Pgweekly 2005 02 09 Part 1

The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, February 09, 2005 PT1 *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971****** Newsletter editors needed! Please email [email protected] or [email protected] Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email [email protected] HOT REQUESTS I was just wondering if you or might know someone from PG who could help a Linux newbie like me. There are some programs I want to install, but I need step-by-step guidance to ensure the programs compile correctly and so forth. Jared Buck <[email protected]> * HEADLINE NEWS Project Gutenberg of Canada needs your help! Please email: [email protected] * v0.2 version of PodReader is out, and it interfaces to PG. This allows users to browse the catalog on their Desktop, pick a book, and have it downloaded to their iPod in the correct format...this is a good plus for PG users since it makes it a lot easier to get to PG documents. http://homepage.mac.com/ptwobrussell/podreader.html * We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks. http://www.archive.org Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date, but you should get all the files when you pass through to the original sites. Click on "texts" to get started, feel free to pick up any of the eBooks you would like to work on. Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive! * TABLE OF CONTENTS [Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.] *eBook Milestones *Introduction

*Hot Requests New Sites and Announcements *Continuing Requests and Announcements *Progress Report *Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report *Permanent Requests For Assistance: *Donation Information *Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections *Mirror Site Information *Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks *Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet? *Flashback *Weekly eBook update: This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter Corrections in separate section 3 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 114 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones 15,365 eBooks As Of Today!!! 12,323 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 We Have Produced 409 eBooks in 2005 We Are ~53.5% of the Way from 10,000 to 20,000 We are ~7% of the Way from 15,000 to 20,000 4,635 to go to 20,000!!! We have now averaged 457+ eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971!!! We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging About 357 books Per Month This Year We Are Averaging About 82 eBooks Per Week This Year 117 This Week

It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~32 months, from 2001 to 2004 for our last 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 It took ~1.25 years from Oct. 2003 to Jan. 2005 from 10,000 to 15,000

* ***Introduction [The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments, News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing.] [Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us: [email protected] and [email protected] if you would like to volunteer.] This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter *** ***Hot Requests New Sites and Announcements "[Beta-testing continues on bowerbird's viewer-app, "give," designed to turn plain-ASCII e-texts into full-on e-books. Features include an automatic table-of-contents menu, italics/bold, automatic hotlinks, big and bold headers, illustrations!, and the usual ability to pick font/size/colors. Please help shape the future of this viewer for your e-texts! to participate, send e-mail to: [email protected] ]" * REQUEST FOR RUSSIAN TRANSLATOR We are trying to start up a Project Gutenberg Russian Team, and we need someone to translate simple email messages from members of Project Gutenberg who want to provide a service to the Russian Team, but who do not know Russian. . .these people will be helping with scanning, finding books, etc. The messages will be in MS Word's .doc format in Cyrillic, we need them translated into English, also in a .doc file. Thanks!!! Contact Jared Buck <[email protected]> * Please visit and test our newest site: www.pgcc.net [also available as

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New eBooks This Week New eBooks Last Week New eBooks This Month [Feb]

357 336 355

Average Per Month in 2005 Average Per Month in 2004 Average Per Month in 2003

203 103 409 4049 4164 2441 1240 ==== 12323 15,365 11,320 ==== 4,045 413

Average Per Month in 2002 Average Per Month in 2001 New New New New New

eBooks eBooks eBooks eBooks eBooks

in in in in in

2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 49.25 Months! Total Project Gutenberg eBooks eBooks This Week Last Year New eBooks In Last 12 Months eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia

* Please note the new format for this week's report. Including last weeks below for comparison's sake. *PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE: Since completing its first eBook in March 2001, the Distributed Proofreaders team has now contributed 6,085 eBooks to Project Gutenberg. For more complete DP statistics, visit: http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php Last week's looked like this: *Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report Since completing its first eBook (#3320) on Mar 13th, 2001, the Distributed Proofreaders team has now produced its 6,390th eBook (#14867). Of these are 5,992 unique, brand-new titles. Projects completed during the past year: Mar 2004 - 365 Apr 2004 - 276 May 2004 - 235 Jun 2004 - 232 Jul 2004 - 231 Aug 2004 - 220 Sep 2004 - 182 Oct 2004 - 263 Nov 2004 - 280 Dec 2004 - 287 Jan 2005 - 248 Feb 2005 11 (as of 2 Feb) * Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how

