The Digital Youth Project, a MacArthur-funded three year, 22 case study, $3.3 million ethnographic study of what kids are doing online, has wound up and published its results. The project was undertaken by the eminent sociologist Mimi Ito and her talented colleagues (including the incomparable danah boyd) and is the largest and most comprehensive study of young peoples' internet use ever undertaken in the US.

The conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling: in a nutshell, the "serious" stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of "hanging out, messing around and geeking out." That is to say, all the "time-wasting" social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.

Ito and her team establish a taxonomy of social activity, dividing it first into "peer-driven" and "interest-driven" -- the former being what kids do with their real-world friends, the latter being the niche interests that drive them to locate other people who are as fascinated as they are by whatever brand of esoterica they fancy.

Within these two categories, the researchers break things down further into "hanging out" (undirected, social activities), "messing around" (tinkering with media, networks and technologies) and "geeking out" (delving deep into subjects based on global communities of interest) and for each one, they describe the successful and unsuccessful techniques deployed by parents and educators to direct kids' activities.

All this is explained in a crisp, 55-page white paper, a snappy two-pager, and a full-length book called (appropriately), "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media." All three are available as free downloads, naturally, and the book can also be purchased as a physical object in a year when it's published.

This project is the best set of research-driven recommendations and observations about young peoples' use of technology I've seen -- it's the perfect antidote to the scare stories of "internet addiction" and pedophiles stalking MySpace, and the endless refrain about "kids today." If you care about kids and want to understand how they use technology and why, this is a must-read.

Two-pager, White paper, Book: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (download), Digital Youth homepage

I love the Buddha Machine, a little plastic ambient music generator that looks like a transitor radio -- put two or three in a room together and play them at the same time and you get something haunting, bent and hypnotic. Now there's a new version, with more loops, colors, and sound-tweaking options.

The Buddha Box 2 features nine new ambient sound loops. The new selection is noticeably more diverse than those of its predecessor--a welcome change. One of my biggest issues with the first incarnation of the box was its relatively limited aural palate. The selections on number 2 should fit a wider range of ambient-suitable scenarios. For further variation, the box also includes a wheel that bends the loops' pitch, to help you tailor the sound perfectly to its surroundings.

Hands On: Buddha Machine 2 (Thanks, Crosshatch!)

See also: Buddha Machine: spiritual, generative transistor radio

Writer/game designer/film-maker Jim Munroe sez,

IFComp 2008, The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition and keeper of the old-school text-game torch, recently declared its winners. Bronze went to my game, Everybody Dies, silver went to Eric Eve's Nightfall, and the gold went to Jeremy Freese's Violet.

Everybody Dies puts you in the shoes of a chubby metalhead who has smoked his last smoke, with illustrations by Michael Cho; Nightfall drops you into a mysterious city where everyone's fled before the approaching Enemy; and in Violet your struggle to write your dissertation is aided by the most charming voice-in-your-head character in history.

All 35 of the comp entries, playable with interpreters, are available at ifcomp.org, but Violet and Everybody Dies can be played online

Congrats, Jim!

Everybody Dies Takes Bronze at IFComp, Everybody Dies review at Play This Thing! (Thanks, Jim!)

Bell Canada, the giant Canadian telco, is before the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission over its throttling practices, whereby it secretly corrupted the download sessions of its customers. The company also interfered with the connections initiated by its wholesale customers -- ISPs that leased lines from the giant and re-sold them to end-users. Bell said that it had to cripple everyone's connections, or the people who bought network access from its wholesale customers would get a better service than its own retail customers, which would be "unfair" to retail customers. Steve sez,

According to the CBC, after twice delaying the ruling, the CRTC will make a landmark decision on the Bell Throttling case by 9 a.m. tomorrow. The decision will determine whether Bell Canada has violated the Telecommunications Act by slowing down the Internet access it sells to wholesale customers.

Steve Anderson from SaveOurNet.ca coalition will be available for comment.

Steve said today, “This decision has huge implications for Internet service competition online innovation, consumer choice and free speech. The biggest battle over the Internet is yet to come, but this ruling will signal whether the CRTC is willing to take action to put Canada on a path that supports online innovation, and online choice. Otherwise the CRTC is abdicating its responsibility to Canadian people and putting us on a path towards a more closed Internet defined by the interests of big telecom companies.”

Every time I'm asked whether I'd consider moving back to Canada sometime, the answer is the same: "Not until the country gets some real telcom regulation." I earn my living on the Internet. I can't afford to live somewhere where the telcos get to throw away your packets if they don't fit their business model.

