Via CNN. See also this statement from his mother:
“This evening I received a phone call that is every mother’s worst dream,” she said. “My son, Russell Jones, passed away. To the public, he was known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard. To me, he was known as Rusty, the kindest and most generous soul on earth. I appreciate all the support I received. Russell was more than a rapper ó he was a loving father, brother, uncle and most of all, son. With love, Cherry Jones.ì
A fascinating article in today’s New York Times by Marc Lacey:
Across the continent, linguists are working with experts in information technology to make computers more accessible to Africans who happen not to know English, French or the other major languages that have been programmed into the world’s desktops.
There are hundreds of languages in Africa – some spoken only by a few dozen elders – and they are dying out at an alarming rate. The continent’s linguists see the computer as one important way of saving them. Unesco estimates that 90 percent of the world’s 6,000 languages are not represented on the Internet, and that one language is disappearing somewhere around the world every two weeks.
“Technology can overrun these languages and entrench Anglophone imperialism,” said Tunde Adegbola, a Nigerian computer scientist and linguist who is working to preserve Yoruba, a West African language spoken by millions of people in western Nigeria as well as in Cameroon and Niger. “But if we act, we can use technology to preserve these so-called minority languages.”
Language geeks, and computer geeks, and progressives unite!
Via Slashdot:
The scientist’s job is to discover truth about the natural world, and the journalist’s is to report the world’s events accurately. Why are these two professions so often at odds? Chris Mooney discusses how journalism fails science in this month’s Columbia Journalism Review. If you applauded Jon Stewart’s plea to “stop hurting America,” Mooney’s analysis will strike a chord; the he-said-she-said approach to truth fails in all kinds of venues.
Mooney’s discussion has a compelling opening:
On May 22, 2003, the Los Angeles Times printed a front-page story by Scott Gold, its respected Houston bureau chief, about the passage of a law in Texas requiring abortion doctors to warn women that the procedure might cause breast cancer. Virtually no mainstream scientist believes that the so-called ABC link actually exists ó only anti-abortion activists do. Accordingly, Goldís article noted right off the bat that the American Cancer Society discounts the ìalleged linkî and that anti-abortionists have pushed for ìso-called counselingî laws only after failing in their attempts to have abortion banned. Gold also reported that the National Cancer Institute had convened ìmore than a hundred of the worldís expertsî to assess the ABC theory, which they rejected. In comparison to these scientists, Gold noted, the author of the Texas counseling bill ó who called the ABC issue ìstill disputedî ó had ìa professional background in property management.î
Goldís piece was hard-hitting but accurate. The scientific consensus is quite firm that abortion does not cause breast cancer. If reporters want to take science and its conclusions seriously, their reporting should reflect this reality ó no matter what anti-abortionists say.
But what happened next illustrates one reason journalists have such a hard time calling it like they see it on science issues. In an internal memo exposed by the Web site LAobserved.com, the Timesís editor, John Carroll, singled out Goldís story for harsh criticism, claiming it vindicated critics who accuse the paper of liberal bias.
Erin O’Connor points to a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual,” by Mark Bauerlein, who writes
The public has now picked up the message that “campuses are havens for left-leaning activists,” according to a Chronicle poll of 1,000 adult Americans this year. Half of those surveyed — 68 percent who call themselves “conservative” and even 30 percent who say they are “liberal” — agreed that colleges improperly introduce a liberal bias into what they teach. The matter, however, is clearly not just one of perception. Indeed, in another recent survey, this one conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles, faculty members themselves chose as their commitment “far left” or “liberal” more than two and a half times as often as “far right” or “conservative.” As a Chronicle article last month put it: “On left-leaning campuses around the country, professors on the right feel disenfranchised.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Davies of Crooked Timber takes note of all the commentary on what’s wrong with the Left in America, given their dismal performance at putting candidates in office last week:
The idea is that, it seems, you can connect almost anything to the phrase ìthis is a serious problem for The Leftî in much less than six steps of argument. So the name of the game is to start with a googlewhack from the site and end via a chain of fairly close reasoning with an argument that the Democrats need to consider your googlewhack in depth.
Can you see where I’m going with this? If there aren’t enough conservatives on college campuses, it’s the fault of the liberals. If there are too many conservatives in government, it’s the fault of the liberals. Do you think if we switched things around, the argument would still work? There are too many conservatives on college campuses, and it’s the fault of the liberals. There are too many liberals in government, and it’s the fault of the liberals. Yup, it works that way, too. It’s the universal causality argument!
I think there’s a lesson here for the Democratic party: observe how those on the Right react when they are under-represented. They do not wring their hands and worry about what they’re doing wrong. They do not sit and listen patiently while those from the other side point out their failings. They simply express indignation that they have not been given their fair share. They say, in effect, “We’re right. You’re wrong. Back off and give us some space.”
In the bits of time available to me, I’ve been reading Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s really quite lovely, and it features as one of the main characters Henry, a librarian for the Newberry who (involuntarily) finds himself temporarily transported backwards and forwards in his own life. What’s not to like? In one scene, an older Henry encounters his younger self after hours in a museum. Taking himself to the rare books collection, he pulls down a copy of “Audobon’s Birds of America, the deluxe, wonderful double-elephant folio that’s almost as tall as my young self. This copy is the finest in existence” They sit and look at the gorgeous plates together while waiting to be returned to their respective times and places:
Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse of paper slowly rises up and over. henry stands attentively, waits each time for the new wonder, emits small noises of pleasure for each Sandhill Crane, American Coot, Great Auk, Pileated Woodpecker. When we come to the last plate, Snow Bunting, he leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the engraving. I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I loved, remember wanting to crawl into it and sleep. (35)
What dedicated reader would not recognize her- or himself in this passage? I like the suggestion here of reading as a kind of time travelling, taking us out of the present and sometimes taking us back to contact a previous version of ourselves.
Niffenegger, by the way, is a professor in the Interdisciplinary Book Arts Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts.