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January 30, 2006
Tunisia Trek: Exploring Ksar Ouled Soltane
It seems that I'll never run out of cool footage from my recent trip to Tunisia. I just found enough video to put together at least a few more pieces; I may make a series out of it if I have enough time.
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Tunisia Trek: Video from my visit to the Berber granary, or ksar, of Ksar Ouled Soltane. It's the best preserved ksar in southern Tunisia, and was featured in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. |
Posted by acarvin at 12:21 PM
January 28, 2006
Hoder's NY Times Op-Ed
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Hoder speaks during a Global Voices panel at the World Summit on the Information Society, November 2005. |
The day before Iran's ninth presidential elections last June, President Bush sent a discouraging message to potential voters. Iran's electoral process "ignores the basic requirements of democracy," Mr. Bush declared, and these elections would be "sadly consistent" with the country's "oppressive record." For Iranians, there was no mistaking the American president's point: he was tacitly sanctioning the call that some Iranian exiles and activists had issued for an election boycott, based on exactly this logic.An American administration that had called on other Middle Eastern populaces to vote in flawed elections greeted the Iranian electoral process with nothing but open disdain. It is worth revisiting this odd judgment call at a time when Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections has raised even more questions about Washington's confused strategy of democracy promotion.
That's right: with what appeared to be the endorsement of President Bush and dozens of American-backed satellite television channels that broadcast in Farsi, the disillusioned young people of Iran effectively took one of the world's most closely watched nuclear programs out of the hands of a reformer and placed it into the hands of a hard-line reactionary.
Can anyone now doubt that Iranian elections, however flawed, really do matter? When Mr. Khatami came to power, his declared goals were to establish the rule of law, demand equal rights for all citizens and reconcile Iran with the world. He may not have succeeded in all of those endeavors, but Mr. Ahmadinejad has entered government with manifestly opposite priorities.
Congratulations on getting published in the Times, Hoder!
Posted by acarvin at 11:28 AM
January 27, 2006
Blogging from Death Row
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Vernon Lee Evans, as pictured on his blog. |
As noted in a recent Washington Post story, Evans is one of the only known death row inmates to have taken up blogging. He doesn't have Internet access at prison, so he relies on a relay system: a volunteer manages the website, posting Vernon's entries after he sends them by snail mail. The volunteer, Activist Ginny Simmons, also passes along questions from the public, allow Vernon to engage as an "amateur advice columnist," as the Post article puts it.
Evans is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on February 6. His blog had been silent for much of the past year, but the flurry of activity prior to his execution may start things up again. Meanwhile, his blogroll is worth a look: the blog divides the links in three different categories based on whether they're for the death penalty, against it, or neutral. There are several sites listed as neutral or against executions, but the spot for sites supportive of the death penalty is currently blank. Similarly, comments on the site from the general public are both for and against the death penalty, some being quite scathing against Vernon personally. It'll be interesting to see if the site picks up more traffic due to the media attention it's getting... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:45 PM
Remembering "My Kennedy" - In Memory of the Challenger Astronauts
Tomorrow's the annivesary. January 28, 1986.
I can't believe it's been 20 years.
I was an eighth-grader at Hoover Junior High School in Indialantic, Florida. Like so many other kids in my community, I'd grown up with the space program. The launch pads of Cape Canaveral were only 40 miles north of our town, jutting out of Merritt Island, just north of the barrier island I called home.
I'd probably seen at least 20 of the previous space shuttle launches, going back to STS-1 in April 1981, when John Young and Robert Crippen piloted the Enterprise; the local newspaper even ran a picture of me awaiting that first launch, eagerly scanning the sky with my binoculars.
Growing up along the Space Coast, you couldn't avoid a shuttle launch; if you didn't happen to step outside to follow the contrail racing through the sky, the sonic boom would rattle the neighborhood so loudly it would set off car alarms. Our community was a part of the space program, whether or not our individual families contributed to it. My elementary school had been named after the Gemini program; our rival high school was Satellite High. The outdoor shots for "I Dream of Jeannie" were filmed just north of us at Patrick Air Force Base. My friend Todd Demetriades even had a life-size mockup of a Gemini capsule in his garage, left over from when a NASA engineer lived in the house; playing astronaut in that Gemini capsule was as good as it gets when you're a 10-year-old boy.
