INTERVIEW (10:08)
Every year, John Ball Zoo gives out tens of thousands of passes to elementary school youth in Kent County who qualify for federal lunch programs. They've since expanded that program to include Ottawa County schools to encourage youth surrounded by digital interfaces to interact with science and nature. To help them keep up the summer program, they are one of WYCE's beneficiaries for the Hat Trick Concert.
The song this week is "Small is Tremendous" off an album by the same name by artist Zoe Lewis, who is the featured performer of Monday's Hat Trick Concert.
ANALYSIS (0:00)
Wikileaks files on Guantánamo Bay summarized
About a year after Wikileaks released information to several press groups about Guantánamo Bay, the New York Times has reported back with a summary of the 700 documents. A pattern among the detainees, even if they had little terrorist ties or informational values to the U.S., was bitterness and the potential for action against the U.S. after interrogation and coercive tactics. Some detainees were mistaken for Al Qaeda militants when they were Yemeni civil war soldiers or of other professions. The files confirmed that many were held without due trial and also showed that many countries sent their own intelligence officers to question detainees. One detainee was an Al Jazeera reporter detained for six years for questioning about the news broadcaster's training program. Files also showed that some prisoners fought back with hunger strikes and whatever limited tools were available to them.
[More: NYTimes]
First draft of history now penned by collective social media efforts
Recent research by a fellow at the Reuters Institute suggests that social media, and not journalism, can be regarded as the first rough draft of history. In a comparison of the Twitter updates during the Haiti earthquake to the role that CNN played during the gulf war, fellow Nicola Bruno drew parallels that as CNN had shortened the cycle of public opinion on the war by providing more immediate information than its counterpart, so had Twitter by delivering instantaneous information by those who experienced the natural disaster in different ways.
[More: GigaOm]
Tool to quantify media queries
Berkman Center for Internet and Society relaunched Media Cloud last week, an online tool to quantify information about the current media ecosystem. Propelled by questions such as whether bloggers inspire story ideas or news outlets report on stories that bloggers then glom onto, if patterns in local news follow trends in national news and many more, the Harvard division created a site to crunch numbers by crawling thousands of news articles within a time parameter and search terms set by the user.
[More: Media Cloud, Berkman Center for Internet and Society]
CALENDAR (26:36)
[MUSIC + ENTERTAINMENT] Professional handbell ensemble to play at Creston High School
4 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at Creston High School (1720 Plainfield NE)
Both greater Grand Rapids' professional handbell ensemble and the youth handbell ensemble will be playing together in a concert this Saturday at Creston High School. There will be familiar and new melodies, set to the themes of dancce and motion.
[More]
[ARTS + POLITICS] No fences, no borders photography exhibition highlights perspectives from Palestine's west bank
7 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at The Division Avenue Arts Collective (115 S. Division)
Bill Cotter has ties to Grand Rapids, and No Fences, No Borders is a photography exhibition featuring work from six months spent living in the occupied West Bank of Palestine.
[More]
[SCIENCE + EDUCATION] GR Amateur Astronomical Association hosts public night to view Saturn and the crescent moon
9:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 at James C. Veen Observatory (3308 Kissing Rock Ave, Lowell)
The Observation Nights feature a closer look at the stars, our neighboring planets, the phases of the moon and many additional wonders our galaxy has to offer, provided the sky is clear.
[More]
[HISTORY + EDUCATION] Genealogical research education at GRPL
6:45 p.m. on Thursday, May 19 at Grand Rapids Public Library (111 Library NE)
The library uses a genealogical database called GEDCOM, or Genealogical Data Communication. Learn how to define, create and edit genealogical information in the GEDCOM format.
[More]
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