Media News

Why Young People Are Fleeing Conservative Evangelicalism

2012-02-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

The results of a five-year study of the Millennial Generation—people born between 1982 and 1993—are in. Thanks to the Barna Group, a 28-year-old, California-based, Christian research firm, we now know that conservative evangelical churches are losing formerly–affiliated “young creatives:” Actors, artists, biologists, designers, mathematicians, medical students, musicians, and writers.

Some leave because they oppose the church’s doctrinal stance. Others are turned off by its hostility to science, and still others reject the limitations placed on permissible sexual activity. The report cites the tension felt by young adults who find it difficult—if not impossible—to remain “sexually pure,” especially since most heterosexuals don’t marry until their mid-to-late twenties. “Young Christians are as sexually active as their non-Christian peers,” Barna concludes. What’s more, the report admits that Millennials see the evangelical church as an exclusive club, open only to those who adhere to every rule. This runs counter to values that rank high on the Millennial playlist—among them, open-mindedness, tolerance, and support for diversity.

Things to do before you are Dead

2012-02-09T11:31:00.001-05:00

Designing Your Death Dossier: Most experts recommend creating a comprehensive folder of documents that family members can access in case of an emergency, so they aren't left scrambling to find and organize a hodgepodge of disparate bank accounts, insurance policies and brokerage accounts.

You can store the documents with your attorney, lock them away in a safe-deposit box or keep them at home in a fireproof safe that someone else knows the combination to.

That isn't to say you should keep everything. Sometimes people hold onto so many papers that loved ones can't find the important ones easily.

Thanks to Luowo for this.

Thought of the Day

2012-02-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

In Case You Haven't Seen It...

2012-02-09T07:29:00.000-05:00

OK Go - Needing/Getting - Official Video - YouTube

...and there is a "making of" video here.

Collapsing Power

2012-02-09T07:24:00.000-05:00

Collapsing Cooling Towers - YouTube

Back to the Future

2012-02-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

UK denies Alan Turing postumous pardon for homosexuality: Recently, over 23,000 people signed an online petition to ask the UK government to pardon Alan Turing for homosexuality, considered the crime of “gross indecency” by the Labouchere Amendment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Yesterday, the motion was dismissed by the House of Lords. Considering that Turing performed stellar and unique service to the British government during World War II, and his work provided much of the basis for the modern computer, this is unconscionable.

According to Justice Minister Lord McNally,

“It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd, particularly… given his outstanding contribution to the war effort,” he said.

“However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.”

To be fair, if the United Kingdom pardoned every person it had wronged, the British government would grind to a halt in the onslaught of absolution (the US too, that matter). And as Lord McNally pointed out, there’s also a technical difference between overturning a conviction for being a miscarriage of justice, and overturning one because the law itself was unjust.

Then there’s the question of precedent: if governments can forgive people for acts that have retroactively been decriminalized, such as homosexuality, does it mean that governments can now also charge people for crimes that only recently came into existence, and weren’t crimes at the time the acts were committed? It’s an unsettling thought.

Boobs Are Evil

2012-02-08T09:25:00.002-05:00

Why Moms Are Breastfeeding In Facebook's Face: Angry lactivists - that's the term, stop snickering - showed up in front of Facebook's offices in Austin to breasfeed their babies. They were part of a wave of such "nurse-ins," all designed to protest the social network's staggeringly dumb policies on breastfeeding photos.

Technically, Facebook allows breastfeeding pictures. But such pictures still seem to get regularly banned on the social network. And Facebook freely admits to a policy under which all breasts must be in active use or covered. "An exposed breast that is not being used for feeding... violates our terms," a Facebook spokesperson is seriously actually telling the press. Similar events have taken place or been planned in 14 cities around the world.

Political Robots

2012-02-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Jeff Bezos Funds Bigot Search Engine That Powers Android Siri Rival: I'm sure Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos doesn't know about this, but he's funding a seemingly ultra-Christian search engine that is anti-abortion, anti-evolution, racist and even thinks that rape may be justifiable. It's called ChaCha, and it powers Android's most popular Siri competitor, Iris.

When you ask Iris "is abortion wrong?" the Android app will answer:

Yes, abortion is wrong. The Lord has said, "You shall not murder," (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as a child. Thanks!

Super Bowl XLVI becomes the most-watched show in US TV history

2012-02-07T09:22:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl XLVI averaged 111.3 million viewers on Sunday (February 5) night, becoming the most-watched program in American TV history. The showdown between the Giants and Patriots toppled the storied record of 111.0 million viewer, set by last year's Super Bowl on FOX.

Last year's Super Bowl, in turn, shattered the record set the previous year by Super Bowl XLIV on CBS, the game that finally broke the long-standing "M.A.S.H." finale record.

Sunday's game was also the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years, with a 47.0 rating and a 71 share, and the top Super Bowl in the key demographic of adults 18-49 in 16 years with a 40. 5 rating.

With the game going down to the wire and another Eli Manning come-from-behind drive, Super Bowl XLVI peaked between 9:30 and 9:58 ET with an average audience of 117.7 million viewers.

Want more data? The halftime show featuring Madonna was the most-watched halftime show in Super Bowl history with 114.0 million viewers, topping last year's Black Eyed Peas performance, which drew 110.

Singled Out: Are Unmarried People Discriminated Against?

2012-02-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

In his new book, Going Solo, New York University sociologist Eric Klinenberg argues that we’re poised to become a nation dominated by single people. Just 51 percent of American adults are married, according to recent census data, and more than a quarter of all U.S. households consist of only one person. Yet singles often don’t get a lot of love—and we’re not talking about their romantic lives.

Activists say that unmarried people are systematically discriminated against. They pay more for health and car insurance than married people do. They don’t get the same kind of tax breaks. Co-op boards, mortgage brokers, and landlords often pass them over. So do the employers with the power to promote them. “Singleism—stereotyping, stigmatizing, and discrimination against people who are single—is largely unrecognized and unchallenged,” says activist Bella DePaulo, the author of Singled Out.

America: A gold star on your driver’s license is not an upgrade

2012-02-06T12:20:00.001-05:00

In a letter addressed to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) urged Secretary Napolitano to reverse the new REAL ID law mandating U.S. states to implant radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into state driver’s licenses. In States that are not “substantially compliant” by the deadline, the state's residents would need a passport to board a U.S. flight.

In a letter to Secretary Napolitano, Rep. Amash writes:

“The chips would give public and private entities an unprecedented ability to track Americans,” said Amash. “RFID's can be read using widely available technology, including technology contained in mobile phones, which increases the risk of identity theft. Furthermore, if RFIDs were to become ubiquitous, there is little doubt that private entities would deploy new technology to capture the chips’ data.”

Are Conservatives More Fearful Than Liberals?