Sometime during my lunch period at school that chilly morning in January, the space shuttle Challenger was expected to take off. Normally if a launch were taking place at this time, I'd cram down my lunch and wait outside to catch it from the start. Today, though, I wasn't in a rush. It was ridiculously cold outside, to the point where there had been a frost warning the previous night for the orange crops, and I'd become so acclimatized to Florida weather that I didn't want to be outside in such frigid temperatures. To make matters worse, I had a big test later that day and wasn't particularly prepared, so I kept my head shoved in a text book while scarfing down lunch.
As lunch period wrapped up, I figured I'd poke my head outside just to see if the launch had been delayed. Stepping out the front doors of the school, a small group of people was staring upwards facing due north. I looked up, expecting to see the shuttle barrelling towards space, its contrail tracing gently through the sky.
What I saw, though, didn't make any sense.
The contrail was shaped like a Y, as if two stunt jets had flown up in a tight formation and then parted in two directions. Then the contrails split again and again, a weeping willow-like fractal pattern splitting into hundreds of faint lines, all drifting slowly downward.
I walked back into the school, unable to process what I had just witnessed. Throughout the hallways, students wrapped up the final lunch period and were making their way back into class. There just seemed to be more commotion than usual. I made my way back to Mrs. Deppner's French class when my friend Dave Wallack stopped me and said, "Someone just told me the shuttle blew up."
I shrugged and told him it was crazy. My head still hadn't processed what my eyes had just witnessed.
Sitting down in Mrs. Deppner's class, I half-expected the period to begin as it always did. Instead, the school principal came over the PA system and announced, with great sorrow, that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded about a minute after takeoff. Most of the class sat there, stunned. A few students began to cry; some of them rushed out, no doubt eager to call home and check to see if their parents - NASA employees - were safe. I asked Mrs. Deppner if I could be excused.
I left the classroom and went straight for the small media lab at the school library. It was probably the only place in school outside the principal's office that had a television, and I couldn't sit in class not knowing what had happened. Every channel was covering the disaster non-stop, but it was all chaos - no one knew what caused the explosion or whether the astronauts could have survived. It certainly appeared that it was a fatal accident. I kept thinking of those hundreds of delicate contrails descending to the sea. Which of those weeping willow branches was the astronauts' chamber?
I must have sat in the media lab for two, three, four hours. Who knows. Time became irrelevant that afternoon. At some point, my American history teacher, Mr. Deppner - my French teacher's husband - came into the room. Normally a real jokester, Mr. Deppner was very somber, silently watching the TV with me. It must have been his planning period. I couldn't keep my eyes off the TV. Mr. Deppner then grabbed his things and began to walk out the door. I looked back and we made eye contact.
"This is your Kennedy," he said, closing the door as he left.
Soon enough, the school day had ended. There was no point in staying in the media lab any longer when I could get on my bike and go home. Stepping outside, I looked one more time in the direction of the weeping willow contrails. Incredibly, they were still hanging in the air, as if the explosion had occurred moments earlier. Normally, a shuttle's contrail evaporates within an hour of takeoff, if not sooner. But the air was so cold and calm that particular day, it remained etched in the sky, as if to hammer home what had happened to anyone who had doubted it the first time around.
I've thought about the Challenger disaster many times since then; the events of that day were so formative to my teenage years that I even wrote my college entrance essay about it. The Challenger explosion was indeed My Kennedy. As the Kennedy assasination had been for my parents, the Challenger disaster one of those rare life-altering events for which you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at that particular moment - whether you want to remember it or not.
In Memoriam:
- Commander Francis "Dick" Scobee
- Pilot Michael J. Smith
- Mission Specialist Judith Resnik
- Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka
- Mission Specialist Ronald McNair
- Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis
- Payload Specialist/Educator Christa McAuliffe
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.
