Brownian Motion

A movie still:

The New York Times September 27, 2005 First Giant Squid Captured in Wild (on Film, That Is) By WILLIAM J. BROAD For decades, scientists and sea explorers have mounted costly expeditions to hunt down and photograph the giant squid, a legendary monster with eyes the size of dinner plates and a nightmarish tangle of tentacles lined with long rows of sucker pads. The goal has been to learn more about a bizarre creature of no little fame (Jules Verne's giant squid attacked a submarine and Peter Benchley's ate children) that in real life has stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. While giant squid have been snagged in fishing nets, and dead or dying ones have washed ashore, expeditions have repeatedly failed to photograph a live one in its natural habitat, the inky depths of the sea. But in an article to be published Wednesday in a leading British biological journal, two Japanese scientists, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, report that they have made the world's first observations of a giant squid in the wild. Working some 600 miles south of Tokyo off the Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Islands, they managed to photograph the creature with a robotic camera at a depth of 3,000 feet. During a struggle lasting more than four hours, the 26-foot-long animal took the proffered bait and eventually broke free, leaving behind an 18-foot length of tentacle. The giant squid, the researchers conclude, "appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey." They report that the tentacles could apparently coil into a ball, much as a python envelops its victims. The Japanese researchers are reporting their findings on Wednesday in the British publication Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the B standing for the biological sciences. The Royal Society, based in London, is the world's oldest scientific organization. Scientists praised the discovery as a long-awaited breakthrough. "This has been a mystery for a thousand years," said Richard Ellis, author of "Monsters of the Sea" (Knopf, 1994). o "Nobody knew what they looked like in the wild. We only saw them dead. These images will open the door to more detailed study of their life." The squid hunters themselves are agog, and some perhaps a bit jealous. "Wow!" said Emory Kristof, a photographer for National Geographic who twice ventured to New Zealand in hopes of capturing giant squid on film. "It's always been a presumption to say you're hunting the giant squid when we know so little. It's great that they got it." The Japanese researchers work for the National Science Museum in Tokyo and the Ogasawara Whale-Watching Association. They discovered the giant by following packs of sperm whales, which are known to feed on the giant invertebrates. With squid remains being found near the Bonin Islands, the researchers focused the hunt there. The explorers created a float system with a long line from which they suspended a robotic camera and strobe light. The camera looked downward at hooks baited with a small squids and took pictures every 30 seconds. A bag of mashed shrimps acted as an odor lure. The researchers set up a number of such rigs near the islands. On Sept. 30, 2004, a squid attacked the lowest bait on a rig that was positioned about 1,000 feet above the seafloor. Giant squid have eight short arms and two long tentacles. During the attack, the squid wrapped its two long tentacles like a ball around the bait, the researchers report. One of the squid's tentacles was caught, and the creature moved violently in the next four hours to break free. It was often out of camera range, suggesting, the scientists say, that it was attempting to swim free. After 4 hours 13 minutes of struggle, the animal tore away, leaving a tentacle behind. At 26 feet, this is a relatively small specimen; giant squid are thought to grow as long as 60 feet. But with DNA analysis and other comparisons with squid that have washed ashore, the researchers confirmed that it was a giant. The squid is often known by its genus name, Architeuthis (pronounced ark-uh-TOOTH-iss), Greek for chief squid. The researchers say their photos dispel the notion that it is a sluggish creature that trolls for prey. "The long tentacles are clearly not weak fishing lines dangled below the body," they write. "Our images suggest that giant squids are much more active predators than previously suggested."

Let's see..how "evenly matched" they are might be a point of contention, but not really that much of a rarity..... Marion/Jimmy McPartland Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Mike/Leni Stern Randy Brecker/Eliane Elias (Marc Johnson/Eliane Elias) Red Norvo/Mildred Bailey Ray Brown/Ella Fitzgerald Cindy Blackman/Wallace Roney Renee Rosnes/Billy Drummond These are the ones that first come to mind-I'm sure there are many more. Actually a good idea for a thread........... ← Everything is a point of contention around here! Married couples don't count. Especially "old marrieds".

I didn't say it was proof--I said it was evidence. Here's the complete tune selection: 1. Arubian Nights 2. Joy Spring 3. Ill Wind 4. How My Heart Sings 5. Six Beats, Six Strings 6. Gerri's Blues 7. How Insensitive I think my question is an interesting one because interplay between two evenly matched jazz improvisers who also happen to be in love is something of a rarity.

Does anyone here know for certain that these two were having a romantic fling when they recorded this wonderful duo album for Concord Jazz back in '85? All the evidence seems to indicate they were, from the tune selection ("Arubian Nights"!) to the possessive way Emily has draped herself over Larry on the cover shot.

I found out that I am unable to use the program on my regular computer, which runs Windows Milllenium. It only works on Windows 2000 or higher. Damn.

I don't remember what proportions he used or the brand of gin and vermouth he preferred or whether he stirred or shook, but I do remember my old man insisted on keeping his jug of mixed martinis in the freezer. And he knew too, because he was an alcoholic.

The New York Times September 22, 2005 Joe Bauman, 83, Who Hit 72 Homers as Minor Leaguer, Dies By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN Joe Bauman, who hit 72 home runs in 1954 playing for a minor league team in Roswell, N.M., setting a single-season record for professional baseball that stood for nearly half a century, died Tuesday at a hospital in Roswell. He was 83. The cause was pneumonia, which developed after he incurred a broken pelvis in a fall last month at a ceremony naming a Roswell ballpark for him, his sister-in-law, Mary Ramsey, said. He was a career minor leaguer who never envisioned reaching the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, figuring he would make out just fine running a gas station in the years to come. But at age 32, Bauman, a 6-foot-4, 235-pound, left-handed-hitting first baseman, produced one of the most spectacular seasons at the plate in baseball history. He became the biggest celebrity in Roswell since aliens supposedly emerged from a flying saucer near the town in 1947, spawning an enduring saga of American pop culture. Appearing in 138 games for the 1954 Roswell Rockets of the Class C Longhorn League, one rung above the minors' lowest level then, Bauman not only hit 72 homers but also batted .400, drove in 224 runs and drew 150 walks. Playing home games at Roswell's Park Field, Bauman took aim at a 10-foot-high right-field fence, 329 feet down the line, driving baseballs into a rodeo grounds when he wasn't pumping gas at Joe Bauman's Texaco Service in town. His single-season home-run record for all of organized baseball endured until Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs for the San Francisco Giants in 2001. "I never thought it'd last this long," The Associated Press quoted Bauman as saying then. "I was watching on TV when Barry Bonds hit that last one. It didn't bother me or anything. I just thought, 'There goes my record.' " Bauman, who grew up in Oklahoma City, made his minor league debut in 1941. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he alternated between the minors and semipro ball and played for a time in the Boston Braves' organization. "There was thousands of minor leaguers then," Bauman once told The Los Angeles Times, "and we knew most of us would never get to the big leagues. Some were bitter, some were philosophical and accepted it, using the minor leagues to get into doors that might have been closed otherwise." Bauman retired during the 1956 season, having hit 337 home runs in his nine-year minor league career, spent mostly in low-level leagues. He settled in Roswell, running his gas station and serving as a manager for a beer distributorship. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy. "It was easy to hit balls out here, in a sense," Bauman told Bart Ripp in recalling his 72-home-run season in the 1980 journal of the Society for American Baseball Research. "The ball carries so good here. Plus, we got a free ham for every home run. We had the best-fed ball club in the country."

Yahoo! News Women's Hands Cleaner Than Men, Study Says By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical WriterWed Sep 21, 2:40 PM ET Men are dirtier than women. So scientists confirmed by spying in public restrooms, watching as one-quarter of men left without washing their hands. The worst offenders were at an Atlanta Braves game. In contrast, 90 percent of the women did wash up. Wednesday's results mark the American Society of Microbiology's latest look at how many people take what is considered the single easiest step to staying healthy: spending 20 seconds rubbing with soap under the faucet. It also explains why these infection experts tend to use paper towels to open bathroom doors. There is no telling what germs the person before you left on the knob. "It's a gamble," said microbiologist Judy Daly of Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, the society's secretary. Back in 1996, the society first studied how often people follow mom's advice to always wash up after using the toilet. Researchers lingered in public restrooms, putting on makeup or combing their hair, while surreptitiously counting. They concluded about one-third of people did not wash. The group sponsored an education campaign about how hand-washing can stop the spread of flu, diarrhea and other infectious diseases. Every few years, researchers repeat the spying. This time, 83 percent of people washed, reported Harris Interactive, a research company that last month monitored more than 6,300 public restroom users for the society. That is a little better overall. But take a closer look: _The worst hygiene was at Atlanta's Turner Field baseball stadium, where 37 percent of men left the bathroom without washing, and 16 percent of the women did. _New York's Penn Station had the biggest gender disparity, where 64 percent of men washed their hands compared with 92 percent of women. Grand Central Station was almost as bad. _The best hygiene was at San Francisco's Ferry Terminal Farmers Market and Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and Shedd Aquarium, where only about 12 percent of people left without washing. People exaggerate about hygiene. A Harris telephone survey of 1,000 more adults found 91 percent insisted they wash in public restrooms. Additionally, 77 percent claimed to always wash before handling or eating food, and 32 percent after coughing or sneezing. It is hard to double-check the latter claims. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says poor hand-washing contributes to almost half of all foodborne disease outbreaks. With influenza season approaching, microbiologists warn that it is easy to catch a cold or the flu by shaking hands with someone who just used that hand to cover a sneeze. The viruses can stay alive for two hours on hands, and for 20 minutes on hard, dry surfaces those germy hands touch. So sneeze into your elbow instead and wash frequently. There is no need for special anti-bacterial cleansers, Daly said, although alcohol-based hand gels can substitute when soap's not available. ___ On the Net: Microbiologists' clean hands info: http://www.washup.org

