random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
  Librarians are very special people. They are the caregivers of the world of the mind, the nurturers of dreams and the defenders of truth. Perhaps no other profession is so marked by the singular generosity of its practitioners

tagged: librarians
  —Editorial Denver Post, March 25, 2000.

Archive for April, 2008

DRM litigation bait

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Surely some enterprising plaintiff-side attorney can generate a lawsuit from the reasonable expectations of consumers to continue to have access to the music they paid for:
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize [...]

back to mormons and forced “marriage”

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Source: More Clarity About Abuse, Intermarriage, Child Breeders, andthe Fundamentalist Churchof Later Day Saints, Sara Robinson, Orcinus, 2008/4/25
[Warren] Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin.
I’m sick of these quotes that just talk about “marriage” and accept the use of that word.
If you are [...]

cultural appropriation, property rhetoric, acknowledgment

Monday, April 28th, 2008

The feminist blogosphere has been erupting lately, showing our strengths and our weaknesses and faultlines. One of those faultlines is race, and the discussions over Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon)’s work, BrownFemiPower’s work, and cultural appropriation have brought this out.
I’ve stayed quiet thus far on the issue, mostly because I have too many thoughts, and [...]

elsevier is now part of elsevier

Monday, April 28th, 2008

new spam tactics

Monday, April 28th, 2008

I just got a call from someone claiming to be a “domain notification server”. They had pulled our contact information off our domain record, and had a highly deceptive pitch, something like:
We are calling you to alert you that you will be receiving a notification regarding your domain, blah blah blah information from our [...]

mellowing with age

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

The cuss-o-meter says only 21.5%. That is not the high standard I set for myself in conversation as a youth. Also, the quiz says that “This is 139% MORE than other websites who took this test.” What does that mean? More than the average, I presume?
Created by OnePlusYou (Yes, this [...]

sexism is not, actually, “open source”

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

There’s been a blog flurry about the use (dare I call it “appropriation”?) of the term “open source” for a project aimed at facilitating gropes of women’s breasts at SF cons. The project was called the “open source boob project” and proposed to pass out buttons so that people (”women”) could affirmatively opt-in to [...]

Expelled without a license

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Word on the street is starting to trickle in that the popular music was not licensed:
* John Lennon’s “Imagine” was definitely used without permission. The Lennon estate + EMI are suing. (See Reuters, 4/23 (link from pharyngula); the NYT, 4/24; and Paste Magazine. (I can just picture the graphic on The Daily Show: “Ono you [...]

creationist & religious violence against science & education

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Just a list of links for the flurry of postings on this topic:
* Bug Girls’ Blog, Weekly WTF: More threats by Creationists, 2007/7/12; related Pharyngula, 2007/7/11; Bug Girl’s blog, 2007/7/20
* Bug Girl’s Blog, Creationist Death Threats, Part 2 (2007/8/24)
* Pharyngula, Another example of amoral religiosity, 2007/8/24
* Sunclipse, Creation, Power and Violence (2008/4/18)

internet privacy (NJ edition)

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

New Jersey’s Supreme Court has recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email communications — thus, law enforcement has to get a search warrant or grand jury subpoena. This was under the New Jersey Constitution and applies only to New Jersey. It’s the first major case finding a state constitutional privacy [...]

fair use (copyright) coming to an LCSH near you

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Awesome librarian (and friend) Jenna Freedman has been on the LCSH (”Library of Congress Subject Headings”) for a while for its many failures to recognize current topics and language. She just posted about the new and revised headings, including a new heading for Fair use (copyright).

150 [...]

music inspired by Expelled

Friday, April 18th, 2008

So at the end of this long post about Expelled and copyright infringement, I appended some rewritten lyrics to the tune of “Spirit in the Sky” :

When I copy and they tell me “desist”,
Gonna go to the place that’s the best
When I get caught in a lie,
Goin’ up to Designers in the sky
Goin’ up [...]

apparently i’m married to pharyngula

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Yesterday I excitedly pointed to this io9 blog entry about vat-grown meat: “You see!” I told my partner. “You see! I was right. We are going to have vat-grown meat, in our lifetime !!!”
The “I was right” or “you were right” is the gold ring of our relationship. The ch-ching [...]

alabama - imprisoning pregnant women like it’s 2020 in Gilead

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

How did I miss this Alabama story?
Greg L. Gambril, a DA in south Alabama (Covington County), is prosecuting women for endangering their fetuses under a chemical endangerment law intended to protect children from meth labs — “chemical endangerment of child”.
“When drugs are introduced in the womb, the child-to-be is endangered. It is what I [...]

Expelled copyright infringement, cont’d

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

update 4/16: Both a commenter here and also P.Z. Myers have reported that Expelled filmmakers Premise filed on Monday a DJ (”declaratory judgment”) motion on XVIVO’s copyright claims against them — i.e., asked a judge to look at the evidence & say that they are not infringing. Premise v. XVIVO, N.D. Tex., 4/14/2008.
Here are links [...]

novel library architecture in Colombia

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Although it feels weird to talk about Colombia without addressing the political issues, I nevertheless present this io9 link + pictures of a beautiful and strange library in Casanera.

the bear stearns of organized pedophilia

Monday, April 14th, 2008

It’s a bit dicey to find anything funny in the sexual slavery / prostitution ring known as the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, aka, the Mormon child abuse cult). Bill Maher managed to do it by pointing out the discrepancy between society’s treatment of misbehavior by “cults” and misbehavior by “religions”.
If you [...]

obedience & expelled

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Obedience has never been my forte but every now and then I try it out just for fun. Or else, just because the radio waves directly into my brain will stimulate the pain center unless I do as told.
So, direct from central squidelicious headquarters:
This dumb movie named Expelled is being released the [...]

sexism in hillary-bashing

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Great article by Rebecca Traister at Salon.com about sexism lurking behind the shrill Obama support.
Notes and thoughts:
* It’s not Hillary’s “shrillness” that’s discomfiting; it’s the shrillness of boys’ support for Obama & hatred of Hillary. Dana Lossia quoted: “People can always come up with reasons they don’t like the candidate they’re not supporting. … [...]

you paid for it; who owns it? Wal-Mart’s contracted recordings

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

So, Wal-Mart is fighting with its former video contractor over ownership of a variety of recordings of internal Wal-Mart affairs.

An aside: From the description, it seems like some of them might have been automatically captured footage. The question of copyright over surveillance camera footage and other automated recordings is an interesting one, [...]