CRTC to Make Landmark Decision on Internet Freedom (Thanks, Steve!)

Buying an Apple computer? Get ready to throw away your monitor, over and over again. New Apple hardware is shipping with "HDCP" anti-copying technology that prevents showing some video on "non-compliant" monitors. Best part: the list of "compliant" monitors will change over time: the monitor you buy today can be "revoked" tomorrow and stop working.

Slashdot says that Apple's added "copyright protection" to its video. But copyright law isn't violated when you watch a movie on an "unapproved" monitor. This isn't about enforcing copyright law, it's about giving a small handful of movie companies a veto over hardware designs.

Yesterday, our buddy David Chartier at Ars and Sam Oliver at AppleInsider both publicized an issue that's been burning up the support boards for a while now: iTunes video rentals and purchases in HD are flagged for HDCP control, and in cooperation with the new Mini DisplayPort connector on the MacBook and MacBook Pro unibody models, those movies and TV shows are refusing to play back on non-compliant external displays.

In this case, 'compliant' means HDMI or recent-vintage DVI, but even monitors or TVs that support HDCP may not properly negotiate with the DisplayPort connector to give iTunes and QuickTime the all-clear signal (if so, quitting and relaunching iTunes once the display is hooked up may clear the playback hold).

Equally annoying: HDCP is only supposed to apply to 'high-value' digital streams, meaning standard-def purchases and rentals on the iTunes store should be out of scope... but some reports indicate that both the HD and SD instances are flagged, blocking playback on anything but the laptop's internal display or a straight-thru HDMI connection. Argh!

MacBook Pro users getting bitten by HDCP (Thanks, Denver Jewelry Guy!)

There were a lot of sad posts today on the blog related to 30 years since Jonestown this week, so as is the tradition, and as our commenters have requested: unicorn chaser. (thanks, Takuan)

In its special website section devoted to 30 years since Jonestown, the San Francisco Chronicle has republished a copy of a 1977 report on Jim Jones and People's Temple by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy. The investigative report marked a turning point for People's Temple, an arc towards the catastrophic end that would come one year later. Before this exposé was published in New West magazine (because back then, the Chronicle's editor refused to run it), Jim Jones enjoyed what amounted to broad support and protection from news organizations, powerful social figures, and politicians who saw the influential preacher as a "deliverer of votes."

Collectively, they turned a blind eye to mounting reports of coercion, corruption, and physical and sexual abuse within his church. And they bear some responsibility for the tragedy that followed.

I agree with what one sfgate.com commenter wrote about the two tenacious reporters who fought to produce this piece:

30 years on, this is a piece that should be required reading by all journalism students at any level. To quote the 1998 article on why this was published in New West rather than the Chronicle, "Kilduff said that when he later proposed a story on Jim Jones, (San Francisco Chronicle city editor) Gavin said 'we had done a profile and that was sufficient.' I went at him several times, and said I thought we should do more. He didn't see it that way.'" Jones had co-opted the powers that were in the City, including the Chronicle, and only the persistence of Kilduff began to reveal the horrible truth.

Three decades later, the whole article is a must-read. I'll paste the final two paragraphs here:

[S]omething must be said about the numerous public officials and political figures who openly courted and befriended Jim Jones. While it appears that none of the public officials from [California] Governor [Jerry] Brown on down knew about the inner world of Peoples Temple, they have left the impression that they used Jones to deliver votes at election time and never asked any questions. They never asked about the bodyguards. Never asked about the church's locked doors. Never asked why Jones's followers were so obsessively protective of him. And apparently, some never asked because they didn't want to know.

The story of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is not over. In fact, it has only begun to be told. If there is any solace to be gained from the tale of exploitation and human foible told by the former temple members in these pages, it is that even such a power as Jim Jones cannot always contain his followers. Those who left had nowhere to go and every reason to fear pursuit. Yet they persevered. If Jones is ever to be stripped of his power, it will not be because of vendetta or persecution, but rather because of the courage of these people who stepped forward and spoke out.

Inside Peoples Temple, Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, Monday, August 1, 1977. (SFGATE.com). Here is a PDF of the original 1977 article (via Jonestown Institute). The SFGate web feature on 30 years after Jonestown includes a number of related features, both archived and new, all well worth reading.