Posted by acarvin at 12:53 PM
January 25, 2006
Searching for R2-D2
Remember last November when I spent a week traipsing around southern Tunisia to put together an article about Star Wars tourism? Well, I'm proud to say that it's featured as the lead story on the Associated Press asap website. The story grew from a simple article to a photo gallery and a pair of two-minute videos documenting the night I spent in Luke Skywalker's house. I'm pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out; check it out when you get a chance. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:40 PM
January 24, 2006
One-Man Peace Mission: Hoder Goes to Israel
This morning I got an email from Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan on the Global Voices email list saying he's getting ready to travel to Israel as a citizen journalist. Hoder, as he's known online, was born in Iran but is a Canadian citizen, allowing him to travel to Israel. However, the decision may make it very difficult for him to visit his homeland any time soon. Hoder writes
This is huge for me.This might mean that I won't be able to go back to Iran for a long time, since Iran doesn't recognize Israel, has no diplomatic relations with it, and apparently considers traveling there illegal. Too bad, but I don't care. Fortunately, I'm a citizen of Canada and I have the right to visit any country I want.
I'm going to Israel as a citizen journalist and a peace activist.
As a citizen journalist, I'm going to show my 20,000 daily Iranian readers what Israel really looks like and how people live there. The Islamic Republic has long portrayed Israel as an evil state, with a consensual political agenda of killing every single man and woman who prays to Allah, including Iranians.
I'm going to challenge that image.
There are many Iranian Jews residing in Israel now -including the president and the minister of defense. Many still speak Persian and love where they were born and raised. I'm going to talk to them and show Israel and Iran from their point of view....
As a peace activist, I'm going to show the Israelis that the vast majority of Iranians do not identify with Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, despite what it looks like from the outside.
I'm going to tell them how any kind of violent action against Iran would only harm the young people who are gradually reforming the system and how the radicals would benefit from such situation.
Safe travels, Hoder. I'll be following your travels with hope in my heart and my fingers crossed. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:27 AM
January 21, 2006
Carpet Waxing
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Video of my recent adventure removing cat hair from a rug by covering the entire surface with duct tape and "waxing" it. |
Posted by acarvin at 9:47 AM
January 18, 2006
Fun With Vending Machines
It never ceases to amaze me how creative people can get when it comes to dispensing things from vending machines. Sure, we see vending machines selling soda, snacks and gum all the time, but why stop there?
Here are some of the more interesting vending machines that have come into my email/rss in-box in recent months:
Open Source Software. Here's a sweet machine I saw at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. It's like a regular old vending machine, except it burns open source programs for you. Called the Freedom Toaster, the vending machine is strictly BYOCD: Bring Your Own CD-Rom. You plug in your blank CD, select which open source tools you want, and it burns them to your disk. Almost a dozen Freedom Toasters have been deployed around South Africa. I imagine it won't be long before commercially-minded vendors start doing the same thing with proprietary software; wouldn't it be nice to run down the street and grab a Coke and the latest version of Mac OSX on your way to work?
iPods. Playlist has an interesting article about an iPod vending machine at the San Francisco Argent Hotel. Technically, it's not a vending machine - it's a Zoom Shop, according to the company that designed it. But it's basically a cross between an ATM machine and a vending machine. You swipe you credit card, peruse the available items, and make your purchase. In this particular case, you can select from various iPod models and accessories, including noise-reduction head phones. A nice idea; I wonder if the machine takes coins.
Eggs. Yes, I know it's not exactly high-tech, but why not? PhotoMann has been keeping track of funky Japanese vending machines for some time, but my favorite is still the egg vending machine. Considering there are vending machines that dispense hot food, I wonder if it could whip up an omelette for you? Just don't rattle and shove the machine in case your eggs get stuck. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:51 PM
Students Expose Sex Offender Through Wikipedia Research
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Mug shot of Joshua Gardner, AKA Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, 5th Duke of Cleveland. |
Here's what happened. A young man identifying himself as Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, 5th Duke of Cleveland, visited Stillwater Area High School in Minnesota three times trying to enroll as a transfer student. He had a "spot on" English accent and insisted on being called "your grace." Students at the school had their doubts, so they began researching him on the Internet. They found Wikipedia citations regarding the Duke of Cleveland had been edited on several occasions by an anonymous Wikipedian - edits that were promptly corrected by other Wikipedians but still viewable in this Wikipedia edit history. They also found that someone named Joshua Gardner had created an entry for Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the person who had visited the school. Subsequent student research exposed Gardner to be their so-called Duke of Cleveland; he also happened to be a 22-year-old registered sex offender.
