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Who Let the Blogs Out? Legal Experts Offer Tips on Avoiding Trouble

The race into the blogosphere has reached a feverish pace. Statistics house Technorati estimates that some 75,000 blogs are created every day, nearly one per second, joining the more than 40 million blogs already populating cyberspace. That's twice as many blogs as there were just six months ago. And newspapers of all sizes clearly have no intention of being left behind, as E&P has documented over the past two years. At McClatchy Co.'s News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., for example, Public Editor Ted Vaden says his newspaper has expanded its stake from a half-dozen blogs a year ago to 18 today.

But with all the excitement and potential for new readers and financial invigoration, something else is rippling: growing unease about the dangers of blogs -- especially legal liabilities in the land of the free and perhaps overly brave.

"There is a lag between newspaper publishers' rush to monetize blogs and at the same time making sure their ethics policies and internal editorial controls keep up with the rollout of new forms of technology and content," warns Seattle-based attorney Robert A. Blackstone, partner at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

At http://www.washingtonpost.com/, which sometimes posts blog entries without editing them, blog humor columnist Joel Achenbach said, "I keep thinking today is the day I will write something that destroys The Washington Post as a newspaper." But he quickly adds that he sees no clear and present danger, neither from his own writing nor from the voluminous number of comments his blog generates: "I think the vast majority of people who want to participate in our blogs are intelligent and civil."

Read this at > Who Let the Blogs Out? Legal Experts Offer Tips on Avoiding Trouble

Cyprus: Aspects of the Problem

The Cypriot and foreign press, as well as the testimonies given to the authorities of the Republic by various sources, prove that more than 500 Greek Orthodox churches and chapels and 17 monasteries that are located in towns and villages of the occupied part of our island have been pillaged, deliberately vandalised and/or torn down. The current location of their ecclesiastical furnishings and items (which include more than 15.000 portable icons) remains unknown to this day. The most significant and priceless of these icons have already been auctioned off and sold by art dealers abroad. Since the summer of 1974, all the legitimate archaeological excavations in the occupied part of the island in the Districts of Ammochostos (Famagusta), Kerynia and Morfou were interrupted and transferred to the free areas of Cyprus.

Unique archaeological remains dating to all the historical periods of Cypriot civilization, including countless sculptures, ceramics, figurines, statuettes, basins, tools, weapons, manuscripts, historical accounts and other works of art have been stolen and illegally exported to be sold at high prices in the international market. This is a clear indication that illegal excavation of archaeological areas is commoplace.

The Department of Antiquities has both evidence and testimonies of destruction that has occurred not only due to abandonment but also to illegal excavations, looting and/or building activities. This information has reached the Department of Antiquities either via articles in the Turkish-Cypriot press sometimes accompanied with photographs, or via various government sources. Most sites and monuments have been given Turkish names in an attempt to disassociate them from their origin and context, thus alienating them from their true identity.

In addition to the looting of museums in the occupied areas, illegal exportation of antiquities and smuggling of items permanently exhibited or displayed in the museums or forming part of unpublished material from the storerooms of foreign archaeological missions, was reported. The Department of Antiquities has similar testimonies concerning missing Byzantine icons, ecclesiastical vessels, embroideries and woodcarvings from the Bishopric of Kerynia, as well as all the icons and manuscripts kept, until 1974, in the Centre for the Conservation of Icons and Manuscripts of the Monastery of Agios Spyridon in Tremetousia. These activities are tangible proof for the total lack of respect towards the Greek Orthodox places of worship, and by the Turks in the occupied areas.
Read this at > Press and Information Office - Aspects of the Problem

Official warning on Windows bugs

The US Department of Homeland Security has urged Windows users to install the latest patches from Microsoft as quickly as possible. In particular it warned about one bug fixed in the latest batch of security updates that, if exploited, could put a PC under the control of an attacker.

Microsoft's recent update fixed 23 flaws found in Windows software.

Many of these bugs are known to malicious hackers and some are already actively exploited on the net.

