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January 31, 2007
Molly Ivins
My dear friend Molly Ivins has passed away.
Molly was an amazing writer, reporter, and humorist. She had a scathing wit. But I have never met a more romantic patriot. She truly and deeply believed in the goodness and greatness of Texas and the United States. Her entire life was devoted to exposing the gaps between what we were and what we could be. She specialized in illuminating the ways our cynical leaders manipulated our weaknesses and kept us short of our full potential.
Mostly, she was loving. She gave big hugs. She had a big laugh. She had high standards and big dreams. She was dear friends with the famous and powerful. (One time I answered her phone and it was Gloria Steinham -- on whom I always had a big crush) But she was never happier than when gossiping with a bartender or joking around with a college student. Molly was always in demand as a lecturer or interview subject. But she was actually intensely shy and private. She mostly wanted to have a beer with close friends and chat with strangers.
Although Molly put on a strong Texas Baptist accent, she was of patrician stock. Her parents were Houston Episcopalian nobility. She was educated at Smith College and Columbia University. She wrote for The New York Times. She traveled the world.
Her favorite place on earth was -- of all places -- Lubbock, Texas. This was not an act. She really loved real people and real places. She walked in boots as if she had learned to walk in them.
She stole more than a few cheap joke lines from her reporter peers -- especially the hilarious Ken Herman and the witty Joe Cutbirth. Once in a while she even stole one of my jokes about some dumb state legislator. Like Mark Twain, she was much more than a humorist.
When she unleashed the full force of her writing style and her big heart, she could make a statue weep.
Tonight, I will raise a glass to her memory and spirit. I wish we could have shared her a little longer. But I will treasure every word and every moment I did get from her.
This is a great nation. How do I know? We had a Molly Ivins for a while. That's pretty great.
Molly Ivins Has Died
I just read the news that Molly Ivins died on Wednesday after a long struggle with breast cancer. It seems so strange that two of the figures so closely identified with Texas, Ivins and Governor Richards, are now gone. Siva knew her and will, I'm sure, have much to say about this firecracker.
Wait, Frank Sinatra was GAY????????
Love God's Way is hilarious. Check it out:
One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children's listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy.
Bands to watch out for
* The Spores (endorse suicide)
* Scissor Sisters
* Rufus Wainwright
* Merzbau
* Ravi Shankar
* Wilco
* Bjork
* Tech N9ne
* Ghostface Killah
* Bobby Conn
* Morton Subotnik
* Cole Porter
* The String Cheese Incident
* Eagles of Death Metal
* Polyphonic Spree
* The Faint
* Interpol
* Tegan and Sara
* Erasure
* The Grateful Dead (AIDS)
* Le Tigre
* Marilyn Manson (dark gay)
* The Gossip
* The Magnetic Fields
* The Doors
* Phish
* Queen
* The Strokes
* Sufjan Stevens
* Morrissey(?questionable?)
* Metallica
* Judas Priest
* The Village People
* The Secret Handshake
* The Rolling Stones
* David Bowie
* Frankie Goes to Hollywood
* Man or Astroman
* Richard Cheese
* Jay-Z
* Depeche Mode
* Kansas
* Ani DiFranco
* Fischerspooner
* John Mayer
* George Michael (texan)
* Angel Eyes
* The Indigo Girls
* Velvet Underground
* Madonna
* Elton John
* Barry Manilow
* Indigo Girls
* Melissa Etheridge
* Eminmen
* Nirvana
* Boy George*
* The Killers
* Lou Reed
* Lil' Wayne
* Motorhead
* Jill Sobule
* Wilson Phillips
* DMX
* Lisa Loeb
* Ted Nugent (loincloth)
* Dogstar
* Thirty Seconds to Mars
* Lil' Kim
* kd lang
* Frank Sinatra
* Hinder
* Nickleback
* Justus Kohncke
* Bob Mould
* Clay Aiken
* Arcade Fire
* Bright Eyes
* Corinne Bailey Rae
* Audioslave
* Red Hot Chili Peppers
* Panic at the Disco
* Elton John(really gay)
In Our effort to keep this list up to date we'd appreciate your help. If you know of a band that is Gay or propogating a Gay message please email us so we can update. Donnie is handling this his email is: donniedavies@gmail.com
The response is overwhelming. You guys know of a lot more Gay Bands than I do. I can't keep up. Hopefully soon we'll have it so you can add them by yourself.
Uh. Morrissey is "questionable?"
And George Michael is "Texan?" Huh?
BTW, the "Safe Music" list consists of a few Christian pop stars and Cyndi Lauper. Seriously. "She bop," people.
Thanks, Joe C!
What Kind of Influence is Ann Bartow Having down there???????
University of South Carolina a top pirate among colleges.
...
“We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!”
It’s a chant University of South Carolina students can’t say about their football or basketball teams.
But when it comes to online music piracy, USC tops the charts, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
The association has sent 914 notices of copyright infringement to the university this year — the highest number in the state and one of the highest among colleges nationwide — for illegally downloaded songs.
Comparatively, Clemson received 71 notices this school year and Furman had 45. ...
January 30, 2007
Greek Students Want The Acropolis Marbles Back
More on the Aggie "Saw'em Off" conflict
Michael Madison at Madisonian.net:
... There is a use-it-or-lose-it mentality to lots of trademark law, but that logic shouldn’t apply here. Trademark law doesn’t require that UT abandon good sense; there is no reason that UT’s mark and all kinds of non-confusing parodies can’t co-exist. Moreover, I don’t know that an independent First Amendment or parody defense is needed here, and I don’t know whether there is or should be a constitutional right to make fun of someone. But if that right exists nowhere else, it has to exist when it comes to talking about your college’s archrival. ...
And William McGeveran over at Info/Law writes:
As has been reported widely (such as this AP story), the University of Texas recently sued a small business that sells fan-wear to supporters of its football archrival Texas A&M. Some of the defendants’ products feature a parody of the Longhorns’ trademarked logo, involving those horns being sawed off. Defendants claim that variations of “Saw ‘Em Off!” have been standard cheers for A&M supporters for decades. (Demonstrating the tone-deafness of some of my fellow lawyers, the complaint was filed days after the Longhorns suffered an embarrassing loss to the Aggies on the football field.) Of course, defendants now have a web site calling attention to their plight and seeking donations for their legal defense. The great commentary available online includes observations from Mike Madison and also a pained Siva Vaidhyanathan choosing between two of his great loves, the Longhorns and the public domain.
As they both point out, this is another example of overreaching by trademark holders. It is also, though, a marvelous example of the disarray in trademark fair use doctrine, a subject I have been studying. The defendants’ answer to the complaint advances three distinct affirmative defenses related to the fairly straightforward idea that they have a right to make fun of UT using the team’s logo. Those defenses are labeled “First Amendment,” “Texas Constitution,” and “Fair Use/Parody.” (The Texas constitutional defense, of course, applies only to state law claims, which are roughly half the counts of the complaint.)
It seems obvious that there ought to be a single doctrine within federal trademark law that covers such cases, and that resort to constitutional defenses should be unnecessary. But there isn’t any such clear guidance about what rules cover the “fair use/parody” type of defense. In infringement cases, the statute provides only limited protection for use of trademarked terms in their English-language descriptive sense — not the situation here. There are exclusions for certain types of fair uses under the newly revised federal law on trademark dilution, but it is not even crystal-clear that this situation falls within those exclusions either. So counsel for the Aggie fans (led by an important partner at a major Texas law firm) are left with an uncertain legal landscape. This is one of the big doctrinal problems in trademark law.
January 28, 2007
Colbert Scores!!!!!!!
TheStar.com: Colbert Day for Oshawa
January 27, 2007
Sunaya Sapurji
Sports Reporter
The ice was littered in Saginaw, Mich., last night. The first projectiles were loose pages of the General Motors annual report. They was followed by a flurry of teddy bears. One account told of a plastic fish being tossed.
There was a hockey game last night between the Saginaw Spirit and Oshawa Generals. But the bizarre antics were the result of a bet, viewed by millions across North America.
The wager was between Stephen Colbert, the satirical host of The Colbert Report, and Oshawa mayor John Gray.
The terms were simple: If the Generals won, Colbert would wear a Generals jersey. If they lost, Oshawa would declare March 20, Gray's birthday, `Stephen Colbert Day.'
Colbert accepted the challenge on his show Thursday night.
With their 5-4 win over the Generals last night, the Spirit have ensured the American host will have his party in Oshawa.
"I'm always disappointed when the Gens lose," said Gray last night from a fan bus heading home. The mayor said he hoped to talk with Colbert's people on Monday to honour the bargain.
"We'll give him an open invitation," Gray added.
The Colbert Report's obsession with the OHL team began in September, when the Saginaw named their mini-mascot Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle, after the show launched an aggressive internet campaign asking fans to vote for the name. Since then, the show has featured regular updates on the team's progress.
When Oshawa held their Teddy Bear Toss last month against Mississauga, Colbert feigned offence since his show contends bears are the "number one threat to America." In retaliation, Colbert posted a link to GM's annual report on his website and asked fans to toss it at the Generals, who are named after the car manufacturer.
Bear v. Colt
Jonathan Lethem goes Open Source
My friend Jonathan Lethem, author of Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, and a bunch of other great books and stories, has offered some of his stories for remixing and adaptation.
Check out the current Harper's Magazine, in which Jonathan copies and pastes together a series of sentences and paragraphs from such notables as Lewis Hyde, Lawrence Lessig, Kembrew McLeod, and me to make an argument for Free Culture. It's brilliant, but not online yet.
Here is what Jonathan says about his new project:
Introduction
These stories are for filmmakers or dramatists to adapt. They’re available non-exclusively -- meaning other people may be working from the same material -- and the cost is a dollar apiece.
There’s a simple written agreement to sign, which imposes a couple of restrictions, and that's it -- once you've paid your dollar and signed the agreement, you're free to adapt or mutate the story as you please.
