Blogcritics Author: Howard Dratch

Museum Review: 10 To The First Power - Celebrating Miami Art Museum's 10th Year Acquisitions

Howard Dratch — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:24:05 EDT

The Power Of Ten celebrates gifts to MAM in its 10th year. The fine Tamayo show has just ended.
The Miami Art Museum, which they want to call MAM, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It is not old for a museum, not even for an American museum. Florida, when I grew up here in the 1950s and part of the 60s, was not noted for its culture. It still is much better at presenting amusement parks and ball games than museums or the performing arts. ...

Florida University Student Attacked By Cops

Howard Dratch — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:00:59 EDT

Florida university declares war on academic freedom. How can the nation survive the loss of liberty to fear and timidity?
The expatriate is back in town, in Miami, in Florida, in the great, free bastion of liberty, my United States. What do I find when I flick on the no-longer-flickering eye of the TV? A young man, a muchacho, a student with a hint of serious in his demeanor approaching the podium at the old but un-respected University of Florida. He insists on...

An Amtrak Trek North By North

Howard Dratch — Wed, 5 Sep 2007 22:18:36 EDT

Airlines are in trouble and have become troublesome. Can passenger rail service make a comeback? A journey...
The trip, this non-Kerouac ramble is from jungle-Mexico up to tourist-Mexico, on board a cruise ship toward Miami, then New York and back to Miami for the medical games for which I came. This is not the journey of Jack, Mrs. Kerouac's son, nor his roll of paper to document the journey across the land. This is not Robert Frank's photo-trek...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Update On Hurricane Dean From His Path

Howard Dratch — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:42:16 EDT

It is 11:00 PM here in Bacalar. It is still quiet although a rain has begun. There is a quality in the air and the humidity that recalls Bogart, Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Lionel Barrymore in Key Largo. Anticipation, perhaps a touch of fear and resignation -- the preparations were done and now the wait to see that it was done well.State & municipal leaders continue to warn more energetically of the danger coming. It is now a cat 5 storm, "Red Alert", with sustained winds of 260 km/hr which is 160 mph -- sufficient to destroy buildings. They are warning of a direct hit on Chetumal or the north part of the Laguna Bacalar.Weather.com gives me more confidence and projects landfall of the eye tomorrow morning around Felipe Carillo Puerto some 50 miles up the road. Carillo Puerto is a very small city that was the center of the Caste Wars of the Maya against the Spanish/Mexican colonials of the haciendas who were growing very affluent on the trade in hemp for ships' rigging during the 18th & 19th centuries.It is the gateway to the Si'an Ki'an Biosphere, the home of a growing group of Maya learning to make crafts, and a place hoping to be included in the tourist, eco-tourist industry that has not totally reached it yet. It has charm and it has many people living in less-than-secure dwellings.I don't want Dean to roll directly over me but I don't want it to destroy others. I cannot influence the monster from his path. It is now being called a monster. President Calder�n is returning from Canada to oversee the aftermath. Even at this stage of the night there is still question of where Dean will land and how much water will precede him in the storm surge. However, it is clear that he will be landing here or near here. The Weather Channel has a good collection of maps including one projecting wind damage. I am in the yellow near the red line. On the line but not, as was just said on state tv, in the bulls-eye. It now seems that the high winds will hit about 3AM. It shows not to believe rumors. An earlier text message warned power would be cut at 7PM. It wasn't.After the Wilma experience that cost billions the authorities are trying to avoid pulling a New Orleans. The Secretary of Tourism is already talking of how quickly the tourism industry can be brought back in the aftermath. I will miss the Internet when it goes. Facing this behemoth of a tempest alone in a soon-to-be-dark house with the sound of the wind raging and the water rising in anger will not make for the most relaxing night. Time to buy an iPod so I could be washed away to the sound of Bach. Then a digital camera to collect some pictures of the fury or the aftermath without having to take them to a lab. Time again to face what the world sends, grin, and bear it.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Hurricane Dean Struts His Violent Way

