Digital Newsroom: AP and the news copyright conundrum

Wherefore art though AP?

The Associated Press doesn’t have the (huge) overhead of printing a physical paper. That cost is eaten by AP members -- namely, newspapers. So why hasn’t the AP taken the lead in the digital revolution? After all, as a wire service, they actually kinda sorta predicted the internet before it happened. But the AP been shrinking instead of expanding. Why?

Well, if you ask Dean Singleton, chairman of AP, he’ll blame copyright law. Art Brodsky at the Huffington Post sees flaws in this, and I do too. Copyright law has nothing to do with it.

Copyright, copyleft, or copymiddle?

I'll come back to the AP, but first, let's talk about copyrights. Let me preface this discussion by saying that you could describe my personal views on copyright law as “information freeganism.”

Maybe it’s my background in science, which relies on the free flow of information. Or maybe it’s my background as a writer. (Although some people try to sweep this fact under the rug, art also relies heavily on sharing information.) I tend to hold an idealistic view that people should create content, and once that information is created, it should be freely shared. The problem with that, clearly, is that if information is free, who will make it? Well, I think we should pay for the creation of content, not the access to it. Yes, there are problems with that too, like, how do you determine the value of content before it is given to the public? But I don't have to have all the answers yet, do I?

You can see why it's called copyleft, right?

I'm not quite copyleft, I'm more Creative Commons. (And not just because the White House embraces it.) The wonderful thing about Creative Commons is that it's an opt in or opt system -- what you want done with your work is totally up to you.

Last week during the Conference on World Affairs I live-blogged a panel called “Who owns the Creative Commons?” A mathematics professor, a Hollywood screenwriter, a technology blogger and sci-fi author, and a web-radio producer/musician debated internet copyright law.
Some of the points raised are relevant to Brodsky’s criticism of the AP:

• Sanjoy Mahajan said that ideas are not the same as physical objects. Sharing them doesn’t take anything away from the person who originally had them. The original purpose of U.S. copyright law was to promote the progress of ideas, not hinder it.
  
• For some, like Andy Inhatko, creation is fundamentally different from sharing or modifying. (It takes more moaning and groaning.)
  
• Ultimately, society (not AP, not Napster) will collectively decide how copyrights will work on the web.

What the AP distributes are not just creative works (yes, I think that reporting is a creative process, so I will refer to it as a creative work), but are also ideas – namely, information and analysis about the world. I think it is necessary for people to cite and reference them...often. You simply cannot discuss an event without referring to a description of it, and in that sense reproducing a news article qualifies as fair use.
So, what is the AP to do, seeing as they don’t have a legal claim here?

All's not lost, AP

If I got stuck – planned or not – in an elevator with Dean Singleton, chairman of AP, here’s what I would tell him: You should rejoice because your position makes you more suited to adapt to the internet than other “traditional” news outlets.
Here’s what you have:

• a network of national and international reporters and editors,
  
• a time-tested way of distributing your information,
  
• a recognized and trusted brand

What don’t you have? Just one thing, but it’s kind of a biggie:

• a collection of individual users who are accustomed and willing to pay for its content.

The reason it doesn’t have that is because, until now, its users are newspapers. Big, old, dying, newspapers.

Singleton my friend, I’d say, it’s not you. It’s them. The AP is in a strange position where while it is losing its users (newspapers) -- and by doing so, it is atrophying and losing itself. But it isn’t by any means losing its audience, the people who actually read the stories. And that’s the major problem here, not the internet and not copyright law.

Let’s just imagine for a moment, Singleton, that all the newspapers are gone. Where will AP license it’s content? Well, websites, of course, he’ll say.

Great! But there’s a problem with that. On the web, why license when you can link?
In light of that, the AP, which has a goal of being the most ubiquitous, most trusted, “essential global news network,” should be happy people are already linking to their content willy nilly, right?

Well they would be, if they weren’t so good at blending into the foreground. The way the AP distributes its content to newspapers, it must blend in. But if it is going to survive when all of its co-op members crumble, it must learn to stand out.

To brand itself better.

To remind people that they read AP stories because they are well-reported, well-written, well-edited and most important, far-reaching.

As Brodsky writes, "The news business has a lot of problems, no doubt. Some are beyond its control, but some are self-inflicted."

So, Singleton…seize your power! Embrace and encourage the spread of your content – and it will spread – and you will succeed. You should be setting the new standard for your member newspapers, not taking a cue from them. As Mahajan pointed out in the CWA panel, when European works weren’t protected under U.S. copyright law in the 19th century, it actually turned out better for the artists. Publishers were able to make copies of their work cheaply, and sell them cheaply, and they outsold copyrighted versions by a large enough factor to blow away their profits.

And you, AP, can be a publisher too. A web publisher. If, of course, that’s what you want. Or rather, if that what your “owners” – the 1500 newspapers who make up your co-op – want. At the heart of this, you’ve got to win them over, too.

News organizations, which hold the transparency of information as one of their key values, are never going to survive if they insist on putting up a gate between the news and the people.

Live Blogging the Conference on World Affairs: Who Owns the Creative Commons?

1:51 pm

And that's a wrap. Glad I came to this panel -- now what did James Hansen say, I wonder?

1:50 pm

Society collectively decides whether we'll have copyrights or not, says Ihnatkho.

1:47 pm

Audience question: Is it up to the community or the artist to set the value of work? Ihnatko says that the audience already sets the value.

But at the same time, you have to live in the world that you live in. He says that the Macquarium ended up getting ripped off over and over. But he couldn't stop it, so he didn't cry about it.

McKenna says that the artist doesn't decide what his piece of worth is work, the market does. (He's a capitalist, remember?) How is he market different from the commons, I wonder?

A debate breaks out between Mahajan and Ihnatko, things get a little heated.

"Who appointed you god," says Mahajan?
"I did!" says Ihnatko.

Mahajan says there are many other ways to make money besides copyrights (like paying for other things). Ihnatko responds that even if it's been proven that it will benefit him to release his works for free, he still has the right to decide.

1:41 pm

One audience member says that sometimes the only way for her, as a consumer, to get access to media and music is illegally through the internet. She feels guilty about it, but really has no way to pay the artist. What should she do?

Sheridan wonders why no one has figured out a central way to distribute royalties. It's a system just waiting to happen, she says, and whoever figures out how to do it first is going to make a ton of money.

1:36 pm

Sheridan, in response to a question about electronic art, points out that there's a difference between amateur art and mixing and professional work. When people are trying to make money, it becomes more complicated.

