Neale Sourna's Writer's Tidbits Creating Creative Writing/Research _ POC/Black Historical Fiction (BHF) Patreon.com/NealeSourna

About Neale Sourna's Writer's Tidbits

People of Color (POC) / Black Historical Fiction (BHF)
POC / Black Historical Fiction / Literature / Romance / Erotica and More
https://www.facebook.com/groups/163627582322721
https://www.patreon.com/NealeSourna

MISSION: To SHARE Historical Black, African, and People of Color (POC) Fiction author historical research references, story prompts, writer hacks, and links for writers and readers of People of Color Historical fiction and nonfiction.

Providing you with writing trigger topics and bits of history you never considered were a possibility. Or "someone" said it never was / never could have happened like that. They're wrong. And probably actually existed, was forgotten, ignored, or cast aside.

Plus, I'll be giving brief personal analyses on: character, a writer’s journey, and more that may prove helpful in creating your own colorful characters, in-depth stories, and completed published works.

NEED HELP:

• How to build an idea into a story?
• How to create interesting characters?
• How to keep your writer sanity sane?
• How to see or feel a writing trigger or a character trigger and what questions can get you to where you want to go.
  • Like always remembering Depeche Mode: "People Are People"

WHY? WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

• Finding relevant reference materials remains scattered and haphazard. Searching for historical information for People of Color isn't just as easy as digging out your old school history books.
        Most often we aren't mentioned, well, not as thoroughly and heroically as European males.

• Writing historically about People of Color to bring something new to readers' minds and emotions about People of Color in History is the plan.
  We are people, with the same or similar wants, drives, hopes as everyone else.
        Ethnic cultures are the unique seasoning for the people we were, are, and want to be and I hope to help you find thought and feel points on cultural points of view (POV) you never considered.

• Finding material that gives us a mental or emotional writing prompt, an urge to build it into a scene, one story, or an entire series.

Maybe its a tapestry image of an African Brit trumpeter for Henry VIII of England, a notice about a foreign black officer soldier who fought for King Henry VIII and his son, Edward—a man of African descent Knighted (Sir Pedro).

Or ... hm, what time periods of historical films do you love and want to see yourself in?

To be blunt, those of European descent, usually male, write themselves into the history of the Great Wall of China, Polynesia, and running with Mongol hordes. 

If Europeans "might" be there, why not Africans, like Yasuke, the "Black Samurai / Black Ronin" or "African Samurai / African Ronin"?

• Plus, marketing and making connections outside of the larger African American Book Clubs, when "lists" for Black Historical Fiction and Literature, because most are only rearranged rewrites of the SAME lists of older / classic African American or Black American tales. 
  • For example. Try searching for "African British Historical Fiction" sometime and see what limited material comes up. Even just African British, when Africans have been in Europe since, at least, Roman times. 
  • Or look for "African American Historical Fiction" that's not Z. N. Hurston, A. Walker, etc.
  • Yes. Some newer books get listed but, you have to scroll and scroll to find the newer stories about older, more varied, or different tales.

NOW. WHO AM I…?

Neale Sourna (www.Neale-Sourna.com), an award-winning author / publisher - screenwriter - game story narrative writer, based in the Greater Cleveland, Ohio, USA area. My novel and short story writing grew from self-prescribed short story exercises to work out ideas for TV scripts and feature screenplays.

My first published work was the short story "Hesitation" for PLAYGIRL, May 2002. 
“Characters should have depth and reality, and be unique in their own way.”

Some awards include my first published novel HOBBLE which won Best Romantic Erotica of the Year from BlackRefer.com; screenplay FRAMES which ranked as a New Century Screenplay Finalist; and Best storytelling @ White Nights Conference Game Narrative Awards for online video game METROPOLIS: LUX OBSCURA. http://www.neale-sourna.com/scriptgateway.html

I am a member of the Writer's Guild of America - West (WGA-w)'s Video Game Caucus.

I also edit and design (ebook and book covers plus interior layouts) of the character-driven stories published through PIE: Perception Is Everything (www.PIE-Percept.com), which is my author-publishing company.

EVER HEAR OF "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW”?

A little bit of everything in my life goes into my writing, because I believe in building characters who have unique depth, freshness, and reader memorability. So, they get some degree of my thoughts, emotions, and experience or that of someone I know directly or by observation.