What lesson should we learn from this today? Why does this matter now? Snip from an extensive piece in today's Washington Post by Charles A. Krause, one of the journalists who survived the November, 1978 trip to Jonestown with Congressman Ryan:

Many Jonestown survivors and their families believe that the lessons of Jonestown are to remember and guard against demagogues who use religion as a cover for fraud, deception and imposing their own sometimes dangerous social and political beliefs on their naive and unsuspecting followers.

(...) It was that theme that dominated Tuesday's memorial service at the mass grave in Oakland. In an emotional and highly charged address, the Rev. Amos Brown, bishop at San Francisco's Third Baptist Church and president of the San Francisco NAACP, warned the mourners to beware of religious leaders who claim to have all the answers and insinuate themselves into politics, as Jones did so effectively in San Francisco.

"Good religion elevates folk, it teaches people to think for themselves. Good religion isn't authoritarian. Good religion isn't bigoted," he said. "Open up your eyes, America. America isn't a theocracy, it's a democracy. . . . And that is the lesson we must learn from Jonestown."

Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

The imprisoned Chinese blogger and human rights activist Hu Jia today received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe’s most prestigious human rights prize. Snip from NYT article:

The award was a pointed rebuke of China’s ruling Communist Party that came as European leaders were arriving in Beijing for a weekend summit meeting. Mr. Hu, 35, was given the prize by the European Parliament despite warnings from Beijing that his selection would harm relations with the European Union.

Last year, Mr. Hu testified via video link before a hearing of the European Parliament about China’s human rights situation. Weeks later, he was jailed and later sentenced to three and a half years in prison for subversion based on his writings criticizing Communist Party rule.

Mr. Hu has been one of China’s leading figures on a range of human rights issues, while also speaking out on behalf of AIDS patients and for environmental protection. He had been considered a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, but lost to the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari. “Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People’s Republic of China,” said the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering. “The European Parliament is sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China.

Chinese Activist Wins Rights Prize (NYT). Embedded video above: Prisoners in Freedom City, an autobiographical internet video documentary about his case, available in multiple parts on YouTube (links to single-file editions there). Hu Jia's case is documented and updated regularly on Twitter. His wife and supporters are very concerned about his health in prison; he has symptoms of liver disease, and information about his whereabouts, condition, and treatment in prison is unavailable. See also this related Los Angeles Times editorial: China should free dissident Hu Jia. Here is Amnesty International's statement.

A fascinating piece by Ed Wong in today's NYT on the role archaeology -- specifically, a set of mummified human remains -- plays in the conflict over independence for one of China's ethnic minorities. Snip:

“Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign. But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story. One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese.

The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang. At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?

The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To (NYT)

The demolition of Long Mill Dye House in Roanoke, Virginia brought down two smokestacks but one didn't fall as planned.

photo from WSLS.com

Watch this AP video and listen for one of the operators warn: "Be advised: one stack apparently did not fall in the right direction." There were no reports of injury to persons or property.

Long Mill demolition video

A local TV station WSLS reporter wrote:

Many of the people who came out to watch the building crumble worked in the mill for years, but for some it wasn’t such a sad sight to see their former employer come crashing down.

“I hate to see them kill all the big rats, they had rats over there about 2 foot long,” said Jim Chattin, who used to work at Long Mill.

Today Offworld got an exclusive sneak peek at the awesomely retro-futurist super HYPERCUBE, a game by Montreal art collective Kokoromi and developer Polytron that uses both red/blue anaglyph glasses and Johnny Lee-style Wii-mote head-tracking to play a stylishly minimalist block game inspired by the infamous "human Tetris" Japanese gameshow video. The game makes its debut tonight at Montreal's Society for Arts and Technology (the SAT), so head down if you're in the area.

We also mapped the evolution of the rhythm game from Parappa to Rock Band via a new interactive timeline, snickered behind the back of Kids In The Hall's Scott Thompson utterly failing at Portal, worried about UK indie dev Introversion trying to build an AI that cannot be stopped from blowing up the entire world, and finally, celebrated the tenth anniversary of Valve's original Half-Life, with new footage from a team of modders attempting to bring the game into the 21st century.

The single most comprehensive online public resource for original source material related to Jonestown is Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, a website sponsored by San Diego State University's Department of Religious Studies. The site includes scanned documents, photographs, first-person testimonies and reflections, and a periodic email newsletter with updates on research, and the whereabouts of those who survived.

The section I've spent the most time in is the Audiotape Project Index, which includes copies of original recordings made by People's Temple members in California and Guyana.