1:35 pm

Books falling into the public domain is a wonderful thing, Ihnatko says. Great books would die, because they don't have enough market to make them commercially viable, but the internet and the public domain has saved them.

But, however, it's a disaster when the film enters the public domain, he says. The problem is, it's harder to recreate a copy with good quality. The work suffers.

1:32 pm

Ihnatko asks, what if somebody gets the idea that Sherlock Holmes is investigating a case and at some point he encounters Jeeves.

McKenna frantically grabs a pen and piece of paper and scribbles. "C!" he says as he holds it up.

Ihnatko flips it around and says, "Don't worry, it's copyleft."

1:30 pm

Sheridan points out that community art, or shared art, could be really really good. She responds to Ihnatko's supposition of someone taking Romeo and Juliet and butchering it, but she says, what if someone took it and made it better.

She says we don't want to get to the point where people completely disregard laws on copyright just because everybody is doing it. We're close, but not there yet.

1:29 pm

McKenna asks, does the world progress through self-interest, or through community interest?

He believes that his self-interest needs to be protected, but not for 100 years (that just benefits large corporations, not artists). Self-interest is the engine for creativity, and that then goes out and helps society prosper.

McKenna points out that science and commerce are completely different fields. He thinks that science shouldn't be copyrighted, private ownership isn't helpful for society. The rules are different for creative work. Hmmm...is it?

"I worship Mammon -- I work in Hollywood," says McKenna.

But then he comes back to the idea of self-interest, and says that the commons hurts innovation in his business.

1:25 pm

I'm really glad there is some dissent among the panelists. At all the other ones, they tended to agree with each others.

Ha ha, Mahajan starts by saying, "I disagree very strong with some of the, how should I say it, bogus arguments..."

He's joking, but serious too. He says the "sweat of the brow" doctrine they used is no part of the U.S. copyright law, because the law is to promote society, not individuals. The laws aren't to protect authors, but to help society gain the greatest benefit. (That's the strict constitutional constrictionist interpretation, at least.)

Mahajan says that no one is a strict godlike creator from a blank page. Shakespeare drew his ideas from Roman historians and others. (Hear hear!) He was a notorious plot lifter. Also, there were no copyright laws in England back then.

"Copyright is an empirical question," says Mahajan. It's all about answering how long it should be in order to figure out what best benefits society. He cites the MIT Open Courseware program.

1:21 pm

Bruce McKenna starts off by describing the myth of Robin Hood. He says it's no surprise that the myth of the robber-outlaw parallels the rise of the enclosure movement. He reminds s that people were creating laws not out of intellectual or moral reasons, but out of a drive to survive and gain or keep power.

We're witnessing a modern version of "the most important dialectic in Western history: which is most beneficial for society, public ownership or private ownership?"

The public domain v. private domain debate drives everything in politics.

McKenna has a different history of the enclosure movement than Mahajan had. He said that before the enclosure movement, the land wasn't owned by the people, but was owned by the lord. Villagers could lease the land from the manor owner, and it was very complicated. This meant that innovation in agriculture was stunted because everyone planted, grazed, harvested, etc. at the same time. People couldn't innovate because they couldn't take the chance to separate from the rhythms of the community.

"The commons" is a romantic notion, but McKenna points out that it was also a method of social control.

It is more complicated than simply the rich displacing the poor, says McKenna. "I am a capitalist by the way," he says as an aside. A lot of small farmers were able to benefit from the enclosure movement by being smart.

"Social change does sometimes have winners and losers," says McKenna. He agrees with Mahajan that the displaced people moved to cities and because the fuel for the industrial revolution. But he disagrees over the fate of agriculture. He says that the enclosure movement created innovation. People were able to grow more, develop new growing methods, and could produce enough to feed people in the cities. The enclosure movement was ultimately beneficial because it saved lives and reduced mortality.

This huge social change, says McKenna, came directly from the creation of private property. "That's a controversial thing to change in Boulder, and I know that," he says.

He picks up Ihnatko's notebook, "I feed my family every day by what I put in this notebook." He says that he has to worry about who owns what he writes, especially because he works in Hollywood.

There is value to the public domain, but there is also value for the private. He says he wants to counter Mahajan's plea for Robin Hood with the Sheriff of Nottingham (and points at himself).

Like Ihnatko, he is worried about the creative commons being a wedge for "people who have a more radical view of property."

He says that Warner Bros. wants to extend the copyright on Band of Brothers for a million years so that, "even aliens watching it will have to pay for it." Although this would benefit him, he doesn't agree with it. That is too extreme. We need to reach a middle ground.

1:08 pm

Andy Ihnatko gets a blank notebook from his bag. It's the most important prop of this panel, he says. This $3 notebook, he says, represents the worst 3 months of my life. Then he says, do not think you are a creator unless you are up to the challenge of filling up those blank pages. [Slams it on the table.]

He says hat you can't talk about copyright law until you've gone through the process of filling up the blank pages. "It's easy to start with something other people have created and modify it," says Ihnatko.

For him, creation is different than sharing and modifying.

He's a bit passionate about this, and apologizes for maybe getting off on the wrong foot. With that, he goes into saying that creative commons is a wonderful thing.

Creative commons is a way to harness things that have been created for community use, not personal use.

Ihnatko made one of the first e-books (about how to turn a Mac into an aquarium). At the end of his page of legalese, he just asked people who had enjoyed it to go to the Red Cross and give blood.

He also posts a lot of his photographs on Flickr and lets people share them, with attribution and no derivation. (People can't change his images when they use them, they have to say that Ihnatko is the one who took them.)

But he has fears about creative commons, too. He sees it the same way he sees medical marijuana. He is totally supportive of it as treatment for cancer patients undergoing chemo therapy. However, he sees people using it as a wedge to get legal marijuana for everyone. The same thing happens with the creative commons. Some people want to use it to share ideas, but other people want to use it for profit, and that undermines the goal.

He also thinks that artists should have a choice. They should be able to copyright their work if they want, or release it to the creative commons. One reason Shakespeare's plays didn't exist while he was alive in print is that Shakespeare was worried people would take his work and alter it, says Ihnatko. Gilbert and Sullivan were also very scared of people butchering their work.

Ihnatko says that creative commons a great idea, but a lot of people will have to die first. (Figuratively, of course.)

We haven't reached a point yet where "copyleft" makes sense, says Ihnatko. At this point, "I am still the god of my blank sheet of paper."