Howard Dratch — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:47:44 EDT

It is a he this time -- Hurricane Dean is making a destructive appearance. He has hit the Dominican Republic and is ramming Jamaica as a force four storm. There have been casualties and surely there will be pain and suffering. Now, in the path of the storm there are massive preparations and evacuations being made. The Cayman Islands suffered enough three years ago. I met many of those who fled from the wind and rising waters as the islands submerged. They had come to hospitals in Miami including Baptist Hospital where I was being treated. Paradise can turn mean.Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula is preparing for a category 4 storm if it does not increase to the category 5 -- which has been predicted. Hurricanes are fickle phenomenon and may or may not do what the most astute scientist predicts. It does look from the maps and satellite images that the Yucatan will come under attack with the storm hitting south of Cancun. That puts us close enough to the eye to be immersed in the storm. The differences will be in seconds of latitude, a few miles north or south.For now the storm is due to encounter Mexico by Tuesday morning latest and appears to be heading yet again for the island of Cozumel and the resorts of the Mayan Riviera from Cancun south. Mèrida will also probably be hit as the storm exits the peninsula for the Gulf of Mexico.The question now is whether or not we in Bacalar, we around Chetumal at what is still the southern edge of the “proposed track”, whether we will see the force of the storm or just the edges. The most recent report predicted the path to more directly include us.State and federal authorities have already sent text messages to the population (cell phones are ubiquitous in developing nations which were not wired in the 20th c. as was the US) advising us to pick a secure place and stay put or follow the orders of “the authorities” in going to a shelter. They have large press conferences -- something beloved in Mexico -- where the governor and heads of agencies all get a chance at the limelight while reminding us that, in the crisis, we have the ultimate responsibility to care for ourselves. Good advice. The alert status for storms here is now orange and reddening quickly.They stress having bottled water, food, documents stored in waterproof containers and, great advice, not listening to rumors. Turn off all your electrical system and uncouple the bottled gas. Keep a supply of purified water which is usually done here since drinking water should always be purified. In 1954 Chetumal was almost completely destroyed by a storm. It was then a small outpost city with a lousy port (it is too shallow for anything of substance), no road or rail transport at the best of times. Buildings in the city were primarily built of wood in the caribe style or less sophisticated. It was, after all, only a small city in a territory of Mexico far from the capital with a history of violence and war against Mexico.We once met a Mayan woman who had lived through the storm in '54 and described the chaos, flooding and winds. Now it is growing affluent with shopping malls, a Sam's Club and two highways connecting it to the rest of Mexico and Belize.The 8PM reports tonight on a number of Internet sites like Accuweather and Weather.com had reports from Santo Domingo and Kingston, Jamaica telling of high winds -- 100 mph sustained winds in Jamaica and 138 mph gusts. This is at category 4 and 5 is being predicted for Yucatan landfall around Tuesday morning by the National Hurricane Center in Miami. A category 5 fuels winds of 160 mph.Dean had already killed at least 8 persons before it hit Jamaica. It is a deadly force, this force of nature. The Cayman Islands are trying to get people off the island with an influx of empty airplanes being sent in to evacuate people from a relatively posh resort. At Cancun airport there were said to be lines of planes to fill with lines of tourists. Not everyone will get a seat on a plane. Foreign tourists are to be evacuated to hotels in the city of Cancun which is not as much of a danger as is the Hotel Zone.This video clip is worth a look.The state TV station in Chetumal continues its warnings to residents to evacuate homes that are not secure and lists the many shelters available. The shelters tend to be schools which are made of cement with cement roofs but are not totally closed in, do not normally have cooking facilities and do not look very comfortable. But, compared to a bamboo hut with a thatch roof; they could be life savers.In Cancun, lines of planes have been taking lines of tourists to safety. That still leaves many who will shortly be ordered off the “hotel zone” -- a barrier island connected to the mainland. A mandatory evacuation is expected.One weather person broadcasting from Cancun noted that the people have seen so many large, destructive storms that they are used to it. I don't think it is possible to get used to them nor to lose the fear of such astounding force unleashed on our planet. Here in Bacalar stores were chaotic today with people buying up as much basic items as possible. Bacalar's stores do not have large amounts of supplies so the town will soon be laid bare.The storm is coming and it is not yet known to the “the perfect storm” but it has been storming around as if it wanted to strut its violent stuff. Worse yet, it seems to have me in its sights. It is also sighting itself on the Mayan Riviera where those who can afford to be on the shore will be those most at risk. Poorer, local people live inland where it is hotter, less elegant, ... and safer.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Pentagon Notices Million Dollar Bill For Shipping 38 Cent Item

