Salon.com > Christopher Ott

Off track

Wed, 21 Nov 2001 20:35:00 +0000

At first glance, September's airborne attacks might seem like a clear vindication for Amtrak. With all flights in the country grounded in the days just after Sept. 11, the national railroad honored airline tickets from stranded travelers and drew a stampede of passengers. "Virtually every train" sold out, says an Amtrak spokesman; the company's phone reservation line was almost unreachable for days, and unreserved trains in the heavily traveled northeast corridor experienced standing-room-only conditions.

At the same time -- and in contrast to airline industry woes -- Amtrak ridership has actually grown slightly nationwide. In October, ridership on express Metroliner and high-speed Acela trains in the northeast corridor between Washington and Boston was up 43 percent over a year ago, and a third to one-half of those trains have been selling out and turning passengers away. On long-distance routes, Amtrak also reports that 40 percent of its sleeper cars have been selling out as well.

"We're in an environment today when 20 to 25 percent fewer passengers are flying than they were a year ago, and our ridership is about 1 percent higher than the year before," says spokesman Bill Schulz of Amtrak's nationwide performance in October. "That is pretty phenomenal." Amtrak carries an average of 60,000 passengers a day -- the equivalent of hundreds of flights.

For your information

Tue, 03 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

For every question you can answer on the Net (how do motorcycles work?), there's always a stumper (how can I synchronize the carburetors in my 1968 twin-engine BMW?). The Web may be an awesome information resource, but most of its data is static and often doesn't address the specific questions you want answered. However, that's quickly changing, as information markets -- online bazaars in which people can buy or sell expertise in real time -- are rolling out.

"Think of eBay, but where the underlying products being traded are pieces of information," suggests Michael J. Stern, who is president of Adeste.com, one of several information markets preparing imminent debuts. Stern's idea is to supplement the Web's vast array of freely available information with an offering of expertise that people are willing to pay for. The information markets will connect experts ranging from tax accountants to dog trainers with people who are willing to pay for their help, and the info market providers will take a cut of the transaction fee.

We're here, we're queer, I'm sick of it

Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:00:00 +0000

Gay pride month is finally over, after a big weekend of partying and parades in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities around the world. Millions of people commemorated the Stonewall rebellion, the shot-heard-'round-the-world brawl in 1969 that catalyzed a movement. We got together and restated positions on everything from hate-crimes to gay marriage, and if dykes on bikes, feather boas and shirtless gym boys are any measure, a good time was had by all.

In the midst of this good-natured celebration of Stonewall, however, a reappraisal of the pride strategy is beginning to emerge. After three decades, the politics of pride is beginning to look a little stale and out of step with the times, and it is becoming clear to both gay people and our straight allies that we need to take a new step forward. With June's pride celebrations over, that step is to ask what the politics of pride has left undone, and why.

Essay questions

Tue, 25 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Forget No. 2 pencils and Scantron ovals: Some educators are beginning to use computers to grade essays. Already a system called E-rater evaluates every essay
written as part of the Graduate Management Admission Test ( href="http://www.gmat.org/gmat_frames.html">GMAT) -- or about 800,000
compositions crafted by 400,000 business school applicants this year.

And some professors, bogged down by the volume of student papers they must
read, eagerly anticipate computerized readers that can help them slog
through the volume of words that comes across their desks each semester.

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to manage the load associated with
essay grading, and lecturers are gradually shifting the focus of their
assessment to multiple-choice questions," says Chris Janeke, a senior psychology lecturer at
the University of South Africa, a 120,000-student university experimenting
with a computerized grading system called the
Intelligent Essay Assessor.
Software "offers the possibility of automatizing at least some aspects of essay grading and may present a technological solution to our logistic problems."

The Kosovo myth

Thu, 25 Mar 1999 20:00:00 +0000

With NATO warplanes making good on a long-standing threat to stop Serbian attacks in Kosovo, what makes Serbia so determined to hold the small province, where 90 percent of residents are ethnically Albanian, not Serbian?

