Mark's Notebook

All Articles - October 2005

Happy Halloween

Thanks to David Brandt for forwarding these to me!

Microwaves proven to cause brain damage

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Women Brawl Over Using Microwave

TAMARAC, Fla. (AP)

A Walgreens employee allegedly stabbed a co-worker in an argument over who could microwave her soup first, authorities said.

Both women wanted to use the microwave in the employee break room Wednesday afternoon, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

While they were fighting over who could use the microwave first, Mellesia Grant grabbed a large kitchen knife off the counter and stabbed Merloze Tilme in the abdomen, the sheriff's office said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/14/national/a133621D07.DTL

Church Agrees to Ban Swallowing Goldfish

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Florence, Ala. (AP)

The First Assembly of God Church has agreed to discontinue its practice of swallowing live goldfish as part of its Fear Factor ministry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked for a ban on the practice.

As part of the Fear Factor ministry at the church, teenage participants were asked to swallow live goldfish. No one reportedly became ill during the goldfish phase of the program that concludes this week.

Youth minister Anthony Martin said earlier the goal of the exercise was to teach teens about fear.

PETA thanked the church for the ban by sending a gift basket of vegan Swedish fish, a gummy candy, as an alternative to live fish.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/26/national/a173637D29.DTL

Please don't drink and fly

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Superman Hospitalized After Leap

GRAZ, Austria

A man who claimed he was Superman and could fly was hospitalized early Tuesday after leaping from a fourth-floor window, authorities said.

They said the man — who apparently had drunk several bottles of red wine before attempting the jump — appeared at the window ledge at around 4 a.m. and shouted: "I am Superman! Nothing can happen to me!"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/25/international/i183634D23
.DTL

Mapping project updates

I have fixed a bug in my Google Mapping Project. The bug prevented the viewing of maps by those using Internet Explorer 6. I hope you can all view the maps now.

I don't hesitate at all to add that using Internet Explorer is a known security risk if you have a PC. I suggest using Firefox instead. Firefox is quite fast and doesn't have the security holes that IE does.

The site also works with Mozilla and Netscape 7 on either Mac or PC.

Also on the Mac, Safari and Camino render the page well.

The mapping project, as well as much of the rest of this site, look really crappy on any version of Opera, which doesn't render tables the way I specify.

http://www.mixed-up.com/maps/

60 new cue sheets by Kenji and Nobuko Shibata

Kenji and Nobuko Shibata have a beautiful new web site. They posted over cue sheets, some of which are quite old. I have indexed all those cue sheets.

http://www.knshibata.com/

http://www.mixed-up.com/cgi-bin/cue/search?combo=shibata&word=1

Are religious societies better than secular ones?

AlterNet

By George Monbiot, AlterNet

Christian fundamentalists claim religion is associated with lower rates of violence, teen pregnancy and divorce. A new study says they couldn't be more wrong.

We know that the most dangerous human trait is an absence of self-doubt, and that self-doubt is more likely to be absent from the mind of the believer than the non-religious infidel.

But it is hard to dismiss Dostoyevsky's suspicion that "If God does not exist, then everything is permissible." If our lives have no purpose, why should we care about other people's?

In the current edition of the Journal of Religion and Society, a researcher called Gregory Paul tests the hypothesis propounded by evangelists in the Bush administration, that religion is associated with lower rates of "lethal violence, suicide, non-monogamous sexual activity and abortion." He compared data from 18 developed democracies, and discovered that the Christian fundamentalists couldn't have got it more wrong.

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion ... None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction."

Within the United States "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the Northeast where ... secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms."

Strangest of all for those who believe that Christian societies are "pro-life" is the finding that "increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator ... Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data."

The rich countries in which sexual abstinence campaigns, generally inspired by religious belief, are strongest have the highest early pregnancy rates. The U.S. is the only rich nation with teenage pregnancy levels comparable to those of developing nations: it has a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. Because they're poorly educated about sex and in denial about what they're doing (and so less likely to use contraceptives), boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get their partners pregnant than those who don't.