Plus, with a lifelong love of learning and with life experience as a temp and perm employee in various fields besides writing; including: retail, business banking and wealth management, accounting, engineering, live theatre, cinema, music (vocal, instruments, and radio), erotic photo modeling, historical and cultural research, and even a little microgravity research at NASA.

You never know what comes in handy for writing characters and plots.

EDUCATION:

• Cuyahoga Community College’s Digital Film & Editing, Game Design Building; plus studies in Music Theory & Harmony. 
• Graduate level Film & Video writing and analysis at American University, DC. 
• A Performing Fine Arts Bachelor Degree from Lake Erie College, OH in Music, Photography, Painting, and Live Theater Stage Management and Theater Management. 
• An undergrad-intern semester at Mount Vernon College with the National Endowment for the Arts Opera-Musical Theatre Financial Distribution Program. 
• And an academic term alone abroad in Vienna, Austria just living, making friends, and learning.
  

A MISCELLANEOUS FUN FACT.

I share a birthday with sensual and sensational authors the Marquis de Sade of France and Thomas Hardy of England.||

_BUY STORIES online at your usual bookstores (BN and Amazon). Or get mobi / kindle / epub versions banned by Amazon Kindle or other vendors available at: https://payhip.com/NealeSourna 

https://www.patreon.com/NealeSourna

• 
  

After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses By JULIE BOSMAN

Ángel Franco/The New York Times _A set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the shelves of the New York Public Library.

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print. [NO!! I LOVE EB!! But...._NS]

Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.

But in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Since it was started 11 years ago, Wikipedia has moved a long way toward replacing the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds. The site is now written and edited by tens of thousands of contributors around the world, and it has been gradually accepted as a largely accurate and comprehensive source, even by many scholars and academics.

Wikipedia also regularly meets the 21st-century mandate of providing instantly updated material. And it has nearly four million articles in English, including some on pop culture topics that would not be considered worthy of a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Mr. Cauz said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand.

“We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said. “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.”

But one widely publicized study, published in 2005 by Nature, called into question Britannica’s presumed accuracy advantage over Wikipedia. The study said that out of 42 competing entries, Wikipedia made an average of four errors in each article, and Britannica three. Britannica responded with a lengthy rebuttal saying the study was error-laden and “completely without merit.”

The Britannica, the oldest continuously published encyclopedia in the English language, has become a luxury item with a $1,395 price tag. It is frequently bought by embassies, libraries and research institutions, and by well-educated, upscale consumers who felt an attachment to the set of bound volumes. Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought.

Room for Debate

Britannica: Define Outdated »

“I spent many hundreds of hours with those gold-embossed Britannica volumes on my lap, with pages you could actually turn, not click or swipe.”

— A.J. Jacobs

The 2010 edition had more than 4,000 contributors, including Arnold Palmer (who wrote the entry on the Masters tournament) and Panthea Reid, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and author of the biography “Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf” (who wrote about Virginia Woolf).

Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. But now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue. About 85 percent of revenue comes from selling curriculum products in subjects like math, science and the English language; 15 percent comes from subscriptions to the Web site, the company said.

About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee for the online subscription, which includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and to the company’s mobile applications. At least one other general-interest encyclopedia in the United States, the World Book, is still printing a 22-volume yearly edition, said Jennifer Parello, a spokeswoman for World Book Inc. She declined to provide sales figures but said the encyclopedia was bought primarily by schools and libraries.

Gary Marchionini, the dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the fading of print encyclopedias was “an inexorable trend that will continue.”

“There’s more comprehensive material available on the Web,” Mr. Marchionini said. “The thing that you get from an encyclopedia is one of the best scholars in the world writing a description of that phenomenon or that object, but you’re still getting just one point of view. Anything worth discussing in life is worth getting more than one point of view.”

Many librarians say that while they have rapidly shifted money and resources to digital materials, print still has a place. Academic libraries tend to keep many sets of specialized encyclopedias on their shelves, like volumes on Judaica, folklore, music or philosophy, or encyclopedias that are written in foreign languages and unavailable online.