And it's such a nice name, and old testament, too. Don't understand how it and similar names--Martha, Leah, Rebecca come to mind--have fallen so far out of favor.

The New York Times September 17, 2005 In New York Cribs, Jeff and Lisa Give Way to Ahmed and Chaya By JENNIFER 8. LEE In the last several years, New York City has had more baby girls named Fatoumata than Lisa, more Aaliyahs than Melissas, more Chayas than Christinas. There have been more baby boys named Moshe than Peter, more Miguels than Jeffreys, more Ahmeds than Stanleys. Yesterday, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the name breakdown for the 124,099 babies born in New York City in 2004. That, together with data stretching back to 1920, shows that in a city that is fashion-conscious and full of immigrants, some foreign-sounding names have become arguably more New York than American classics like Carol, Susan, Stephen and Harry. But the reverse also happens. Jose and Luis were the top two names for Hispanic baby boys in 1980. But today they have slipped out of the Top 10, behind names like Brandon, Kevin and Christopher. The top Hispanic baby name today is Justin. There is a lot in a name. One of an individual's most defining characteristics, a name also says just as much - if not more - about the country, the city, even the family to which a person belongs. It is not news that the ethnic makeup of New York City is changing and has been for decades. But the effects this has on the names of the city's newborns can be dramatic, and surprising. "When you look at the incredible diversity of the top of the New York naming list," said Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard" (Broadway Books, 2005), "there are two different phenomena working together. There is the rising diversity of the population and the willingness to use names from your ethnic background rather than adopting an Anglo name, which is a change from past generations. At the same time, there is a fall of the usage of the Anglo-Christian classics." Names speak to parents' aspirations for their children. Everyone has one, and, of course, they are free, said Stanley Lieberson, a Harvard sociology professor who wrote "A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions and Culture Change" (Yale, 2000). And because few special interest groups have anything to gain in baby name selection, "It's clean from commercial influences and not simply a reflection of affluence," Professor Lieberson said. According to the names released yesterday, Michael and Emily still hang on to their top positions, with Daniel and Ashley close behind. However, there were differences across groups, with Emily the most popular name among Asian-Americans, Ashley the top name for Hispanics, Kayla among blacks and Sarah for whites. And, just for the record, there were 27 Katrinas born last year, placing the name out of the top 300. But look more deeply into the list, beyond the Top 10, and the ebb and flow of changes over the years becomes more apparent. Religion is far and away the biggest influence on names around the world. Some of that is reflected in New York City, which attracts a wide cross section of Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Hindus, all of whom have strong religious naming traditions. Added up, the spellings of Muhammad, which vary across the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia (Mohammed, Mohammad, Mohamed, Muhammad, Mouhamed), make it a Top 50 name - ahead of Richard and Charles. The city's large Orthodox Jewish population has helped to push Moshe to No. 68 , Mordechai to 155 and Shlomo to 199. Angel (26 in 2004 over all) and Jesus (96) are popular among Hispanic boys, as are names of Catholic saints traditionally. Esther, Grace and Hannah have long been popular for Korean-American girls nationwide due to the Christian missionary influence, Professor Lieberson said. Fatoumata, a popular West African name that was given to 41 of the city's baby girls in 2004, may be a local variation of the Arabic Muslim name, Fatima, though its exact origins are unclear. Currently, the stylish trend for boys is two-syllable names ending in "en" that feature strong vowels and soft consonants. In particular, the "aden" family of names are surging up the charts in New York and the rest of the country: Aiden, Caden, Hayden, Jayden. The myriad various spellings of Jayden (Jaden, Jadon, Jaeden, Jaiden, Jayden, Jaydin, Jaydon) added together make it a Top 10 name in New York City. Immigrant influences can be spotted in baby name data through New York City history. Francesco, Antonio and Giuseppe were Top 20 baby boy names in 1920, at the tail end of the great wave of immigration from southern Italy. No longer. Likewise, a century ago, Germanic-influenced names were popular in New York City and beyond: Bertha, Mildred, Gertrude, Herman. In New York, as in the rest of the country, some standard-bearers have been spurned by parents who are looking for fresher, more original names. Lisa, the top girls' name throughout the 1960's, has slipped out of the top 200. But Lisa has hung on better than Carol, which hit its peak in the 1940's in the Top 5, but by 2003 had since fallen out of the city's Top 500, far behind Luz, Yocheved and Fatima. Some classic men's names - Michael (1), David (6) and John (19) - have hung on in the Top 20. Others - Edward, Charles and George, (all names popular with British royalty) - no longer make the cut for the Top 50, at Nos. 78, 81 and 91, respectively. Black female names tracked white female names until the late 1960's. The city's top five black girls' names in 1965 were Lisa, Sharon, Kim, Denise and Karen. But spurred by the black power movement and media phenomena like "Roots," certain prefixes and suffixes inspired by Islamic and African names, like "Lat," "isha" and "ika," became fashionable for black girls in 1975: Tamika (No. 3 among black girls in 1975), Latoya (16), Latisha (20), Latasha (75) and Shameka (88). Since then, the divergence has kept growing. In 2003, not a single one of the top 20 girls names for blacks and whites overlapped - though both strongly featured names ending in the "a" sound. White families often try to revive classic names that have fallen out of use like Olivia or Hannah, whereas blacks are more likely to improvise, Professor Lieberson said. But now improvisation is becoming more common across the board. And Asian-American names have their own quirk: They lag mainstream America, with last year's top 10 list of Asian-American baby names filled with names that hit their overall peaks a generation ago: Jason, Brian, Eric, Michelle, Tiffany, Nicole, Amy and Kelly. This results from a tendency of Asian-American parents to take a cue from the names of adult peers, Professor Lieberson said. There is one popular name on which New Yorkers differ sharply from the rest of the country: Brooklyn. The name, a combination of two girls' names, Brooke and Lynn, has soared up the list of the nation's top 1,000 female baby names since 1990, landing at No. 101 in 2004. But in New York City, Brooklyn has barely registered, appearing nowhere in any of the Health Department rankings. "New Yorkers hear Brooklyn, and they have an image of a place, despite its many charms, that doesn't seem very delicate and feminine," Ms. Wattenberg said. Andy Lehren contributed reporting for this article.