2012-02-06T12:10:00.001-05:00

...conservatives appear to be motivated by fear in a way that liberals are not. An expanding body of research suggests that Republicans and Democrats differ on some fundamental level in how they respond to positive and negative stimuli. A new study, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, adds even more evidence to the theory that these two groups quite literally see the world differently.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln showed people a series of photos — some endearing, some disgusting — and then measured their physiological and cognitive reactions. Conservatives, in keeping with past literature, reacted more strongly to the negative images, and liberals strongly to the positive ones.

Synergy

2012-02-06T12:04:00.001-05:00

Is this what Fox News means by full employment?

Rly, Disney?

2012-02-05T17:07:00.001-05:00

Dip this.

Edumacation

2012-02-05T09:26:00.000-05:00

kids can't answer basic questions - YouTube

Super Bowl bust: U.S. government seizes 307 domains for violating NFL copyrights

2012-02-05T08:57:00.000-05:00

While many sports fans are preparing for Sunday's Super Bowl by organizing parties and shopping for TVs, the U.S. government is preparing in a different way. Just yesterday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency seized 307 different domains suspected of violating NFL copyrights. Of those, 16 were suspected of illegal streaming. The rest were allegedly selling counterfeit NFL merchandise.

The seizure was conducted under U.S. civil law, not criminal law. That means the affected parties need to prove that the internet domains were not engaging in illegal activity to get them back — an ugly mirror image of the country's usual "innocent until proven guilty" right. Many of the domains were not being operated by U.S. groups. Because they used U.S. domain suffixes .net, .com, and .org, however, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was empowered to act.

Oklahoma Lawmaker Proposes Tax on Violent Video Games

2012-02-05T08:56:00.000-05:00

An Oklahoma lawmaker is proposing taxing violent video games in that state to fund obesity and bullying programs.

The proposal by House Rep. William Fourkiller [sic] comes seven months after the Supreme Court said that states could not ban the sale of violent video games to minors. The Supreme Court ruled in June that California could not declare the games obscene to exempt them from First Amendment protection.

For the same and other reasons, Fourkiller’s measure, which has not had a hearing, isn’t likely to pass constitutional muster even if it becomes law.

MythBusters Was Banned from Talking About RFID Chips Because Credit Card Companies Are Little Weenies

2012-02-04T08:39:00.000-05:00

RFID chips are super cool because those little buggers can beam things wirelessly. The guys at Mythbusters totally thought so too and wanted to make an episode about how trackable and hackable RFID chips were. Sounds amazing! Everyone would've learned more about the technology that's invisibly invading our lines. But, nope. Credit Card companies banned 'em.

Specifically, it looks like the lawyers of Visa, American Express, Discover and all the other bigwig debt slurpin' credit card companies got in immediate contact with Discovery (the network that airs Mythbusters) and told 'em if Savage and crew did the episode, the credit card companies would pull its advertisements and commercials from Discovery. Discovery caved and the RFID episode was axes. Bummer.

Libraries fight ACLU over online censorship

2012-02-04T08:35:00.000-05:00

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing a Washington library district, for censoring what kinds of websites adult patrons can access.

If you log on to a computer at the Wenatchee public library and type "porn" into the search engine, the list of results will appear as if porn doesn't exist.

But the policy also means the library has to block some popular sites, like Google Images, that disable their filter.

"We cannot allow any access to an internet site that would subvert our internet filter," said Howard.

The ACLU accuses the library district of having an overly broad filtering policy "that has prevented our plaintiffs that are an artist, a college student, and a gun magazine, from accessing perfectly reasonable material," said Doug Honig, spokesperson for the ACLU.

The Great Divorce

2012-02-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

Murray’s basic argument is not new, that America is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s impressive is the incredible data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.

His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricey, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today.

More important, the income gaps did not lead to big behavior gaps. Roughly 98 percent of men between the ages of 30 and 49 were in the labor force, upper class and lower class alike. Only about 3 percent of white kids were born outside of marriage. The rates were similar, upper class and lower class.

Since then, America has polarized. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.
Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.

Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.

People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.

Online Citizens

2012-02-03T09:23:00.001-05:00

People Are Citizens

French Court Fines Google For Offering Its Maps For Free

2012-02-02T07:22:00.000-05:00

A French court has ruled that Google is guilty of abusing the dominance of Google Maps, and so has ordered it to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company.

Apparently Bottin Cartographes argued that Google was planning to offer Maps for free only until all the competitors had been driven out of business — then, it argued, Google would start charging, reports AFP. The result? The court ordered Google to pay $660,000 in damages.

Indiana Senate passes bill putting religion in science class

2012-02-01T20:47:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, after almost no debate, the Indiana State Senate approved a bill that would allow its schools to teach the origin stories of various religions when a class touches on the origin of life. It now moves on to the state's House, where one of its cosponsors is currently the Speaker of the House.

Although the bill as written could be used to create a comparative religion class, its sponsor, Senator Dennis Kruse, has made it clear that he hopes to see it foster the teaching of creationism in science classes. The original text of the bill explicitly mentioned creation science; it has since been modified to mention a variety of religions, including Scientology. In a brief interview, Kruse expressed disdain for evolution, calling it a "Johnny-come-lately" theory.

Picture of the Day

2012-02-01T11:28:00.001-05:00

work consume obey die ecologist silent be silent

Amazon's Earnings Report Translated Into English

2012-02-01T11:14:00.000-05:00

Amazon took in $17.43 billion of your money in the last three months, but In [sic] the world of earnings reports, all that matters is how you performed compared to how investment analysts magically predicted you would perform, since those predictions have been built into your stock price.

In this case, the average analyst revenue estimate was around $18 billion. So as far as Jim Bob Analyst is concerned, Amazon underperformed by nearly $600 million—even more if you take into account the hundred million bucks they lucked into because of currency fluctuations.

Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a 'Per Country Basis'

2012-02-01T10:07:00.000-05:00

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.

Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.

Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.

Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?

2012-02-01T09:51:00.000-05:00

The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults. Over the past two centuries, and even more over the past generation, the developmental timing of these two systems has changed. That, in turn, has profoundly changed adolescence and produced new kinds of adolescent woe. The big question for anyone who deals with young people today is how we can go about bringing these cogs of the teenage mind into sync once again.

The first of these systems has to do with emotion and motivation. It is very closely linked to the biological and chemical changes of puberty and involves the areas of the brain that respond to rewards. This is the system that turns placid 10-year-olds into restless, exuberant, emotionally intense teenagers, desperate to attain every goal, fulfill every desire and experience every sensation. Later, it turns them back into relatively placid adults.

Why Did Bill Murray Keep Going Back in Groundhog Day?

2012-02-01T09:20:00.000-05:00

Groundhog Day also makes for great discussions, and numerous theories about the movie and its meaning have been put forth. Is it karma? What goes around comes around? Is it a commentary on man’s true nature? His true goodness -reflected by kindness, understanding, and warmth? Some Buddhists have adopted the film as a modern symbol of their religion. One keeps “coming back” until they finally evolve into a “perfect state,” at which time the endless “coming back” ceases. All valid and very metaphysical theories.

