The Internet has become the Wild Wild West

Editorial or Advertorial: What's the Difference?

Neda Raouf, OJR Contributor  posted: 1998-05-15 • modified: 2002-04-04 Amid the rapid growth of the Internet and the push to make it profitable, maintaining the wall between editorial and advertorial content is often a matter of semantics. In the world of online publication, where the nature of the medium is that both journalistic sites and their ads are fraught with slick graphics, clear labeling of articles and advertisements can be key to keeping potential readers aware of what they are reading. However, when an advertorial is not labeled as an advertisement but as an 'InfoSite,' or with other such euphemistic labels, it may serve to lure readers into ads. This may ultimately create what PC World magazine calls 'stealth sites,' material that looks like news but is disguised marketing material. 'I don't think the average consumer that sees 'InfoSites' will know that it is advertising and not independent editorial material,' said Cathryn Baskin, editor in chief of PC World print magazine. 'The average consumer will have to exercise a lot more caution on line than they do in most print publications.' If average consumers were to come across Toronto Star or theABC7 San Francisco Citysearch sites, which include event listings and features, they would have an opportunity to exercise this greater sense of caution. The advertorial sites that exist within these news sites label ads only as 'InfoSites.' It is not until readers scroll down to the bottom of these pages that it is clearly stated in fine print that: 'The above organization has sponsored and written this page.' Conversely, the Washington Post Citysearch site has icons indicating that readers are about to enter the 'Sponsor's Website,' and within this site, the top left-hand corner is clearly labeled 'Promotional Pages.' 'If it's pure advertorial in nature, we think that readers expect to be kept clearly informed and to come to their judgments, based on a clear understanding of the authorship, of what to make of the assertions in the content,' said Christopher Ma, Washington Post.com executive editor and senior vice president. 'I think it's particularly an issue because the nature of the medium allows you to click from one type of content to another kind very, very easily and it may not be clearly apparent that the content has very different origins? The nature of the medium does lend itself to a bordering of the lines in some cases.' One of the most recently-launched sites, the Los Angeles Times'Calendar Live' Citysearch site, does not have icons labeling sites as sponsor's sites before readers click on them, but in the site itself, next to the label of 'InfoSite,' is the label of 'advertisement' in parentheses. Stan Holt, general manager of the LA Times site, explained that issue of the blurred line that online publications face is the same one that print publications face: the importance of labeling things clearly. 'Because of the potential for blurring, you have to be really on guard to make sure that it is one thing or another,' Holt said. 'There is a pressure, space pressure [within the site], but it's something that you can't get around or you undermine the credibility of the whole publication.' This issue is not just related to the credibility of individual publications but to the integrity of online journalism. Buckling under the pressure to make a profit, many sites may be undermining the Internet's future as a credible source of journalism. Along with the problems in labeling, there are also advertisers who will stay with a site based on the number of 'clicks' on their banners and on a performance basis, where a percentage of advertisers' sales will go to the site, said Lewis Perdue, president of IdeaWorx, a new media company, and a founder of www.Webethics.com. He explained that the potential of online journalism may be crushed by the pressure to profit -- and perhaps for editorial to cater to advertisers. 'There are venture capital firms who are making the site that they fund do a return on investment for every page. If that page doesn't generate enough income, you don't continue writing,' Perdue said. 'I think that if performance based advertising becomes the norm, the Web will be a gigantic infomercial. I think people will think that the Web will be somewhere between limited and worthless, and I think that is the problem that online journalism faces.' In what is a relatively young medium, many publications are now in the exploratory stages of how they balance profit with editorial integrity, Baskin said. 'There are a handful of sites making a profit on the Web, and in this experimental stage of publishing, they are trying all sorts of business models and spending all sorts of money to get ad revenue, which is pushing some of the problems between advertising and editing.' In this exploratory process, online journalism is in the process of establishing its identity, said Michael O'Donnell, publisher and president of Salon magazine. 'The Internet has become the Wild Wild West right now and rules are being written. People are realizing that reporting on the Internet has the same consequences as in traditional media,' said O'Donnell. 'I think you need to use the traditional modes of editorial. The Web needs to adopt standards that are more consistent with traditional media. It's a little loose right now on many sites and we need to get with the program.' A set of guidelines was established in June 1997 by theAmerican Society of Magazine Editors, a non-profit member-based organization, yet the stringency and the enforcement of these guidelines have been questioned. 'I'm quite certain that the standards of the guidelines adopted by the ASME are fairly watered down from the ethics of traditional media,' Perdue said. 'They're the best set of guidelines out there so far, but I don't think they go far enough to keep the Web from being a giant infomercial.' These standards were based on an existing set of print guidelines, said Marlene Kahan, executive director ASME, who contends that the standards have not been compromised in their adaptation for the Internet. 'The guidelines are not watered down at all. The language, of course, looks at the online world rather than traditional print medium. Really, our goal was to draw clear distinctions between editorial and advertising on the Web,' said Kahan, who admits that the enforcement of these guidelines has posed challenges. 'As far as policing it, it is somewhat difficult because the Web is so vast. At this point, we do what we can to police and write to people who don't comply.' Despite these ethical issues, the potential of online journalism is not lost on those who have been watching it grow. 'Online journalism has the potential of not only being credible but being better than traditional media because you can put all of your source documents online. I think it can be better, more credible and more valuable,' Perdue said. 'It's a great opportunity if it doesn't get fumbled or compromised.'

