High surf earlier this week at Santa Barbara’s Arroyo Burro Beach (Hendry’s Beach as it is known locally) has severely damaged the formerly sandy seashore. The photo above shows the aftermath of the big waves that pummeled the coast below the Douglas Family Preserve, unearthing jagged rocks that lay hidden beneath the sand. Beach-goers will notice that easy access is essentially cut off by the wet, slippery. and treacherous terrain. As of Thursday January 14 the shoreline just below Selrose Lane, southeast to the Mesa Lane staircase has been affected.
Levi and Tim kick of their KCSB premiere with Cathy Murillo, KCSB’s news director. Cathy highlighted the station’s contributions to the community with coverage of important visitors like the Dalai Lama, and emergency news coverage of local wildfires and future floods. Check out this week’s podcast page.
As the Santa Barbara School Board ponders the fate of the Cesar Chavez Charter School Dr. Jin Sook Lee was in the studio today with Tim and me on Intents & Purposes Radio to discuss the the school’s unique dual-language immersion program. Dr. Lee is a professor of Cultural Perspectives and Comparative Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on understanding how societal, cultural, and psychological variables influence the way people learn foreign languages. Check out this week’s podcast page.
This fall my colleague Timothy Grigsby and I started a new public affairs and eclectic music public radio show called Intents & Purposes on KCSB/KJUC Santa Barbara. Our latest episode features studio guests from City at Peace Santa Barbara, a non-profit organization helping teenagers to create safe, peaceful and productive lives through performing arts. Their group is hosting a climate awareness gathering tomorrow along with others around the world called Project 350. Also we featured music tracks from Systems Officer, David Bazan among others and a special international block.
UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Learning and Inquiry in Networking Communities (LINC) and the California Virtual Campus were the recipients of the 2009 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award, a competition that recognizes innovative uses of educational technologies in higher education for their project: Stepping Into Your Future. LINC Director Beth Yeager and I produced this video to highlight the project which has improved student retention and pass rates for K-12 students preparing for California’s English and Math high school exit exams.
During my class’s break today at The Anacapa School the students walked out to find a giant tour bus in front of the school with a likeness of Aerosmith’s Joe Perry on the side. Perry emerged from Our Daily Bread bakery across the street, jaywalked (which is against school rules, ha) to campus and signed autographs for each and every student. Fortunately for him it is a small school.
I spoke with Providence Business News reporter Ted Nesi last week about the FCC’s net neutrality announcement and the Commission’s lack of comment on “content neutrality.” Here is the article from today’s Weekly Technology Update in which I am quoted.
I am pleased to see that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski supports network neutrality. Allowing unencumbered access to an “open Internet” is vital to its continuing value and to Americans’ right to free speech. However, the chairman has not properly addressed a key underlying issue: content neutrality. If Internet service providers (ISPs) are to discontinue discrimination based on the source of data traffic, then so too should content providers end such practices. Under content neutrality media giants such as Disney, Google, Yahoo, etc. would no longer be allowed to demand payment from ISPs for access to their content.
For example, Disney’s ESPN 360 is using an online video content delivery model of demanding payment from ISPs based on total number of subscribers in order to provide all of the ISPs subscribers access to video content. The sports-media giant’s fear is that they would not be as profitable if they offered ESPN 360 only to individuals who chose to pay for it. So instead the fee is levied on all users, regardless of their individual interest level. Without content neutrality as part of the deal we will see the a-la-carte merit-based model of the Internet disappear in favor of a model where content is forced as a package on consumers by media giants. This will result in skyrocketing costs for Internet access and a crippled and “closed Internet.”
Col. Edward H. R. Green is known locally in Southeastern Massachusetts as the rich eccentric son of “Wall St. witch” Hetty Green, once the richest woman in the world. Col. Green spent his life trying to spend and give away his mother’s fortune making him the area’s most prominent philanthropist of his time.
MIT erected the "Radome" antenna on top of the Round Hill water tank in the 1950s. (image from Wikipedia)
Having grown up in Rhode Island and having spent much time in nearby Massachusetts I was always fascinated by the “dish” on Round Hill in South Dartmouth, Mass. Much of the information available to me as a child about this massive, seemingly alien structure was part of local folklore, a muddle of facts, stories and rumors. Some said it was an MIT experiment to eliminate fog, others said it was a radio antenna for listening to deep space. I never quite understood the connection between it and the impressive mansion just to the dish’s north until I began researching it as an adult. In my travels I found an original printed copy of this publication “WMAF: The Voice From Way Down East” published by Round Hills (sic) Radio Corporation in 1923. The document is somewhat of an early PowerPoint, outlining the company and the radio station as well as Col. Green’s passion for broadcasting.
WMAF was one of the first broadcast stations in the country when radio was born in the 1920s and WMAF and sister station WEAF in New York were linked via AT&T cable and carried live music, theater and other entertainment on the airwaves between New York and Massachusetts.
Today his mansion on Round Hill is condominiums and his water tank turned lighthouse turned MIT radio antenna demolished, but his legacy as a radio pioneer and early technology enthusiast is documented in this booklet and several other local publications. Col. Green was a bizarre and interesting character whom, if alive today, would most certainly have his own reality show and it would be far more interesting than The Apprentice.
For more on Col. Green and his story check out the book Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green and the World He Created at Round Hill by Barbara Fortin Bedell. It may be available from Partners Village Store in Westport, Mass. for cover price: $39.95.
