Now online, an “utterly fascinating archive of Mike Wallace Interview videos from the 1950s, which are hosted online by The School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin.”

The Mike Wallace Interview archive: Link.

Via Boing Boing:

It’s astonishing to watch television in which the host asks real questions and the guests answer in full sentences. Wallace never lets people off the hook and he smokes cigarettes like the world is ending tomorrow, piling on fulsome praise for his beloved Winstons before each interview begins.

And what a list of guests! He interviews Frank Lloyd Wright, Salvadore Dali, Leonard Ross (a 12-year-old California school boy who won a total of $164,000 on the game shows The Big Surprise and The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Challenge), Aldous Huxley, Gloria Swanson, Tony Perkins, Eldon Edwards (Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), Philip Wylie, Jean Seberg, Earl Browder (former head of the Communist Party in the United States), Mary Margaret McBride (the “First Lady of Radio”), David Hawkins (the youngest of 20 prisoners to defect during the Korean War), Dr. Henry Kissinger, and many more.

- Mark Frauenfelder @ Boing Boing: Link.

Earl Browder: 6/2/1957: Link.
Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party in the United States, talks to Wallace about Nikita Khrushchev, Joseph Stalin, the cold war, and American communism.

Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.

Babel seeks multilingual and multicultural writers, editors, bloggers and translators proficient in using web tools to continue building in over 250 languages what has been recognized since 2001 by the United Nations as one of the most import social and human sciences online periodicals.

There are over 250 subdomains of towerofbabel.com ready to be configured by those who are interested in taking the language-oriented subdomains and helping to build the tower ….

Design your language’s tower however you wish but continue what has already been pioneered as an attempt to build a tower aiming for the highest egalitarian, altruistic, philanthropic and humanitarian structures.

Tower of Babel: Link.

Babel English Blog: Link.

“Simply put, the model involved sending miniskirted saleswomen out to sell ads at confiscatory rates to lecherous old car dealers and appliance-store owners.”

Veteran journalist Jon Talton write about the decline of newspapers:

The biggest problem, of course, had nothing to do with the newsrooms. It was the collapse of an unsustainable business model. Simply put, the model involved sending miniskirted saleswomen out to sell ads at confiscatory rates to lecherous old car dealers and appliance-store owners. Protecting these profits, whether from national, local or classified ads, became the central focus of newspaper bosses. These areas were the most vulnerable to new competitors. But the condition of the industry by the 1990s – risk averse, promising unrealistic margins, losing its best talent, ignoring ideas outside its preconceived notions – left it unable to meet these threats.

- Jon Talton @ Rogue Columnist: Link.

Via Boing Boing.

“The book is very well worked out, somewhat in the way that the wheel is very well worked out.”

People are still asking me about the death of the book … and yet here I am and every day I go out to the biggest bookstores that have ever existed and are doing the most business daily of any bookstores in history.

It’s the oldest and the first mass medium. And it’s the one that requires the most training to access. Novels, particularly, require serious cultural training. But it’s still the same thing — I make black marks on a white surface and someone else in another location looks at them and interprets them and sees a spaceship or whatever. It’s magic. It’s a magical thing. It’s very old magic, but it’s very thorough. The book is very well worked out, somewhat in the way that the wheel is very well worked out.

William Gibson, interview

In a new play based on Hunter S. Thompson, “performer and writer ‘B. Duke’ incarnates the Last Free American Writer as he was during the intense and difficult years 1968-1971.”

From an interview with B. Duke, conducted by R.U. Sirius:

I suggested that we use Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. That’s a collection of Thompson’s letters from ‘68 - ‘76. I had read that a few years earlier and I’d become keenly aware that the nuances of a real man were there.

… He was ferocious. He would start in on speed, probably somewhere around 11 PM or midnight, and he would go to bed about 8 or 9:00 in the morning – around the time his young son Juan was getting up. He’d get up around 3 in the afternoon.

We secured an original 1968 IBM Selectric Model I typewriter off of eBay for the play. I learned from working with it that you can lie through a computer really easily. You can delete whole swaths of material real easily. On the typewriter, you have to think continuously. Also, we’re used to firing out our emails right now. Nobody takes time to think about anything. In these letters, he’d stop and start. They would take hours for him to create. And in between, he was hosting a lot of druggie friends and doing a lot of shooting and some traveling …

… He read tremendously. His inventory of magazines and publications was twenty or thirty publications long — newspapers, magazines. And he didn’t just read one side. It’s not as though he just read all the left-wing stuff. He wanted to know what the other side was thinking. He read religiously.