Lee and the End of the Civil War

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS

Through Union victory an entirely new social order was to be established that would alter the relationship between the races forever. Unlike so many other Southerners, Robert E. Lee embraced the new order. After peace had been achieved through unconditional surrender, the South became a vast, heavily occupied military zone with black Union soldiers seemingly everywhere.

One Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, a well-dressed, lone black man, whom no one in the community—white or black—had ever seen before, had attended the service, sitting unnoticed in the last pew.

Just before communion was to be distributed, he rose and proudly walked down the center aisle through the middle of the church where all could see him and approached the communion rail, where he knelt. The priest and the congregation were completely aghast and in total shock.

No one knew what to do…except General Lee. He went to the communion rail and knelt beside the black man and they received communion together—and then a steady flow of other church members followed the example he had set.

After the service was over, the black man was never to be seen in Richmond again. It was as if he had been sent down from a higher place purposefully for that particular occasion.

Today, and deservingly so, Lee is honored throughout the country. Only Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln exceed him in monuments and memorials.

Everybody Knows All

The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

 Review

The distinction between citizen and consumer forms the core of The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You. Are we consumers whose role in society is primarily to purchase and use products, or are we citizens who make informed decisions in an attempt to make life better for ourselves and the world? The Internet, as Eli Pariser convincingly argues in the book, is hurtling toward a consumer model, existing primarily to sell people stuff at the expense of everything else. 

From the book…

We are overwhelmed by a torrent of information: 900,000 blog spots, 50 million tweets, more than 60 million Facebook status updates, and 210 billion e-mails are sent off into the electronic ether every day.  Eric Schmidt (GOOGLE CEO) likes to point out that if you recorded all human communications from the dawn of time to 2003, it’d take up about 5 billion gigabytes of storage space. Now we’re creating that much data every two days.

Retailers notice that 98 percent of visitors to online shopping sites leave without buying anything.

Richard Heuer analyses faulty CIA conclusions in The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis…a kind of Psychology and Epistemology 101 for would-be spooks.

Phil Tetlock, a political scientist, …invited a variety of academics and pundits into his office and asked them to make predictions about the future in their areas of expertise. Would the Soviet Union fall in the next ten years? In what year would the U.S. economy start growing again? For ten years, Tetlock kept asking these questions. He asked them not only of experts, but also of folks he’d brought in off the street – plumbers and schoolteachers with no special expertise in politics or history. When he finally compiled the results, even he was surprised. It wasn’t just that the normal folks’ predictions beat the experts’. The experts’ predictions weren’t even close.

It brings to mind the famous Pablo Picasso quotation: “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler describes creativity as “bisociation”  - the intersection of two matrices of thought: “Discovery is an analogy no one has ever seen before…Discovery often means simply the uncovering of something which has always been there but was hidden from the eye by the blinkers of habit.”

In 1510, the Spanish writer Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo published the swashbuckling Odyssey-like novel, The Exploits of Espandian…that describes the Island of California.

David Bohm describes the essence of town meetings in On Dialogue.

Christopher Alexander wrote A Pattern of Language. Discusses urban planning.

Capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, costs about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out

latimes.com

Death penalty costs California $184 million a year, study says

A senior judge and law professor examine rising costs of the program. Without major reforms, they conclude, capital punishment will continue to exist mostly in theory while exacting an untenable cost.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
June 20, 2011

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Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.