12:56 pm

Mahajan, in addition to teaching math and physics at MIT, used to serve on the admissions committee at the Cambridge law school. Hmmm...

He starts by saying that, "almost by definition, we, the public own the creative commons. Or at one point in time we did. But now we're losing it."

Now he's taking us back into history, and the historical definition of commons -- like the Boston Common and other New England town centers. Those were common spaces where all villagers could graze their cattle. But then the enclosure movement came along, and fences went up around the commons. This was bad news for the villagers, who couldn't graze sheep and cows any more. "They became fodder for the industrial revolution."

Basically, enclosure, and the loss of commonwealth, causes great harm to people. And Mahajan sees what's happening now as us losing a mental commonwealth, which could be much worse.

Ideas are different objects than physical things. Mahajan uses a quote from Benjamin Franklin, about how the sharing of ideas doesn't take anything away from the person who originally had it. When you give an idea to another person, you don't take it away from the first owner, like you do with physical objects.

The ease of distribution is what makes an idea an idea.

Mahajan says that the purpose of the copyright clause in the constitution was to promote the progress of ideas. But in reality, the opposite happened as copyright terms keep getting extended. (He refers to the "Sunny Bono copyright extension.")

What are the problems of copyright law? In science, most research is funded by taxpayers. Scientists do research, submit their articles to a journal, it is peer reviewed. Up until now, all the work has been paid for by taxpayers, or has been done for free. But at that point, the work becomes copyrighted, and the work has to be bought back through subscriptions.

"It's a total scam," says Mahajan.

In answer to the claim that we wouldn't have works without copyright laws, Mahajan cites British authors in the 19th century, who didn't have copyright laws in America. (Their work was only protected in the UK.) But British authors earn more from their publications in the states than they do in Britain. Why?

In Britain, the price was marked up because of copyrights. But in the states, publishers had to sell it cheap in order to sell enough copies to make money. In this case, copyright laws kept authors from making money.

Another example where a lack of copyright laws led to innovation and creativity is the web, where html is completely open. The more it can be shared and seen, the faster it blossoms.

12:43 pm

Some challenges Sheridan faces in her work: she runs an internet radio station, and her fans are asking for on-demand performances and podcasts. However, she also works for a composer service, and it's not easy to work with them to make that happen.

She is optimistic that people will play for blanket access to media and music.

12:41 pm

Molly Sheridan starts us off. She says the first time she hear Lawrence Lessig's name (one of the founders of Creative Commons), she was at an event of music publishers and the whole crowd hissed.

She mentions an artist who culminated performances from YouTube, aggregated them, and put them together in something great. But he never had permission from any of the performers to do it. That's something that couldn't have happened in the 20th century.

Another question people ask Larry Lessig is, why don't people just create their own content? Why do they have to steal it?

I think that brings up an interesting question: what's the different between sharing and stealing, especially when it comes to creativity and to the media?

Molly Sheridan says we speak in pop culture. So using media that other people have produced is almost necessary to produce relevant commentary.

Technology changes so fast, says Sheridan, and people are worried about rushing forward so fast. But she points out that by not rushing forward so quickly, disaster happens (re: the recording industry).

There's a discussion within the music industry that, whether the "war on copyrights" is right or wrong, fighting against it is a losing battle. Copies are just too easy to make. So instead of looking at it as an evil, they need to start looking at it as an opportunity.

Although Sheridan hasn't brought this up, a lot of these things apply to the news industry, too.

I'm glad she ends it by saying that with all the choices out there, it's so important to emphasize ethics and make sure that we know what the right thing to do is. Although the technology may change, the ethics are still there.

12:34 pm

Moderator Howard Berstein said that laptobs are permitted for taking notes, not for surfing the web or disturbing the person next to you. Ihnatko jokingly closes his net book. "I just ruined his day," says Berstein.

12:29 pm

This is by far the smallest audience of any panel I've been to so far -- less than 50, by a quick count. Probably because of the overlap with Hansen, I'm guessing. Ihnatko is wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses. he also has huge chops. He looks like a Blues Brother.

12:28 pm

And here we go again:

Who Owns the Creative Commons

12:30-1:50 on Thursday April 9, 2009
Wolf Law Wittemyer Courtroom
Panelists:
o Andy Ihnatko
o Sanjoy Mahajan
o Bruce C. McKenna
o Molly Sheridan

o Moderator: Howard Bernstein

Note: I finally found a seat near an outlet. Where? The law school, of course!

And another note: Attending this panel means I won't be able to see James Hansen's key note. C'est la vie! I'm sure plenty of people I know will go and tell me how awesome it is...

Earlier:
Live-blogging "When the Well Runs Dry: Dwindling Resources and International Conflict"
Live-blogging "There's No Such Thing As Agenda-free Science"
Live-blogging "Reading Fiction Helps Me Survive in the Real World"

Live Blogging the Conference on World Affairs: When the Well Runs Dry: Dwindling Resources and International Conflict

10:49 am

And that's the end...people are starting to file out and chatter, even though Shaer is still talking.

Thanks for tuning in!

10:48 am

Someone asks if a world war over water is inevitable. Granoff says no. He says living in violence is a decision. Anthropologists have struggled with the question of whether violence is the normal state of humanity or not. Granoff says they came to the conclusion that it isn't.

10:43 am

Granoff answers the question: if water is confirmed as a human right, that would take precedence over other uses. I wonder, even if those who want it have the power to pay for it?

Sorry, guys, I'm feeling a bit cynical this morning...

Oh oh, Shaer agrees with me. She says, "There are so many other rights that are not enforced by our governments." So we'll need other safeguards as well.

10:42 am

Another audience question: how does the "misuse of water resources for corporate profit" play into international water resources.

The guy sitting next to me lifts up his Eldorado Springs bottled water and chuckles, "Corporate profit..."

10:39 am

Another question from the audience was on international water law. Shaer says that those regulations actually might come out of the replacement for Kyoto, because water is tied up with climate change.

10:37 am

Granoff says we should read the statements issued by the Nobel Peace Laureates. One says, "violence is a preventable disease."

All of the Novel Laureates signed on to a declaration saying that every politician should be asked three questions:

• What are you doing to protect the global commons?
• What are you doing to address poverty?
• What are you doing about nuclear disarmament?

But those questions were largely ignored by the media.

Wait, wasn't the question about population? No one addressed that...

10:34 am

The guy in the audience next to me wonders, "Do they even mention population at all? They're crazy! It's all politics."

