GHOSTBUSTERS CLUB WHO'S WHO 7
Silicon Wadi (Arabic for valley) - High-tech prowess of Israel's 6 million people, a small, feisty cyberrevolution player with denim-clad 20s millionaires among 110,000 high-tech workers. "If Israel had 33 million people it would not be No 2," Governor Davis said. Many of Israel's top computer minds are lured to California or involved in joint projects with California companies, cooperation Davis seeks to deepen.
Near Giryat Gaton, Israel, and Intel's $1.5 billion plant, lies isolated West Bank Bedouin camp Al-Kaabneh where 2,000 Palestinians live without electricity, phone lines or clean running water, a region still with no final peace treaty with Israel. Children walk 6 miles through Judea's desert to school. Their parents labor in Israel or sell tapestries woven the same way since 3000 BC. Greenstar installed solar panels on school, mosque and infirmary, running a computer and refrigerating much-needed vaccines. With state-of-the-art technology Greenstar hopes to leapfrog conventional land grids and provide Al-Kaabneh with e-commerce potential to escape poverty and isolation. With solar electricity and battery recharging Al-Kaabneh jumped from one to 20 cell phones.
"Far from the world, now we're at its center," said village English teacher Suleiman Najada, who prints out test papers and looks up information for the first time in his career. A miniature 2-way satellite gives Web access, marketing village crafts online. San Jose's Liquid Audio Inc markets traditional Bedouin music from Al-Kaabneh digitally recorded straight to an Apple PowerBook. Greenstar's Al-Kaabneh project, a prototype Greenstar hopes to take to the developing the world's remotest regions, is an example of many Californian high tech solutions Davis had in mind on his 4-day visit to Israel, Palestinian Gaza and Egypt with several California business executives in tow, capping a 14-day journey beginning in London and including Ireland and Greece.
In Gaza Davis met Yasser Arafat, who hopes peace with Israel will bring his people economic development. Davis stressed California's expertise in wastewater management and water supply for Gaza, which like most of the Middle East suffers severe drought. "Our high-tech economy can play a big role in prosperity following peace," said Davis, citing Sun and Oracle as already active in the Palestinian Authority.
In Tel Aviv Davis spoke to the Israel America Chamber of Commerce. In Jerusalem he met with Ehud Barak. Like Davis, Barak attended Stanford and is a highly decorated former military commander. "We hit it off. I told California's story to the region's leaders. Business offers economic opportunity," Davis said. Davis declined to speak about the peace process, his role being to carve a place for California and its edge in environmental technology. California is home to 22% of America's environmental companies. TetraTac and Environ bid to clean up a hazardous waste project. Barak told Davis of another problem site near the U S ambassador's residence.
With Israel poised to withdraw from more of the West Bank and the Golan Heights as part of a peace treaty with Syria, Davis also told Barak of California's experience transforming military bases to civilian use and disposing of chemicals and munitions. Barak, accepting an invitation to visit California, lit up with recognition seeing Zvi Alon, owner of San Jose software company Netmanage Inc. "I met Barak in San Jose just before the election," said Israeli-born Californian Alon, founder of Israel's largest Internet server company, Netvision. Alon called Davis's trip awesome, saying it would boost trade. A networking trip to Egypt, organized by California's Trade and Commerce Dept, led Santa Rosa's DriWater Inc to complete deals worth $4.8 million with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. An additional $25 million in sales in these countries pends for DriWater, supplying farmers with water suspended in semisolid gel packets that placed at the roots of certain plants provide 24/7 moisture for months.
"Water scarcity has plagued the Middle East for centuries. I'm glad a California company profoundly impacts an age-old problem," said Davis. Menlo Park's Accurate Sound Corp won a 2-year contract worth over $2 million to supply air traffic-control recording equipment to Egypt's government. In Israel Davis met with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, now minister of regional cooperation. At Ben-Gurion University in the Negev Desert Davis signed a memorandum of understanding to promote biotechnology and environmental technology exchanges between California and Israel. Israel is California's 25th largest export market. Egypt is California's 42nd largest export market.