Howard Dratch — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:32:45 EDT

Bloomberg.com reported today the story of a supplier of parts to the Pentagon billed them $998,798 to send two washers with a value of 38 cents to an Army installation in Texas, the tip of the iceberg in a Pentagon over-billing scam totalling over $20 million.The two sisters who owned the company and lived ostentatiously on their criminal activities discovered a loophole in the Pentagon's shipping system. Supplies to combat areas and military installations that had been labeled "priority" were paid automatically. Charlene Corley is the surviving sister and owner of C&D Distributors of Lexington, SC. She is being fined only $750,000 and "faces" 20 years on each count of an indictment for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money. The government is hoping to recoup some of its $20.5 million by selling off "homes, beach property, jewelry and 'high-end automobiles". It cannot recover the money from their vactions -- a pentagon spokesperson said, "They took a lot of vacations."C&D charged the pentagon $455,009 for 3 screws (value:$3.93) to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq. They were paid automatically. They billed and received $293.451 for the shipment of a washer to Patrick AFB in Florida. It was worth 89 cents.The southern sisters began the scam in the year 2000. They got more and more greedy as time went on. The price for each shipped item was seldom more than $100. During six years of continuing fraudulent activities the total reeal value of items shipped was $68,000. They billed and were paid $20.5 million by the accomodating procurement system.In September of 2006 a purchasing agent (Bloomberg did not report whether the agent was rewarded or promoted for diligence and honesty) noticed a bill for sending two additional washers (value: 38 cents) for $969,000. The agent rejected the bill and found the earlier $998,798 payment to the South Carolina women.A spokesperson for the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency, Dawn Darden, said that the government raced to look at "all billing records..." and that this kind of fraud is "...not a widespread problem." They have found some other "questionable billing," but that the Carolina company's total take stood out by a large margin. For something that is denigrated as "not wide-spread", they noted that the "next-highest billing for questionable costs totaled $2 million." A pittance.Bloomberg understands money. Take this $20.5 million, that $2 million, add up the rest of the fraud and corruption and what would you have? For those of you dealing with the high cost of living in a nation embroiled in a war against evil attackers, a credit crisis (could fraud be a part of that, too?) this example of federal effectiveness will be reassuring. Those looking for a new business should consider a shipping service directed at the military. Get a UPS and FedX account and a lot of Express Mail envelopes (they are free) and keep the bill in the range of "negligible" -- under $2 million. Let the troops support you.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Dear Miss LonelyBlogs