The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.

The study's authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin's death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.

In their research for "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," Alarcon and Mitchell obtained California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records that were unavailable to others who have sought to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of capital punishment.

Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners.

The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.

Alarcon, who prosecuted capital cases as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the 1950s and served as clemency secretary to Gov. Pat Brown, said in an interview that he believes the majority of California voters will want to retain some option for punishing the worst criminals with death. He isn't opposed to capital punishment, while Mitchell, his longtime law clerk, said she favors abolition. Both said they approached the analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row.

Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state's lethal injection procedures.

The long wait for execution "reflects a wholesale failure to fund the efficient, effective capital punishment system that California voters were told they were choosing" in the battery of voter initiatives over the last three decades that have expanded the penalty to 39 special circumstances in murder, the report says.

Unless profound reforms are made by lawmakers who have failed to adopt previous recommendations for rescuing the system, Alarcon and Mitchell say, capital punishment will continue to exist mostly in theory while exacting an untenable cost.

Among their findings to be published next weekin the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review:

The state's 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.

The least expensive death penalty trial costs $1.1 million more than the most expensive life-without-parole case.

Jury selection in a capital case runs three to four weeks longer and costs $200,000 more than in life-without-parole cases.

The state pays up to $300,000 for attorneys to represent each capital inmate on appeal.

The heightened security practices mandated for death row inmates added $100,663 to the cost of incarcerating each capital prisoner last year, for a total of $72 million.

The study's findings replicated many of those made by the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008, and a year later, when the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California researched the death penalty's fiscal effects ahead of public hearings on how to revise lethal injection procedures after a federal judge ruled the state's practices unconstitutional.

As with the recommendations in Alarcon's 2007 report, none of the remedies outlined by the commission chaired by former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp has been adopted by lawmakers or put to the public for a vote.

All of the examinations have pointed to a shortage of death penalty-qualified attorneys in the state as a prime cause of the delays in handling appeals from death row prisoners. At the time of the commission's report, it took an average of 10 years for a condemned inmate to get his death sentence reviewed by the California Supreme Court, as required by law.

Michael Millman, executive director of the California Appellate Project, says more than 300 inmates on death row are waiting to have attorneys assigned to work on their state appeals and federal habeas corpus petitions. He says there are fewer than 100 attorneys in the state qualified to handle capital cases because the work is dispiriting and demanding and the compensation inadequate.

Death penalty advocates argue that the lack of attorneys qualified to represent death row inmates in a state with a bar membership over 230,000 is deliberate.

"Choking off the appeals is part of the strategy" of those opposed to capital punishment, Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, says of what he calls unnecessarily elaborate state court requirements for taking on death penalty cases.

In their report, Alarcon and Mitchell raise the prospect of costly new legal challenges to the state's handling of capital inmates because of the dozens who have died while waiting for lawyers to be assigned for their appeals. Of the 92 death row inmates who have died since 1978, only 13 were executed in California and one was executed in Missouri, while 54 died of natural causes, 18 by suicide and six by inmate violence or undetermined causes.

Federal judges find fault with about 70% of the California death row prisoners' convictions and send them back to the trial courts for further proceedings, the report noted. That could make the state vulnerable to charges of denying inmates due process, the authors warned.

The report also says the corrections department and the Legislative Analyst's Office failed to honestly assess and disclose to the public what 30 years of tough-on-crime legislation and ballot measures actually cost.

"We hope that California voters, informed of what the death penalty actually costs them, will cast their informed votes in favor of a system that makes sense," the report concludes.

carol.williams@latimes.com

International Documentary Filmmakers

The Economist Film Project
http://film.economist.com/about.php

The Economist Film Project is an initiative by The Economist, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, to share the work of independent, international documentary filmmakers with global audiences interested in learning more about our world and its untold stories.

From Nigeria to China, from maternal health to international development to cross-border tensions, the project will feature films whose new ideas, perspectives, and insights not only help make sense of world events, but also take a stand and provoke debate. Selected films have been jointly curated by The Economist and PBS NewsHour to bring to the fore work by filmmakers who share these goals. We welcome your voice in this conversation.

The films you can explore on this website were first featured in news segments aired on PBS NewsHour. More films will be added on a regular basis through the end of 2011, so check back frequently to explore new stories.