Stolen Rembrandt work recovered A self-portrait by Rembrandt has been recovered by Danish police, nearly five years after it was stolen in a daring raid on Sweden's National Museum. It was retrieved on Thursday during an operation at a Copenhagen hotel that resulted in the arrest of four people. "We heard that someone was trying to sell the painting and we decided to go for it," said a police spokesman. The artwork - which was reportedly undamaged and still in its original frame - is worth an estimated £34m. Dating from 1630, it was stolen by three armed and masked robbers who entered Sweden's National Museum in December 2000. 'Close co-operation' Making off with three paintings - the Rembrandt and two others by Renoir - they escaped on a small motor boat, spreading nails in front of the museum before they fled. One of the Renoirs was recovered in 2001. Eight men were subsequently jailed for their part in the robbery. Police said Thursday's raid came as a result of "close co-operation" between Swedish authorities, the FBI and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The four men arrested - two Iraqi nationals, a Gambian and a Swede - will face a custody hearing on Friday. "Then we will have them extradited to Sweden," said Chief Superintendent Per Larsen of Copenhagen police. The stolen Rembrandt will be returned to Sweden's National Museum. The other Renoir has yet to be recovered. Story from BBC NEWS:

Fiddler Vassar Clements Dies; Bluegrass, Country, Jazz Star By Matt Schudel Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 17, 2005; B05 Vassar Clements, a virtuoso fiddle player who transcended genres and influenced generations of bluegrass musicians, died of lung cancer Aug. 16 at his home outside Nashville. He was 77. A self-taught musician who mastered the violin (or fiddle, as he usually called it) by age 14, Mr. Clements began his career with Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys in 1949 and worked with country artists through the 1960s. He found his greatest success beginning in 1972 by performing with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on the popular album "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." From then on, he made a series of boundary-breaking recordings with mandolinist David Grisman, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, among others. Absorbing almost every conceivable style of music, Mr. Clements invented what he called hillbilly jazz, a blend of country music, jazz and swing that characterized his eclectic style. He was known as the "Isaac Stern of the fiddle" or the "Miles Davis of bluegrass." It would be hard to find anyone who worked with musicians from more widely varied backgrounds, from Hank Williams Sr. to alt-rocker Dave Matthews. Mr. Clements released 27 albums as a leader and, in a 60-year career, performed on as many as 3,000 recording sessions with other artists, including B.B. King, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris, members of Miles Davis's groups, Buck Owens and the Boston Pops. "He was a musical giant," Grisman, one of his frequent collaborators and the producer of his final album, "Living With the Blues" (2004), said yesterday. "He had an incredible sound. He had incredible imagination. He was a fountain of ideas and could execute them amazingly." Although he was most closely identified with country music and bluegrass, Mr. Clements had a sensitivity for jazz and blues that often came out in his playing. He attributed his broad musical approach to the variety of music he heard as a boy. "Actually, I heard more swing than country or bluegrass while I was growing up in Florida," he once said. "I've always loved that kind of rhythm." "He was listening to a lot of jazz and a lot of horn players," bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs said yesterday in a telephone interview. "He was just real open with his playing and went places musically that other musicians weren't going. He would break out a whole vocabulary of licks that nobody else was doing on the fiddle." Possessing a craggy, expressive face, Mr. Clements often smoked a pipe while performing and had an unvarnished, down-home way of speaking. Even as renowned musicians flocked to hear him, he was never awed by the company he kept. In 1995, he told the Orlando Sentinel about someone who came to one of his recording sessions: "He was in the studio with them dark glasses on. . . . I finally asked after he left, who was that sitting down there, because he never done anything, he just set there. They said that was Bob Dylan. Boy, I'd never have known that. I thought he mighta just been asleep or something." Mr. Clements was born April 25, 1928, in Kinard, Fla., and grew up in Kissimmee, Fla., then a cow town near Orlando. He had no musical training except what he heard on the radio or from jukeboxes in the black section of town. He played the guitar before switching to violin. "My stepfather went and got one at an old furniture store and put some kind of strings on there," he recalled. "I didn't know how to tune it; I didn't know what the bow was for." He first tried out for Monroe, the "father of bluegrass," at 14 and was rejected. He was an instant sensation when he joined Monroe in 1949 at age 20. "His first recording with Bill was 'New Mule Skinner Blues,' " Grisman said. "His solo on that recording is one of the cornerstones of bluegrass fiddle playing." Mr. Clements worked with Monroe until 1956. He struggled with alcohol in the early 1960s and dropped out of music for several years before moving to Nashville in 1967. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he resumed touring with Faron Young, John Hartford and banjo superstar Earl Scruggs before his breakthrough appearance on "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." He made his first record under his own name ("Crossing the Catskills") in 1973 and, the same year, performed with Garcia and Grisman on "Old and In the Way," one of the top-selling bluegrass albums ever. He appeared in Robert Altman's 1975 film "Nashville" and continued to perform at festivals, concerts and bluegrass clubs until February. Mr. Clements was proficient on viola, cello, string bass, guitar and banjo, but his primary instrument was the violin. He played a 400-year-old French violin given to him by Hartford, with the head of a bearded man carved on the scroll. His marriage to Jean Clements ended in divorce. His wife of 34 years, Millie Clements, died in 1998. Survivors include two children from the first marriage and three from the second, and 12 grandchildren. In an interview last year with the puremusic.com Web site, Mr. Clements reflected on his long career: "When I think of how long I've been playing, I think, 'Golly bum, I'm getting old.' " © 2005 The Washington Post Company Advertising Links What's this? Save on All Your Calls with Vonage When looking for local regional and long distance calling, use Vonage to make calls to all 50 states and Canada. Get voicemail, great international rates and more. Sign up today. www.vonage.com MyCashNow - $100 - $1,500 Overnight Payday Loan Cash goes in your account overnight. Very low fees. Fast decisions. Direct deposit is not required. No credit check. 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Made jambalaya for the first time. I used a variation on a Paul Prudhomme recipe, and the results were excellent. Here's to New Orleans cooking.