Howard Dratch — Mon, 6 Aug 2007 06:19:58 EDT

Dear Miss Lonelyblogs:Please help a blogger who lost his way. I have dallied with more than one piece of blogware, shamelessly used a few blog editors, and taken a web host. Do I need blogger absolution or can I learn to live with the situation?I was seduced. Some pretty blogware wagged its back end at me and my mind numbed. My fingers took over and stroked those keys as if words could be coaxed from them. I admit it. I lost control. Pretty, sexy, amenable to change, she posed prettily with all her 3 columns of goodness just running over. Now she has become teasingly difficult, hard to handle, prone to tantrums, stubborn and, I fear, slower and fatter than I would have liked. There is still something about her I love but blogging with her has its drawbacks.The foreplay to this tragic tale of being drawn like a moth to the gentle, embracing light of the computer display is that first rush of pride that the words people read, the pictures they look at, the thoughts and feelings exposed are the self-caress of my psyche. The hidden exhibitionist cries, “Look at me, world.” WordPress took me away with her into the depths of blogospherical depravity. What would I not do for a sweet, pretty, amenable, friendly and all-embracing blog system to expose for the world to see?Blogging caught me up with my first computer a few years ago. Like my past life where newspapers, magazines, annual reports and books published my work; blogging seemed like self-publishing. Is a web log vanity-publishing or just vanity? I push “publish” therefore I am published. Or is it just another self-caress brought to us by the magic of the Internet?I lived with Blogger for years and played around with more than one Blogger Blog and Blogger Betas searingly hot off the press. I tweaked them and pimped them, asked much and they returned my lusty exhibitionism with placid restraint and engaging loyalty. Oh, Miss Lonelyblogs, I did not give them the respect they deserved. So now I keep some Blogger blogs in a harem. Am I a bigamist or blogamist?It was this year with more time and less money that I decided to plunge into a morass of web hosts and Content Management Systems -- even Blogware Platforms. One would be my very own. I wanted, thought I, a space of my own in the great Web, a place under my control and my design. I looked around, visited the dens of iniquity called WordPress, Movable Type, Serendipity , Mambo and yet more. I wandered the proffered offerings of Laughing Squid, PowWeb, Blue Host and ItsaMac and looked at the pretty front of SquareSpace which is no square.I decided it was time and bit the bullet, made the commitment, said “I do” to WordPress and we settled our blogging lives into our own domain, 7 Color Lagoon . We became family with a home on the web host. Ah, to think that there was a possibility of sub-domains to come, buying up virtual real estate, moving in a sexy new dance called “SEO”. All was right with the world -- or was it?Disillusionment came quickly. Our marriage showed rifts, fractures, tears and frustration. What had I so blithely gotten myself into? The web host installed WP and I went to work “migrating” (no green card needed) my Blogger life to WordPress. I looked at 1001 different themes and finally settled on one. I tweaked colors and columns, added links and ads and Pages (little blogs spat from the mother-blog). I would love to say I had mastered NVU, Freeway or Dreamweaver but the skills come slowly and only this week have I begun making my own pages for my site . The road ahead is long and rocky.Oh, Miss Lonelyblogs, what happened to sideline that romantic freight train on the tracks of love?I learned that the seductress of panting bloggers was not as easy to get along with as she seemed. She was downright ornery, hard to handle, to control, always making you wait while she did some private thing in her storage closet. Only a few hours after a week of working on her and sighing