Follow us on Twitter at @EconomistFilm to receive alerts.

Chinese to California

http://juejoeclan.blogspot.com/

Jue Joe Clan History

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

St. Helena Historical Society-" From Canton to St. Helena"

Last evening I attended a wonderful program organized by the St. Helena Historical Society, "From Canton to St. Helena -Chinese Immigration in the Nineteeth Century . My wife Liz and my Auntie Soo-Yin and her husband Ed were also in attendance.
In a previous post I have discussed Jue Joe's early years working in the vineyards around St. Helena .
Last night's program included famed Chinese American historian Philip P. Choy giving a great overview of Chinese immigration from Canton to California in the 19th century and earlier.
This was followed by a fantastic presentation by St. Helena historian Mariam Hansen who has spent many hours pouring over old microfilm records of the St. Helena Star Newspaper archived by the historical society. Mariam has complied the following timeline of the Chinese in St. Helena which is fascinating . I have included it below. I was happy to be able to share some stories about Jue Joe with the attendees as well .

Here is Mariam's timeline of Chinese in St. Helena :
1857-61 Chinese begin working for grape growers in Napa & Sonoma
1860 45,000 Chinese in Calif-20,000 miners, 20k railroad, 5k misc
1862 Anti-chinese "Coolie" Clubs exist as political groups
1867 most wheat labor done by Chinese and Indians
1869 Railroad jobs end-10K C.unemployed, move to agric areas
1870 Chinese are 10% of farm laborers
1871 Chinese harvesting grapes in Napa Valley
1872 Jan Overland Monthly writes "grapes in the northern portion of the state are picked by Chinamen, who will pick an average of 1500 pounds per day"
1874 24-Jan Anti-chinese anarchists set fire to Occidental Winery hay barn
1874 12-Nov Locals are outraged that Chinese have requested to use public schools in the evening for classes, when they don't pay taxes.
1874 10-Dec "tallow colored rat eaters of the celestial empire buy guns, shoot their way to the Flowery kingdom"
1875 19-Aug Wah Chung, the labor contractor, says he has 300 Chinese waiting to pick grapes
1875 26-Aug There are so many Chinese in Chinatown waiting to pick grapes and hops, all 3 wells have gone dry
1875 At harvest time 300 Chinese arrived in SH, contracted to pick grapes
1876 22-Apr Quong Goon Loong advertises "China Labor Furnished", and China goods for sale
1876 1-Sep SF Chronicle condemns use of Chinese for grape harvest, when 3000 unemployed boys 16-20 yrs old are willing to work for $15-20 a month.
1876 1-Sep Charles Storey began picking hops with 60 Chinamen employed
1876 15-Sep H.A. Pellet (first mayor of SH) owns Manzanita Winery. His Chinamen got his finger caught in a grape crusher
1876 20-Sep Editorial espouses hiring local boys for vineyard work, not Chinamen.
1877 25-May Slumlord Gillam received a threatening letter, saying his premises will be torched because he employs Chinese (he doesn't)
1877 8-Jun Chinaman killed at Rudolf Lemme's La Perla Winery when a hillside collapsed on him as he was excavating for a wine cellar.
1877 27-Jul "San Sing, at Ginger's China Store, furnishes help for cooking, railroad work, chopping wood, etc. at Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena, Calistoga. Good men at cheap prices!"
1877 29-Jul Chinaman working for John Lewelling burned a pile of brush, which got out of control due to dry conditions. Heavy fire damage.
1878 8-Feb Chinese residents invite the public to a "Grand Display of Fire Crackers" on Sunday at 4pm"
1878 7-Jun "Workingmen's Picnic" held in Napa with Denis Kearney, supremacist organizer as speaker. A load of St. Helenans rode south in a large bus decorated with a sign "Chinese Must Go".
1878 30-Sep "Ginger" the Chin merchant went bankrupt, debts of $1000
1878 majority of farm labor in Napa Valley still white
1879 22-Mar Mock You, married 28 yrs old woman died at Rutherfordof natural causes- no obituary
1879 9-May Editorial writes of Harpers Weekly "the paper did its best to break down the wine interest of California..with your fancy sketch of Chinamen treading out the wine with their feet"
1879 new Calif constritution discriminates against Chinese
1880 30-Jan Chinese laborers are plenty. Don’t patronize local merchants. Send money to china. Complaints about them always finding work.
1880 10-Sep 100 Chinamen working on the railroad between Napa and St. Helena. When poll taxes were due,they refused to pay. Railroad workers pass poll tax receipts from one to another, so that 100 receipts will do for 2000 Chinamen.
1881 28-Jan "John Weinberger made wine from wild grapes, but his Chinese drank it all (Chinese must go)"