Frequently Asked Questions
What gives?
I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.
I recently explored some of these ideas in an essay for Harper's Magazine. As I researched that essay I came more and more to believe that artists should ideally find ways to make material free and available for reuse. This project is a (first) attempt to make my own art practice reflect that belief.
My thinking along these lines has been strongly influenced by Open Source theory and the Free Culture movement, and by Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift ...
Look for an interesting Google Book Search article in the New Yorker
The magazine just sent it to me. It has some good stuff. I won't post it until the issue is out, though.
Two thoughts: The article, by Jeff Toobin, takes too seriously the promises from Google that tagging and linking will generate good searches. It does offer a very shallow glimpse into the sort of metadata policy Google is installing.
Anyway, check it out.
Now you tell us: Google co-Founder Brin realizes bowing to Chinese dictators not such a good idea
My Interview with the Metropolitan Opera Playbill
This is one of the most fun and coolest things I have done in a while. The folks at the Metropolitan Opera wanted me to talk about how opera might leverage the advantages of the digital environment to reach new audiences.
Playbill Features: The [New] Rules of Engagement
January 27, 2007
Cultural historian Siva Vaidhyanathan muses on contemporary culture and how using technology can create gateways to new audiences. He tells the Metropolitan Opera's Elena Park that arts institutions can no longer sit back and simply deliver content.
Elena Park: You believe in the importance of cultural democracy. What role does opera or classical music, which has traditionally been seen as very elitist, play in that democracy?
Siva Vaidhyanathan: It's hard to generalize about opera because there are some works that are going to remain relevant and hip for a hundred or a thousand more years, and there are some that won't.
But we do have to concede that in a pure market environment, opera would not survive today for long, and I think that we have to also concede that it's worthy of investment because it's an important thing. Even those of us who have no discernable European roots have to recognize that opera matters in the stories we tell about ourselves and in our own cultural conversations. And there's also a lot of fun to be had!
EP: So you're optimistic about the popular appeal of opera?
SV: I am. But of course we're not going to push Shakira off her global perch with opera.
There is great potential once it is taken out of its temple or once it's clear that its temple is not the end of the story. Among cultural institutions in New York City, there is a deep desire to use digital technology to at least present a gateway, especially for young people, to build audiences in future generations. The key is to remain no more than three steps away from something that young people already care about.
So that's a big marketing challenge. But people in these institutions are mostly excited about the challenge rather than depressed about it. They're not really worried about the issues that used to be big hang-ups — cheapening, commercializing, or "dumbing down." Those are less important concerns now.
In the 1960s American cultural policy was clearly geared toward correcting market failure. If something did not obviously fill up a concert hall, the government was there to step in and supplement the effort. Sometime in the 1980s, our national cultural policy turned towards a much more limited and almost populist notion. Attacks on the NEA and NEH were sometimes couched in ideological terms, but a lot of it came from a pretty straightforward policy question, "Wouldn't it be better to support bluegrass festivals and quilting competitions rather than opera and 20th-century composers?" That's a legitimate question, and the reaction to that has been generally healthy. Institutions have had to get more savvy and really push to prove themselves relevant.
There have been horror stories — museums that have gone overboard in the product placement area. Nobody wants to see a giant Miller billboard behind a performance at a major cultural institution. Nevertheless, the idea that you can push a lot of this material out into high schools, out on the street or the plaza and not just in the building — that you can put stuff on the Internet — is really exciting. Only in the last two years have we reached the point where millions of Americans can watch high quality audio and video on the Internet. We've been hoping for this technological moment for 20 years.
EP: The Met is actively using technology to move the operatic art form forward. What are the challenges?
SV: The challenge is to empower your potential audience to engage in conversation. Delivery is no longer enough. It's important to have web sites with commentary so people can engage in conversations, sites that keep people apprised of new events and trends. No matter where you're sitting in the world, you should feel a part of the Metropolitan Opera.
The big challenge with connecting to new audiences all over the world is to make them feel part of the process, and not that they are merely passive recipients. That might mean encouraging people to remix materials. Or to release video clips in a format that might allow this technological remixing.
Culture is conversation. It is an argument over time. And sometimes you can get heated, and sometimes people just break into song and dance, and that's the beauty of it. But those are the risks you take, and as more and more cultural institutions realize that that is how culture works — in a circle rather than in a line — the more relevant they will remain.
EP: How has the rise of delivery mechanisms such as TiVo and Flickr affected the consumption of culture? What are the implications for an art form such as opera, which often spins out long stories with complex music over extended periods of time?
SV: [One view is that] the Internet and television have made us incapable of focusing for more than 20 minutes on anything, and certainly in New York that's what you think is going on. But now, all over the U.S., there are 12-year-olds playing video games for six, eight hours straight. These are examples of deep and sustained immersion, and are satisfying [experiences] only with deep and sustained immersion.
EP: What new avenues should arts institutions explore?
SV: The idea of posting archives in video format is really exciting. Anybody who's involved in voice training would find the highest-quality performances presented in digital video inspiring and exciting in ways that CDs or the occasional TV program are not.
The dramatic and musical arts must become more portable in a sense — and I don't think portability is necessarily an erosion of quality. It's complementary to the live event, not a replacement. If you see an inspiring video clip, you're not likely to think, "I don't want to see this live." You're more likely to think, "I do want to see this live, and I'm going to find some way to get to New York and get a ticket."
It is really about connecting with audiences over time and space, because artists are hooking into the familiar and bringing it to a new level, giving it a new interpretation and sending the audience to an unexpected place. Part of the challenge for any cultural institution is to be able to create those hooks. To bring people in who are surprised to find that they are into it.
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of The Anarchist in the Library.
January 26, 2007
Make your own at
Make your own at Signbot
Raising awareness of breast cancer research by putting a violent message on a headless female torso
Photo by techne, from here. Additional impassioned commentary at I Blame The Patriarchy.
January 25, 2007
AE is Correct...
28 Repukelican Senators Vote To Eliminate The Federal Minimum Wage
Is "Repukelican" a tad petty and immature? Sure, but I'm taking my cue from Bush. As the Daily Howler notes:
...Bush has begun, in the past year, to refer in speeches to the “Democrat Party.” (We think this is new for Bush, although we’re not sure.) Plainly, there is something wrong with this locution. The Democratic Party’s actual name is well known. It appears on the party’s letter-head, and it’s featured at the party’s web site. Indeed, the name has been in use, unchanged, since the 1830s; people have had lots of time to commit it to memory. When Bush refers to the “Democrat Party,” he’s engaging in a familiar type of schoolyard behavior—a particular type of childish conduct that others in his party have long sponsored. It’s dumb; it’s rude; it’s stupid; it’s childish.
Now about the Repukelican attempt to eliminate the federal minimum wage (via Thomas):
S.AMDT.116
Amends: H.R.2 , S.AMDT.100
Sponsor: Sen Allard, Wayne [CO] (submitted 1/23/2007) (proposed 1/24/2007)
AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
To afford States the rights and flexibility to determine minimum wage:
TEXT OF AMENDMENT AS SUBMITTED: CR S932
STATUS:
1/24/2007:
Amendment SA 116 proposed by Senator Allard to Amendment SA 100. (consideration: CR S1021-1022, S1041-1042, S1043-1044; text: CR S1021)
1/24/2007:
Amendment SA 116 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 28 - 69.
SA 116. Mr. ALLARD submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill H.R. 2, to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide for an increase in the Federal minimum wage; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the end of section 2, add the following:
(c) State Flexibility.--Section 6 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 206) is amended by adding at the end the following:
``(h) State Flexibility.--Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an employer shall not be required to pay an employee a wage that is greater than the minimum wage provided for by the law of the State in which the employee is employed and not less than the minimum wage in effect in that State on January 1, 2007.''
Senators voting in favor of this included both of my Senators, Graham and DeMint. Via Discourse.net.
Micro Something, Probably
Blech. Via Feministing.
Del Corazon!
Latino Voices in American Art.
(Above rendering by Ester Hernandez.)
One More Reason To Question Copyrights in Unpublished Works
Like so many people, I read The Diary Of A Young Girl as a child and was powerfully moved by it. The edition I obtained, published in the 1950s and loaned to me by my grandmother, had an Afterward that noted that some portions of the work "of no interest to the reader" had been excised. I spent a lot of time wondering how anyone could possibly think that Anne Frank had written anything in her diary that wasn't of interest to readers like me. A 1995 "complete" edition revealed that Otto Frank had edited out passages in which Anne detailed her romantic relationship with Peter, and also negative comments she made about her mother. As owner via inheritance of the copyright in the diary, he certainly had the legal right to do this, but I've always thought it was a shame that once he made the decision to publish her diary, he felt he needed to manipulate and distort the way she presented herself through her writings.
As I noted in this article, when ABC decided to develop a miniseries on the life of Anne Frank in 2001, the company was unable to obtain the rights to her diary and received litigation threats that caused ABC to direct the project’s creative team to draft a script that did not use a single word of Anne Frank’s writing. Lines were changed to avoid even coincidental similarity to words from her diary, and a writer was kept on the set during the entire shoot to police last-minute script changes. Even then, the Anne Frank-Fonds, a foundation that holds the copyrights in the diary, denounced perceived “substantial similarity between the two works” and threatened legal action. The miniseries had to be constructed so that it avoided not only the copyrighted words of the diary, but also all of the copyrighted expressions contained in previous books, films, television movies, plays and documentaries about Anne Frank.
Now it seems that part of Otto Frank's story has also remained untold. He died in 1980, but letters he wrote in 1941 have not yet been released, although hopefully that will happen soon. From Yahoo News:
Desperate letters written by the father of Anne Frank, the teenager whose diary of hiding from Nazis documented the horror of Jews during World War II, have surfaced in the United States and will be released next month.