on how well it went in spite of so much time wasted; her developer let it be known he had re-made her in a new version. Proper fellow that I am I set about installing the new version. Many hours later my site was lost. I recovered her and she was preening on the Web yet again after only a week of frustration. Oh, Miss Lonelyblogs, the web host I hired has been sweet but not quite all there, if you know what I mean. Did you notice that a 99.9% guaranteed uptime has some fine print below? The infrastructure of the host's site is promised to work 99.9% of the time. They will have a site. It doesn't mean that you will. Mine was up about 40% for a while, then 60 or more and, recently, it began working like the 21st century artifact it is. They have always been sweet and supportive but sadly said I was on the dread MySql10. It didn't work very well. Someday they hoped they would be able to fix it. That is another part of the equation, almost a menage a trois. Who did what to whom? When is the blogware acting up or the host? Or is it the Mexican ISP taking a siesta. No matter. At least the host has done what they promised to do -- fixed it. What is the moral, Miss Lonelyblogs? Am I a two-timer? Or does blogging require careful thought and planning, clear direction and purpose?When I questioned a photographer who had a relationship, photoblog-wise, with my own blogware; he replied that he had a web master to attend to that. That is one way to get it done. The best way. Who am I to want to become a web master, beast master, task master or zen master this late in my life? Remember that the web master deserves far more respect for facing the constant petty problems and nitty pickings necessary to keep a site working, flashing, roll-overed and mastered. Guiltily yours,Lagoonish BloggerDear Lagoonish:Yours is a common cry. We at MissLonelyBlogs.com offer a family service counseling bloggers, their abandoned families, reformed blog addicts, and those who have fallen into the cult of media-worship. I cannot condone your profligate and possibly perverted use of perfectly good blogware to stroke your own ego. You have the audacity to cry that you were “seduced”. That blogging platform trusted you to treat it fairly and, in your inexperience, you could not properly control its environment. Remember this, bloggers! Don't say “I do” until you can.Blogging is not for the faint of heart nor the fickle throbs of those who would follow just any blog home to its domain. You want to blog away without regard for the simple feelings of complicated systems who need constant attention. Blogging is a serious activity that requires effort, loyalty and planning. If you cannot support a blogging platform, take a communal blog out for a while -- Blogger, WordPress.com, LiveJournal. OK, they must be shared with complete strangers but they could make you happy for a time or even as a regular diet. Better yet, they are yet better day-by-day as they vie for the blogger-Johns that happen by. Even blogging must sometimes sully its purity with the mechanisms of business.Take your fingers out of your guilty pockets and put them back on the keys. Make your blogware happy by keeping it filled to overflowing with words, pictures and links. Give it all your attention. Make it feel loved and important. Smile on your host for they will make the servers sing your praises. Pull up the only editor that works, ScribeFire which lives in the den of the Firefox, and don't whine. Just post and post again. Drown your lascivious need to philander around the Web in hard work and let the different wares assert their power and independence. Each has its own needs and desires and we at Miss Lonely Blogs will forever work to protect the strength and identity of the willing partners of you blogging devils and devilish bloggers.Ever So Sincerely,Miss LonelyBlogsPs. Dear Readers: Take a look at 10 Requisites for Professional Bloggers and stay current with Blogcritics own On-Line Media Cultist .