1881 27-Jun Citizens "will be glad to know that..effort is being made to remove the filthy den of disease breeding Chinamen from the main street to a more retired situation..the entrance to town is marred by stench, noisy confusion, fighting, etc.
1881 list of Cal Italian vine growers: 141
1882 13-Jan Eddie Butler murdered at Occidental Winery by two Chinese who demanded payment of their wages. Butler refused to pay until the wine was sold.
1882 10-Mar Large anti-chinese meeting held at the Palace Hotel. Resolutions supported bills in Congress restricting Chinese immigration of persons who are "a curse and a blight upon the industries and morals of this country"
1882 2-Jun Newspaper warns against a white mechanic teaching his Chinese assistant,enabling him to undercut the price of white man's work.
1882 15-Sep Chinese worker on Ink's farm brutally assaulted. Editor urges prompt prosecution of the evil perpetrators, who are not named.
1882 20-Oct Chinese labor camp at the Washington Mine in Pope Valley burned down. Chin miners lived separately from whites.
1882 Oct Witness for prosecution Ah Chuck in Butler case was murdered in San Francisco
1882 24-Nov Ad for Quong On Lee's Chinese Intelligence Office-Men for picking, clearing, ditching, chopping,etc. Look for house in back of stores in Chinatown
1883 17-Jul Edwin Angwin rented land on Howell Mtn to Chinese farmers, who raised over $300 worth of strawberries on half acre.
1883 3-Aug Town marshal and a large posse of citizens arrest 13 gamblers,while about 50 escape. Prisoners are marched up Main Street, escorted by 100 or so whites, and put in jail.
1883 10-Aug "Celestial lawbreakers" have all pleaded guilty to gambling: casino owner fined $30, each gambler $15. Four were unable to pay and remain in jail.
1883 26-Oct Local boys assaulted an old Chinaman on Main Street in SH. Four boys arrested, given stern warning by judge and released. Editor warns these incidents will tarnish town's good name.
1883 2-Nov "Lively rumpus in Chinatown resulted in Ah Chung hitting Ah Kate over the head with a revolver. Ah Chung was arrested by Officer mcGee and brought before Judge Elgin, Fined $25. Being unable to pay, he went to jail in Napa."
1883 26-Nov Police raided a gambling parlor in Chinatown
1883 Napa County collected poll tax from 400 Chinese
1884 3-Jan "A gang of 15-20 men mounted on horse back and mules rode through town looking like a bunch of lawless Indians. They rushed into Chinatown, frightening a team of horses hitched to a Chinese vegetable peddler's wagon, causing a runaway and smashup"
1884 13-Mar Chinese Free Masons met in Justice Hunt's court to initiate 13 members, there being no hall in Chinatown large enough. 40 prominent Chinese from other parts in their brightly colored costumes conducted the ceremony, followed by a feast and fireworks.
1884 14-Jan Charles Krug has a gang of Chinamen on Howell Mtn clearing forest fo plant grape vines
1884 31-Jan Residents complain of their chickens being stolen by Chinese who are preparing the Chinese New Years feast.
1884 3-Mar 3,000 Chinese cigar factory workers were fired in San Francisco
1884 7-Apr Chinese man of high standing died of consumption, given a stately funeral procession with band, hearse, 50-75 men on foot, wagon with food for afterlife, 4 leading merchants of Chinatown.
1884 14-Apr Editorial complaining Chinese increasing wage demands from $1 to 1.50 per day. Alleged that Chinese contractors skim off a large share from the laborers.
1884 14-Aug Huge fire in Chinatown started in upper story of Quon Loong High China Store. Hook & Ladder boys arrived, followed by the hose company. 3 stores, lodging houses and contents destroyed. $5000 total lost.
1884 18-Aug Slumlord John Gillam is rebuilding new store on site of fire. The other stores will be rebuilt at once, as tenants are waiting.
1884 8-Sep Ah Choo died. Service held at temple in Chinatown, 100 men marched to the cemetery in fine costume, Musicians played at the grave in rites of their secret society.
1884 15-Dec movement afoot to evict all Chinese from their tenements and wash houses
1884 Fire in Chinatown
1884 Napa County collected poll tax from 500 Chinese
1885 16-Feb Chinatown "den of infamy" constructed in Chinatown, 2 story 10X12 foot building a disgrace to the town.
1885 19-Feb Chinese New Year began Saturday, when our "celestials" are good natured, giving candy, nuts and cigars to white friends.
1885 23-Apr Old Chinese man was run over by the train while walking on the tracks. No name given.
1885 4-Sep Editorial encouraging hiring white men tramping the roads looking for work, saying they work harder than Chinese and spend their money in white owned stores.
1885 4-Dec Sh protest against Chinamen held and Anti-Chinese League formed by 300-400 taxpayers, prominent citizens who want to rid the town by any lawful means. Editor cautions that grapes could not be harvested without them.