Otto Frank wrote the letters in 1941 in a despairing effort to get his family out of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, before finally hiding the family, including Anne, in secret rooms in an Amsterdam office building for two years until they were betrayed, Time magazine said Thursday.
The family was sent to Nazi prison camps where Anne, her sister Margot, and their mother Edith died before the war's end. But Otto Frank survived and returned to Amsterdam where he recovered his daughter's diary of their time hiding from the Nazis.
He had it published and eventually, under the title "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl," it turned into a best-seller in the United States and other countries.
In 1959 a movie was made from the book, "The Diary of Anne Frank."
The sheaf of Otto Frank's letters, about 80 documents in total, show him seeking escape routes to Spain, exit visas from Paris and help to get to the United States or Cuba, all in vain.
They were discovered by a researcher at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research two years ago. But concerns over copyright and other legal issues compelled YIVO to keep their existence quiet until now, Time said. The New York Institute will release the letters on February 14, it said.
Like Anne's diary, Otto Frank's letters sound like they will offer powerful testimony about the tragedy and human cost of the Holocaust. Copyright laws aren't what motivated Otto Frank to write them, and seem to have failed miserably at incentivizing their distribution.
My kid is cuter than this other kid!
How did I miss this?: 2 Live Crew's 'Pretty Woman' in a video mashup
YouTube - "Pretty Woman," 2 Live Crew
This song, of course, generated one of the most important fair use cases in copyright history. Enjoy!
January 24, 2007
Apologies on behalf of all Longhorns: The Aggies are actually right this time
JJR, better known in the library blogosphere as the Aggie Librarian, points us to this story:
UT sues Aggie retailer over
'saw em off'
10:27 AM CST on Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Associated Press
COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The University of Texas is countering a jab from an Aggie business owner by taking him to court over his “saw em off” variation of the familiar Longhorn logo.
'Saw em off' lawsuit
The UT System Board of Regents claims in its lawsuit that Fadi Kalaouze’s merchandise adorned with an inverted Longhorn logo with its horns detached is a trademark infringement.
The lawsuit argues that Kalaouze, a 1991 Texas A&M University graduate and the owner of two College Station stores, is illegally using a design that tarnishes and mutilates the trademarked Longhorn logo.
“This is not a dispute with Texas A&M. It is a dispute with a private company that is unfairly profiting from use of the UT logo and at the same time mutilating the logo,” said Craig Westemeirer, director of the University of Texas Office of Trademark Licensing.
Kalaouze contends that his emblem is a parody and is protected by the First Amendment. He said in court filings that the lawsuit is a “legally baseless display of poor sportsmanship.”
The lawsuit filed last month names Kalcorp, which is owned by Kalaouze and is the parent company for both of his stores. It seeks a permanent injunction to stop the company from selling the symbol, as well as attorneys fees, damages and the company’s profits from selling the emblem.
UT’s lawsuit says that the “saw em off” logo, which has been placed on merchandise such as T-shirts and bumper stickers, could confuse consumers because of its similarity to the Longhorn logo.
Kalaouze said nobody would mistake his emblem for the actual Longhorn logo, and he doesn’t believe any Longhorn supporters have accidentally purchased one of his shirts or stickers. He has established a Web site to raise money for his legal fight.
“We honestly don’t believe anyone is confusing this logo with their logo. We have been sawing their horns off for many years,” Kalaouze said. “We just want to make sure the tradition lives on.”
Westemeirer said the UT logo is “one of the most recognized brands in America” and must be protected.
“We want to present the logo as a consistent image to the public — that is not possible if others, such as the defendants, modify or mutilate the logo,” he said.
Mike Huddleston, Texas A&M’s vice president for business development, said Texas A&M would likely have taken similar action if it faced the same scenario as UT.
“I’m just surprised it took them so long,” Huddleston said.
How shameful of my Alma Mater! Even though the University of Texas is indisputably the finest institution of higher learning on the planet and was until a few weeks ago the reigning National Champions in football, it should never have stooped this low.
First, Mr. Kalaouze and all of us MUST be free to ridicule trademarks and symbols. Such depictions are essential in a free society. The University of Texas has no business trying to stomp out every critic who deploys an altered image of the university's symbols. Besides, the University of Texas and all of its symbols belong to all Texans, even the Aggies who don't appreciate excellence as much as the rest of us do.
Second, Mr. Kalaouze is clearly adapting to a sad fact about his potential market: many of them are not so good with the book larnin'. So he has to use cartoon images instead of words to render his ideas in understandable form. Images are an important part of language and deserve the same free speech protections as other forms of communication. Mr. Kalaouze is just serving his Aggie customers.
Third, since when does UT care if someone "tarnishes" a bovine head? Don't we have better things to worry about? We are trying to solve all the world's problems. Why be so petty? Is the University of Texas really so insecure and paranoid about criticism that it has to stomp on every poor Aggie who has a dumb idea for a t-shirt? Please. I think not.
So, if you are a proud Longhorn like me, please call or write to the UT System General Counsel's office to complain.
Hook'em!
January 23, 2007
Satirical Video About "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace"
Not safe for work! I thought it was funny, but your mileage may vary.
January 22, 2007
African American Visibility In Popular Culture
Over at Blackprof.com, Paul Butler noted:
Three of the top five movies feature predominately African-American casts. Three of the top five songs are by black artists (and the remaining two artists- Fergie and Nelly Furtado - would be nowhere without African-American producers). Barack Obama has the best selling hardcover non-fiction book in the country. Three of the top ten paperback non-fiction best sellers are by blacks (and a fourth- the Freedom Writers Diary - is an anthology that prominently features African-American writers). And two African-American coaches are going to the Big Dance.
Today is Blog For Choice Day: Try a Little Emergency Contraception Activism!
January 21, 2007
"The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft"
From the publisher's website:
Introducing a dramatic new chapter to American Indian literary history, this book brings to the public for the first time the complete writings of the first known American Indian literary writer, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (her English name) or Bamewawagezhikaquay (her Ojibwe name), Woman of the Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky (1800-1842). Beginning as early as 1815, Schoolcraft wrote poems and traditional stories while also translating songs and other Ojibwe texts into English. Her stories were published in adapted, unattributed versions by her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a founding figure in American anthropology and folklore, and they became a key source for Longfellow's sensationally popular The Song of Hiawatha.
As this remarkably original volume shows, what little has been known about Schoolcraft's writing and life only scratches the surface of her legacy. Most of the works have been edited from manuscripts and appear in print here for the first time. The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky presents a collection of all Schoolcraft's known writings along with a cultural and biographical history. Robert Dale Parker's deeply researched account places her writings in relation to American Indian and American literary history and the history of anthropology, offering the story of Schoolcraft, her world, and her fascinating family as reinterpreted through her newly uncovered writing. This book makes available a startling new episode in the history of American culture and literature.
La Dolce Vita
For the next few days, I'll be off my regular Southern California beat, as I head to Italy to present at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, which is hosted by the University of Modena and the city of Reggio Emilia (a municipality known for its theater, an image of which I have reproduced above). If you are in Northern Italy, I would encourage you to attend this conference, which is free and open to the public. Game studies heavy hitters include Espen Aarseth and the wonderful women from Ludica who are exploring feminist alternatives in game play.
Ewe Want A Singing Sheep Ringtone for Your Phoooooooooone?
Try this one!
January 20, 2007
Sheriff Andy Taylor Explains the Right To Confidential Communications With An Attorney To Opie
Via Campus Progress.
January 18, 2007
Which 2006 Fundamentalist Blog Post Is the Most "Fundielicious"?
I'd have to go with September, "Computers Smarter Than Atheists."
(NB: You don't have to register to read the entries, only to vote.)
Copyright Law and the RIAA Versus Creativity, The Mixtapes Version
NYT account here, below is an excerpt:
In the world of hip-hop few music executives have more influence than DJ Drama. His “Gangsta Grillz” compilations have helped define this decade’s Southern rap explosion. He has been instrumental in the careers of rappers like Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. He appears on the cover of the March issue of the hip-hop magazine XXL, alongside his friend and business partner T.I., the top-selling rapper of 2006. And later this year DJ Drama is scheduled to make his Atlantic Records debut with “Gangsta Grillz: The Album.”
Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.
On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.
DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.
The compilations produced by DJ Drama and his protégés are known as mixtapes, though they appear on CDs, not cassettes. Mixtapes have become a vital part of the hip-hop world. They are often the only way for listeners to keep up with a genre that moves too quickly to be captured on albums. On a mixtape you can hear unreleased remixes, sneak previews from coming CDs, casual freestyle rhymes, never-to-be-released goofs.
Mixtapes are, by definition, unregulated: DJs don’t get permission from record companies, and record companies have traditionally ignored and sometimes bankrolled mixtapes, reasoning that they serve as valuable promotional tools. And rappers have grown increasingly canny at using mixtapes to promote themselves. The career of 50 Cent has a lot to do with his mastery of the mixtape form, and now no serious rapper can afford to be absent from this market for too long. ...
...DJ Drama’s mixtapes are often great. He has turned “Gangsta Grillz” into a prestige brand: each is a carefully compiled disc, full of exclusive tracks, devoted to a single rapper who is also the host. Rappers often seem proud to be considered good enough for a “Gangsta Grillz” mixtape. On “Dedication,” the first of his two excellent “Gangsta Grillz” mixtapes, Lil Wayne announces, “I hooked up with dude, now we ’bout to make history.” The compilation showed off Lil Wayne more effectively than his albums ever had, and “Dedication” helped revive his career. When some unreleased tracks by T.I. leaked to the Internet, T.I. teamed up with DJ Drama for a pre-emptive strike: together, they created a mixtape called “The Leak.” ...
January 17, 2007
Pachelbel Rant
Great for teaching Copyright Law! Hang in through the first couple of minutes and you will see why. Warning to the extra-senstive: the word "ass" is deployed around minute five. God I love tenure.
