Europeans to counter Google print project

Europeans to counter Google print project – Tech News & Reviews – MSNBC.com
the first culture war in cyberspace. I read this article about Google’s ambitious project to digitize several libraries and the European response to it. I think it speaks volumes about the differences between our cultures. America puts books online because a private corporation figured this is a service people want, and it would be a good way to make a profit. European heads of state decide to make this a giant public works project, and they do it because they don’t want an ‘Anglo-American’-centric online library which offers the literature people desire. I like how the article mentions French cinema as if it is a success story about how government intervention can save the arts. Which project do you think will succeed?

120 Years that changed the World

Harold Warp’s parents immigrated to America from Norway and setup a homestead on the Nebraska Prairies in 1873. Harold, born in 1903, the youngest of twelve children, grew up as a barefooted farm-boy herding cattle.
As he grew up, he began inventing new and useful things himself. He noticed that chickens grew faster and laid more eggs in summer and that sunlight prevented rickets in chickens. The plastics revolution was gathering steam at that time and he spent three years developing a practical, weatherproof, translucent material that unlike glass let in the sun’s ultraviolet rays; he called it Flex-O-Glass. He took the advice given to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” to heart. So he moved to Chicago in 1924 with two of his brothers and a capital of $800 and started manufacturing Flex-O-Glass. Flex-O-Glass could be made so inexpensively that in addition to poultry house windows, millions of people began using it for winter protection in their homes in screen doors and window screens. By his forties he had made his fortune. He wrote:

“For thousands of years man lived quite simply. Then like a sleeping giant our world was awakened. In a mere hundred and twenty years of eternal time man progressed from open hearth, grease lamps, and ox carts to television, super sonic speed, and atomic power.

The full list is here.

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya – Indian Express

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya
Interesting Op-Ed perspective in the “Indian Express” from a member of the growing entreprenuerial class situated in the largest democracy of the world.

The Bush family has an uncanny knack of knowing where the future will happen, says Jaithirth Rao

And from the NY Times comes this about the 2 million Indian American citizens:

These issues are of intense interest to Americans of Indian origin, who are the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, whose data shows they are far better educated and wealthier than the average U.S. citizen. …

According to figures compiled from census data by the U.S.-India Political Action Committee, Indian-Americans own 15 percent of Silicon Valley start-up firms, constitute 10 percent to 12 percent of U.S. medical doctors and control about 40 percent of the American hotel sector.
One in 10 Americans of Indian origin are millionaires, while the $60,093 median income of Indian-American families in 2000 was far above the U.S. average of $38,885. They post similarly striking educational statistics.

AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO

Now that all the hysterical “gotcha” headlines have convinced the public that Bush lied in the oft repeated ABC TV interview about the levee breach, here comes the embarrasing retraction, which will invariably be a footnote in the ongoing news coverage; thus continuing the public’s misperception. Supposedly AP had the tape, of Bush being briefed at his ranch before Katrina hit, in their vault for months and only “found” it just now.
the Associated Press reporter, who narrated the videotape, implies that Mr. Bush lied when he said after the storm that nobody had anticipated “the breach of the levees.” This is supposed to be contradicted by the video footage of a pre-landfall briefing in which the National Hurricane Center told the President of the possibility that “the levees will be topped [emphasis added].” But in fact the New Orleans levee system wasn’t topped; it was breached, just as Mr. Bush said — and there’s a big difference between the two. The levees being topped by the storm surge would have caused damage, but arguably much less severe than what happened after the structural failure that actually occurred.

AP FRIDAY NIGHT CLARIFICATION ON BUSH/KATRINA VIDEO
Fri Mar 03 2006 19:48:29 ET

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.
The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn’t until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

Here is some background on the levee failures and successes in New Orleans – the distinction between topping and breaching is clear. And a last thought – saying that Bush did not lie about this is different from saying that the Federal response to Katrina was A-OK.  Katrina: What went right