A Semacode is a machine-readable, Data Matrix symbol which encodes URLs; basically it’s a barcode for web locations. The idea is to create one of these labels which looks like a complicated crossword puzzle, and through it you can be connected to a URL which will provide you with more information on the object that the semacode is pasted to. Currently they are being used through cellphone with cameras, and full internet capabilities, although you do need to download additional software for this. (A draw back seems to be that this technology only works with a handful of cellphone operating systems.) The idea is to be able to get more information of whatever you are looking at on the spot.

The company in Canada that created these tags says on their website that the tags can be used without restrictions, and that the software used to produce them is free of charge and available for non-commercial use. This technology is currently licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Currently one of the bigger projects using this technology is Semapedia which aims at bringing the vast content available on Wikipedia to the real world. Semapedia is a community project and anyone can create semapedia tags, print them, and begin hyperlinking objects they believe other’s might want more information about. Another project using semacodes is the eRuv. This project along Manhattan’s Third Ave attempts to use semacodes to explain the area’s history; Third Ave marks a boundary for a Hasidic community in the old Lower East Side.

You can learn more about semacodes from an article in Wired, another in Tangent Mobile, and through Wikipedia, ofcourse. And here are some pictures of semacodes in Flickr.

Image info here.

Today, Michael Pollan (author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Botany of Desire”) had a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine about how the agribusiness is who determines what we eat, and how the farm bill, which passes Congress every 5 years, affect almost every aspect of our lives and in turn affects people all over the globe.

For a nation that is increasingly more and more concerned about obesity, it is incredible to realize that dollar for dollar you can get more calories/more food from highly processed foods than you can from more natural foods. A study by Adam Drewnowski from the University of Washington found that a dollar can get you 1,200 calories from cookies or potato chips, but only 250 worth of calories from carrots. This set up hardly makes sense, “junk food” is highly processed and should therefore cost much more, but this is where the farm bill comes into play.

The USA farm bill, among other things, determined which crops will be subsidized, and the five favored crops are corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton, the first three being the main ingredients of “junk food.” These subsidies have created a saturation in the market place for these products at the expense of denying us a more balanced diet at an affordable price. It also means that these products can compete in the international market place at an unfair advantage, and thereby have the ability of being sold in foreign markets at lower prices than locally grown food. The hypocrisy of it hits when you realize that the USA lobbies as much as they can in the world market to prevent other countries from subsidizing their products, but yet that is exactly what happens here. This unfair marketing approach has created a situation in which USA grown corn can sell cheaper in Mexico, than locally grown corn. This also means that Mexicans are eating corn that has a lot more chemical than the local crop. Given the situation it is only obvious that Mexican farmers, and others around the world who have been put out of business by this set up try to make a living elsewhere, in many cases that means immigrating to the USA in search of a better life.

The light at the end of the tunnel here is that more and more groups are starting to realize just how this farm bill affects us. Public health groups are realizing that issues like obesity and diabetes cannot be fully addressed without talking about this bill. Environmentalists see that this bill means massive agribusiness initiatives, which in turn mean more polluted land, air, and water due to the high use of chemicals. Even the huge world organizations seem to be speaking out about this unfair bill. In 2004 the World Trade Organization ruled that USA cotton subsidies were illegal; hopefully they will continue speaking up.

On a related note, a great documentary on this and similar issues is Life and Debt, by Stephanie Black.

06.07.07 - A recent article on thruthout.com continues this discussion around the USA Farm bill. The article explains the dynamics of how big agribusiness benefit from this bill. Large poultry producers benefit from receiving highly subsidized chicken feed (corn). These discrepancies continue when the USA exports the chicken parts that aren’t liked as much here to developing countries, at rock bottom prices, and in doing so they help destroy local production. Ironically a number of peasants in other countries affected by these global economic dynamics end up immigrating to the USA to work at the very plants that helped destroy their initial livelihood.

Image information here.

Mexico seems to be paving the way for social reforms in Latin America. In January the country legalized same sex civil unions, and today they have legalized abortion in the first trimester (although this is only applicable to Mexico City); previously women could have a legal abortion only in case of rape or if her life was at risk. The vote was 46 to 19 with only one abstention and all of the “no” votes came from president Felipe Calderon’s political party.

Currently there are about 200,000 illegal abortions in Mexico, and yearly at least 1,500 women die because of poorly handled and unsanitary illegal procedures. This new law states that if a woman has an abortion after the first 12 weeks she risks going to jail for 6 months, the doctor risks between 1 - 3 years in jail, and women under the age of 18 still need parental consent.

In Latin America, only Cuba, Puerto Rico (technically USA territory) and Guyana also offer women the ability to have a legal abortion. Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile ban the practice entirely.

Today, the NY Times, and the BBC and the Guardian, in the UK, all have articles on the subject.

You can learn more about women’s health issues in Latin America through Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network (LACWHN).

