Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Your Books by Adrian Johns,

author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making [via wood s lot]

tv insight tidbit: “Tribune Broadcasting said WPIX(TV) New York’s Yule Log, which returned Christmas Day after a 12-year absence, was local TV’s top-rated program from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The station reported Nielsen Media Research numbers of 3.1/10 for the two-hour video of a log burning brightly in a fireplace, accompanied by Christmas carols.” Cahner’s [thanks, Abby]

Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Your Books by Adrian Johns,

author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making [via wood s lot]

This story is interesting for what’s not said — like how did it happen?

An Industry Motivated, More Than Ever, By Fear: New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell reflects on the state of the genre. “…In the aftermath of Sept. 11, it is harder to avoid the fact that American mainstream movies have become incredibly exclusionary: a series of spectacles in which middle-aged white guys — or those who share their sensibility — blow stuff up for the entertainment of the 12- to 19-year- olds who are thought to keep the movie business alive. By playing almost solely to that crowd, the studios have rendered modern movies irrelevant to more discerning filmgoers — the folks who’d rather stay home and wait out the ever-diminishing window between theatrical and home-video release. If you’re a woman over 25 and you want to see a protagonist with concerns similar to your own, you stay in and watch series television — although, interestingly enough, the movies have been catching up.”

iWalk Looks More Like iWish. Does Apple have a slick new PDA (that presents like the iPod) up its sleeve for a Monday unveiling at MacWorld, or is the Mac rumor site with purported pictures the victim of a hoax? Wired

Trolling the Web for Afghan Dead: “In an online report, a University of New Hampshire professor charges that the U.S. military has killed more than 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan and that the U.S. media have largely ignored the toll of the war on terrorism.” Wired On the other side of the coin, the news media are all over this fatality:

Franks Confirms U.S. Soldier Killed By Enemy. The Green Beret, on a mission near the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan to “facilitate cooperation” with tribal elements in the area, was killed and a CIA agent accompanying him was injured in what has been described as an ambush. He becomes the first US combat fatality to hostile fire. The Boston Channel

Corporations behaving badly: Multinational Monitor describes the ten worst corporations of 2001: Abbott, Argenbright, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Enron, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, Sara Lee, Southern and Wal-Mart.

Monsanto isn’t on the list, but should be right up there given the evidence of its decades-long concealment of PCB contamination in an Alabama town. Washington Post

Spotting the face of deception

The airports of the future could identify potential terrorists by using a lie detector that spots concealed blushing with a super-sensitive thermal imaging camera. Liars are betrayed by the heat that rushes to their face when they tell a fib, according to scientists in the United States. Blood flow to the surface of the skin around the eyes increases when someone tells a lie. BBC

Yes, and when someone is emotionally aroused for any of a myriad of other reasons — being nervous about flying, missing the people left behind, hassled by traffic or security procedures at the airport, having just had a stimulating interaction with an attractive stranger, etc. This proposal is another example of technological innovation without thought. Although polygraph technology has always been controversial, it has the advantage at least of not being a random sampling of the person’s physiological state of arousal but a controlled experimental probe in response to specific questions, analyzed by a trained technologist. The supposed advantage of this new system is that it gives instantaneous results to untrained observers … of the ilk of the minimum-wage workers currently responsible for airport security. I trust that, because of the enormous potential for (and potential cost of) false positives, this technology will never see the light of day.

In related news, an ACLU report reviews the failure of face recognition technology in Tampa, Florida.

Facial recognition technology on the streets of Tampa, Florida is an overhyped failure that has been seemingly abandoned by police officials, according to a report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

System logs obtained by the ACLU through Florida’s open-records law show that the system never identified even a single individual contained in the department’s database of photographs. And in response to the ACLU’s queries about the small number of system logs, the department has acknowledged that the software — originally deployed last June, 2001 — has not been actively used since August.

“Tampa’s off-again, on-again use of face-recognition software reminds us that public officials should not slavishly embrace whatever latest fad in surveillance technology comes along,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, which made the records request last August.

The logs obtained by the ACLU also indicate that the system made many false matches between people photographed by police video cameras as they walked down Seventh Avenue in Tampa’s Ybor City district and photographs in the department’s database of criminals, sex offenders, and runaways. The system made what were to human observers obvious errors, such as matching male and female subjects and subjects with significant differences in age or weight.

An Adobe Acrobat version of the full report is downloadable from a link at the site. This finding parallels the discussion the crime-fighting failure of public video surveillance in widespread use in the UK, as discussed in a New York Times Magazine article to which I blinked earlier this fall.

John Nichols: Reich’s Candidacy is Intriguing Idea:

As someone who covers politics, I think there is nothing more disturbing than the penchant of Americans who have been entrusted with Cabinet-level posts to hightail it into the private sector as soon as their terms end. It is a good thing that Clinton administration aides such as Reich and former Attorney General Janet Reno are looking to make bids for governorships in Massachusetts and Florida, respectively.

(…) The idea of having someone who is actually, er, smart, serving in an important position may seem outdated in this moment of the mediocre. But it remains appealing to those of us who actually have to cover campaigns and governments.Madison Capital Times via CommonDreams

Monbiot: This is The Year of the Right: But Progressives Can Fight Back if They Abandon All the Old Strategies. “There is a widespread fallacy that the destruction of society was engineered in recent times, notably by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The notion is comforting because it suggests that the trend is reversible. But social fragmentation has been the work of centuries.

” Guardian UK via CommonDreams

A serial killer analyzes serial killing: ‘The 1960s “Moors Murderer,” Ian Brady, still haunts the British psyche. His recently published book shows why.’

Sorry, a spate of hardware problems (of my own making, of course) on my home system has prevented me from posting for the past several days of intensive tinkering and tweaking. I think I’ve got things on an even keel now, and will be back at it again… Happy New Year, belatedly, to you all.

[Annoy.com via boing boing]

This is a reprise of a New Year’s Day post from FmH one year ago:

New Year’s Day History, Traditions, and Customs. Years ago, the Boston Globe ran a January 1st article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article; especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond watching the bowl games and making resolutions. A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point:

“Traditionally, it was thought that one

could affect the luck they would have

throughout the coming year by what they

did or ate on the first day of the year. For

that reason, it has become common for

folks to celebrate the first few minutes of

a brand new year in the company of

family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night

after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the

first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or

bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor

happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also

thought to bring luck. Many cultures

believe that anything in the shape of a ring

is good luck, because it symbolizes

“coming full circle,” completing a year’s

cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe

that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will

bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming

black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by

either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes

have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and

thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes

prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is

consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also

considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper

currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on

New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called

hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones.

After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors.

First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat,

dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also

performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage

proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Mozilla 0.9.7 is out.