More on the religious dimensions of Groundhog Day here.

Feeding the Poor

2012-01-31T12:21:00.000-05:00

Indian Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has lashed out at Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s dream project, namely the National Food Security Bill, which the government introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22. Pawar went on record as saying that there are insufficient funds to implement the Food Security Bill in its present form.

The bill is the United Progressive Alliance government’s third major common man-centric project, and comes six years after it brought the Right to Information Act and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The bill vows that there will be hot mid-day meals provided for children up to 14 years of age, and Rs 6,000 ($121) for all pregnant and lactating women. As noted by NDTV, it also promises 75 percent of rural population and 50 percent of urban households the right to 7 kilograms of food grains per person per month, at Rs.3 per kg for rice, Rs.2 per kg for wheat and Rs.1 per kg for coarse grains to the beneficiaries.

How Much Does an A-list Actor Make ... and Spend?

2012-01-31T09:53:00.001-05:00

So how does the upper-strata celebrity really live? We sought out a high-level Hollywood money manager to show us just how all that dough is spent. Do any of these people live within their means? “Very few,” he told us.

Geek Graffiti Artist Spreads Anti-Google Propaganda In NYC

2012-01-31T09:40:00.001-05:00

From Gawker.

What's a Fair Minimum Wage?

2012-01-31T09:37:00.000-05:00

The New York state legislature is considering a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour. The current minimum wage in New York is $7.25 per hour, which, at a standard 2000 hours per year, works out to a pre-tax income of $14,500.

So what's a fair minimum wage? Consider living on any of these salaries while raising a family in New York City.

$8.00/ hr= $16,000 annually
$8.50/ hr= $17,000 annually
$9.00/ hr= $18,000 annually
$10.00/ hr= $20,000 annually
$15.00/hr= $30,000 annually

Even $15 an hour would leave a young, single person with no kids relatively poor in New York City. We're still trying to get to $8.50 an hour. Socialism is destroying the free market, again.

Picture of the Day

2012-01-29T12:02:00.001-05:00

European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA

2012-01-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA. A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue." However, it appears his investigation of ACTA didn't make him very pleased:

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.

Question of the Day

2012-01-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

If American copyright laws can be enforced around the world, why can't American labor and slavery laws be enforced worldwide as well? : Why do we allow multinational companies to defend their intellectual property "rights" while at the same time they stomp on the rights of human beings around the world?

Twitter Censorship Move Sparks Backlash: Is It Justified?

2012-01-28T08:31:00.000-05:00

Like Yahoo and Google before it — and for the same reason, becoming a global powerhouse — Twitter has confronted an inconvenient truth: Freedom of expression is sacrosanct and protected by the Constitution in the United States, but in other parts of the world, not so much.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which typically has no patience with any sort of censorship, saw Twitter’s announcement as little more than stating the obvious. ”I’m a little puzzled by the kind of freak out that kind of appears to be happening. Companies have to abide by the law where they are,” said Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the digital rights group.

The ACLU wasn’t as forgiving. ”The countries that engage in censorship are precisely the ones in which open and neutral social media platforms are most critical,” said Aden Fine, an ACLU staff attorney. “We hope Twitter will think carefully before acceding to any specific requests by those governments to censor content simply because they want to interfere with their citizens’ access to information and ideas.”

And the Twitterverse was beside itself. “When you become the agent of the censor, there are problems there,” said Twitter power user and media consultant/critic Jeff Jarvis.

A Love Supreme - Jon Stewart

2012-01-27T16:43:00.001-05:00

The nine berobed big brains of the Supreme Court make sense of what appear to be arbitrary, archaic distinctions of profanity and nudity.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

A Love Supreme - Profanity & Nudity on TV

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Even Little Protests Illegal in Russia

2012-01-26T17:13:00.001-05:00

Doll 'protesters' present small problem for Russian police: Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."

Nike: Corporate Responsibility at a “Tipping Point”

2012-01-26T11:57:00.001-05:00

... you can see Nike grappling, in public, with some tough choices. The narrative demonstrates what can happen when a company begins reporting regularly and in-depth, and with an apparent commitment to intellectual honesty, about core issues.

For Nike, labor and human rights continue as a top priority and corporate worry. The company’s three main product lines — footwear, apparel and equipment — are made in approximately 600 contract factories that employ more than 800,000 workers in 46 countries around the world. Nearly 60 percent of the work force is in North Asia, 31 percent in South Asia. One major difficulty is that contract apparel factories generally produce for multiple brands, making it a difficult to maintain standards.

Thanks to Chelsea for this.

Consumption

2012-01-26T11:50:00.001-05:00

A woman looks at the work "Your Beliefs" by artist Jani Leinonen at the exibition "I love Aldi" at the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, western Germany. The exhibition presents works by various artists, each symbolising the "Aldisierung of Society", which is described as the attitude of consumers searching for the cheapest product possible.

UK Mobile operators censor privacy tool 'Tor'

2012-01-26T09:19:00.000-05:00

Open Rights Group and Tor have established that UK mobile networks such as Vodafone, O2 and 3 are filtering UK users' access to Tor's primary website (meaning the HTTP version of the Tor Project website, rather than connections to the Tor network) on pre-paid contractless accounts.

Tor helps people stay anonymous online. Some examples of how it has been used include those trying to avoid oppressive state censorship in places such as Iran, through to abuse victims in the UK.

Thousands march in Poland over Acta internet treaty

2012-01-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

Thousands of protesters have taken to Poland's streets over the signing of an international treaty activists say amounts to internet censorship.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk says his government will on Thursday sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

The treaty, known as Acta, aims to establish international standards to enforce intellectual property rights.

But critics say it could curb freedom of expression, and government websites have been hacked in protest.

For more on ACTA, try here.

Romney income calculator: How much does Mitt make? How long would it take him to earn your salary?

2012-01-26T07:50:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney released his 2010 tax return on Monday. His total income for the year was listed as $21.6 million, more than one-half of which came from capital gains. How does that stack up against your income? Enter your annual income below to find out how long it would have taken Mitt Romney to earn the same amount of money. (Don’t worry, we’re not collecting any data you type in.)

We're #47!

2012-01-26T07:43:00.001-05:00

In this year's Reporters Without Borders international press freedom index, the U.S. slumped to 47th place, a fall of 27 places, largely due to arrests of journalists covering protests.

Insane English copyright ruling creates ownership in the idea of a photo's composition

2012-01-26T07:38:00.000-05:00

In a bizarre ruling, an English court has ruled that in favor of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar (but different) scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of a poster. What the judge ruled was that photographing a scene that is "substantially similar" to a scene someone else has already photographed infringes the first shooter's copyright.