1885 11-Dec Anti-Coolie League of SH has 300 members. Rumor that Mongolians are preparing to leave town. League meets at city hall. VP-H.C. Rammers, Sec-A.B. Swartout, Sgtat arms-A.B. Williams.
1885 11-Dec Chinaman arrested for riding his horse on the sidewalk due to a passing funeral. Employer Parrott hired a lawyer to defend him. Charges dropped.
1885 18-Dec Editorial urges boycott of Chinese vegetable peddlers, servants and laundrymen. The Anti-Chinese League held a regualr meeting at city hall. Dr Davis evicted his Chinese tenants.
1885 Napa County collected poll tax from 687 Chinese
1886 2-Feb 300 Anti-Coolie marchers descend on Chinatown and demand residents leave in 10 days, residents lock up and leave, bosses requested to listen to group's demands. Vintners urge restraint, as other sources of farm labor not available.
1886 12-Feb Slumlord John Gillam writes to editor defending his ownership of Chinatown, saying the rents support his family. "No Chinatown in state is so well located but out of the way as SH"
1886 12-Feb Vineyardists call meeting to discuss labor question. Speakers say violence against Chinese is wrong, threats against employers is un-American, demanding they leave Chinatown is unlawful, labor and employers should coopeate on a solution, and all should find another site for Chinatown.
1886 19-Feb "Chinatown sold-Moon-eyed Denizens must find other quarters"-Anti-Coolie league reps buy property, narrowly beating out the Chinese Six Companies who were willing to pay more. Buyers are Simmons, Logan, Sciaroni and Davis
1886 9-Apr Anti-Chinese meeting held at Turner Hall, 400-500 locals attend, urge opening a white employment agency, urge boycott of those who employ Chinese.
1886 9-Apr New owners of Chinatown complain Chinese refuse eviction by showing their leases and hiring a lawyer. Deny accusations they bought to collect the high rents from the Chinese, but were fulfilling wishes of the town.
1886 9-Jul A new road from Rutherford to Lake County is being graded by 125 Chinamen, presently working in Sage Canyon.
1886 wheat gone, first trainload of fruit shipped east
1886 17-Sep Height of harvest, roads lined with grape wagons. Difficult to get enough white men and Chinese to work. "Chinese are insolent and are asking $1.25/day. They must be treated with respect, or they quit."
1886 Chinese are 88% of farm laborers
1886 24-Dec Logan & Sciaroni, owners of Chinatown, defend their actions and attempt to move Chinese residents to another piece of property, tenants owe 6 mos rent, hired a lawyer, case in US District Court.
1887 7-Jan Marshal Spurr & deputies raid Chinatown lottery game,capture 3 celestials with lottery box & tickets, Chinese deny charges.
1887 7-Jan Ah Joey is in the county jail for stealing and tried to hang himself with his queue. Henry Lange opend the Napa Valley Laundry. Ad proclaims "No Chinese Employed"
1887 14-Jan Chinese arrested last week plead guilty , pay fines, released
1887 1-Jul Fire at Dr. Dawsons started when a boy threw a firecracker on the roof. His Chinese servant put it out
1887 2-Sep Chinese hop pickers demand $1.25/day and strike. Editor urges white boys and girls to apply for work.
1887 23-Sep great scarcity of vineyard labor. Whites pd $2/day, Chin $1.25, some demand $1.50
1887 30-Sep Chinese grape pickers strike in Rutherford-want $1.50/day
1888 1-Jun Chinatown landlords still in court in procedural issue. W.T. Simmons may drop the case, collect rents until leases expire.
1888 29-Jul Yung Hong Sing died at Josephine Tychson's of burns
1888 Northern Italians from Genoa, Lombardy, Turin begin arriving to work
1889 8-Mar Editor of newspaper says Ch gambling unchecked in Ch-town
1889 9-Aug 
1890 24-Jan Deputy Constable Frank Sciaroni (part owner of Chinatown) requests residents not to light firecrackers at night, waking people up. Can light all they want in the daytime. At 2am they do it anyway. Town govment passes new law.
1891 1-Oct remains of 3 Chinese removed from SH Cem to China
1893 23-Jul Tong Sing died at Josephine Tychson's of burns-body sent to China
1893 17-Aug White laborers union formed, fight C. workers in prune orchards
1894 11-Jan Lee Han died at Niebaum Winery when a tree fell on him
1896 7-Jan Won You died in Rutherford of rheumatism at 70
1897 12-Mar Sam Kee was denied a permit to open a laundry on Pope Street near the railroad tracks. New city ordinance. Aetna Mine report describes Chinese laborers drilling holes for dynamite.
1897 45,625 Italians in Calif operate 2,726 farms
1899 17-Dec Qung Sing Lung General Store & Laundry sold to Wah Chung, who will not honor debts of seller. Ginger departs for China.
1913 2-Jun remains of 20 Chinese removed from SH Cem to China
1920 50% of farm labor is Mexican
1921 Portugese operate 8000 farms in Cal
1939 21-Jan Ah Joe last on list of Chinese burials, died at 89 in SH of heart ailment