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Does Your White Roof Have A Green Glow?

Howard Dratch — Mon, 2 Jul 2007 20:17:53 EDT

This green idea has been headlined a few times recently. The articles have declared that painting roofs white would save more than the equivalent space put into expensive solar panels. It is a good idea for a green and energy-efficient world – at least in the hotter and sunnier climates. In the US the demographics have changed, slipped toward the Sun Belt which makes the idea far more appropriate than it would have been before the Rust Belt rusted.It is not such a radical idea – the painting of roofs white and reflective rather than the usual New England-like fake-slate or tar-black. The difference now is that photo-voltaic panels and hoped-for solar technologies are becoming available and therefore tempting as an active, visible, high-tech solution to a world crisis. Green is now the color of goodness and virtue; businesses and institutions are itching as if they had poison ivy to climb up the green stalks toward global responsibility.One such report in Business Week sagely noted that the 21st century world is often dominated by the notions that “complex problems require complex solutions.” But they point out that the environmentally correct solution is probably that white paint is often cheaper and better than the expensive and glittering solution. K.I.S.S. -- Keep It Simple Stupid – is the hard lesson of a high tech world. An iPhone might be, should be, probably will be fun, useful and the summit of cool. But when its battery is down and the power is out after the storm to recharge it; that $10 analog phone will come out of the closet because it is simple enough to work. General Roof Management's web site touts its “Cool Roofs” program for an example. It is being written into code requirements in California -- a place where “green” is a charged word-- Georgia and Chicago. Their Cool Roofs are white or light-colored roof surfaces which, they write, have surface temperatures 30-90 degrees (F) cooler than more conventional roofing. This lowers the costs of cooling the building by 20-50%.Plant Services.com writes that a typical flat, tar-black roof can get to 170 F in summer. Further they point out that these hot roofs contribute to the “heat island effect” which is said to be connected to increased carbon dioxide levels in urban areas. The heat build-up also requires extra fossil-fuel use to generate power for the additional cooling loads.The relative reflectivity of the Earth itself is of interest in the nature of cooling. A black earth somehow denuded of clouds, ice caps, glaciers, deserts would be a hot place indeed. The Business Week article compared a dark Earth to a black leather car interior on a hot day and the Earth with those light-colored features as a car with a beige leather interior. In the jargon of planetary scientists the “albedo” of the planet – its relative level of reflectivity – is 30%.The new element affecting the albedo of Terra is the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which contain additional heat. The sun gives Earth 1350 constant watts of energy, of illumination. Some is absorbed, some reflected by the light-colored features. In the modern, industrial world an additional 2 watts per square meter is retained over the retained levels in the world before it became industrialized.The new generation of solar, energy-producing panels are not reflective. They are black and designed to collect and use those watts of illumination beamed down to us. The panels receive an average of 300 watts per day in a square meter panel. Most of that is still lost due to inefficiency but the 20% that is utilized is enough to offset the 2% loss to greenhouse gases.Therein lies the hot rub. The meter (3.1 foot) square photo-voltaic panel costs about $1000. That thousand bucks would buy a lot of white paint. Enough, Business Week estimated, to cover 2000 square meters with high-quality white paint.Should alternative electricity-producing products be replaced by white roofs, lighter roads and parking lots? No. You cannot use the white roof to produce electricity to power your refrigerator, water pump or even charge your new iPhone. But, some experts have put the estimate of savings by painting roofs light colors at $750 million. The balance will be between greenish solutions of simplicity and the greenish solutions – for a number of reasons – that are the stuff of technology and public relations. NPR has a podcast of “Morning Edition” that reports on a new solar energy business where solar energy producing companies sell large stores and chains on allowing them to install photo-voltaic panels on their large roof areas. The energy produced by the panels is then sold to the store at rates that are lower than the big utilities charge. The store can then advertise itself to the community as “green”.(Photos ©Howard Dratch, 2007. Bacalar, Mexico)Would I paint a house in the Hudson Valley of New York white roofed? No. Much of the year is spent trying to capture every fleeting draft of heat, the wood stove stoked and the furnace roaring while that Nor'easter roars outside and the world becomes deeply white.There are an amazing number of new technologies waiting, offering themselves, or in the gleam of the inventors' eyes. They could, with support, change the nature of the world into the new color of virtue – green.Grab your cell phone, push “send” on your email, access the Net and check on the latest and greatest of new science and new ways to make the world a better place. But remember that there are times the analog phone works best, paper and pencil write a shopping list quicker and some kids would be better off making a phone with tin cans and string than having an iPhone in their pocket.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

