Software Company Hopeful No Bar Exam Essays Will Be Lost (NYLJ)

Joel Stashenko
New York Law Journal
July 31, 2007

The Massachusetts company that provided the software for students using laptops for the New York state bar examination last week said it believes no essays will be lost due to computer problems, the New York state Board of Law Examiners said.

Students reported problems saving the essays on their computers, and later uploading the essays onto the company's Web site for transfer to the state for grading.

"We have been advised by the software company that so far, there are no essays that appear to be lost and they are confident that no one will lose any essays," John McAlary, executive director of the Board of Law Examiners, said Friday. The board will notify laptop test takers by electronic mail when their essays are located, McAlary said.

He said the process of matching the essays with the answer packets of the students who wrote them will probably take until the end of this week to complete. The board is also sending e-mails to the test takers to notify them of the status of the effort to locate all essays.

The six essays were included on the New York state portion of the two-day bar exam that students took on July 21. About half the 10,850 students taking the bar exam used laptops to write their essays, McAlary said.

Software Secure Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., was the supplier of the SecureExam software that the law examiners blamed for the glitches.

Link

China's eBay-MySpace

from the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

In China, the concept of guanxi ranks right up there with air, water, food, love, and tea as an essential of life. Air and water are becoming compromised in China, but not guanxi. In its simplest translation, guanxi means connections or relationships. The concept is really far more complex than that, easily the stuff of dissertations. I found one blogger’s struggle to define the social capital of guanxi appealing. He said the important qualities are whom you know; whom the people you want to know know; whom the people you already know know. Or something like that.

As it was only a matter of time before Chinese internet entrepreneurs would try to monetize guanxi, along comes Zhike.com. The site, which has attracted a flurry of attention in the Chinese press lately, is described as a kind of eBay for guanxi. The idea is to provide a virtual meeting place for people who have guanxi to sell or guanxi they want to buy. (more . . .)

New York Wineries Face Tastings Gone Wild (NYT)

By COREY KILGANNON
Published: July 9, 2007

AQUEBOGUE, N.Y., July 3 — In the 35 years since vines began sprouting out of its sandy soil, the North Fork of Long Island has fought to be recognized as a bona fide wine region, and now more than a million visitors a year visit the tasting rooms at its 30 vineyards to sample award-winning merlots and cabernet francs.

But this season, small signs bearing stern messages — “No Buses,” “No Limos,” “Appointment Only” — have sprouted outside many of the wineries. There also are reports of tastings gone wild involving intoxicated visitors who have tossed back full glasses of wine without regard to nose or body until they grabbed the brass spittoon for baser purposes. (more . . .)

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

. . .Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

When the cult film “Party Girl” appeared in 1995, with Parker Posey as a night life impresario who finds happiness in the stacks, the idea that a librarian could be cool was a joke.

Now, there is a public librarian who writes dispatches for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a favored magazine of the young literati. “Unshelved,” a comic about librarians — yes, there is a comic about librarians — features a hipster librarian character. And, in real life, there are an increasing number of librarians who are notable not just for their pink-streaked hair but also for their passion for pop culture, activism and technology.

“We’re not the typical librarians anymore,” said Rick Block, an adjunct professor at the Long Island University Palmer School and at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, both graduate schools for librarians, in New York City.

“When I was in library school in the early ’80s, the students weren’t as interesting,” Mr. Block said. (more. . . )

Beverly Sills' Farewell Performance (1980)

Sills highlights her career and sings a tearful final encore of the Portuguese Folk Song: "Tell Me Why" that Estelle Liebling, her only voice teacher, gave her when she was ten. As a tribute to Liebling, Sills ended every recital with this song. Her long-time accompanist, Charles Wadsworth, plays for this final, moving performance.

Beverly Sills on the Muppet Show

Beverly Sills sings Sempre Libera (from La Traviata). Along the way, she's interrupted by the ensemble, singing the Toreador Song (Carmen), then Missy Piggy enters on a barge (dressed in costume and black wig for Aida) and they sing the Ride of Valkyrie (The Valkyrie). They finish up singing the chorus of La Donna Mobile (Rigolett0).

Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, Is Dead at 78

from today's New York Times review:

Along with Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, she was an acknowledged exponent of the bel canto Italian repertory during the period of its post-World War II revival. Though she essentially had a light soprano voice, her sound was robust and enveloping. In her prime her technique was exemplary. She could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped by radiant high D’s and E-flat’s, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text.