This case offers a fascinating example of Wikipedia use in the classroom. While many educators may poo-poo Wikipedia, the checks and balances set up for the site allow visitors to explore the detailed history of how an article is created and edited over time; without this data, the students might never have uncovered Gardner's true identity.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:01 AM
Kenya's Parliament Website: Too Embarassing for Public Consumption?
Internet users who happen upon the website of the Kenyan parliament will find a near-blank page with the terse message, "Thank you for visiting the Parliament Website. We are currently updating this site. Please bookmark this site and visit us shortly." One might assume the problem is a hacked database, or merely an attempt to roll out a new website. In fact, the problem is embarassment.
As reported by the East African Standard by way of AllAfrica.com, the Kenyan parliament website has been shuttered since September because parliamentarians were embarrassed about the information published about them. What content shamed them so? Apparently their education backgrounds, hobbies and ages, among other biographical trivia. According to the article, the site was shut down after complaints that this information was "too sensitive" for public consumption.
The article goes on to compare Kenya's closed door website policy with that of Tanzania and Uganda. Both countries embrace a more open approach to e-government:
They detail MPs' employment history, political experience and special skills. The sites also tabulate MPs' performance in Parliament in terms of questions raised and their contributions. The sites also contain a summary of development funds and ministry activities. Also posted on the sites are proceedings of committee meetings, which are still a closed-door affair in Kenya. The public is also given an opportunity to post comments on the websites.
The article stops short of criticizing the Kenyan parliament for its decision to shut the website. But it seems clear that the policy reflects a skittishness that borders on paranoid. While Uganda and Tanzania are now exploring e-goverment as tools for greater transparency and decreasing barriers between politicians and constituents, Kenya's parliamentarians remain fearful of acknowledging they're a few years older (or younger?) than they look, or they didn't study at Cambridge, or they like to spend their free time reading mystery novels. Such basic biographical information is standard on almost every politician's website. Even Turkmenistan's President for Life, head of one of the most secretive and repressive regimes in the world, details his background on official government websites. According to the Turkmen Embassy in Washington, Saparmurat Niyazov was born in 1940, was orphaned at a young age, obtained an engineering degree, has two children and enjoys poetry, history, philosophy and music.
It will be interesting to see what the restored Kenyan parliamentary website looks like. What kind of information will Kenyans be able to learn about their elected officials? Hopefully there will be more discussion about the issue in the Kenyan press and blogosphere; if politicians are too ashamed to acknowledge their backgrounds and qualifications, how can they be expected to engage in open, transparent policymaking?
Posted by acarvin at 10:29 AM
January 14, 2006
Welcome Back, Stardust
For those of you nightowls located in the northwest US, I hope you get a chance to poke your heads outside around 1:50am Pacific time. That's when the NASA comet probe Stardust is expected to make its return entry through the atmosphere before landing in the Nevada desert. If all goes well, it'll be the brightest object in the sky, and should be visible for around 10 minutes. The only catch is that you'll need to be in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada or northern California to spot it. Given the crappy weather that's been plaguing the northwest as of late, it may take a fair share of luck for the cloud cover to clear; nevertheless, it's a great opportunity for astronomy geeks. Too bad that northeasterners are out of luck for this one.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:29 PM | TrackBack
January 13, 2006
Here's Your Chance to Conceive the 300 Millionth American!
According to a New York Times story today, U.S. census experts believe that the 300 millionth American will be born some time in October.