It's impossible to understand how this will play out in real life. If a Reuters and an AP photographer are standing next to each other shooting the Prime Minister as he walks out of a summit with the US President, their photos will be nearly identical. Will the slightly faster shutter on the AP shooter's camera give him the exclusive right to publish a photo of the scene from the press-scrum?

The judge here ruled that the idea of the image was the copyright, not the image itself. Ideas have always been exempt from copyright, because courts and lawmakers have recognized the danger of awarding ownership over ideas. Indeed, the "idea/expression split" is pretty much the first thing you learn in any copyright class.

What is your Google Age?

2012-01-26T07:30:00.000-05:00

Google ad preferences manager: Does it accurately guess your age and gender?: We tend to think of Google as all-knowing, but even the search giant can get it wrong sometimes—and does it ever get its “inferred demographics” wrong. An informal survey of Slate staffers found the following:

- Women aged 24, 25, and 28 were estimated to be men aged 25-34. So was a 41-year-old woman, which she was quite pleased about.

- Men aged 30, 41, and 29, plus a 39-year-old woman, were all found to be men 65 or older

- A 24-year-old man was found to be a woman aged 25-34.

Check yours here.

Life in New Hampshire

2012-01-26T07:26:00.000-05:00

Florists, caterers and other wedding-related businesses could turn away engaged gay couples under legislation before the House that opponents likened to segregation and Nazi Germany's race laws.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the bill, which would allow providers of wedding-related goods or services to withhold those services if they believe doing business with gay couples would violate their conscience or religious faith. The bill also would bar lawsuits against business owners in such situations.

Bill sponsor Rep. Jerry Bergevin, R-Manchester, called it a "business protection bill" and said a person's personal religious beliefs should receive protection in his or her capacity as a service provider.

and:

A Franklin city ordinance barring sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school is unconstitutional, a judge has ruled.

Merrimack Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler ruled last week that city officials failed to show that the restriction protects children.

Attorney Barbara Keshen, director of the NHCLU Foundation, says city officials will be hard-pressed to frame an ordinance that passes constitutional muster.

"There have been so many empirical studies done around whether those restrictions protect children," Keshen said. "Virtually all have said there's no correlation. It's bad public policy."

The NHCLU several years ago succeeded in striking down a similar ordinance in Dover.

Keshen said Tilton, Northfield and Boscawen have ordinances similar to Franklin's. She said Boscawen's ordinance goes further-- barring sex offenders from using the public library.

Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in America : The New Yorker

2012-01-25T11:34:00.000-05:00

For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.:

Coding for success

2012-01-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

We need to teach our kids to code. All of them. This should be compulsory education, a core pillar of modern schooling. Many people are worried about a shortage of trained programmers, but this misses a wider issue – one of the biggest modern threats to our individual and collective success. They will thank us for it, and curse us if we don’t. Stick with me, because I want to show you why.

Today in Censorship

2012-01-24T10:34:00.001-05:00

The World's Worst (and Ugliest) Cars

2012-01-24T09:31:00.001-05:00

Here at Dark Roasted Blend we normally celebrate weird and beautiful... except when we equally celebrate weird and ugly. Both "beautiful" and "ugly" sides of things are worth mentioning when they are brought to extremes. We already covered the ugliest architecture, the worst roads, and even the ugliest facial expressions. Now, it's time to see some atrocious cars and collectively abhor their unnatural shapes!

Taking the 5th? Not so fast....

2012-01-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

Judge forces defendant to decrypt laptop, fuels debate over Fifth Amendment rights -- Engadget: A judge in Colorado yesterday ordered a defendant to decrypt her laptop's hard drive at the prosecution's request, adding new fire to the ongoing debate surrounding consumer technology and the Fifth Amendment. The defendant, Ramona Fricosu, is facing charges of bank fraud, stemming from a federal investigation launched in 2010. As part of this investigation, federal authorities used a search warrant to seize her Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop. Fricosu's legal team had previously refused to decrypt the computer, on the grounds that doing so would violate her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid self-incrimination. On Monday, though, US District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled against the defendant, arguing that the prosecution retained the right to access her device, as stipulated under the All Writs Act -- a law that requires mobile operators to comply with federal surveillance.

EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms

2012-01-23T12:04:00.000-05:00

A new law promising internet users the "right to be forgotten" will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday.

It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are "legitimate" grounds to retain it.

Tenn. Tea Party Demands Removal Of Slavery From Textbooks

2012-01-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

The Tea Party of Tennessee wants to remove from history textbooks any incidents of slavery and genocide linked to the founders of the U.S. for fear those references would tarnish the image of the Founding Fathers.

The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

Warrants Needed for GPS Monitoring, Supreme Court Rules

2012-01-23T11:52:00.001-05:00

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday the authorities need a probable-cause warrant from a judge to affix a GPS device to a vehicle and monitor its every move.

The decision (.pdf) in what is arguably the biggest Fourth Amendment case in the computer age, rejected the Obama administration’s position. The government had told the high court that it could affix GPS devices on the vehicles of all members of the Supreme Court, without a warrant.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

Hollywood Begins with Copyright Infringement

2012-01-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

(Note: punctuation corrected.)

Incongruous as it sounds, Hollywood was born in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At least, that’s where most of the early filmmakers hung out in the early 1900s when the “flickers” began to move from the peep shows to the Nickelodeons and money started to come in. Lots of it.

For those few years, thinly settled Fort Lee served its purpose. Its plentiful woods, easily traveled roads, and picturesque buildings lent themselves as locations for 1903's breakthrough narrative The Great Train Robbery, 10 minutes of blazing guns and cowboy action. But after a while the weather, the sunlight, and the terrain proved limiting. Even more limiting was the Motion Picture Patents Trust, which was headquartered in nearby East Orange, New Jersey, where Thomas A. Edison had built his Black Maria film studio. Together with George Eastman (who devised perforated film), importer George Kleine, producer Frank Marion, fellow inventor Thomas Armat, and others, Edison demanded royalties from the burgeoning number of fledgling independent production companies that were making movies with homemade (and sometimes purloined) equipment.

Rather than meet the Trust’s demands to pay license fees, and refusing to stop making movies, these producers packed their bootlegged cameras and fled westward, eventually settling in the sleepy Southern California village of Hollywood. Once there, they discovered a temperate climate, constant sunshine, and wonderfully varied scenery. Better yet, they discovered that the Mexican border was only an hour’s mad dash away if the Trust’s lawyers showed up with subpoenas. Sometimes the Trust hired thugs to shoot the independents’ cameras, and occasionally the independents themselves frequently the independents (such as pioneer director Allan Dwan) shot back.

Graffiti of the Day

2012-01-23T11:43:00.001-05:00

From Brisbane, Australia

Private Family Matters

2012-01-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

Roe v. Wade Passes 39th Anniversary: On the 39th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case on Sunday, which established protection for abortion rights, President Obama reaffirmed his support for a woman's right to choose in a statement released on his blog.