When TV Is Deadly: A New Channel Comes to German Television

Howard Dratch — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:06:42 EDT

The German news organization Spiegel reported on a new phenomenon. In Germany this fall, a new 24/7 TV channel will join the line-up of food TV, home improvement TV, sports TV, and news TV -- welcome to death TV. The channel will dedicate itself to “aging, dying and mourning.” They believe that there is no end to the fascinating stories of death and tragedy. People will have access to documentaries about cemeteries, nursing care, the culture of funerals -- “death and dying... right in your living room.”Advertising should not present a problem. Looking for a nursing home or health-related facility, need one of those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” panic buttons linked to 911? Soon there will be ads for the paraphernalia of aging and dying. Like those who need to show off expensive running shoes and stylishly aerodynamic suits -- hundreds of dollars -- to go for a run, the ranks of the ostentatious dyers may emerge as the stylishness of the funeral becomes one with the living room.In terms of a business model there are distinct advantages to bringing death out of the closet and outing it to the living. There is a constant audience. People just keep on dying no matter what. There are the dead ones and the survivors who will soon be able to buy a 30-second obituary for 2400 Euros that will be broadcast 10 times and archived on the channel’s website. Check out The Internet Cemetery which will put the name of the dead one on their website with up to three photographs for $15 and allows visitors to “plant flowers” and send flower e-cards to the family. There is still a lot of room in that server in the sky.The German National Association of Funeral Homes declared that there has been a movement away from traditional funerals toward “forest cemeteries” and Internet graveyards and away from as much reliance on the church in the “death industry.” The death industry remains strong. Evelyn Waugh described it in his sardonic novel, The Loved One. Now it is going to be beamed or channeled directly into the living room, on to your big, flat-screen entertainment center along with the nightly news (more death, normally), the cooking channels, and streaming movies. That Ingmar Bergman vision of Death playing chess will come with commercials and, perhaps, infomercials with canned keening and crying from the audience. There could be book reviews of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, interviews with Dr. Kevorkian, and sales of that great book Winona Ryder found in Beetlejuice, Guide for the Newly Departed, let alone broadcasts of that movie along with: D.O.A., It’s A Wonderful Life, Daisy Miller, and a raft of everything from war films to melodrama. The supply of death-related movies in this world is grist for the TV mill. Think, too, of the possibilities for the do-it-yourself brigade. How to build your own coffin, choose a cemetery, practice little-known rites for the dead, and how to boost performance in your favorite hearse. Wolf Tilmann Schneider, the founder of this new channel, was right when he pointed out that Germany had 150,000 more deaths in 2006 than births. Even here in Latin America where birth rates remain strong, the death rates are not going to drop precipitously. This is the time, Mr. and Mrs. Entrepreneur, to invest heavily in the coming boom in death. You can hardly go wrong.I know how hard it is to be serious about such a diverting subject, but Growth House is a real reference to a helping agency for those dealing with death. They provide a “... portal ... international gateway to resources for life-threatening illness and end of life care. Our primary mission is to improve the quality of compassionate care for people who are dying through public education and global professional collaboration. Our search engine gives you access to the Internet's most comprehensive collection of reviewed resources for end-of-life care.”There are serious issues in the most serious of subjects. I would not be surprised if a TV channel that offered high-quality programming about this once-taboo subject would not both succeed and offer people information and assistance on the difficult chore of being left behind. It remains to be seen what will emerge in a world of vastly different levels of programming.Some years ago crossing by ship from Miami, I met a woman who worked in a hospice (a non-hospital, supportive environment for helping people on the final leg of the journey). I was impressed enough at the fact of offering one’s life to that kind of work. Then she told me she had given a massage to someone while they died. What a selfless thing to do! TV has never been noted for its selflessness but maybe a TV channel will help some grieving people between the ads and infomercials. Schneider is actively searching for partners in his network in both Europe and the United States. He reported that the response has been “lively”.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Will Earth Need A Reboot After The Sky Falls?

