Judge Rules on Amateur Reporters: "A federal court has ruled that nonprofessional news gatherers have the same rights as professionals, supporting a community gadfly who claimed she was muzzled by a public access cable company. It is the first ruling of its kind, said the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented plaintiff Patricia Demarest in her fight with Athol/Orange Community Television."

What color is water? "Water has an intrinsic color, and this color has a unique origin. This intrinsic color is easy to see, as can been seen in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas and in Colorado mountain lakes. Pure water and ice have a pale blue color, best seen at tropical white-sand beaches and in ice caves in glaciers (green colors are usually derived from algae). It is neither due to light scattering (like the sky), nor dissolved impurities (e.g., Cu2+). Because the absorption which gives water its color is in the red end of the visible spectrum, one sees blue, the complementary color of orange, when observing light that has passed through several meters of water. This color of water can also be seen in snow and ice as an intense blue color scattered back from deep holes in fresh snow."

The April 2002 issue of Wired contains an infographic of wireless access points across the United States. An annotated list of the wireless access points included in their statistics is available in PDF format on their site. (via Kottke.)

Asteroid sentry takes up post on web: "Sentry is a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth."

Happy 4th Birthday Kottke.

How much is that worth today? "Comparing the purchasing power of money in the United States (or colonies) from 1665 to any other year including the present. '$10,485.72 in the year 2001 has the same "purchase power" as $500 in the year 1900.'"

MIT to make "nanotech" Army wear: "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology plans to create military uniforms that can block out biological weapons and even heal their wearers as part of a five-year contract to develop nanotechnology applications for soldiers, the U.S. Army announced Wednesday." The Army is hunting for a new military uniform that can make soldiers nearly invisible, grant superhuman strength and provide instant medical care.

China responds to the US State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2001" with their own "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001."

Google responds to the Googlebombing: "'I'm not sure people are doing it with malicious intent,' said Matt Cutts, a software engineer for Google, which is widely recognized as producing the most relevant Internet search results. 'Just about all the cases we've seen have been humorous.'"

New Google News Search (beta):"Google's News Search (BETA) service presents information culled from many of the world's news sources collected over the previous week. With continuous updates throughout the day, you'll keep up to date with what's happening now and learn about the stories that led to the most recent developments. What's different about Google's News Search is the unique grouping technology Google has developed to automatically put related stories together in the same search result. This makes it easy to quickly scan the headlines while providing the option of reading multiple accounts of a story from different news sources."