Obama called the right to choose a "fundamental constitutional right," despite how "sensitive and often divisive" the issue may be.

"As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters," his statement reads.

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class

2012-01-23T07:42:00.000-05:00

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Where women rule, and men are suffragettes

2012-01-21T09:09:00.000-05:00

In the small hilly Indian state of Meghalaya, a matrilineal system operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son - but some men are campaigning for change.

Losing the Scarlet Letter

2012-01-21T09:01:00.001-05:00

The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century By 1800, most forms of consensual sex between men and women had come to be treated as private, beyond the reach of the law. This extraordinary reversal of centuries of severity was partly the result of increasing social pressures. The traditional methods of moral policing had evolved in small, slow, rural communities in which conformity was easy to enforce. Things were different in towns, especially in London. At the end of the middle ages only about 40,000 people lived there, but by 1660 there were already 400,000; by 1800 there would be more than a million, and by 1850 most of the British population lived in towns. This extraordinary explosion created new kinds of social pressures and new ways of living, and placed the conventional machinery of sexual discipline under growing strain.

Urban living provided many more opportunities for sexual adventure. It also gave rise to new, professional systems of policing, which prioritised public order. Crime became distinguished from sin. And the fast circulation of news and ideas created a different, freer and more pluralist intellectual environment.

[...] The ultimate legacy of the first sexual revolution has been far from straightforward. In place of a relatively coherent, authoritative worldview that had endured for centuries, it left a much greater confusion of moral perspectives, with irresolvable tensions between them. That has been part of our modern condition ever since. What's more, as the history of the past few decades shows, its consequences are still unfolding, in different ways across different western societies. It is equally clear that the 18th century marked the point at which the sexual culture of the west as a whole moved on to a new trajectory.

In many parts of the world, by contrast, sexual ideals and practices reminiscent of pre-modern Europe continue to be upheld. Men and (especially) women remain at risk of public prosecution for having sex outside marriage. Often, the word of God is supposed to justify this. The Ayatollah Khomeini affirmed in 1979 that the execution of prostitutes, adulterers and homosexuals was as justified in a moral society as the amputation of gangrenous flesh. In some countries, imprisonment, flogging and execution by hanging, or even by stoning, continues to be imposed on men and women convicted of extramarital or homosexual relations. Even more widespread and deep-rooted is the extra-legal persecution of men and women for such matters. These are the same practices that sustained western culture for most of its history. They rest on very similar foundations – the theocratic authority of holy texts and holy men, intolerance of religious and social pluralism, fear of sexual freedom, and the belief that men alone should govern. How they help to maintain patriarchal social order is obvious; so too is their cost to human happiness. How durable they will prove to be remains to be seen.

Violent Class War Coming Soon

2012-01-20T10:34:00.000-05:00

Kremlin backed propaganda artists Russia Today have predicted that the United States could erupt into a violent class war within two years. "With an assumption that a strong or very strong conflict exists increasing in only two years time, at this rate 85 percent of Americans would sense a class war in two years' time," reads the barely coherent missive. The economy is down and jobs are hard to come by, so pretty soon we'll all be killing each other in the streets. Should you be scared? You should probably not be scared.

Iranian Programmer Sentenced to Death for Developing Porn Site Software

2012-01-20T10:26:00.000-05:00

While we're all up in arms over SOPA and PIPA, the government of Iran continues to monitor its citizen's Internet access. The government has gone so far as to sentence a programmer to death for insulting the sanctity of Islam because of a piece of software used by a porn site.

The Star reports that programmer and Canadian resident Saeed Malekpour was arrested during a visit to Iran in 2008 while visiting his sick father. During his incarceration Malekpour was forced to make televised confessions on state TV after being tortured.

The horrible porn software he created was actually just a piece of photo uploading software that a porn site used without his knowledge. In June 2011, Malekpour's sentence was suspended. But, under review by the Iranian Supreme Court, his death sentence was upheld on Monday.

BBC News - India's exploited child cotton workers

2012-01-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

The noise was deafening and air in the factory in northern Gujarat was so thick with cotton dust it was like a snowstorm at night. Women and girls, some no more than 10 or 11, fed machines with raw cotton picked from the nearby fields.

It is a process known as ginning - one end of a commercial supply chain that ends up as clothes and textiles in high street shops around the world. Globally, annual revenues from the industry are measured in the trillions of dollars.

Many household-name retailers concede they do not know exactly how the cotton they use is farmed and processed. Yet, for years, labour activists here have campaigned for their help.

"The workers' lives are terrible," said Jignesh Mevani, an activist who was our guide. "They are not paid the minimum wage. There are no safety precautions. There are many children."

Filming openly, children were easy to find in both the ginning factories and the cotton fields.

Video available on link.

Supreme Court Gives the Go Ahead for Re-Copyrighting Public Domain Works

2012-01-20T10:22:00.000-05:00

You've got to be kidding me. The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Congress can remove works from the public domain and re-copyright them in order to bring the the pieces into compliance with international copyright schemes. Yeah, because that doesn't run completely against the spirit of copyright law or anything.

For one reason or another, the American copyright protections of many famous, foreign works—including H.G. Wells' Things to Come, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Prokofiev's Classical Symphony and Peter and the Wolf, Shostakovich's Symphony 14, Cello Concerto and everything by Igor Stravinsky—moved into the public domain despite still being copyrighted overseas. To "correct" this issue, Congress passed legislation in 1994 that would move the works in question back to protected status and comply with the Berne Convention, an international copyright treaty.

Modern Warfare

2012-01-20T10:19:00.000-05:00

Anonymous Shuts Down The MPAA, RIAA And Other Websitescom: For the past few days the big story has been the protest of SOPA and PIPA, the two potentially disastrous and dangerous pieces of legislation that would give major corporations and organizations the right to censor the internet in the name of protection against piracy. Yesterday, websites like Wikipedia.org and Reddit.com shut their doors to the public, demonstrating what it would be like if either SOPA or PIPA were passed, despite admonishment from the MPAA. In a move that can only be described as retaliation, earlier this morning the US government was able to shut down MegaUpload.com a file sharing website that some have chosen to use to download and upload illegal material (despite the fact that the site itself has no control over the content people share). Now Anonymous, the nameless, faceless hacker organization that is typically identified with Guy Fawkes masks, has struck back.

Since this morning's news, Anonymous has managed to shut down various powerful websites in the government such as Justice.gov along with others like MPAA.org, Universal Music Group, and the RIAA. The move is being called the biggest attack in the organization's history.

Why The 'Check Engine' Light Must Be Banned

2012-01-19T07:51:00.000-05:00

It's pretty easy to dismiss the "check engine" light as just stupid, because, well, it is. I suppose if you thought that the cause of smoke coming from under your hood had something to do with the floor mats, then, sure, the "check engine" light is handy, but beyond that, it's useless. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the "check engine" light is a tool for the propagation of consumer ignorance about their cars. Which is why it needs to die. Now.

