Short Takes: News From All Over

Staff Utne.com

SinceSlicedBread.com: What's Your Common Sense Idea?
By Staff, The Service Employees International Union
The Service Employees International Union wants ordinary folks to take a dip in the think tank. So it's sponsoring a search for fresh, practical ideas that could improve the lives of Americans and bolster the economy. A panel of judges will select 21 finalists, and after that, a general vote will decide who wins the $100,000 grand prize. The site already has received more than 6000 ideas ranging from raises for Congress to free meals at work. -- Archie Ingersoll
http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/

Whisper in Mandarin and the Words Come Out in English
By Staff, We-Make-Money-Not-Art
Szu-Chen Stan Jou, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, is in the process of making a seemingly science-fiction technology a reality. Last month he debuted a mechanism that translates whispered language into other tongues almost instantly. The device consists of 11 electrodes attached to the speaker's face to pick up movements of the jaw and relay them to a computer that translates the mouthed words into other languages. -- Rose Miller
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/007338.php

In Bogota, All-Female Team Runs City for Mayor
By Angela Castellanos, Women's eNews
Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon of Bogota, Colombia, attested to having a pro-woman bias when appointing the city's 20 'minor mayors.' But some feel like the anti-corruption crusading Garzon has gone too far in appointing women to fill all the positions. -- Rose Miller
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2489

Eco-Labels Could Face WTO Ban
By Staff, Environment News Service
Energy-efficiency, recycled content, and other green consumer info could be banned from product labels if proposals before the World Trade Organization succeed, warns Friends of the Earth UK. 'Countries including Korea, the United States and China are claiming that eco-labeling damages their competitiveness and acts as a barrier to trade,' the Environment News Service reports. Fortunately, it looks like disagreements on other issues may bring the upcoming WTO summit in Hong Kong to a halt, like earlier meetings in Cancun and Seattle. -- Leif Utne
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-21-04.asp

Elements of Style, the Opera
By Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
'Be obscure clearly,' instructs Strunk and White's classic writers guide. Nico Muhly considered this principle and many others when he composed an avant-garde nine-song cycle based on the tome in which grammar, opera, and performance art meet. When the piece premiered October 19th at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the publication of illustrator Maira Kalman's The Elements of Style: Illustrated, the audience was prepared to become grammatically correct, awash in soprano Abby Fischer's trills about hyphens and the music of the Omit Needless Words Orchestra. -- Rose Miller
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/29/elements_of_style_th.html
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=1417

Creative Commons Explained
By Staff, Adbusters
If that 'double C' symbol that's popping up online confounds you, or you aren't quite clear about the purpose of Creative Commons licensing, these two in-depth, informational flash movies provide an ample introduction. Whether or not they bring you to your senses as a supporter of remix culture, the animations will certainly let you know why Creative Commons advocates believe the movement has the potential to 'bring creativity back to its senses.' -- Rose Miller
http://adbusters.org/blogs/Creative_Commons_Explained.html
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/

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