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Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto or http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml *** *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report Please note the addition of the Internet Archive marked with <<< below. We need people to surf the Internet Archive sites, etc., to keep us up to date on what is available. PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as: Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files eBooks@Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<< Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change Renaisscance Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files =======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files===== Average Size of the Collections

8,067.18 Total Files

These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of their donors: some are one file per book; some have a file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the overcounting or duplication of numbers. If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts, that leaves a unique book total of ~45,714 Unique eBooks If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts,

that leaves a unique book total of ~34,286 Unique eBooks *** Today Is Day #35 of 2005 This Completes Week #5 and Month #01.25 329 Days/47 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 4,635 Books To Go To #20,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 82 78 79 47 24

Weekly Weekly Weekly Weekly Weekly

Average Average Average Average Average

in in in in in

2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

41

Only 41 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers list [Used to be well over 100]

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the US Internal Revenue Service, and has the Federal Employee Information Number (EIN) 64-6221541. For more information, including several other ways to donate, go to http://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html or email [email protected] *Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections *Mirror Site Information Mirrors (copies) of the complete collection are available around the world. To find the sites nearest you, go to: http://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL *Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks http://www.gutenberg.org/find allows searching by title, author, language and subject. Use your Web browser or FTP program to visit our master download site (or a mirror) if you know the file's name you want. Try: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs or ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/ and then navigate to the appropriate directory and look for the first five characters of the file's name. Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) *** Statistical Review In the 5 weeks of this year, we have produced 409 new eBooks. It took us from 1971 to 1996 to produce our FIRST 409 eBooks!!! That's 5 WEEKS as Compared to ~25 YEARS!!! FLASHBACK! Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #409 Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ### A "C" Following The eText # Indicates That This eText Is Under Copyright Feb Feb Feb Feb

1996 1996 1996 1996

Frivolous Cupid, by Anthony Hope [Hawkins] [frcupxxx.xxx] The Great War Syndicate, by Frank Stockton [FS#2] [wsyndxxx.xxx] Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson[#18][tlfnsxxx.xxx] Familiar Studies of Men & Books, by Stevenson[#17][fsombxxx.xxx]

428 427 426 425

Feb 1996 General Booth, Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay [#2][gnbthxxx.xxx]

424

Feb 1996 Round The Red Lamp, By Arthur Conan Doyle[Doyle#8][rrlmpxxx.xxx] Feb 1996 The Romany Rye, by George Borrow [Borrow #2] [trryexxx.xxx] Feb 1996 Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson [RLS #17] [kdnpdxxx.xxx]

423 422 421

Feb Feb Feb Feb Feb

1996 1996 1996 1996 1996

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, by L. Frank Baum[#4][dorozxxx.xxx] The Magic of Oz, by L. Frank Baum [L Frank Baum#3][magozxxx.xxx] A Treatise on Good Works, by Dr. Martin Luther[#4][gworkxxx.xxx] The Hymns and Small Cathechism of Martin Luther [thomlxxx.xxx] Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson [wnbrgxxx.xxx]

420 419 418 417 416

Jan Jan Jan Jan

1996 1996 1996 1996

The Bible in Spain, by George Borrow [Borrow #1] [tbispxxx.xxx] Pageant of Summer, by Richard Jefferies [psumrxxx.xxx] Ballads, by Robert Louis Stevenson [Stevenson #16][rlsbaxxx.xxx] John Jacob Astor, by Elbert Hubbard [Homes Series][jastrxxx.xxx]

415 414 413 412

Jan Jan Jan Jan

1996 1996 1996 1996

The King's Jackal, by Richard Harding Davis [#8] Hell Fer Sartain & Other Stories by John Fox, Jr. Religious and Moral Poems, by Phillis Wheatley The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois

[kjackxxx.xxx] [hfersxxx.xxx] [whtlyxxx.xxx] [soulbxxx.xxx]

411 410 409 408

Jan Jan Jan Jan

1996 1996 1996 1996

The Reporter Who Made Himself King, by Davis[#7] [rkingxxx.xxx] Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis [Davis#6] [aprhdxxx.xxx] Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis[5][alrhdxxx.xxx] Industrial Biography, by Samuel Smiles [Smiles#1] [inbioxxx.xxx]

407 406 405 404

Jan Jan Jan Jan

1996 1996 1996 1996

Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis[RHD4][soldfxxx.xxx] Penrod, by Booth Tarkington [Tarkington #2] [pnrodxxx.xxx] Blix, by Frank Norris [#4 in Frank Norris series] [blixnxxx.xxx] Helen of Troy, by Sara Teasdale [helenxxx.xxx]

