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(AP) - No, Jon Stewart had to emphasize this year, Stewart and Colbert will not
be a presidential ticket in 2008.
All in fun, of course, but there are some who get their news almost exclusively
from Comedy Central's fake newscasters. Was this the year where fact and fiction
tended to blur together?
In publishing, one author claimed his memoirs were valid, even if they weren't
literally true. In film, we laughed at the antics of a randy, offensive,
anti-Semitic journalist - we knew Borat
was fake, but his co-stars didn't (or did they?).
When two celebrities drew attention for truly offensive comments - anti-Semitic
in one case, racist in the other - they told us it wasn't the "real
them," in essence. And, on YouTube, fans were crushed to learn that a
lonely girl they'd come to love was just an actress playing a role.
Perhaps it's impossible to enforce a theme upon a whole year of popular culture
but it's fun to look back. Join us for a chronological journey of things that
made us talk in 2006.
January 2006
In the first seconds of Jan. 1, we're greeted by a beloved icon, Dick Clark,
ringing in the New Year at Times Square as he has so many times - only now he's
struggling from the aftereffects of a stroke. His words are slurred, his posture
stiff but his cadence is brisk and assured. Some critics imply he shouldn't have
shown up, but many people - fellow stroke survivors especially - are
inspired.
Inspiring isn't the word to describe author James Frey's halting, remorseful
appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." But it's riveting television:
Winfrey, angry, tearful and embarrassed, lambasting Frey for fabricating chunks
of "A Million Little Pieces," his so-called memoir and her book-club
choice. He says the book felt true to him. "I feel duped," she says,
and apologizes to viewers for having defended Frey at first: "I left the
impression that the truth is not important."
February 2006
Late-night comics must feel like it's Christmas and their birthday all rolled
into one when U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has his famous hunting accident,
shooting a friend in the torso, neck and face. If you believe in karma, this
marks the beginning of a bad year for the GOP.
March 2006
"Brokeback Mountain" loses the best-picture Oscar to surprise winner
"Crash," but it's no contest in the enduring-pop-culture-icon
category. Those gay cowboys are the subject of endless jokes and imitations -
the best being the fake movie trailers (remember "Brokeback Penguin"?)
to the distinct guitar twangs of the movie soundtrack. And "brokeback"
becomes an adjective unto itself, meaning something with gay overtones.
April 2006
Those who dreaded the day they'd do a movie version of Sept. 11 breathe a sigh
of relief. Paul Greengrass' "United 93" turns out to be a harrowing
but honest and skilful portrayal of one of that day's horror stories. In other
words, it's real - a refreshing affirmation that some things need no adornment
at all. A key FAA operations manager even appears as himself.
On a different note, the celebrity baby craze hits a new high with the birth of
Suri Cruise. The infant immediately drives gossip editors crazy by not appearing
in public for months. Some ask: Does Suri even exist? Finally she bursts forth
on the cover of September's "Vanity Fair." But move over, Suri -
anticipation is greater for what some in the media dub the most awaited baby
since Jesus.
May 2006
The genetically blessed Shiloh Jolie-Pitt is born in Namibia, instantly raising
the profile of this small African nation and briefly sparking rumours that Britney
Spears will also give birth there. (They are false.)
June 2006
How do you get yourself booked onto every talk show in town? Insulting women who
lost their husbands at the World Trade Center is one way. The brash, blonde
conservative pundit Ann Coulter outdoes even herself in "Godless: The
Church of Liberalism," where she writes: "I've never seen people
enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." The book spawns a new trend in
revenge literature: "Soulless," "Brainless" and "I Hate
Ann Coulter" all come out later in the year.
July 2006
An inebriated movie star spews anti-Semitic slurs at the cop who pulled him over
for drunk driving - but that wasn't really me, Mel Gibson says in one of the
year's many non-apology apologies. It was the booze talking.
August 2006
One of the funniest moments at the Emmy awards - "Good evening, godless
sodomites! - belongs to Comedy Central's
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, underlining their status as the nation's
commentators par excellence. Oh yeah, they're fake commentators, but surveys
have shown that some young people depend on Comedy Central for their news
intake.
The movie "Snakes on a Plane" debuts after much Internet buzz. It's
nice to have buzz; what the film doesn't have, though, is "People in the
Theatres."
September 2006
Speaking of buzz, Katie Couric finally makes her debut on the "CBS Evening
News," the first female sole anchor of a network evening newscast.
Feminists rejoice at the landmark and laugh off the attention to her clothes.
But after big ratings driven by curiosity, Couric sinks into the program's usual
third-place slot, where it remains.
Some YouTube followers of the young Lonelygirl15 are crushed to discover that
she isn't the authentic teenager whose life they'd been following, but actually
an actress hired to play the part. But isn't that the point of Internet fame -
it's democratic (it could be you or me tomorrow) and it's heady, but sometimes
it just isn't . . . real?