At the Portland Public Library in Maine, there are still many encyclopedias that the library orders on a regular basis, sometimes every year, said Sonya Durney, a reference librarian. General-interest encyclopedias are often used by students whose teachers require them to occasionally cite print sources, just to practice using print.

“They’re used by anyone who’s learning, anyone who’s new to the country, older patrons, people who aren’t comfortable online,” Ms. Durney said. “There’s a whole demographic of people who are more comfortable with print.”

But many people are discovering that the books have outlived their usefulness. Used editions of encyclopedias are widely available on Craigslist and eBay: more than 1,400 listings for Britannica products were posted on eBay this week.

Charles Fuller, a geography professor who lives in the Chicago suburbs, put his 1992 edition on sale on Craigslist last Sunday. For years, he has neglected the print encyclopedias, he said in an interview, and now prefers to use his iPhone to look up facts quickly. He and his wife are downsizing and relocating to California, he said, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica will not be coming with them, a loss he acknowledges with a hint of wistfulness.

“They’re not obsolete,” Mr. Fuller said. “When I’m doing serious research, I still use the print books. And they look really beautiful on the bookshelves.”

Books, New Media, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia

Related Posts

From Media Decoder

• Encyclopaedia Britannica vs. the Digital Reference Library

• How I’m Surviving (or Trying to) Without Wikipedia at My Fingertips

• The Breakfast Meeting: Wikipedia Turns Off the Lights

• Carr and Stelter on Wikipedia’s Day of Protest

On Character: US Military Seeks Sixth Sense Training

LiveScience.com

Ordinary soldiers have sometimes shown a battlefield sixth sense that has saved lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the U.S. military wants to better understand that "spidey sense" and train troops to tap their inner superhero instincts.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research pointed to sixth sense research about how "humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them," according to a special notice posted on Feb. 29. It hopes to encourage such intuition in the brains of new soldiers, Marines and other troops with little or no battlefield experience.

Having intuition allows for split-second detection of patterns in the midst of uncertain scenarios — a possibly life-saving action in the face of an ambush or area rigged with roadside bombs.

But intuition stands apart from step-by-step, time-consuming analytical thinking because it happens both rapidly and subconsciously. A soldier may see, smell or hear something that gets subconsciously organized within hundreds of milliseconds to create the "feeling or impression of a solution" leading up to a sudden insight about the battlefield situation.

The U.S. military also pointed to studies suggesting a sixth sense can arise from "implicit learning" — absorbing information without being aware of the learning process — rather than building up expertise through years of practice. Ordinary examples of implicit learning include bike riding, learning new languages or developing intuition about how other people may act.

First, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) plans to measure the workings of both intuition and implicit learning. Next, it would create a working model of such thinking that could also reflect individual soldiers' differences, adapt to new situations, and account for the influence of battlefield stress or fatigue.

In the end, virtual battlefield simulations could help train soldiers' intuitions as well as collect information about their performance, ONR explained in its special notice. The U.S. military already uses game-like simulators to prepare soldiers for battlefield scenarios or even to help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

Mens Health A Perfect Day of Weight Loss [both women and men] By Bill Phillips and the Editors of Men's Health

For every man who transforms himself this year, there will be countless others who will stall, relapse, or never actually begin to change. What makes the difference? And how can you be among the group whose January 1 resolutions see the other side of April intact? The answer may be a mantra as simple as "Focus on February."

How so? Researchers from Sheffield University in England found that sticking with something for five weeks is more likely to turn it into a habit, a lifestyle change. They monitored 94 people at a gym for 12 weeks, and found that those who showed up and sweated for five weeks straight had a much better chance of lasting the study's duration. "During the 5-week period, there seems to be a shift from initial voluntary control to repeated habitual behavior," says Christopher J. Armitage, Ph.D., the lead author.

The implications are huge: In a little more than a month, you can overcome your worst habits. Five weeks. Count ’em on one hand. Could it be any easier?

Even better, our New Year, New You 2012 center will coach you every step of the way, with simple 30-day plans for accomplishing nine popular New Year’s resolutions. And when I say simple, I really mean it. Consider one of the most popular resolutions: Lose 10 to 20 pounds. Our plan is so easy you can start tomorrow. Just do this:

7:30 AM
Exercise for 11 Minutes

Believe it or not, an 11-minute workout can help you burn more fat all day long, say researchers from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. In the study, people who lifted weights for that duration three times a week increased their metabolic rate even as they slept. "The process of breaking down and repairing your muscles increases your metabolism," says study author Erik Kirk, Ph.D. What's more, the participants were able to fit their workouts into their schedules 96 percent of the time.

