I’m at the first public meeting of the World Trade Center Health Registry. More than 71,000 people registered and gave 30-minute interviews on their health after the attacks; it is the largest health registry in U.S. history. There are perhaps a few hundred in the room tonight. I look around at this diverse crowd of people and realize that the only thing that brings us together is what we experienced that day.
Tonight, they will release their first results and answer questions.
: A few days ago, I went to my doctor for a checkup and he ordered an annual chest X-ray since I inhaled a great deal of the cloud of destruction that day, which led to pneumonia and then to my cardiac fibrillation. The doctor warned me that my insurance might not cover the X-ray. What? “There’s no code for 9/11,” he said. Cough.
: In the registry, 61 percent were building occupants or passers-by; 43 percent were rescue workers; 21 percent were residents of the area; 4 percent were school students and staff. 42 percent were caught in the dust and debris cloud; 55.7 percent witnessed at least one traumatic event; 14.4 percent evacuated from a damaged building; 5.8 percent worked on the WTC pile. In the preliminary findings, 67 percent reported respiratory health symptoms. Adult enrollees reported higher rates of psychological distress than the citywide average (8 v. 5 percent).
A first study of a subgroup concentrated on survivors of collapsed and damaged buildings, not passers-by (like me) or rescue workers. Of them 95 percent witnessed a traumatic event, 64 percent three or more; 62 percent were caught in the cloud; 44 percent sustained injuries; 57 percent reported respiratory problems and 11 percent probable severe psychological distress.
Those caught in the dust cloud have much worse health problems than the rest: 46 vs. 25 percent reported sinus irritation, 44 v 21 shortness of breath, 34 v 17 persistent cough, 14 v. 6 psychological distress, 2 v 1 percent newly reported asthma. These problems were reported two to three years after 9/11.
That is frightening for those of us who did inhale and ingest the debris from that cloud.
A study about evacuation found that women — who usually are the first out in a disaster — were slower in this case because of the difficulty they had with their footwear. In the news story I wrote that day and my podcasts later, I recalled coming to the concourse of the World Trade Center moments after the first plane hit the first tower and seeing shoes scattered everywhere; women ran out of them.
Truly frightening: The disabled were slower to get going and get out and were three times more likely to be injured.
We are about to get a followup survey and they will send specific surveys to residents about their homes, to rescue workers about their masks, and to building survivors about their experience in evacuation. There are papers being prepared n ow on the probable level of post traumatic stress disorder among residents, rescue workers, and survivors; asthma and injuries among child survivors; mask use; and respiratory health of lower Manhattan residents.
: In the Q&A, I asked them to give our doctors guidelines on what to look for in us and to do PR to get the insurance companies to recognize a code for 9/11. They said they are sending out new guidelines to New York doctors; I asked that they send them to Jersey, too. Another registrant asks about the ongoing screenings we should have and how to judge ongoing respiratory problems; he said that he and his neighbors all say they just do not breath as deeply as they did. The person running the evacuation study said they have learned a lot about perparedness and found that most was “unbelievably suboptimal.” She said we were lucky on 9/11 insofar as the World Trade Center were occupied by only 17,000 people who were evacuated when there could have been more than 100,000 people in them.
Terry Semel keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper… pretty soon, he’ll reach China.
At the haughty D conference, he was questioned about Yahoo and China. This from the WSJ.com blog:
“I continue to be pissed off, outraged, and feel very very bad about it,†Mr. Semel said.
Well, I’m sure that makes the poor sap stuck in a Chinese prison for 10 years because he used Yahoo mail feel much, much better.
“But you have to follow the laws of the country you’re in.â€
Enough with that company line. Would you have done business in South Africa under apartheid and run no pictures of black people? Would you have handed in Jews in Nazi Germany? Oh, but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Someone asked that incredibly obvious question and he had an incredible answer.
One attendee asked Mr. Semel if Yahoo would have cooperated with Nazi Germany the same way it has with China. His response: “Yahoo has a basic obligation not to have a point of view on basic content, and to present content … and aggregate things and to allow people to make their own choices. I don’t know how I would have felt then.â€
Good God, man! You don’t know how you would have felt? Who gives a damn about your feelings? This is about human rights. It’s about ethics. It’s about morality. It’s not about content. But now that you’ve brought it up, that’s ridiculous, too. Of course, you have a point of view on content: You buy some and not others. Dig, dig, dig. The next spadeful:
He added, “I don’t feel good about what’s happening in China today. I don’t feel good about some of the things that happen in our own country.â€
So in one breath, he has managed to equate America with Communist China and Nazi Germany. Oh, I’m sure some flack will say he was taken out of context. The best way to fight that is to take yourself out of the context of trying to justify supporting dictators.
Semel also said:
Mr. Semel went on: “I don’t think any one company is going to change a country, and I dont think any one industry is going to change a country.  
See Amnesty International’s call on companies as well as countries to support the cause of freedom.
Still, Mr. Semel said progress is being made, noting that the Chinese know more about American culture than ever before, thanks in no small part to the Internet. “To me, it’s about keeping the information flowing. Little by little, we start to bring about change.â€
John Updike, old fart, is turning out to be no ally of modernity. Last week, he took to the podium at BookExpo and railed against the mere notion of making books digital.
