Earlier this week Footnote.com and the National Archives and Records Administration offered a new Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The actual memorial consist of two large granite walls inscribed with the names of over 58,000 American casualties of the way, the online version, which was created by combining over 2,000 photographs of the actual site, make the walls searchable from your home computer. The new version also allows you to link each name to the person’s service record, and add content to the record.

This project is different from a previous one called The Wall, which is maintained by the veterans of the 4th  Battalion 9th Infantry Regiment. The Wall originally went online back in 1996, and has been evolving ever since. The Wall allows you to search by name, but in addition offers links to “Today’s Wall Birthdays” and “Today’s Wall Causalities,” and provides some basic facts of the war.

The physical Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located in Washington DC, was designed by Maya Lin, and holds 58,249 names, it is managed by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior. Each day rangers gather items left at the site (except food and flowers), which are then tagged and taken to the Archive for future preservation. Although the full archive is not open to the public, selections of it are on display at the American History Museum.

The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial site does warn that is has been experiencing high traffic, so connections might be slow.

You can read more about the online Vietnam Memorial from an article in Wired Magazine here, and read the Wikipedia entry here.

Share and Enjoy

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has recently published Information Economy Report 2007-2008 which notes that the digital divide is still very much an issue that must be addressed. The report explains that while digital penetration is growing daily through the world, most developing countries are still far behind (with the few exceptions of countries like Korea and Singapore).

The report notes that in terms of information communication technologies, mobile phones are opening new pathways for people around the world to communicate and access information, and are in many occasions frog leaping several steps in the communication development process. Countries with high rise in mobile phone penetrations are starting to experience a new form of commerce, “M-commerce”. People in countries such as Nepal and Ghana are using mobile phones to buy and sell products, as well as keeping in touch. This same report illustrated their point by commenting on results seen in Thailand. The study showed that a 10% increase in computer literary will produce a 3.5% in productivity increase.

In terms of internet penetrations, most developing countries are also still far behind, with internet access being prohibitively expensive, even when it is available. Still the silver lining is that just a few years ago the developed world had ten times more access to internet, and now the disparity is only of 6 times the amount. I guess this is an improvements, but the situation is still highly unequal.

And while a discussion on access is very important we also still need to have a discussion on related policy issues that should ensure equal access, plus security for users.

A couple of days ago the BBC had an article about this issue. You can read it here. For more visual information on this issues check out the for the Internet User Stats showing a variety of graphs on internet penetration, growth, and usage divided by geographical regions.

Graphs from ITU Free Statistics.

Share and Enjoy

Yes! You can enjoy the opera at the movie theater! Last season Peter Gelb, director of the Metropolitan Opera began this amazing project of doing live broadcast to a number of HD movie theaters across the USA and around the world. Tickets do cost about twice as much as regular movie tickets, but this project is still bringing extraordinary cultural events to a much larger audience that those who can afford regular opera tickets.

Presentations also include some behind the scene takes, allowing the audience to see how the sets are installed and some of the makeup and props used during the production. During the broadcast of Hansel and Gretel, Renée Fleming also provided background commentary and short interviews with the two main singers and the stage director, giving the presentation a very interesting and well rounded approach.

During the presentation I attended today, we did have some technical difficulties with the sound during the second part of the show, but people after the theater was notified, the rest of the presentation went very smoothly. All in all is was a great experience and I was delighted to be able to access a world class cultural event at an affordable price.

For more information on the Metropolitan Opera’s HD presentations check out their website. On the left you will find a link to buy tickets in the USA or around the world. Other countries participating in this project include Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, among others.

On Friday, January 4, 2008, Tom Ashbrook, presenter of WBUR’s On Point interviewed Peter Gelb about this project. You can listen to the interview here.

Share and Enjoy

As the year comes to an end the Million Book Project has reached its goal of scanning and making freely available a million books! This project is spearheaded by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Sciences and University Libraries, with a number of partnerships including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United States National Agricultural Library, the National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education in China, and the University of California at Merced who negotiated to acquire copyright permission for the books which are not currently in the public domain.

So far the project has scanned 1.5 million books in 20 languages, including Chinese, English, Arabic and Telugo. The books have also been scanned using OCR to enable full text searching. The project also collaborates with the OCA, acknowledging that both are working towards the same goal of making content easily available to everyone.

You can learn more about the project here, and can access their catalog here.

Share and Enjoy

This weekend I attended the 31st. Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. I heard about this event after a visit to the John Carter Brown Library and decided to check it out. I saw a number of fascinating book, not all as old as I expected. Some of the exhibitors had material that dated back hundreds and hundreds of years, as well as other book from the 20th century. Newer books were usually first editions and they were usually signed. Among these first editions I saw books by Garcia Marquez, Steven King, and John Steinbeck, among others. Some of the vendors had old maps, prints (including an original Chagall), poster, and I even saw an entire case of glass eyes that was for sale.

I also attended two lectures the first by Anne Bromer, titled Miniature Books: 4,000 of tiny treasures, and the second presentation was titled Japanese Illustrated Books, by Charles Vilnis. During the first presentation I learned about the practical use of miniature books (usually books smaller than 3 inches). We saw a copy of a miniature book version of the Emancipation Proclamation which Lincoln had printed and gave to soldiers to hand out throughout many southern states. I also heard of a collection of classics that were printed in miniature form which people who spend a lot of time on the road could easily take with. In general I was surprised to learn that miniature books were usually created to be read and used, instead of being only for decoration.

During the presentation on prints in Japanese books we saw an amazing selection of images that dated as far back as the 1600s and as recent as the mid 1900. The illustrations ranged from very simple, elegant images, to long scrolls that describes entire journeys.

