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PT1b Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
by Michael Hart 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

pt1b4.d05 **The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 4, 2006 PT1** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1B Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart(a)pobox.com or gbnewby(a)pglaf.org Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart(a)pobox.com ***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements General Catalog of Old Books and Authors http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information about them and their authors where you can find more. For information please contact Philip Harper <webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk> * We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks. http://www.archive.org Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date, but you should get all the files when you pass through to the original sites. Click on "texts" to get started, feel free to pick up any of the eBooks you would like to work on. Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive! * Please visit and test our newest site: "PROJECT GUTENBERG EUROPE" http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe] http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe] * There is an experimental online reader available. Start from any bibliographic record page, e.g. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4300 Basically this paginates the .txt file and remembers your last position in a cookie so you can later resume reading where you left off. Please test it. It should work with any book that has a text file where the encoding is known. * MACHINE TRANSLATION We are seeking as much information as possible on the various approaches to Machine Translation. Any brand names or contact information would be greatly appreciated. *** Please use our new site for downloading DVD and CD images, etc. http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject and The PG bittorrent tracker is up and running. Aaron Cannon has placed the CD and DVD there if anyone wants to test. You can access it by visiting http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969 *** Please checkout the various Project Gutenberg FAQs, etc. at: http://www.gutenberg.org/about * We're building a team to read our eBooks into MP3 files for the visually impaired and other audio book users. Let us know if you'd like to join this group. More information at http://www.gutenberg.org/audio *** Project Gutenberg Needs DVD Burners So far we have sent out 15 million eBooks via snailmail!!! We currently have access to a dozen DVD burners. If you have a DVD burner and are interested in lending a hand, please email Aaron Cannon <cannona(a)fireantproductions.com> We can set you up with images, or snail you these DVDs for you to copy. You can either snail them directly to readers whose addresses we can send you, or you can do a stack of these and send the whole box back for reshipping. We can also reimburse you for supplies and postage if you wish. Please note that we can only use DVDs which are burnt in the dvd-r format, as we have had some compatibility issues with the dvd+r format. *** Project Gutenberg is seeking graphics we can use for our Web pages and publicity materials. If you have original graphics depicting Project Gutenberg themes, please contribute them! To see some of what we have now, please see: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images *** PROJECT GUTENBERG IS SEEKING LEGAL BEAGLES Project Gutenberg is seeking (volunteer) lawyers. We have regular need for intellectual property legal advice (both US and international) and other areas. Please email Project Gutenberg's CEO, Greg Newby <gbnewby AT pglaf.org> , if you can help. This is much more important than many of us realize! ***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders In the 12.00 months of this year, we produced 2970 new eBooks. It took us from July 1971 to Dec 2001 to produce our first 2970 eBooks! That's 52 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 Years!!! 42 New eBooks This Week 50 New eBooks Last Week [took one out] 212 New eBooks This Month [Dec] ~248 Average Per Month in 2005 336 Average Per Month in 2004 355 Average Per Month in 2003 203 Average Per Month in 2002 103 Average Per Month in 2001 2970 New eBooks in 2005 4049 New eBooks in 2004 4164 New eBooks in 2003 2441 New eBooks in 2002 1240 New eBooks in 2001 ==== 14,864 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 60.00 Months! ~248 books per month! 17,926 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks 14,956 eBooks This Week Last Year ==== 2,970 New eBooks In Last 12 Months 519 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia [This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ] 210 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Europe [Will be added to total in 2006] You may also want to look at Project Runeberg [Scandinavian] * PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE: Since starting production in October 2000, Distributed Proofreaders has contributed 7,880 Books to Project Gutenberg. For more complete DP statistics, visit: http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php * Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers even before the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalog. eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists. Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto or http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml *** *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report Please note the addition of the Internet Archive marked with <<< below. PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as: Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files eBooks@Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<< Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change Renaisscance Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files =======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files===== Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 Total Files These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of their donors: some are one file per book; some have a file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the overcounting or duplication of numbers. If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts, that leaves a unique book total of ~45,714 Unique eBooks If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts, that leaves a unique book total of ~34,286 Unique eBooks *** Please also note that over 25,000 eBooks are listed via The Online Books Page, of which over 5,700 are from PG. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries, made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up any current information. You can try a new IPL service at: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/ It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page. Still looking for more Internet Public Library info. *** Today Is Day #364 of 2005 This Completes Week #52 and Month #12.00 [364 days this year] 00 Days/00 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 2,074 Books To Go To #20,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 57 Weekly Average in 2005 78 Weekly Average in 2004 79 Weekly Average in 2003 47 Weekly Average in 2002 24 Weekly Average in 2001 45 Only 45 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers list [Used to be well over 100] *** Permanent Requests For Assistance: DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES Please visit the site: http://www.pgdp.net for more information about how you can help a lot by simply proofreading just a few pages per day, or more. If you have a book that has been scanned, but not yet run through OCR (optical character recognition) or proofed, and you would like the Distributed Proofreaders to work on it, please email dphelp(a)pgdp.net and we will get things started. Also, DP is seeking public domain books not already in the Project Gutenberg collection. To see what is already online, visit http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL (a text file) listing Project Gutenberg eBooks and is available for downloading. Do you have Public Domain books you would like to see in the archive? Can they be destructively scanned? If so send them to the Distributed Proofreading Team! Please email dphelp(a)pgdp.net with your geographic location. You will be given the address of the nearest high-speed scanner. [Note that the high-speed scanner requires destruction of the book(s) which will not be returned.] We have high-speed scanners currently located in the east, west and central portions of the US to make shipping easier. Please make sure that any books you send are _not_ already in the archive and please check them against David's "In Progress" list at: http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html to ensure no one is currently working on them. It would also be helpful if you obtain copyright clearance before mailing the books, and send the 'OK' lines to dphelp(a)pgdp.net Do you like to work on an entire book at once but don't have the time or technology to do the scanning, OCR, and initial proofing yourself? Distributed Proofreaders has the perfect solution! Just send us email telling us that you are interested in post-processing and we will help find a project you would like to work on. Please contact us at: dphelp(a)pgdp.net if you would like to know more about the Distributed Proofreaders. ***Donation Information We Have Included Quick and Easy Ways to Donate. . .As Per Your Requests! 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PGLAF is approved as a charitable 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal Revenue Service, and has the Federal Employee Information Number (EIN) 64-6221541. For more information, including several other ways to donate, go to http://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html or email donate(a)gutenberg.org *Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections *Mirror Site Information Mirrors (copies) of the complete collection are available around the world. To find the sites nearest you, go to: http://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL *Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks http://www.gutenberg.org/find allows searching by title, author, language and subject. Use your Web browser or FTP program to visit our master download site (or a mirror) if you know the file's name you want. Try: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs or ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/ and then navigate to the appropriate directory and look for the first five characters of the file's name. Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) *** Statistical Review In the 52 weeks of this year, we have produced 2970 new eBooks. It took us from 7/71 to 12/01 to produce our FIRST 2970 eBooks!!! That's 52 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 YEARS!!! * Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet? 1.16 Trillion eBooks Given Away If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of 6,487,906,504 that would be 17,926 x 64,893,367 = ~1.16 Trillion !!! With 17,926 eBooks online as of January 04, 2006 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.86 from each book. [1% world population x #eBooks] 64,893,367 x 17,926 x $.86 = ~$1 Trillion [Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.] * or. . . A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.56 Value Per Book With 17,926 eBooks online as of January 04, 2006 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.56 from each book. This "cost" is down from about $.67 when we had 14,956 eBooks a year ago. Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population, or 100,000,000 readers. At 17,926 eBooks in 34 Years and 06.00 Months We Averaged ~520 Per Year 43.3 Per Month 1.42 Per Day At 2970 eBooks Done In The 364 Days Of 2005 We Averaged 8.2 Per Day 57 Per Week 248 Per Month If you are interested in the population of the world or of the U.S. you might want to know that these numbers, official as they appear, are just just estimates, and perhaps not as accurate as we hope. Recently the U.S. Congress, pertaining to district reapportionment, who gets to vote for which Congresspeople, decided that many of the districts were undercounted by 5%, perhaps then later deciding that all districts had been undercounted by 5% [can't recall details]. However, I just this moment heard a news item that made me wonder a bit more about the accuracy of the U.S. Census. A "Special Census" is taking place in Normal, Illinois, that is expected to count more people, by a factor of 3,000 or 3,400, depending on which source. 