Today, he tells the the Times about understanding a cuddly Islamic terrorist in his new book:
When Mr. Updike switched the protagonist’s religion to Islam, he explained, it was because he “thought he had something to say from the standpoint of a terrorist.”
He went on: “I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody’s trying to see it from that point of view. I guess I have stuck my neck out here in a number of ways, but that’s what writers are for, maybe.”
He laughed and added: “I sometimes think, ‘Why did I do this?’ I’m delving into what can be a very sore subject for some people. But when those shadows would cross my mind, I’d say, ‘They can’t ask for a more sympathetic and, in a way, more loving portrait of a terrorist.’ ”
Ahmad is lovable, or at least appealing; he’s in many ways the most moral and thoughtful character in the entire book, and he gains in vividness from being pictured in that familiar Updikean setting, the American high school….
“Terrorist” even includes some Koran passages in Arabic transliteration; Shady Nasser, a graduate student, helped Mr. Updike on those sections. “My conscience was pricked by the notion that I was putting into the book something that I can’t pronounce,” he said, but he added: “Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. My feeling was, ‘This is God’s language, and the fact that you don’t understand it means you don’t know enough about God.’ “
I think the Supreme Court’s ruling today against government whistleblowers — deciding that they have no First Amendment protection for their complaints if those complaints are part of their jobs — will result in more anonymous leaks of information not through the press but through the many means of anonymity that the internet provides. That is, Deep Throat would blog.
Jack Balkin and Marty Lederman each explain this decision well at Balkinization. Says Lederman:
Today, the Court took that very signifiant step, holding that “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.” This apparently means that employees may be disciplined for their official capacity speech, without any First Amendment scrutiny, and without regard to whether it touches on matters of “public concern” — a very significant doctrinal development.
So you won’t see people blowing the whistle through the press because the government may well take reporters to court and jail and find out their identity. As Jack explains, you won’t see them going through channels because that loses them their First Amendment protection. You won’t see them compaining publicly because they’ll lose their jobs.
Who loses? We the people, on two counts: Our government is less accountable and our First Amendment has a new boundary.
* Adverlab sends us to Marketallica’s idea of taking a picture of your books and adding a notes layer with links to Amazon together with your Amazon affiliate ID.
* Steve Rubel also reports on a deal with Nikon (see the MediaPost report here). Says Steve:
Nikon has struck a deal with Flickr to place Nikon branding on the site, including small logos next to photos that were taken with their cameras. In addition, there will be branding on the login pages as well as special Nikon-only photo galleries.
I could be wrong. Or the French could be strange. Of course, both are distinct possibilities. But I have been skeptical about newspapers’ efforts to lure the young with new print products targeted at them. I tend to think they pander to a demographic with the false voice of an oldster trying to talk down to a youngster. And I’m not sure that luring the young to print is either feasible or desirable.
Yet last week, Focus, the German newsmagazine, reported on the success of a French effort to publish newspapers for young people (no link to the story, unfortunately). Mon Quotidien (my newspaper), a paper originally for readers between 10 and 15 launched in 1995, sells 200,000 copies. Along with three other papers for readers of various ages — one serving readers up to age 7 — they claim 2.5 million readers.
So it’s spreading. This month, former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan launched First News in the UK. And in Germany, Springer head Mathias Doepfner uses the French success to argue for a kinderpaper there.
Maybe I was wrong. When Andrew Sullivan signed onto Time Magazine to become a house blogger, I regretted that he didn’t stay independent on his own blog and that Time didn’t find a clever way to enable that. But since he started getting regular pay, he has been blogging up a storm and I’m glad to see it. Funny how money motivates. So as much as I want to see the distributed world made real, until we reach that shining day on the hill, maybe hiring bloggers isn’t such a bad idea.
: LATER: Just got email from Mark Tapscott saying that the Examiner in D.C., where he is editorial page editor, just signed up a gaggle of bloggers to become regular op-ed page contributors: Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters, Jeralyn Merrit of TalkLeft.com, LaShawn Barber of LaShawn Barber’s Corner, Betsy Newmark of Betsy’s Page and Mary Katharine Ham of Salem/Hugh Hewitt.
Iain Dale writes that the continuing consolidation in the British bookselling business — which has long-since happened here — means:
The only way publishers can give this discount is to concentrate their efforts on bestsellers and to put all their marketing resources behind comparatively few books. The publishing sector has reflected its bookselling counterpart and seen many smaller publishing houses gobbled up by the bigger ones, as they struggle to compete. In turn this has meant fewer books being publishing and a contraction in range. So although the consumer wins on cover price, it loses out on choice. Some independent booksellers don’t even bother to sell Harry Potter books because Tesco is selling it more cheaply than the bookseller can buy it from the publisher. It’s not uncommon to see small independent booksellers piling up their supermarket trollies down at Asda, looking slightly sheepish as they do so. This is because the publisher gives Asda a 60-65% discount, while the small bookseller will get 40% if he’s lucky. And on top of that Asda is likely to sell the book as a loss leader.
