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random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
regarding the male Washington, D.C., mayoral aide who used the word "niggardly' and then was canned / asked to resign / resigned, and the resulting brouhaha about political-correct language etc.:
But the point about 'niggardly' is that words are more than their origin and their dictionary definition. The very sound of them carries weight and meaning, as does their real or perceived relationship to other words. 'Niggardly' belongs in society's vocabulary trashbin, not through any fault of its own, but because it transcends its definition and automatically conveys a feeling of bigotry. For God's sake, it sounds like the adjective form of a word that we can't bear to speak or even write! How can anyone use it? It's like putting up a wallpaper pattern that looks very much like a series of swastikas, but it's not! It's really a Scandinavian design that symbolizes good luck for the upcoming ice fishing season.
Wow, after four men, a female human being’s genome finally got sequenced. Go Dutch.
Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 27—Geneticists at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have announced the first complete sequencing of a woman’s genome. The announcement was made at Bessensap, an annual meeting bringing together scientists and the press in the Netherlands.
The DNA of [...]
an upsetting day. so, reading the news.
Farewell to the crown, farewell, the velvet gown, won’t you all come tumbling down? Goodbye to the crown! (Chumbawamba, “Farewell to the Crown”)
Nepal votes out their monarchy and institutes a republic. Gyanendra has to vacate the palace within two weeks or face eviction. Also, he had to [...]
Our cyberpunk future approaches: monkeys with brain implants can control robotic devices.
So Adam Nagourney certainly was annoying me today, but yesterday, I was way more irate at someone I don’t usually hate, Tom Ashbrook, in his radio show “On Point”. Granted, I was driving around in Boston traffic, trying to find parking in the over-crowded Longwood Medical Area, and did I mention that I was [...]
Two things annoyed me in the last 24 hours. Well, two media things.
First, this morning in an article about same-sex marriage in the NYT, there was utter stupid cluelessness that led me to conclude the article must have been written by a straight person. And indeed, But then I just looked at the [...]
Well, I loved the California same-sex marriage decision. Not just because it granted same-sex marriage, and not just because it said that the state needs to use the same term to refer to same-sex and opposite-sex unions, but because it significantly expanded Equal Protection jurisprudence.
For the non-law-geeks out there, federal and state constitutional [...]
Following an action at my own BPL, the anti-DRM organization Defective by Design is calling for libraries to boycott products that use DRM.
The Open Letter to Libraries is posted @ DBD’s website, and they have also made a sample letter / template available for us to send our own letters.
Link via cory @ boingboing
Canadian Club (”CC”, not Creative Commons) has been running these really offensive & annoying ads aimed, apparently, at a very small demographic: straight white men with masculinity issues and daddy issues.
My partner pointed them out to me — plastered on bus stops in our ethnically diverse and progressive, queer-friendly community — and we [...]
New York’s state tourism board is seeking to reclaim their “I heart NY” slogan. (link from michele) According to the article, the slogan was developed for them pro bono by graphic designer Milton Glaser in the early 1970s. It was used prolifically as a mark; then they let their registration lapse and stopped [...]
I had been seeing “ftw” in internet chit chat for a while, and I just finally got around to looking it up and seeing what it actually means: “for the win”.
In the meantime, I had just sort of assumed it was an inversion of “wtf” — sort of taking the aghastness of “wtf” [...]
According to Robert Brauneis’ new paper, “Copyright and the World’s Most Popular Song”, the song “Happy Birthday To You” — long held as an example by us copyright reformists — is most likely not copyrighted after all, due to the tortuous path of ownership and failure to re-register.[linked from patry copyright blog]
See also the brauneis [...]
This is great news. The Open Humanities Press (OHP) aims to be for the humanities what many similar archives and endeavors have been for the sciences.
It will begin including the following journals: Cosmos and History, Culture Machine, Fibreculture, Film-Philosophy, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Parrhesia and Vectors.
link from peter suber @ open [...]
In Burger with a Side of Spies (editorial, NYT 5/7), Eric Schlosser calls for legislation to protect people from private entities, á la the Bill of rights.
The article discusses a number of incidents, including spying and infiltration
- by HP on journalists;
- by a private security firm on Greenpeace & other environmentalist groups; [...]
The current New Yorker (2008/5/12) is chock-full of good stuff:
* Malcolm Gladwell, In the Air, New Yorker. link from MC on closed mailing list
Invention is part of zeitgeist. Many people come up with the same ideas at the same moment — true in her field, my partner says, and it looks true from any [...]
This is highly amusing. A Constitutional flaw in the way that patent appeals judges have been appointed since 2000 (by persons without authority to do so) threatens to invalidate all the decisions made by a panel that includes a judge appointed since 2000. [My initial hearing of snatches of this made me think [...]
This just in from AP: Mildred Jeter Loving, of Loving v. Virginia, passed away on Friday 5/2.
A longer obit from the NYT. “Mildred’s mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She preferred to think of herself as Indian rather than black.” I can’t tell if that was throughout her [...]