If we are to accept the findings of this one -- and so far only -- wide survey of belief and human welfare, the message to those who claim in any sense to be pro-life is unequivocal. If you want people to behave as Christians advocate, you should tell them that God does not exist.

http://www.alternet.org/story/26721/

Hip-hop ministry

San Jose Mercury News

By Glenn Lovell, Mercury News

A popular fixture on the local scene since February, The Firehouse has become a safe haven for "all young people at risk," explains San Jose pastor-activist Sonny Lara. "We're an alternative to the thug life, man. When they come here, they don't need to stand with their guard up; they can relax . . . be themselves."

The free, non-denominational nightspot meets the last Friday of each month at the old Oasis disco or, if that's taken, the St. James Community Center down the street. The club has been hailed by San Jose Recreation Superintendent Angel Rios Jr. as "cutting edge" and "a positive alternative" for kids who are confused or have lost their way.

Pastor Lara rents the St. James Street club from downtown developer Barry Swenson for a token $375 or "as close to that as we can come." He calls The Firehouse "neutral ground," a place where different religions and ethnicities can mingle without fear of the kind of gun violence that erupted Saturday morning outside the Ambassador Lounge on San Pedro Street.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12990615.htm

New England braces for Wilma, nor'easter

San Jose Mercury News

By Brooke Donald, Associated Press

The remnants of Hurricane Wilma plus a nasty nor'easter began kicking up high winds, heavy rains and coastal flooding Tuesday across New England, a region already saturated by days of rain.

The storm may produce 20-foot seas and a 3-foot storm surge, causing minor to moderate coastal flooding during high tide late Tuesday. A coastal flood warning was in effect through the evening.

The weather service also issued a winter storm watch for the Berkshires beginning Tuesday evening, with the potential for up to seven inches of snow at elevations above 1,500 feet. The expected wet, heavy snow, could bring down tree limbs and power lines.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/12991505.htm

Mark says: I hope everyone got into and home from the Berkshires dance safely.

New Mapping Project

I have added a new page where you can search for square or round dance clubs in California or Nevada, and the results are displayed on a Google map.

http://www.mixed-up.com/maps/

When you use the "advanced search" page to search for square or round dance clubs, you can also specify that results will be displayed on a map.

http://www.mixed-up.com/clubs/advanced.html

When you have searched for clubs using the standard search page, you can then elect to "show these results on a map." Here is an example of such a search:

http://www.mixed-up.com/clubs/search.html?bcou=SMa

Cowboy church rounds 'em up

Orlando Sentinel

by Mark I. Pinsky, Sentinel Staff Writer

The Rev. Gene Blankenship Jr. pulls up to the Kissimmee Valley Livestock Show building in Osceola Heritage Park every first and third Thursday evening of the month to preside at the Cowboy Church of Central Florida.

The cowboy ministry, which is supported by New Hope Southern Baptist Church in St. Cloud, began six weeks ago, after several years of planning. Blankenship says he feels called to "outside evangelism" -- nontraditional approaches to saving souls. He heard about cowboy churches in the West and Midwest, and thought the concept might work in Central Florida, with its long tradition of "cracker cowboys."

"Our goal is to reach those who enjoy the Western culture with the gospel of Christ, whether they're a working cowboy or a cowboy at heart," says Blankenship, 43, whose day job is running an audio-production company.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/orl-view1705oct17,0,4749708.story?c
oll=orl-home-entlife

Theology On Tap

San Francisco Chronicle

A priest walks into a bar -- and serves up some theology

by Marianne Costantinou

Not all is typical on this Tuesday night at Ireland's 32, one of the city's most popular bars, on Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District. On one side of the bar, about two dozen folks are gathered round, and while most are nursing beers, they're wearing name tags and speaking softly when they're speaking at all. But mostly they're just listening to two speakers. The crowd is made up of young people in their 20s and 30s. The speakers are old enough to be their mothers -- if they didn't happen to be nuns.

This is "Theology on Tap," a national series of seminars run in bars and restaurants by the Catholic Church. The program began 25 years ago in the Archdiocese of Chicago as a way to reach out to young people who either didn't attend church regularly or had questions that they didn't feel comfortable discussing on church grounds. Today, parishes in at least 30 cities host the seminars. In San Francisco, they're run by the archdiocese's Office of Young Adult Ministry and the University of San Francisco's Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought.