Get the updates now, go to > Official warning on Windows bugs

Sophocles' Oedipus gets a cheeky, interesting makeover

Sophocles’ tragedies get a cheeky and interesting makeover by Nova Arts Project.

Not content with tackling all three of Sophocles’ Oedipus tragedies in a single “freely adapted” treatment, they’ve also given one (Oedipus at Colonus) an irreverent new title: The Gods Are Big Poop Heads. It’s the theatrical equivalent of standing in an electrical storm and daring lightning to strike.

Yet the fact that Oedipus Rex and Antigone retain their original titles evinces a certain inconsistency in Nova Arts’ Oedipus. Especially at the start, an antic air suggests the company intends to kid the material. Teasingly slangy, the dialogue abounds in anachronisms. The oracles and messengers are played in broadly comic style, like figures in a Monty Python skit. One bewilders Oedipus with a set of increasingly ridiculous demands culminating in “Now do the hokey-pokey and shake yourself about.”

Read the review > Sophocles' Oedipus gets a cheeky, interesting makeover

How the web went world wide

In a few short years the web has become so familiar that it is hard to think of life without it.

Along with that familiarity with browsers and bookmarks goes a little knowledge about the web's history.

Many users know that Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed the web at the Cern physics laboratory near Geneva.

But few will know the details of the world wide web's growth - not least because the definitive history of how that happened has yet to be written. So here's your chance to learn everything. Just read this > How the web went world wide

Revealing secrets of Archimedes

In this excellent coverage Revealing secrets of Archimedes by Lisa M. Krieger of San Jose Mercury News the reader can read in a non-scientific written article, that is in simple and understandable Enlish, all about the discovery which I think must be considered as one of the most important of this century. Not because it makes me proud being a Greek, but because mankind will be able to understand and appreciate Archimides’ work.

It is known that Archimides exclaimed the famous ”Eureka!” upon discovering how to measure volume while sitting in his bathtub.

The article includes some excellent pictures and graphics as well as a short history about medieval scripts.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED

Curator’s Web site: www.archimedespalimpsest.org

• Today, 7 p.m., Cantor Museum, Stanford University: Stanford physicist Uwe Bergmann will explain how the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is used in reading the Archimedes text.

• Friday, 4 p.m.: Exploratorium Webcast: www.exploratorium.edu/archimedes/index.html

I highly recommend you to read the article. I’m sure you will agree with me. Here is the link > Revealing secrets of Archimedes

The Splendid Corpse of Byzantium

Today, the very name of Byzantium is known to many readers only thanks to W.B. Yeats, who used it as a blank canvas on which to project his poetic fantasies.

The title of "Sailing From Byzantium" (Delacorte, 336 pages, $22), Colin Wells's smart and accessible new history, pays homage to Yeats's famous poem, "Sailing to Byzantium," which makes "the holy city" a metaphor for the eternal realm of art:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Read more > The Splendid Corpse of Byzantium

Odyssey/Greece/Homepage

Welcome to Greece! When you look at the night sky you see constellations named for heroes and heroines of ancient Greek mythology - Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Orion, and Perseus.

You may live near a city that takes its name from ancient Greece, like Athens in Texas, Georgia, or New York. Nashville, Tennessee calls itself the "Athens of the South" and is home to an exact replica of the Parthenon, the 5th-century BC Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. Their NFL team is even called the Tennessee Titans, named for the first of the ancient Greek gods.

One of our most significant human accomplishments - manned flight to the moon - was named for the Greek god Apollo. The center of American government and well-known American national monuments look back to the buildings of ancient Greece. Why are we fascinated with ancient Greece?

Greek culture - its myths, theater, architecture, and sports - has influenced and inspired people for centuries, even millennia! We see the evidence of ancient Greece around us every day - in the constellations we identify in the heavens or the Olympic games held every four years; in the stories we tell and in the movies we see; in the architecture of our houses, churches, and public buildings and in our democratic system of government.

In this section of Odyssey Online, we'll look at ancient Greek objects to learn more about the people who made and used them, the rich culture of these people, and their legacy in our lives today. First, where is Greece? Take a look at a map. Odyssey/Greece/Homepage