45,386 was the population as per the 2000 Census, so 3,000 added to this would be an increase of 6.6%, and 3,400 would be 7.5%, above a possibly automatic increase of 5% as per the same terms above but I presume this is in addition to previous adjustments. Of course, we should consider that we would have to double figures, perhaps to 15% from those above, if are considering the normal time between censuses of 10 years, these are for 5 years' growth. In previous news I heard about the U.S. Census, no mention was made about the annexation of various nearly locations as a cause of this normally unexpected growth, but it is mentioned at the site I found on the subject of the current Special Census. If annexation is the primary cause of such increases, country wide, then we should not be expecting a huge rise in the 2010 Census, but rather should expect something more along the norm. However, if it is not annexation, but more actual people on the average, then this might be an indicator that the population of the U.S. may have seen 300 million go by some time ago. For more details, see: www.normal.org/WhatsNew/Census.htm The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks' production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon, starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 5th was the first Wednesday of 2005, and thus ended PG's production year of 2004 and began the production year of 2005 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *** *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists, including the Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters: and the other Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists: The weekly is sent on Wednesdays, and the monthly is sent on the first Wednesday of the month. To subscribe to any (or to unsubscribe or adjust your subscription preferences), visit the Project Gutenberg mailing list server: http://lists.pglaf.org If you are having trouble with your subscription, please email the list's human administrators at: help(a)pglaf.org

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PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
by Michael Hart 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

pt1a4.d05 Weekly_January_04.txt **The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 4, 2006 PT1** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A Due to our weekly Wednesday to Wednesday schedule, this is our LAST Weekly PG Newsletter of 2005, and January 11 will mark our FIRST 2006 Weekly Newsletter >I'm thinking of moving everything one week earlier when in 2007. Comments?< * [Several hot messages immediately below] In a joint issue Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.org/) and Project Gutenberg of Australia (http://gutenberg.net.au) are commemorating the 400th anniversary of the beginning of Australia~Rs documented history, with the release of "The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765" by J E Heeres. In 1606 Willem Janszoon (aka Jansz.) charted some of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula and made the first authenticated landing on Australian soil. A number of events are being organised to commemorate the occasion by "Australia on the Map: 1606-2006" (http://www.australiaonthemap.org.au/) Heeres book was published in 1899 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Geographical Society of the Netherlands. Heeres notes in the introduction to the book that the object of publication was "once more to throw the most decided and fullest possible light on achievements of our forefathers in the 17th and 18th century, in a form that would appeal to foreigners no less than to native readers. An act of homage to our ancestors, therefore, a modest one certainly, but one inspired by the same feeling which in 1892 led Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to celebrate the memory of the discoverer of America, and in 1898 prompted the Portuguese to do homage to the navigator who first showed the world the sea-route to India." Herres work is now difficult to access and it is fitting that we are able, with the release of this ebook, to once more to "throw the most decided and fullest possible light on achievements" of the Dutch in commemorating the first authenticated landing on Australian soil by Willem Janszoon. Heeres notes in the introduction to the book that "the documents, here either republished or printed for the first time, are all of them preserved in the State Archives at the Hague, unless otherwise indicated. They have been arranged under the heads of the consecutive expeditions, which in their turn figure in chronological order. This seemed to me the best way to enable readers to obtain a clear view of the results of the exploratory voyages made along the coasts of Australia by the Netherlanders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." All have been translated into English and the English and Dutch text appears side by side on each page. The ebooks may be found at Project Gutenberg of Australia at http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html#heeres and at Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17450 Another important book relating to the early discovery of Australia is 'The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea' by George Collingridge This ebook was a joint release to celebrate the issue of the 500th ebook by Project Gutenberg of Australia and may also be found at both Project Gutenberg and Project Gutenberg of Australia. * A BIT ABOUT PROJECT RUNEBERG Project Runeberg was the first Project Gutenberg spin off, starting on December 13, 1992, when Project Gutenberg was just coming up on having 50 freely downloadable eBooks. The following has been excerpted from an email I received from Lars Aronsson, founder of Project Runeberg, on December 24, 2005. [My own comments are in brackets] *** It is now thirteen years and two weeks since I started Project Runeberg, the Scandinavian online literature archive. The name comes from Finland's most hailed poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), but is also a play on the name of my rolemodel, Project Gutenberg. Despite the ambition to cover all Scandinavian countries, Project Runeberg is dominated by Swedish literature. [About 1,500 eBooks at about 175 pages per book, as of January 1, 2005] On January 1, 2005, Project Runeberg's collections contained 260,000 pages scanned in digital facsimile, corresponding to 13 linear metres of shelving. That day we should have scanned 494 pages (0.19 percent of 260.000), but instead we scanned 1200 