Right after he said that, another audience member stood up and asks about population and food.

10:33 am

Rupert is still the best part of this panel:

"If you are asking a question, and you don't have a question, you just have something burning you need to say, would you just raise your voice at the end so that it sounds like a question."

10:30 am

Granoff calls social distractions, "the pornography of the trivial."

He says water should be a human right. That means that it can't be fully commodified. If this doesn't happen, and water is commodified, that puts a dangerous precedence in place for people to begin putting a price on other things, like genetic code and air.

Oceans are another hot button issue that were absent from the last election. No one in this country is talking about disappearing fish resources.

10:27 am

Normally I like cerebral debates, but Granoff is a little too abstract for me. Instead of talking about natural resources, he keeps mentioning ideas as a resource. Yes, this is true, but we need to connect those to the material world, too.

10:26 am

This panel seems to agree that diplomats are the indispensable key to a peaceful future.

Trengrove is describing how Azerbaijan opened an academy to train diplomats. The number of embassies they have around the world went from 30 to 60 in one world. As they are expanding their presence in international politics, they are doing is by learning diplomacy.

One of Azerbaijan's strategies is planning for peak oil -- which will happen in that country around 2025. They are doing this by re-creating the silk road, says Trengrove. "They are planning for the future of dwindling resources."

10:22 am

Shaer says that one of the ideas that has brought about solutions is diplomacy and collaboration. She says that looking at how much money a country puts into diplomacy is an important yardstick. And education is a big part of this.

Our state department isn't prepared to deal with the types of conflicts that are happening over oil and natural gas pipelines Trengrove mentioned, says Shaer. At this point, we simply don't have enough trained diplomats.

10:19 am

"False realism is a problem," says Granoff. "It dampens creativity."

He quotes Victor Hugo, from 1851, who said (extreme paraphrasing here) that if you told someone four centuries earlier that war would end with a ballot boxes, laws and nations, they would have found it absurd. So if you say to modern nations that a day will come when they won't need weapons and there will be no war, that nations would be joined together, would sound equally absurd. Granoff says that Hugo was describing the European Union and the U.N. as the peaceful future.

So -- is Granoff right? Have we finally made it? Are the pieces in place for a peaceful future?

"Visions based on moral grounding are the most important resource that humanity has," says Granoff.

10:14 am

Now Granoff is talking about Oscar Arias, and the work he did to create a peaceful regional settlement in Costa Rica that won him a Nobel Peace Prize. He calls him a "well of ideas."

Granoff says that Arias said to the countries in the UN, "It's time we started addressing Article 26." (Which is about disarmament.)

He brings up a Will Ferrell SNL skit (as Bush), where he said that we'll tackle this problem of climate change, we just have to get mother nature to cooperate with our plan. That encapsulates the world's current pattern of thinking, which, clearly, won't work.

He comes back to the importance of ideas.

Hmm...I think ideas are the starting point, and if we don't have good ones we don't have anything, but I think that it's clear the world needs more than ideas. We also need a way to put ideas in place and implement them. I wonder what Granoff would say to this -- what does the world need to ensure that powerful ideas don't die?

10:06 am

Granoff starts by pointing out that virtually all conflicts that have been occurring in recent years have been over natural resources, and this trend is only going to increase.

"I believe that the most important resource to deal with all of these issues is the resource of ideas," says Granoff.

He considers Europe from a historical perspective: from the 13th century on, the continent was in a perpetual state of war, culminating in the 30 years war and the Protestant v. Catholic conflict. Eventually, someone called for ideas to solve these problems, and the nation/state system arose where people could live where they wanted according to their religious beliefs.

"They stopped fighting over religion," says Granoff. "They later figured out ways to fight over nationalism." (But that's beside the point...)

"It took so much carnage to understand that we needed some ideas that would stop this madness," says Granoff. He names nuclear warfare as a wake up call that made us realize that we couldn't have the type of fighting that had been happening in Europe on a global scale.

10:02 am

Trengrove worked as a journalist for 21 years, but he quit during the last presidential campaign. He realized that he wanted to keep learning and trying new things. He heard about a position for someone creating public affairs TV programming in Azerbaijan. He didn't know where it was, so he looked it up on a map. "And I said, wow, this is a real geopolitical hotspot, where things are actually happening," he said. He went there for 3 months and worked with the foreign ministry. He said that it was real stuff, not "superdelegates." Ha ha.

The experience led him into "pipeline politics" -- that is, the politics of oil and gas. Because of former Soviet control, most of the pipelines went through Russia. But now countries (mostly in Western Eurpoe) want alternatives to that. One of the new pipelines went through Georgia, and when the conflict between Russia and Georgia broke out, they nearly broke an important pipeline.

This made everyone realize the importance of energy transportation. "You can't put natural gas in a barrel," says Trengrove. So, at least for now, pipelines are essential.

Trengrove says this part of the world is getting very interesting, and Obama was just in Turkey trying to "get everybody to get along" -- all because of what is happening in Afghanistan. But the area "is a tinderbox."

9:53 am

Shaer says that, "The more we lose newspapers, the more [politicians] lose contact with their constituents."

What her organization does is make things like military budgets "accessible and easy to talk about." Sounds kind of like an OpenSecrets.org for military spending.

"The new oil may be, in fact, water," says Shaer. She says it "could be like the horses without hay." She uses the example of Georgia last year, and politicians "going to battle" (not literal battle) over water resources. But what happens if such a situation occurs in a non-peaceful, non-stable environment, where you don't have friendly neighbors willing to negotiate? Conflicts, of course.

She says that we to have a security policy that addresses the battles that will be fought over water.

But, Shaer ends with the positives: Obama wants to eliminate nuclear power, our leaders are willing to plan for a safe future.

9:47 am

Now Shaer will dive into the "political reality." She points out that Obama called for an end to nuclear weapons this weekend (actually, she deferred to an audience member, who said that the media failed to cover it). But at the same time, other countries that had reduced spending on military are starting to spend again (like Argentina and Brazil, which are now ramping up nuclear programs). The main point? What nations are doing with their military budgets isn't at the forefront of public consciousness.

9:43 am

Shaer says Rupert knows everyone in the city and their grandchildren, and remembers who everyone is.

Shaer's organization is Women's Action for New Directions, an anti-war group. She'll be talking about history, politics, and water.