403 402 401 400

Jan Jan Jan Jan

1996 1996 1996 1996

Cast Upon the Breakers, by Horatio Alger[Alger#3] 1st Book of Adam and Eve, Rutherford Platt Four Poems by John Milton [Milton #3] The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton

399 398 397 396

[cubrkxxx.xxx] [1adamxxx.xxx] [miltpxxx.xxx] [ladytxxx.xxx]

* Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet??? With 15,365 eBooks online as of February 09, 2005 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$1.02 from each book. 1% of the world population is 64,417,750 x 15,365 x $1.02 = $1+ trillion With 15,365 eBooks online as of February of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal This "cost" is down from about $.89 when 100 million readers is only ~1.5% of the

09, 2005 it now takes an average value of $0.65 from each book, we had 11,320 eBooks a year ago. world's population!

At 15,365 eBooks in 33 Years and 07.25 Months We Averaged ~457 Per Year 38.1 Per Month 1.25 Per Day At 409 eBooks Done In The 35 Days Of 2005 We Averaged 11.7 Per Day 82 Per Week 357 Per Month

The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks' production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon, starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 5th was the first Wednesday of 2005, and thus ended PG's production year of 2004 and began the production year of 2005 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *** *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] GREECE BANS E-MAIL SNOOPING Greece's personal data watchdog has ordered companies not to violate employee privacy by snooping into their private e-mail. The independent Data Protection Authority (DPA), whose decisions are binding, has barred firms from collecting and processing information on workers' communications, including e-mail. The decision did not include fines. The authority acted on a complaint by the workers' union of an unnamed company, alleging the company remote-controlled employees' computers through virtual network control, specialized software that transmits the screen and keyboard and mouse clicks between two computers on a network. (The Australian 2 Feb 2005) By J Lamp Deakin U. WHY BUY WHEN YOU CAN RENT? Until recently, subscribers to music download services were restricted in their ability to transfer songs they purchased to portable players, while Apple has touted the portability of its iTunes service, aimed at owners of its iPod portable music player. But Napster is hoping to change all that with its Napster To Go service, which it's promoting in a SuperBowl ad urging music fans to compare the costs of spending $10,000 to buy and transfer 10,000 songs to an iPod, compared with the $15 per month fee to carry songs from a catalog of more than a million tracks on Napster-compatible players. The Napster service will use Microsoft's new Janus digital rights management software, and manufacturers like Samsung, iRiver, Gateway and Creative are cranking up production of Janus-compatible devices ranging in price from about $250 to $500. An IDC analyst predicts the price eventually will fall below $100, creating tougher competition for Apple. (Reuters 3 Feb 2005) [More. . .] THAT MUSIC IN THE AIR HAS BECOME A RENT-OR-BUY DECISION The business model made popular by Apple's iTunes Music Store and its iPod portable player -- which allows music fans to buy songs by the track -- is being severely tested not only by new subscription services that treat music as a pay-as-you-listen proposition, but by Microsoft's new copy-protection software that allows subscribers to move their rented tracks from their PCs to portable music players. How does this work? By putting a timer on the tracks loaded on the player, and automatically checking whether a user's subscription is still current. Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media says, "This is potentially the first serious challenge that the iPod is going to face. What these devices are going to be able to do is attack iPod

where it's weak." But of course renting and buying can live together in peace: Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg says, "There's going to have to be some education in the marketplace. There's some stuff that consumers watch over the air and on cable but don't actually own and some DVDs consumers actually go out and buy. There's going to be some coexistence here as well." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 3 Feb 2005) WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT JOURNALISM IS? [Talk about reducing a country wide argument to an extreme:

Mom and Son]

