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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Studs Terkel, an American historian, radio talk show host and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has died at the age of 96. His son, Dan Terkel, said he died peacefully in his Chicago, Illinois home.

“My dad led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life. [His death was] peaceful, no agony. This is what he wanted,” said his son in a statement to the press.

Terkel was born in New York City in 1912. He moved to Chicago when he was eight years old. He was mostly known for his oral histories, but he was also host of his own radio show, an author of several books, and an activist.

In 1985, Terkel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize after his writing about World War II in his book called The Good War. In 1970, he published a book about the Great Depression, entitled Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, which told the stories of people from all walks of life who were affected by the stock market crash in 1929.

In 2007 Terkel published his memoirs, titled Touch and Go, in which he described himself as a “martini and cigar man” who never retired.

“It was those loners — argumentative ones, deceptively quiet ones, the talkers and the walkers — who, always engaged in something outside themselves, unintentionally became my mentors,” said Terkel in his memoirs.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Vernon Bellecourt, once the primary spokesperson for the American Indian Movement, died recently at age 75. Bellecourt, an Ojibwa who fought for Native rights, was perhaps best known for his opposition to Native names and mascots for sports teams.

First in the headlines in 1972, Bellecourt organized a cross-country caravan of the Movement, to Washington. Once there, members of the group occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices. His goal of international recognition for Aboriginal nations and their treaties found him meeting with figures like Libyan Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, and Palestine’s Yasir Arafat. In 1977 Leonard Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of two FBI Agents during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; Bellecourt led the campaign to free him.

Most recently, he visited Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, to discuss getting free or cheap heating oil for reservations.

His work as president of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media made a much wider known mark, though. Bellecourt emphasized that he believed such names perpetuated racial stereotypes, clouding the real identities and problems facing natives.

Teams with native-related names could almost guarantee on Bellecourt showing up at major games. He twice burned an effigy of Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians baseball team mascot, and both times was arrested. When the Washington Redskins of the National Football League made the Super Bowl, Vernon was there to protest. The United States Commission on Civil Rights was critical of such names by 2001, calling them “insensitive in light of the long history of forced assimilation”. Some newspapers have stopped using the names of teams with Native origins.

None of his “big four” targets have shown any indication of changing: the Washington Redskins, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Cleveland Indians or the Atlanta Braves.

Post-season use of American Indian mascots were banned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 2005, suggesting the names are “hostile or abusive”. Bellecourt was pleased with the NCAA sanctions, but suggested such actions were only going “half way”.

The Florida State Seminole and the Illinois Illini were among the 18 colleges affected by the ban. Florida president T.K. Wetherell threatened legal action in response. The Florida Seminole tribes have endorsed the University’s usage of the name, but some out-of-state tribes were “not supportive”, according to the NCAA vice president for diversity and inclusion.

Born WaBun-Inini, Bellecourt died from complications of pneumonia on October 13, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

In a media event on March 2, Apple Inc. unveiled its iPad 2 tablet computer, the successor to the company’s iPad. The announcement was made at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. CEO Steve Jobs appeared at the event and introduced the new product, with FaceTime video messaging (with front and rear cameras) as well as a new dual-core Apple A5 processor.

The iPad 2 is an all new design and has several improvements over the original iPad. The device runs on an dual-core Apple A5 CPU. According to Jobs, the CPU’s new dual-core capability enhances multitasking and doubles the processing speed. Apple additionally introduced a magnetic ‘Smart Cover’ accessory that snaps to the front screen of the device along with several new apps ported from the Mac OS X operating system and the iPhone. These include iMovie, GarageBand, and Photo Booth. The new iPad introduces front and rear cameras which enable FaceTime. The new tablet is 15% lighter and 33% thinner than the previous version – thinner than an iPhone 4 – and has beveled edges. It will be available in black and white. The device continues to be capable of ten hours of battery life on a single charge.