January 16, 2007
Peter O'Toole Still Has It!
Dinesh D'Souza really does hate America and Americans
And he seems to really love Al Queda and the Taliban.
Another Little Lessig!!!!!
Internet Shaming
Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date.
Almost immediately, she started receiving "weird and creepy" calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting "Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!" her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor's office were posted, along with the admonition, "next time, you might take your business outside." The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe.
It used to be the worst you could get for a petty wrong in public was a rude look. Now, it's not just brutal police officers, panty-free celebrities and wayward politicians who are being outed online. The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure as well. There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking (Caughtya.org) and leering (HollaBackNYC.com) to littering (LitterButt.com) and general bad behavior (RudePeople.com). One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs. Capturing newspaper-stealing neighbors on video is also an emerging genre.
At Concurring Opinions, Kaimipono Wenger added:
Quick google-checking turns up the blog in question, AdviceGoddess.com, the site of a syndicated advice columnist named Amy Alkon. Ms. Alkon's original post does indeed contain Ms. Burgess's information. In comments to that post, she defends her decision to put that information online, noting that her ire stems in part from Ms. Burgess's failure to apply the "do unto others" principle. (There is no indication in the comment that Ms. Alkon realizes the irony of that statement.) Later, Ms. Alkon elaborates further: "I posted freely dispensed news. I didn't wiretap the girl's phone or listen at her keyhole. She shouted the information out to the public, which suggests that she was happy to have the public in possession of her phone number and all the rest of the information she dispensed."
This "waiver" argument comes up releatedly in comments, as Ms. Alkon and several of her comment interlocutors assert that Ms. Burgess's public phone conversation destroys any legal expectation of privacy. (See, e.g., comments in this follow-up post at Ms. Alkon's blog.) In fact, as many readers of this blog probably know, the law is much more complex. In particular, some jurisdictions (including California) have recognized a doctrine of limited privacy.
A very good discussion of the limited privacy doctrine can be found in the recent privacy article by Lior Strahilevitz (who, incidentally, gets mentioned in the WSJ piece for his "How am I driving?" article) ...
Read Wenger's excellent post in full here.
January 15, 2007
A Brilliant Prank
From the lovely and talented Kembrew McLeod:
Chronicle Careers
Monday, January 15, 2007
An Educational Prank
By Kembrew McLeod
First Person
Personal experiences on the job market
In a groundbreaking marketing move, six corporations sponsored my undergraduate course during the fall of 2006. To be more accurate, I should say, with a wink and a nod, that they "sponsored" the course.
There was no contractual exchange of money or services in this faux patronage experiment and, to be honest, some of the businesses didn't want to be involved in my scheme. (One company representative, sensing the political motivations behind my endeavor, told me via an e-mail message: "You will not use the Disney logos or any connection to the Disney Co. in your class.")
I began referring to my syllabus as a McSyllabus, and for the duration of the semester my corporately sponsored name was Professor McKembrew McLeod.
I even planned to plaster a tweed sports coat with the logos of my pseudo-sponsors -- McDonald's, MTV, AT&T, Disney, Pfizer, and Sony Music. Kind of like a NASCAR outfit, but with elbow patches. Alas, I never went through with that part of my plan, as there were too many papers to grade and not enough time.
My experiment was a provocation, a quiet protest that escalated near the end of the semester after a contentious move made by the University of Iowa's Board of Regents. That body had increasingly adopted a top-down management style and embraced a corporate model for the university, and demonstrated that last November by scuttling a 10-month presidential search because it didn't like the finalists.
The board's actions inspired me to push my prank even further, and so I personally contacted each regent, telling them about my plan. It came as no surprise when one regent -- unaware of my satirical motives -- happily endorsed the idea of a corporately sponsored classroom. But more on that later.
I should point out that I write this column from a protected position. As a newly tenured professor, I have strong free-speech rights in the workplace -- a right that is weakening across the country as colleges reduce the number of tenure-track professorships. Cutting the workforce and extracting more labor for less compensation may increase the bottom line of corporations, but it's no way to run a university, for a number of reasons.
Close attention from faculty members was a privilege I enjoyed while attending a midsized state university in Virginia during the early 1990s. That one-on-one interaction broadened my intellectual horizons, and it transformed my life.
But few students I have met at Iowa have had the same experience. My own department, for example, is bursting with more than 1,300 majors, but we have only 12 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members. Of course, some of our students do receive the special attention they deserve, but it comes from the goodwill of a faculty whose workweek easily exceeds 40 hours (not to mention our hardworking graduate students, visiting instructors, and office staff members).
The arts and humanities have obviously been hit hard, but even "big money" units have been affected. For instance, the blossoming university-industrial complex has experienced serious consequences in certain areas of basic scientific research, where the sharing of information is becoming less and less free. As universities and their corporate partners place a greater emphasis on developing valuable patented technologies, the norm of openness among scientists has eroded.
That has been widely documented, including in a survey of nearly 2,000 university-based geneticists the results of which were reported in the January 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the survey, a third of the scientists agreed that it was becoming more common in their field to withhold data for financial reasons.
About three years ago I interviewed David J. Skorton, then the president of Iowa, about some of those issues. During our talk Skorton told me that he understood and took seriously the expectation that we should do "the best we can to commercialize technologies developed in the universities for the state's good."
"But," the president quickly added, "my own point of view has been, and will remain, that I am more concerned with freedom of expression than with the commercial imperative."
I'm sure his philosophy did not sit well with the university's regents, with whom the president had skirmished over other issues. When he left last year to become president of Cornell University, few people on our campus saw his departure as a coincidence.
Iowa's presidential searches have always been campus-led affairs, but after Skorton announced his resignation, for the first time in the university's history, the board appointed a regent as head of the search panel and exercised unprecedented control over the committee's operations. The regents also appointed the former dean of the business college as Iowa's interim president, who is quoted in a Q&A on the university's Web site as saying that "in educational programs and in research and clinical programs, we should seek partnerships, relationships where we're not bearing all of the costs and we're sharing the rewards."
All of which got me thinking, "What would a liberal-arts education look like if McDonald's underwrote it?"
My project gained a new sense of urgency when the regents terminated the search for Skorton's replacement. In a cryptic press release, the regents explained that the board "needed candidates who had more experience as leaders who oversaw complex health-sciences operations as well as the myriad of other academic and nonacademic operations of a large university." The Des Moines Register reported that the final applicant pool did not include an earlier candidate who had been favored by the board president, a candidate with significant ties to the insurance industry.
This disturbing sequence of events prompted me to send the aforementioned e-mail message to each member of Iowa's board explaining my prank in a straight-faced manner:
"In a class exercise I thought you'd appreciate, we are imagining what it would be like if several corporations sponsored this class. In one assignment, the students will be making an advertisement for one of these 'clients,'" I wrote, adding, "Because it is so important to organize the university more like a business, I thought you would appreciate and agree with the philosophy that underpins this project."
I concluded by mock complaining, "I believe that too many professors at the university are out of touch with real-world business practices."
Because I contacted the regents in the middle of the presidential-search firestorm -- and given my prankish history, which is just one Google click away -- I worried about two things. Either the regents would (a) see through my sardonic rhetoric and try to have me fired for being a smart aleck, or (b) affirm the e-mail's core sentiments.
One way or the other, it was a lose-lose proposition.
A few days later, I received an e-mail message from one regent, who cheerfully wrote: "Conceptually, it sounds great. Happy Thanksgiving." Although this was not a smoking-gun admission -- "yes, product placement in the classroom is part of our nefarious plan for the future!" -- my suspicions were nevertheless confirmed.
The troubles faced by the University of Iowa (and our nation's universities, more generally) run deeper than a mere bureaucratic squabble. This episode highlights the systemic problems that emerge when we try to turn the university into "an economic engine for the state," a term our administrators are fond of using.
Perhaps I should start stitching together that logo-slathered tweed jacket after all.
Kembrew McLeod is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa. His latest book, Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property will be published this spring by the University of Minnesota Press.
Public Domain
Today is an important day to mark the legacy of a great activist for civil rights, human rights, and the peace movement and perhaps the planet's last great political orator as we move into the Internet age. As my colleague Vivian Folkenflik points out, the holiday allows us to create and inhabit our own memorial spaces that honor the spirit of his work.
But, at the risk of committing a sacrilege that may offend some readers, it is also worth commemorating the fact that the work of this great cultural borrower and weaver is not yet part of the public domain where it justifiably belongs. In 1993 the King Estate sued USA Today for reprinting the "I Have a Dream" speech on the thirtieth anniversary of the event, and in 1998 it sued CBS for copyright infringement, even though this speech was delivered in front of 200,000 people and remains a historical high-water mark in our common public memory of social change. You can read how King's image is also licensed for inappropriate commercials in The Washington Post and The New York Times. For more on this story from Virtualpolitik, you can go here, here, and here.
Today, In Honor of Dr. King, Remember That The First "C" In SCLC Stands For Christian
The American Civil Rights Movement was born and nurtured in the African American churches of the South, and the first President of the SCLC was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Today, try to remember that while a whole lot of awful things have been done in the name of Christianity, and many bad people call themselves Christians, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King were Christians too.
No, I am not a Christian, and yes, reports like this makes me very nervous. But there are a large number of African Americans residing in the American South, and a very high percentage of the African Americans who live here define themselves as Christians. Many, I would even say most, are smart, kind-hearted, engaged political progressives. They honor Dr. King with their good works every day.
Expressing bigotry toward Christians, and toward Southerners generally, hurts some very good people, and has racist aspects and overtones as well. So in honor of Dr. King, and because it's the right thing to do, please knock it off!
Thanks for reading. Sermon over.
January 14, 2007
Alert The Nobel Prize Committee, Someone Has Invented Video Glasses That Allow Wearers To View Porn In Public
Yahoo "News" coverage here. Note to people who sit next to me on mass transit vehicles: Watch whatever you like, but please keep your hands out of your pants, and far away from me. Thank you.
