Is FmH loading faster tonight? Is it laid out all right? I did a rewrite of the template and almost, almost, succeeded in table-less CSS-based layout. It worked fine in Mozilla but, on the off-chance, I checked with IE6 (both under WinXP) and my header layout didn’t work. So there’s one little table up there until I can tweak it further. Of course, I’d prefer if you would all switch to Mozilla for me instead… Please let me know if the page doesn’t sit right in whatever browser you’re using, especially if you’re operating under a different OS. Any CSS gurus care to look at my template and offer any tweaks?

“Gov. George Ryan of Illinois will end his tenure on a high note if he issues a blanket commutation of the sentences of everyone on death row.” NY Times editorial

“Two giant black holes have been found at the center of a galaxy born from the joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting toward a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many millions of years from now, scientists said today.” NY Times

“The rate of life-threatening heart rhythms more than doubled among cardiac patients in the New York area in the month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, according to a new study that sheds light on the role of elevated stress in heart disease.” NY Times

“Scientists are reporting today that they have created the first vaccine that appears able to prevent cervical cancer. The vaccine works by making people immune to a sexually transmitted virus that causes many cases of the disease.

The vaccine is experimental and will not be available to the public for several years.” NY Times

The Action Coalition for Media Education:

ACME is a coalition of teachers, scholars, students, journalists, public health advocates and community organizers who believe that today’s media system is profoundly undemocratic.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution gave special privileges and protections to the media—via subsidies and free speech laws—due to the media’s critical role in maintaining an open and robust democratic culture.

Many citizens—including journalists and media professionals—believe that today’s media system is failing our democracy in numerous ways:

• With the media owned by some of the world’s most powerful corporations, independent and in-depth coverage of how power is exercised is rare (e.g., the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the digital spectrum give-away). With a truly democratic media, in-depth coverage of how power is exercised would be the norm, not the exception.
• Sound-bite journalism and over-reliance on ‘official sources’ ensure that only a very narrow range of voices and perspectives is heard. These practices thus ensure that the interests of economic and political elites are largely unexamined and unchallenged. (e.g. the absence of Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower, labor voices, etc)
• A media system dominated by advertising revenue pays attention to audiences favored by advertisers. As a result, poor and working-class citizens are largely ignored, unless they are subjects of crime or catastrophe.
• A media system dominated by entertainment values trivializes achievement by its focus on celebrity, the sensational, and the superficial.
• A media system obsessed with high-consumption lifestyles promotes behaviors that are harmful to the public health and to the health of the planet.

These weaknesses are understood consciously or intuitively by many citizens. The goal of ACME is to raise this growing awareness to a threshold of action in order to bring about democratic media reforms, including the creation of alternative media that are non-commercial, locally-controlled and locally-accountable.

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I

suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an

up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual

freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would

sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.”

Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964 [via Dave Farber’s IP mailing list]

“The killing of Jam Master Jay and other recent incidents have polarized the hip-hop community from the rest of the nation. Erik Parker reports on