If the world were a village of 100 people.

The World of 100

via Everyone's Blog Posts - My Modern Metropolis by Alyssa Anda on 6/2/11

There is no doubting the skill of designer Toby Ng. His designs have won him numerous accolades including the Red Dots Awards, International Design Awards, and the Hong Kong International Poster Triennial Awards. One of his projects, called World of 100, answers the question: If the world were a village of 100 people, what would its composition be? His answer consists of twenty posters based on statistics about the population around the world under different classifications. 

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The settling of the Americas

First Peoples in a New World

Colonizing Ice Age America

David J. Meltzer (Author)

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.

“A must read for anyone interested in what is undeniable the greatest debate in American archaeology. . . . Essential.”—Choice

“A masterful exploration and encapsulation of the last two centuries of American archaeology and the first five millennia of the earliest Americans.”—American Scientist

“Often lively and occasionally bemused, Meltzer's study—part detective story and part archaeological research—is stimulating and sometimes tantalizingly controversial.”—Publishers Weekly: Nonfiction (2)

"Meltzer's compelling account of the data and the debates takes readers behind the scenes of the often contentious arguments that have redirected the scientific pursuit of the first Americans."—Tom D. Dillehay, author of The Settlement of the Americas

"In remarkably comprehensive and lucid fashion, Meltzer synthesizes the complex and commonly conflicting evidence for the earliest human presence in the Americas and provides an honestly told lesson about the workings of scientific thought."—David Hurst Thomas, author of Skull Wars

"A natural storyteller, David Meltzer gives us a vivid picture of both the colonizing bands of humans who moved into the Americas and the researchers who followed their footsteps from Alaska to Chile. This is an insider's account, told with a keen eye and sense of humor, as if Meltzer were there when discoveries were made and when disputes were aired—as, indeed, he often was."—Ann Gibbons, author of The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earliest Ancestors

"The settling of the Americas has been a first-rate scientific puzzle since Columbus stumbled across the peoples of the Caribbean. David Meltzer is its ideal chronicler: a major participant in the research that is unlocking the mystery and a fine writer with a wry humor. Thank goodness there aren't too many scientists like him—science journalists like me would be out of business."—Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Colder and snowier winters caused by global warming?

 Researchers say climate change may be cooling California 

By Matt Weiser
mweiser@sacbee.com

Published: Saturday, Jun. 4, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A

Last Modified: Saturday, Jun. 4, 2011 - 12:17 am

Spring passed California by, and summer remains in hiding.

Nine tornadoes have torn up the Sacramento Valley from Oroville to Fairfield. A giant Sierra snowpack, still frozen fast, has put innumerable summer adventures on hold.

