I forgot to check this year’s National Film Registry selections. Each year the Library of Congress chooses 25 films for preservation. There are some interesting (in a good way) picks this year including Alien, Boyz N the Hood , and This is Spinal Tap.
Pretty good article in the Globe about SEVIS, the new INS system that I write software to help colleges use.
As of today, any time a foreign student drops a course, gets a part-time job, takes a medical leave, or changes his or her address, the school will have to file a report on SEVIS. Depending on their country of origin, some students may need to file with SEVIS if they leave and reenter the United States. And all incoming foreign students will need to be registered with SEVIS before they can receive a visa.INS just announced a 15-day grace period so schools have a little more time.
I was pretty sure that the Bush African AIDS money would come with strings attached disallowing condom distribution and requiring abstinence-only education, but apparently that’s not the case. It will be interesting to see where the money actually goes.
Keeping your mind fit.
“A new study, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says three areas of the brain that are adversely affected by aging stay in better shape when a person keeps their body physically fit.”
Health Groups Sour Over New Dairy Campaign.
Copying the National Cancer Institute’s “5 A Day” vegetable campaign, the National Dairy Council has intruduced the “3-A-Day” campaign. The “5 A Day” folks aren’t happy and want the new program ended:
“From a Cancer Society perspective, our biggest issue is probably that they have this campaign going that is not doing much to promote low-fat or fat-free dairy products,” says Colleen Doyle, a registered dietitian who serves as nutrition and physical activity director for the American Cancer Society. “The recipes on the [3-A-Day] Web site include low-fat and reduced-fat,” she says. “We really don’t have any issue with the fact that they are promoting dairy products, but we wish there had been a [stronger] low-fat message. With cancer and heart disease rates so high, it would have been desirable to see that message as a primary message of the campaign.”
Check out the bike this guy is riding to the south pole. Here’s the pic. Looks like fun.
Another Cory Doctorow story on Salon.
The plaintiffs in the McDonald’s beef-fries case are unhappy about the way the settlement money is being distributed:
A key element in the case is that six of the seven original plaintiffs disagree with the list of groups. They claim university projects and scholarships on the list do nothing to help vegetarians and others learn more about expanding their food choices, and that the Muslim community is being shortchanged by getting $550,000 rather than $1 million in the settlement.
Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case makes me think that only way to win against the copyright holders is through guerilla war. Steal everything you can, folks, and give money directly to the artists.
Looks like the Jhai Foundation project that needed $25,000 is under way. I got this press release via email but I can’t find it on the Jhai Foundation website, so here’s the whole darn thing:
|
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE GOOD
NEWS: JHAI FOUNDATION |
|
Contacts:
Jesse Thorn 1 415 225 1665, splangy@splangy.com Earl Mardle 612 9787 4527, earl@techempower.net What do you do when you want to do a little business, and you have no telephones, no electricity and an impassable road? Noy Chanthavong and her neighbors in Phon Kham village in rural Laos asked Jhai Foundation (www.jhai.org and www.jhaicoffee.com) to help them get connected to the world wide web. Noy and her neighbors want voice and written communications with overseas relatives at affordable rates. They want access to price information for rice, vegetables, and woven goods in market towns and to get education on computers and the internet for their kids. They also want the ability to send spreadsheets and written bids to clients for small construction jobs, the ability to call the doctor, and a free way to talk with friends in neighboring villages.
How? Stage
one of the process is a single village launch, connecting Phon Kham Village
to the network as a demonstrator for the other villages in the proposed
network. We expect to launch the entire five-village network before the
rainy season, which starts in May. What? Who? Jhai
Foundation, an American 501(c)3 non-profit, reconciliation organization,
was begun in 1997 by Mr. Thorn, a bomb-loader during the American war
in Laos, and Bounthanh Phommasathit, a Lao refugee from the American bombing.