"This is where Jesus would be, with the people," said Mary Criscione, a lecturer at St. Patrick's Seminary and at Santa Clara University.

"You always get in debates in a pub. Heck, this pub would traditionally have political discussions," Eileen Salinas added, pointing to the bar's ceiling, covered with protest signs championing the Irish Republican Army. "Why not have a theological discussion?"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/THEOLOGY.TMP&nl=top

Obituary

Died: Oswald C.J. Hoffmann, voice of "The Lutheran Hour" radio show from 1955 to 1988, on September 8 in St. Louis after a brief illness. He was 91. Hoffmann represented the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the Second Vatican Council and served as North American chairman for the 1974 World Congress on Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. He served on the board of Christianity Today International from 1981 to 2000.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/7.22.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/national/18hoffmann.html

http://www.lhm.org/lhmint/estorypreview.asp?articleid=4146

(He was the father of Paul Hoffmann, who serves at Holy Cross Lutheran Church of Los Gatos, California, the church where I grew up in the late 60's and early 70's. -- Mark)

Latest numbers signal softening of red-hot home market

San Jose Mercury News

By Margaret Steen, Mercury News

The median house price in Santa Clara County dropped to $705,000 in September amid signs this month that Silicon Valley's red-hot real estate market is cooling.

New data available Tuesday also shows it's taking longer to sell homes. At the beginning of the year, it would have taken 28 days to sell all the homes on the market in the county, given the pace of sales then. It would take more than 54 days today.

The median price of a single-family resale home in Santa Clara County dipped in September to $705,000 from a record $714,000 in August, according to DataQuick. The median price of a condo was $480,000, up 23.7 percent from a year earlier but down from $490,000 in August.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/classifieds/real_estate/12939758.htm

Abolishing the Poll Tax Again

New York Times Editorial

Critics of Georgia's new voter-identification law, which forces many citizens to pay $20 or more for the documentation necessary to vote, have called it a modern-day poll tax, intended to keep blacks and poor people from voting. A federal judge supported these claims yesterday and blocked the law from taking effect. Instead of continuing to defend the statute in court, Georgia should remove this throwback to the days of Jim Crow from its lawbooks.

Under the new law, voters with driver's licenses were not inconvenienced. But it put up huge obstacles for voters without licenses, who are disproportionately poor and black. Most of them would have to get official state picture-identification cards and pay processing fees of $20 or more. Incredibly - beyond the cost imposed on such voters - there was not a single office in Atlanta where the identification cards were for sale.

Republicans claimed the law was intended to prevent fraud, but that was just a pretext. According to Georgia's secretary of state, Cathy Cox, in recent years there have been no documented cases of fraud through voter impersonation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/opinion/19wed2.html?th&emc=th

Silence on Suffering

Christianity Today guest opinion

Where are the voices from the Christian community on cruel and degrading treatment of detainees?

by Gary A. Haugen

President Bush faces a defining question of morality on which he has yet to receive any discernible guidance from the faith-based coalition that helped put him in office. The question: whether it is ever right for Americans to inflict cruel and degrading treatment on suspected terrorist detainees.

We read credible reports—some from FBI agents—that prisoners have been stripped naked, sexually humiliated, chained to the floor, and left to defecate on themselves. These and other practices like "waterboarding" (in which a detainee is made to feel as if he is being drowned) may or may not meet the technical definition of torture, but no one denies that these practices are cruel, inhuman, and degrading.

Today, the practical application of that question is whether the President should fight the efforts of a group of Republican senators, led by John McCain, who has introduced amendments to a defense bill that would outlaw such abuse. Two weeks ago, the Senate passed the McCain amendment, but whether it is put into place will be determined by the conference committee charged with resolving differences between the Senate and House defense bills.

Recent survey results from the Pew Research Center indicated that, in rating the importance of Supreme Court issues, the treatment of terrorist detainees is a close second only to abortion on the list of concerns of evangelical and Catholic voters. Where, then, are the robust voices of theological reflection and moral reasoning that we have come to expect in these debates?