The Golden State's weather has gone haywire.

And it's not over yet: Sacramento can expect as much as another 1.4 inches of rain this weekend and temperatures 20 degrees below normal, with more mountain snow.

"It's what I call global weirding," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "This has been a very strange year all over the planet."

What's going on?

First of all, this spring's weather is not unprecedented, just uncommon. California has had wet, cold spring weather before, notably in 1983, a year that produced record Sierra snows.

This year, the blame falls on a complex interaction between La Niña and another phenomenon called a negative Arctic oscillation, Patzert and others said.

La Niña is marked by a cooling of equatorial waters in the Pacific – the opposite of El Niño. In the past, this pattern means an equal chance of wet or dry weather.

What made this year so wet was the negative Arctic oscillation.

Typical conditions make the Arctic colder than the mid-latitudes, which include the United States and Europe. This is a positive oscillation.

Negative conditions flip this around, making the Arctic warmer than usual and pushing cold air and a vigorous jet stream down into the United States and Europe.

The deadly blizzard that struck New York and other Northeast states in December is one consequence.

"It's a great snow producer, rain producer and tornado producer when it's in that pattern," Patzert said. "Nobody knows exactly what causes that."

One theory gaining traction is that climate change, in fact, may be to blame.

The theory was developed in several published papers by Judah Cohen, an atmospheric scientist in Massachusetts.

Cohen argues that ice melt in the Arctic has produced more snowfall across Siberia. All that snow creates a giant cold air mass that diverts the jet stream, contributing to the negative Arctic oscillation.

Cohen successfully predicted this winter's colder temperatures across the northern United States, but said the phenomenon influences weather on the East Coast more than the West.

Colder and snowier winters caused by global warming? It may be one of the counterintuitive consequences of climate change, he said.

"We don't understand everything, and we don't understand how the different feedbacks affect different parts of the climate system," said Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a private firm in Lexington, Mass. "It's very complicated. So we should expect the unexpected."

Californians have been getting plenty of practice at that.

Those nine tornadoes, for example: While far weaker than recent twisters in the Midwest, they caused significant damage to a handful of agricultural operations.

An almond farm near Ord Bend in Glenn County had half its trees in a 35-acre orchard destroyed by a tornado that touched down May 25. A roof was torn off a dairy barn at another nearby farm.

Nine tornadoes sounds like a lot, but the region actually had more in 2005. They typically occur when longer spring days warm up the land surface, then a cold storm arrives. The temperature difference creates wind shear and updrafts that can spin into a twister.

The region's farmers have been affected by more than tornadoes, said Jean Miller, assistant agricultural commissioner in Glenn County.

"The cooler weather is just not allowing the plants to grow like they should be," she said. "We have the possibility for diseases which we would not normally be having at this time of year, when it should be 80 or 90 degrees."

A lot of recreation is also on hold.

On Thursday, organizers of the storied Tevis Cup Western States Trail Ride decided to move it from July to October for the first time in its 56-year history. The 100-mile horse race uses a trail across the Sierra Nevada, from Squaw Valley to Auburn, that is completely snowed in.

The event avoided postponement in the big snow year of 1983 by using an alternate trail.

"Two months ago, we had planned on using that alternate route," said ride director Chuck Stalley. "But our alternate route is basically snowed in. It's been a rough year."

The statewide snowpack stands at 262 percent of average. Rather than shrinking, as it normally would by this date, the snowpack has held steady and even grown deeper in places with new storms.

In February, the Arctic oscillation returned to its positive phase, yet storms continue to hammer California. The likely cause is a third phenomenon: A cooling of the North Pacific Ocean called the Pacific decadal oscillation.

"I don't think we're done yet," Patzert said.

The state's reservoirs are brim-full, yet the snowpack still has to melt. This could lead to flooding problems, especially on the San Joaquin and Kings rivers, said Rob Hartman, hydrologist-in-charge at the California-Nevada River Forecast Center, a branch of the National Weather Service.

The peak of spring snowmelt, Hartman said, is probably now delayed to late June or early July – at least a full month late.

Hartman said the reservoir operators are confident they can handle the remaining snowmelt, but he remains concerned.

"This is a very unusual year," he said. "So there's a real possibility that we are underestimating everything."

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/04/3676297/researcher-says-climate-change.html#ixzz1OKOcnq5u