If it sounds like I'm making a big deal out of this, it's because I am. The continued use of a generic, uninformative "check engine" light in cars keeps car owners in the dark about the condition of their vehicle, and ensures they stay dependent and subordinate to car dealers and mechanics. The frustrating thing is it doesn't have to be that way.

God/Bang

2012-01-19T07:43:00.001-05:00

Fear Factory

2012-01-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

Fear Factory - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: By creating a convenient ecosystem, China's Foxconn draws in employees who earn 31 cents an hour working for 35 hours straight, thereby saving American companies money.

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The Day The LOLcats Died: The Ultimate SOPA Protest Song

2012-01-18T09:31:00.000-05:00

There are many ways to stand up to SOPA. Websites like Wikipedia and BoingBoing are dark, there's a rally in New York, and people everywhere are signing petitions and contacting their senators. My favorite method, though? A protest song to the tune of Don McLean's ‘American Pie'.

SOPA Blackout Set For January 18th: Here’s All The Info

2012-01-17T10:16:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, the Stop Online Piracy Act was dealt a major blow as the legislation was delayed until “outstanding concerns” have been addressed. SOPA will not move forward in the House as the official vote was been cancelled and the bill has been yanked from the floor. Representative and SOPA opponent Darrell Issa cheered this as a win for the internet community – but he warned that SOPA’s Senate cousin PIPA is still a major concern.

He’s right, and SOPA is still a concern as well. While it has been delayed, SOPA is not dead. It is entirely possible that SOPA could resurrect once a “consensus is reached.” SOPA must be destroyed while vulnerable.

Second Class Citizens

2012-01-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

The Gay Rights Movement - YouTube

Wikipedia Will Go Offline Wednesday for SOPA Protest

2012-01-17T09:47:00.000-05:00

Despite rumblings from Capitol Hill that the recently-defanged SOPA legislation not see the light of day, Wikipedia has announced that "the Internet must remain free" and that it is joining the blackout protests scheduled for January 18th, nonetheless.

Founder Jimmy Wales made the announcement via Twitter today. The English-language Wikipedia site will be unavailable for for 24 hours beginning midnight EST of January 18th.

Should Wearing Pajamas In Public Be Banned?

2012-01-17T09:25:00.000-05:00

Do you like to go about town wearing comfy pajama pants? Not in Shreveport, Louisiana, you won't ... if a local parish commissioner has his way!

Caddo Parish District 3 Commission Michael Williams said it was an incident at a local Walmart that offended him and some elderly customers that spurred him to push for an ordinance that would prohibit wearing pajama pants in public.

"I saw a group of young men wearing pajama pants and house shoes," he said. "At the part where there should have been underwear," his private parts were showing through the fabric. [...]

"Pajamas are designed to be worn in the bedroom at night," Williams said. "If you can't (wear pajamas) at the Boardwalk or courthouse, why are you going to do it in a restaurant or in public? Today it's pajamas," Williams said. "Tomorrow it's underwear. Where does it stop?"

Jan. 16: Worst Day Of The Year?

2012-01-16T11:35:00.000-05:00

To hear some psychologists tell it, Jan. 16, 2012—the third Monday in January—is a good day for a bad mood. In short—because of a cocktail of personal and seasonal factors—this particular day is the time when a person typically reaches their emotional low point for the year.

Indeed, January is a month when people do not have a lot of events, parties, or holidays to look forward to. And, by the third Monday, many people are struggling to cope not only with bleak weather, but also with the debts they amassed by spending too much over the holidays.

It's also a time when people may start to feel like failures because they have broken their New Year's resolutions shortly after making them.

A few years back, a UK psychologist formerly at Cardiff University named Dr. Cliff Arnall famously devised a formula that combined various ingredients to calculate the year's gloomiest day—which turned out to be the third Monday in January.

The complicated equation comprised seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels, and (NA) the need to take action.

More recently, Arnall admitted that it wasn't particularly helpful to identify the year's worst day because it became "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Communism and America

2012-01-16T07:56:00.000-05:00

Why is communism seen in such negativity to most of the USA? An interesting Reddit discussion of the issue.

What They Don’t Want to Talk About

2012-01-16T07:46:00.000-05:00

Republicans are indeed in growing trouble as more voters begin to realize how much the party’s policies — dismantling regulations, slashing taxes for the rich, weakening unions — have contributed to inequality and the yawning distance between the middle class and the top end.

The more President Obama talks about narrowing that gap, the more his popularity ratings have risen while those of Congress plummet. Two-thirds of Americans now say there is a strong conflict between the rich and the poor, according to a Pew survey released last week, making it the greatest source of tension in American society.

Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

2012-01-16T07:44:00.000-05:00

We love our iPhones and iPads.

We love the prices of our iPhones and iPads.

We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.

And that's why it's disconcerting to remember that the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

And it's also disconcerting to realize that the folks who make our iPhones and iPads not only don't have iPhones and iPads (because they can't afford them), but, in some cases, have never even seen them.

Last week, PRI's "This American Life" did a special on Apple's manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," and The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, whose wife's family is from China.

Putting SOPA on a shelf

2012-01-16T07:36:00.000-05:00

Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.

At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.

The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration’s chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.”

Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States

2012-01-16T07:27:00.001-05:00

The United States holds a disproportionate amount of the world's rich people.

It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. That's for each person living under the same roof, including children. (So a family of four, for example, needs to make $136,000.)

So where do these lucky rich people live? As of 2005 -- the most recent data available -- about half of them, or 29 million lived in the United States, according to calculations by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots.

Reginald Hill Dies

2012-01-14T09:03:00.000-05:00

Hill called himself a crime novelist, but his work owed nothing to the hard-boiled tradition of the genre. His approach was cerebral, his plots labyrinthine, his characterisations sharply etched, and his dialogue richly laced with humour. His novels bristle with shrewd perceptions and whimsical wit.

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

2012-01-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

TVShack's student founder can be extradited to US, court rules

2012-01-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

A British student can be extradited to the United States for running a website linking to sites carrying pirated TV shows and films, a court has ruled.

Richard O'Dwyer, a 23-year-old student at Sheffield Hallam University, looked downward as district judge Quentin Purdy ruled that there were no valid reasons why he could not be sent to New York state for trial.

US customs agents are seeking his prosecution over a website O'Dwyer set up when he was 19 called TVShack, and ran until his arrest last year. This provided links to other sites hosting pirated versions of TV shows and film. It was so popular that the student earned £15,000 per month in advertising revenue, US prosecutors claim.

O'Dwyer's lawyers said the site was little different from a search engine like Google and was thus most likely not illegal under UK law.