While the President may have ruled out torture, the administration is currently reserving the right to treat some of its detainees with "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." The U.S. government is a signatory to an international treaty that bars such treatment, but the administration has maintained that such standards only apply to detainees held on U.S. soil. In fact, since April 16, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has explicitly authorized interrogation techniques that constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

How ought the President, as a man of faith and moral conviction, think through the ethical questions posed by these practices? In shaping practical answers, the President should be able to draw upon the serious theological reflections of leaders from his religious base.

Gary A. Haugen is President of International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency that rescues victims of illegal detention, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression around the world.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/142/12.0.html

Estonians Break Ground, Vote Online

Washington Post

By Jari Tanner, The Associated Press

TALLINN, Estonia -- This tiny former Soviet republic nicknamed "e-Stonia" because of its tech-savvy population is breaking new ground in digital democracy. This week, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet.

Thousands of people voted online in Democratic primaries in Arizona in 2000 and Michigan in 2004. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, has held several online referendums, the first in January 2003. But Estonia is the first to extend it to voters nationwide, experts said.

Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state. It gave the Linux-based voting system a trial run in January, when about 600 people voted online in a referendum in the capital, Tallinn. The plan is to allow online voting in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.

To cast an online ballot, voters need a special ID card, a $24 device that reads the card and a computer with Internet access. Some 80 percent of Estonian voters have the ID cards, which have been used since 2002 for online access to bank accounts and tax records.

In the United States, the Pentagon canceled an Internet voting plan for military and overseas citizens in 2004 because of security concerns. Plans for large-scale voting in Britain have also been dropped.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101400737.
html

What A Relief

CityTeam came to our church, Calvary Chapel of San Jose, to talk about opportunities for volunteers to do relief work on the Gulf coast. One of our members, Don Schottman, had already been to Mississippi even before CityTeam gave their presentation. Mary said she wanted to go. Now that she is no longer working, we both have the free time to do this. We had considered spending this autumn in New England, the winter in Arizona, and the spring in Italy, but God has other plans for us, for the autumn, anyway.

Debra Reyes of CityTeam was happy to talk to us this afternoon. In addition to Don, CCSJ members Joe Smith and his wife have also gone to Mississippi. CityTeam has ongoing relief efforts in both Mississippi and Louisiana, but right now they are mostly sending people to Mississippi.

They put Don to work putting on a roof, but I think that building has been finished and most of the "heavy lifting" is done. Right now it seems they are working mostly on light construction, fixing the building interiors, cleaning up, feeding the homeless, and helping people find their families, which requires some computer skills. But we're willing to help out however we can.

Because of other activities, we were trying to position our window between November 16 and January 20, hopefully not right at Christmas. (Mary's brother Robert Boston is a missionary to Paraguay but home on furlough until February, and we want to spend as much time with his family as possible.)

But because of conflicts trying to get all our families together at Thanksgiving, we told Debra that we would be available then. She was very happy because it is apparently difficult to find volunteers during that period.

We will attend a training meeting for two hours the evening of Tuesday, October 25. These training meetings are open to all, and if you're thinking you might like to be involved in this work, you are welcome to come by the meeting as a drop-in. It's the best way to get the whole scoop about everything that's happening. In fact, Mary and I still know very little about what we're getting ourselves in for, and we'll remain ignorant until the Tuesday meeting.

Debra advised us to get shots, Hepatitis A/B and Tetanus TD. She says some also get Typhoid, but we don't know why. We have already called our doctor and we can get these shots as walk-ins at his clinic. We plan to do that right away tomorrow morning.

It costs CityTeam $1500 to send one person to Mississippi for two weeks. We are not required to pay the $3000 for our own passage. But the money does come from donations. We can probably afford to make a donation to help pay our expenses, but not everyone can. We don't need your money since this isn't costing us anything. But your donation might make it possible for some other volunteer to go.

We really appreciate your prayers!

CityTeam has a web page about their hurricane relief efforts:
http://www.cityteam.org/katrina/

CityTeam San jose has a powerful ministry to the homeless:
http://www.cityteam.org/sanjose/

Calvary Chapel San Jose is sending help to hurricane victims through Calvary Chapel Stone Mountain in Georgia which is coordinating relief efforts on behalf of Calvary Chapels.
http://www.calvarysj.org/index.php?action=view&id=18&module=newsmodule&src=%40ra
ndom42bc3386510ee

Floor It

We got a quote of $250 to "possibly" fix some small damage to our vinyl floor near the dishwasher, but the repairman never called back. Sigh. We also got a ballpark quote of $2500-3500 to replace our 200 square foot kitchen floor with anything else. Bah.

