Page 26 RAIN March/April 1984 Eat your carrots! Bruce Ames, a University of California biochemist, recently completed a study of carcinogens. He found that most cancer-causing agents come not from man-made pollution and toxic wastes, but from natural foods and traditional cooking methods. Mushrooms, figs, celery, parsley, beans, some herb teas, cottonseed oil, rhubarb, molds, fats, and alfalfa sprouts each contain some chemical that can increase the risk TOUCH & GO of cancer. Cooking only increases the level of carcinogens in foods. Some yfoods, however, such as carrots and citrus fruits, contain natural anticarcinogens. (From: Discover) Endurance: The Oriental rat flea can jump 600 times an hour for three whole days without stopping. (From: Science Digest) Cage on cacti: Composer John Cage played on eight cactus plants at a recent concert in New York City. “Botanical materials make lovely sounds when they're amplified," he said. He strung up the dried cacti on a sort of wire clothesline and stroked them with feathers to produce sounds not unlike plucked strings. “I like the cactuses where the spines are separated," Cage said. "When they're close together they don't vibrate freely." While he was in New York, he also read one of his works, entitled "Rocks Speak," which he said was inspired by Thoreau. He recited it like this: rocks speak the tales inscribed on them so from time to time not enough of the stony element in us as if you were that boulder gradually increasing in number (From: The New York Times) ACCESS: Community Uses of Computers A Meeting Puzzle (or, too many late- night database developments) Flew over brown and white America in December, just before my 38th birthday, to land in rainy Washington, DC, from rainy Portland, Oregon. Went there for four days of shuffling between DuPont Circle and the Steward Mott building on Capitol Hill, across the street from the Supreme Court. It was a small conference, or sometimes an almost too large roundtable discussion (at a rectangular table), about computers, telecommunications and (mostly) nonprofit public-interest/community organizations. The Public Interest Computer Association (PICA) pulled together what felt like the first event of its kind—no wagers on what to call "it" yet—in a short time, and successfully! It had the kind of organization that only goes with events that happen at just the right time. For hours the group discussed the impact of small computers, big and scary ones, telecommunications, operating systems, appropriate computing, electronic mail, database management, group needs assessments, and so on. Hours of fruitful conversation ensued between people trying to cope with changes in the community/public-interest world being brought on by the small-computer and telecommunications revolution. The conference was a tentative but large step forward toward developing a unified voice and support base for the computerization of the nonprofit world. The group is exploring an electronic mail system as a means to carry on its work. You can reach PICA at 122 Maryland Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002; 202/ 544-4171. It has a useful periodical on public-interest uses of computers. As I contemplated a method for summarizing the conference, 1 looked back on the attendees, remembering some of the conference as I pictured the individuals. Then I looked at the names, and in my mid-winter work mind (I have been creating databases of books and groups), what stood out was the characterization of the conference by the issues represented by the groups, all trying to figure out this new electronic wizardry. New Technology Resource Center (Chicago) was there, along with David Burnham (The Neio York Times), reminding us of the dangers of the "coming computer state" (he wrote a book with that title). Some people were there talking about and showing us this here thing they called a Community Memory (Berkeley). Then there was a Public Citizen (Washington, DC), and someone who kept talking about laws and rights (Stu Gay, ACLU), and kind of the same with Michael Goldhaber from the Institute for Policy Studies. Tall John McComb with the Sierra Club would stand up now and then and talk about its experience using computers for data processing as well as communications between branch offices. Mike McCullough was there passing out copies of one of the best grassroots journals on all this stuff (Re:Set). What strange names we are when stripped of some articles, all huddled together trying to figure out this electronic stuff. Things like: new technology, information cooperative, community memories, appropriate computing, public citizens, and winged mercury networking. Most of the information below is part ofa project I'm compiling on community uses of computers. I plan to list current information in each issue of RAIN, and you can order a 5- page bibliography on "Community Uses of Computers and Telecommunications" for $2 from RAIN. —S] International Network for Social Network Analysis Centre for Urban and Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Toronto, Ontario MSS lAl Canada The International Network for Social Network Analysis is an interesting network. I receive Connections, its quarterly bulletin. It sometimes has articles, but most often it is a dense collection of abstracts and bibliographies, information about information all over the place, about people studying how people connect with other people into networks.
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