Some of the cassette recordings at the SDSU website were retrieved from Jonestown by the FBI; others are in the possession of the FCC, which monitored radio transmissions from the compound. I'm not clear on the specifics, but it seems many of the original recordings in government possession are lost, missing, or still classified and unavailable to the public. Some ham radio operators once maintained a website documenting their battle to get the FCC to release more shortwave radio recordings from Jonestown, but the website is now offline.

Here is a list of recording transcripts and summaries at the SDSU Jonestown Project website. They include:

* Peoples Temple audiotapes collected by FBI
* Tapes of Peoples Temple radio conversations collected by FCC
* The Miscellaneous Audiotapes link includes tapes donated from private individuals and collections.

Three examples of the recordings in this collection:

* FBI #Q 042, "The Death Tape", made in Jonestown on 18 November 1978, during the mass deaths. Warning: the audio is very disturbing. You can hear children dying. Here is the audio at archive.org.
* FBI #Q594: In this tape recorded 5 days before the mass deaths, Jones and followers fantasize how they will torture and kill People's Temple defectors.
* FBI #Q174: music and entertainment performed by Peoples Temple members in October, 1978. An announcer speaks: "And now, ladies and gentlemen. We’re glad to have you here in Jonestown, Guyana. Sit back and enjoy yourself. We have a brief program. Presenting to you, the Jonestown Express."

The Jonestown Institute website is maintained by Elizabeth Parker, and archivist-historians Fielding McGehee III, and Dr. Rebecca Moore, an SDSU professor of religious studies. Together, they have played an instrumental role in preserving and digitally archiving many important historical documents related to People's Temple at SDSU, and with the California Historical Society. The SDSU site introduction expresses hope that visitors "will come away with an understanding that the story of Jonestown did not start or end on 18 November 1978. Dr. Moore has a personal connection to the tragedy: her two sisters died there. Annie Moore was Jim Jones' nurse, and Carolyn Moore Layton was his lover and lieutenant.

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RELATED:

* The fact that so many Jonestown-related source materials went missing or remained classified for years has fed much speculation, and many conspiracy theories. This Feral House book includes an interesting essay by Jim Hougan which explores some of the wackier theories, and some of the possible links between Jonestown and various military/government activities involving the US or Guyana.

* Snip from a 1998 CNN item about how the lack of access to documents and audio recordings has fueld rumors of CIA involvement:

Some people believe CIA agents were posing as members of the Peoples Temple cult to gather information; others suggest the agency was conducting a mind-control experiment. In 1980, the House Select Committee on Intelligence determined that the CIA had no advance knowledge of the mass murder-suicide. The year before, the House Foreign Affairs Committee had concluded that cult leader Jim Jones "suffered extreme paranoia."

The committee -- now known as international relations -- released a 782-page report, but kept more than 5,000 other pages secret. Without those documents, it's hard to confirm or refute the speculations that have sprung up around Jonestown, said Melton, who planned to be in Washington Wednesday to ask for the documents' release.

George Berdes, chief consultant to the committee at the time of the investigation, told the San Francisco Chronicle the papers were classified to assure sources' confidentiality, but he thinks it is time to declassify them.

* Loren Coleman has a post up on his Copycat Effect blog about connections between the Jonestown deaths and the murders of then San Francisco political figures Harvey Milk and George Moscone. For some time before the extent of his insanity and destructive activity were known, Jones and his church -- in which most members were black, while most leaders were white -- received expressions of support from left/liberal politicians including Milk and Moscone, and black power activists like Angela Davis and Huey Newton.

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Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

Blip Festival 2008, a celebration of low-res visuals and chipmusic, hits New York City on December 4. Brandon Boyer has the details and a promo video over at Boing Boing Offworld! Blip Festival 2008: The Promo

Ala Ebtekar is a Berkeley-based artist whose fantastic work juxtaposes "street" art and traditional Iranian culture. (Above, detail of this piece.) "In my own work, I'm trying to find a visual glimpse of a crossroad where present day events meet history and mythology," Ebtekar says. Ala Ebtekar site, Video profile on public television's Spark (KQED.org) (Thanks, Heather Sparks!)

Boing Boing Gadgets reader Tucker Cummings bought the Bandai Gun O'Clock and reviewed it for us! He loves it as a novelty, but apparently as an alarm clock it, er, misses the mark. From Boing Boing Gadgets:

The Gun O'clock has all the fun of Duck Hunt on the NES. Which is to say, it's fun, but I wish there was more to do. Both game modes are designed for very short rounds of play, which I found tremendously disappointing.