I remember recomending that one some time ago. The featured musicians on this include Vassar Clements, David Grisman, and Tony Rice, and they really wail.

The academics really missed the boat on bluegrass music. Better late than never, I suppose, but opportunities to learn much about such interesting influences as Arnold Schultz (a rural African-American country guitarist who mentored teenaged Bill Monroe) are pretty much lost now.

Bluegrass Music Begins to Pique a Fancy By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press WriterFri Sep 9, 3:52 PM ET Bluegrass music has taken a long road to the ivory tower from its hardscrabble roots in the rural South. But 50 years after mandolin player Bill Monroe, often credited as the father of bluegrass, broke from country traditions at the Grand Ole Opry and melded breakneck instrumentals with unique melodies, academics are coming around. A symposium that began Thursday at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., brings together scholars from 17 states and three countries to discuss bluegrass and why its fast pickin' banjos have been so slow to take root in academia. A dozen or more universities have folk studies programs that include classes on bluegrass, but outside of a folk revival in the 1960s that led some to seriously look at the subject, most academics haven't embraced the genre as they have jazz and blues. "Poor rural whites are in a sense the last examined minority," said Erika Brady, a professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky who helped organize the symposium. "It's a group that it's taken the academic world a long time to get around to." It is impossible to ignore social groups and race when asking about the development of bluegrass studies, Brady said, and too often there are misconceptions that bluegrass' early practitioners were backward country folk incapable of finesse. Bluegrass rose from the musical traditions of the downtrodden — Southern workers, farmers and families who took to song in hard times. Monroe, a native of Rosine, Ky., about 40 miles northwest of Bowling Green, blended the blues, ragtime and folk songs he heard while growing up to fuel his driving performances on the mandolin at the Opry in Nashville. Monroe was already a staple star, and few identified the break from country as bluegrass. But historians point to Monroe's band the Blue Grass Boys as the definitive moment when colliding influences gave way to something just as new as jazz was at the turn of the century in New Orleans. Thoughtful study was bound to come, said banjo player Bela Fleck, whose style crosses the distinctly American traditions of bluegrass, folk and rock and has garnered thousands of modern music fans. "It's like music theory, which was created to study what already was. Bluegrass exists, and since it's been around long enough, there are people who want to talk about it," Fleck said. Just as there are a thousand definitions for jazz, all of which are correct in some regard, bluegrass has perplexed fans and musicians who know it when they hear it but can't give hard rules for how to play it. The symposium also will address the decades-long pursuit of chasing down that definition of bluegrass, which drew from many influences like blues and jazz and remains just as hard to pin into a canned phrase. Still, it's a bittersweet moment for the faithful to move bluegrass from jam sessions to the lecture hall, said Paul Wells, director of the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University and a speaker at the symposium. While music that isn't embraced by the universities can be trivialized — it's not culture with a capital C — anything that's worthwhile eventually will be examined. Whether it's art or music, people want to understand what they like, Wells said. "Some people think that it's overintellectualizing a grass-roots music. But why not give it full attention?" he said. "It can be some of the most hair-raising, emotional music you ever want to hear." Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Questions or Comments Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Ad Feedback

Most of its customers do not pay Skype anything, but about two million customers have signed up for premium services that allow customers to make and receive calls from regular phone numbers for a fee. How does this differ from current land-based phone service?