Accompanies Gov Davis on exchange visits with Mexico's President. President Clinton names him western regional Census 2000 coordinator. Prosecuting attorneys take softer stands towards ghostbusters' cases and work in community crime prevention projects.
Law school diplomas and legal certificates lining California State Attorney General office walls are replaced with grainy black-and-white photos of Somali mine workers. Once-locked doors in the spacious office suite are open. The basement two-car cinderblock garage with rolldown metal doors and private elevator is parking space for employees of the month. Lockyer increases communication with deputy attorneys general, many of whom never saw Lungren during his 8 years in office. Lockyer shuns the private garage, unlocks 17th floor doors and rides workers' elevators. As the Legislature's top senator Lockyer instigated an open-door policy in the Senate president pro tem's suite off the ornate Senate chambers. "Traditional pyramids don't work," Lockyer said. "You can't be the best attorney general unless people in this department are motivated to work hard and well." Well before his election Lockyer vowed to steer the department in a new direction, toward civil rights, environment, consumers. "Instead of the state's chief law enforcement officer, the top cop, the attorney general is the steward of justice. Justice is more than crime and punishment." Lockyer uses his broad powers as the state's chief lawyer and law enforcement officer to defend the state against lawsuits and represent the people in actions protecting the environment and consumer and civil rights. The department also helps local law enforcement investigate crimes, analyze forensic evidence and enforce drug laws. A career politician serving in California's state legislature for 25 years before becoming attorney general, Lockyer hit the ground running, petitioning the federal court to outlaw jet bikes and other two-stroke engines on Lake Tahoe. Stressing the non-criminal law side of the office during his campaign, Lockyer also modernizes law enforcement tools. Lockyer seeks to improve computer and crime technology by, among other things, adding palm prints to fingerprints already on file. 40% of crime scenes have palm and finger prints. 12% only have palm prints.
Thank you for contacting the Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. We look forward to serving you. A staff member will reply to you shortly. - Gov Schwarzenegger's autoresponder message.
"Like a knife in my head." A painful blood-fed tumor pressing into the left side of his cerebral cortex, crushing his optic nerves, left Oakland native Randy Tamez legally blind and at the edge of the Internet's next frontier: government-mandated cyberspace access for the disabled. Radiation and two 1986 operations killed the tumor but it blinded his left eye and left him with 20/2800 vision in his right. Tamez sees shapes, shadows and light but can't read, watch TV or see details. Devastated, Tamez had to relearn how to live, walk, everything. In SJSU's student computer center Tamez found keyboards friendly thanks to learning touch typing in high school. Even in the high-tech world Tamez encountered barriers. School computers had none of the technology vision-impaired persons needed, like large print readers and voice technologies. With his reader Tamez researched state and federal regulations on disability rights, including the ADA. In 1995 Tamez filed a letter of complaint with U S Dept of Education alleging the school didn't provide disabled students with equal access to the school's computers. That complaint was resolved when SJSU purchased equipment and trained staff to enable handicapped students to use university computers and Internet connections more easily. An SJSU spokesperson citing privacy regulations would not comment on the complaint but said SJSU spent $1,083,850 on ADA-related campus improvements since 1993. Filing that complaint showed Tamez his disability wasn't as crippling as he thought.
With a $25,000 Social Security grant Tamez bought a high-speed desktop computer, a laptop and a voice synthesizer. Connecting with the outside world he exchanged strategies with other disabled computer users on how to knock down Internet barriers. According to a 1996 American Foundation for the Blind study, 1/3 of blind and visually impaired Americans have computers, a ratio almost equal with sighted Americans. That same study found that nearly 40% of blind people overall had used a computer. 1/3 of those had Internet access. "We're taking over," laughed Tamez. As more and more sensory impaired users go online the more barriers they find in front of them, the biggest of which is the World Wide Web. As websites fill with pictures, video and sound, text becomes a secondary concern to designers. Text drives the Internet, especially screen readers helping sight- or hearing-disabled persons use the Web. The Internet was friendly when it was text-based. Multimedia erects new barriers.
