“I’ve just come across a weblog for summaries of recently issued West Virginia Supreme Court opinions. This is the power of weblogging in action. Why is this so exciting? Well, weblogging provides a simple mechanism for a court clerk to publish summaries, using an off-the-shelf software package (Radio), requiring little (if any) technical knowledge. More importantly, it provides RSS feed, which would allow a (say) a law firm to trivially track new posts, and to syndicate the contents to the lawyers throughout the firm.”

Found via Column Two.

“An HIV-positive puppet character is to be introduced to the South African version of long-running children’s favourite Sesame Street. The character has not yet been named or designed but is expected to be a female ‘monster’ similar to Grover or Elmo.” Says a spokesman of The Terence Higgins Trust, “half of the new HIV infections worldwide are now occurring among those aged between 15 and 24.” Read more at The Guardian. Update, August 9: After news of the character was announced, five U.S. Congressmen wrote to PBS saying “the Muppet would be unwelcome on American TV.” One PBS exec “won’t rule out an appearance of the character.”

“The Alameda County Computer Recycling Center is a 501c3 nonprofit computer recycling organization that provides computers to those on the Earth who would not otherwise have access to them. We help disadvantaged, undereducated, and disabled humans gain access to technology, computers, and the Internet. We teach... unskilled workers how to build and maintain computers. We give computers to underprivileged peoples, including citizens and governments..... We give computers to physically disadvantaged individuals. We donated over 5000 computers last year, all at no cost to the recipients. We are a 100% Microsoft Free organization. Every computer we donate runs a full and legitimate copy of SuSe Linux. The computers that we place with our recipients are refurbished through our Computer Repair Internship Program. In the process, we ensure that obsolete, non-working, or no longer usable electronic equipment does not end up in landfills.”

“Hemp car is an alternative-fuel project car that utilizes hemp biodiesel for fuel. Industrial hemp would be an economical fuel if hemp were legal to cultivate in the United States. Industrial hemp has no psychoactive properties and is not a drug. Hemp Car demonstrates the concept of hemp fuels on a national level and promotes the reformation of current law.”

“The people in the apartment across the street have had an American flag hanging outside their second floor window since the day after 9/11. Looking out my window this morning, I noticed that the bottom of the flag is tattered from waving in the brisk San Francisco breeze for ten months. The top red stripe is seceding from the rest of the flag, the wind gradually tearing it away from the other twelve.

I wonder if they’ve forgotten about the flag and the reasons they bought it in the first place, the respect they must have felt for it then and the disrespect with which they are treating it now.”

From kottke.org.

“Beijing Organising Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) opened a two-day Olympic Design Conference in Beijing on Tuesday in a bid to find the most appropriate ways to impress the world visually. Beijing Mayor Liu Qi said in the opening address that through the magnificent and unique ‘Olympic look’, Beijing will unfold the great charm of this global sporting event and the history of China. Meanwhile, Beijing will also ‘promote the concept of “New Beijing, Great Olympics”, and demonstrate and elevate the image of Beijing and China in the world’, added Liu, who is also BOCOG president.”

From the People’s Daily.

“Every morning in the apartment building where I live I take the elevator six floors down. One morning a woman appeared with her bicycle as I was waiting for the elevator. Though we live along the same corridor, I had scarcely seen her before, and we had never spoken. Japanese public behavior in residential space is customarily limited to either reserved nods of recognition or restrained ‘good mornings’ and ‘good afternoons.’ Everything changes at the elevator, as I was especially surprised to see this particular morning.

Suppressing my annoyance (a bicycle takes half the space in the small elevator), I gestured for the woman to enter when the elevator arrived and the door opened. She acknowledged my courtesy, and positioned herself inside. There was just room enough to accommodate me in front of her. As the elevator descended, suddenly I felt a hand touch my collar, and smooth it down over my tie! ‘Arigato gosaimas’ (thank you very much), I managed, when we reached the bottom floor and I could turn to face the woman. She smiled faintly and bowed in turn.

I was stunned for hours afterwards. Japanese never touch. It’s not even customary among themselves when they meet to shake hands. So how to explain why this woman would so casually reach over and adjust my collar? In public! And yet, not exactly. The space of an elevator is small enough, and, perhaps more important, brief and ephemeral enough, to admit a private character. Therefore, an individual can relax, and accord another a degree of warmth inadmissible once the elevator doors open once more. My moment of contact, I concluded, could have only happened in an elevator, and then perhaps only in Japan. Suddenly the mundane seemed luminous with an entirely different meaning to transit space.”

See “In and Out of Elevators in Japan” by Terry Caesar, published in the Journal of Mundane Behavior.

“Elevator space in Japan is considered both as an example of transit space generally and as an example of the practice of a particular national identity. The paper argues that there is an intimate relationship between the social script outside the elevator and variations possible on this script inside the elevator. In Japan, these variations serve to express the improvisational, private character of personal interaction possible inside elevators, over against the fixed, public character of behavior outside them.”

Found via Consumptive.org.

“For eight days in 2002, 14 student teams will compete to capture, convert, store, and use enough solar energy to power our modern lifestyle. Solar Decathletes will be required to provide all the energy for an entire household, including a home-based business and the transportation needs of the household and business. During the event, only the solar energy available within the perimeter of each house may be used to generate the power needed to compete in the ten Solar Decathlon contests.”

Found via SynEarth.

The Industrial Designers Society of America has announced the 2002 winners of their Industrial Design Excellence Awards. Note the Universal Bathrooms developed by the Kelley Design Group and University at Buffalo for the National Institute of Disability & Rehabilitation Research.

“The Universal Bathroom concept uses two entries, movable fixtures and movable panels to retrofit existing bathrooms for universal design. Because many people are aging, become disabled, etc., and do not want to move from their house, retrofitting the bathroom is an economically viable and a physically easier alternative than moving to another location.”

See also the PediaPod, Automatic Public Toilet, and Universal Bedpan.

Construction has begun on a “security barrier to separate Israel from the West Bank.” BBC: “As always, it boils down to a question of land: Israel taking Palestinian land to ensure its security.... In the absence of a peace settlement, the fence has raised all the old questions about where Israel ends and the West Bank begins.” Some villages will be split in half, or annexed entirely. VOANews: Yasser Arafat “described the $220 million fence as a ‘sinful assault on our land, an act of racism and apartheid, which we totally reject.’” News24: “Veterans from both sides of the Berlin Wall say Israel’s... plan to erect 110km of fence along the West Bank will fail ultimately, much as the Cold-War divide through Berlin eventually crumbled.”

Update March 23, 2003: While the first wall proceeds apace, Israel is planning a second wall.