The New York Times September 8, 2005 EBay Said to Be in Talks to Acquire Skype By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and VIKAS BAJAJ EBay is in preliminary discussions to acquire Skype Technologies, the Internet telephone company that has been the object of much merger speculation of late, for $2 billion to $3 billion, two people involved in the negotiations said today. The talks are highly tentative and could fall apart, these people said on the condition that they not be identified because the talks are continuing. An acquisition of Skype would put eBay at the forefront of one of the hottest and most-watched online movements of recent times, and one that the giant online marketplace has so far not been a major part of. It would also follow moves by Microsoft and Google, which eBay increasingly finds itself in competition with on new technologies, to get into the Internet phone business. Last month, Google announced a service similar to Skype's free phone service called Google Talk, and Microsoft said it was acquiring Teleo, a San Francisco-based service provider that allows phone calls between a personal computer and a telephone. The discussions between eBay and Skype were first reported in The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal today. Skype allows users who download its software and register for its service to talk to one another for free over the Internet. For a company that is a little over two years old, it has already amassed a large global following - the company says its telephony software has been downloaded 162 million times and it has 53 million registered users, with as many as three million using its service at any given time. Most of its customers do not pay Skype anything, but about two million customers have signed up for premium services that allow customers to make and receive calls from regular phone numbers for a fee. An acquisition of Skype would be eBay's biggest purchase since it bought the Internet Auction Company of South Korea in 2004 for $4.3 billion. EBay has been aggressively acquiring companies, many of them overseas, in recent years as it has been reaching beyond its core business of being the definitive online bazaar. Skype, based in Luxembourg, was founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who also founded the popular and often controversial Kazaa, the file-trading service that has drawn the ire of the recording and motion picture industry. Skype's rise from a small Internet service to a phenomenon has roiled the telecommunications industry, whose officials at times try to dismiss it as a niche online fad that could never replace trusty phones and at other times cite as a revolutionary force transforming their more than 100-year old industry. * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company * Home * Privacy Policy * Search * Corrections * XML * Help * Contact Us * Work for Us * Back to Top