"Notes On A Scandal"
Heard good things from friends about this movie:
WaPo review here. Haven't seen it and am not an investor, so apologies for the viral-marketing ethos of this post, and I'm sorrier still if you see it and hate it!
The Legality of Wiki Linking In Dispute
On 12.21.06 the NYT reported (as was noted here):
For at least a year, Eli Lilly provided information to doctors about the blood-sugar risks of its drug Zyprexa that did not match data that the company circulated internally when it first reviewed its clinical trial results, according to company documents.
The original results showed that patients on Zyprexa, Lilly’s pill for schizophrenia, were 3.5 times as likely to experience high blood sugar levels as those taking a placebo, according to a February 2000 memo sent to top Lilly scientists. The memo is one of hundreds of internal Lilly documents provided to The New York Times by a lawyer in Alaska who represents mentally ill patients.
But the results that Lilly eventually provided to doctors until at least late 2001 were very different. Those results indicated that patients taking Zyprexa were only slightly more likely to suffer high blood sugar as those taking a placebo, or an inactive pill.
Another Lilly report, from November 1999, shows that Lilly found after examining 70 clinical trials that 16 percent of patients taking Zyprexa for a year gained more than 66 pounds.
The New York Times article was apparently based on documents which were leaked from an ongoing Zyprexa products liability lawsuit. Copies of the leaked Eli Lilly documents appeared (or were linked to) on a variety of websites such as this one. Links to the documents were also posted on a wiki at http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com. On January 4, 2007 Judge Jack Weinstein of the E.D.N.Y. enjoined use of the wiki to further disseminate these documents. The estimable Fred von Lohmann of EFF is representing the wiki poster. Read more at the associated EFF webpage.
Update: Today the NYT posted an article on this issue.
Supreme Court Patent Litigation Funnies
"Get Your War On" Comic Strip Now An Off Broadway Production!
Details here. Promotional video here. Via Greenespace.
January 13, 2007
Ramen Noodle Inventor Dies
From the 1/9/07 NYT:
The news last Friday of the death of the ramen noodle guy surprised those of us who had never suspected that there was such an individual. It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan.
But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product — fried, dried and sold in little plastic-wrapped bricks or foam cups — turned the company he founded, Nissin Foods, into a global giant. According to the company’s Web site, instant ramen satisfies more than 100 million people a day. Aggregate servings of the company’s signature brand, Cup Noodles, reached 25 billion worldwide in 2006.
More here. And here as well.
H.R.6055 and S.3867 Apparently Rise Again
Text of H.R.6055:
A BILL To designate the United States courthouse located at 555 Independence Street, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as the `Rush H. Limbaugh, Sr., United States Courthouse'.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. RUSH H. LIMBAUGH, SR., FEDERAL COURTHOUSE.
(a) Designation- The United States courthouse located at 555 Independence Street, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, shall be known and designated as the `Rush H. Limbaugh, Sr., United States Courthouse'.
(b) References- Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the United States courthouse referred to in subsection (a) shall be deemed to be a reference to the `Rush H. Limbaugh, Sr., United States Courthouse'.
It was introduced by Rep Emerson, Jo Ann [MO-8] on 9/12/2006. S.3867, almost identical in form, was sponsored by Sen Bond, Christopher S. [MO]. It passed the Senate September 30 (legislative day, September 29), 2006.
Apparently Bond has reintroduced the same bill this session. Because an official link to the bills noted above will "time out" quickly, I give you instead a link to Thomas, where you can confirm the above if you search by bill number. The text and number of the new variant are not yet listed, though a TRN blogger asserts it is S.247.
I leave you with this question: Why don't we just auction off naming rights to government buildings? At least the treasury would get something in return. Instead, we get ridiculous political backscratching like this.
The Tamoxifen Citrate Antitrust Litigation
There are serious public health consequences related to the Tamoxifen Citrate case (Tamoxifen Citrate Antitrust Litigation, 429 F.3d 370 (2d Cir. 2005)), particularly for women's health. The maneuvering to keep the Zeneca monopoly deprived women of generic competition for nearly a decade, a period when Tamoxifen was not only an important treatment modality for breast cancer, but also offered as a chemopreventive compound as well. If you are a full time legal academic and would like to read the draft amicus brief in support of certoriari (and consider signing on), contact Prof. Eileen Kane: emk17 (at) dsl.psu.edu at your earliest convenience.
Whistle Blower
Check out "Guantanamo Unclassified" and the video on YouTube below.
Wikipedia Update
Since my last Wikipedia Round-Up, there's more to report from print and the blogosphere.
Yesterday's Wired Campus Blog from the Chronicle for Higher Education reports on two initiatives in a "Wikipedia for Scholars -- Take Two." According to its FAQ section, still yet-to-launch Citizendium plans to provide a "gradual fork" off Wikipedia for "expert-led" articles with more scholarly input.
Now there is also Scholarpedia, which adds a layer of vetting through "peer review," to its look-alike interface, so that citations could be taken as more reliable. I tend to be skeptical about online initiatives that promise this layer of "peer-review" without building a sustainable virtual community that will encourage continuing participation. You can see why I have a somewhat jaded view in this paper, which was published by Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education two years ago, if you consider the fate of the once much vaunted and now largely moribund "peer-reviewed" MERLOT.
I poked around a bit in Scholarpedia's Encyclopedia of Computational Intelligence, since I write about technology, and I'd consider myself to be relatively able to define pretty specialized terms like "Bayesian Learning" or "Belief Network" or "Markoff Algorithms" in comparison to someone off the street. I have to say I thought that the accessibility of the prose to lay readers would have to be considered pretty poor, given the lack of clarity in the writing and absence of background context, which print encyclopedia editors certainly emphasize. Plus, key entries like "cybernetics" are unreadable.
Of course, I was quite reluctant to side against Wikipedia during my first round-up a few months ago, given that Encyclopedia Britannica was leading the charge. As a writer for the similarly encyclopedic Dictionary of Literary Biography, I knew that the Britannica entry on Sigmund Freud contained some misstatements about Freud's life. This is particularly ironic, since at one time Sigmund Freud was a Britannica contributer, along with Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Bertrand Russell, and George Bernard Shaw.
However, there is something to be said for the work of traditional encyclopedia article-writing being a part of the academy, and Wikipedia makes these enterprises even more likely to be devalued in university departments. From experience, I can tell you it's difficult to write one of these articles, and the fact that they aren't worth anything for purposes of tenure and promotion is discouraging. Just try to boil down a theoretical classic like Civilization and Its Discontents to one paragraph and you'll see what I mean! Unlike Wikipedia, print encyclopedias also check with living subjects for accuracy, which means that scholars sometimes find themselves rebuting the official autobiography of an eminent person. Of course, it also means that sometimes you get some cool mail from your subjects. (Thanks, Claude Levi-Strauss!)
There are two other interesting criticisms of Wikipedia that I've read this week: a short essay by anthropologist and filmmaker Jenny Cool in praise of traditional databases and the argument against relying on volunteerism and in favor of building publicly funded infrastructure in Jean-Noel Jeanneney's Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge.
Pentagon Official Attacks Lawyers Who Represent Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay
Per this NYT article, which states in pertinent part:
The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.
The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.
“This is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an authority on legal ethics. “It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.
“We have a senior government official suggesting that representing these people somehow compromises American interests, and he even names the firms, giving a target to corporate America.”
Mr. Stimson made his remarks in an interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio, a local Washington-based station that is aimed at an audience of government employees.
The same point appeared Friday on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, cited the list of law firms and quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.” ...
On a more hopeful note, unless there is some kind of complicated spin choreography going on, AG Gonzalez disagrees. The same NYT article notes:
In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said he had no problem with the current system of representation. “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases,” he said.
January 12, 2007
Catalog Card Generator via
January 10, 2007
HUCK FINN at the Metropolitan Playhouse in NYC!
Details here! Written by Sivacracy friend and awesome blogging feminist N.G. McClernan. Part of a Twainathon!
Latte Art
New Ella Fitzgerald Postage Stamp
Story here that starts out with cringe-inducing pun: "The lady is a stamp!"
Parental Warning
Warning: Do not install Vista as your kid's operating system.
Despite what you may have heard this week from places like The New York Times in articles like "For Parents, New Way to Control the Action," it's a truly terrible idea to install software that enforces centralized corporate controls and intentionally disables programs that come from independent software developers. They may say things like "It is not overreaching to say that if you have young children who play computer games or use the Internet you are basically remiss if you do not upgrade to Vista as soon as possible," but listen to the chief technologist of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Seth Schoen, if you don't believe me and read what he has to say here. Or read from a leading game developer about how Vista hobbles independent game makers who can't afford to buy a rating from the expensive ESRB system. I'm a parent, and I say this new operating system violates almost every one of my 10 Principles for the Digital Family. (This week I'm playing the delightfully mindless GrowCube games with my kids.)
Anyway, just say no on this one.
WiFi Security (Or lack thereof...)
... I recently filmed six episodes of a new TV series (”It’s All Geek to Me,” which airs in February on The Science Channel, Discovery HD and Discovery Europe). In one of them, I wanted to get to the bottom of this Wi-Fi snooping business. I wanted to see exactly what is, and is not, possible for the bad guys to intercept when you’re sitting there in Starbucks or the hotel lobby.
I put a note up on my blog, seeking a guest who could appear on the show and show me the hacky ropes. I found Jon Baer, a technical consultant who seemed just right for the part.
We met (Jon, the camera crew and I) in a Manhattan Wi-Fi coffee shop. Turns out there was absolutely nothing to it. Jon sat a few feet away with his PowerBook; I fired up my Fujitsu laptop and began doing some e-mail and Web surfing.
