NewsScan Daily, 11 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Yahoo's New Desktop Search Tool
       The New Shape of PC Cards
       'On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog'
       Exercise + Gaming = 'Exergaming'
       ACLU Opposes Police "DNA Dragnet" to Catch Killer

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Unamplified Voices

YAHOO'S NEW DESKTOP SEARCH TOOL
     Yahoo is offering free desktop search software that searches through
more than 200 different file types on your computer and offers added privacy
controls to prevent unauthorized access to your stored information. A
downloadable test version of the software can be found at
http://desktop.yahoo.com. Yahoo claims its new product is the most
comprehensive and nimble of the desktop search solutions now on the market.
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 10 Jan 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10615687.htm>

THE NEW SHAPE OF PC CARDS
     The credit-card-size PC cards for adding functions to notebook
computers are about to be replaced by "ExpressCards" that are half the size
and bear an orange rabbit logo to indicate they can handle high-definition
TV broadcast viewing and high-speed storage. Backed by Microsoft, Intel, and
Dell, the new cards will eventually be used on desktop PCs -- thereby
eliminating the need to open the computer to install hardware upgrades.
(Reuters/USA Today 11 Jan 2005)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/parts/2005-01-11-pcmcia-mutation_x.htm>

'ON THE INTERNET, NO ONE KNOWS YOU'RE A DOG'
     Psychologists believe that secret role-playing may be good or bad,
depending on the circumstances. Harvard psychology professor Daniel M.
Wegner says: "In a very deep sense, you don't have a self unless you have a
secret, and we all have moments throughout our lives when we feel we're
losing ourselves in our social group, or work or marriage, and it feels good
to grab for a secret, or some subterfuge, to reassert our identity as
somebody apart." The Internet is famous for accommodating people with
multiple personalities, and MIT sociologist and author Sherry Turkle says,
"It used to be you'd go away for the summer and be someone else, go away to
camp and be someone else, or maybe to Europe and be someone else" -- whereas
now many people now use online interactive games to set up families they
wish they had or to play out alternative versions of their own lives. "I
think what people are doing on the Internet now has deep psychological
meaning in terms of how they're using identities to express problems and
potentially solve them in what is a relatively consequence-free zone." In
further defense of secret lives, New York clinical psychiatrist Jay S.
Kwawer says, "Contrary to what many people assume, quite often a secret life
can bring a more lively, more intimate, more energized part of themselves
out of the dark." (New York Times 11 Jan 2005)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/health/psychology/11secr.html>

EXERCISE + GAMING = 'EXERGAMING'
     Last week's consumer electronics show in Las Vegas sponsored a "Cardio
PlayZone" featuring  "exergaming" or "exertainment" -- the marriage of
physical exercise and video gaming. Six exhibitors showed off digital
putting greens, optical sensors in miniature dance floors, biofeedback
devices, and workout systems. The customer support manager for Kilowatt, a
workout exergame, said: "The most common question I get is, 'How is this
exercise? I just don't see how this is a workout.' But it will tone you. It
is a workout." In the exergame "Dance Dance Revolution," players tap their
feet to the correct circle on a floor pad, based on cues on the screen, and
if they wish may compete against 15 other people worldwide. (AP/Los Angeles
Times 10 Jan 2005) 
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12jan10,1,3234540.story?coll=sns-ap-toptechnology>

ACLU OPPOSES POLICE "DNA DRAGNET" TO CATCH KILLER
     The American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts wants to stop
police officials of the Cape Code town of Truro from tracking down a killer
through the use voluntary genetic tests on the town's male residents. The
ACLU says the mass collection of DNA is "a serious intrusion on personal
privacy that has proven to be both ineffective and wasteful," and suggests
that men might be reluctant to refuse to offer their DNA for fear of
becoming murder suspects. Law enforcement consultant Howard Safir says the
ACLU "thinks that any request by police for assistance is intimidation."(USA
Today 10 Jan 2005)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-01-10-dna_x.htm>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "We do not see, or we forget, that the birds that are idly singing
around us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly
destroying life." (Charles Darwin)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: UNAMPLIFIED VOICES
     Walt Whitman wrote: "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason
singing ... " 
     But poet and essayist Adrienne Rich hasn't heard much singing in the
last fifty years:
     "For ordinary people to sing or whistle used to be as common as
breathing. I remember men whistling, briskly or hauntingly, women humming
with deep-enclosed chest tones. Where did it go? A technology of 'canned'
music available through car radios, portable 'boom boxes,' and cassette
players, programmed music piped into the workplace, has left people born in
the 1950s and later largely alien to the experience of hearing or joining in
casual music making. Knowing how to pitch your voice isn't the privilege of
the conservatory; people used to learn it from hearing others casually,
unselfconsciously sing, as they learned language, accent, inflection in
speech. Now singing belongs to professionals, is preserved in churches; rap,
a spontaneous and sophisticated expression of Black street youth at first,
quickly became a commodity on videotape, adapted as a new style for
television commercials. (Yet rap goes on around the world, picking up on
local grief, local insurgencies.)
     "Part of the experience of casual singing was the undeliberate soaking
up of many songs, many verses. Ballads, hymns, work songs, opera arias, folk
songs, popular songs, labor songs, school-children's playground songs. And,
of course, with the older songs words changed over time, new generations of
singers misremembering or modifying. Tunes changed, too, as songs traveled:
from England or Wales to Appalachia, from Africa to the Sea Islands, France
to Quebec, and across the continent.
     "To ears accustomed to high-technology amplification and recording
processes, the unamplified human voice, the voice not professionally
trained, may sound acoustically lacking, even perhaps embarrassing. And so
we're severed from a physical release and pleasure, whether in solitude or
community -- the use of breath to produce song. But breath is also 'Ruach',
spirit, the human connection to the universe."
                                 ***
     [To find a library copy of Adrienne Rich's "What Is Found There:
Notebooks on Poetry and Politics," visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=22134964>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393312461/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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