The announcement comes after months of rumors about a successor to the original iPad. Competitors have designed tablets to compete with the iPad such as Motorola’s Xoom powered by the Android operating system. One research analyst predicted that iPads would still make up at least 20 million of the more than 24 million tablet computers sold in the United States in 2011. Another analyst credited the Apple’s App store for iPad’s continued success. The device will become available in the United States on March 11, 2011, available in 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes. iPad 2’s 3G models can connect to the wireless networks of AT&T or Verizon Wireless and Wi-Fi. The iPad 2 will start at US$499. In tandem with the announcement, Apple reduced the price of its original iPad to US$399. Shares of Apple inc. rose $2.81, closing at US$352.12 the day of the announcement.

Monday, April 23, 2007

A new drink called Robby Bubble has sparkled up some sparkled debate with distributors and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in Calgary, Alberta.

The drink, similar to sparkling wine, is a non-alcoholic sparkling drink which is currently for sale in Alberta liquor stores. The bottle has the words “Party, Party!” with cartoon characters. Their slogan is “Celebrate like the grown-ups” and is shaped as a champagne bottle. It is under the approval of the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission.

Tracy Franklin, president of MADD in Calgary, said: “It’s calling out to kids, but the whole thing is geared as a champagne bottle, as an alcohol product … Do we want to give them something, although it’s non-alcoholic, and have them partying like an adult?”

Other “adult products” marketed to children, such as candy cigarettes, have been banned in Canada. Studies have shown a link between the marketing of candy cigarettes to children and the promotion of smoking in later life. It had been shown that tobacco companies cooperated with candy manufacturers in the design of candy cigarettes.

The Tobacco Act legislation in Canada has eliminated the ability of companies to market tobacco-looking products to children. In Section 27, the Act states, “No person shall furnish or promote a tobacco product if any of its brand elements is displayed on a non-tobacco product, other than an accessory, or is used with a service, if the non-tobacco product or service is associated with young persons or could be construed on reasonable grounds to be appealing to young persons.”

President of the German company responsible for the distribution of Robby Bubble, Darryl Weinbren, defended his product saying it is non-alcoholic and parents are responsible for serving their children the drink.

“I can understand Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and certainly I respect their objectives and what they are after. There wasn’t any intention from our point of view to encourage kids to drink alcohol. It was just a matter of trying to find something that would meet a family celebration with something for their kids.”

A spokeswomen for the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission, Marilyn Carlyle-Helms, said liquor stores can distribute non-alcoholic drinks and if there were a health concern they would have disapproved them.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced today the release of the first version of gNewSense, a new GNU/Linux distribution based on both Ubuntu and Debian. The goal of the newly created distribution is to offer an operating system which is 100% proprietary software free.

Generally, GNU/Linux distributions comes with proprietary software such as kernel drivers (eg. NVIDIA and ATI card drivers), the Opera web browser or the VoIP Skype software among others. According to its developers: “From a philosophical perspective we wanted to create a GNU/Linux distribution where the user has access to all the sources for all software on the system. This includes everything from the heart of the kernel through to the everyday desktop applications.”

Ted Teah, FSF’s free software directory maintainer explained, “With all the kernel firmware and restricted repositories removed, and the reliance on Ubuntu’s proprietary distribution management tool gone, this distribution is the most advanced GNU/Linux distribution that has a commitment to be 100% free.”

gNewSense will provide users with full security updates and is available for immediate download in LiveCD ISO format along with a version of the Ubiquity graphical installer. The developers have also created a set of tools called Builder that allows users to create their own gNewSense-based distributions.

In the new 1.0 version, gNewSense has removed all non-free firmware from the kernel, removed access to the Ubuntu Restricted component (such as links to LaunchPad which are redirected to the gNewSense webpage for now) and replaced the Ubuntu logos with its own. Also the UniVerse component is enabled by default and Emacs, BSD games, NetHack, and build-essential part of the default install.

There already exists such a distribution called Ututo which aims for zero proprietary software but it never really took off in popularity. A few years ago, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu distribution, also initiated a similar initiative dubbed Gnubuntu but it never materialized.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.