiders will focus on James H. Billington as he decides what royalties Internet radio stations will pay to record labels.

Depending on how the rates are set, some insiders believe the announcement could put some Web broadcasters out of business.

The issue of Internet-radio royalties was first raised when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998. This law, intended to strengthen the copyright protections of digital media such as software and CDs, also required the recording industry to negotiate with Internet broadcasters to determine how much artists should be paid when their music is played on an Internet radio station.

The sides failed to reach an agreement, so Congress directed Mr. Billington to form a panel to set the rates.

From the "and you smell bad too" department, we have Don Henley mincing no words whatsoever regarding his opinion of Ms. Love.

Check out the Vancouver Sun story by Kerry Gold:
Eagles still test the limits .

As for Courtney Love, who's also waging battle with the recording industry for the same reasons, Henley is quick to separate himself from the loud-mouthed grunge rocker turned Hollywood actor.

"She's not a part of our group, nor do we want her to be, because she's a pain in the ass, and she's a loose cannon. She's her own worst enemy."

But Henley's not finished.

"She's an asshole, okay? I can't say it any plainer than that. She is a huge asshole. She's bright but she's wasting it, because she's so interested in being a personality that that is all she can think about.

"God knows we have enough image problems to overcome as it is. Artists are known for being flakey, and mindless and self absorbed... and Courtney doesn't help us in that arena."

Well I just found the first thing out that sucks about Mozilla 1.0: it still has no default CSS or XSLT stylesheet when none is specified so you can view and parse, view and debug XML fragments easily.

It just means that Internet Explorer is stilll my XML Development browser of choice, for now.

There's supposed to be some way to configure client side stylesheets, so I'll try to go find that feature...I guess (shrug).

The ChessBrain Project (which "seeks to create a massive chess playing computer by utilizing the idle processing power of networked machines") and the The Distributed Chess Project ("Creating Chess Playing Artificial Neural Networks with Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms") are working towards creating non-commercial distributed computing platforms.

All's well that ends well, I suppose. The Dixie Chicks were basically demanding more cash and it looks like they got it. Good for them.

See the L.A. Times article by Chuck Philips:
Dixie Chicks, Sony End Feud With a New Deal.

After going to last week's Mozilla party, I figured I'd download it and give it a try.

A friend pointed some cool features out to me (See linked graphics below for instructions on configuring these):

• You can select which search engine is used within the address bar.

• You can configure it to turn off images (ads) from a particular server.

• You can configure it to not respect JavaScript pop-up ad windows.

The funniest thing about this Billboard article is that the team accusing her of stealing a single song is claiming she created two different songs from it (on the same album even!)

Two musicians have filed a lawsuit against Britney Spears, claiming that a couple of songs on her multiplatinum second Jive album, "Oops! ... I Did It Again," were based on a tune they wrote. Philadelphia songwriters Michael Cottrill and Lawrence Wnukowski claim in the lawsuit that they authored, recorded, and copyrighted a song called "What You See Is What You Get" in late 1999 and submitted it to one of Spears' representatives for consideration on a future album.

Yeah so my little part and theme song for Monsturd went over pretty well over the weekend. Merlin Mann wrote up a nice review.

I think half the thrill on Friday night was having so many friends in the audience laughing at every little thing. But it was a different kind of thrill on Sunday afternoon hearing complete strangers laugh at all the same jokes -- in just the right places. Many of them stayed after just to laugh at the credits and the theme song.

My buddies Rick Popko and Dan West really pulled this one off!

I'll have my own little Monsturd web site up soon, with stills from my scenes and stuff. Stay tuned.

Come see me in my acting debut!

Monsturd premiere's tonight at 8pm at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco. I play the wife of the first victim and sing the Theme Song:
Number Two: The Ballad of the Monsturd.

So far it's gotten some great reviews! Here's one from SF Examiner.

Check out:
http://www.craigslist.org/craig.vs.hollywood.html.

Craig Newmark, a ReplayTV user (aided by the EFF) is suing Turner Broadcasting (among others) and seeking a declarative judgement asserting his right to space- and time-shift TV programming -- and to skip commercials while doing it -- using a PVR.