She says that in this country the influence of the military has been slowly but surely growing. From the beginning, the intention was to have a standing army but not a military government. But in the U.S., "we don't consider ourselves a militaristic society, but we spend more money than any other nation in the world combined on the military."

Military dictatorships don't spend as much money as we do. (My question: when you look at it as a proportion of the GDP, is this still true?)

She says spending isn't necessarily driven by what your country needs, but by outside geopolitical forces.

9:38 am

Introductions --

Dorothy Rupert was a state senator -- whoa!

Jim Trengrove: His daughter is a junior at CU. She is volunteering at the CWA. Rupert says, "I don't know why she isn't in my class. I'm teaching a class on civic engagement." His wife is an investigative reporter who did a talk this morning on KGNU. "I feel pretty connected to you, Jim," says Rupert. Trengrove is a reporter, he went to film school, and has made many documentaries.

Jonathan Granoff: He's a global security adviser. When he was in law school, he was "the most active left-winger on campus," at Rutgers. He worried that would taint his reputation as an alum, but they gave him an award this year.

Guy next to me: She doesn't sound like a politician, does she. She spends a lot of time saying nothing.

Susan Shaer: First time at the CWA. She's done a lot of national security work, appears on radio and tv frequently. She's an anti-war activist.

9:33 am

The moderator, Dorothy Rupert, is a hoot. She says of the CWA, "I've only been to the last 50 of them."

Music started next door, and she goes, "Oh!"

I'm pleasantly surprised, too.

9:31 am

Welcome to my third attempt at live blogging. Today's special feature:

4163 When the Well Runs Dry: Dwindling Resources and International Conflict

9:30-10:50 on Thursday April 9, 2009
UMC West Ballroom
Panelists:
o Jonathan Granoff
o Susan Shaer
o James A. Trengrove

o Moderator: Dorothy Rupert

Earlier:
Live-blogging "There's No Such Thing As Agenda-free Science"
Live-blogging "Reading Fiction Helps Me Survive in the Real World"

Live Blogging the Conference on World Affairs: There's No Such Thing as Agenda-free Science

4:39 pm

Ok, now that the panel is over, I've migrated to an outlet. A few interesting things came up after my battery died, most importantly:

• Sanjoy Mahajan is the man. (And yes, I recognize the irony of using this phrase in light of the feminist discussion that was part of this panel...)

He told an anecdote about how he'll give his students something that looks like a multiple choice problem, only all the potential answers are wrong. After much hand-wringing and head-banging, they eventually reach this conclusion, at which point he gives them another multiple choice questions:

Did I set you up because
A) I'm careless
B) I'm a bastard

Most students choose B. The moral of the story? (Yes, there's a life lesson here!) When his students get out into the world and pursue their careers, people will try to manipulate them by presenting them a falsely-exhaustive set of solutions. As he said, "They'll ask you, do we cut A) education spending or B) science spending, when there's another answer, C) cut military spending."

When an audience member asked the panel about the recent push to legally force Texas schools to teach creationism alongside evolution, Mahajan had the most articulate and nuanced response:

• Courts don't bring about social change, grass roots activism does.
• If science-minded people want to keep creationism out of schools, they need to go door to door to rally the cause like the religious right did.
• Bringing the 'creationism v. evolution' debate into schools would actually be the best thing for evolution. Too often, when the debate occurs, those who favor evolution don't come prepared because they think they hold the "scepter of truth" on their side. What happens? Creationists wipe the floor with them. Teaching students how to think and debate is more important than making them memorize the tenants of evolution, which has, as Mahajan says, become its own kind of religion.

I reeallly want to see some more of his panels, but unfortunately I have class for Friday morning's "Science Literacy and the Un-dumbing of America." If I can, I'll try to make it to "Who Owns the Creative Commons" tomorrow...

3:50 pm

Ok, my battery is just about dead. At least I made it through the panelists' statements. The Q and A has been a mixed bag, so far, so not a huge tragedy!

More live-blogging to come tomorrow.

3:48 pm

The people behind be are growing at the audience questions. "Do you want to step out?" one guy asks to the person sitting next to him.

I think it isn't the panelists' fault!

3:47 pm

Jairala asks Nordstrom whether that physicist felt embarrassed and felt like a woman because of what he said, or because of the reactions of the other physicists.

Nordstrom says from his statements it looks like a combination of both.

3:46 pm

Mahajan responds to a question on why the U.S. dropped the bomb on Japan if they were close to surrendering. He says it was an "early version of Nixon's mad-man theory," to show the world what we could do.

Perkowitz points out that the decision was made in the context of the time. We have to remember their social situation.

3:42 pm

Next, Nordstrom mentions the unknown social consequences of science.

Now, she's talking about observation and objectivity. Observation cannot be pure, because "observation is about a relationship between the observer and the observed." She points out that quantum mechanics accounts for this, as does anthropology.

Observations often say a lot more about the observer than the observed.

Nordstrom says that we need to be aware the agenda and the social context of science.

She openly acknowledges that her organization has an agenda. It's a clear one that they put out in the open when they do studies. It's a different kind of agenda than profit, says Nordstrom, but we, the public, are the ones that get to evaluate those agendas.

3:38 pm

Jennifer Nordstrom agrees that science/scientists almost always have an agenda due to the nature of being human. Sometimes this is consciously recognized, and sometimes it isn't. "Scientists operate within a social context that they may or may not realize," she says.

She uses the example of cartographers drawing maps during age of imperialism. Their maps helped empires rise to power, although they weren't directly involved with conquest.

Nordstrom has a background studying gender and nuclear disarmament. (My note: Interesting!) Estimates made my physicists on the casualties of bombs were made by "a bunch of male physicists sitting around a table." They were talking about the difference between 36 million and 30 million deaths -- one of them just freaked out at the conversation. Nordstrom tells the anecdote: "'Oh my god! We're talking about 30 million deaths! What are we doing?' one physicist said," then later, he reflected, "'I'm so embarrassed, I feel like a woman.'"

There's a "divorce of head and heart" that has had negative consequences in science. Things that may not seem immediately immoral are still part of the separation of our brains and souls, Nordstrom said.

The fact that emotion has a negative connotation because it means feminine, hysterical, non-rational, is disturbing. She's gotten some flack from other male panelists in the conference for bringing this up. She says that divorcing the emotional and the rational is doing ourselves a disservice.