… It’s very easy to translate elements of his frustration — the Vietnam war to the Iraq war; spineless, useless Democrats to spineless, useless Democrats; vile Republicans to vile Republicans. Oil companies fucking everybody.

… He was from an age where men didn’t really talk about their feelings. They kept it locked up. He didn’t believe in psychiatry. He took it on alone. So he was trying to grapple with all of this agony in his personal life. Meanwhile, the country’s disintegrating around him. He got the shit knocked out of him in Chicago [1968] by the police. He started to feel like the whole nation was really slipping into a type of internal Civil War bordering on anarchy.

… He’d already covered very heavy things as a journalist. He had been in South America for a time, and had covered riots down there and had done some tough reports in New York City and the Caribbean. He knew true toughness. He was unafraid to go into it. And remember, Thompson was like 6′5″ and 185 pounds. He was monstrous.

[Link]

Via Boing Boing.

Kurt Vonnegut was a beautiful amazing soul. What a writer!

“Here’s some lovely advice on writing short stories, from Kurt Vonnegut’s collection, Bagombo Snuff Box:”

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.*

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Via Boing Boing.

Press Release

Our dearest friend, our brother, the editor in chief of AGOS newspaper Hrant Dink has been assasinated ruthlessly.

There are no words to explain our pain.

Our deepest condolences for those who can still feel themselves as human beings.

[AGOS Members]

Three Arrested in Turkey for Murder of Outspoken Journalist Hrant Dink

Istanbul governor Muammer Guler said three people were arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Hrant Dink earlier on Friday, CNN-Turk television reported.

No further information was provided on the arrests. Earlier in the day, two people were arrested, only to be released when officials decided they had no connection to the crime. Dink was one of the most prominent voices of Turkey’s Armenian community, and a frequent target of nationalist anger.

[FoxNews.com]

Prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink murdered

Journalist Hrant Dink, one of the most prominent voices of Turkey’s Armenian community, was killed by a gunman Friday [January 16, 2007] at the entrance to his newspaper’s offices, police said.

Dink, a 53-year-old Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, had gone on trial numerous times for speaking out about the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. He had received threats from ultra-nationalists, who viewed him as a traitor.

Dink was a public figure in Turkey, and as the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, one of its most prominent Armenian voices.

In his last column for Agos, Dink complained that he had become famous as an enemy of Turks and wrote of threats against him. He said he had received no protection from authorities despite his complaints.

… Turkey’s relationship with its Armenian community is fraught with tension, controversy and painful memories of a brutal past. Much of Turkey’s once-sizeable Armenian population was driven out beginning around 1915.

During World War I, as the Ottoman Turkish empire fought Russian forces, some of the Armenian minority in eastern Anatolia sided with the Russians.

In May 1915, the Armenian minority, one or two million strong, was forcefully deported and marched from the Anatolian borders towards Syria and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Many died en route.

Armenia says 1.5 million Armenians were killed in this period, either through systematic massacres or through starvation.

It alleges that a deliberate genocide was carried out by the Ottoman Turkish empire.

Turkey acknowledges that many Armenians died, but says Turks died too, and that massacres were committed on both sides as a result of inter-ethnic violence and the wider World War.

Dink had been convicted of trying to influence the judiciary in 2005 after Agos ran stories criticizing a law making it a crime to insult Turkey, the Turkish government or the Turkish national character.

The conviction was rare even in a country where trials of journalists, academics and writers have become common. Most of the cases, including that of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk last year, were either dropped on a technicality or lead to acquittals.

… A colleague at Dink’s newspaper, Aydin Engin, said Dink had attributed the threats to elements in the “deep state,” a Turkish term used for alleged shadowy, fiercely ultra-nationalist and powerful elements embedded in the government and security establishment.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry released a statement quickly after the shooting Friday saying it was deeply saddened by the killing.

“The actor or actors will be caught in the shortest possible time and delivered to justice,” the statement vowed. The Foreign Ministry offered condolences to the people of Turkey, its press, and particularly to the Armenian community and Dink’s family.

[New Anatolian]

Hrant Dink Received Threatening Messages

“We are in deep sorrow due to the murder of Hrant Dink, editor of Agos newspaper. We strongly condemn this cruel act. Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin, wrote in his column on January 10th that he was receiving threatening messages,” says the press release of ARI MOVEMENT NGO received by PanARMENIAN.Net. In the words Director Rana Birden, he also wrote that he felt like a fearful dove but “knew that the people of this country would not hurt a dove”.