A California court will soon decide whether bloggers have the same legal protections as journalists under "shield" laws that protect reporters from revealing their sources. Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kurt Opsahl, who represents two bloggers targeted by Apple for leaking information about new company products, maintains that if the bloggers are forced to give up their sources "the public will lose out on a vital outlet for independent news, analysis, and commentary." An opposing view is offered by University of Iowa law professor Randall Bezanson, who says that simply expressing opinions to a tiny audience isn't journalism -- because if it were "then I'm a journalist when I write a letter to my mother reporting on what I'm doing. I don't think the free-press clause [of the U.S. Constitution] was intended to extend its protections to letters to mothers from sons." (USA Today 2 Feb 2005) [and. . .] YOUR LYING EYES IN THE PHOTOSHOP AGE [Who remembers the doctored FBI photograph of the March on Washington that spelled the end of the Viet Nam War? It turned out they took the picture after the march was over, but didn't realize the Washington Monument was, in fact, a HUGE sundial, and that it was obvious to any observer that the photograph had been taken hour after the march ended. Of course, we wouldn't have that problem today, would we?] Have the ethics of photojournalism been changed in some way by such software as Adobe Photoshop, which allows easy manipulation of digital photos? The National Press Photographers Association says it's wrong to alter the content of a photograph "in any way that deceives the public," and the director of photography at the Los Angeles Times director of photography says, "If our readers can't count on honesty from us, I don't know what we have left." Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid is working to solve the problem of dishonest photographs by developing computer algorithms that can detect when an image has been altered. But Farid says, "It's a bit of an arms race. It's tamper and tamper protection, and we can already predict who's going to win. We simply make it harder" for the average person with the average amount of skill to get away with photographic deceptions. (CSM/USA Today 2 Feb 2005) SCHOOL DAYS: WHAT EXACTLY IS GOING ON? It is increasing commonplace now for teachers and schools to use the Internet to distribute grades, pending assignments, written comments, class

participation, and disciplinary actions -- and to allow parents to check on both the academic progress and general activities of their children. One parent says, "My sixth grader has not bothered to tell me he is failing math for the first time in his life. I was just perusing [the school's Web site] and he's got one, two, three, four, five zeros. I have immediately put a call in to that teacher." The parent adds: "If everybody would use it and use it more, we could be more involved in our children's education." Yet Pearson Education, one of the vendors for systems to manage student information, estimates that only a quarter of its 16,000 school districts buy the optional parental-access package. Among the reasons schools are reluctant to use it is that teachers just don't want to let parents quibble with them about grades. Yet without such systems some parents won't even know that there's anything to quibble over, because, in the words of another parent, "Kids don't always bring the bad stuff home." (AP 2 Feb 2005) SCHOOL NEWS: FIRST AMENDMENT? WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT? A University of Connecticut survey of more than 100,000 high school students has found that educators are failing to give high school students an appreciation of the First Amendment9s guarantees of free speech and a free press. Commissioned by the Knight Foundation, the $1 million, two-year study found that nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted; seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal; half believe the government can censor the Internet; and more than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Knight Foundation chief executive Hodding Carter III says, 3These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation9s future.2 (Knight Foundation 31 Jan 2005) FLAT-PANEL SHAKEUP Fierce competition from Korean manufacturers is driving down prices of flat panel displays and eroding profits for many of the companies that make them. With LCD screen prices down as much as 40% in the last year, Fujitsu announced it's selling its LCD operation to Sharp for an undisclosed amount. The divestiture comes on the heels of an announcement last week that Fujitsu will sell back to Hitachi a large piece of the 50% stake it has in the companies' plasma display joint venture. "Fujitsu's been planning an exit strategy for flat panels for some time and it's finally come to fruition," says an analyst for UFJ Tsubasa Securities in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Hitachi and Matsushita are joining forces to develop, manufacture and market plasma displays, a market they hope will prove more lucrative than LCDs. Matsushita is the world's third-largest maker of plasma displays after Samsung and LG Electronics. Hitachi will rank No. 4 once it's completed its deal with Fujitsu. (New York Times 8 Feb 2005) HOLOGRAPHIC DISKS WILL STORE HUNDREDS OF MOVIES With the competition between the next-generation Blu-ray and HD DVD technologies still red-hot, technology firms are seeking a cooler solution for the third-generation DVD. Six leading companies, including Sony, Fuji Photo, CMC Magnetics and Optware, have formed the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) Alliance in the hope of building a consensus early. The Alliance says consumers conceivably could store a terabyte of data -- as much as 200 standard DVDs -- on a single HVD disc, and transfer data at over one gigabit per second, or 40 times faster than a DVD.