That’s all it took. He turned his laptop around to reveal all of this:
* Every copy of every e-mail message I sent *and* received.
* A list of the Web sites I visited.
* Even, incredibly, the graphics that had appeared on the Web sites I had visited.
None of this took any particular effort, hacker skill or fancy software. Anyone could do it. You could do it.
All Jon needed was a “packet sniffing” program; such software is free and widely available. (He used a Mac program called Eavesdrop.) It sniffs the airwaves and displays whatever data it finds being transmitted in the public hot spot.
Now, the fact that it’s so easy to intercept your Internet signals in a public hot spot doesn’t mean that somebody is *doing* it. In fact, of course, most of the time, nobody is.
Nonetheless, Jon’s little demonstration made clear that somebody *could* intercept your transmissions extremely easily....
Read the full post here.
January 9, 2007
I don't think this haircut will catch on...
But I've been wrong before! From here.
Tony Blair - Should I stay or should I go?
We will miss Le Blogue Bérubé
Le Blogue Bérubé is no more. Michael retired it so he could write some things called "books."
Sorry to see you go, Michael. Come visit here any time.
January 8, 2007
"Babes Against Bush" Website No Longer Operative
Does this make you feel empowered?
Or does it make you want to pull your hair out? Three years ago I was a subscriber to The Nation, which maintains a blog called ActNow!. Then in December of 2003, I read this post there and I wondered yet again whether or not I was a liberal. Here is an excerpt:
Thirteen beautiful women versus one hideous president.
Babes Against Bush is taking protest politics in an unlikely direction. A new group from southeastern Michigan, B.A.B. is looking to attract attention to a cause--unseating George W. Bush in 2004--and hoping to spur more people to take notice of some basic facts about the Bush Administration by using the venerable, politically incorrect vehicle of the "pinup girl" as the medium for its message.
Why? "Because hot chicks hate him too."
"What could be more un-American than that election-hijacking, economy-wrecking, war-mongering chimp George W. Bush?" the group asks on its website. "What could be more All-American than thirteen beautiful young women, exercising their first amendment right to thumb their nose at our bozo president?"
The result is the Official Babes Against Bush Regime Change Calendar, which counts off the number of days remaining until "the moving vans pull up to the White House." Lavishly produced in glossy color, each of the thirteen months' pages feature one anti-Bush babe as well as well-informed facts and figures detailing the failures and lies of the Bush Administration.
It's only $11.00! Click here to buy a copy.
I didn't renew my subscription, despite the fact that this periodical publishes some excellent op-eds. The women writing there are fantastic, but there are still so few of them. And Peter "Babes Against Bush" Rothberg is still in control of ActNow!, though I note that "Babes Against Bush" itself is no longer operative online.
January 7, 2007
Overheard in NY: What do Media Studies Professors expect?
They Should Know Better
Hipster girl: So, like, what do you do in your media classes? Like, what do the professors expect?
Hipster dude: Well, they just want you to care.
--Balcony, Hunter College
Bad News
In the past few years, web watchers who follow political events directly from primary sources may have noticed that the Federal News Service and their claims of copyright have become more prominent in what you would normally think of as government records in the public domain, which are posted on the web or otherwise available electronically.
However, according to their copyright notices, you'd be wrong. Whether it is transcripts of Intelligence Committee Hearings or military briefings from Pentagon officials about Iraq, this service threatens those who disseminate public information about the workings of our democracy with dire consequences, even when the information is posted on a government-supported federal site with a .gov or .mil URL. Unfortunately the Federal News Service has a lock on certain government documents, many of which can't be gotten through other means, even from other commercial services like LexisNexis.
To give you the flavor of their legalism, here is the language posted at the bottom of a briefing to the press:
COPYRIGHT 2005, FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE, INC., 1000 VERMONT AVE. NW; 5TH FLOOR; WASHINGTON, DC - 20005, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ANY REPRODUCTION, REDISTRIBUTION OR RETRANSMISSION IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION, REDISTRIBUTION OR RETRANSMISSION CONSTITUTES A MISAPPROPRIATION UNDER APPLICABLE UNFAIR COMPETITION LAW, AND FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE, INC. RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PURSUE ALL REMEDIES AVAILABLE TO IT IN RESPECT TO SUCH MISAPPROPRIATION. FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE, INC. IS A PRIVATE FIRM AND IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
The news service, which was founded in 1984 during the Reagan era of privatization, is now run by president Cheryl A. Reagan (no relation to the Former commander in Chief), who is also the owner of the Grace News Network, along with Thorne G. Auchter, who has a Sourcewatch page of his own. Ms. Reagan has been described as a "fundamentalist Christian millionaire" who is proud to claim that the latter organization "will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will ‘change the news’ to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes.” Grace News Network was also strangely given a contract by the U.S. government for broadcasting Arabic language news in Muslim Iraq after the occupation. Reagan has also had well-documented bankruptcy woes, as this chronology reveals.
FNS has a terrible anti-trust history under its previous head Cortes W. Randell, a shady character who went on to run eModel, which garnered bad publicity for its fraudulent claims and financial troubles. In connection with an earlier venture, the National Student Marketing Corporation, Randell was featured in a New York Times "Rogue's Gallery." Almost unbelievably, I must point out that Randell took charge of the FNS and enjoyed the benefits of a government contract AFTER the Times described him as a "convicted stock swindler." Randell had been involved with FNS as late as 2002, although now he is apparently involved in a Washington-based Christian ministry that warns of "Nazi Islamic Fascism." As the Times admits, the scary thing is that the media has been depending on FNS coverage for decades despite all the stranger-than-fiction church-state, anti-trust, and financial mismanagement issues.
The incursions of this organization into the free culture of the public sphere urgently deserve attention from the copyfight community.
"Project Implicit"
"Here you will have the opportunity to assess your conscious and unconscious preferences for over 90 different topics ranging from pets to political issues, ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music. At the same time, you will be assisting psychological research on thoughts and feelings."
From here:
Project Implicit represents a collaborative research effort between researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington. While the particular purposes of each study vary considerably, most studies available at Project Implicit examine thoughts and feelings that exist either outside of conscious awareness or outside of conscious control. The primary goals of Project Implicit are to provide a safe, secure, and well-designed virtual environment to investigate psychological issues and, at the same time, provide visitors and participants with an experience that is both educational and engaging.
Please feel free to explore the informational pages at this website and at our demonstration website before deciding whether to register at Project Implicit. If you are interested in participating in research at Project Implicit, registration is easy and you will instantly qualify to participate in numerous studies available in our databases. Most sessions require 10-15 minutes to complete. You are welcome to participate in as many studies as you wish. Each time you login, you will be provided information about the next study so that you can make an informed decision about participation. There are no fees, no advertisements, and no obligations to you for participating at Project Implicit. This site is for educational and research purposes only.
For more background information about this research visit our demonstration website. And, for information about Project Implicit more generally, visit our information website.
January 6, 2007
The Plurality Religion of Congress is Catholicism
According to this article:
The new Congress will, for the first time, include a Muslim, two Buddhists, more Jews than Episcopalians and the highest-ranking Mormon in congressional history.
Roman Catholics remain the largest single faith group in Congress, accounting for 29 percent of all members of the House and Senate, followed by Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews and Episcopalians.
While Catholics in Congress are Democrats by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1, the most lopsidedly Democratic groups are Jews and those not affiliated with any religion. Of the 43 Jewish members of Congress, there is only one Jewish Republican in the House, and there are two in the Senate. The six religiously unaffiliated members of the House are all Democrats.
The most Republican groups are the small band of Christian Scientists in the House (all five are Republican) and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (12 Republicans and three Democrats) — though the top-ranking Mormon in the history of Congress will be Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the new Democratic majority leader.
Baptists divide along partisan lines defined by race. Black Baptists, like all black members of Congress, are Democrats, while most white Baptists are Republicans, though there are such notable exceptions as incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. Byrd, first elected in 1958 when white Baptist Democrats were commonplace, will serve as president pro tem in the new Senate, making him third in succession to the presidency after the vice president and speaker of the House.
The same was true last term. A majority of Supreme Court Justices are Catholic.
Life is a Long Song
Maybe He Needs To Consume More Fiber
Yeah I know, I'm going to Hell for this. Photo via Crummy Church Signs.
Ding, Dong, DOPA is Dead!
Despite passing overwhelmingly in the House, the Deleting Online Predators Act never made it out of the legislative branch to the President's desk. This legislation, which would have barred access to social networking sites in schools and libraries, would have hampered public agencies and nonprofit groups who are reaching out to teens and tweens online and would have had placed economic burdens on the urban poor who use these sites instead of more costly long-distance telephone calls. According to the Learning Now blog on PBS, four of the bill's sponsors lost their re-election bids, and so they lacked the political capital to push it through the Senate before the slate of the year's business was wiped clean, and Democrats who might have second thoughts about the bill took over. Read more objections from Henry Jenkins and Danah Boyd here. Virtualpolitik has talked about DOPA here, here, here, here, and here.
January 5, 2007
Does Google=Internet?
Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing
IBM 1950-1980
Microsoft 1984-1998
Google 2001-
Google has won both the online search and advertising markets. They hold a considerable technological lead, both with algorithms as well as their astonishing web-scale computing platform. Beyond this, however, network effects around their industry position and brand will prevent any competitor from capturing market share from them -- even if it were possible to match their technology platform.
To paraphrase an old comment about IBM, made during its 30 year dominance of the enterprise mainframe market, Google is not your competition, Google is the environment. Online businesses which struggle against this new reality will pay opportunity costs both in online advertising revenue as well as product success.
Competitors such as Yahoo should quickly move to align themselves with this inevitability. Yahoo could add an extra $1.5B to their revenue overnight by conceding monetization to Google and becoming a distribution partner for Adwords, as Ask Jeeves did.
Google is the start page for the Internet
The net isn't a directed graph. It's not a tree. It's a single point labeled G connected to 10 billion destination pages.