Currently, Jhai Foundation works in 20 villages in Lao PDR. on technology,
a weaving initiative, and an organic coffee initiative. Jhai’s four Internet
Learning Centers have implemented a financially sustainable model
for educational and community-based computing. The Economist and The New
York Times magazine feature our project. The Swedish representative has
nominated this project as ‘best practices’ to the Secretariat of the UN. When? Please also see FAQ and other information at www.jhai.org to answer questions you might have. New York Times magazine and the Economist stories follow … Making
the Web world-wide A
Project In Laos Is Giving Internet Access To Villagers Without Electricity "THE
creation of the PC is the best thing that ever happened," said Bill
Gates at a conference on "digital dividends" in 2000. He even
wondered if it might be possible to make computers for the poor in countries
without an electric power grid. The answer is yes, and things are going
even further. Villagers in a remote region of Laos that has neither electricity
nor telephone connections are being wired up to the Internet. Lee
Thorn, the head of the Jhai Foundation, an American-Lao organisation,
has been working for nearly five years in the Hin Heup district. The foundation
has helped villagers build schools, install wells and organise a weaving
co-operative. But those villagers told Mr Thorn that what they needed
most was access to the Internet. To have any hope of meeting that need,
in an environment which is both physically harsh and far removed from
technical support, Mr Thorn realised that a robust computer was the first
requirement. He
therefore turned to engineers working with the Jhai Foundation, who devised
a machine that has no moving, and few delicate, parts. Instead of a hard
disk, the Jhai PC relies on flash-memory chips to store its data. Its
screen is a liquid-crystal display, rather than an energy-guzzling glass
cathode-ray tube-an exception to the rule that the components used are
old-fashioned, and therefore cheap. (No Pentiums, for example, just a
486-type processor.) Mr Thorn estimates that, built in quantity, each
Jhai PC would cost around $400. Furthermore, because of its simplicity,
a Jhai PC can be powered by a car battery charged with bicycle cranks-thus
removing the need for a connection to the grid. Wireless
Internet cards connect each Jhai PC to a solar-powered hilltop relay station
which then passes the signals on to a computer in town that is connected
to both the Lao phone system (for local calls) and to the Internet. Meanwhile,
the Linux-based software that will run the computers is in the final stages
of being "localised" into Lao by a group of expatriates in America.
One
thing that the new network will allow villagers to do is decide whether
it is worth going to market. Phon Hong, the local market town, is 30km
away, so it is worth knowing the price of rice before you set off to sell
some there. Links farther afield may allow decisions about growing crops
for foreign markets to be taken more sensibly-and help with bargaining
when these are sold. And there is also the pleasure of using Internet
telephony to talk to relatives who have gone to the capital, Vientiane,
or even abroad. If it works, the Jhai PC and its associated network could be a widespread success. So far, the foundation has had expressions of interest from groups working in Peru, Chile and South Africa. The prototype should be operational in Laos this December and it, or something very much like it, may soon be bridging the digital divide elsewhere as well. Copyright
© 2002 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights
reserved. |
Pedal-Powered
Internet, The
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Picture
this: A remote farmer in the dirt-poor country of Laos wants to check
some e-mail. So he goes to the only computer in his village. (It’s bolted
to the floor of a public building, to prevent theft.) He brings a friend
along — not to Web-surf with him, but to pedal a bicycle-driven generator
that powers the computer. When they’ve cranked out enough juice, they
can log onto the Web, using a jury-rigged set of wireless antennae. It’s
a clunky system made out of spare parts, but when it goes live next year,
it will become the newest way to hook up the developing world: the pedal-powered
Internet.
The
Laotian farmers hatched the scheme this year while talking with development
workers from the Jhai Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit group. Laos
is a brutal place to farm, littered with Vietnam-era unexploded ordnance
and racked by a dusty dry season. The farmers figured that the Web would
help them track weather movements and price swings in rice, allowing them
to optimize the scanty profits from their crops. ”And they all want to
keep in touch with their families,” says Lee Thorn, Jhai’s chairman.
”They all left the bombed villages, so these families are really isolated.
There are people they haven’t had contact with for 25 years.”
There’s
just one problem. How do you bring the Web to people who don’t have phone
lines — or even electricity?
With
a level of ingenuity that would have impressed Robinson Crusoe, it turns
out. Thorn’s group is cobbling together five inexpensive computers with
out-of-date microchips. To link these computers to the Internet, they’re
using cheap wireless broadcasting stations — much like the ones that
you can buy at Radio Shack for a few hundred dollars. A tower located
in a Laotian city will tap into the Net and the local phone system, then
blast the signal toward the villages nine miles away. A second tower will
catch that signal and route it wirelessly to each village, like a hub
with spokes. No expensive satellites or copper-wire phone lines needed.
And as for electricity? That pedal-power technology is straight out of
”Gilligan’s Island.” ”It’s the same stuff I had on my bike when I was
a kid, to power my headlight,” Thorn says.
Development
groups are watching the project closely, and for good reason. With this
strange Rube Goldberg contraption, the farmers will effectively leapfrog
100 years of technological evolution. This year, they’re living in the
19th century; next year, they’ll be in the 21st. Few have traveled so
far using a bicycle.
Contacts:
Jesse Thorn 1 415 225 1665, splangy@splangy.com
Earl Mardle 612 9787 4527, earl@techempower.net
Jhai
Website
Woohoo! Cory Doctorow’s first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is out and available for download. Unfortunately, the site has been Slashdotted.
It’s how often you drink, not what you drink, that helps the heart.
“Those who drank at least three days a week had about one-third fewer heart attacks than did non-drinkers. And it made almost no difference whether the drinking consisted of half a drink or four. Those who imbibed only once or twice a week had only a 16 percent lower risk of a heart attack.”
As
reported in The Economist and the New York Times Magazine
(see both articles below), Jhai Foundation will launch its rugged, pedal-powered,
wireless-connected Jhai computer and communications system in Phon
Kham village, Hin Heup District, Vientiane Province, Lao PDR, on February
13, at noon. You are most welcome to come. 