Don Bain, Director of the Geographic Computing Facility at UC-Berkeley, has posted The World Wide Panorama. These Quicktime VR scenes, including one from Mineral Point, were shot March 20, 2004 in celebration of the Equinox. Enjoy – there are some extraordinary scenes.
2004 Jefferson Muzzles
The 2004 Jefferson Muzzle awards have just been announced.
Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson’s admonition that freedom of speech “cannot be limited without being lost.”
Announced on or near April 13 — the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson — the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment’s limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle.
Unfortunately, each year the finalists for the Jefferson Muzzles have emerged from an alarmingly large group of candidates. For each recipient, a dozen could have been substituted. Further, an examination of previous Jefferson Muzzle recipients reveals that the disregard of First Amendment principles is not the byproduct of a particular political outlook but rather that threats to free expression come from all over the political spectrum.
……. This year’s winners.
MPS Voucher Program Achievements
Milwaukee’s voucher program prompted sustainable achievement gains for the city’s public elementary schools, according to a new study by a Harvard economist.
Researcher Caroline Hoxby followed up on a study of three years ago, in which she concluded that the private school choice program pushed the public schools to improve.
In the new study, she adds test score data from two additional years – the 2000-’01 and 2001-’02 school years – and finds that the gains were sustained, although they did not accelerate. The study was published in the Swedish Economic Policy Review.
Saving money on your phone bill: VOIP
David Pogue reviews the latest VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, which allow you to call anywhere in the United States for as little as $20.55/month (plus your broadband internet connection):.
This development is annoyingly called voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, which means “calls that use the Internet’s wiring instead of the phone company’s.” When you sign up, you get a little box that goes between your existing telephone and your broadband modem (that is, your cable modem or D.S.L. box, a requirement for most of these services).
At that point you can make unlimited local, regional and long-distance calls anywhere in the United States for a fixed fee of $20 to $40 a month (plus the cost of your broadband Internet service, of course). Overseas calls cost about 3 cents a minute. These figures aren’t subject to inflation by a motley assortment of tacked-on fees, either; voice-over-Internet service is exempt from F.C.C. line charges, state 911 surcharges, number-portability service charges and so on.
Save money, switch! I’ve been using www.packet8.net for some time.
Two alternatives beyond the phone interface: ichat | skype
New proposal would eliminate ?Education? from school district budget
Bizzaro Wisco Column – [Humor]
Filberto Epstein
March 30, 2004
A document released today by the Madison Metropolitan School District
outlines the administration?s proposal to close the district?s $10 million
budget shortfall by eliminating all ?education? activities and focusing on
the district?s core ?child storage? functions. According to Superintendent
Art Rainwater, the increasing cost of ?education? has impaired the
district?s ability to balance its books.
Thanks to Lucy Mathiak for pointing me to this article.
Who Owns What?
Columbia Journalism Review has a very useful tool: Who Owns What? Locally, Wisconsin State Journal owner, Lee Enterprises, owns a myriad of small regional publications, including 50% of Capital Newspapers, an entity shielded from monopoly concerns by the no longer necessary Newspaper Preservation act of 1970.
Post & Publish
Nahal Toosi writes a very thin article about blogging, including campus initiatives.
Last week, Tim Kelley asked me to visit with his UW journalism class and discuss my perspective on blogging. [608K PDF]
Spacious, leafy & tranquil – if a little on the dead side:
Sarah Lonsdale asks: “Where better to rest in peace than in a converted mortuary or burial chapel?”
Roanoke’s O. Winston Link Museum
Virginia Postrel writes about the new 0. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia (Link recorded the waning years of steam locomotives)
The museum is in the former Norfolk and Western train station, which famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy redesigned in 1947. As Modernism’s Victoria Pedersen writes: “He completely transformed the 1905 neoclassical station, adding 22-foot ceilings, marble walls, terrazzo floors, a futuristic wall of horizontal windows and a dome. He also designed a concorse leading to the train platform that featured the first passenger escalators in the Roanoke Valley, cutting-edge technology for the period.” The new station was the epitome of streamlined modernism. But what that meant in the Virginia of a half century ago is spelled out in the letters above the door in these photos from the Library of Congress collection, the first of which Modernism reprinted