3:32 pm

Mahajan's examples:

• The atomic bomb project: suppose we start with the assumption it was a reasonable idea to start the project. We had motives of our own defense. But after Germany surrendered in 1945, why continue developing the bomb? The stimulus behind it was the fear that Germany could also develop a bomb. One scientist wanted to quit, and his supervisors tried to stop him. The purpose was finished, he wanted out. They eventually let him leave, but he couldn't tell anyone why. Moral: it's easy for scientists to get sucked in to problem solving without thinking about why solve them in the first place.
• A microwave crowd-dispersal project that heats up water just under the skin. What are the reasons for doing this? One spokesman claimed it was because we needed a non-violent method for crowd-control in Iraq. Another described it as, "a torture device that would leave no marks," -- but we would never use it that way, of course. Now people are talking about other applications, use in the U.S. and abroad.
• Superconducting supercollider: not just for studying theoretical physics, but also has defense applications

Mahajan uses a quote from Adam Smith about how the division of labor makes it impossible for man to see the ethical implications of his actions. Everyone is just solving one small problem, they don't see the big picture. "They are all so separate, that it is very hard to have a moral view of what is going on," says Mahajan.

How to make science moral? Maybe we can get beyond the division of labor in our own minds.

3:25 pm

Mahajan gets up and stands at the podium. He takes a poll of the audience and determines that most of us think the phrase, "he/she has an agenda" has a negative connotation.

So he wants to rephrase the debate: Can we have a science that is free from ethics and morality?

No way -- "scientists are human, and science is a human institution."

But what is the mix of good and bad traits within science? How can we evaluate it?

3:23 pm

In her daily job, Jairala works on development of a new spacesuit for the future lunar missions.

(Ouch, she just got the one minute warning from the moderator.)

But the point behind this is that all the different scientists who work on the space suit all have their own research agendas, but they also have to come together for a common goal.

3:20 pm

Juniper Jairala wants to start by explaining why she's dressed the way she is. "I don't have an agenda," she says -- but she was scheduled to do a dance today, as well as talk about science. "I don't dress like this for work," she says.

She had taken a hiatus from working for NASA to work for some other companies, and one of the main reasons was she was bogged down by the agenda. But...she went back. She found that in the private space industry, they have their agendas just as much as government organizations do.

For example, founder of SpaceX originally wanted to put greenhouses on Mars. That morphed into a goal of proving that things could be sent into space faster, cheaper, better than NASA.

Why are we going back to the moon? Jairala says, "Do we need a reason? It's there!" Space exploration is, in that respect, agenda-less, or rather, an agenda in and of itself.

In the 60s, there was a political agenda -- the Cold War -- for pursuing space exploration. It was a competition with our political enemies, and everyone in the U.S. was on board. "But that crumbed, and what did we have left," says Jairala. We are left with a void -- action without reason. She says a lot of what we accomplished wasn't because of the budget (4% in the 1960s, now less than 1% goes to NASA), but also because of the energy

She points out how many civilian applications came out of the space program as another answer to the question, "why even have a space program?"

3:12 pm

Perkowitz cites two places where science "as a whole" came together with an agenda:

• In support of stem cell research
• Emphasizing the importance of addressing global warming

3:10 pm

Perkowitz presents 2 examples:

• Korean scientist Woosook Wong. He found a way to get stem cells from an adult that can be used for therapeutic cloning. This can be used to grow a new kidney for someone who needs a transplant. The Korean government treated him as a hero and gave him more money than most scientists see in their lifetimes. He was also a hit with the public. But...turns out he made up all of his research. Oops. Who called him out? People within his own lab. That's an example of the system "correcting itself" even if there's one bad apple in the barrel.
• James Hansen, NASA climate scientist (with an open agenda to educate the world about global warming). "And yet the agenda may have pushed him over the edge," says Perkowitz. He said that oil and coal companies should be charged with crimes against humanity, and Perkowitz thinks this was going too far.

3:05 pm

Perkowitz: Is fascinated by the angles in this lecture hall, too.

He says the question isn't whether agenda-free science exists, but whether agenda-free scientists exist.

Science can't be separated from the people who do it. Scientists are human beings. They like rewards -- in addition to answers and knowledge.

"Humanity shows up in everything that scientists do."

But he says that even if an individual isn't objective, the system can correct it.

3:03 pm

Introductions:

Sidney Perkowitz: Teaches physics at Emory University, also writes books about human cloning (and a screen play!). Being a writer has helped him understand the true goals of the scientific agenda.

Juniper Jairala: EVA engineer for NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center. She also dances with fire -- not with NASA.

Sanjoy Mahajan: Theoretical physicist at MIT. He's interested improving how science is taught.

Jennifer Nordstrom: Coordinates carbon-free, nuclear-free campaign. She's an organizer and activist.

2:59 pm
Juniper Jairala is wearing a red sparkly hat, red arm warmers, and a salmon colored tank top. Sanjoy Mahajan is wearing a suit. It's great to see them sitting next to each other.

2:58 pm
Before this thing officially gets underway -- and in between bites of a veggie/avacado/cream cheese sandwich -- I have a few things to say about the room. This talk is being held in the physics building, in one of the strangest lecture halls I've ever seen. The floor plan is an isocoles triangle with a top angle of, oh, I'd say 30 degrees. The result is two steeply angled banks of chairs. The chairs themselves are, like the rows they are in, angled very steeply (and not really towards the center/front), so they swivel. That's right. Spinny chairs! Spinny chairs with desks that you can't flip up or down.

The results is that everyone sitting in the audience is closer to each other than we would normally be, but has the ability to turn away and stare at the wall if we get scared.

Also, there's a balcony level -- also steeply angled -- that is only about 10 feet above the middle rows of chairs. It's kind of disconcerting...

2:54 pm

3711 There's No Such Thing as Agenda-free Science

3:00-4:20 on Wednesday April 8, 2009
Duane Physics G1B30
Panelists:
o Juniper Jairala
o Sanjoy Mahajan
o Jennifer Nordstrom
o Sidney Perkowitz

o Moderator: Radu Popescu

Earlier: Live-blogging "Reading Fiction Helps Me Survive in the Real World"

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 04/06/2009

• Will the Internet Replace Universities? | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

  A Discover blog response to an article by Kevin Carey in Chronicle of Higher Education about whether the internet is replacing universities.
  
  If anything is killing universities, I'm guessing it will probably be THEMSELVES, not the internet.

  tags: cosmic variance, chronicle of higher education, internet, education, technology, information, sharing, open source

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Live Blogging the Conference on World Affairs: Reading Fiction Helps Me Live in the Real World

1:52 pm
All right -- the panel is still going full force, but I have to get to class. Hope you enjoyed the live blogging. More to come soon!