Well, after pricing out laminate flooring at Home Depot, Lowe's, and Costco, we found this place in Fremont, Universal Floor Covering at 4500 Automall Parkway near Fremont Blvd. We worked with a gentleman named Sam, and his number is 510-659-9553. He had some Armstrong brand laminate flooring for only $1.74 per square foot. The entire price including underlayment and tax came to less than $500. When we picked it up, we bought an extra couple of boxes with which we hope to later replace the hallway tile as well.

Mary found this web page that shows how to install an Armstrong laminate floor:
http://www.internetfloors.com/armstrong_laminate_installation.asp

She also found this page that shows how to remove a ceramic tile floor, possibly the hardest part of the process, but something we will save until later anyway:
http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/diy_main/pg_diy.jsp

Mary's brother-in-law Jerry Bacho installed a floating hardwood floor when they remodeled last winter. There are some big differences between hardwood and laminate, mostly when it comes to cutting, but the preparation is the same and the installation procedures are similar. I'm sure he will be big help to us when we start this project. Jerry? Jerry? Where are you?

The nice guy in the "Tool Corral" at OSH found us the proper circular saw blade for cutting laminate. It takes a little searching to find the right one.

Self Storage

I bought a Powerbook G4 in July, but eventually its 40 GB drive became too confining. This is due to 12 GB of MP3 sermons on the drive, 11 GB of audio in AIFF format that I have recorded myself at round dances, and over 1 GB of photographs from the Vacation Bible School in August. (Note that the system itself takes up 5 GB, and my Applications folder account for 3 GB more. And the 40 GB drive really holds only about 37 GB.)

The sermons are files I brought home from church with the promise that eventually I would edit and downsample them to allow their posting on the CCSJ web site.

Recording audio at round dances was one of the main reasons I bought the thing. Previously, I had been recording to mini disk. But this method required me to play the entire dance again in real time at home if I wanted to copy it to a CD or convert it to MP3. The portable mini disc recorder/players do not allow fast digital audio out. Even the true digital optical input can accept data only in real time.

Anyway, while at Fry's on another errand, I found a 100 GB Seagate drive for only $179. Installing it myself was an adventure. I'd heard that installation in the Titatium Powerbooks was pretty simple, but installation in the Aluminum Powerbooks was Fear Factor fodder.

A brief searched turned up this detailed instruction page:
http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/53.11.0.html

Note in particular Page 6, which requires the removal of 14 screws of five different types. Also note that two of the screws require a Torx T6 driver to remove. A quick trip to OSH yielded the proper tool, and the young gentleman in the "Tool Corral" was well acquianted with the tools required for both computer disassembly and laminate floor installation (see separate article elsewhere). The hardest part of disassembly was the last picture on Page 7, removing the upper case, because something was catching on the front just to the left of the latch. I tried to bend the rest of the upper case forward, but this only made things worse. Eventually I bent it back down as far as possible, and it came unstuck.

These instructions cover disassembly but not re-assembly. Presumably one can undo everything in reverse order. Since I'm a bit of a klutz, I found it easiest to use a pile of identical plastic boxes to store the screws as they were removed. I put only one type of screw in each box, and I stacked up the boxes in order as I went along. When it came time to re-assemble, the first screws I needed were in the top box. The hardest part about re-assembly was the three battery compartment screws on Page 5, because it is not possible to position the screwdriver perpendicular to the surface. Thus the screws wanted to go in a little crooked.

Even though I'd used Carbon Copy Cloner and CpMac -r -p to copy the contents of one drive to the other, the computer would not boot from the new drive after I installed it inside the case. I fixed this by installing 10.3.3 from the DVD, and then applying the 10.3.9 combo updater. Of course, the nastiest part of this sort of update is adding all the security patches and application updates, about one-third of which require reboots.

It's all done now, the PB is humming along, and I can add one more Mac to the list of those whose warranties I've voided with a Torx driver.

Mortgage deduction on block?