If the Internet were a monolithic product, say the work of some alternate-future AT&T that hadn't been broken up, then you'd turn it on and it would have a start page. From there you'd be able to reach all of the destination services, however many there were.
Well, that's how the net has organized itself after all.
From this position, Google derives immense and amazing power. And they make money, but not only for themselves. Google makes advertisers money. Google makes publishers money. Google drives multi-billion dollar industries profiting from Google SEM/SEO.
Most businesses on the net get 70% of their traffic from Google. These business are not competitors with Google, they are its partners, and have an interest in driving Google's success. Google has made partners of us all. ...
There is much more. Please check it out.
Robert Solomon, RIP
Robert Solomon was simply one of the finest teachers I have ever had. He had an amazing intellect and a passion for making complex ideas clear and relevant. He was funny and tragic. I learned more from the courses I took with him than all my other courses combined.
Many generations of University of Texas students benefited from his caring attention and will miss him dearly.
Here is his obit:
By Jeff Salamon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, January 05, 2007
Once a month or so, Robert Solomon and his friend James Pennebaker
would meet for beer and conversation at a Guadalupe Street watering
hole, the Dog & Duck. Most of the time, Solomon, a philosophy
professor at the University of Texas, and Pennebaker, a UT psychology
professor, would talk about what people usually talk about at bars:
"The nature of emotions, from both a philosophical and a
neuroscientific perspective," Pennebaker recalled Thursday.
Beer and neuroscience — they could almost be the watchwords of a
life that Solomon's friends and colleagues say was marked by a
passion for intellectual seriousness and a love of fun. One former
student, the filmmaker Richard Linklater, cast him in a cameo role as
himself in the 2001 film "Waking Life."
Solomon's own life ended suddenly this week in Switzerland. Solomon,
64, an internationally known scholar who had taught at UT since 1972,
died Tuesday morning in the Zurich, Switzerland, airport. According
to his wife, Kathleen Higgins, also a philosophy professor at UT,
Swiss medical authorities cited the cause of death as pulmonary
hypertension.
She and Solomon were on their way from Austin to Rome to visit his
brother Jon, a classics professor at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign who was leading a group of students on a tour of
Roman ruins.
"We had gotten off a flight and were in the process of trying to
figure out where we needed to go for our connecting flight," Higgins
said by phone from Zurich, where she was making arrangements to bring
Solomon's body back to America. "He said he was dizzy and collapsed."
Solomon received medical attention immediately but was dead within
minutes. Higgins said her husband had a congenital heart defect —
"basically, a hole in the heart" — that gave him trouble throughout
his life.
As Solomon told the American-Statesman in 2005, he arrived in Austin
35 years ago on something of a lark.
"I was young and adventuresome, I guess, so I took lots of one-year
jobs and two-year jobs just because I wanted to see the world,"
Solomon said. "I came to Texas expecting it was an interesting place
and I'd spend a couple semesters here and then go back to New York."
Instead, he fell in love with the town and stayed.
During his decades at UT, Solomon developed expertise in at least
three scholarly areas: existentialism, the role of the emotions, and
business ethics. His interest in existentialism began as a young man
and continued well past the era when most philosophers took the topic
seriously. Solomon believed that the existentialists — most notably,
Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche (whom he considered an early
existentialist) — addressed fundamental questions of life that much
of modern philosophy had left behind.
His interest in emotions, by contrast, predated the current vogue for
such studies; when he first started contemplating the philosophy of
emotions, few philosophers were interested in the topic. Now, there
are academic conferences virtually every week.
"His work on emotions was at the cutting edge," said David Sosa,
chairman of UT's philosophy department.
And Solomon's interest in business ethics brought him into the real
world in a way that few philosophers dare: He worked as a paid
consultant for corporate executives on ethical issues. By his own
admission, he learned as much as he taught.
All three fields point toward Solomon's insistence that philosophy
must engage with the age-old issues and questions that puzzle
undergraduates and public leaders alike: "Why are we here? What is
the good? How do I live?"
This passion made Solomon a much-loved teacher — his former students
spoke of him glowingly, and he was featured in several "Superstar
Teacher" video courses for the Teaching Company.
"I think his vitality impressed everybody," Higgins said. "Making
thinking be an important part of life and something that added to
life's splendor and mystery was really a model for a lot of people
and captivated many, many students."
"He was one of those people who took his own life and life in general
very seriously, and yet he had a whole lot of fun," said LBJ Library
director Betty Sue Flowers, a longtime friend of Solomon's. "He died
too young, but I bet he packed many lifetimes into the time he had."
Solomon is survived by his wife; two brothers, H. Andrew Solomon of
Austin and Jon Solomon of Urbana, Ill.; and five nieces and nephews.
There will be a private memorial service later this month; the
philosophy department is planning a conference in Solomon's honor in
the fall.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in memory of Solomon may be made to
Oxfam International.
Calling out Dinesh D'souza
My old Austin friend Mark Warren wrote this book review in Esquire:
The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
by Dinesh D'souza
Death to America
A Review by Mark Warren
Dear Dinesh,
Just read your new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. Here's your blurb -- I think it works: "Dinesh D'Souza does for liberals what The Protocols of the Elders of Zion did for the Jews!" Put that one up high, D, because with your crowd, that's going to move some serious books. And you're going to need the help, my friend, what with being hospitalized for what would have been your book tour. Come on, Dinesh, let's fight.
That you have provoked violence from a lowly American such as myself (read: one lacking the sinecure of an endowed chair at the Hoover Institution, whatever that may be) should not come as a surprise to you, old girl, when you say in your spicy little tract that "without the cultural left" -- again, whatever that is -- "9/11 would not have happened," and that if only we had been more like the "traditional culture" maniacs who attacked us -- if only we stoned homosexuals to death, for instance, or enslaved our women, and didn't brook so much dissent or speak so freely or have so much sex -- then maybe we wouldn't have provoked their violence. Yessir, in the course of your tortured logic, in this utterly incoherent book, you do end up justifying their violence against our open society, an open society that you seem clearly to despise.
Here's the thing, D: We knew how much they hated America. We just didn't have a full grasp, until now, of how much you and your crazy cohort hate America. Because you have taken to heart the "Islamic critique of Western moral depravity," as you call it, and have come down on their side of things. You actually seek to blame your free-speaking moral inferiors here in America for giving bin Laden no choice but to kill us. And in nothing short of derangement, you imagine a "de facto alliance" between the American "cultural left" and Islamic fundamentalism. You blame Michael Moore, for instance, for establishing the atmosphere that made 9/11 possible. But Dinesh, every good foot soldier of the cultural left knows that Michael Moore wasn't really made el jefe of the movement until the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004, which was, you know, after 9/11. So what cues was bin Laden taking from Michael Moore? His caustic view of corporate detachment in Roger & Me? His zany John Candy vehicle Canadian Bacon? Are you crazy? Or are you just looking for a little of that Coulter cash?
Your unbearably prim, dishonest little book searches for culpability for 9/11 everywhere except where it actually lies. In 1998, bin Laden himself told American journalist John Miller that it was the American military presence on the Arabian Peninsula that was driving him batshit crazy and that he intended to do something about it. Something specific. He told Miller he was going to "bring the fight to America" ("Greetings, America. My Name Is Osama bin Laden," Esquire, February 1999). But there you sit at the Hoover Institution, looking for the bogeyman. I've got news for you, D. As President Bush says, We're right, they're wrong.
Dinesh, my wife and I live in Manhattan. This is our home. This is where we are raising our children. We were here on September 11, 2001. We had the taste of ash in our mouths, and we were so angry, we wanted to kill somebody. The enemy felt close at hand that day. Today, after reading your despicable book, the enemy again feels close at hand. And the enemy is you.
So come on, Dinesh, don't just stand there on the mass grave in lower Manhattan and spew your astringent hate at your own countrymen and -women. Defend your ideas with your blood. To be clear: Let's fight. You know where to find me. I'm in the book.
January 4, 2007
Trademark Wars
The participation of fair trade activists in support of government trademark efforts involves some complicated issues for free culture advocates. Check out Oxfam's case for giving Ethiopia an exclusive license for branding Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe coffees.
Here is Starbucks YouTube response.
Guantanamo Documents Released
The FBI has just released documents about "aggressive interview techniques, interrogations, or mistreatment of detainees" at the Guantanamo Bay detention facilty for terrorism suspects. The reports include summaries of abusive treatment FBI agents personally observed. If you aren't used to Freedom of Information Act files, you may find it difficult to get through the full PDF text, which is covered with redactions, but interested citizens should at least give it a try. (A "positive" response means that a detainee has reported specific allegations of abuse in response to a general survey.) Unfortunately, the recent film on the "Tipton Three," Road to Guantanamo, relies on re-enactments, but it also vividly makes the case that the U.S. is not following its own founding principles of justice, so it may well be worth a trip to the video store.
My MSNBC column: No New Year Predictions from Me
Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com:
No new year predictions from me
Let’s hear it for those people who are willing to say 'we don’t know'
COMMENTARY
By Siva Vaidhyanathan
MSNBC contributor
I just got off the phone with an interviewer from a firm that is trying to advise libraries on how to manage and leverage social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook.
The interviewer asked me to predict what social networking would be like in five years. I declined to answer. I don’t do predictions, I explained.
“If we were having this conversation 18 months ago, I doubt we would even mention MySpace or YouTube,” I said. “I doubt the phrase ‘social networking’ would even come up, despite the fact that millions of people have been electronically networking since the rise of e-mail and instant messaging.”
This is the time of year when journalists and others love looking back and looking forward, as if nothing interesting ever happens in December and January. Newspapers and magazines are filled with “the best of 2006” and “what’s coming in 2007” stories. And technology seems to play a big part in both conversations.