It's "the Kosovo myth," says Tomislav Longinovic, a leading expatriate Serbian scholar and an associate professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin, where he is writing a new book called "Borderline People: Imagining 'The Serbs.'" At the heart of the current conflict, he says, is a fervently patriotic version of the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Ottoman Turks defeated Serbian Prince Lazar and his allies in 1389. The defeat at Kosovo meant hundreds of years of Ottoman servitude for the Serbs, but it has taken on mythic proportions as the battle that ultimately halted the expansion of the Ottomans and Islam into Europe.

If this sounds like ancient history, it was, and maybe still would be if it were not for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In 1989, Milosevic stirred up nationalist passions based on the 600-year-old Kosovo myth to cement his hold on power while Eastern European communism crumbled. "The popular political imagination has substituted the Albanians for the Ottomans who defeated the Serbian army in 1389," Longinovic says. "The Serbs have shown readiness not only to fight their neighbors to the death, but to take on the entire world community as well."

The Kosovo myth

Thu, 25 Mar 1999 17:40:00 +0000

Strange bedfellows

Mon, 02 Nov 1998 20:00:00 +0000

--> MADISON, WIS. --Visitors to this liberal, lake-front college town and state capital might think that Tammy Baldwin had already wrapped up the race for an open seat in the 2nd Congressional District. Baldwin signs are on display throughout the center of Madison, the district's only large city. By most accounts, Baldwin is fantastically popular with the 40,000 students of the University of Wisconsin. Last Saturday at the weekly farmers' market, which draws crowds from all over the county and beyond, Baldwin, 36, was shaking hands and handing out stickers to a stream of well-wishers. Around the corner, an unstaffed table for Baldwin's moderate Republican opponent, Jo Musser, offered only a modest stack of Musser yard signs.

In spite of these appearances, this complex race is widely considered too close to call. And in the background is an issue everyone knows about, even though both sides seem eager to downplay it. Baldwin, a six-year veteran of the state assembly, who is campaigning for Congress on a progressive platform that includes universal health care and education reform, is an open lesbian. If she wins, she'll become the first openly gay nonincumbent ever elected to Congress. (Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., came out while already serving.) Baldwin is part of a national triumvirate of lesbians running for Congress that includes Grethe Cammermeyer, a Washington Democrat, and Christine Kehoe, a California Democrat.

Just the facts, RAM

Fri, 28 Aug 1998 19:00:00 +0000

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them."
-- Thomas Gradgrind, in Charles Dickens' "Hard Times"

Despite all the controversy between liberals and conservatives over issues like sex education, school prayer and a "back-to-basics" curriculum, there's a curious agreement on both the left and right today about one educational endeavor: putting as much technology as possible into the hands of students and teachers.

Conservatives have done their part with proposed legislation to give tax incentives for buying computers, and the Texas Board of Education has even flirted with plans to replace all textbooks with laptops in hopes of saving money. But educational technology seems to be a rare spot of political common ground. Some of the most vigorous proponents of educational technology have come from the liberal side: President Clinton praises the computer as "a teacher of all subjects," and Vice President Al Gore literally invented the term "information superhighway."

God's own ZIP Code

Thu, 09 Jul 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Think of evangelists on the air, and a variety of unsavory images come to mind. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, bawling for dollars. Oral Roberts, who once threatened that God would end his life if followers didn't pony up a multimillion-dollar sum. Ham-handed moralists like Jerry Falwell. Ambitious politicos like Pat Robertson, who recently warned that hurricanes or "possibly a meteor" would punish the city of Orlando, Fla., for its gay-pride celebration.

James Dobson, the force behind the radio-based ministry Focus on the Family, has a different style, nearly always presenting himself with an air of earnest, prudent authority. Whereas Dobson's colleagues have been trying for decades, with some success, to pull the center of political debate in America more firmly to the right, it is Dobson who now seems poised to have a serious impact on the nation's agenda. One sign came earlier this year when he lambasted the Republican Party for its insufficiently conservative agenda; soon after, he received high-level assurances at a meeting with Newt Gingrich and other party leaders in May that his concerns would be addressed.