Tamez's lemon and green parakeet Birdy jumped excitedly as a speech synthesizer voice recited words across the screen, "My computer. Netscape Explorer 3 point oh. Connected at 24.4." Tamez deftly logged onto several regional mass transit sites, jumping from page to page, showing off each site's pros and cons. On the Metropolitan Transportation Commission site (http://www.mtc.ca.gov) he was stymied when the machine called out, "edit field." "Edit field what?" said Tamez. "A sighted person told me this is an e-mail form but I can't tell that from what my machine tells me." A visitor asked Tamez to log onto Amazon.com, a popular bookselling website he has yet to explore. "Text only," the screen reader declared, reading the site's tags. Tamez got lost on the text-only site. The machine recited confusing links and fields not following a logical course from left to right, top to bottom. He peered an inch of the monitor. "I see colors but that's it. I'm lost." In 1989 Tamez entered San Jose State University (SJSU) as a political science student. Grants and scholarships paid a reader to help him with library research. Textbooks were read to him on cassettes. Students ushered him across campus. "Being treated as a disabled person showed me the world is not set up for disabled people."
Tamez filed a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, overseer of 9 Bay Area counties' transit systems, alleging inability to access site documents including bus and train schedules violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, one of the first formal complaints filed against a website. Other complaints allege San Francisco and Washington DC fail to make public touch-screen computer kiosks compliant with hearing- and vision-impaired users. Both cities promise to enact guidelines and training to make the kiosks ADA compliant. The feds are taking notice. Sept 1996 the DOJ ruled on inquiry by Sen Tom Harken, D-Iowa, that websites were subject to ADA regulations A U S Civil Rights Commission report urged the government to more proactively create Web disability access standards. "Websites are like public buildings. You can't discriminate against people who can't climb stairs. Why should disability make you a second-class citizen in cyberspace?" Tamez said.
Some don't welcome government Web involvement even for the disabled. Former motorcycle racer Ted Henter, blinded in an auto accident, created JAWS (Job Access With Speech), one of the first viable commercial screen readers. Henter calls voluntary standards the answer for Web disabled. "It's a piece of cake to make Websites work for us. I hate when the government makes rules. It's not worth having them involved." Countered Tamez: "That's like saying people voluntarily drive the speed limit when you know they go over it when no one's watching. We need someone to watch. Only the government can."
Randy's home page Randy's document page
Joyful, joyful - going online and finding this!
After weeks of secret planning, President George Bush sneaks away at night and boards Air Force One, accompanied by Condoleeza Rice and hand-picked reporters summoned only hours before, and flew with lights out across the Atlantic Ocean to Baghdad's airport for a surprise visit to the troops. Entering on cue from behind a curtain as the most senior officer present to deliver the President's Thanksgiving speech, Bush said he wanted a warm meal. Troops stood on chairs and tables yelling their approval. News of his visit were released after Bush returned home, boosting citizen morale as well despite safety concerns.
Retired Canadian engineer Herbert Hilgenberg broadcasts accurate Atlantic marine weather forecasts from his home, the one with satellite dish and the high-frequency radio antenna. Commercial ships and ocean-going yachts check in with him every day. Hilgenberg jots down their sea conditions, wind speed and direction, and downloads weather data from the U S, Canada and Europe. Hilgenberg often locates ships missing at sea, saving countless lives.
Since early Nov 2001 when California Governor Gray Davis ordered the National Guard to patrol San Francisco Bay Area bridges. Robin Lynn, 44, delivers breakfast and lunch, including home-cooked French toast and lasagna, to soldiers working 12-hour shifts on the Golden Gate and Bay bridges. She wants people to remember the soldiers are there. People started donating money towards Lynn's expenses after her story was told on radio KFOX.