Right on dude! You big sweetie! Stand up for our right to watch shows later and go to the bathroom during commercials! (Has it really come to this?)

Craig vs Hollywood
Thursday, June 6, 2002

Hey, folks, you know that craigslist has a strong commitment to political issues that affect the online community, like privacy and free speech. We figure we should focus on what we know something about, and otherwise, provide you a platform for whatever you want to discuss.

The major Hollywood companies could be embracing new technologies, serving their customers better and making more money, for themselves, and for artists. A lot of people in Hollywood know this.

However, a lot of folks in entertainment seem to be panicking, taking bad advice and trying to get anti-consumer laws passed, to restrict personal freedoms, like what you do when you buy something like a CD or DVD, or record a TV program.

To help everyone out, Craig is suing Hollywood, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a major pioneer in the fight for online rights.

To oversimplify, the Hollywood lawyers are telling us that when we view TV, skipping commercials is a copyright violation... and it gets worse from there.

Craig and others are telling them that this ain't okay.

Craig is not representing craigslist in this regard, but we figure you should know about this.

(For that matter, he can even help people figure out good ways to prevent actual piracy, which could help out artists and the named companies.)

The idea is that Hollywood and also the tech industry are really well-represented, but no one stands up for ordinary citizens and consumers. (No one really stands up for the artists, and the industry is encouraging piracy by its current actions, but that's another fight.)

Hey, whenever you can, please help us out: support our legal challenge in whatever way you can, stay informed, and tell people in your company and even Congress that you're concerned about this. I'd appreciate it if you were to join EFF or any group concerned with your online rights.

More info is available on the EFF site here.

thanks!

Craig

This saddens me greatly.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dee Dee Ramone
dead at 50

LOS ANGELES, June 6 ˜ Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member of the pioneer punk band the Ramones, was found dead of a possible drug overdose in his Hollywood home, the coroner‚s office said Thursday. He was 50.

RAMONE, whose real name was Douglas Glenn Colvin, was found dead on the couch by his wife when she returned home at 8:25 p.m. Wednesday, said Craig Harvey, operations chief for the coroner‚s office. Paramedics were called and he was declared dead at 8:40 p.m. „The investigator noted drug paraphernalia, including a single syringe on the kitchen counter, and we are handing it as a possible accidental overdose, Harvey said. An autopsy was planned later Thursday.

The death comes 11 weeks after the band was celebrated with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lead singer Joey Ramone died in April of last year of lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was 49.

In what at first appeared to be an annoucement straight out of left field, it turns out that Al Sharpton and artists rights have a lot more in common than first meets the eye, via Sharpton's National Action Network.

Check out this little ditty from Billboard (registration required so I have cut and pasted it from an email sent to me):
Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz.

Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz

Billboard Bulletin:

June 05, 2002,

Cochran, Sharpton To Call For Changes In Music Biz

Seeking to end what they call the "subservient way" major record labels treat recording artists, lawyer Johnnie Cochran and the Rev. Al Sharpton will today hold a news conference in L.A. in which they plan to propose "radical changes" for the music industry.

Operating as the legal arm of Sharpton's New York-based National Action Network civil-rights organization, Cochran is seeking meetings with the majors to "try and get a sense how [artist] relationships and contracts are evolved," according to a spokesperson. Changes they plan to propose include a system that would emulate the free-agency market that exists in professional sports; presumably this would give artists greater opportunities to shop their services to the highest bidder.

The RIAA did not return calls for comment. -- Erik Gruenwedel, L.A.

Hey kids! Now you'll be able to recognize which CDs are the hottest (you know the ones -- the ones your parents wouldn't want you to have) because they will be clearly labeled!

Cool parents will be able to demonstrate their flexibility by purchasing such discs, in large numbers, for their insecure teenagers, while big businesses can rest assured that they will be better insulated from (those nasty) occasional suicides.

See the Wall St. Journal piece by Yochi J. Dreazen:
BMG Records goes out on a limb with detailed parental warnings -- Explicit content to be noted on albums, advertising.