In the USA Earth day sprung out of the growing environmental awareness of the 1960, which among other things led to Congress passing the Wilderness Act, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In 1970, Senator Gaylor Nelson (D-WI) called for an environmental teach-in which attracted over 20 million people to participate. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day on the vernal equinox which falls in March.

Today the organization Earth Network does a lot of work to promote environmental awareness and to promote legislation that will help curb our ecological footprint. Try this interesting test to see how big your ecological footprint is. Even though my footprint was about a third of what is to be expected where I live, it would still take 2.1 planet to fulfill the demand if everyone on the planet lived at my level. Scary to think that it would then take over 6 planets to meet the demand at our regular level of consumption!

Image by NASA.

At the same lecture that I attended earlier this week I learned about the Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, NH. This small public library has done away with their old static website and have replaced it with a WPopac. A WPopac is something created by Casey Bisson by tweaking WordPress to become an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). We got to see the insides of this library’s website and it looks exactly like the insides of this very blog you are reading.

The fascinating concept here is what can be created for free with the Opensource tools that are already available to us. Currently the Cook Memorial Library’s site provides you with just one search box that gives you relevant returns from all of their site, not just the OPAC. The fact that the search box cover the entire site means that if you search for local poet Marnie Cobbs, you will find out not only that the library carries her book titled “The Quiet Rage”, but also that she will be appearing at the library on May 8th. This set up also allows content on the web to be accessible through Google searches and the like.

Like any blog, the site allows collaboration by anyone who wants to contribute their two cents towards what is happening with the library. In relation to this, we heard the story of a man who is home-bound and therefore could not access the library, but now with this interactive site, he is able to participate by posting comments and starting discussions. In this sense the library is no longer just serving their immediate neighbors, but virtually anyone using the web.

You can learn more about this project and how it came about at maisonbisson. Bisson is also behind the Beyond Brown Paper project which is also based on WordPress.

11.14.07 - The Plymouth State University Lamson Library’s OPAC runs on WPopac, now known as Scriblio. You can access the site here.

Earlier this week I attended a lecture that addressed social tagging and its use to libraries. Today more and more libraries and archives are trying to make themselves more visible by creating engaging websites, starting blog and posting photographs on flickr. While many of these are started to attract people to the library, it was fascinating to see the information that is coming out of these open spaces.

Take for example the Beyond Brown Paper site. This is a project based out of Plymouth State University, and it aims to digitize and preserve a photography collection about the paper mills that used to function in the area. The collection contains about 11,000 photographs that are gradually making their way on to their site. The fascinating thing is that the site allows for comments and collaboration, and this has brought new information to the project. Locals who used to work at these mills have seen some of the photographs, and through their comments have started to fill in the information gaps.

Item # 718 is an image of two men working on some equipment. The subject headings that were initially allocated are “Tightening, Securing lid on digester, Wrenches, Digester, and Burgess Mill.” In early March someone posted a comment giving us more information on what the digester does. Later in the month someone else identified one of the men in the photograph.

In cataloging, usually the more information we provide the better since it provides more access points to the item. But librarians, archivers and the like don’t know everything, so it’s fascinating that we can get help from the people who lived and experienced the history and documents we are trying to help manage. And while there can be a concern of people volunteering inaccurate information, I think the risk isn’t a serious one. Besides we can always acknowledge where the information came from.

A similar case was seen on flickr. Here someone posted their pictures of vacation in Newfoundland, which included a close up of a Humpback Whale’s tail. Another person who knew about whales was later able to identify this particular whale as one that scientist had been following under the “name” of HWC#2943, last seen in 1984!

You can learn more about this project and how it came about at maisonbisson. Bisson is also behind the Cook Memorial Library project which is also based on WordPress.

- Photograph used with permission-

While the number of women enrolling in male dominated programs, such as mathematics and biology, are currently close to par, women continue to have very little visibility within the computer science field. Actually, statistics show that women’s representation in the field seems to be shrinking. According to the National Science Foundation in the USA, in 1985, 38% of computer science B.A.’s went to women, in 2003 that figure fell to 28%.

An article in the NYT yesterday dove into the issue and tried to address some of the factors that might be causing this situation. Apparently the two most commonly given reasons to explain the problems are not it; the dot-com bust and the off-shoring of high-tech jobs. To disprove the “dot-com bust” theory, Jan Cuny, a computer scientist at the University of Oregon said that more people are involved in the field now than they were at the height of the dot-com boom. Today virtually all industries heavily rely on technology and computer-sciences, so the demand should be greater. As for off-shoring, Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington said that the move abroad has less to do with cheap labor and more to do with accessing talent.

The article also discussed how the field has a poor image (the “geek factor”), one that tends to scare people off, particularly women. AP classes for computer sciences seem to be an issue as well, since many tend to focus on teaching Java programming, which some lots, but others hate.