And don’t forget your legs. In a new Syracuse University study, people burned more calories the day after they did lower-body resistance training than the day after they worked their upper body. "Leg muscles like your quads and glutes generally have more mass than the muscles in your chest and arms," says study author Kyle Hackney, Ph.D.

Our advice: Hit every muscle each workout. We put 80 such superfast workouts in our new books, The Men’s Health Big Book of 15-Minute Workouts and The Women’s Health Big Book of 15-Minute Workouts.

8:00 AM
Skip the Super Bowl

Warning: Your breakfast may be larger than it appears. Cornell University scientists found that people ate more cereal from bigger bowls than from smaller ones, even though they thought the opposite to be true. "It's called the size-contrast illusion," says researcher Brian Wansink, Ph.D. "Because food takes up a smaller percentage of space in larger dishes, it seems like you're eating less." Use a measuring cup to portion out your cereal; in a few days, you'll be able to eyeball servings accurately.

Healthy Ingredient Swaps for Weight Loss

NEXT - 10:00 AM >>

Why women really are better at almost everything: Q&A with author Dan Abrams

by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff, on Tue Mar 1, 2011

Contrary to jokes and one-liners, women are better drivers than men. They’re also better at getting the joke. And better with hammers. And video games. And social networking. And did we mention, they get dressed faster than guys? This isn’t opinion, it’s fact, and Dan Abrams can prove it.

In his new book, Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else, Abrams collects research from leading studies over the past few years to make the case for the ‘fairer’ sex.

A legal analyst for ABC News and former lawyer, he approached the topic as a defense attorney, using evidence that already exists to debunk popular myths about women.

“In nearly every field, statistics and studies show that women are better collaborators, are more cautious and more adept at navigating treacherous terrain,” writes Abrams in his book’s opening statement.

“I am not convinced that women as a group play basketball or read maps better than men. The evidence here will show, however, that women are living longer and evolving better than men.”

It takes a lot for a man to admit his own weaknesses (there’s a chapter on how women tolerate pain better), so we wondered why Abrams would make the case for women. Turns out, it’s a man’s job.


Shine: How did you decide to do this book?
Dan Abrams: I was hired to write a light article for a magazine about certain areas that women are better in than men. Some of the evidence surprised me, so I went and looked into the underlying research. Most of it was true, some was exaggerated, some anecdotal. But I kept finding more and more real studies and the evidence is compelling when you look at it all together. I couldn’t believe there’s been no major book about it.

Shine: Why now?
D.A.: There’s a lot more evidence now. A lot of the studies from the book are from the last three years. It’s only been in the last twenty or so years, that women have been on a relatively even playing field in terms of work to do many of these studies. We weren’t able to make fair comparisons before, because women were a fraction of the working world. Now we’re see women taking over the majority in many professions. But only recently has there been enough time to look back to compare men versus women and only recently has there been real interest.

Shine: Which gender is leading these studies?
D.A.: Of the studies I looked at, a vast majority of lead researchers are men, but the broad trend trackers are women.

Shine: What finding surprised you the most?
D.A.: I was most surprised at how conclusive the evidence was for the fact that women tolerate pain better. They endure more pain throughout their lives, in more bodily areas and with greater frequency, according to researchers at the University of Bath. According to the medical journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, women have an average of 34 more nerve fibers per square centimeter of facial skin, while men have an average of 17. New research is suggesting the fact that women tend to endure pain more makes them more immune to it. It’s the old aphorism, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Shine: Are women really better at tasting beer?
D.A.: The evidence is clear that women have a better sense of smell. In one study, researchers questioned whether men or women be better able to smell sweat behind fragrances, and women were fooled far less. But also they have a better sense of taste, and can apply it to just about anything. Taste is based on smell, as well as the number of taste buds a person has, and women are more likely to have a greater number of more-sensitive taste buds. And it’s not just beer that they’re better at tasting, but wine as well.