I get calls like asking for technological predictions almost every week. Reporters ask me stuff like, ‘What’s next for the music industry?’ Foundations ask me to participate in ‘expert focus groups’ to predict the next big thing in communication policy and technology.
If I had a clue what some industry should or will do about something I would be a very rich man. I don’t. I’m not.
...
January 3, 2007
Anyone want to add citations to my Wikipedia entry?
It's been flagged. And please expand and improve it. Thanks!
Save Las Manitas!!!!!!
Burnt Orange Report reports that the astoundingly delicious and pleasant Congress Avenue diner is under threat from the insane development in Downtown Austin. Believe me: There is no better food substance in the world than the gorditas at Las Manitas.
Interesting conversation over at Technology Liberation Front
Last week Tim Lee over at The Technology Liberation Front took me to task for my MSNBC article about Time's Person of the Year award. Seth Finkelstein and others offered some nice responses.
Tim has moved the conversation forward:
Prof. Vaidhyanathan has left a gracious comment in response to my post last week about his MSNBC article. He rightly takes issue with my characterization of his position as "knee-jerk leftist and old fogeyism."
As I point out in a subsequent comment, think his article illustrates a couple of interesting ideological divides. One divide is that Prof. Vaidhyanathan is more concerned than I am about the impact of corporate control over the means of communications. But the more interesting divide, in my estimation, is an individualist/communalist divide. Prof. Vaidhyanathan seems to feel that it's only a revolution if people are able to "forge collective consciousnesses" and tackle big social problems. I'm more inclined to think that individual, incremental, spontaneous social organizations are at least as important.
What's most fascinating about this is that it doesn't seem to have any correlation with the traditional left-right divide. Vaidhyanathan clearly hails from the left-hand side of the political spectrum, as does Seth Finkelstein, but you can see similar sentiments from Nick Carr, who I've never thought of as a left-winger, and from our friends at the libertarian-leaning Progress and Freedom Foundation.
And of course, there's yet another axis concerning copyright and patent law, in which Seth, Prof. Vaidhyanathan, and I would generally find ourselves on the same side, with PFF and most of the Washington establishment on the other side.
This is one of the things that makes writing about tech policy so interesting. On most issues, there is a distinctively "conservative" position and a distinctively "liberal" one, with libertarians usually lining up squarely with one side or the other, depending on the particular issue. But in tech policy, the battle lines seem to be more fluid.
This is the sort of conversation that makes the Internet a wonderful place to read and write. Thanks, Tim!
Jean-Noel Jeanneney's Critique of Google: Private Sector Book Digitization and Digital Library Policy
David Bearman writes this review in D-Lib:
... So what is the basis for Jeanneney's opposition to Google's undertaking? It is definitely not Luddite; Jeanneney presides over and takes pride in one of the largest book digitization programs in the world at the BNF, which presents its public Web face at
I will not attempt to portray the full range of Jeanneney's ideas on America, Adam Smith and market economics, the nature of European culture, and the many other matters that enter into his very personal essay. Instead I'll focus on five distinct critiques Jeanneney weaves through his text, which I believe are central to his message and important to anyone engaged with digital library policy. First, Google will not be able to digitize everything ever printed, and its selection will favor American, or English language sources over other cultures. Secondly, Google's presentation of texts based on keywords decontextualizes them in culturally damaging ways, and its primary interest in harvesting words to link to advertising permits sloppy imaging of the books at the expense of more carefully executed efforts. Thirdly, the Google search engine (and its business plan), promote search results that are not consistent with the rankings that scholars from the cultures in which the literature was written would approve. Fourthly, permitting a private firm to own the digital library of images and OCR'd texts is not a sound archival plan for the world's libraries or cultures, and defeats efforts to encourage value-added exploitation of this unique resource. And fifthly, Google's approach to copyright threatens the achievement of a universal digital library. I suggest taking these criticisms one at a time. ...
... In the glare of publicity surrounding Google Book Search and other mass digitization projects focused on print culture, we should not lose sight of the small proportion of culture that publication represents, the problems of ceding its control to a private firm, Google's unfortunately incendiary approach to intellectual property, the poor quality of the digital capture we have seen to date, the limits of search and presentation as performed in this one service and the restriction that Google applies to other potential value-added uses, or the significant problem of cultural bias exacerbated by Google's advertising business model. Ian Wilson calls our attention to five principles enumerated by national librarians of la francophonie meeting in Paris on February 28, 2006: free access to publicly owned resources; non-exclusive agreements with content providers; capture of preservation standard images with assurances for long-term accessibility; protection of the integrity of original source materials; and provision of multi-lingual, multi-cultural access [17]. Jean-Noël Jeanneney has done us all a service by reminding us to look under the hood and hold Google, and those providing content to it, accountable. In the two years since Google first announced its ambitions, I think the D-Lib community has largely given Google the benefit of the doubt; now that some results are visible and the implications are more clear, I think it's time to publicly endorse open access to rights-cleared, high quality, scanned page images and reconsider the appropriate roles for academic and public institutions participating in commercial analogue heritage conversion efforts that don't contribute to this end.
January 2, 2007
Loser's Circle
So here they are, the winners of the 2006 Foleys, which recognize the incompetence of government agencies and policy makers in the area of digital media. (Insert drumroll here.)
Worst overall web design of a government website
It started parodically bad, it continues to be appallingly bad, and it seems like it won't cease to be bad any time soon. The prize for the all-around worst government website still goes to Ready.gov, which merits the recognition in a number of categories. The fact that they created a truly abysmal children's page this year (see this story in July) and threatened the Federation of American Scientists with a trademark infringement lawsuit because they made a critical counter-site (see this story in August) makes them worthy of the dishonor.
Worst online information access
Talk about a last-minute entry! According to a December 31st story on "Courts Rake in Fees for Web Access" in The Los Angeles Times, the County of Los Angeles should be the undisputed winner for actually charging usurious fees for searches of county records. Obviously the poor have just as much right as the rich to know if a doctor has a history of malpractice allegations or a contractor has a record of judgments for substandard work, but searches of public records net the county millions of dollars each year, even though neighboring counties don't charge for such searches.
Worst online social marketing
I asked social marketing expert Nedra Weinreich for her opinion:
My favorite remains the FEMA Kidz Rap, though the rest of the FEMA kids site is relatively harmless as federal kids' sites go. But FEMA also gets the award for worst offline social marketing (if you could call it that) for this program that I never got around to blogging, but have kept in mind as an example of what not to do.
Worst visual rhetoric
I'd give the prize for cretinous graphics to the Executive Branch Management Scorecard that comes from the White House, although -- as Ellen Lupton points out -- the White House generates plenty of other bad design from chaotic Photoshop backgrounds and banner ads to chartjunk and idiotic PowerPoint rhetoric.
Worst user interface
The website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to be quite user-unfriendly, especially given the number of second language speakers who would logically be visitors to the site. I tried a few searches, and it seems to have not improved much from the condition that it was in last year. Imagine that you are an Iraqi citizen seeking political asylum, given the violent civil war taking place in your country, and you'll see how difficult good information is to find on the site.
I'd have to give the honorary second place award to the Transportation Safety Administration's Kafka-esque materials for people on their "no-fly list," which actually made the following statement on their site in March: "Please understand that the TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists."
Worst technical incompatibility
As the Washington Post pointed out in August, years after the September 11th attacks, the public still has yet to have the integrated computer system promised to the FBI by policy makers.
Worst electronic message to the masses
Of course, it has to be the suggestive instant messages sent to underage Congressional pages by Florida representative Mark Foley, who made his reputation as a crusader against online kiddie porn, although the "macaca" message of Virginia Senator George Allen on YouTube certainly merits a held nose as well.
Worst official PowerPoint presentation
I'd say the electronic slideshow about "Terrorist Use of the Internet" that was presented by experts from SAIC before the House Intelligence Committee was the worst this year, because -- in addition to being incredibly wrong-headed -- it was designed to create anxieties about domestic use of communication technology as well.
Worst government-funded videogame
I asked Ludology czar Gonzalo Frasca this question, who said, "I would say that by far the worst government funded game is the War in Iraq. And they're losing!"
I like the Federation of American Scientists otherwise, but I think the NSF-funded Immune Attack is probably the biggest unrecognized taxpayer turkey this year. Not only is this a classic example of "content stuffing" into a genuinely un-fun game, but the representations of microscopic body components are often wildly inaccurate in color, size, and behavior.
Worst abuse of copyright law
It's not technically part of a government organization, but the life of civil rights activist Martin Luther King is commemorated with a national holiday, so his heirs shouldn't be so protective of intellectual property associated with his legacy and so litigious, given that his words are part of our common national heritage.
Worst appeal to children
There were certainly plenty of bad government websites for children this year, but readers unanimously nominated the CIA's Homepage for Kids, when it came to bad government web design.
Worst call to patriotism
All the websites from the defense department are pretty uniformly terrible, since they don't acknowledge the sacrifices being made by over 3,000 soldiers who have already given their lives in Iraq. But this year's Defense Intelligence Agency Calendar is in particularly bad taste, so make sure to print out your PDF copy today.
Worst regulation of technology in response to a craven fear
Banning access to social networking sites in schools and libraries may be the worst regulation of a common technological practice in response to the bogeyman of the child sexual predator who was haunting the House Energy and Commerce hearings all this year. The Deleting Online Predators Act may have many unintended consequences for those who depend on Internet service as a cheap alternative to long distance phone calls for the poor or as a way to access social services and other important cultural goods.
Cross-posted at Virtualpolitik
January 1, 2007
Bobc Has a Blog!
Frequent Sivacracy commenter Bobc has his own blog now: Bobc's Webetorial. Drop by and say hello!
Sivacracy Pal Patric Verrone Tells It Like It Is
To start the year off right, check out Writers Guild president Patric Verrone talking about media consolidation on YouTube. You can learn more about Verrone's old school union rabble-rousing efforts here.
