derivative work

The Section 108 study group has finally released their report. See: Section 108 Study Group Executive Summary of Report Full report For those who are not copyright or library geeks, Section 108 is one of the most important parts of the Copyright Act for libraries. For those who are having trouble reading the medium-grey on [...]

2:45 to 4:55 a.m. So I was up too late at night (or too early in the morning) writing out my thoughts and ideas and plans and investigating various and sundry burning questions, as one does at 3 in the morning, and I found myself signing up to Zune. Really, I found myself doing it, [...]

Josh Timonen wrote a detailed synopsis of the movie “Expelled”, the creationist film that tries to argue that creationist views are “unfairly” excluded from the academy. What piqued my interest about this particular post (there have been hundreds by now about how bad the movie is, the deceptiveness of the filmmakers, P.Z. Myers’ being prevented [...]

These Wisconsin parents prayed while their kid lapsed into a diabetic coma and died. So, Madeline Neumann was born to parents who let her die only eleven years later. Her parents think she may be resurrected yet. I usually think of religion as inherently funny, but it’s also stupidity, and stupidity is dangerous and not [...]

My partner and i were discussing today the massive downloads of her music file that spitzer’s partner-in-sex-scandal had (“Kristen” aka Ashley Dupre). Her MP3s increased in price from 13c to 98c, and had over 200,000 downloads by Thursday March 13. (MSNBC 3/14) We were happy for her, but wondered if the other women over the [...]

Natalie Angier began an article on sexual monogamy in the natural world by reference to the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. The entire article is a rebuke to the evolutionary psych hogwash that has been bandied about the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, although I particularly enjoyed the first sentence of the second paragraph: You can accuse [...]

So Geraldine Ferraro revealed her cluelessness about race issues with her “I’m being attacked for being white” comment. She also revealed, as my partner astutely pointed out, that she must have almost no people of color in her close circle who could help her out by explaining exactly what was wrong about the comment about [...]

Joseph Romm analyzed both Clinton and Obama’s plans on global warming, noting that they are much better than McCain’s, who has begun teetering toward a Bush position. salon 3/15 Compare Romm’s earlier analysis of McCain’s proposals (salon 2/8)

I just love the imagery in these descriptions of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, in Friday’s NYT 3/13: Cassini Gets a Cool Shower From an Ice-Spewing Moon Then again, no other 310-mile-wide ice-ball moon in the solar system has a geyser of icy particles shooting out of its south pole. Geysers of ice. Truly, this world is [...]

A friend‘s FaceBook entry pointed me to an amazing article in Bitch Magazine: “Hard Times” by Sarah Seltzer. Seltzer defines and describes the pattern and statistics of the reviews of books by women, describing both the gender disproportionality, and an editorial pattern of assigning writers who are likely to dismiss feminist works.

I was checking out Tor’s new wallpapers and thinking about the uses of provenance in the art world. Tor is a science fiction publisher, and they’ve been doing one of those Publisher Experiments with the new digital world. (In fact, Tor released this week Farthing by Jo Walton for free — this was an amazing [...]

Federal officials have indicated that they are likely to close the Pacific salmon fishery from northern Oregon to the Mexican border because of the collapse of crucial stocks in California’s major watershed.That would be the most extensive closing on the West Coast since the federal government started regulating fisheries. “The Central Valley fall Chinook salmon [...]

the awesome new blog from annalee & charlie (and others) io9 profiled research today on growing extra fingers. think of the piano competition bump on the resume that aggressive yuppie parents can give their six-fingered offspring!

Eliot Spitzer could help us all, right now, by not resigning. It would do a huge favor to the ordinary non-politician people who have to live in America to resist the stupidity of letting the personal sex lives of our politicians affect our government. He could show a little “leadership” to his peer politicians in [...]

For the record, the menacing presence of very large german shepherds is not a plus at a train station. And when you hear their barks, whimpers, and howls nearby it makes you worry whether they’re attacking someone, upset or excited at someone’s lunch, etc. Word is they’re sniffing for bombs but I don’t think for [...]

A few days ago, the Village Voice wrote an article about a series of World of Warcraft-inspired porn; their article was duly picked up by BoingBoing. Strangely, BoingBoing missed the IP angle — that “Whorelore”‘s original name was “Whorecraft” but they ran into an “IP” issue, presumably trademark. You can still see “Whorecraft” on some [...]

Satellite photos reveal the depredations of illegal loggers in Mexican forests, particularly in the winter home of the migratory monarch butterflies. Is there any reason at all that we cannot have real-time monitoring of the freakin’ environment to ensure that wide-scale clearcutting, burning, stripmining, and other land and sea uses do not happen? It seems [...]

It’s like peanut butter cups: two great ideas that were destined to join and become better than anything else, ever. Opera, and lolcats. lolturandots (link from one of wendy‘s sites)

i like this atheist’s creed pretty well. it was posted at pharyngula and i suspect that pz myers wrote it. An atheist’s creed I believe in time, matter, and energy, which make up the whole of the world. I believe in reason, evidence and the human mind, the only tools we have; they are the [...]

This is one of my favorite sets of photos from Michele’sVariationen von poker set. and my visit to the San Diego Zoo in January, 2008. (Feel free to engage me in a conversation about the ethics of zoos.) If I had more of these I’d make an awesome flip-book. Okay, call me puerile. The best [...]