The clock's display goes to sleep after a few minutes. The backlight turns off, and the numbers turn from red to black, rendering the clock pretty much useless. Clearly, this is not the clock you should buy if you are looking for a useful time piece. But chances are, if you bought this clock, it was for the coolness factor.

And there is plenty of cool to be found.

Bandai Gun O'Clock alarm clock review

A 91-year-old Jersey City woman was conned by a burglar pretending to be a utility company employee. He told her that there was a water emergency and that if she didn't hold down the flusher on her toilet, the house would explode. Meanwhile, he stole almost $4000 in cash from her apartment. From The Jersey Journal:

The man first opened and shut a faucet in the kitchen and then went into the victim's bathroom where he flushed the toilet, reports said.

The man then instructed the victim to "hold down the flush handle or else the house will explode," reports said...

But after about two minutes, the victim told police "I didn't care if the house exploded" and walked into her living-room, at which time she discovered her house had been ransacked, reports said.

"Jersey City senior holds toilet handle while water company impostor ransacks house" (via Fortean Times)

Of the many television and film documentaries produced on Jonestown, the 2006 PBS American Experience feature Jonestown: Life and Death of People's Temple, directed by Stanley Nelson, seems to me the most sensitive and comprehensive. I read somewhere that Jim Jones' adopted son -- who appears in this film -- also feels that way. Google Video embed above, and here's the link. Amazon Link to purchase DVD, and here is the PBS website, with additional background.

Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

Current TV contributor Charmosh produced this interview with Jordan Vilchez, a Jonestown survivor who lives in the Bay Area. In 1971, cult leader Jim Jones established the headquarters of the Peoples Temple on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, CA. The building is now a US Post Office. Vilchez, a survivor of mass deaths in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, remembers what it was like in the early days of the Peoples Temple. (thanks, Gabriel del Rio)

Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

The LA Weekly published an article by Barry Isaacson about the discovery earlier this year of a number of letters sent by a Jonestown resident to her parents, who lived in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood.

Phyllis and her family were dead for more than a decade by the time her elderly parents moved out of their house in Silver Lake in 1992. Architectural real estate agents had to bring the exquisite midcentury modern on Micheltorena Street back from the brink of decrepitude before selling it to my wife, Jenny, and me. Handing over the keys, they told us that, according to neighborhood folklore, the Alexanders might have left behind a concealed suitcase containing correspondence from their long-dead daughter and grandchildren. We looked but found nothing, and having been made aware of the circumstances of this family’s demise, we felt reluctant to intrude on an almost unimaginable grief.

But this past February, 10 years after we started to raise a family of our own where the Alexanders had raised theirs, a handyman working on our house emerged from the basement carrying a dusty vinyl briefcase. Inside was an extensive collection of press clippings, evidence of an almost obsessive attempt by the Alexanders to make sense of their daughter’s fatal acts of bad judgment.

In a separate envelope were letters written by Phyllis from San Francisco and later from Jonestown, Guyana, where she and her husband had moved with their children in 1975. There were fond letters to their grandparents from Gail and David. The most moving document in the cache was a carbon copy of a painful valediction from Dr. Alexander to Phyllis, written on an old manual typewriter on September 21, 1977. Tenderly, but with eloquent firmness, he reprimands her, perplexed and offended by her embrace of Jim Jones, the deviant cuckoo who had flown into the Alexanders’ nest and whom Phyllis and her fellow Peoples Temple members called “Dad.”

From Silver Lake to Suicide (LA Weekly). Here's a related slideshow in the LA Weekly.

See also this related section of the SDSU Jonestown document archives, "The Chaikin/Alexander Letters," with PDFs of the original documents.

Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

Shmuck Alert is a blog that reports on accounts of people hassling reporters.

Above: Officer Friendly from the Oakland School District Police threatens to "stuff" Oakland Tribune photojournalist Jane Tyska into his cruiser and jail her. If you don't like profanity, cover your ears.

Remind us to watch our elbows next time we're in Oakland! That seems to be all it takes to make the local School District Police Chief go postal! The cop in question is seen hurling invectives and otherwise being a total ass to Oakland Tribune photojournalist Jane Tyska. According to him, the female photog struck his patrol car with her elbow, setting off an on-camera tirade in which he curses her up (and down!), threatens to 'stuff her' in the back of his (fatally-crippled) cruiser and accuses her of trying to incite a riot. Hey occifer, how about a steaming hot cup of 'CHILL THE #&$@% OUT!'? I've seen calmer reactions at school bus collisions...