Howard Dratch — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:09:09 EDT

Earth has been hit and is constantly at risk of attack by interlopers from space. These are called “near earth objects” (NEOs). Major players are asteroids. Most burn harmlessly during their trip through the atmosphere. However, just as in the intensely mediocre films, Armageddon and Deep Impact, there is more than a zero chance that a large one will threaten earth in the near future. Quietly in the background of our already nervous world, scientists have been making plans for how to prevent a catastrophe whether or not Bruce Willis is available. NASA recently presented its report to Congress. More recently Rusty (Russell) Schweickart, lashed out at NASA for a recent study on the threat from NEOs (Near Earth Objects) impacting our planet. Schweickart was the lunar module pilot for Apollo 9. He is now Chairman of the B612 Foundation and a member of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) where he is on the Committee on Near Earth Objects.B612 is a group of astronomers, astronauts and scientific specialists who have dedicated time to working on methods to deflect the orbit of asteroids in order to prevent another catastrophic “event” like the 1908 Tunguska explosion which has been shown to have been caused by a 45-50 meter diameter asteroid exploding in Siberia. It destroyed 2000 square kilometers of Siberian forest “... and maybe a few reindeer.” Schweickart noted that, "Had it hit a couple of hours later it might have wiped out London or Moscow...”Both groups call for early warning detection systems, “deflection capability”, and an ability to coordinate the responses internationally. The possibilities of such an impact are becoming less as time goes on. Partly because we are now cataloging the objects that present possibly dangerous trajectories. By 2019, he said, there will be more than 10,000 objects “...with a non-zero probability of impacting Earth." “A non-zero probability.” What great euphemisms scientists can invent!At this time, we were warned, there is no one and no agency of the U.S. government or of any other on the planet that is responsible for dealing with the potential threat nor for developing “Mission Rules” for the deflection of NEOs. In true astronaut-geek speak Schweickart warned that there is “... the possibility-in an evolutionary sense-of a Control-Alt-Delete; a reboot of the evolutionary system that has already occurred many times on Earth." "If we do our homework right, never again should an asteroid that can do damage on the ground impact the Earth," Schweickart suggested. "We're living at a time -- with our technology -- we have the capability to eliminate this major shaper of evolution - the evolution of life on this planet."The “Tunguska Event” was the catastrophe in Siberia that is now accepted as the explosion of an asteroid above Tunguska in deserted Siberia in June, 1908. The 100th anniversary is next year. Start planning your Chicken Little parties early.It was early morning 30 June, 1908. Witnesses, of which there were few, recalled in recently translated testimony that they saw a fireball falling from the sky as far as 110 miles away. Seismic recordings were made 600 miles away and 40 miles from the event people were knocked down or knocked into unconsciousness. The closest witnesses were “reindeer herders” about 20 miles away who were blown out of their tents into the air. "Everything around was shrouded in smoke and fog from the burning fallen trees," said one witness. Another man was blown into a tree and died later according to a report by the Planetary Science Institute . Russian scientists interviewed people from the Vanavara Trading Post. One translated account included, "I saw the sky in the north open to the ground and fire poured out. The fire was brighter than the sun. We were terrified, but the sky closed again and immediately afterward, bangs like gunshots were heard. We thought stones were falling... I ran with my head down and covered, because I was afraid stones may fall on it." Since the object, now believed to have been a meteorite of about 30 meters (98 feet) traveling at 15 km per second (9.3 miles per second), exploded before impact; there is no crater. A scientific group in 1993 studied the records and were later corroborated when Russian scientists found rocks of the same composition as “common stone meteorites” blasted into trees at the site. It was the kind of Earth-altering event that is thought to happen relatively often in planetary time.(The photo of the Tungaska site is from the 1927 Kulik expedition)He noted that the force of the blast was about that of 10-15 million tons of TNT and that an atmospheric shock wave circled the globe twice. Fine dust permeated the atmosphere sufficiently that “...for two days afterwards, there was so much fine dust in the atmosphere that newspapers could be read at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000 km (6,213 miles) away.”A Russian scientist believes that the Tunguska Event was responsible for global warming rather than man-made gases. Vladimir Shaidurov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, theorizes that water vapor thrown into the earth's meteorological system is the cause of present climatological change. “Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University, writing in The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, claims that: "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, as the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."The English version of Pravda on-line recently offered the theory again that it was caused by a UFO. It is not a very compelling theory but the fact that there is an English version of Pravda and that it reads like a super-market tabloid was a fascinating aside in this research.The NASA/JPL photo of Asteroid 243, Ida and Dactyl (Asteroid and her satellite) was shot by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993 on its way to Jupiter at 10,500 km (6500 miles) from the pair.In 2002 Earth had a “close shave.” Asteroid 2002MN became one of only 6 recorded asteroids to penetrate within the orbit of the moon. Astronomically that is surprisingly close. Especially since it was only discovered 3 hours after its closest shave with a defenseless planet. It came within 12,000 km (7,457 miles) which is 0.0008 astronomical units (distance from Earth to Sun). If it had hit it would have been as powerful as Tunguska – equal to a few H-bombs and it was too small to be in the group that we are to be planning defenses against.The March, 2007 report NASA gave Congress (of which astronaut Schweickart complained) is available as a pdf download from NASA .“The objectives of the George E. Brown, Jr. NEO Survey Program are to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize the physical characteristics of NEOs equal to or larger than 140 meters in diameter with a perihelion distance of less than 1.3 AU (Astronomical Units) from the Sun, achieving 90 percent completion of the survey within 15 years after enactment of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The Act was signed into law by President Bush on December 30, 2005.”Whichever group of astronomers, scientists and assorted world-shakers is correct, they seem to agree on the danger and the need to plan for a response. As if we didn't have enough to worry about already. It is time to listen to Chicken Little: the sky might fall. We now have or could have methods to protect the current version of Earth without needing an evolutionary reboot -- “restart” for Mac-lovers.

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.