“Unfortunately, he was wrong. We call for restraint in social reactions at this sensitive time and relate our condolences to Dink’s family, his loved ones, and the staff of Agos Newspaper,’ the release says.

[/PanARMENIAN.Net/]

FACTBOX: Turkish journalist Hrant Dink

• Dink, born in Malatya, southeast Turkey in 1954, was a member of Turkey’s small ethnic Armenian community, and a Turkish citizen.
• He was editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos (www.agos.com.tr).
• Dink had been convicted of insulting Turkishness — under the controversial article 301 of Turkey’s penal code — and handed a six-month suspended sentence in 2005. The case was prompted by an article he wrote in which he referred to an Armenian nationalist idea of ethnic purity. The European Union has repeatedly called on Ankara to change the law and the government has promised to revise it.
• Of his conviction, Dink told Reuters: “I may be paying the price for this, but Turkish democracy will gain from it, I hope.”

[Reuters.com]

See Also

• Hrant Dink @ Armenipedia

How Wikipedia entries get written: “Aaron Swartz … has done some data-crunching … while the majority of edits come from a small group of 500 core editors, the majority of new content is inserted by drive-by, unregistered users whose contributions are then massaged into encolopediahood by the core 500.”

When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site — the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

… Other encyclopedias work similarly, just on a much smaller scale: a large group of people write articles on topics they know well, while a small staff formats them into a single work.

[Aaron Swartz: Link]

Via Boing Boing.

Astute observation about other encyclopedias working similarly.

I love talk balloons — speechballoons, speech balloons, thought bubbles, verbal blurbals, call them what you will — they have fascinated me since childhood.

This article by Andy Konkykru explores the evolution of the form –

I’m using the word speechballoon as the general, inclusive term. (The gothic form of speechballoons are speechbands, flags, scrolls or sheets of paper, the modern form of speechballoons are balloons, but also little rectangles, often rounded at the edges, or simply little blocks of text above the heads of the speaker etc, etc).

…. It should be noted that the simplified speechballoon was not new, it had been used sporadically for centuries … but only now did rounded balloons become the standard.

[Image: Conversion of Paul, detail from missal page, 1240 AD]

[Andy Konkykru: Link]

Via Boing Boing.

Wikipedia asserts:

Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used in comic books, strips, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic. There is often a formal distinction between the balloon that indicates thoughts and the one that indicates words spoken aloud: the bubble that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a thought balloon.

…. One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble were the “speech scrolls”, wispy lines that connected first person speech to the mouths of the speakers in Late Classic era (600-900 CE) Mayan art.

In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what a pictured figure is speaking have appeared since at least the 13th century. More recognizably modern “speech balloons” begin appearing in 17th century printed broadsides. With the development of the comics industry in the 20th century, the appearance of speech balloons has become increasingly standardized, though the formal conventions that have evolved in different cultures (USA as opposed to Japan, for example), can be quite distinct.

[Wikipedia: Link]

Early Mesoamerican Writing
Royal glyph seal resembles speech balloon:

Scientists have uncovered evidence of what is believed to be the earliest form of writing ever found in the New World. The discovery was based on glyphs carved on a cylindrical seal used to make imprints and on greenstone plaque fragments found near La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico, in the Gulf Coast region. The writings were produced by the Olmecs, a pre-Mayan civilization, and are estimated to date from 650 B.C.

…. Excavations led by Mary E.D. Pohl of Florida State University, resulting in the discovery of the Olmec writings were conducted at San Andrés, near La Venta in 1997 and 1998. Her team included colleagues Kevin O. Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research, Christopher von Nagy of Tulane University and four students, three American and one Dutch. Pohl’s team worked for several years beyond the initial excavations to analyze, refine and confirm the estimated date of the Olmec writings.

…. “The connection between writing, the calendar and kingship within the Olmecs is indicated in these communications, dating to 650 B.C., which makes sense, since the Olmecs were the first known peoples in Mesoamerica to have a state-level political structure, and writing is a way to communicate power and influence,” Pohl said.

Pohl’s group found one of the indicators of this political system as they excavated through a rare sampling of Olmec refuse debris that included human and animal bone, as well as objects such as food-serving vessels, hollow figurines and the cylinder seal and greenstone plaque fragments containing the evidence of Olmec writings.

One of these writings contained the glyphic element determined to be close to early Mayan counterparts representing the day sign “ajaw,” or “king.” The scientists interpreted part of the glyphic inscription to contain the word “3 Ajaw,” the name of a day on the 260-day calendar, which could also represent the personal name of a king. Whether or not the interpretation is entirely accurate, Pohl said that the evidence suggests association between writing and “rulership.” The cylinder seal, for example, was probably used to imprint clothing with the King 3 Ajaw symbol.

