derivative work

open source install fest at Bay Area schools, Sat March 1 (linked at badgerbag) Liz Henry, Annoyingly sexist framing of Google VP Marissa Mayer Heather Morrison, No to author’s rights? Let your librarian know!, Poetic Economics (link from open access news) Jonathan Eisen, Editorial: PLoS Biology 2.0, 6(2): e48 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060048 (2008) – a moving essay [...]

good lord, what is wrong with arlen specter?

The seed vault I wrote about last year has opened, ahead of schedule. (NYT 2/26) Bent Skovmand would be proud.

My partner and I agree on one thing about the Democratic race: That sexism has played a major role in the treatment of Hillary Clinton. A friend of ours recently pointed out that if the genders were reversed — if Barack Obama were a woman, with little experience but inspiring rhetoric — Obama-as-woman would never [...]

Free Power, NYC, Feb. 3, 2008.Photo by L. Quilter. In NYC earlier this month, I saw someone sitting on a sidewalk with a laptop and other accoutrements. I assumed it was just a convenient (if cold) place to pick up a free wireless signal, but when I got closer I realized that the person was [...]

Pharyngula recently dropped an aside on one of my favorite topics, scientists communicating about science to the public: You can also hear the author discussing the methodology and results in a podcast, which I think is a wonderful idea. (Maybe every paper should be accompanied by a 15 minute podcast in which the author explains [...]

Intellectual property pops up in the strangest places. Browsing The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg, for instance, I found this discourse on “stealing” baby names: Not long ago, I heard an expectant mother beside herself with outrage. She had just learned that another woman in her small town had “stolen” her baby name! No, [...]

Go Carl Malamud, freeing the law! The same Carl Malamud that pushed SEC’s EDGAR database to be open has now published 1.8 million United States court opinions. The project was announced in November, and just three months later, it’s online. The opinions are at Malamud’s main website, resource.org, and there is now a special website [...]

I haven’t heard any recent updates about Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali, the woman sentenced to death for witchcraft. A Saudi Arabian court issued the death penalty in 2005 for a woman who allegedly made a man impotent, through witchcraft, among other sins. According to Human Rights Watch, she was beaten until she signed (by placing [...]

Randy Cohen’s NYT “The Ethicist” column took on “ethics” versus “legality” and got it right. The Ethicist, Feb. 24, 2008.

Last weekend I was listening to a program on “Testosterone” on “This American Life” (archive) and, predictably, my interest in the topic was equaled or surpassed by my exasperation and annoyance at its handling. “This American Life” is a one-hour show, that aims to do something rather cool: Shed some light on a topic by [...]

John Naughton had a nice column last week in The Observer (at the guardian) trashing the British Phonographic Industry. Triggered by their spokesperson’s statement that “For years, ISPs have built a business on other people’s music,” Naughton awarded it “Fatuous Statement of the Month” and went on to excoriate their arrogance and the legislation they’re [...]

Friend and colleague Wendy Seltzer has a new column in Craft Magazine about copyright. Copyright has been increasingly applied by crafters and craft-pattern companies to craft patterns, in “shrinkwrap” style licenses. I’m greatly pleased to see some attention to this issue! Thanks, Wendy! Related reading: * idahobeauty writing about the impact of copyright on quilting [...]

Speaking of penumbra yet again (1, 2) , I had previously blogged about a Circuit split on laws banning sex toys — it was Valentine’s Day, and I was feeling a bit whimsical, so I wished for a “penumbra” that would strike down stupid laws. LawPundit “ha[s] an opinion” on my wish for a penumbra [...]

Well, not only tonight, but only tonight for the last several and next few years. An amazing lunar eclipse will be highly visible in North America tonight (Wed., Feb. 20) — 10-11pm Eastern time, a total eclipse of the full moon. Sky and Telescope describes it as “America’s best lunar eclipse in years”. In addition [...]

God I love it when people discover more solar systems and planets. A new technique that permits detection of solar systems that include large outer planets, as opposed to large planets close to their suns, is proving fruitful. The solar system that was discovered includes large outer planets and may have small rocky planets, akin [...]

Well, the 5th Circuit (Texas) has just said that Texas’s anti-sex-toy-law (memorably mocked by Molly Ivins in this video, available at youtube via pandagon) is unconstitutional, relying heavily on Lawrence (or so I hear, via pharyngula); I haven’t read the case yet). This looks like a pretty clear Circuit split with the 11th Circuit (Georgia, [...]

I’ll be watching Harvard’s A&S faculty vote today to see if they approve setting up a library-run faculty publications open access repository. (A proposal, I noted to my partner, that I first saw some 15 years ago in the library community.) The NYT covered the proposal. For-profit scholarly publishers have of course been complaining vociferously [...]