pages. For the whole of January, we should have scanned 15,755 pages (0.78 metres), but in reality we only scanned 12,384 (0.61 metres). In 1996 we finished typing the Swedish text of the Bible. In 2003 we finished scanning a classic 38 volume Swedish encyclopedia. We currently have 376,900 scanned pages online in addition to our early e-texts, corresponding to 18.8 metres of shelving. One third (125,000 pages) were added in the last 12 months. [About 2,150 eBooks at about 175 pages per book, as of January 1, 2005] [An increase of about 650 books at 175 pages each, in 2005] [The 175 pages is just an estimate I made] * [The following was simply too cute not to include, no connection to me or PG] See Gutenberg! The Musical! Jermyn Street Theatre presents the world premiere of Gutenberg! The Musical! written and performed by Anthony King and Scott Brown Michael Roulston at the piano Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450, so Bud Davenport and Doug Simon wrote a musical about him. Now they're bringing it to the West End. They don't have a cast, a budget, or a producer - but they have a dream, and they're crossing an ocean to bring it to you. "One of the most clever performances in the city." (New York Metro) It's the "true" story of Gutenberg, his buxom wench Helvetica, and an evil Monk, hell-bent on keeping the masses illiterate. "Gutenberg! The Musical! is ostensibly a backers' audition to get Doug and Bud's damaged brainchild to the Great White Way. In reality, though, it's a savvy satire by Anthony King and Scott Brown, who send up the musical genre with ... affection, scorn and wonderfully bad songs," (Time Out New York) Gutenberg! The Musical! celebrates the monstrous success of Bud and Doug's idiocy. It is a tuneful, tactless triumph, with a big bleeding heart where its head should be - perfect entertainment for all the family, even if some of them are illiterate. 6 to 28 January 2006 Mon to Sat at 7.30pm Wed & Sat matinees at 3.30pm Previews: 6 & 7 Jan at 7.30pm only Press Night: Mon 9 Jan at 7.30pm Box Office: 020 7287 2875 Tickets: #16 (#12 concs/previews) Jermyn Street Theatre, 020 7287 2875 16b Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6ST www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk Nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus London, England ** Portugal Has New Project Gutenberg Mirror http://eremita.di.uminho.pt/gutenberg or ftp://eremita.di.uminho.pt/pub/gutenberg/ Offical data: Continent: Europe Nation: Portugal Location: Braga Provider: Universidade do Minho Computer Science Dept Brainchild of: Alberto Simoes <albie(a)alfarrabio.di.uminho.pt> *** Editor's comments appear in [brackets]. Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart(a)pobox.com or gbnewby(a)pglaf.org Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart(a)pobox.com * WANTED! >>> !!!People who can help with PR for our 35th Anniversary!!! <<< >>> !!!People to help us collect ALL public domain eBooks!!! <<< * Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc. * TABLE OF CONTENTS [Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.] *eBook Milestones *Introduction *Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements *Continuing Requests and Announcements *Progress Report *Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report *Permanent Requests For Assistance: *Donation Information *Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections *Mirror Site Information *Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks *Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet? *Flashback *Weekly eBook update: This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter Corrections in separate section 2 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 40 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* ***519 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 17,926 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are ~90% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,864 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~248 eBooks per Month for ~60 Months We Produced 2970 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,074 to go to 20,000!!! 7,880 from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] 519 from Project Gutenberg of Australia 210 from Project Gutenberg of Europe Average 10.33 Per Month For 2005 [We will start including these in 2006] [Apology for previously mixed numbers!] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005 [This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org] This Site Averaged ~57 eBooks Per Week This Year 42 This Week It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~32 months, from 2002 to 2005 for our last 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 It took ~2.00 years from Oct. 2003 to Nov. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,500 * ***Introduction [The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments, News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B. [Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us: hart(a)pobox.com and gbnewby(a)pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.] This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] Edupage has been on vacation from Dec 21 to today. You have been reading excerpts from Edupage: If you have questions or comments about Edupage, send e-mail to: edupage(a)educause.edu To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to LISTSERV(a)LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU and in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName or To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 *** News From Other Sources A European Commission study has revealed that giving more copyrights means less publications. [Do a search on "european commission" copyright database for multiple stories] * James Risen says that the US pressured international phone companies to route more of international calls through the US to help out with the wiretap efforts. [Much too much to relate here. See book "State of War" and CNN's story "The Book Behind the Bombshell"] *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA [As requested adding sources, etc., when possible. Remember, the subject is not the article's subject, the subject is the manipulation of the world news.] U.S. House Resolutions 635, 636, and 637 are not being mentioned. * Argentina and Pay Brazil Pay Off and Tell Off IMF [International Monetary Fund] IMF spokesmen refused to comment, but it