Potpourri for the Middle of the Week

FROWNY NEWS!

1. Woman sues city after it orders her to remove a link… – What the hell makes a city think it can issue threatening notes about her providing a link to their city website from her own. Yeah, evidently there was bad blood, but an URL is no different from a street address or phone number.
2. New Details of Official Dissent in Spying Scandal – We keep learning more and more about how the Bush Administration pushed forward some of its internal spying measures against a surprising level of resistance within the Administration itself. I’m not usually much for post-election witch hunts, but we definitely need to get more of this info out into the light.
3. Secret Counterfeiting Treaty Must be Made Public – Speaking of secrets … why is an international treaty on counterfeiting being kept secret?
4. Copyright Enforcement Bill Being Pushed to Fast Track – No secret why this bill’s Big Media supporters aren’t talking much about this one, which would have the Justice Dept. filing civil suit against copyright infringers, rather than the copyright holders having to do so. It’s outsourcing the legal case to the government, for free … well, except for our taxpayer dollars. It’s idiotic, but the Dems are as much in the pocket of Big Media as the GOP is.
5. The J-Walk Blog: Kill Mickey – More Middle Eastern Clerical Amusement, as we learn that not only are mice evil, but media presentations of mice (Mickey, Jerry, Stuart Little, etc.) that are favorable are also evil.
6. Brain implant results in non-stop self-stimulation – Boing Boing – This one’s mildly tittilating, as well as kind of scary (cf. Larry Niven’s drouds and wire-heads).
7. Taxpayers cheated out of royalty payments by gas, oil companies, says GAO report – Salt Lake Tribune – I’m shocked — shocked! — to find that the Interior Department “party hearty” crowd were doing a crappy job of tracking royalties owed. It’s more irksome that the record-keeping is such that there’s no way to recover the losses.
8. cbs4denver.com – Denver Airport Undecided On Expansion – That would be unfortunate, as my office is contracted for work on the expansion.
9. Lost in the shuffle. | Unscrewing The Inscrutable – Meanwhile, maybe rather than getting into a shooting war with Iran before the end of the year, we’ll be in one with Pakistan instead. Keen!

SMILEY NEWS!

1. Saul Bass’s iconic logos – I was familiar with Bass’ work on animated movie titles, but I wasn’t aware that he’d designed a ton of popular product/company logos.
2. NO HEROICS – I will so pick up any Region 1 DVDs that come out on this super-hero satire show from the UK.
3. Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Forgotten attachment detector – Evidently it doesn’t work 100% reliably, but anything that can remind you that you forgot to attach something that you reference in your email is a worthwhile lab add-on to use. More reliable and subtly useful is a lab gadget that puts the “Mark as Read” as a button, rather than a menu item. I’ve added both of these.
4. Beauty & the Brain [Neurophilosophy] – I’m fascinated by the idea of measuring the way beauty reacts on the brain, as well as the thought that looking at beautiful art actually reduces pain response.

AMAZING NEWS!