San Francisco Chronicle

by Kathleen Pender

President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform is likely to propose next week a change in the deduction for home-mortgage interest that, if adopted by Congress, would have a drastic impact on the Bay Area and other regions with high housing prices.

Today, a married couple filing jointly can deduct interest on up to $1 million in mortgage debt. In a meeting Tuesday, the panel agreed to recommend lowering that limit, perhaps to the maximum mortgage that can be guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA limit varies by region, but in the Bay Area and most of coastal California is $312,895.

Such a plan is not likely to pass Congress, but it could spark interest in changing the hallowed mortgage-interest deduction.

"I think it's dead on arrival," says Ken Rosen, professor of real estate and urban economics at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "It's very biased against California and New York and favorable to Texas." The FHA loan limit throughout Texas is $172,632. That's more than enough to buy a median-priced home in Houston ($142,500) or Dallas ($149,100), according to the Realtors Association.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/13/BUG8VF7
E901.DTL

New SMS Translation of the Bible

The world's most famous book, which has been translated into more languages than any other publication, is now available in the world's most modern form of communication, SMS or text.

The idea, believed to be a world first, has come from the Bible Society in Australia which translated all 31,173 verses of the Bible into text.

It took just one person about four weeks to convert the entire new and old testaments to text.

The society used the Contemporary English Version and remained faithful to the grammar, changing just the spelling of the words.

Examples

In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth. (Genesis 1)

God luvd da ppl of dis wrld so much dat he gave his only Son, so dat evry1 who has faith in him will have eternal life & neva really die. (John 3:16)

U, Lord, r my shepherd. I will neva be in need. U let me rest in fields of green grass. U lead me 2 streams of peaceful water. (Psalm 23)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bible-cre8td-for-nu-wrl/2005/10/06/112856292
7820.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1586871,00.html

Jubilee at Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose

The Santa Clara Valley Square Dance Association (SCVSDA) hosts its annual Jubilee on October 14-16, 2005, at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose.

The dance features a wide variety of programs and activities including Plus, Advanced, Challenge, Rounds, Clogging, Beginners, Handicapable, Youth, afterparties, and a barbeque.

The main program includes a full time Plus hall, a full time Advanced hall with both A1 and A2, and a full time Challenge hall with dancing from C1 through C3.

There will also be several "intro" sessions, some novel. The Plus hall hosts an "Intro to Advanced," the Advanced hall hosts an "Intro to Challenge", and the Challenge hall hosts an "Intro to C2" session. None of these is unusual. But a new feature of this year's program will be the "Intro to Square Dancing" session for non-dancers on Friday evening, the "Blast Class" session for non-dancers all day Sunday, and the class-level session on Saturday night for those taking a class but not yet graduated.

The featured callers are Don Nordbye and John Saunders. Local callers include Roger Smith, Jim Osborne, Harold Fleeman, John Sybalsky, Robert Algea, Bob Elling, Pete Herman, Ken Carroll, Keith Ferguson, CJ Smith, John Bowman, and Eric Henerlau. Chuck and Shirley Hurst will cue rounds, and they will teach a round dance on Saturday morning.

The Jubilee web page is here:
http://www.scvsda.org/jubilee.html

And a list of opportunities for newer dancers is here:
http://www.scvsda.org/jubilee-nd.html

The Internet didn't kill the library card

San Francisco Chronicle

By C.W. Nevius

In the past five years, despite the overwhelming presence of the Internet, libraries are experiencing record attendance.

The new library is a sprawling, open, friendly place where people go to surf the Web on a Wi-Fi connection, sip a latte and check out a movie. There are still books, of course, but nationally the most popular items to be checked out of libraries are DVDs.

New libraries like Santa Clara's Central Park or Livermore's new Civic Center Library have gathering rooms for groups, coffee shops and loads of computers.

And the Internet? It turns out to be the library's best friend. Visitors use the library computers, and seniors come to learn computer skills in workshops and classes. So was everyone wrong about the threat of the Internet? Wouldn't be the first time.

Librarian Cindy Brittain keeps a copy of a news story at her desk. It details the concern that television is going to be the end of libraries. It is dated 1953.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/04/NEVIUS.TMP

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