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’
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’
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’
Jean-Baptiste Say, economist and exponent of the attainment of truth through logic and observation
by Kevin Alfred Strom
THE FACT THAT the fetid “economic stimulus” nonsense that continuously emanates from the professional plunderers in Washington is accepted by intelligent people is disturbing to me.
The idea that politicians can actually give us “free” anything — especially “free money” — is a perennial fallacy that would be laughed out of elementary school if real economics were taught to our children, as it should be. The acceptance of that fallacy by the manipulated and ignorant mob will surely deprive us of our freedom — and our children of their rightful inheritance.
The antidote to ignorance is education. For any intelligent child who is approaching the age of reason and who has somehow learned to read well despite the best efforts of the modern “educators,” the great work of the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy, will provide the grounding in economics that he or she needs.
Continue reading ‘Logical Economics’
The Jewish Strategy by Revilo Oliver, Professor of the Classics at the University of Illinois
by Kevin Alfred Strom
QUITE A FEW READERS have written to ask about the availability of Revilo P. Oliver’s posthumous book, The Jewish Strategy, which I published in 2002. Almost all print copies of this book were stolen from me — and quite possibly destroyed — by the same individual who worked with the government to falsely accuse me of heinous crimes.
Though my reduced economic circumstances don’t allow me to bring out a new print edition at this time, I have recovered the PDF file from the printer (almost all of my computer files were stolen, too, including the original Framemaker files for this book and an unpublished book by Dr. Oliver on the John Birch Society) and I am happy to offer it as a free download. If you have learned or otherwise benefited from my efforts, please consider making a donation using the link in the upper right-hand column of my site.
Continue reading ‘Revilo Oliver’s ‘The Jewish Strategy’’
One of the anthrax letters. Were the anthrax attacks the result of a disgruntled scientist or a murderous intelligence agency?
by Kevin Alfred Strom
THE GROUND-BREAKING investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks by researcher Robert Pate, The Anthrax Mystery: Solved, is now back on line at anthraxattacks.net — its original venue on the Web.
While I was forcibly detained by the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) under false charges, hackers took advantage of the situation to deface the site and delete all its content. When I regained my freedom, I restored the site from backups, whereupon the hackers struck again — this time attempting to destroy not only Mr. Pate’s work but mine as well. Now every single word and note of the original article has been restored.
In addition, Robert Pate’s hard-to-find essay on the hidden truth about the 9/11 attacks — The Missiles at Ground Zero — has also been added to the site.
Continue reading ‘Anthrax Investigation Site is Back’
The bodies are counted just after Valentine's Day, 1945, in the aftermath of the Dresden Holocaust. American author Kurt Vonnegut was there. Emerging from a shelter into the smoldering ashes of the firebombed city of civilians and refugees, he told a fellow survivor "I'll never trust my government again."
by Kevin Alfred Strom
RABBI DAVID Kaufman quoted my essay and radio broadcast on the Dresden Holocaust in his column recently. His bias stands out like Bertie Wooster’s white suit. Kaufman is an unabashed Zionist, and told the Des Moines Register last month that his concern over events in Iran is motivated by “Iran’s threat to Israel.” That’s ethnocentric and probably wildly overblown, but at least it’s honest. (Many of Rabbi Kaufman’s fellow Zionists would prefer to conceal the truth about their motivations, instead telling us that their real concern is with “democracy in Iran,” a chimera if there ever was one.)
Continue reading ‘The Dresden Holocaust and the Numbers Game’
by Kevin Alfred Strom