Shine: What about sports—men are better at sports, right?
D.A.: There’s no question that men have larger muscles, so they tend to be better at most sports. But there are certain areas—particularly endurance sports—where women are better. Studies show that estrogen is a disadvantage for muscle development but an advantage when it comes to endurance. Another advantage for women is that their bodies more efficiently process oxygen.

When it comes to ultra-marathons—say, a 135 mile race without sleep—women can beat men. It’s reflective of something we see throughout the book— when it comes to race of life, women won’t sprint but they'll run longer. In baseball terms, men may hit the home run but women hit the singles and doubles more often and end up with a better average. This is true in financial fields as well: women are better long-term investors.

Shine: It makes sense that women are hard-wired for endurance, considering another chapter in the book entitled, “Women Live Longer.”
D.A.: Women live an average of five years longer than men. The reasons for this are both genetic and behavior-based. First of all, women have stronger immune systems, again due to estrogen which aids the fight against disease-inducing enzymes. But women are also less likely to engage in risky behavior.

For example, I found that women are hit by lightning less often than men. That’s because the guy may not get off the roof when there’s a thunderstorm coming.

Shine: Does the same theory apply to women being safer drivers?
D.A.: Men are more likely to engage in reckless behavior, like driving drunk. One study found male drivers have 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women. It’s translated to insurance rates, women have 7 percent lower rates on the whole because they’re less careless drivers.

In Australia, they actually petitioned to have more women bus drivers, because they found they’re more likely to treat buses better and have fewer accidents.

Shine: Bus drivers aren’t the only jobs women excel at, according to your research. What other jobs are women better at than men?
D.A.: Women were found to be less corruptible as cops. In both Lima, Peru and Volgograd, Russia where police corruption was a major issue, the governments campaigned to hire more women cops. There’s another study that women are more effective as political leaders than men.

It suggests, we’d be a better country if there were more women in the highest echelons of politics.

Shine: In the field of medicine, the findings are also in favor of women.
D.A.: One of the most definitive studies in the book was done in 2009 by the British government. They collected a database of information on all the investigations of medical misconduct or incompetence over a period of eight years. It was the largest study of medical performance ever.

They found that while forty percent of doctors were women, 80 percent of those under investigation were men.

In the U.S., there were similar findings. Male physicians were twice as likely to be sued as women.

Shine: With all this counter-evidence, why are women still subjected to the same old stereotypes?
D.A.: Women weren’t allowed to vote in this country 100 years ago. We’re still in the period of catch up. We still haven’t had a female president, or that many women running Fortune 500 companies. When we get to point of seeing just as many women in the top levels of every profession, that's when we'll see a sea change at lower levels.

Shine: How is the internet giving women more of an advantage?
D.A.: One of the clichés about women is that they’re more communicative—those who want to demean women say they like to gossip more. That’s a pejorative way of commenting on the fact that women are more involved in social media.

A 2010 study found women were six percent more exposed to social networking sites and spent more time on them. Other research found women were less likely to be victims of internet fraud.

Shine: Are you worried about backlash from men?
D.A.: I already had one men’s rights group send a petition to get me fired from my job. They wrote, “Dan Abrams is penning a sexist book claiming male inferiority.” But this book is not about my musings or opinions. This is me approaching the topic like a lawyer. Is there some hyperbole in the headline? Sure, but the reality is the trends here are significant and important.

The goal of this book is not be viewed as a feminist book but an objective book. Someone with no bias is examining the evidence and coming forth to say it’s compelling. I’ll get mocked by many men, but a woman who made the same findings would be discounted for writing this book because of her bias.

Shine: You've provided a lot of evidence that women are better at some of life's most important tasks. What are men better at?
D.A.: Men are better at parking, they’re better dieters, they have better distance vision, they read maps better. One study suggests they even treat their friends better.

But my next book won’t be about making the case for men. Overall I found that men’s biggest problem is that they’re too confident and women’s biggest problem is that they’re not confident enough. Truth is, I think the evidence is overwhelming in favor of women.

U.S. apologizes to Guatemalans for secret STD experiments By Brett Michael Dykes

By Brett Michael Dykes

U.S. scientific researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan mental patients with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946 to 1948 -- a practice that only came recently to light thanks to the work of an academic researcher. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a formal apology to the Central American nation, and to Guatemalan residents of the United States.