Schmuck Alert - Potty Mouth Cop (Thanks, Michael!)

Thirty years ago this week, nearly a thousand adults and children lost their lives in Jonestown, Guyana. The settlement was also known as "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", and was formed by followers of the Reverend Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.

Today, some refer to the mass deaths as suicide, others murder. We still don't really know all the facts of what happened, or how, or exactly why. Autopsies were botched, records and forensic evidence were mis-handled, and many of the US government's documents remain classified, out of reach of FOIA requests.

But we do understand that most of the people who died on November 18, 1978 drank fruit-flavored Flavor-Aid laced with a variety of intoxicants and poisons: Valium, chloral hydrate, and cyanide. The victims included hundreds of children. Many of the corpses, including children, bore puncture wounds indicating they received lethal cyanide injections. Adults who resisted were injected with cyanide or killed by gushot.

Jones' followers had moved from their Northern California base to the South American jungle the year before. The promise: they'd build a utopian, agrarian, interracial community in Guyana, which had a Socialist goverment at the time. Jonestown was to be free from racism, sexism, and ageism, and founded on communist principles. Jones told his followers to think of him as a living incarnation of Jesus Christ, and God.

Over the past 30 years, many documentaries, books, and articles have been produced about Jones, Peoples Temple, and Jonestown. I'll be blogging pointers to some of them today.

I want to start with the one I've returned to again and again -- a radio documentary from 1981 that for me, also defines what radio journalism can achieve. "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," was co-written by my NPR colleague Noah Adams. Here's a snip from the original introduction on npr.org:

In the months preceding the tragedy, Jim Jones and his People’s Temple followers recorded their tho ughts, their problems and their aspirations. The hundreds of hours of audio tape form the basis of [this] NPR documentary (...) written by James Reston, Jr and Noah Adams, and produced by Deborah Amos. It was based on the tapes Reston acquired under the Freedom of Information Act, and won most major broadcast awards including the Dupont Col umbia Award, the National Headliner Award and the Prix Italia.

Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown recaptures the final months for the People’s Temple cult. After problems arose for the group in San Francisco, they moved to the South American jungle during the 1970's. In 1978, reports of an increasingly hostile and controlling atmosphere by Jones led to a Congressional fact-finding mission into the cult. As the group, led by Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), was preparing to leave they were ambushed. Ryan, three American journalists and a Peoples Temple defector were killed. A dozen other people were injured. The incident was just hours prior to the deaths of the cult members.

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Here's the web page for Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown, with audio links. Here is the direct *.ram link for the complete 90 minute program (requires Real Audio). The website for this related NPR feature, produced in 2003, also includes 3 direct audio urls for "Father Cares," broken into 45 minute chunks (requires Real Audio or Windows Media Player). Another powerful, related NPR piece: Noah Adams talks with Deborah Layton, author of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple.

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Here is more on producer Deborah Amos. Here is James Reston's website.

You may also want to obtain a copy of Reston's book, for which this radio work was, in part, preparatory research: Our Father, Who Art In Hell.

I stayed up all night last Saturday listening to Father Cares in entirety. I really hope you listen to it. It is a profound example of the power of radio as a storytelling medium. It captures the souls of those who died, and those who survived, with a sense of lasting respect and sorrow.

Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple:

- Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.
- Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video).
- Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video)
- Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide
- Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981
- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People
- Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings

Thirty years ago yesterday, 900 people living on a commune in Guyana under the religious guidance of Jim Jones killed themselves, or were murdered. The story of Jonestown is an amazingly twisted tale involving faith, trust, charisma, control, and politics. In my opinion, that story has never been synthesized better than in Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People, just republished this week. Tim Reiterman, the main author of the 1982 book and former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, was investigating the cult for more than a year before the suicides. During a fact-finding mission to Guyana with Congressman leo Ryan, Reiterman was shot by Peoples Temple gunmen. He was injured, but Ryan and several others were killed. That's when all hell broke loose.

As Reiterman points out in his preface to the book, Jones had a sign hanging above his throne with this phrase painted on it: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Indeed. There are still stories from Jonestown waiting to be remembered, and lessons to learn from those stories. Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People is a good place to start. Also, Xeni will be posting a number of Jonestown related items today so please stay tuned.
Buy Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People (Amazon), Interview with Reiterman (TIME)

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