was all the big news in much of the world when both Argentina and Brazil paid off about $10 and $15 billion respectively in the last few days, saying that this freed them from the unusually harsh restrictions and controls of the IMF. [See the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"] The IMF had been withholding approval of economic policies. Reuters termed the stormy relationship to the IMF as "years of bitter clashes." This news, along with the recent news of a major oil strike for Brazil, could mean that next major places to watch in the world economy will be Brazil and Argentina, along with other major changes in South America. * GENIE Global Nuclear from "Energy Daily" recycles nuclear fuel, and drastically reduce the amount of nuclear waste that would have to be stored deep underground for hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years. [I couldn't find the exact reference "GENIE" but did find articles from the New York Times and Scientific Amercian, with a search on: nuclear recyling breeder ] *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Various comments about how much, or how little, former House leader Tom Delay's wife and daughter were paid, for what, and by whom, by opposing sides on this issue. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK This could be the biggest year of political scandals in the US for over a century. Also see: "K Street Project" [K Street is to lobbyists in Washington, D.C. as Madison Avenue is to advertizers in New York] *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK See Doublespeak [Not going to actually repeat these slings and arrows] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK When CNN/USA Today/Gallup pollsters asked in a telephone survey whether President Bush is a "uniter" or a "divider" 49 percent said a uniter and 49 percent said a divider. * The average household about $10,000 on credit cards. New regulations are doubling the minimum payments, as previous minimums would end up with people paying for possible decades totalling more interest than the money they borrowed. The average credit card user has seven credit cards. 35 million credit card users only pay the minimum. Source: ABC World News Tonight * 1/3 of our crops are pollinated by honeybees PBS * 100 Dunkin Donuts franchises got 9/11 Small Business Assn loans. * Tropical Storm Zeta was the 27th named storm of 2005, and tied the record for the latest storm of the year. 2005 saw the most storms in a year and most category 5 storms, since such records were started in 1851, and extended 2005's record breaking year in terms of total number of tropical storms. First time over the 21 letters used for names, these used 6 letters of the Greek Alphabet. Before last month, only four December hurricanes had formed in 153 years of record keeping, and we got two last month. Records set in 2005 Most Powerful Hurricane [Wilma] Most Hurricanes Most Hurricanes to Strike US Most Tropical Storms Most December Tropical Storms Latest Hurricane [Tied] Most Category 5 Hurricanes [Katrina, Rita, Wilma] Source: www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=wxcenter_news * Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries. "If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education 1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater] 1 would be 79 years old or more. Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years, but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure to expire within that 63 year period. I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date, as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer then there would be only 60 million people in the world who owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States households have computers, out of over 100 million households. Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in the United States. I just called our local reference librarian and got the number of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at: 111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports. If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million, and that's counting just one computer per household, and not counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc. I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate given above, and would like some help researching these and other such figures, if anyone is interested. BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old. This means that basically 90% of the world's population would never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they can receive more per year, but because they will live more years to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in. * POEM OF THE WEEK Angles he hasn't told me anything new lately all I remember were meaningless sounds coming from the throat of a tired hawk screening my front lawn; all the preys had been put to sleep the night before. nature's TLC spelled euthanasia the skies stretch far, beyond my comprehension all I can feel is the future rain ducked behind a white cloud in the land of millions of shapeless purple-grayish thunder-friendly apparitions haunting my sight the chill air and the coldness inside switch places at times my body becomes a windy universe in which nothings stays put. Shivering and wanderings define my skin, my flesh the eyes strain to grasp the tornadolike rebellion of every cell But then, in the middle of silence, a faint sound begins to grow. A voice in the mist proclaiming that every pair of eyes is prone to misinterpretations That things are seen from the inside out, and not the other way around like my mind had always taught me That to put order in one's soul it takes for one to be awakened on a chill, misty morning by the crying of a hawk whose prey had forsaken him A white cloud in the shape of a guitar pours down sweet music of raindrops that my hearing has so longed for. A harmonic announcement letting the eyes know that the heart was wrong Copyright 2006 by Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart Please send comments to: simona_s75 AT yahoo.com & hart AT pobox.com *** *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists, including the Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters: and the other Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists: The weekly is sent on Wednesdays, and the monthly is sent on the first Wednesday of the month. 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