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Wednesday, March 28 2001

Black history, slave trade

My old employer The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about G. Ugo Nwokeji (University of Connecticut) and David Eltis (Queen's University in Canada) who are compiling a database of information on Africans rescued from slave ships. The goal is to provide an easily-usable historical record of slavery - where Africans were taken from, where they were being taken.

Humanities text repository

Another source for interesting (mostly historical, at a cursory glance) texts: The Perseus Digital Library.

Tuesday, March 27 2001

Marriage Expert Divorcing

Ellen Fein, co-author of "The Rules," is filing for divorce. Her new book "The Rules of Marriage: Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work" is on its way to stores now.

Short parody of The Rules.

Saturday, March 24 2001

Cheap used books, CDs, movies online

At half.com.

Rather than act as an auction site, they connect sellers of used stuff with buyers thereof; you pay half.com, they pay the seller, seller ships stuff to you.

Wednesday, March 21 2001

San Francisco street crime

Crime in big CA cities is up; but in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, it's down.

San Francisco Police Department crime stats.

Tuesday, March 20 2001

Hydrogen-powered cars

CNN has an article on hydrogen-powered cars being developed by BMW. 217-mile range, 140mph top speed. Safe, more environmentally sound than our current cars. But it'll require special refueling stations (stations won't be built till there are enough customers; customers won't come until there are enough stations; blah blah). (Link courtesy of slashdot.)

Monday, March 19 2001

Baboon stress

Robert Sapolsky, Stanford physiologist, studies stress in baboons (and theorizes that his findings may apply to humans). Findings: having numerous friendships reduces stress; having a Type A personality increases it; and the higher your rank (in a "stable dominance hierarchy"), the less stress you'll feel.

Friday, March 16 2001

Earthquake Art

Friend Sandy sent a link to a page of patterns caused by sand-tracing pendulums during the Seattle earthquake.

Warren Buffett on the tech market slump

"I told you so."

Wednesday, March 14 2001

Burn Out vs. Fade Away

Studies suggest that people view a short, happy life better than a longer, less-consistently-happy one.

Additionally: "...in evaluating their own experiences, people tended to pay less attention to how long an event lasted than to how the experience ended, and to peak moments, either good or bad, that stood out in their minds."

Thursday, March 8 2001

The Lone Gunmen vs. Junkyard Wars

Janelle Brown gives The Lone Gunmen a thumbs-down, while giving shows like Junkyard Wars a big thumbs-up. Reason: social stereotyping of geeks on the Chris Carter show.

Janelle needs to get a clue.

LinuxPPC is non-profit

It actually happened a while ago, but LinuxPPC, Inc. is now a non-profit. Which means that their goal in enhancing and distributing their PPC-based (aka Mac-hardware-based) Linux distribution is to break even and do good, rather than make significant returns on investment.

piou.org and all my other websites run off LinuxPPC boxes; though I'm open to switching to the other PPC-based unixes which are popping up...

:-( trademarked

As pointed out a message on RRE, the folks behind Despair.com have a trademark on the emoticon, ":-(". They have a press release on their website forbidding the use of the frowny-face in anyone's email; though there's a link to a follow-up press release saying they'll license use of the emoticon.

The press releases look to be jokes; but, they do own the trademark...

Homosexuality no longer a mental illness

The Chinese Psychiatric Assocation has decided that homosexuality is not a mental illness, contrary to their previous stand on sexual orientation. According to the article, the World Health Organization stopped calling it a mental illness in 1993; but various other Net sources give different years for the WHO's change.

Wednesday, March 7 2001

Veep watch

Salon and Slate on replacements for Cheney.

Monday, March 5 2001

Vice-presidential succession

Washington Post: Dick Cheney having (further) heart problems.

U.S. Constitution, 25th Amendment: "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress."

U.S. Constitution, Article V: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution,
or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing
Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress..."

Thursday, March 1 2001

Another obit: "Father of Digital Communication," Claude E. Shannon

The man who first figured that all communications could efficiently be encoded as 0s and 1s has died.

Chief Justice Earl Warren's Driver/Bodyguard/Friend dead

Interesting obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle for Edgar Patterson, a black man who served as former Chief Justice (of the Supreme Court Justices) Earl Warren's (a white man's) driver and bodyguard a while back, and helped shape Warren's views on race.

Warren wrote the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. "'He [Patterson] had a great teaching role. I believe he had an uncredited part in Brown vs. Board of Education,' Cray [a journalism professor] said."

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...