Amazon offers a standard 30-40% discount on most non-academic titles, so it has been able to establish a dominant market position in online bookselling. It has been so successful that 80% of people who buy anything online, buy from Amazon at some point. So there’s the background – now for the prediction. I foresee that within ten years the independent bookshop will have disappeared from our town centres, all bar a few retired individuals who have got money to throw down the drain. Even second hand bookshops are disappearing at a fair old rate, as most people now buy their used books through Abebooks.
All the more reason for all the more writing to come online. [via Clive Davis]
Things that are proclaimed dead yet hailed to be long living:
Devo • The book • The internet • DEC • The Designer • Economics • Java • Email • Eminent Domain • The Human Rights Council • Layout • Clint the chimpanzee • Grokster • Environmentalism • Tax reform • Television • The Assessor • The peace process • The wolf • Yahoo! • PageRank • The kiosk • Microsoft Bob • Robin Hood • Camper Van Beethoven • Internet radio • Romanticism • Firefox Help • Wikipedia • DVD • PGP • Microsoft • AllofMP3 • Documentary • The King
This summer, it will release the first version of Sophie, an “all-purpose tool” for creating multimedia texts. Like the institute itself, Sophie’s mission is both simple and complex: to help authors easily create books that use any medium…. It’s a key goal, because the future of the book lies in the hands of authors first. Give them the tools they need to deliver dynamic, digital books, and dynamic digital books will flourish.
From the Q&A with Vershbow:
Q: You write about the “social life” of books, and I know you don’t mean where books go to hang out and cross-reference. What do you mean?
A: Well, to a certain extent, I do mean that books will be able to go hang out and cross-reference. I think digital libraries will be in constant communication with each other, sharing patterns of use, exchanging user-created metadata, building maps of meaning out of the recorded behaviors and interests of readers. Parts of books will reference parts of other books. Books will be woven together out of components in remote databases and servers. So, in some ways books will have a life of their own. But you’re right, what I’m getting at primarily is the social life of readers and authors that will exist around and inside of books.
Q: How do you see that developing?
A: Soon, books will literally have discussions inside of them, both live chats and asynchronous exchanges through comments and social annotation. You will be able to see who else out there is reading that book and be able to open up a dialog with them. You already see evidence of this in Wikipedia’s “discussion” pages and revision histories where the writers and editors negotiate the collaborative development of articles. Wikipedia is a totally new kind of book in that it is never static, always growing. It has boundaries, but these boundaries are always shifting and are highly porous. We also see social interaction in the reading and interpretation of texts-on blogs, for example, discussion forums, social bookmarking sites, Amazon reader reviews, and thousands of nonpublic venues like [discussion lists] and email. Again, this sort of interaction is not inherently new, but the Internet allows it to be recorded, aggregated, and woven together in astonishing new ways that defy geography and time.
Q: Is blogging a good example of this?
A: In many respects, the blogosphere is a society of readers, all publishing their notes and reflections in real time and linking to fellow readers….
At the institute, we talk about “the networked book.” This involves many of the things we’ve talked about already-the book as a place, as social software-but basically we’re talking about the book at its most essential, a structured, sustained intellectual experience, a mover of ideas-reinvented in a peer-to-peer ecology. The structure part is crucial, though. Whereas the web is a massive, diffuse array, more like a library than an individual book, a book provides some sort of shape, even if that shape is malleable and the boundaries porous, even if the edges of books overlap. A good future of the book is one that combines the best qualities of physical books with the best qualities of the network….
Q: What future for the print book? Is it even conceivable that future generations will eschew the benefit of multimedia?
A: It’s really impossible to predict exactly what will happen to print books. Of one thing, though, I am pretty certain: the main arena of intellectual discourse is moving away from print to networked, digital media. That doesn’t mean that certain forms of print books will not persist. In fact, the mass migration to computers and the Internet in some ways serves as a foil for print, dispensing with its more circumstantial uses and highlighting its most essential virtues. There are certain kinds of books I’m convinced will cease to exist on paper: directories, reference works, textbooks, travel guides, to name a few. But deep, linear narrative works read for pleasure like novels, biographies, and certain forms of history may persist in print for some time. Then again, this could simply be a generational question. People raised with high-quality electronic reading devices, using only multimedia electronic texts in school and forming little or no attachment to dead-tree media, may consider paper books at best fascinating antiquities, at worst, inert, useless things.
The Internet Advertising Revenue Report says that online ad spending in the U.S. is up 38 percent this quarter over a year ago to $3.9 billion.
Ah, but before you start crowing, fellow American geeks, see what Jon Fine says about online ad spending in the UK: He quotes the ad group Heavy M saying that online ad spending there is overtaking spending on national newspapers. Adds Jon:
What really caught my eye, though, is Group M’s expectation that 13.3% of all UK ad spending will go to the Web this year. That’s about twice as much as the Web will get in the US this year, if I recall the figure from a recent Merrill Lynch analyst report correctly. (And which I’d quote from if I hadn’t stupidly deleted.)
