Wednesday. April 1, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 7
KAW celebrates one year on air
By Chris Horton
chorton@kansan.com
Kanson staff writer
After one year of broadcasting, KAW 88.9 FM is ready to celebrate.
The KAW Birthday Bash will be at Liberty Hall tonight and will feature live music and poetry, special guests, a birthday cake and a pinta. It will start at 8 p.m. and will continue until about 1 a.m.
The Birthday Bash will be different from events such as the letter-writing party and the March 1 bowling tournament that benefited the station.
Tonight's event is more of a party than a benefit, said Laurel Wimberg, who organized the bash.
Musicians scheduled to appear are The Telathe Singers, Al Trout and his Happy Ukelebe, Danger Bob, Planetarium, The Hefners, The Teriyaki, and Sunbarrow. Wimberg said there would be live poetry readings between band acts.
Larry Brinkman, guitarist and vocalist for the The Hefens, hosts the show "No Hit Wonders" on KAW. Brinkman said programming diversity was the station's greatest asset.
"It's a goal of everybody at the station to avoid the mainstream," he said.
Brinkman said he was excited to be a part of the station's first birthday and that he is expecting a good turnout.
he said. "You can get your rock 'n' roll, maybe some drinks and do some socializing."
"I think it's going to be a blast,"
Wimberg said the proceeds from the bowling tournament and birthday party would be allocated at a financial planning meeting 11 a.m. Saturday at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The public is welcome, she said.
Wimberg, host of KAW's "Metamorphic Rock with Lena Inverse," said she knew the station would survive its first year despite Federal Communications Commission warnings.
She said the FCC was considering a proposal to establish licensing procedures for low-wattage stations similar to KAW. Community input is important in influencing the FCC, and it will be possible for tonight's partygoers to contact the FCC, she said.
"We'll have everything people need to write letters or just take information home with them," Wimberg said.
The support shown by the Lawrence community for KAW during the past year might have had an influence in the FCC's possible licensing of low-power stations, she said.
"I think KAW has had a role in the FCC changing its mind about smaller stations," Wimberg said. "The packet we sent them from our letter-writing party at the ECM building was huge."
University technology to revamp news media
By Aaron Knopf
aknopf@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
Cable and satellite television systems have vastly increased the number of programs available to viewers. But with so much programming, it is nearly impossible for people to watch — or even to know about — all the shows that might interest them.
Worldwide Broadcasting Network of Cambridge, Mass., has designed a system to solve this problem. And the system is based on technology originally developed at the University of Kansas.
Worldwide's system digitizes video feeds and stores them in a computer database, indexing each scene in the feed by its closed-caption content. Subscribers can connect to Worldwide's database through the Internet to search for specific video clips that meet their criteria. Users can request notification by e-mail anytime new video comes in with specific content.
"This product greatly increases the efficiency with which you watch TV," said David Kamins, vice president of engineering. "The ultimate vision is our machines could continuously be watching dozens of channels a day for topics that are interesting to you."
The system has the potential to change the way people watch broadcast television. People basically could build their own newspapers from a variety of sources based on topics that interest them.
Susan Gauch, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, led a team that developed the key components in Worldwide's system for storing and cataloging video feeds.
Gauch was principal investigator in a faculty group that applied for a National Science Foundation grant to develop the system in early 1994. When they did not get the money, the university of Kansas funded the project with a $97,000 research development fund grant, Gauch said. She also said additional funding came from the Center for Excellence in Computer Aided Software Engineering.
She said that a team of faculty, students and researchers had developed a working prototype by early 1996 and that Worldwide approached the University about licensing the technology in the summer of 1996.
Gauch said the initial vision for the project was to build online video archives that educational institutions could search. However, she said that she liked Worldwide's concept of letting people build customized news broadcasts.
"As a mother, that appeals to me because I will not watch the news with my children in the room," she said.
Kamins said that right now the only channels that Worldwide is capturing and indexing are C-SPAN and C-SPAN2.
"They try it and think, 'Gee, it's really cool, but I sure wish there were some sports on there,'" he said of the pilot users.
But Kamins said that Worldwide soon would have more content in its system. He said capturing news from CNN was one of Worldwide's key goals.
"We could go license it today for literally millions of dollars, but were a small startup and don't have that kind of capital," he said.
