by Kevin Alfred Strom
IT’S BEING acknowledged everywhere — now by Wired magazine and the SEO Theory newsletter. Google Groups is totally broken.
It began well. Google acquired the Deja News archive of Usenet postings from 1995 forward, and then added 1981-1994 material from Marc Spencer’s archive. If somebody said it in a newsgroup, you could find it by searching Google Groups. You could search by author, by keywords, by newsgroup, by date range, or by exact phrase. It was as it should be.
But then Google decided to kluge its own “discussion groups” onto Usenet, and began emphasizing “new communities” or some such cliché at the expense of Usenet archiving, which has been all but abandoned. Some entire newsgroups have been ditched without explanation. And searching by author or exact phrase? Forget it. If you get any results at all, they’ll be woefully incomplete.
Google Groups is in violation of its own terms of service, which state in part “The Service contains the entire archive of Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981.” To Google: Fix, please. Or remain evil.
Continue reading ‘Google Groups: How Not to Run an Archive’
by Kevin Alfred Strom
YEARS AGO I joked that the next niche radio format to be attempted would be continuous bird calls. I never imagined that it could actually happen, but it has, and the results are quite pleasant.
Apparently one of the Digital Audio Broadcast channels in Great Britain (yes, they have real over-the-air digital radio in the UK, not the dysfunctional “HD Radio” that the media moguls forced on this country) started broadcasting ambient bird calls and other natural forest sounds about a year ago, and it developed quite a following. (I have no idea if the station’s creator, Quentin Howard, ever heard of my decades-old suggestion or not.)
Continue reading ‘Birdsong Radio’
Gandhi by Harold Arthur McNeill; click for the full-size version.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
MY RECENT ARTICLE on Mahatma Gandhi has created some interest, and has been reprinted not only by the Historical Review Press in Britain, but also by John de Nugent and by Ironlight, a site whose motto is ‘illumination in the dark age.’ Ironlight also apparently commissioned an illustration especially for the article by the talented artist (and writer) Harold Arthur McNeill, which you can see here.
I also received a few letters disagreeing with my proposition that Gandhi was consistent in his belief in self-determination, and that therefore “equality” under multiracialism could not have been his ideal. One of the more intelligently-written dissenting letters was from a Mr. Allen, who wrote:
Continue reading ‘Gandhi Article Generates Interest’
A Simple Quiz
by Mark Graffis
EDITOR’S NOTE: Being able to score an “A” on this simple quiz should be a requirement before one is permitted to vote in any national election. — Kevin Alfred Strom.
1. In which of these countries are Christians permitted to pray or wear religious symbols in the schools?
A. France
B. United States
C. China
D. Iran
Continue reading ‘How Much Do You Know About World Affairs?’
Here we see HD Radio sidebands on either side of an analogue FM broadcast signal, as shown on a spectrum analyzer.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
WITH 2010 APPROACHING, CNET just released its “The Decade’s 30 Biggest Tech Flops” anti-awards, and “HD Radio” was among the “winners.”
HD Radio was not only doomed from the start, it was such a serious blunder that it may well lead to the death of thousands of radio stations and the permanent stunting of the industry itself.
There is nothing wrong with the concept of digital radio.
Using modern firmware-upgradeable codecs, orthogonal FDM transmission, and a network of community transmitters in a dedicated digital band, great things could have been done:
Continue reading ‘HD Radio: Doomed from the Start’
by Däanlea and Kevin Alfred Strom
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
THIS POEM is really two poems by two authors.
The first part was sent to me by an aspiring new poet named Däanlea, whose work really deserves to be published in print one day.
The second part is my response.
This piece begins in a personal vein, and ends with an extension of the personal into the infinite.
We conscious and unconscious beings are all on a journey together. I hope this poem helps the reader capture some sense of that.
Continue reading ‘The Pine’
The Learned portrait of Virginia Poe, left; on the right the Traylor Miniature, showing a very young Edgar Poe.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
THIS YEAR marks the 200th birthday of the great poet and thinker Edgar Allan Poe. Today, October 7th, is the day of his mysterious death 160 years ago in Baltimore. And last month marked the 174th anniversary of his marriage to his beloved Virginia.
Not too long after Poe’s birthday in January of this year, someone very dear to me gave me a surprise present: two gift boxes from the Poe Museum in Richmond, one decorated with a reproduction of the famous Learned portrait of Virginia Poe (pictured, left) and the other (on the right) having on its lid an image of a very young-looking and clean-shaven Edgar Allan Poe — an image I had never seen before. The portrait is oval and in a thin oval gilt frame. Inside the lid of the second box is written “Edgar Allan Poe – Robert Lee Traylor.”
I have been a reader and student of Poe since the age of 11, but this portrait was one I had never seen. The only references I could find to “Robert Lee Traylor” and a Poe portrait were as the owner of a very different Poe picture, a daguerreotype.
And exhaustive searches of the ‘Net, comprising thousands of articles and representations of Poe, didn’t come up with this portrait or any reference to it. It seemed quite a mystery to me.
Continue reading ‘New and Rare Images of Edgar and Virginia Poe’
Mahadev Desai (left) and Gandhi meet with other Indian nationalists in 1939
by Kevin Alfred Strom
THIS WEEK Google replaced their normal search page graphic with one depicting Mohandas K. Gandhi, also known as Mahatma (Sanskrit for “Great Soul”) Gandhi, in recognition of his birthday, which is now celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence. Gandhi’s movement of civil disobedience was a significant factor in India’s successful quest for self-determination and the ultimate withdrawal of Britain from the Indian subcontinent.
Barack Obama praised Gandhi on Friday, saying “Gandhi’s teachings and ideals, shared with Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1959 pilgrimage to India, transformed American society through our civil rights movement. The America of today has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent social action movement for Indian independence which he led. We must renew our commitment to live his ideals and to celebrate the dignity of all human beings.”
Many people, Obama included if he’s sincere, see Gandhi and his movement in very simplistic and essentially mythological terms: Gandhi’s movement, they believe, was a “struggle for equality” within a multiracial paradigm. Actually it was the opposite of that.
Continue reading ‘Gandhi, Obama, and Race’
As analogue TV is phased out, the media moguls have pinned their hopes on over-the-air digital video. But, in time, Internet video will eclipse the moguls and their networks.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
THE LOGO IMAGE I’m using this month on kevinalfredstrom.com is my little tribute to the end of analogue TV broadcasting. Though most of my work has been in the radio and print media, I have produced or appeared in videos, including Richmond, Virginia’s Race and Reason program, the Revilo P. Oliver memorial film, and others.
As we mark the end of analogue television broadcasting in the United States, it’s good to remember its beginning — and its inventor Philo Farnsworth. When his wife Elma Farnsworth, who worked closely with her husband, died in 2006, I published this piece on NationalVanguard.org:
Continue reading ‘Goodbye Analogue TV’
Patrick J. Buchanan
by Kevin Alfred Strom
PATRICK BUCHANAN utters truths that no one else in the mediasphere dares utter. For that I admire and like him.
But Buchanan has one foot inside establishment “conservatism,” and, whether due to a desire to placate that segment of his following or because of the wishful and anachronistic thinking that old men are sometimes prey to, he will at times speak as though America was still the old American Republic — as though “conservatives” like Dick Cheney were still “holding the line” against subversion and alien influence — as though America had not long since been converted into the multiracial, multicultural empire that he fears will “arise” — and as though Dick Cheney were any less a faithful servant of the empire than Obama.
Continue reading ‘Pat Buchanan’s Double Mind’
by Kevin Alfred Strom
