Pictures of the U2 Vertigo concert in Pittsburgh taken with my cell phone...

My phone takes pictures at 640 by 480 pixels. I took some pictures at the U2 concert in the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and sent them to my e-mail account at Penn State. Here is a progression of photos of the stage area as the arena filled up:

Here are some pictures taken during the concert:
--The opening of the concert--
--The stage was a big circular track with lots of lights--
--Big video screens above the stage and a curtain of lights that made a huge video screen--
All seats in the arena gave a pretty good view. See the reviews at:
http://u2tours.com/detail.src?ID=20051022

Rob Porter sent me Penn State v Illinois football score updates on my cell phone throughout the concert. Thanks, Rob!

Is it all about the beer?

Yuki and Sungmi Jin, two doctoral degree candidates in our academic program at Penn State, presented a paper at the Northeastern Educational Research Association (NERA) meeting in Kerhonkson, New York, last week. The paper, "Use of Data on Labor Force Dynamics for Planning & Evaluating School–to–Work Programs (a 1.6 Mb Adobe PDF file) " was co-authored by Rose Baker, Yeonsoo Kim, and me.

For about 20 years, Phil Archer, a NERA former president, and I have been trading buying each other a Heineken beer. When I stopped attending the NERA conferences, who owed the beer was a matter of friendly contention. I would have students and friends attending the NERA meeting to tell Dr. Archer that he owed me a beer. He would claim that he did not. So, this time, he gave Yuki a beer to give to me in State College:

He expects that this evens us off. Hmmm. Really?

Here is Yuki presenting our paper:

And, here is a picture of Yuki with the discussant of the paper: Here is a picture of some of our students who attended the meeting, Wang Wei, Yuki, and Sungmi (L to R) in the lobby of the conference hotel: I think they all had a good time.

Saw U2 in Pittsburgh last night....

Will post some pictures and other news tonight. Still in Pittsburgh on this Sunday morning.

Travel to Pittsburgh to see U2 Vertigo Tour tonight....

Alice, Ann, Emily, and I travel to Pittsburgh today, where we will join my daughter, Maureen, and her husband, Dave, for the U2 Vertigo Tour concert that takes place in the Mellon Arena.

Information about the Vertigo Tour here.

Reviews of the 20 October 2005 concert (last one prior to Pittsburgh) are here.

A review of Bono's global politics here.

As always with these venues, "cameras not allowed," but U2 have negotiated a "cameras allowed" policy. I will either capture a few picts with me cell phone, or I will actually have my digital cam with me for some sneaky peaks. Will post when I return from Pittsburgh to State College, Pennsylvania.

Posted without comment...

IRAN: BLOGGER CONDEMNED TO 30 LASHES

Tehran, 21 Oct. (AKI)

A young Iranian blogger, Ahmad Seyyed Saraj, who has been imprisoned since 29 June in a jail in Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan, has received 30 lashes of the whip as part of his sentence. Seyyed Saraj has been charged with offending the authorities and revived a sentence of 30 lashes, while for the accusation of attacking the security of the state, he is still awaiting judgement.

Ahmad Seyyed Saraj is a journalist who has been running a blog after the newspaper where he was working closed down. Before him, another four Tehran bloggers were punished with whipping, for the contents of their sites.

After the closure of most of the independent newspapers and magazines in Iran, blogs have been the only possibility for many unemployed journalists to continue to express their opinions and truthfully report what cannot be found in the official media.

Persian is the third largest language used by bloggers, due to the more than 75,000 blogs generated in Iran.