Share and Enjoy

Being that we can’t go back in time to study previous climate patterns, Prof. Zerefos of the National Observatory of Athens has begun a study of old master pieces to learn more about global weather patterns.

Using impressionist pieces created mostly in the 19th century, scientists are focusing on the differences between the usage of red and green hues to create hypothesis of how much pollution was in the skies specially after the eruption of large volcanoes. The redder the sunsets, the more pollution was in the air.

Impressionist artists of the time did a great job of capturing real scenes to the extent that scientist have been able to see patters between the art and periods of high pollution after major volcanic eruptions. Such is the case when various artists created richer sunsets for three consecutive years after the eruptions of Tambora in 1815, Bubuyan (Philippines) in 1831, Consiguina (Nicaragua) in 1835, and Krakatoa in 1881. Some of the artists being used include J.M.W. Turner, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, and Hogarth. Edvard Munch‘s red skies in The Scream are thought to be the effect of Krakatoa as seen from Norway.

The scientists involved in this project are already looking into extending their research to include paintings from the 20th century.

You can read more about this from an article in the Guardian, or more specifically about the impact of major volcanic eruptions and their effects world-wide in Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883.

Image info. here.

Share and Enjoy

Pradeep Lokhande is an India-based entrepreneur who has been helping bring computers into some of the most remote corners of his country while simultaneously bringing information about rural villages to the city. After working for a multinational company which had him traveling around the country, he realized just how isolated some communities were. With this realization in mind he began Rural Relations, a now 14 year old organization, to help bridge this gap. Mr. Lokhande wanted to help make villagers comfortable with computers and information technology, so he set out to install computers in places where interest was high, such as secondary schools. To date, he was installed over 450 computers across more than 440 villages.

To finance his project Lokhande is appealing to compatriot’s sense of being “Non-Resident Villagers (NRV);” Lokhande explains that every Indian has deep roots to the village they grew up in, or from where their parents came from. All have a deep sense of commitment to the community and are thus willing to help out. The program has engaged a number of NRVs from overseas who have provided a number of computers and other technologies to continue the program’s growth.

Some of the new projects Rural Relations is working on include Rural Voyage, a program that provides highly current information in audio-visual format to villages. There is also the Village Developer, which brings trained local village youths to continue the learning process in the community, and the Rural Barometer which provides live information about the villages to help forecast upcoming trends.

You can read more about this program from an article in the BBC today.

Share and Enjoy

A few days ago the Christian Science Monitor had an interesting article about conservation efforts for bufeos, (also known boto, pink dolphins, or fresh water dolphins). Scientist Fernando Trujillo from the Colombian based Omacha Foundation is behind a five nation project which also includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Their research hopes to gather information on population numbers and the current state of the species in order to help project it, and to use the bufeo as the poster child for a larger preservation campaign of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers.

Hopefully these efforts won’t be coming too little too late, as was the case just last week with the less fortunate fresh water dolphin in the Yangtze River whose extinction seems to have been confirmed. The Indus, Ganges and Mekon rivers also have fresh water dolphins, the populations of none of which are in good shape.

I’ve been lucky enough to have seen pink dolphin while drifting down the Orinoco river many years ago, but the memories are as fresh as if it had been just yesterday; they really are an impressive sight, and hopefully this charisma will help preserve them and the larger river ecosystem in which they live.

The International Society for the Preservation of the Tropical Rainforest has some more information on pink river dolphins here, so does Project Boto, here. A good book on the subject is the Journey of the Pink River Dolphin by Sy Montgomery.

Boto image by Pasajero on Flickr.

Share and Enjoy

Earlier this week UNESCO had a couple of additions to their World Heritage Site list. World Heritage Sites can include natural locations, buildings, monuments, and entire cities, and are believed to be of significant interest for humanity. In 1972, UNESCO created the program, initially know as the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, and it aimed at identifying significant sites, cataloging and conserve them for all our of enjoyment. On occasion this new status can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund for preservation. As of last year there were a total of 830 designated sites.

This week the Sydney Opera House, built in 1973, and was declared a “great artistic monument accessible to society at large” by UNESCO, and India’s Red Fort Complex, completed in 1648 was said to include “all phases of Indian history from the Mughal period to independence”.

Other sites that to have been previously designated World Heritage Sites include the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mines on Honshu Island, Japan, Richtersveld mountainous desert region in South Africa, and Namibia’s Twyfelfontein. Click here for the complete list.

You can read more about this in the recent BBC article.

Share and Enjoy

This morning the BBC has an article about the first all-female UN peacekeeping troop. The group is comprised of 105 Indian women, who have been based in Liberia for the last 6 months. The group was initially set up as an experiment, and it was gone so well that their mission has been extended to a full year.

The women who make up this troop were selected from all over India and have been trained in drug raids, law enforcement, and crowd control among other things. It is also hoped that their presence will encourage local women to join local law enforcement groups. There is a push to bring more women into law enforcement in hopes to curb down sexual assault and exploitation, as well as helping local women feel safer.

Women in UN peacekeeping troops have been woefully underrepresented. In 2006 women made up only 4% of all peacekeeping troops. The UN currently encourages women to become involved in peacekeeping; here are a few highlighted stories.

Women have been making their mark as soldieries elsewhere around the world. Spain’s arms forces are currently 15% women, the Chinese island of Xisha also host an all women trope. Still it’s really too bad that so many of these articles focus not on the merit and ability of these women, but on their ability to add to the beautiful scenery (Israel recently had the “lovely idea” of having women soldiers pose in their underwear for Maxim magazine in order to boost the country’s image abroad!), or focus on how much these women miss their families (as if any soldier station abroad won’t miss their family).

The Christian Science Monitor has another article on the matter.

Image from Grewal, Shabnam. “All girl UN squad a success”, BBC, June 21, 2007.

Share and Enjoy