1:52 pm
Peterson heard one poet say, "don't presume that what I write about is my life." He takes this to mean that poetry is as much storytelling as anything else. It doesn't have to be personal reality. It can be fiction too.

"If I knew what the end was going to be, I should be working from diagrams," says Peterson. He sees the same thing -- spontaneous discovery -- in the creation of fiction.

1:50 pm
Winsor asks how they got into visual from being writers. Jordan has to say it in Peterson's ear. He came the other way -- came to writing out of visual art.

Peterson discovered Ezra Pound when he was in art school, and "I suddenly though this is exactly the kind of thing I should be doing....so I began writing in my own cryptic way."

"There's something about poetry that is so rock hard, can go right to the heart of the matter," says Peterson. Ever since then, he's done visual art and poetry. They are different forms that come from the same place. "I never had to choose whether to do one or the other, I could do them both."

1:46 pm
Peterson talks about technology and the availability and affordability of information. Refers to Hegel quote about when a cultural form becomes obsolete, it becomes art. With books, the content may become less important than the production of the book itself. They will become objects, not words. So where will the words live? On the web -- but how does this change the form of them? How does this change how people read?

McNally adds that there's the fiction/non-fiction debate, then the narrative/non-narrative debate. He finds narrative writing of any form the most compelling (even if it is telling facts/news). When he interviews on the radio an environmentalist, economist, his first question is always about their personal path. "If I can get them to go back to why they first started doing what they are doing...it's amazing what happens to them." He says, "that changes the quality fo the rest of the interview because I've gotten them out of their rote track into themselves." Even if they end up talking about the same things, they are coming from a different place.

Peterson: I was just gonna say that.

1:44 pm
Jordan points out that Rand's book sales have seen a spike recently: is this because people see it as the end of the world, or a need to return to the free market principles?

McNally asks, "Bernie Madoff: Ayn Rand yes, or Ayn Rand no." Jordan says she would see him as a looter, McNally says he would see himself as a creator.

1:40 pm
McNally to Teresa Jordan, "Tell him [Peterson] that I said exactly what he said."

McNally asks Jordan if she noticed little cracks in Rand's work in addition to the big areas where it broke down. She thinks people at first find Rand liberating, but that's a stage in their development -- not a final destination. People generally move beyond the "dead ends" in Rand's philosophy, but her father didn't. With any belief that is presented as THE answer to the problems world, versus AN answer to the problems of the world, there will be problems.

1:38 pm
Peterson thinks maybe fiction is answering the question of, "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Where can you draw a line between prose and poetry? Peterson, himself a poet, thinks this is a pointless argument, thinks barriers between fields are unnecessary.

1:33 pm
Allan Peterson has two defecits: an ear infection that renders him almost deaf, and he's heard almost nothing about his fellow panelists.

Considers the implication that fiction is in fact not the real world (as the name of the panel suggests). He thinks this isn't necessary the case. Fiction has the unique pleasure of delivering you to a parallel and simultaneous world, it's "like a dream while you are awake."

1:31 pm
After Jordan's mother died, her father cut himself off from the world and created a place for himself where he would never encounter love again.

When people invented tablets, Peterson speculates, people thought, "well there goes the world" -- people thought we would lose the power of memory. He doesn't want to see the Kindle succeed, he savors the joy of a book. In Jackson County Oregon, they decided to close down the libraries to save money. The public rose up and found funding. He says whether you are reading stone tablets or computer screens that shouldn't happen.

Peterson is interested in the process of how writers put things together. The writing often seems to take on a life of its own. "Things happen during the writing itself that tells the writer what might happen next, what could happen next, what should happen next. Characters seem to find themselves and their own futures."

He wants to see that mind at work when he reads fiction. He wants to both live the dream and keep one eye on the reality of the author.

Great loves in fiction: James Joyce, John Barth -- but "for some reason, fiction didn't choose me, I'm not as attuned to it."

Is also interested at the point before poetry and storytelling diverged. "You stare at the world long enough until you begin to intuit how it might be working. That intuition is the substance of the writing."

Some texts help Jordan make sense of life: Louis Hyde's, "The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World", Stephen Levine's work on spirituality and compassion, Jeanette Haien, "The All of It" and "Matters of Chance".

1:27 pm
Jordan's brother was someone who was happy-go-lucky, had learning disabilities, wasn't the archetype of an Ayn Rand hero. Her father couldn't understand it, and rejected it. There was nothing in Rand's words to help him deal with this situation, which could only be explained by unconditional love.

1:24 pm
By the time she was 12 or 13, Jordan had read the complete works of Ayn Rand and started to realize that some of it didn't work for her. She wrote her notes on "soft touch stationary" and wrote this comment about her father: the problem with finding an ultimate truth is that then your task becomes only to find evidence for it.

Her father only saw things that fit into his world view. Once she started asking questions that couldn't be answered easily, she was "expelled from Eden."

For her father, the world was black or white, but Jordan wondered, "what about the love part?" Her father came from a painful childhood with parents who hated each other, and split up but never divorced, "out of the fear that one of them might re-marry and be happy." Her father was comforted by the idea that love could be earned and created, but saw unconditional love as blasphemy -- a very dangerous idea because it is love that isn't traded like a commodity.

1:20 pm
Jordan describes Rand's philosophy: you live for the self; the self is the highest purpose. The world is composed of heros (makers) and looters/moochers/parasites.

Growing up in a family that embraced these ideas gave her the idea that her life was her own, and she could pursue her dreams without apology. She had a conversation with her parents about whether she should aspire to be an executive secretary or a CEO. "This is not the conversation of a typical ranch girl."


1:16 pm
Jordan tells stories of "Western orphan," an archetype for independence and doing it all on ones own -- that distinguishes West from East.

Some stories don't help her live in the real world. The sacred text that shaped her family was Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Oh man. I can relate. It was her father's bible. Not quite the same for my dad, but close...

1:14 pm
Teresa Jordan starts with the metaphor of the brain as a sort of computer. Stories give meaning to an otherwise confusing world.

1:12 pm
Gatsby evoked a feeling of subtle sadness.

In fiction, the fact that you consciously acknowledge the presence of a narrator makes it more true than non-fiction. You know it is perception, and that validates it.

1:10 pm
McNally read a book of fiction yesterday, in preparation for this panel. What did he choose? F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

1:06 pm
McNally: "I tell them no one ever marched on Washington because of a pie chart."