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible [hidden, secret] research could have occurred under the guise of public health," said Clinton and Sebelius in a joint statement. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

The discovery of the long-ago experiments stems from another, far better known episode of federal tampering with test subjects to study sexually transmitted diseases: the long-running "Tuskegee experiment," studying 399 poor black men from Macon County, Ala., who had been diagnosed with syphilis but never informed of their condition. Federal scientists simply told the men they had "bad blood" and researchers compiled a four-decades-long study monitoring "untreated syphilis in the male Negro." Researchers never treated the illness over its usually fatal course, even after the simple remedy of penicillin was shown to be an effective syphilis treatment; participants received only free meals and medical exams, together with federal funding of their funeral expenses after they died. The study began in 1932, continuing right through to 1972, when it was exposed in media reports.

One of the better-known experts on the Tuskegee scandal is Susan Reverby, a professor of women's and gender studies at Wellesley College who has published two books on the subject. As she was researching her most recent book, Reverby learned of the Guatemalan project, in which researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service conducted experiments on 696 male and female patients housed at Guatemala's National Mental Health Hospital. The scientists injected the patients with gonorrhea and syphilis -- and even encouraged many of them to pass the disease on to others.

"It was done in conjunction with the Guatemalan government," Reverby told The Upshot in a phone interview Friday morning. "They had permission from the Guatemalan government."

Reverby explained that she learned of the Guatemala study purely by accident.

[Related: Japan offers big apology to South Korea]

"I was in the archives of the University of Pittsburgh looking at the papers of the surgeon general at the time," Reverby said. "And the papers there were also the papers of a man named John Cutler, who had also been involved in the Tuskegee study. When I opened the boxes of the Cutler papers, there was nothing in it about Tuskegee, but there was everything about this Guatemala study."

Reverby -- who was instrumental in getting former President Bill Clinton to offer an apology for the Tuskegee experiment in 1997 -- told us that she informed Dr. David Sencer, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control; Sencer then passed the discovery up the chain of command in the U.S. government.

"As with many of these things, it was just pure serendipity," Reverby said. "I was the right person in the right place at the right time."

(Photo via AP)

Disease risk higher for suburban swingers than prostitutes By Kate Kelland

Disease risk higher for swingers than prostitutes

Reuters – A female guest enjoys the atmosphere in a swingers club The Secession art gallery in Vienna late evening …

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists studying swingers -- straight couples who regularly swap sexual partners and indulge in group sex at organized meeting -- say they have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than prostitutes.

Dutch researchers publishing their work in the British Medical Journal showed that older swingers -- those over the age of 45 -- are particularly vulnerable and yet are a group largely ignored by healthcare services.

With estimates that the swinger population could be many millions across the world, the scientists said there was a risk this untreated group could act as an STI "transmission bridge to the entire population."

"Although exact estimates are unavailable, the swingers' population is probably large," wrote Anne-Marie Niekamp, who worked on the study with colleagues from Maastricht University.

The Dutch study analyzed the numbers of patients seeking treatment in 2007 and 2008 at three sexual health clinics in South Limburg in the Netherlands.

The clinics have recorded whether a patient is a swinger since the start of 2007, in an attempt to track infection rates among this group.

During the study period, there were just under 9,000 consultations at the three clinics. One in nine of the patients was a swinger, with an average age of 43.

Overall, combined rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were just over 10 percent among straight people, 14 percent among gay men, just under 5 percent in female prostitutes, and 10.4 percent among swingers, they found. And female swingers had higher infection rates than male swingers.

One in 10 older swingers had chlamydia and around one in 20 had gonorrhea.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted disease among women and in 70 percent of cases causes no symptoms. The bacterial infection can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. Gonorrhea is another bacterial infection which can also lead to infertility if left untreated.

Niekamp said that while other high risk groups, such as young straight people, gay men and prostitutes, were relatively easy for healthcare service to identify and target for advice and help, swingers were generally a hidden community.

"That makes them very hard to reach," she said in a telephone interview. "Because they are so hidden and in some ways also stigmatized, it is hard for them to come forward for STI testing and treatment."

