A Trip To Sumatra To Hear a Gibbon's Call
The Gibbon, a smaller member of the primate family, is well-known for its long arms and hands. Its speed makes it difficult to see, but its distinctive call is easy to identify. A trip to the rainforests of Indonesia by plane from New York, followed by a crumbling 30-year-old propeller plane, and by foot finally yielded a call from the elusive gibbon. Read more.
Club For Growth: Conservatives Lost Nothing In N.Y.
The Club for Growth strongly supported and financially helped Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23 Congressional District. That support led the Republican candidate to withdraw, and throw her weight behind the ultimate winner: Democrat Bill Owens. Club for Growth President Chris Chocola says, from a conservative standpoint, there was no loss. Read more.
An Irrepressible Tribute To Charlie Poole
The hard-living Poole sold 102,000 copies of a song in 1931. His work has been covered by the likes of Jerry Garcia, The Chieftains and Tom T. Hall. Nevertheless, Poole remains obscure. Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III means to change that with a two-CD tribute to Poole called <em>High Wide & Handsome</em>. Read more.
High Court Weighs Prosecutors' Immunity
Terry Harrington served 25 years for murder, but he later discovered that prosecutors handling his case worked with the police to withhold evidence that might have freed him. Harrington wants to sue those prosecutors, but must convince the court that the protections prosecutors have from such suits are unconstitutional. Read more.
What’s going on here?
This page uses an RSS news feed from National Public Radio's All Things Considered to update the columns on the right and left with up to the minute news stories.
I have been contemplating different web site ideas that integrate ever-changing data directly into their design. Many sites display data like this, but my intent was to build the content into the site itself.
I recently built a weather page that collects weather data for six cities in the bay area and Tahoe. It then integrates this data into the design of the site. This newspaper page is my next experiment with this concept.
The news stories surrounding this central column are updated in real time. The date and time of the update is displayed at the top of this page, similar to a newspaper's front page. The data is collected each time the page is refreshed.
The news is delivered in XML format, which I style with XSL into the columns you see here.
The design of the paper was done in photoshop, and the code handling the XML is PHP.
Report: U.S. Trails In Infant Mortality
A report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that the U.S. ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality rates, mainly because of a higher rate of pre-term births than most countries in Europe. Analysts say these studies don't take sufficiently into account the U.S. population mix. Read more.
Thoughts On A Human Re-Creation Of The Berlin Wall
Commentator Andrei Codrescu notes that a British artist is asking people to help him mark the 20th anniversary next month of the fall of the Berlin Wall by making a human wall for 15 minutes. At first, Codrescu wants to be part of it, but then has second thoughts. Read more.
Iranian Protests Show Opposition Is Still Strong
Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of Tehran again on Wednesday to protest against the government and last June's presidential election. Some analysts had begun to write off the Iranian opposition as a spent force. But Wednesday, it was clear the opposition has not melted away. Read more.
Writer: Kandahar Bustling, But Violent
For the past 18 months, the Dutch writer and journalist Alex Strick van Linschoten has been living in downtown Kandahar, Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold. Van Linschoten, author of <em>See You Soon, If We're Still Alive</em> in <em>Foreign Policy</em> magazine, says the city is a bustling market town, but violence is a daily fact of life. Read more.
What Election Results Say About The Obama Effect
The midyear election is historically a bad one for first-term presidents. This year, there's no argument that the Democrats got a slap in the face, and the Republicans got a much-needed victory. But what does this tell us about President Obama's likely effect in 2010? Read more.
Italian Judge Convicts Americans In Rendition Case
An Italian judge convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the kidnapping in 2003 of an Egyptian cleric from Milan. The cleric said he was transferred to an Egyptian jail where he was tortured. The convictions mark the first time "extraordinary rendition" was successfully contested. Read more.