More specifically, the article says that census researchers believe the US population to be at just below 297,900,000 as of yesterday. Given the fact that a baby is born in the US every eight seconds, someone dies every 12 seconds and someone immigrates every 31 seconds, that puts us on track to surpass the 300 million population mark sometime in October, just over nine months from today. This means now's your chance to conceive that baby and make demographic history. Better get cracking, people. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:21 PM | TrackBack
Half of All Ashkenazic Jews Descend from Four Women; Just Not Me
CNN.com has an Associated Press story today about a major scientific study about DNA and Jewish genealogy. According to the researchers, more than half of all Ashkenazic Jews - those of us tracing our Jewish roots through Central and Eastern Europe - descend from just four women.
The research examined over 11,000 DNA samples from around the world, looking specifically at the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), a type of DNA we all inherit from our mothers. One generation after the next, a person gets mtDNA from their mother, who got it from their mother, and so on. The new research suggests that millions of Ashkenazic Jews have mtDNA so similar, they can literally trace their roots back to four individual women, each with a unique mtDNA pattern, or haplogroup. This may sound impossible, but it's not really that surprising. If you go back over the centuries and millennia, there were periods of time where large numbers of Jews died off, while others were able to flourish. So more than half of all Ashkenazic Jews today can trace a direct line back to these four women, each representing genetic clans, so to speak, that managed to flourish better than others.
Interestingly, I know for a fact that I'm not a direct matrilineal descendent of one of these four women. Looking at the research study, I noticed that the four haplogroups in question were K1a1b1a, K1a9, K2a2a and N1b. (These are just the code names designated by scientists to the four genetic clans analyzed in the study.) I had my DNA tested for genealogical purposes almost six years ago - in fact, five years ago next week marks the US News cover story that featured me and my genealogical DNA adventure.
As part of that research, I discovered that my genetic clan, or mtDNA haplogroup, is called pre-hv1. It's a very uncommon haplogroup among Jews; in fact, it's more common in Arabia, Ethiopia, North Africa and southern Spain. This doesn't mean I'm not an Ashkenazic; it just means that my particular family history has a direct line that's more easily traceable to modern middle eastern populations. The haplogroup has even been found in suprising numbers among the Kalash tribe of Pakistan, whose oral history traces its roots back to Greek and Syrian soldiers of Alexander the Great. Perhaps they picked up some women along the way who happened to be cousins of mine..... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:43 AM | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
Launched: Google Earth for the Mac
Google officially unveiled Google Earth for the Mac yesterday. You can download it here.
According to Chikai Ohazama on the Google Blog:
[W]e have a brand new member of the family -- Google Earth for Macintosh. We're happy to finally have some good news for the, ahem, vocal Mac enthusiasts we've been hearing from. Let's just say that we have gotten more than a few "requests" for a Mac version of Google Earth. They've gone something like this:1) "When is it coming out? Your website says that you are working on it."
2) "You know, Mac users are very heavy graphics/mapping/visualization/design/ architecture/education/real estate/geocaching/social-geo-video-networking fans who would certainly use Google Earth a lot."
3) "So when is it coming out?"
We heard you loud and clear.
To run it you'll need the latest operating system - Mac OSX 10.4. If you try to upload it on OSX 10.3, you'll get a message saying they're still working on a 10.3 version. Looks like I finally found the excuse to upgrade.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:46 AM | TrackBack
January 9, 2006
The Daily Grind: Two Camels at Work
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Video montage of two friendly camels I met on the island of Djerba, Tunisia. Both had interesting jobs: one worked an olive press while the other mowed the grass. I even got to help the lawn mowing camel by providing extra weight on the rolling blades. |
Posted by acarvin at 6:03 PM | TrackBack
Impromptu Celebration
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Video clip of Tunisian women participating in an evening procession in the seaside village of Sidi Bou Said. |
Posted by acarvin at 3:20 PM | TrackBack
In Tunisia, The Sound of Enforced Silence
Ever since the end of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, most of the mainstream media has turned its attention away from Tunisia's shabby human rights record. WSIS, for a brief time, put an intense spotlight on the way the Tunisian government curtails free speech and suppresses political dissent. But the news coverage ended abruptly after WSIS delegates packed their bags and returned home.
Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper has picked up where other news outlets have left off, publishing a strong critique by Tunisian political activist Neila Charchour Hachicha. Some highlights from her essay:
In Tunisia, the price for speaking one's mind is harsh. The late blogger Zouhair Yahyaoui spent a year and a half in prison for his Web commentary. The government sentenced teenagers in the southern port city of Zarzis to 19 years' in prison for having clicked on Web sites of terrorist groups. The teenagers did nothing that analysts, journalists or curious persons do not do several times a month in any democratic state.The Tunisian government regularly blocks access to my own party's Web site and that of other liberal and secular opposition groups. The government has even blocked the sites of legally recognized opposition parties. Ben Ali tells Washington and Brussels that he alone stands in the way of fundamentalist groups, and he adds that Tunisia is a genuine democratic republic evolving at its own standards of evolution. Indeed each country has its specific context and needs its own standards of evolution; but freedom of speech is and will always be the minimal credible standard for any newborn democracy. Unless this freedom is guaranteed, a regime cannot pretend that it is evolving toward democracy....
It is humiliating to be denied freedom of expression in one's own country. It was embarrassing that it needed the public intervention of the Swiss president to defend our cause and help Ben Ali remember that he must respect Tunisia's national and international commitments as a member of the UN. Democracy cannot be a favor offered by a regime under international pressure. Liberty is a state of mind that each one of us, from the grass roots to the pinnacle of power, must practice every day through tolerance and within the framework of an independent legal system.
Instead of sending its experts after a crime is committed, the UN would be better off considering preventive sanctions for those countries whose regimes do not respect the fundamental rights of its citizens.
If you've never read the Daily Star, I highly recommend it, particularly for its opinions and editorials. They're publishing some of the best English-language commentary on the evolving Middle East. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:31 AM | TrackBack
January 5, 2006
Helping Latinos Bridge the Digital Divide Through Sensible Policymaking
Yesterday's Miami Herald featured an excellent op/ed by Hector Flores of the League of United Latin America Citizens offering a Latino policy perspective on the digital divide. "In 2006, Congress will set out to rewrite the nation's telecommunications laws," Flores notes. "And if federal lawmakers get it right, Hispanic Americans, and consumers generally, could have much to celebrate. But if lawmakers misfire, the digital divide could explode into a digital abyss."
Flores laments the state of telecom regulation, saying that current rules make it too hard for qualified companies to offer local telecom services and provide much-needed competition. "'Mother, may I' is truly bad policy in this technologically dynamic era," he says. Flores also suggests that companies seeking to compete in the voice-data realm should be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund, the federal fund that makes the E-Rate program a reality, subsidizing Internet access for schools and libraries. Meanwhile, as companies move forward with deploying broadband and video services, they must address the growing content divide - a divide that's painfully clear to anyone who wants to go online but doesn't speak English.
"For Hispanics the stakes are especially significant because only one in eight are experiencing the digital fast lane known as broadband," Flores adds. "And study after study shows that broadband usage is a predictor of educational advancement and educational attainment."
"We all stand to benefit most from the innovative services and lower prices that competition will bring," he concludes. "Yet, we want the big telephone and cable companies to duke it out for our business -- for everyone's business. That is not too much to ask as the fastest growing demographic of Internet users."
It's heartening to see a prominent leader from the Latino community expressing concerns about the digital divide in a major media outlet. We've spent too much of the last five years retreating into our various communities of interest, spending less and less time working across ethnic, political and sector lines on crafting a common vision for bridging the divide. The Latino community, among other groups, is in an excellent position to mobilize faith-based organizations to get involved in digital divide policymaking. Years of experience have made it clear that no one sector - the private sector, government, civil society - can bridge the digital divide on their own. Just because all of middle class America is online doesn't mean we've bridged the digital divide. There's still lots of work to do, and I'm glad to see Mr. Flores and his colleagues at LULAC are taking up the challenge. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 3:12 PM | TrackBack
Dewey Defeats Truman
Walking down the street yesterday afternoon I saw that the local USA Today box still had copies of the paper in which they mistakenly claimed a dozen miners had survived the Sago mine disaster. I was tempted to buy a copy of it but resisted; too grim of a collectors item in my book.