The key to working with CNN and other similarly sized broadcasters was proving that Worldwide's concept was commercially viable. Kamins said.
"You have to build the market first and build bigger and bigger partnerships as you grow," he said.
What's the buzz?
Robert Brooks, collections manager at the Snow Entomology Museum, and Rebekah Andrus, a student visiting from Utah State University in Lagan, examine a bee from the University's collection of more than 470,000 specimens of bees. The two were studying the Orchid bee, named for its attraction to orchids, yesterday in the basement of Snow Hall. The collection of insects started by Francis Snow holds the largest bee collection in the world, surpassing the Smithsonian and British Museum. Photo by Geoff Krieger/KANSAN
St. Lawrence earns grant to encourage abstinence
Graham K. Johnson gjohnson@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
The St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center recently said yes to a federal grant designed to encourage young people to say no to premarital sex.
The $66,667 grant was awarded to St. Lawrence March 20 as part of the federal government's 1996 Abstinence-Only Education Program. The program funds abstinence-only sex education, and broad-based sex education programs.
Father Vince Krische, head pastor of St. Lawrence, said the program was part of a national effort to fight the epidemic of teen pregnancy.
Krische said that the center's program would be a unique approach. The funds will be used to train college students to become abstinence counselors, Krische said. Counselors then will
"The nation has seen an increase in teen pregnancy," Krische said. "This is an opportunity to see if we can help solve this problem."
work with teens to encourage them to abstain from intercourse and to avoid problems such as teen pregnancy. Krische said.
Don Brown, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said the strength of the center's proposal, and its history in promoting abstinence helped St. Lawrence receive the grant.
The program specifies that the money must be used exclusively to promote abstinence, Brown said. The program also requires that St. Lawrence provide three dollars of funds or in-kind services for every four dollars of grant money.
Brown said that the grant came from $391,000 given to the state by the federal government.
Five other groups across the state received a portion of the state's money.
Krische said the program would be a success because the teenagers would look up to and respect the college-aged counselors' advice.
Professor Dennis Dailey, University of Kansas professor of Social Welfare, said that abstinence-only
education programs were too narrow and would not help people with special problems.
"Many abstinence-only programs are not what I would call 'comprehensive' because they don't address issues like contraception, abortion or homosexuality that require study and information," Dailey said.
"I think it's the opposite," Krische said. "The current sex education programs are narrow because they focus mainly on the physiological aspects. The abstinence-only program is built upon a whole way of life that can give a sense of freedom, that young people don't have to be exploited by others and risk their lives at such a young age."
Krische disagreed.
Rachel Seidle, Tulsa, Okla., freshman, said that abstinence freed people from the worries of pregnancy and disease, but that both educational approaches had their benefits.
Magnets kick off poetry month
WASHINGTON—Poet T.S. Eliot called April "the crauelest month." But the Academy of American Poets has made it National Poetry Month, and President Clinton has promised to join in by reading his favorite poem in a video to be preserved for posterity.
"I think a mix of the approaches would be the most effective," Seidel said.
The White House won't say what the president will read at the event April 22. Hillary Rodham Clinton also will read her favorite poem.
The Associated Press
Others reading that night will be poe laureate Robert Pinsky and two predecessors: Robert Hass and Rita Dove.
Pinsky began as laureate last October with a project for recording the favorite poems of Americans from all walks of life, read by
"There will be about 1,200 audio and 200 video," he said in a recent interview.
themselves.
In a foreword he wrote for a book, "The Magnetic Poetry Book of Poetry," collected by the Minneapolis firm that makes the tiles, Pinsky said: "The poems we assemble on our refrigerators are the compositions of actual American people, produced not for profit but for the fun of it, and to satisfy
that peculiar, deep itch to make something new."
Sabo said he had little interest in poetry but was trying to help the company that made the tiles, which provides jobs in his district and does promotes literacy.
On the other hand, he is an avid fan of the Minnesota Twins, so for reporters and photographers on the Capitol lawn he read four lines from the poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer, which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner June 3. 1888.
But before anyone actually could compose poetry on the wall, the Capitol police asked that it be moved to a nearby book shop, because, an aide to Sabo said, they considered it a commercial message for the company that makes the tiles.
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