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: Music history finds a new home inside Rock Hall's library and archives at Tri-C's Center for Creative Arts--John Soeder

Music history finds a new home inside Rock Hall's library and archives at Tri-C's Center for Creative Arts
By John Soeder, The Plain Dealer
February 28, 2010, 6:30AM

PHOTO. andyleach.jpgLisa DeJong, The Plain DealerAndy Leach is the director of the Rock Hall's new library and archives in Tri-C's Center for Creative Arts. "We want this to be the world's preeminent research center for rock 'n' roll," Leach says.

In the conservation lab, a movie poster for "Love Me Tender" starring Elvis Presley in his big-screen debut ("Mr. Rock 'n' Roll in the story he was born to play!") is unfurled on a table, awaiting inspection. Around the corner, a worker pulls a "We Are the World" album off a stack of LPs as she takes inventory for a computer database. In another room, pallets are piled high with boxes containing everything from David Bowie and Jefferson Starship videos to a vinyl copy of "Gary Puckett and the Union Gap's Greatest Hits" -- a fresh shipment of history, ready to be processed.

Welcome to the attic of rock 'n' roll heaven, otherwise known as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's library and archives.
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Rock around the archives

Here's a taste of some of the cool items in the Rock Hall archives:

# Buddy Holly's diploma from Lubbock Senior High School in Lubbock, Texas.

# Jimi Hendrix's handwritten lyrics to "Purple Haze," originally subtitled "Jesus Saves."

# Record mogul Ahmet Ertegun's 1969 appointment book, in which the evening of May 26 is blocked off for an Incredible String Band concert.

# Documentation from Alan Freed's 1959 payola trial, including testimony from promotion manager Bernard Friedlander of United Artists, which paid Freed to play its records on his radio show.

# Jim Morrison's death certificate, which lists the cause of death as "Unknown, pending Doctor's statement."

# The passport of Joseph Vernon Turner, aka Big Joe Turner, the blues singer whose hits included "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Corrina, Corrina."

-- John Soeder
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The facility won't open to the public until November or December, but staffers are hard at work there already.

"We want this to be the world's preeminent research center for rock 'n' roll," said Andy Leach, director of the library and archives.

The new digs occupy approximately one-third of the four-floor, 75,000-square-foot Center for Creative Arts on Cuyahoga Community College's Metropolitan Campus, two miles away from the Rock Hall itself.

Through a capital campaign, the nonprofit hall raised $12 million for its stake in Tri-C's $35 million building. The college footed the remainder of the bill with state funds.

Rock Hall and Tri-C officials hope the library and archives will establish Cleveland as a hub for the study of rock and related genres of popular music.

Rock music "should be studied like any other serious art form," said Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the New York City-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which runs the Rock Hall in conjunction with a Cleveland board.

"To do that, you need a serious place where people can sit down and go through materials," Peresman said. "This is going to be the only place where you can go to dig really deep."

That goes not just for scholars, but for the general public, too. In a special reading room, under supervision and amid tight security, you’ll be able to peruse material from the archives, although in the case of certain highly valuable items -- Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten “Purple Haze” lyrics, for example -- you might have to settle for studying a digital scan or a color copy of the original.

The foundation's $8 million pledge to the Rock Hall's capital campaign includes $3 million for the library and archives.

The area designated for such a repository in architect I.M. Pei's original blueprints for the Rock Hall never materialized. It was appropriated for offices when the space-crunched museum opened in 1995.

The hall considered other options, including housing the library and archives in a proposed connector between the museum and the Great Lakes Science Center, before announcing its partnership with Tri-C five years ago.

"It's extremely important to have the Rock Hall's library and archives in Cleveland," said Tri-C President Jerry Sue Thornton, a Rock Hall trustee.

In addition to providing unique educational opportunities for students at Tri-C and other colleges and universities, the library and archives will be a big draw for music scholars, Thornton said.

Ground was broken in October 2007 for the Center for Creative Arts, whose 27-foot-by-24-foot digital billboard is clearly visible from Interstate 77. The building was designed by the Cleveland firm of Robert Madison International. The college's side of the center has been open since August, complete with state-of-the-art multimedia facilities and classrooms.

The Rock Hall signed a 50-year lease for its part of the building.