The Supreme Court and the Filthy Words You Still Can’t Say on TV

2012-01-11T09:25:00.000-05:00

What lawyer would want to work amid nudity and filth?
Four Justices of the Supreme Court made clear Tuesday that they would not. Their determination did not waver even when former Solicitor General Seth Waxman, representing the ABC-TV network, pointed out that the famous frieze surrounding the Court’s chamber depicts various undraped figures that might subject a broadcaster who showed them on TV to hefty fines.

Waxman’s waving finger of shame — one of the most dramatic moments in Supreme Court argument since Daniel Webster shed tears over the fate of Dartmouth College — drew gasps and laughter from the crowd. It is not clear, however, that it budged the Court’s Decency Caucus, made up of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito. They all but begged America’s broadcasters to remain an island of decency in a sea of filth.

Whether Waxman rocked the Justices is a different question. At the end of the argument, it seemed that the best the broadcasters could hope for would be a 4-4 court: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Alito favoring the FCC, and Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Thomas favoring the broadcasters. That would affirm the Second Circuit’s opinion and suspend the FCC’s indecency rule.

Breyer is no guaranteed vote to affirm, and of course, Clarence Thomas is sometimes strongly pro-speech (especially if it’s campaign speech) and sometimes strongly anti-speech (the First Amendment provides no right to anyone but parents to address speech to children, he wrote last year in a dissent to Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the violent video-games case). As usual, he said nothing.

Outside the Court Tuesday, First Amendment protesters stood in a line near the Court steps, chanting over and over the words that had gotten George Carlin in trouble 35 years ago: “Shit, piss, fuck, cunt cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.”

Google Changes the Way Its Search Engine Works, Privacy Be Damned

2012-01-11T09:20:00.000-05:00

Google's great at finding pretty much anything on the Web—no matter how obscure—but has generally lacked social content thanks to its ongoing standoff with Facebook. But, according to the search giant today, the "most radical transformation ever" has just occurred to its search engine. But maybe not in the good way.

Google dubbed this metamorphosis, "Search, Plus Your World." It integrates Google content directly into search results in three ways. First, it now provides "Personal Results" which include media—photos, blog posts, etc—that have been privately shared with you as well as your own stuff. Any images you've set to share using Picasa will also be displayed. Second, Google Search will now auto-complete queries to people in your circles and will display people who might also be interested in what you're searching for in the search results. Finally, it simplifies the process of finding other Google profiles for people or specific interest groups based on your query. So if you search for, say, NASA, it will display Google profile pages for NASA and space-related Google interest groups in addition to the normal results.

Future Past

2012-01-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

1900 Predictions: The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”.

Mr. Watkins wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.”

Some samples:

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.

Prediction #19: Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theatres or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devises will add to the emotional effect of music.

Lost inTranslation... or Maybe Not

2012-01-09T11:55:00.001-05:00

A Japanese/English Primer

German Hackers Are Building a DIY Space Program to Put Their Own Uncensored Internet into Space

2012-01-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

There’s more than one way to stick it to The Man. There’s civil disobedience, subversive propaganda, political art, outright violent revolt--each possessing its own degree of difficulty and consequence. In a decidedly 21st-century twist, team of German hackers bent on fighting the powers that be has chosen a rather ambitious means of taking the power back: building a hacker-owned and -operated space program, complete with a constellation of communications satellites beaming uncensored Internet to users on the ground.

The Hackerspace Global Grid was borne out of a call to action at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, where hackers of all stripes gather to mull the issues of the day as they relate to their craft. Hacker activist Nick Farr--motivated by legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S.--called on the community to contribute to a project that would remove the power of censorship from governments and corporations by creating an uncensored Internet in the free frontier of space.

Technology and the Pursuit of Happiness

2012-01-09T11:24:00.000-05:00

The United States’ Declaration of Independence asserts that all individuals have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the years since that document was drafted, its phrasing has been subject to much interpretation, and laws have been enacted to limit the scope of those rights, particularly the latter two. For instance, forbidding one from taking mood-altering drugs alienates an individual from his or her liberty and pursuit of happiness, but this limit exists under the debatable reasoning that drug use generally tends to trespass on the rights of others, including their right to pursue happiness.
[...]Some bioethicists feel that ESB technology should be made available to everyone, protected by the “pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence. Are there dangers in having euphoria just a click away, all the time? Would it be bad thing to have intense orgasmic pleasure at the push of a button?
It seems clear that the pleasure center of the brain evolved to guide our actions and to motivate us, by rewarding us when we do well. This is evidenced by the fact that the primary activity that we mammals have evolved to do– to mate for reproduction– results in greater portions of pleasure than any other natural activity. Therefore, it is possible that a pleasure-giving device would detract from our ambition and good judgment. Some people also worry that individuals who are raised without unhappiness and heartache would lack the “character” that makes us human. There is also the concern that most rewards decline in value after prolonged exposure, and some claim that this sort of technology would slowly erode a person’s ability to feel good.
But these are all guesses, there is no way to know for certain how a human might change in response to such technology. One could also point out that many people never tire of other stimulations such as sex or pleasurable foods, and that while many people will naturally partake of those pleasurable activities a lot at first, most will gradually moderate the usage to times when it is most needed or appropriate. But nothing would stop an ESB-wired person from taking a day off work, putting a brick on the button, and enjoying an afternoon of bliss. As an added benefit over sex and chocolate, this technology isn’t likely to result in unwanted pregnancies, disease, or weight gain.

Religious Morality

2012-01-09T11:21:00.001-05:00

Doing right, the Judeo-Christian way...

All four major record labels are now suing Grooveshark

2012-01-09T11:18:00.000-05:00

Grooveshark is now being sued by EMI for allegedly failing to pay royalties. This follows a lawsuit served by Universal, Sony and Warner.

Things are not looking good for music streaming service Grooveshark. After getting hit with lawsuits from Universal Music, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment, EMI — the only company with whom Grooveshark actually had a licensing deal — has now filed suit against Escape Media Group, Grooveshark’s parent company, claiming that Escape has failed to make a single royalty payment.

While the lawsuit, filed in the New York State Supreme Court, does not specify the amount in damages EMI is seeking from Grooveshark, reports The New York Times, correspondence between the two companies show that EMI has requested Grooveshark pay it $150,000 in royalties. Grooveshark said in a statement that the matter is simply a “contact dispute,” which the company expects to “resolve.”

New Zealand sees no Justice in quirky baby names

2012-01-09T07:46:00.000-05:00

Would you consider naming your child Princess or Justice? Lucifer or Christ? Mafia No Fear or (ahem) Anal? If so, don't move to New Zealand. Those names are all included on a just-released list of names that have been banned over the last decade by the New Zealand Internal Affairs Department.

Other names that won't fly in New Zealand? Emperor, King, Bishop, Queen Victoria, Messiah, V8, 89, and the symbols * and /. Good thing Prince didn't try to move Down Under during his unpronounceable symbol phase! Though actually, come to think of it, the name Prince wouldn't pass legal muster in New Zealand, either.