Posted by acarvin at 1:55 PM | TrackBack
January 4, 2006
Pete Townshend Warns iPod Users to Watch Their Ears
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Pete Townshend, from his Blogger profile |
"I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his website. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."
I remember when I was a kid, I spent countless hours blasting Who albums using various mobile devices, including cassette walkmans and portable CD players. (Pete's right; he definitely helped create a genre of music that demands to be played really, really loud.) But it seems that each time there's been a new generation of mobile audio, there have been warnings from experts about the effect of these devices on our hearing. I have no doubt that my hearing was affected by walkman use, not to mention guitar playing and countless concerts, but I honestly don't know by how much, since my hearing remains pretty good. Haven't there been longitudinal studies about fellow Gen Xers who grew up with the Walkman? If so, it seems that warnings like Pete's would be more powerful if they happened in conjunction with the publishing of research showing what happens to our ears after years of mobile audio use.
Granted, I still listen to my iPod all the time. (Sorry, Pete, haven't uploaded Quadrophenia yet.) But I definitely am more aware of the audio levels I use, particularly when compared to my teenage years, when no volume could be too loud. I just wish the iPod would start to vibrate or flash or spew noxious fumes each time I accidentally turned the volume too loud.
Anyway, thanks to Mr. Townshend for the public service reminder - we should all be more sensitive to our iPod use. Wonder if he plans to make a podcast warning as well; if so, hope he doesn't record it too loud. :-) -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:33 PM | TrackBack
New Years Resolution: Become a Dad
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Introducing Peanut, our (currently) gender-neutral child-to-be, coming to a delivery room near you on the Fourth of July, 2006. |
Getting to this point hasn't been easy; Susanne had to go through two rounds of endometriosis surgery over the last two years. And in the end, we needed a bit of a kickstart from science, using in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to get to this point. The IVF procedure allowed us to avoid the pitfalls caused by endometriosis; even with two surgeries, there's no way to ever "cure" it per se. The PGD, in my mind at least, was even more important. PGD is basically genetic testing for newly formed embryoes, making it possible to detect whether or not an embryo contains an ill-fated chromosomal flaw that would lead to a miscarriage. Since Susanne had experienced previous miscarriages, PGD was in many ways our last hope; from the good news we've received with each ultrasound and blood test, it seems it was well worth it.
Needless to say, I'm absolutely thrilled about pending fatherhood, and very thankful that everything is going as planned. Not only did I want to share this good news with the world, I felt it was important to talk about the context of Susanne's pregnancy. It's all too common for people to not want to talk about miscarriages or infertility, even though millions of couples have gone through the same hell we've experienced for much of the last three years. It shouldn't be a taboo. I wish I'd been more open to talk about it earlier. Thankfully, my offline and online friends have been tremendously supportive, particularly those on Omidyar.net - they helped us realize we're not alone in the world.
The IVF experience has also made me very, very thankful that we've spent the last two years living in Boston, as Massachusetts is one of the few states that requires insurance companies to cover fertility procedures like IVF. If we'd been living almost anywhere else, we would have wiped out much of our savings paying for multiple IVF procedures, making it impossible for us to explore other options like adoption. I'm grateful that state legislators in Massachusetts were thoughtful enough to make IVF a reality for couples who can't afford to spend $15,000 per attempt. More states should recognize the plight of the millions of couples struggling with infertility and subfertility - they shouldn't have to face bankrupcy just to start a family.
Anyway, enough politics. Time to buy some baby clothes.... -andy
ps - in case you're wondering if it's a boy or a girl, don't ask. We haven't decided if we're going to find out, even though we've got a pretty good guess. For now, we're just calling it the gender-neutral nickname "Peanut," based on the first ultrasound pictures....
Posted by acarvin at 3:23 PM | TrackBack
January 3, 2006
Testing My New Comment System
For those of you who've had problems getting my blog's comment system to work, I've just scrapped Typekey. Now, I'm experimenting with Haloscan to see if it will make it easier for people to post comments. It's not the most exciting comment tool out there, but at least it works, and that'll be a big step in the right direction... - andy
