Friday, July 21, 2006

Africa Mulls Dual Citizenship for Slave Kin

Africa Mulls Dual Citizenship for Slave Kin

The African continent (and its 52 nations) are mulling granting dual citizenship to the kin of former slaves. Such a move, they hope, could act as a fundraiser to help eliminate some of the poverty. A similar system has worked well for India, which grants dual-citizenship to its NRIs. Ideally, this system could work for the African nations, too--just cross your fingers that no dual-citizens decide to actually "return" to Africa as Marcus Garvey suggested. Remember what happened to Liberia? (Hint: the former slaves returned to enslave)

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/91-07202006-686653.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-07-20-citizenship-proposal_x.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_on_re_af/africa_citizenship_for_slavery

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Rain (poem)

The furor’s nearer, as the day
The thunder on horizon makes its way
The quiet lingers before the storm—
Menacing gray above the earth;
Clouds borne

If only it would rain—
Water diamonds fall, and the earth relieved
But the tension lingers,
Ominous above

Turning Spam into Art

Today I read an article about Romanian artist Alex Dragulescu who turns spam into beautiful works of art. He assigns certain words and numbers occurring in spam messages length of petals and leaves, color, etc. This creates a picture from words (or, in another project, music). Ideally, in the future artist-scientists might be able to turn songs into visual art that we can view--actual representations of what is heard, much like the laser light shows of the 1970s.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0720/p16s01-stct.html

www.sq.ro

The One Percent Rule and the Little Red Hen

Reading an article on the "one percent rule," in the Guardian--an emerging concept that suggests if you get a group of 100 people online only one will create content, 10 will critique it (my husband's favorite part of any project) and the other 89 will just view it--I am strongly reminded of the story of the Little Red hen. Yes, if someone bakes the bread, everyone will eat it--but to get someone to do the work or to help out with it is next to impossible. Even in this age of technology, how true the traditional folklore rings!

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1823959,00.html?gusrc=rss