How Nicole Richie Complaining About Cow Shit Could Change TV Forever

2012-01-08T11:18:00.000-05:00

... on January 10, the Justices will consider whether or not the Federal Communications Commission violates the Constitution when it imposes fines on network TV stations for indecency. Fines in dispute include those levied against the network that aired the Simple Life episode wherein Nicole Richie asked viewers if they'd ever tried to "get cow shit out of a Prada purse." She then added, "It's not so fucking simple." Another network was fined for showing a shot of a woman's butt on NYPD Blue.

The Obama administration has spoken out against the relaxation of standards, saying that TV needs to be a safe place for families to sit around together and not talk. Those in favor of the relaxed standards say that the FCC's enforcement of decency laws is uneven, inconsistent, and unfair, especially considering the fact that most American households have cable, anyway, so Protecting the Children from swearing on CBS won't do any good when they're a click away from bloody True Blood vampire sex. Analysts and Supreme Court nerds think that the Justices will side against the FCC given their history of supporting free speech, even by corporations.

If the Supreme Court sides against the FCC, this will be the biggest change in standards for broadcast TV since the end of the Fairness Doctrine, which until 1987 required TV stations to present both sides of controversial issues. Ironically, the lifting of The Fairness Doctrine has allowed stations like Fox News to become so very Republicanly Fair and so Tea Partily Balanced today.

David Bowie's 65 birthday: 65 crazy facts and bizarre myths

2012-01-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

1 First things first - how do you pronounce David Bowie's name? It is 'Bowie' to rhyme with 'Joey', rather than as if it were similar to the acronym for The Only Way is Essex, TOWIE.

2 Did Bowie help start the credit crunch? BBC journalist Evan Davis suggests he may have had a role. In 1997, Bowie sold bonds on his future back catalogue royalties, an idea which was copied by the banks who sold on mortgage income. This ‘securitisation’ was partly responsible for the problems banks developed in the late Noughties.

3 Bowie says he was moonwalking years before Michael Jackson wowed the world in 1983's Billie Jean. He wrote on his official website that choreographer Toni Basil taught him a type of moonwalk for his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.

4 Bowie was interviewed on a BBC programme as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men at the age of 17. He complained: "It's not nice when people call you darling and that".

5 Bowie shares his birthday with Elvis Presley, who was exactly 12 years older. In her book, Stardust, Angie Bowie writes David Bowie could do a “devastating” impersonation of Elvis Presley. And Elvis once considered recording a cover version of Bowie’s 1976 hit, Golden Years.

And his worst song:

Artist evades nude censorship with smartphone

2012-01-07T18:07:00.001-05:00

A photographer who specializes in nudes found a way around censorship of one of his art pieces at Fredericton city hall by using smartphone technology.

Jeff Crawford was invited to contribute to an exhibit of artworks produced during the Fredericton Arts Alliance's Artists-in-Residence summer series.
But after the photograph was up for half a day, city officials took it down. City officials asked Crawford to submit a different piece of work.

"One sentence that really sticks in my mind is, 'Do you have anything non-naked to display?' And that got my blood boiling, pretty quick," he recalled. Then Crawford had what he calls a "light bulb moment."

Jeff Crawford's work, entitled Emersion. CBCHe replaced the photograph with a framed pixilated black-and-white square, which some people thought was abstract art.

It was actually an enlarged so-called Quick Response (QR) code — a bar code-like image that can be read by a smartphone and sends the user to a link on the internet. He submitted a photograph entitled Emersion, which shows a nude woman lying in a stream with one breast visible.

The QR code Jeff Crawford put up at city hall takes smartphone users to his banned nude photograph on the internet.The QR code Jeff Crawford put up at city hall takes smartphone users to his banned nude photograph on the internet. CBC"I wanted to display my work, as it is, without any changes made to it, or censorship," said Crawford.

Ronald Searle Dies

2012-01-07T09:24:00.001-05:00

Ronald Searle, who has died aged 91, was best known in Britain for his cheerfully anarchic St Trinian’s series of books and Molesworth illustrations, though his reportage work for publications such as Le Monde, Life and The New Yorker saw him feted elsewhere as one of the world’s greatest satirical artists.

A Guide to SOPA

2012-01-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Fool Me Once

2012-01-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

The Folly of Fools — By Robert Trivers: Our big brains and communication skills make us master dissemblers. Even before we can speak, Trivers notes, we learn to cry insincerely to manipulate our caregivers. As adults, we engage in “confirmation bias,” which makes us seize on facts that bolster our preconceptions and overlook contradictory data. We wittingly and unwittingly inflate the qualities of ourselves and others in our religious, political or ethnic group. We denigrate those outside our in-group as well as sexual and economic rivals.

Fooling others yields obvious benefits, but why do we so often fool ourselves? Trivers provides a couple of answers. First, believing that we’re smarter, sexier and more righteous than we really are — or than others consider us to be — can help us seduce and persuade others and even improve our health, via the placebo effect, for example. And the more we believe our own lies, the more sincerely, and hence effectively, we can lie to others. “We hide reality from our conscious minds the better to hide it from onlookers,” Trivers explains. But our illusions can have devastating consequences, from the dissolution of a marriage to stock-market collapses and world wars.

Yeah, But We Did it First

2012-01-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

China claims it has successfully curbed 'excessive entertainment' on TV: A campaign to curb "excessive entertainment" by cutting the number of racy programmes on Chinese satellite television channels has been successful, state media reported, after President Hu Jintao warned that western culture was out to attack China.

The broadcast regulator ordered the cutback in entertainment programmes in October, taking particular aim at dating and talent shows, programmes featuring "emotional stories" and those of "low taste".

Channels are now showing programmes that "promote traditional virtues and socialist core values", Xinhua news agency said.

The regulator added it "believes that the move to cut entertainment programming is crucial in improving cultural services for the public by offering high quality programming".

NOT SATIRE: L.A. Tells Arrested OWS Protesters They Can Pay for "Free Speech" Classes to Avoid Court

2012-01-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

Incredibly, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office is offering Occupy L.A. protesters arrested in recent weeks the opportunity to pay $355 for private free speech classes to avoid their court dates.

As reported in the Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city won't press charges against protesters who complete the educational program offered by American Justice Associates.
...

Carter said the free-speech class will save the city money and teach protesters the nuances of the law.

"The 1st Amendment is not absolute," he said, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled government can regulate when, where and how free speech can be exercised.

As a civil rights attorney working with some of the approximately 350 protesters who have been arrested in recent weeks noted, the offer is nothing short of "patronizing."

However, it's much more than that. It's a disgusting and cynical way to alleviate the strain on city courts by having protesters pay for an unofficial guilty plea.

In short, the city is offering protesters the chance to purchase courses in which they will learn about the free speech LAPD officers stripped from them.

Apparently, in L.A., you can pay to learn about the free speech you don't actually have.