Acting voluntarily, BMG plans to place new advisory stickers on certain albums, specifying whether they have violent content, sexual content, strong language or some combination of the three, officials say. BMG plans to include the more-detailed warnings in advertising, including television, radio, print and online ads for the albums concerned...

...BMG officials say they are sensitive to concerns that warning stickers, or ratings, could crimp artistic expression by making it easy for retailers and consumers to shun music they deem offensive. "There is definitely a need to balance the preservation of free artistic expression with the need and desire to address consumers' concerns that the labels didn't tell them enough information," says LaVerne Evans, BMG's senior vice president and general counsel. "We feel that these new labels do that."

Of course, parental warnings often have a way of helping sales, by turning an album into forbidden fruit and making teens want to hear it. And many albums and CDs that have been edited to remove explicit content, and are labeled accordingly, haven't sold well.

I just saw Garbage on the Tonight Show. Shirley Manson sure is cool, but her choice of commando attire reminded me why I put my camouflage pants in the bottom of my closet last September.

Just added Poltergeist to my online collection.

This song is also written by myself and Ron Taylor and recorded at Vagrant Records by Erik-4A with Evan Foster on lead guitar.

Some agricultural biotechnology interests (Monsanto and Syngenta) have found a new humanitarian ways of dodging the real concerns surrounding the use of biogenetically-altered plants in food crops.

See:
Cultivating a New Image: Firms Give Away Data, Patent Rights on Crops,
by Justin Gillis for the Washington Post.

But the long-term environmental impact of the crops remains a serious question. Many scientists wonder whether foreign genes inserted into crops can spread to the wild relatives of those plants, doing some kind of unforeseen environmental damage.

In fact, several incidents have suggested that the ag bio companies, whatever their intentions, won't be able to control where their altered genes wind up. Agricultural biotechnology's biggest debacle to date occurred when an altered crop called Starlink corn, approved only for use as animal food, turned up in the human food supply, forcing widespread recalls of taco shells and other products.

That mess forced all the biotechnology companies to pledge never to put a crop on the market for animal use only, because it would be certain to wind up in the human food supply. For similar reasons, many American farmers are worried about Monsanto's efforts to commercialize a genetically engineered wheat. The farmers, though they may support biotechnology in principle, are afraid the altered wheat will taint the entire American crop in the eyes of foreign buyers.

Bitzi has used my "Shake All Over" tune as an example of its Privileged Listings service.

I'm in Cambridge, MA for a Creative Commons meeting. What a cool little town.

Unfortunately, I'm not having the same kind of luck that both Cory Doctorow and Aaron Swartz were able to have with finding wireless networks while putzing around in Harvard Square.

A few months ago, Cory was able to reach three different wireless networks from his hotel window. Just last Thursday night, Aaron (who was also in town for our meeting) went war walking and was able to quickly locate a network.

I spent a good half hour searching around Harvard Square for a network, to no avail.

It was still fun walking around Harvard Square and the Harvard Campus. There are a ton of musicians and lots of smiling people. It made me wish I had brought my guitar.

Hal Plotkin has written an informative piece for SF Gate about a controversial new technique for seeding plankton growth in our oceans.

See:
Ocean Rescue Planktos Foundation hopes to reduce global warming by fertilizing the seas.

A group of scientists say it may be possible to simultaneously reduce global warming and increase dwindling supplies of fish around the world by adding relatively tiny amounts of powdered iron to the ocean.

Although the concept is controversial, several demonstration experiments have already been conducted, including by the Half Moon Bay-based Planktos Foundation, which hopes to eventually turn the cultivation of plankton forests at sea into an environmental-restoration business similar to reforestation on land.

The proposal has sparked considerable debate within the scientific and environmental communities, in part, because some energy and oil companies see it as a possible way to offset atmospheric pollution caused by their products. If it works, its backers say, the idea could help save humanity from the twin dangers of dying oceans and an overheated planet. On the other hand, others see it as an unworkable scheme that would interfere with nature, one that could lead to consequences even more dire than those it seeks to address.