[National Science Foundation: Link]

• Nature.com: Oldest American writing found in dump - December 2002
• Mesoweb: Evidence for Olmec Writing? - April 2005
• Florida State University: Dig Uncovers Oldest Writing in New World -
• Mary Deland Pohl, Ph.D: Bio - Florida State University

Stained Glass Speech Balloon of the Gods

Found in mid-2006 during an archaeological web surfing expedition, this extraordinary artifact dates to the late twentieth century –

Detail from Speech Balloon by Judy Schaechter

Stained glass

28″ x 24″

1999

Link to full image.

Big Bang as Speech Balloon: if the universe is expanding like a balloon, and if string theory is true … does string connect the balloon of Creation to the mouth of God? “In the beginning was the Word,” etc.

Speech balloons in literature: speech balloons are so associated with comic effect that a written description of a speech balloon can evoke humor –

Attorney Alejandro starts frisking himself. A picture of a fresh pack of Marlboros appears over his head in a little thought-balloon.

[Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon]

You know what I think would be funny? A personal holographic projector with programmable thought balloons. Generate customized thought balloon messages — over yourself, over friends, over dogs and cats, over cars — endless possibilities for fun and amusement!

Boing Boing reports:

Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything Word does, for free — and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing — multiple editors on the same doc at once — and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don’t worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some “security” procedure.

[Boing Boing: Link]

Also via Slashdot.

Cool!

Aug. 22, 2002: reporter Allen Myerson falls to his death, an apparent suicide. No evidence of foul play; but the event is strange, and his investigative reporting (sewage sludge dumping, Enron, etc.) could have made any number of powerful enemies.

Texas Press reports –

Allen Myerson, 47, died Aug. 22, 2002 after falling from the 11th floor of The New York Times building and landing on the roof of a parking garage.

He was assistant business editor/weekends for the Times. Police said the death was an apparent suicide. Myerson joined the Times in 1989. Before that he was a reporter for several years at The Dallas Morning News.

[Link]

NewWatch India observes –

Allen Myerson, 47, was a staffer at the paper, an assistant business and financial editor, and he landed on the roof of a parking garage next door. That’s where police found him. Dead — an apparent suicide.

The next day’s obits ranged from a respectful one in the Times — declaring that Myerson “fell from a parapet above the 15th floor” and that the preliminary police finding was suicide — to the New York Post’s play-by-play of the moments before death and exposure of the editor’s marital and financial difficulties.

[Link]

Lisa DePaulo: Justice for Allen –

When Allen Myerson jumped from the fifteenth floor of the New York Times building, it wasn’t just the tragic end to a respected editor’s life. It was the beginning of a ferocious battle between his estranged wife and the sisters who accuse her of “murdering” him.

[New York Metro: Link]

Paul Kienitz: unnerved by Allen Myerson’s death –

Now this scares me a bit. A New York Times business editor, Allen Myerson, fell to his death four days ago. The police are treating it as a possible suicide — but nobody knows how he fell. He used to work for the Dallas Morning News. This scares me a bit because Myerson specialized in energy industry stories and Enron news, just as I am doing here…

[Enron & Friends: Link]

Interview with W. James Au by R.U. Sirius. Au worked, for a time, as an official embedded reporter in Second Life; and he continues to report on the SL scene:

Second Life is the online 3-D virtual world that threatens to conquer reality as we know it. W. James Au was hired by the game producer, Linden Lab, to be an embedded reporter in an emergent society, covering the news of this alternative game world. While no longer officially under contract with the company, Au continues to be the pre-eminent newsman in this strange new world. He joined us at our studio.

[Mondo Globo: Link]

W. James Au: New World Notes.

Via Boing Boing:

AU: They created what they call a Camp Darfur. So it’s like … tents and campfire and photos of real life refugees in the real life Darfur … This guy found a flaw in the building and he was able to trash the whole camp. And some of it was racist. They started shouting anti-African slurs and they started attacking the camp day after day.

Meanwhile on the other side of the camp, there’s a group called The Green Lantern Core… One of the guys is the Green Lantern — he’s got the Green Lantern outfit on and he’s this huge dude and he’s got the magic ring — he heard about Camp Darfur getting attacked… And so now the Green Lantern Core guards Camp Darfur.

[Boing Boing: Link]

Speaking of Green Lantern — he is the superhero whose powers I’d most like to have.

If I owned one of those Green Lantern rings, I’d be an auto mechanic for a living.