October 2006
Speaking of YouTube, it's only fair that one of the
biggest business stories of the year is the wildly popular online video site -
after all, it was YouTube that captured so many of the year's other stories for
the world to see. It's a marriage of two of the most indispensable names on the
web when Google Inc. agrees to buy the site for US$1.65
billion.
November 2006
Britney
Spears - let's face it, folks, she's our pop culture champion, hands down.
She's in the news this year for every mommy foible imaginable, down to almost
tripping on her espadrilles and dropping little Sean Preston. But, in November,
she tops it all by finally leaving Kevin Federline and embarking on a
celebratory romp with buddy Paris Hilton, flashing her nether regions to the
paparazzi in the process. Is it any wonder that Britney in 2006 is - yet again -
the most-searched term on Yahoo, globally?
Then there's Michael Richards, aka Cosmo Kramer of "Seinfeld," whose
racist rant at heckling black fans (captured on a cell phone) shocks everyone.
"I am not a racist," he says in an awkward appearance on David
Letterman, while pundits debate whether his remarks could come from someone who
isn't. More apologies follow, but it looks like Kramer's comedy career could be
in trouble.
Quite the opposite for Sacha Baron Cohen,
whom we know much better as "Borat" (he's usually in character). His
movie is a surprise hit and falls into that murky space between truth and
fiction. We know Borat is fake, but what of all the secondary characters drawn
into his wacky, R-rated world? Were they playing along, or were they in the
dark? Some have sued Cohen's film company, saying they were duped. Others, like
"Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson, won't say whether they knew or
not.
And when is an apology not an apology at all, but a cynical act of
self-preservation? Some are saying that about a chastened Rupert Murdoch, head
of News Corp., who bows to a universal wave of disgust and shelves a TV
interview and book by O.J. Simpson entitled (speaking of cynical) "If I Did
It."
December 2006
Thousands of gay and lesbian couples raising children in America cope with
endless questions and scrutiny. Imagine also being the daughter of the
vice-president - a vice-president whose administration strongly opposes
recognizing same-sex couples. Mary Cheney's pregnancy promises to put the
spotlight on the plight of gay and lesbian couples across the country.
And, as the year comes to a close, there's comfort for those who crave
consistency. Tune in on Dec. 31 and you'll see - who else? - Dick Clark,
greeting the new year for the 34th time.
The Internet Archive Receives
Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Internet Archive Receives Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to
Digitize and Provide Open Online Access to Historical Collections from Five
Major Libraries
The Internet Archive’s efforts to digitize content and make it freely
accessible online has received a tremendous boost from the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation. The foundation is awarding Internet Archive a grant to bring
historic collections from eminent cultural institutions online without any
restrictions on their use. In addition to winning this grant, the Internet
Archive through its work supporting Open Content Alliance principles of free
and open access to knowledge has reached a milestone of 100,000 digitalized
books now publicly available at www.archive.org
.
The Internet Archive’s efforts to digitize content and make it freely
accessible online has received a tremendous boost from the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation. The foundation is awarding Internet Archive a grant to bring
historic collections from eminent cultural institutions online without any
restrictions on their use. In addition to winning this grant, the Internet
Archive through its work supporting Open Content Alliance principles of free
and open access to knowledge has reached a milestone of 100,000 digitalized
books now publicly available at www.archive.org
.
“The Sloan Foundation is proud to support the digitization of these
high-value collections from five of the nation’s leading cultural
institutions and to ensure that these materials will always be available
through public channels for future use,” said Doron Weber, Program Director
of Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the Sloan Foundation. “Brewster
Kahle and the Internet Archive are pioneers in this exciting and historic
opportunity to create a universal digital library that is both open-access and
non-proprietary. The capability to digitize all recorded human knowledge now
exists for the first time, and it is important that we seize this moment and
ensure that public works and the public domain at large remain in the hands of
the public.”
Scanning materials under open principles allows cultural institutions to
ensure the preservation and public access to their holdings in digital form.
With the new funding, several historical and influential collections will be
added to the open library.
These collections include:
• Boston Public Library: The John Adams collection, which is the complete
personal library of the Founding Father, lifelong book collector and second
President of the United States.
• The Getty Research Institute: Major collection of books on art and
architecture and an alternate collection on the performing arts.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The archive of publications issued by the
Metropolitan Museum through the present.
• Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley: Key primary
texts documenting the California Gold Rush and Western expansion.
• Johns Hopkins University Libraries: The James Birney Collection of
Anti-Slavery materials.
“This rare collection of anti-slavery materials, first presented to Johns
Hopkins for preservation in 1891, has tremendously far reaching value for the
scholarly community as well as for increasing the general public’s
understanding of our nation’s history,” said Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of
University Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. “We are thrilled to be able
to extend its preservation digitally through partnering with the Internet
Archive, whose commitment to keeping knowledge freely accessible will ensure
that this wealth of historical writing can enable others to learn from and
build upon it, for the benefit of our society.”