"There is no such thing as rational decision making...by the time we consider it, it's probably already got a little tag: 'good, matters to me, I'll consider it,'..."

Looks for three things in stories:

1. Flesh and blood characters
   
2. Do you have scenes? Do you slow down the story to commit to a narrative, exchange of dialoge, action..."We listen to it differently, we relate to it differently, we allow it to affect our emotions."

"If you match a great piece of data to a compelling story, that's the way to move people."

1:04 pm
McNally: said that when he looks out on a crowd like this, of people who are so committed to the topic, they should be up here on the panel. He realizes that he mostly reads non-fiction, but feels nostalgic for elementary school when he would go through a novel a day instead of paying attention to class.

He makes a side-handed jab at the death of newspapers...

He teaches storytelling to non-profit organizations. "They all have powerful stories," he says, "but very often, like me, they've gotten out of the habit of telling them."

1:02 pm
This is a flustered first attempt at live blogging.

1513 Reading Fiction Helps Me Live in the Real World

1:00-2:20 on Monday April 6, 2009
Old Main Chapel
Panelists:
o Teresa Jordan
o Terrence McNally
o Allan Peterson

o Moderator: Tish Winsor

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 04/03/2009

• Where Gadgets Go to Die: Facility Strips, Rips and Recycles

  Awesome pictures of an electronics reclamation facility by Jim Merithew.

  tags: wired, e-waste, recycling, electronics, end of life

• TED Blog: The fate of the newspaper: Exclusive interview with Jacek Utko

  An interview with Jacek Utko on the, yes, death of newspapers:
  
  "Newspapers, just before death -- since we agree that, sooner or later, they will die -- just before death, they blossom, design-wise. Never in history has design and visual journalism been as good as it is now. This happens not only in Western Europe and America, but even more in countries in Latin America. Asia is waking up; they will do beautiful stuff in the near future.
  
  "People perceive newspapers as boring pages with letters, but I can find so many examples around the world of sophisticated, artistic, beautiful work. They're not dying because they're not good. They're dying because of more general reasons connected with technology and behavior.
  
  "Just before newspapers die, they come to highest possible level of development."

  tags: jacek utko, TED, newspapers, media, journalism

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 04/02/2009

• Oregon woodland owners consider selling carbon credits - OregonLive.com

  Am I wrong to be confused by this? Does the fact that the decision of whether or not to cut stands of forest -- or how often to cut them -- is dependent on the market price of carbon scare anybody else?
  
  I am still trying to wrap my mind around carbon credits, and every way I do it, they don't make sense...

  tags: oregon, forest, carbon credit, logging, forestry, oregonian, offsets, global warming

• Science and art in action: A machine that poos

  Yes, it really is what it sounds like. In goes food, out comes poop.
  
  I, of course, think this is fantastic. The creator of the machine (an art installation), is a bit self-deprecating:
  
  "I wanted to make something that is absurdly unnecessary... I don't think this biologically correct machine belongs in a science museum. I don't have that ego. I'm not helping sick people. I'm practically useless in society."
  
  That can't be true! There have to be SOME uses for this! After all, waste water treatment plants basically mimic natural decomposition. Making a machine that mimics human digestion has to have similar applications.
  
  Go look at the pictures...right now!

  tags: poop, poo, machine, artificial, digestion, art, intestines, Wim Delvoye, cloaca

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 04/01/2009

• Mountain lion's territory crosses Highway 101 : Local News : Ventura County Star

  An update on mountain lion tracking, this time from California.

  tags: mountain lion, cougar, wildlife, urban, tracking

• The Running Man, Revisited § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

  Read this (awesome and very my-life-appropriate) article last week about how humans evolved as runners. Forgot to bookmark it until now! Totally essentially for any runner/science geek.

  tags: SEED, running, human, evolution, evolutionary biology

• SEEDMAGAZINE.COM | Revolutionary Minds | The Interpreters

  "The new tools of high-throughput science  — like powerful data visualizations — are revolutionizing both scientific research and science education, as scientists, entrepreneurs, and educators all take advantage of their power. For the five Revolutionary Minds we profile here, the new tools of science are also the best tools for education, and engagement. "

  tags: SEED, science, education, technolog

• A Blog Around The Clock : Defining the Journalism vs. Blogging Debate, with a Science Reporting angle

  A blog post on the "death of journalism" with a science spin. I really like how he divides journalism up into different categories and defines them. I totally agree that there are different types of journalism, and we need different people to do them.
  
  Have only gotten about half way through it but...can't wait to finish it. Zooming ahead, I can see that he only devotes a short amount of time to "Opinion, Entertainment, Storytelling, etc." which is my favorite kind.
  
  Now wait a minute...isn't STORYTELLING the most important thing for a science journalists, since scientists tend to neglect the STORIES behind the science?
  
  I'll at least wait until I finish reading to pass judgment...

  tags: science, reporting, blogging, journalism, media, scienceblogs

• April Book Picks § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

  Ahhh! Too many books to read!

  tags: books, SEED

• Philosophers finally relax as navel fluff explained - life - 01 April 2009 - New Scientist

  Ahhh, self-aware pseudo-science is kind of refreshing, actually...

  tags: navel, belly button, lint, new scientist, navel gazing

• Asian Dolphin Less Rare Than Thought - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

  Wait -- there are dolphins in the Colorado River?
  
  "The vaquita, a porpoise living in brackish waters where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf of California, is critically endangered, biologists say, depleted by fishing nets and the disruptions in the great river’s flow in the 20th century from dam construction."
  
  Hold the phone!

  tags: nytimes, dotearth, andy revkin, dolphins, porpoises, river, endangered, aquatic, population, ecology

• FBI Nabs Robbers With Google Map, Spycam Mashup | Danger Room from Wired.com

  If online tracking using a network of uses works so well for stalking celebrities, why not apply it to catching criminals?
  
  From the article:
  
  "G-Men these days have to focus more on stopping terrorists than nabbing old-school bank robbers. So FBI agents in Arkansas are enlisting the online public's help in catching the thieves. And it appears to be working. Four bank robberies have been solved in the past six months, thanks in part to tips collected from BanditTrackerArkansas.com, Little Rock special agent Steven Burroughs tells the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In all, 10 suspected robbers featured on the site are now behind bars."

  tags: maps, crowd sourcing, crime, police, wanted, tracking, wired, bandittrackerarkansas.com

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.