Jennifer Government's author on copyright's excess. Cory Doctorow: Max Barry, author of the excellent novel Jennifer Government, has blogged a likewise excellent essay about how crazy copyright has become, and how little copyright he'd settle for:

Having a few years of copyright protection is a good incentive. But a hundred years? Or seventy years after my death? (If I live to 80, it will become legal to print your own copy of Jennifer Government in 2123.) There's no additional incentive in that. There is nobody, and no company, thinking, "Well, this is a good song, but if I only get to keep all the money it makes for the next 50 years... nah, not worth developing it."

Copyright extensions, of the kind popping up everywhere lately, have nothing to do with encouraging more creative work, and everything to do with protecting the revenue streams of media companies that, a few generations ago, had an executive smart enough to sniff out a popular hit. It's a grab for cash at the public's expense. The fact that there is any posthumous copyright protection at all proves that the law is intended to benefit people who are not the original creator: that is, heirs and corporations. The fact that copyright extensions retroactively apply to already-created works proves they're not meant to encourage innovation. The only reason copyright extension laws keep getting passed is because the people and companies that became fabulously rich through someone else's idea are using that wealth to lobby government for more of it.

Link

(Thanks, Sidney!) [Boing Boing]

This will not be fixed by the current administration. it will require someone who actually 'gets' the efects of technology on creativity.  11:06:59 PM    

Kids With Cameras in Smithsonian. David Pescovitz: This month's Smithsonian Magazine has an excellent article about Born Into Brothels, the Academy Award-winning documentary about children living in Calcutta's red light district. Director Zana Briski gave the children cameras and taught them basic photography skills. Their work is incredibly moving. The film launched Kids With Cameras, "a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world." From the Smithsonian article (photo by Kochi/Kids with Cameras):

As Briski worked, she was surprised that children — most of them sons and daughters of prostitutes — would surround her, fascinated by her camera. So she started teaching them to take pictures, setting up weekly classes and giving them cheap, point-and-shoot cameras with which to experiment. Their snapshots —arresting portraits of their families, each other and the surrounding streets — capture a chaotic world as few outsiders could.

Briski pressed on, securing grants to fund her efforts, soon dubbed Kids with Cameras, and arranging to sell the kids' photographs in Calcutta and New York City galleries. The pictures attracted attention. "These children have what adults most often don't: total openness," says Robert Pledge, co-founder of the Contact Press Images agency. Briski persuaded Pledge to meet the children, and he was soon convinced that the pictures had genuine merit. "Most photography is observation, from the outside," he says. "You're very rarely inside, looking from the inside out."

Link [Boing Boing]

The power of digital technology and its ability to connect what could not be connected before.  11:02:17 PM    

Cost of the Uninsured. USAToday contains an article discussing the recent report from Families USA showing that the uninsured cost the average worker $340 and the average family $920 in extra insurance premuims each year.  Families USA is an organization that promotes universal health... [HealthLawProf Blog]

An extra $1000 a year. And the skeptic quoted provides little more than his opinion.Oh, if we have health insurance, people will go to doctors more often. What a concept if we actually have healthier people who can work more and produce more goods. We would not want that.  10:59:30 PM    

Some History on  Sam Brownback

 Jason Miller wrote a wonderful history of Sam's fanatical beliefs:

...As one examines various facets of Sam Brownback, one formulates a profile of an individual who is dangerously radical. As I write this article, he is pandering to the Religious Right, his extremist base. Brownback is threatening to filibuster the Senate bill that would relax restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research. This legislation would enable the US to begin catching up with nations like South Korea. Yes, you read that correctly...read on 

Think Progress has more: The [base "]Obstructionist[per thou] Brownback:  Now one of their own, the staunchly anti-choice Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), [base "]has put a hold on the White House[base ']s nomination of a prominent abortion-rights supporter to a diplomatic post.[per thou]  It would seem that the crime of Julie Finley - nominated as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - is her extensive fundraising work for pro-choice candidates.