No more toolbox — no more tools — whatever tool you need, the ring makes it, hey presto! I’ll bet I could fix cars three times faster than any regular mechanic.

Moving observations about Louisiana from Jasmina Tešanović:

Used to be a town: Cameron, Louisiana, July 2006

We just missed a twister. We saw its black cloud in the sky, lit by lightning. In Louisiana, some miles after Cameron, a small tornado has toppled trees into the road. Police blocked the highway, workers cleaned the branches away and cool people sat on the porches, watching it all happen. Mostly old people. Why do people stay in disaster sites, living under the volcano? Why do they watch?

We enter the tourist center at the border of Louisiana. We want to go to Holly Beach, we say. Holly Beach isn’t there any more, says the clerk, politely smiling.

But yes, the road to Holly Beach still exists. We see this: tall trees snapped in half, house-trailers blown by the hurricane, landing in the most improbable places, upside down. Dead cars strewn like corpses, rusting anywhere, mangled as if crushed by specialized machines. Wind-shredded American flags. Where beach-houses once stood there are only bare poles. Instead of churches, there are the statues of saints… The trees which survived the storm have weird wind-tattered shapes. New leaves are growing out of their trunks.

Marshlands stretch all around us. My American friend is devastated. He laments loudly: the future belongs to this indestructible marsh-grass.

The houses we see, what’s left of them, have roofs patched with blue plastic, and some, even people living in them: ten months after the storm… why didn’t they rebuild the roofs?

Some empty sites still have street numbers and names: and hand-lettered signs that promise, we will be back…

As for the beach itself, oh well, it has seagulls, brown mud, a lot of fish jumping high in low water in the blazing sun. A massive heat wave is striking the USA.

The graveyards have no fences left, the churches have no windows. These people here are all Catholics, and the state of Louisiana is divided into parishes, not civil counties.

I have seen dead towns before, destroyed by war, not nature. My friend argues. The oil of Louisiana is pumped and produced all over these desolate marshlands as if nothing else matters; fossil fuel is like heroin, selling like crazy since the price is soaring worldwide, and bringing the damage of climate change back to the marshland. The refineries smell of pollution, putrid fish, putrid capitalism.

I am interested in people, not things. But there are not many people around here any more.

[Jasmina Tesanovic @ Boing Boing: Link]

Google: Jasmina Tešanović

Wikipedia: Jasmina Tešanović

From the BBC:

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and [Alexander Lebedev] have bought a 49% stake in a leading Russian independent newspaper.

Mr Gorbachev told an international media forum in Moscow that Novaya Gazeta - often critical of the Kremlin - should maintain a plurality of views.

Mr Gorbachev pioneered the “glasnost” (openness) policy that demolished decades of Soviet censorship.

Critics say President Vladimir Putin now has too much media influence.

Russia’s main television channels are state-controlled and several major newspapers are owned by businesses friendly to the Kremlin.
[Link]

Mikhail Gorbachev is an interesting historical figure; in my eyes, a hero:

• Mikhail Gorbachev

Alexander Lebedev appears in “World’s Richest People” list at Forbes.com:

Net Worth: $1.6 bil

The wealthiest former Soviet intelligence officer turned businessman, Lebedev is also a parliamentary deputy. As a KGB agent in the 1980s he was involved in the effort to prevent capital flight from the Soviet Union. He also worked for five years at the Soviet embassy in London. As a businessman Lebedev has been especially successful in portfolio investing. His sizable holdings in Unified Energy Systems and Gazprom are now worth six times more than his core business, National Reserve Bank.
[Link]

This New York Times ad reminds me of the old Field & Stream magazine, weaponized for the 21st century:

[Link]

This seems like as good a place as any to mention Get Your War On.

Interview with GYWO creator Dave Rees:

I had to get this off my chest. Late one night I was going to update my Web site with the regular, apolitical comics, and it just struck me that I just couldn’t continue with business as usual. Since I was sitting at my computer with the clip-art open, it was like, “Hell, I’ll make the clip-art characters say what I’m actually feeling.” It wasn’t like I was sitting around thinking, “God, I have to come up with a really powerful anti-war tool.” I’m not an activist. I’m not coming from that background. But after September 11, I really had to come to terms with my own death—what felt like an imminent death—because I live in New York City.

That first night I did the strip, I was thinking to myself, “O.K., when I was in high school, my friends and I would play our little punk rock music and sing and yell about Ronald Reagan. But if there has ever been a time in my life to create something about what is happening in the world, now is that time.”
[Link]