The New York Times September 8, 2005 After the Storm, the Swindlers By TOM ZELLER Jr. Even as millions of Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with swindles, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the frauds are more varied and more numerous than in past disasters, according to law enforcement officials and online watchdog groups. Florida's attorney general has already filed a fraud lawsuit against a man who started one of the earliest networks of Web sites - katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others - that stated they were collecting donations for storm victims. In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet sites - with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com - displayed pictures of the flood-ravaged South and drove traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to white separatist groups. The registrant of those Web sites was sued by the state of Missouri yesterday for violating state fund-raising law and for "omitting the material fact that the ultimate company behind the defendants' Web sites supports white supremacy." Late yesterday afternoon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put the number of Web sites claiming to deal in Katrina information and relief - some legitimate, others not - at "2,300 and rising." Dozens of suspicious sites claiming links to legitimate charities are being investigated by state and federal authorities. Also under investigation are e-mail spam campaigns using the hurricane as a hook to lure victims to reveal credit card numbers to thieves, as well as fake hurricane news sites and e-mail "updates" that carry malicious code aimed at hijacking a victim's computer. "The numbers are still going up," said Dan Larkin, the chief of the Internet Crime Complaint Center operated by the F.B.I. in West Virginia. He said that the amount of suspicious, disaster-related Web activity was higher than the number of swindles seen online after last year's tsunami in Southeast Asia. "We've got a much higher volume of sites popping up," he said. The earliest online frauds began to appear within hours of Katrina's passing. "It was so fast it was amazing," said Audri Lanford, co-director of ScamBusters.org, an Internet clearinghouse for information on various forms of online fraud. "The most interesting thing is the scope," she said. "We do get a very good feel for the quantity of scams that are out there, and there's no question that this is huge compared to the tsunami." By the end of last week, Ms. Landford's group had logged dozens of Katrina-related swindles and spam schemes. The frauds ranged from opportunistic marketing (one spam message offered updates on the post-hurricane situation, with a link that led to a site peddling Viagra) to messages said to be from victims, or families of victims. "This letter is in request for any help that you can give," reads one crude message that was widely distributed online. "My brother and his family have lost everything they have and come to live with me while they looks for a new job." Several antivirus software companies have warned of e-mail "hurricane news updates" that lure users to Web sites capable of infecting computers with a virus that allows hackers to gain control of their machines. And numerous swindlers have seeded the Internet with e-mail "phishing" messages that say they are from real relief agencies, taking recipients to what appear to be legitimate Web sites, where credit card information is collected from unwitting victims who think they are donating to hurricane relief. On Sunday, the Internet security company Websense issued an alert regarding a phishing campaign that lured users to a Web site in Brazil that was made to look like a page operated by the Red Cross. Users who submitted their credit card numbers, expiration dates and personal identification numbers via the Web form were then redirected to the legitimate Red Cross Web site, making the ruse difficult to detect. The security company Sophos warned of a similar phishing campaign on Monday. "They're tugging at people's heartstrings," said Tom Mazur, a spokesman for the United States Secret Service. Mr. Mazur said there were "a number of instances that we're looking into with this type of fraud, both domestically and overseas," but he would not provide specifics. The lawsuit filed in Florida last Friday accused Robert E. Moneyhan, a 51-year-old resident of Yulee, Fla., of registering several Katrina-related domain names - including KatrinaHelp.com, KatrinaDonations.com, KatrinaRelief.com and KatrinaReliefFund.com - as early as Aug. 28, even before the hurricane had hit the Louisiana coast. By Aug. 31, according to the Florida attorney general, Charles J. Crist Jr., Mr. Moneyhan's sites had begun asking visitors to "share your good fortune with Hurricane Katrina's victims." A "Donate" button then took payments through a PayPal account