(WebIndia123.com 7 Feb 2005) You have been reading excerpts from NewsScan: NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making significant and sustained contributions to the effective management and appropriate use of information technology. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages (i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to: Text version: Send message to [email protected] Html version: Send mail to [email protected] NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html * >From Edupage DOES GOOGLE FACE COPYRIGHT TROUBLES? Google's recently announced plans to scan millions of volumes in several libraries has some wondering if the project is at risk of running into copyright limitations. Google will scan books that are in the public domain and make those texts available online; the company will also scan copyrighted books and offer short excerpts of a few lines each. Some publishing groups argued that putting even small pieces online will violate copyright and that the company should seek explicit permission from copyright owners. Critics also expressed reservations about copyright determinations for books that might, for example, be in the public domain in one country but not in another. Sally C.L. Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, said that although the sheer number of academic publishers represents a powerful disincentive to obtaining permissions from all of them, "that doesn't mean there's not a legal requirement to do it." For its part, Google insists that its actions are acceptable. Google spokesperson Steve Langdon said, "In every case, Google's presentation of the works to the public will keep authors and publishers in mind and be well within the bounds of copyright law." Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 February 2005 (sub. req'd) You have been reading excerpts from Edupage: If you have questions or comments about Edupage, http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958352.html or send e-mail to: [email protected] To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to [email protected] and in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName *** *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA Apparently Iraqi government forces have been trying to

buy ballot boxes filled with votes they want to change. * AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. . .OR RATHER 71.6 DAYS !!! Ellen MacArthur wrote her way into several history book records this week as she completed her 26,000 mile nonstop solo sail around the world. This new world record of hers of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, 33 seconds is over an entire day faster than the previous record from Francis Joyon of France. Praise for her efforts has been coming in worldwide and also from Mr. Joyon, himself, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac. Ellen, who will now be Dame Ellen, is the youngest person ever to be awarded Britain's highest honor at the ripest old age of 28. However, it would appear this may be just the beginning for England's newest superstar. She said she could see beating that record by about a week with more favorable weather, as there were severe problems this time. Some other world records are already in her sights including the old clipper ship records from Shanghai to London at 67 days, circumnavigating the British Isles, and a west to east Atlantic crossing. These trips are particular grueling as sleep only comes in 15-30 minute catnaps, and there are always emergency repairs, this time requiring her climb the mast to make repairs the the mainsail. Being bruised and battered a world away from home out in the middle of nowhere is an essential portion of most such voyages. The BBC World News devoted just over 1/3 of their story segments to covering the finish of this record breaking story, but United States networks seemed to ignore this story completely. The media seems to be quite different these days from a standpoint of biased reporting than it was in a variety of previous incarnations during the 1900's and 1800's. And, of course, let's not forget just how great stories such as this one fly in the face of Harvard's President only a week after he left the news with egg on his face after commenting about women not being suited for study or careers in the areas of science and mathematics that are required to accomplish such a record breaking feat. If you don't think applying science and math to sailing around the world requires much study, then you have not actually tried it, or else you are a natural math whiz. We tend to forget that the rigors of navigation, even a modern computer-aided navigation, are still well beyond the capabilities of the normal math and science student

or professor, not to mention being able to calcuate the winds, currents, location, weather reports, maps, reefs and all the other naval navigation requirements. This feat is truly one of the most difficult we hear on the news as well as one of those requiring the greatest possible endurance of mind and body working together. Whether that mind and body are female or male. . . . *STRANGE QUOTE OF THE WEEK I hope you saw The Daily Show's segment on the largest cache of chemical weapons in the world. It's in a place called Al Abama.

*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK The results of the Iraqi elections will be held up for so long that no one will care who was elected, or how many voted. . . the fact that elections were held at all will called victory. Of course, that victory will not encourage anyone to go home.

*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK We don't usually associate smog advisories with the middle of winter, but there is just such an "air quality alert" [to put it in NewSpeak] for a handful of counties surrounding Terra Haute, Indiana, and apparently a few more in northern Indiana. [Terra Haute is south of Indianapolis, not far from Illinois.] !!! Well, I spoke a little too soon, only a day after sending out this report we were under a "smog alert" as they called it before the Political Correction Officers insisted on a new NewSpeak Dictionary that doesn't include "smog alert." Yes, right here in my Central Illinois hometown surrounded by cornfields we are having our own smog alert, and people are being warned not to go outside if they are old or have any medical concerns about breathing. Apparently lots of particles are in the atmosphere from cars, factories, furnaces and the like; first time we've had one of these new-fangled alerts, at least according to the news. * "If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be:

57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education 1 would own a computer I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date, as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer then there would be only 60 million people in the world who owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States households have computers, out of over 100 million households. Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in the United States. I just called our local reference librarian and got the number of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at: 111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports. If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million, and that's counting just one computer per household, and not counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc. I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate given above, and would like some help researching these and other such figures, if anyone is interested. BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old. This means that basically 90% of the world's population would never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they can receive more per year, but because they will live more years to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in. ***

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