“Fortunately, many great libraries are weighing the alternatives and
choosing to go open instead of putting public domain materials under perpetual
restrictions,” said Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and Founder of Internet
Archive. “With the support of the Sloan Foundation and the addition of new
members we are more certain than ever that the brightest future for knowledge
is one in which information is shared openly.”
The Internet Archive has made over 100,00 books available in little over a
year since the announcement of the formation of the Open Content Alliance (OCA)
in October 2005. The collection brings together books from over a dozen
libraries in Canada, the United States and India and was digitized at
University of Toronto, University of California and various Indian libraries.
While the books are hosted by Internet Archive, these volumes are also
available to be indexed by any search engine following OCA’s philosophy
concerning open access of digitized content.
About Internet Archive:
Internet Archive is a 501(c) non-profit organization headquartered in San
Francisco, California, with facilities also in Amsterdam and Alexandria, Egypt.
It was founded in 1996 with a mission to build an “Internet library”
providing permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to
historical collections that exist in digital form. Built on open source
software developed by Internet Archive and the International Internet
Preservation Consortium, Internet Archive itself is the largest publicly
available web archive in existence. It currently archives 65 billion pages from
50 million websites worldwide, including texts, audio recordings, moving images
and software as well as archived web pages.
About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation:
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science,
technology and the quality of American life. A relatively new program,
Universal Access to Recorded Knowledge seeks to increase access to recorded
human knowledge by encouraging digitization of material in the public domain,
assuring archiving of this material as well as more recent knowledge on the
Internet and fostering the availability of books on demand.
In addition to its support of the Internet Archive and the Open Content
Alliance, Sloan has also supported the Library of Congress, the Biodiversity
Heritage Library, the New Orleans Public Library and On-Demand Book Machines.
The Sloan program is led by Doron Weber, Program Director for Public
Understanding of Science and Technology, which includes books, radio, public
television, commercial television and film, theater and new media.
Media and Analyst Contact:
Pia Chatterjee for Internet Archive 415-977-1931
The non-profit Internet
Archive, famous for its WayBack Machine collection of web pages, has
received a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation so it can
continue scanning public domain works for open online access.
"Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive are pioneers in this exciting
and historic opportunity to create a universal digital library that is both
open-access and non-proprietary," ZDNet
has Doron Weber, who overseas public understanding of science and technology at
the Sloan Foundation, saying.
Kahle was one of the inventors of Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), a
text-based search system that searched database indexes on remote servers before
there were Internet search engines, says the story, going on:
"After WAIS was sold to AOL in 1995 for several million dollars, Kahle
founded the Internet Archive, which works closely with the Open Content Alliance
(OCA). The OCA developed a set of principles dedicated to a 'permanent archive
of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content' for free and open
access."
In an earlier and different funding
announcement, "The vision of an online universal library received
tremendous impetus in December 2004 when the Google company announced its aim to
develop a commercial realization of this concept, supported by a variety of
fees," says the Sloan fundation, continuing:
Although several libraries,
including Harvard and Stanford, agreed to contribute to the Google archive,
there were concerns about relying on a sole system operated by a private
for-profit entity.
The best-placed organization
to unite the holders of content in a counterpart massive digitization effort
built around the concept of open access is the Internet Archive. This grant
enables the Archive to take steps to build the universal digital library,
beginning with an archive of millions of books.
The project requires more
than $200 million in funds by 2010, to be obtained from other foundations,
libraries and other archival institutions around the world, and from private
sources. The best technical advice suggests that today's technology for
scanning, data compression, storage, and distribution puts the goal within
reach.
The main hurdles are
funding, political will, cooperation from libraries, copyright restrictions, and
the competing commercial effort.
The new grant will enable Internet Archive and the OCA to scan collections
from several major institutions, including the entire collection of publications
from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as several thousand images from the
museum; John Adams' personal library of over 3,800 works at the Boston Public
Library; and other collections from The Getty Research Institute, Johns Hopkins
University and the University of California, Berkeley, says ZDNet.
"Google is so good at the media being their PR machine, that you would
not know there was an alternative out there," it has Kahle saying.
"We have brand name institutions going open and foundations like the
Sloan are funding (us). It shows that the Open Content Alliance is viable, that
there is support for public interest. We don't have to privatize the library
system."
ZDNet points out that Google has, "begun to offer full-text, printable
PDFs of public domain works with plans to add more as it scans more books,"
but, "its platform is closed, and its PDF pages have a 'Digitized by Google'
watermark. The company is not planning to share its scanned material with the
OCA or Internet Archive, according to Kahle.
"If the materials would be made available for broad public search and
educational use we'd be all for it, but in my discussion with the founders (Google
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin) they aren't going to," the story
has Kahle saying.
and
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Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site
blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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