Who can forget his sickening debate against Arlen Specter. Video here

[Crooks and Liars]

Yep, a single REPUBLICAN Senator is holding up one of Bush's nominated diplomays simply because she is pro-choice. IOKIYAAR. They would be all over a Democratic Senator for this but they can do it to themselves. What happened to an up or down vote?  10:43:15 PM    

Al Franken catches Bill O'Reilly doing a little funny editing

via Al Franken Show: So much O'Reilly, so little time. This one is particularly egregious. The Spark Notes summary: O[base ']Reilly took video from Senator Joe Biden[base ']s Sunday appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, edited it to misrepresent what Biden said, then advocated his now edited-out position (all the while criticizing him)...read on

                                                      Video-QT

                                           Video-WMP-low quality

[Crooks and Liars]

Here is the video demonstrating how O'Reilly spun Biden's message. And to top it off, he stole Biden's iea and acted like it was his own. Such video plagarism should result in his ffiring, especially after the loofah incident.  10:24:08 PM    

"are starting to refuse to print digital photos because of fear of copyright infringement." [Daypop Top 40]

So be sure you make your pictures look crappy if you want Wal-Mart to print them. This is such a stupid misuse of copyright laws. How in the world can they verify who made the picture? Say you were a professional and you held the compyright. How do you prove to the clerk at Wal-Mart that you do hold the copyright? There should be a central repository for people who want to maintain copyright to pay, say $1 a year, to maintain a copyright on their work. Then we could inf out who holds the rights or not. Or just go somewhere else than Wal-mart.  10:22:01 PM    

"Divine design" legislation threatened in Utah. June 9, 2005: Utah is abuzz with the news that a state senator plans to introduce legislation to teach "divine design" in the state's public schools.

Not so long ago, a Deseret Morning News article on evolution education in Utah referred to "Utah's non-war over ev ... [National Center for Science Education]

Salt Lake City has some pretty good biotech companies and researchers. I wonder how they feel about this. I guess with more states trying to mandate such teachings we will have even more immigrants in graduate school becasue we have failed to educate our own citizens.  9:56:34 PM    

David Corn: Bush, Check Your Briefing Book!.

There are many ways for a president to mislead the public. Here's one.

Appearing before the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy today, George W. Bush gave a speech lauding the Patriot Act and calling for its extension and expansion. He did his best to make it seem that all the provisions of the act--and the new ones his administration wants to add to the law--are strictly monitored and controlled by judges. This is how he put it:

We need to renew the critical provisions of the Patriot Act that protect our civil liberties. The Patriot Act was written with clear safeguards to ensure the law is applied fairly. The judicial branch has a strong oversight role. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, a federal judge's permission to track his calls, or a federal judge's permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.

Would you believe this misrepresents reality? Under section 215 of the act, judges who participate in a secret court that oversees top-secret national security investigations must approve a government request for medical, bank, business and other records if law enforcement agents assert they need the material for a foreign intelligence investigation. (None of these requests have ever been rejected.) Moreover, the Bush administration is now pushing Congress to approve "administrative subpoenas." These would let the FBI issue its own search orders without having to request permission from a judge. As the ACLU huffs, "If [this] became law, we would go from diminished judicial approval to none at all: this is the administration's idea of checks and balances."

Yes, as Bush notes, judges are playing a role in overseeing certain provisions of the Patriot Act. But it's a limited role, and Bush is trying to cut them out of the picture in certain instances. For some reason, he didn't tell the state highway patrol officers that.

******
If you're looking for some imaginative ideas on what to do with the 400,000 leftover blastocysts now sitting frozen in fertility clinics--the blastocysts that Bush and DeLay say cannot be destroyed to create new stem cells lines--then click here.

[The Huffington Post | Raw Feed]

Misleading and misrepresentation. He must have gone to the same school as O'Reilly who was recently caught re-editting a tape of Biden to change its meaning, Seems like standard procedure.  9:52:16 PM    

Jonathan Alter: Fox, Watergate and Intimidation Journalism.

I got a little insight today into how the bullies at Fox News play the game. In this week's Newsweek, I wrote a column under the headline "If Watergate Happened Now." The satirical conceit was that I was writing a column looking back at the successful completion of Nixon's second term. In a light vein, I sideswiped lots of people in today's media culture by way of explaining why the scandal never came out and Nixon survived in office. At one point, I wrote: "Those of us who hoped it would end differently knew we were in trouble when former Nixon media adviser Roger Ailes banned the word 'Watergate' from Fox's coverage and went with the logo 'Assault on the Presidency' instead."

Well, it turns out Mr.-Dish-It-Out apparently can't take it. Today I heard that his stooges were out peddling a story to the press that I was guilty of a conflict-of-interest and should have disclosed in my column that I twice unsuccessfully sought employment at Fox News and now do part-time work under contract to NBC News and MSNBC.

The facts: Five years ago, I once had a conversation with Ailes in his office about going to Fox but I never pursued it after it was clear he just wanted me on his air as a liberal punching bag. When I told him I was a centrist on many issues and didn't care to be announced as a liberal every time I appeared (his terms of employment), our discussions ended.

