derivative work

The Simpsons’ “Don’t cut off my pianissimo” and “What would Jesus glue?” is not patently offensive, according to the FCC, disagreeing with the Parents Television Council. FCC denies 36 Indecency Complaints, AP 1/24

Techdirt covers

“I would call upon everyone who has access to ‘Eyes on the Prize’ to openly violate any and all laws regarding its showing,” says civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot, who led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and today is a program manager for the D.C. Department of Human Services. from

hmm. maybe the whole spongebob thing is worth checking out after all, now that i know what an insidious homosexual menace it is: “We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids,” he said. “It is a classic bait and switch.” — NYT 1/20

quick reference: Judy Bachrach takes out Bush / Prayer Services [Fair And Balanced | Oliver Willis]

rest in peace, Noel Peattie … a letter from chris dodge about “Remembering Noel Peattie“, posted on librarian.net. Noel Peattie published Sipapu, a small press review zine, for many many years, way before it was hip for libraries to care about zines.

Columbia Law Librarian Charles Cronin has been gathering and archiving historical materials related to music copyright infringement cases in the 19th century. Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project. [link from rumori]

Salon.com WarRoom did a good job of excerpting from Ted Kennedy’s speech @ the National Press Club [kennedy website transcript], so I’ll just take their excerpt: I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like [...]

The American Dialect Society has recognized Dan Savage’s efforts on behalf of the word santorum, “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex”: The Most Outrageous category is tricky; we never agree whether it’s the word itself that’s outrageous (typically for having some vulgar element, as in [...]

thank god fafblog is here to explain it all: There were real reasons to go into Iraq, despite the failure and recent quiet drop of the Quest for WMDs. What fool’s errand? [fafblog 1/12] full text below …

The 10th anniversary of SF MOMA prompted an article in SFGate today [1/13] about MOMA’s architectural values, functionality as an art museum, and fitness into the SOMA neighborhood. I particularly liked the opening observation: A big problem with architectural criticism is that buildings often are treated as if they are inert works of art, sculptures [...]

Good. Georgia District Court has ordered removal of the anti-evolution stickers in science textbooks. [sfgate 1/13]

… i’ve liked the term “blink” which copyfight has been using the last several months for its links. Blink, because it implies a quick look at something; blink at it’s gone. Eliot Gelwan claims it as his idea, describing it as a noun/verb derived from “weblink”, a la blog from weblog. What’s interesting is how [...]

i’ve been out of the loop for about an entire month while i moved, battled colds & flus & snowstorms, and made it thru the winter holidays … so i’ll be logging a month’s worth of interesting articles & commentaries. luckily it seems that courts, legislators & commentators have also been slower than usual the [...]

So call me one of those annoying people who count things up and then bitch and infer meaning from quotas and statistics: Boy Reviewer Michael Chabon, in his March 25, 2004, The New York Review of Books: Dust & Daemons review of Pullman’s His Dark Materials books, manages to cite, out of 19 references, only [...]

… Sometimes, fighting for freedom of access to information seems shallow in comparison to the struggle against poverty and inequality, or against government-sponsored murder and torture, or even the struggle to survive in the face of hurricanes and tsunamis and floods. But ultimately I believe it’s all the same struggle. … Philip Pullman recently wrote [...]