The windowless, climate-controlled archives are spread over two floors. Twin HVAC systems keep the temperature at 68 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity at 45 percent.

"Good for materials, tolerable for people," Leach said as he led a recent tour of the inner sanctum.

He joined the Rock Hall in January 2009, after eight years at the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago, and moved into his new office in the Center for Creative Arts in December. His staff includes three other full-time employees, with four more positions expected to be filled in the coming months.

Leach, 36, strikes you as the kind of guy who is equally at home in academia or in the front row at, say, a Wilco concert. He has a bachelor's degree in music and a master's degree in library science. He plays guitar and pedal-steel guitar, too.

PHOTO. In the archives, high-density shelving provides 12,000 linear feet of storage space.

Even when all of the materials housed in the Rock Hall's off-site facility on Cleveland West Side are transferred here, only one-tenth of the available capacity will be filled.

"If we were to take everything offered to us, we'd fill these shelves in one year," Leach said. "We have to be selective."

The archives will hold personal papers, business documents, photographs, song manuscripts, posters and other items from rock's movers and shakers.

Already on the shelves are dozens of boxes from the late Ahmet Ertegun, a founder of Atlantic Records and the Rock Hall. The collection includes correspondence between Ertegun and everyone from Mick Jagger to Henry Kissinger.

The Rock Hall has obtained similar collections from other record-company executives, including Clive Davis, Mo Ostin and Seymour Stein, as well as Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed and numerous artists, including Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, Art Garfunkel and Eddie Cochran.

Visitors will be able to don gloves and examine items from the archives in a special library room. In the library, they'll also have access to music books, dissertations, periodicals, sheet music and extensive audio and video recordings, including footage from the Rock Hall induction ceremonies and various museum events.

In recent months, the Rock Hall has stepped up its collection efforts. The challenge is convincing donors that their collections belong here and not in the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress or any given university.

While Leach took pains to emphasize that the Rock Hall isn't competing with other institutions -- "As far as I'm concerned, we should all work together," he said -- he was happy to talk up the strengths of the hall's repository.

"If you're a recording artist or someone in the music industry in another capacity, your materials are going to be in the right context here," Leach said. "In a facility where rock 'n' roll isn't the focus, your materials could be lost in the shuffle."

PHOTO rochellelemaster.jpgLisa DeJong, The Plain DealerVolunteer Rochelle Lemaster stacks Rolling Stone magazines from the 1970s in the Rock Hall library and archives. The issue on top is from September 1974, with Tanya Tucker on the cover.

Now that the library and archives are a reality, "the floodgates will open," said guitarist Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group.

"Every rock 'n' roll artist has a box in their basement . . . that might get lost to history," he said.

Kaye also is a member of the Rock Hall's nominating committee, co-author of Waylon Jennings' autobiography and compiler of "Nuggets," a seminal garage-rock anthology.

When Kaye inherited a collection of live cassettes recorded in the '70s and '80s at CBGB, the landmark Manhattan club where the likes of Smith, the Dead Boys and Talking Heads used to pack 'em in, he passed along the tapes to the Rock Hall's archives.

"When I go to various libraries looking for rock-oriented material, it's very haphazard," Kaye said. "At most institutions, rock is regarded as some kind of a backwater. . . . My hope is these archives will be a place where the music's legacy is safely preserved."

The Rock Hall's facility could fill a void for researchers, said Ruthann McTyre, president of the Music Library Association.

"It's going to be a good central location for compiling a lot of material in one place," McTyre said. "It's getting to the kinds of primary source materials that they'll have there that really brings research alive."

Rock Hall President and CEO Terry Stewart personally has been courting potential donors on behalf of the library and archives.

"I honestly get the chills when I walk around there," Stewart said. "Much of the material that we've collected will reside there and be exposed to the world in a very different way than you see at the museum."

Ideally, the library and archives won't appeal only to scholars, but also to local residents and Rock Hall visitors seeking a deeper immersion in the music's back pages, Stewart said.

"I don't want it to be solely an ivory tower," he said.

"It's primarily an educational facility with a scholarly function, but if music floats your boat and you just want to submerge yourself in it, this is a place where you might want to spend an afternoon.

"It's rock 'n' roll, and the music will live there every day."

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