But there are some success stories; Carnegie Mellon seems to have found an effective way of attracting women to their computer science program. Their enrollment of women has gone up from 8% to 40%. The University of Washington has set up a webpage about computer sciences that highlights only women, therefore trying to break the stereotype. Brown University has an organization called Women in Computer Science @ Brown which runs the Artemis Projects. This project brings in 9th graders from all over the city to the campus for five weeks each summer and teaches them concrete computer skills and abstract computer science concepts.

The article is here.

Today, The New York Times has an article about the rise in undocumented immigrants in the USA who are filing taxes. Since 1996 undocumented immigrants can legally file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). ITINs were created to allow both undocumented immigrants as well as foreign investors file returns, although it’s generally assumed that most of the 11 million numbers issues since then have been used by undocumented immigrants.

The IRS wants to encourage people to file taxes, and for the most part view their job as that of collecting taxes, not managing immigrations issues, although since 9/11 there have been a few exceptions, specially in relation to the Department of Homeland Security.

Some critics of ITINs and issues that generally relate to undocumented immigrants argue that, undocumented immigrants are only filing taxes because they expect a refund, but actually about two-thirds of those filing taxes with an ITIN will actually own the IRS money. On average these undocumented immigrants filing taxes earn less than $10,000 a year and will owe about $600 worth of taxes.

This trend has also been noticed by taxes businesses which do not want to pass of the opportunities available with this new market. Companies like Liberty Tax Services and H&R Block are learning to navigate the complications with this portion of tax filers, and are reaping the economic benefit.

The article suggests that the other main reason undocumented immigrants are filing taxes is because this will create a paper trail of their residency in the USA, and that this will eventually help them establish legal residency here. While this might be partially true, consider that many of these immigrants are paying taxes for public services which they are not likely to benefit from. They are also contributing to our Medicare and Social Security funds, and this they are almost guaranteed not to ever see. A New York Times article from 2005 places the subsidy by undocumented immigrants to Social Security at about 7 billion a year!

To celebrate National Library Week, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) plans to introduce legislation that will amended the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide Perkins student loan forgiveness in order to encourage people to accept and remain in library positions in low-income school and public libraries. If successful, the Librarians Act of 2007 would allow for loan cancellation for full-time librarians (who hold an MLS) who work in a public library in a neighborhood that has one or more schools eligible for assistance under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965, or who work in an elementary or secondary school that is eligible for assistance under this same Title I.

The 1965 Elementary and Secondary School Act, is part of the “War on Poverty” campaign launched by President Lyndon B. Jonson. This act was established to redress the needs of poor children, realizing that children from low-income homes require extra educational services.

I just got back from the Charles Darwin (1809-1882) exhibit, and even though I already knew the basics of his life (My dad is a big admirer of his), I was still very impressed by it.

Darwin was born into a family of privilege in the UK and as a young man his father pushed him to pursue first a career in medicine and then as a clergy man. His father is quoted as having told him, “you care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Initially Darwin didn’t try to go against his father’s wishes, but instead found ways of working around them. If he were to become a clergy man in a small rural community he would then have all the time he wanted to explore the countryside and its wonders.

Luckily for us, Darwin did begin to associate with some of the scientists of the time and was eventually invited by one of them on a world tour aboard the Beagle. This voyage was to last two years, but instead lasted more than five, yet it is also the trip that squarely set Darwin on the path of finding an theory to explain the natural diversity that surrounded him. About this trip he wrote, “The Vogayes of the Beagle“.
By 1842 Darwin had a pretty clear theory to explain evolution though natural selection, but it took him almost two decades to make his findings public. Before making his work public, Darwin wanted more time to think about his theory, and to gather more evidence to convince those who he knew would criticize his work. He also wanted to have a more solid reputation in the field and for the general societal climate to change, since he realized his ideas would be attacked by the church. Eventually a letter outlining another man’s version of natural selection finally got him to publish.

On a curious note; According to the exhibit, Darwin didn’t believe in waste, and often gave his children discarded manuscript pages of the “Origin of Species” to draw on. Because of this there are only 28 pages of the original document known to exist.

Today, 150 years after he first published the “Origin of Species” Darwin regularly becomes a topic of controversy. Oddly (sadly) enough, his work continues to be challenged with the same arguments and objections that were used when his work first came out. The exhibit acknowledges this controversy, but did so with only one small display tucked away in a corner.

My only disappointment with the exhibit was that there were very few original documents on display; almost every single one was a facsimile of the original.

“There is a grandeur in this view of life… from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” -Charles Darwin

04.29.07 - Darwin’s writings covered a vast array of subject. You can find practically everything he ever wrote at The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Each document has been scanned so you can see the original, but they have also been retyped to allow keyword scanning.

05.16.07 - Tomorrow the University of Cambridge will be releasing digitized versions of approximatley 5,000 letters Darwin wrote over the course of his life. You can find these letters at the Darwin Correspondence Project. The BBC has an article about this today.

1st image, Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of Darwin; 2nd image, Voyages of the Beagle, both available here.