that Mr. Moneyhan had set up. Mr. Moneyhan did not respond to numerous phone calls and e-mail messages, but the Web site names in question are now owned by ProjectCare.com, a loose collection of Web sites that is using the Katrina sites as an information center for hurricane victims. Kevin Caruso, the proprietor of ProjectCare.com, said that he had offered to buy the sites from Mr. Moneyhan on Sept. 2, but that Mr. Moneyhan, distressed over the lawsuit, simply donated them to Project Care without charge. Mr. Caruso also said that after several phone conversations, he believed that Mr. Moneyhan, was "trying to help the Hurricane Katrina survivors, but did not have the experience to proceed properly." The lawsuit, however, states that Mr. Moneyhan had tried to sell his collection of Katrina-related domain names on Sept. 1 "to the highest bidder." The suit seeks $10,000 in civil penalties and restitution for any consumers who might have donated to the Web sites while they were controlled by Mr. Moneyhan. Jay Nixon, the Missouri attorney general, sued to shut one of the more bizarre fund-raising efforts yesterday. A state circuit court granted a temporary restraining order against Internet Donations Inc., the entity behind a dozen Web sites erected over the last several days purporting to collect donations for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Also named in the Missouri suit, which seeks monetary penalties from the defendants, is the apparent operator of the donation sites, Frank Weltner, a St. Louis resident and radio talk show personality who operates a Web site called JewWatch.com. That site - which indexes Adolf Hitler's writings, transcripts of anti-Semitic radio broadcasts and other materials, according to the Anti-Defamation League - attracted headlines last year when it appeared at or near the top of Google search results for the query "Jew." It remains the No. 2 search result today. Most of Mr. Weltner's Katrina-related Web sites - which include KatrinaFamilies.com, Katrina-Donations.com, and NewOrleansCharities.com - appear to have been registered using DomainsByProxy.com, which masks the identity of a domain registrant. However, Mr. Weltner's name appeared on public documents obtained through the Web site of the Missouri secretary of state yesterday. Those indicated that Mr. Weltner had incorporated Internet Donations as a nonprofit entity last Friday. The various Web sites, which use similar imagery and slight variations on the same crude design, all point back to InternetDonations.org. There, visitors interested in donating to the Red Cross, Salvation Army or other relief organizations are told that "we can collect it for you in an easy one-stop location." It is unclear whether any of the sites successfully drew funds from any donors, or if Mr. Weltner, who did not respond to e-mail messages and could not be reached by phone, had channeled any proceeds to the better-known charities named on his site. But the restraining order issued yesterday enjoins Mr. Weltner and Internet Donations Inc. from, among other things, charitable fund-raising in Missouri, and "concealing, suppressing or omitting" the fact that donations collected were intended "for white victims only." "It's the lowest of the low when someone solicits funds" this way, Mr. Nixon said in an interview before announcing the lawsuit. "We don't want one more penny from well-meaning donors going through this hater." * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company * Home * Privacy Policy * Search * Corrections * XML * Help * Contact Us * Work for Us * Back to Top

Jackson witness on fraud charge The mother of the teenage boy at the centre of a sex abuse trial against Michael Jackson has been charged with making false social security claims. Los Angeles prosecutors accuse Janet Arvizo of fraudulently collecting almost $19,000 (£10,500) in benefits. She was a key prosecution witness in the case, which saw Mr Jackson being acquitted of all charges. Evidence of her alleged benefit fraud was presented during the trial by Mr Jackson's defence lawyers. Refusal to speak They said she had claimed to be poor, despite having collected about $150,000 in a legal action against a department store. Ms Arvizo, mother of 15-year-old Gavin, refused to testify about her financial situation during the sex abuse trial on the grounds that she might incriminate herself. "These charges are the result of a very careful investigation of allegations that she basically lied to receive aid," Los Angeles District Attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. "We felt the evidence was sufficient to file these counts," she added. Ms Arvizo, whose married name is Mrs Jackson, could face five years in jail if prosecuted. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ente...ent/4179024.stm Published: 2005/08/24 01:42:35 GMT

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