We'll never win the war against Musalim fundamentalists if we ever abandon the Middle East's only democracy just because it's Jewish.
JOPLIN MO - A jury agreed that vapors from butter flavoring at the microwave popcorn factory where Eric Peoples, 32, worked permanently ruined his lungs. He's happy with the $20 million verdict and 29 other former Gilster-Mary Lee plant workers in Jasper with cases pending against the same butter-flavoring manufacturers. The burden of proof is on them. Jurors deliberated 3 hours before ordering flavoring manufacturers International Flavors and Fragrances Inc and its subsidiary Bush Boake Allen Inc to pay $18 million to Peoples and $2 million to his wife Cassandra. These former factory workers all suffer from damaged airways and breathing problems. The manufacturers knew their butter flavoring was hazardous but failed to warn them of the dangers or provide adequate safety instructions. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) also linked exposure butter flavoring vapors to lung disease in popcorn factory workers in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Health officials insist people who microwave popcorn are not in danger although the EPA is studying chemicals released into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped. Peoples, of Carthage, was selected to have his case heard first because he's among the sickest of the Gilster-Mary Lee workers. Trial testimony showed that if his health remains stable he could wait at least 10 years for a needed double-lung transplant. Life expectancy is 10 years for lung transplant recipients.
"Eric feels like he's in prison," his attorney, Ken McClain, told jurors in closing arguments. "He'll eventually go through the physical pain of a lung transplant, knowing he's going back to prison because he'll eventually get lung disease again." On CBS Early Show Peoples said he worked at the plant about a year when he experienced what he first throught were cold or flu symptoms. He tried to treat it with over-the-counter medications and nothing worked. He finally went to a hospital emergency room in late 1998 "and it just went from there." McClain said the next trial is set for April 20 in Joplin. He also has cases pending in Illinois and Iowa. He wants to keep the pressure up and get these cases done ASAP. Attorneys for the manufacturers left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
During their closing arguments they told jurors their product is safe when handled properly. Information sent to popcorn plant officials warned the flavoring should be mixed in a well-ventilated area and a respirator should be worn when heating it. "We know beyond shadow of doubt if you use basic hygiene practices you don't have a problem in this plant," said attorney Mike Patton, for New York-based International Flavors and Fragrances. Gilster-Mary Lee, not named in the suit, remodeled the plant and ordered workers to wear respirators after government investigators in 2001 linked a chemical in the butter flavoring, diacetyl, to workers' illness. The SW Missouri plant still uses the same butter flavoring with no reports of illness since changes were implemented, Patton said.
DEAR ABBY: I'm 13 and in the 8th grade. For my Health and Human Services class I did an oral report about my future career. I've wanted to be president of the United States since 5th grade. My teacher laughed and told me I had very little chance of making it, but didn't say why. Classmate Jim laughed hysterically and said girls aren't allowed to be president. I said, "Yeah, and I'll bet the idiots who came up with that idea were guys!" Upset, I ran out of the room. Schoolmates call me names and spread rumors about me. Jim tripped me and made me bite my lip. I try to ignore them but it's hard. They keep laughing at me. My teacher is no help. I lose sleep and feel horrible. I didn't realize so much trouble could come from revealing a dream. It's not like I'm not ambitious enough. I'm in the National Junior Honor Society and my poems were published in the paper more than once. Guidance counselors do nothing. Mentioning my career ambition to my family gets me "That's nice, dear." My dream is turning into a nightmare. - I HAVE A DREAM
DEAR I HAVE A DREAM: Clip this and show it to your male chauvinist teacher. Because a woman has never been president of the United States does not mean it won't happen. 50 years ago the saying was, "A woman's place is in the home." Today more women work outside the home than in it. This year for the first time, there were more female applicants to medical schools than male. Don't let classmates get you down. If necessary, ask your parents to get involved to stop the harassment. Those who imply you can't fulfill your dreams are wrong. I expect to see a woman elected president in my lifetime and who's to say it won't be you? Not this columnist!