As it happens, I also bashed MSNBC in this week's Watergate column ("When 'Firebombing Brookings: Good Idea or Not?' became the question-of-the-day on MSNBC, Liddy's radio show got a nice ratings boost."). MSNBC apparently has a thicker skin than Fox.

Many of the people at Fox are fine journalists and executives. But whomever was assigned to spread the "dirt" on me must have noticed that, while disclaimers are often appropriate (And I've disclosed my relationship with MSNBC on many occasions), in the middle of a satirical piece it would have been unnecessary and ridiculous. They were just trying to shiv someone who had the temerity to make fun of their boss.

Speaking of disclosure, I don't recall Ailes disclosing that he worked for Nixon, Reagan and other GOP candidates when he writes an op-ed piece or goes on TV. He somehow never gets around to mentioning that while President of Fox News, he wrote a letter to President Bush offering his advice on how to handle 9/11.

There's a lesson here. Ailes is a very talented TV producer who has brought his bare knuckles political skills to the media world. When he's attacked, he hits back harder, whatever the facts. His m.o. is distraction. He hides behind his munchkins and assumes his anonymously-sourced counterattack will just fuzz up the issue and make people focus on something other than the fraudulence of his claim to being "fair and balanced." He assumes his adversaries are patsies who will be easily intimidated into silence. This time, he assumed wrong.

[The Huffington Post | Raw Feed]

Unfortunately, it is not really parody if it is true.  9:44:21 PM    

There's Life in That Oil!. Ancient crude indicates young Earth teemed with organisms [ScienceNOW]

Another fact for ID guys to deal with. At least the young Earth ones.  9:25:45 PM    

NPR on Merck and Vioxx. Thursday evening, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" had a detailed overview of some of the internal documents that they have been able to obtain concerning Merck's knowledge concerning Vioxx and its potential for causing heart problems.  Merck doesn't look... [HealthLawProf Blog]

How quickly marketers at Big Pharma destroy the trust built up by its scientists. The ability of some of the big guys at the top to ignore reality almost matches that of this Administration's. Wonder if they went to the same MBA program>  7:41:01 PM    

Social behavior encoded in junk DNA?.

A discovery that may someday help to explain human social behavior and disorders such as autism has been made in a species of pudgy rodents. Researchers traced social behavior traits, such as monogamy, to seeming glitches in DNA that determines when and where a gene turns on. The length of these repeating sequences -- once dismissed as mere junk DNA -- in the gene that codes for a key hormone receptor determined male-female relations and parenting behaviors in a species of voles.

[Science Blog - Science News Articles from Medicine, Space, Physics and More]

So, behavior may be determined not by specific genes but by regions found elsewhere, regions we thought served no purpose. We have fewer genes than we thought but the control and expression of them is so much more complex. Simply kowing a genetic sequence may not really tell us a lot about ourselves without out knowing a lot more detail than we can get easily. This could complicate many of the ideas of preventative medicine using genetic sequences.  5:58:04 PM    

Thomas de Zengotita: Time to call the NYTimes on Placement.

Ok, fellow HuffPosters, we are on to this Cooney red pencil evisceration of science on behalf of the corporate interests Bush favors over the well-being of our planet. And, let's face it, many of us were alerted to it by the NYTimes. They are covering this story. The decision makers at the Times can look in the mirror and say "We're covering this story." But those of us who attend to how major news outlets cover things understand why they presented the photocopies of the Cooney corrected report but didn't shove the story to the top of the news agenda. The photocopies are implying that it deserves to be at the top of that agenda because it's the latest (but this time undeniably documented) example of a pattern of factual deceit that's so various it practically escapes comprehension. It almost can't be covered, there's so much of it, and the Times hasn't been able to figure out how to deal with that fog.

That's where a decision has to be made. You just can't cover every lie they tell. Sometimes I think they tell so many just to neutralize coverage of any one of them. But this Cooney story seems like such a simple containable case in point. How did this actually happen? What were the specific day-to-day mechanics? Maybe this is the one that's worth knowing about, in detail, as an exemplar?

But pick somethingâo[per thou]and, when you do, placement is everything.

[The Huffington Post | Featured Posts]

One more in a series of altering science for political needs. Just as they have politicized religion, they are also working at politicizing science, In one case they manipulate faith. In the other they manipulate nature. And we let them. Such is a democracy in the face of those with little morality or shame.  5:50:54 PM