I never heard of this before and I’ve lived in Massachusetts for 12 years now, but it appears we have a law passed in 1675 that bans American Indians from entering the city of Boston–and one group might choose to go elsewhere unless it is repealed. According to an article in the Boston Globe, the law reads:

We find that still there still remains ground of Fear, that unless more effectual Care care be taken, we may be exposed to mischief by some of that Barbarous Crew, or any Strangers not of our Nation, by their coming into, or residing in the Town of Boston. . . . Secondly, That there be a Guard appointed at the end of the said Town towards Roxbury, to hinder the coming in of any Indian, until Application be first made to the Governor, or Council if fitting, and to be . . . remanded back with the same Guard, not to be suffered to lodge in Town, unless in Prison.

Naturally, this isn’t sitting so well with Unity, a coalition of four groups representing Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans working in the news media. The city is in the final rounds to win Unity’s 8,000- to 10,000-attendee convention in 2008, but only if it gets this old law off the books. Trust me, they’re working on it–it may already be a done deal.

Dan Lewerenz, president of the Native American Journalists Association and a Unity board member, said in the Globe:

”We’re considering what it means for us to endorse a city that officially and effectively bans Native Americans," said Lewerenz, a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. ”We know it’s not going to be enforced, but in theory, the police could arrest us when we arrive at the airport."

According to Meta-Roj blog, the New York Times said this law came up last fall around Thanksgiving, for obvious symbolic reasons. But, he says, "now that there’s some real
money on the line, maybe things will progress a bit faster." (He also poses an interesting correlation between this 330-year-old law and the Real ID Act of 2005.)

But this is just one of the many weird Massachusetts legal holdovers from the old days. There’s also an old law that makes goatees illegal unless you first pay a special licensing fee to wear one in public; another that says it’s illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath; and yet another that makes it illegal to have a gorilla in the back seat of your car,  according to this site.

Of course, Massachusetts is not alone in having stupid laws–far from it. I remember posting a while ago about British students coming to the U.S. to break as many dumb laws as they can in numerous states over their vacation here this summer. Some of the more bizarre ones I ran across: Did you know that you’re breaking a city ordinance if you fish while sitting on a giraffe’s neck when in Chicago? So much for that exciting incentive idea ;> And be sure to let your Florida meeting attendees know that they could be busted for passing gas in a public place after 6 p.m. on Thursdays. The idiocy goes on and on…go to dumblaws.com to see all the ways you’re probably breaking the law daily in your home town, state, or meeting locale.

I find this one hard to believe, but Stephanie Downs at ConferZone reports that the day her presentation was scheduled at the WebEx User Conference in San Francisco, organizers had to cancel because “a protestor with guns was outside the event and was consequently arrested Monday night.”

I never thought of WebEx as being particularly controversial–definitely not something to inspire this kind of yahoo behavior. Wonder what his gig was all about? As for Stephanie, well, she sounds pretty calm about it, and even jokes, “Maybe next year they could rent a private island to avoid problems in the future. I am sure the other attendees would be all for it…what do you think?”

As if it wasn’t hard enough to get today’s attendees to come to a meeting…just imagine if you were planning the MIT Time Traveler Convention! From the Web site:

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and…We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention.

Great idea, I’d love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

Can’t the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and travel back in time to attend?

Yes, they can! In fact, we think this will happen, and the small number of adventurous time travelers who do attend will go back to their "home times" and tell all their friends to come, causing the convention to become a Woodstock-like event that defines humanity forever.

So, if anyone reading this is from the future, you’re welcome to come; "We do request that you bring some sort of proof that you do indeed come from the future, and haven’t just dressed like you do. We welcome any sort of proof, but things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty, or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated." Present-day attendees also are welcome.

Here are the coordinates:

The Time Traveler Convention

May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)

East Campus Courtyard, MIT

42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W

(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

According to an article in Wired, there’s now such a thing as Social Networking in Fur, or SNIF. The "project is a wearable computer system for dogs that allows their owners to monitor the animals’ behavior and capture their social networks."

Unlike human social-networking sites, where users typically confirm they have met, the system automatically verifies whether the mutts have actually sniffed each other. It also reports on the status of a relationship and how often they see each other.

Do you suppose that someday they’ll develop a system like this for humans, so we don’t have to go through that whole, "I know I know that person from somewhere but have no idea what their name is, where I met them, or even if I liked them" thing that happens all the time at conferences?

Anyway, it’s one of the stranger things I’ve run across this morning, and as a dog person, I can’t imagine not knowing which dogs my pups like and don’t like–they make it pretty clear who their friends are and aren’t!

Hard to believe it, but there’s a company that makes spring-loaded shoes (if you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the springs). Could this be the answer to a long day on the show floor?

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According to this study by Sirota Consulting, meeting planners with too much on their plates actually are a pretty happy lot. While the most satisfied were people who had just the right amount of work to do, those who had too much to do were right behind them in satisfaction levels. Those with too little to do were the least satisfied with their jobs.

So that’s why I’m so slap-happy with my work–there’s too much of it!

(Thanks to Gary for the pointer.)

I don’t even know what to say about this one: Administration Balks At ‘Gay’ In Gay Suicide Conference. The administration also is asking that organizers include a session on faith-based prevention.

Now I know that funders, even the government funders, are free to do as they wish with their money, but it doesn’t seem right to me to fund a conference, then ask them to make changes or, it is insinuated in this article, lose the money. If the sponsor, in this case the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) part of the Department of Health and Human Services, doesn’t like the title or the content, I don’t understand why they’re funding it to begin with. Maybe I’m missing something?

If you read the article, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

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Every meeting planner knows that Murphy’s Law–whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually in the most exasperating way–is alive and kicking. But for those among us who are better at math than I, there’s actually a formula that can help you beat Mr. Murphy at his game:

((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
Where U=urgency, C=complexity, I=importance, S=skill, F=frequency, and A=aggravation (set at 0.7 by experts after a poll)

Project psychologist Dr David Lewis said: “The lesson from this is that, to cut the seemingly unbeatable Murphy’s Law gremlins down to size, you need to change one of the elements in the equation.

“So, if you haven’t got the skill to do something important, leave it alone. If something is urgent or complex, find a simple way to do it. If something going wrong will particularly aggravate you, make certain you know how to do it.”

But he added a note of caution: “There is, of course, a Sod’s Law factor to the equation. If you judge your ratings wrongly, you might become too optimistic - and calamity will strike.”

Now can they come up with a way to do away with the phenomenon where the second I say, “Gee, I can’t believe I haven’t seen a single mosquito today,” a bloodthirsty, whining cloud descends on my head, or as soon as I comment on how light the traffic is, it comes to a screeching halt?

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If this ever makes it to the commercial market, just imagine how you could wow the most jaded meeting attendees:

Virtual butterflies that flutter about in space and react to the presence of visitors—if you touch them or try to catch them, they fly away; but if you hold your hand steady, they return and, with a little luck, alight on your outstretched hand. The “Moony” project is meant to make such a scenario possible. Its aim is to develop an intuitive interface that can be used in conjunction with smoke or steam, projections and sensors. A forerunner project has already been carried out. Water vapor serves as the projection surface for the visualizations.

(via Gizmodo)

I’m so excited that I just have to share our good news with you–we just found out that Medical Meetings is a finalist for a Neal Award for Best News Coverage for an article I wrote last fall called Stark Raving Mad.

The Neal Awards are a pretty big deal for us journalist types, so I am way beyond happy!!