Nation’s Largest Cancer Charity Caves To Right Wing Pressure, Ends Relations...

Nation’s Largest Cancer Charity Caves To Right Wing Pressure, Ends Relationship With Planned Parenthood

via ThinkProgress by Marie Diamond on 1/31/12

Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the country’s best-known and best-funded breast cancer organization. Known for it’s iconic pink ribbon and annual Race for the Cure event, the organization has invested nearly $2 billion in cancer education and research since its founding in 1982.

But today, bowing to political pressure, Komen for the Cure announced that it is severing its partnership with Planned Parenthood and will stop providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants that allow their centers to perform breast exams on women who could not otherwise get them.

Since anti-abortion activists and their Republican allies ratcheted up their crusade against Planned Parenthood last year, they’ve targeted any and all allies of the organization to try to make inroads, including the cancer charity. Planned Parenthood provides birth control, STD testing, and cancer screenings to low-income women.

In a press release Planned Parenthood said it was deeply saddened and disappointed by the decision:

Planned Parenthood Federation of America today expressed deep disappointment in response to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s decision to stop funding breast cancer prevention, screenings and education at Planned Parenthood health centers. Anti-choice groups in America have repeatedly threatened the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide these lifesaving cancer screenings and news articles suggest that the Komen Foundation ultimately succumbed to these pressures.

“We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In the last few weeks, the Komen Foundation has begun notifying local Planned Parenthood programs that their breast cancer initiatives will not be eligible for new grants (beyond existing agreements or plans).

Komen’s pretext for ending the alliance is the spurious congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood led by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). Democrats say the far-reaching investigation is a political witch hunt and abuse of government resources.

Komen’s new Senior Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel, not only has a long anti-choice history, but pledged to eliminate grants for Planned Parenthood to provide breast and cervical cancer screenings when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2010.

According to Planned Parenthood, in the past five years support from Susan G. Komen allowed their health centers to provide nearly 170,000 breast exams and 6,400 mammogram referrals. The charity’s decision has succeeded only in depriving low-income women of cancer screenings that could save their lives — a move that flies in the face of Komen’s mission.

Google Will Start Country-Specific Censorship for Blogs

and so it continues...first Twitter, now Google

Google Will Start Country-Specific Censorship for Blogs

via Mashable! by Zoe Fox on 1/31/12

Google figured out Twitter‘s trick for avoiding universally censoring content weeks ago, but it managed to go unnoticed — for a while.

That is, until TechDows wrote about Blogger‘s plan for country-specific URLs Tuesday.

At some point “over the coming weeks,” Google’s Blogger will begin redirecting users to country-specific domain names — think Google.fr in France rather than Google.com — to avoid universally removing content that would not be tolerated in specific jurisdictions.

A Blogger support post, “Why does my blog redirect to a country-specific URL?,” last updated Jan. 9, explains that Google is using the method to limit the impact of censored content.

Readers will be redirected to sites with their own country’s domain name when they try to visit blogs recognized as foreign, as determined by their IP addresses.

“Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you’re reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or “ccTLD.” For example, if you’re in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location.”

SEE ALSO: Relax: Twitter’s New Censorship Policy Is Actually Good for Activists

If you would like to see a non-affected page, you can direct to google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”), which places a short term cookie that temporarily prevents geographical redirection.

Google says migrating users to local domains will help promote the freedom of expression while allowing the flexibility to abide by local law.

Do you think censoring content by specific countries is a good move for freedom of expression? Let us know what you think of Google and Twitter’s moves.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, serts

More About: blogger, censorship, Google, trending, Twitter

Politicians who spoke at the Hart Park rally must denounce incendiary rhetor...

http://bloggingblue.com/2012/01/31/politicians-who-spoke-at-the-hart-park-ral...">Politicians who spoke at the Hart Park rally must denounce incendiary rhetoric NOW (Blogging Blue)

via P2Blogs Latest Posts on 1/31/12

In order to really capture what it felt like to attend the pro-Walker rally at Hart Park a few weeks ago, Phil and I embedded ourselves in the crowd. In some ways, it felt more like participation than reporting to me, even though that was not the intent. For days after the event, I was not myself. I was aggressive, angry, on edge, and kind of depressed. I was deeply affected by the use of fear, anger and hatred these politicians harnessed in order to score political points.

I understand why Tommy Thompson felt the need to go all Tony Soprano with his “they’ll be black and blue!” remarks.  It’s effective. It gets votes.

But after a Facebook group made threats to those who signed the Walker recall petition yesterday, some citizens are now terrorized and live in fear that they’ll suffer the wrath of these bullies. This is not okay. And it shouldn’t fall solely on the shoulders of the GAB to rectify the situation.

The politicians who encouraged this kind of behavior at Hart Park must denounce it, NOW,  if they truly care about Wisconsin. They must not pretend that there’s no correlation between their hate speech and the hateful actions taken by their supporters. They must put the needs of those they serve or seek to serve over the needs of themselves.

Republicans Start To Unite Around Call To Allow Billionaires And Corporation...

Republicans Start To Unite Around Call To Allow Billionaires And Corporations To Directly Fund Campaigns

via ThinkProgress by Scott Keyes on 1/31/12

Eight in 10 Americans believe that there is too much money in American politics, and only 17 percent agree with the Supreme Court that corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited money to try to influence elections.

Yet top Republicans are coalescing around the idea that current campaign finance laws — which still prohibit corporations and wealthy individuals from giving unlimited money directly to campaigns — are actually too restrictive. Judging from interviews with ThinkProgress and Republican campaign speeches over the past two months, the GOP’s standard response to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling has solidified: allow for unlimited contributions directly to candidates while requiring immediate disclosure.

The language used by different high-ranking Republicans is so similar that it suggests a certain level of message-coordination on the subject. Indeed, from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) to Republican money man Fred Malek, their reactions to campaign finance laws are virtually identical:

• Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “The better position is to allow full and free speech in whatever form, but have instant disclosure.” [1/21/12]
• Top Republican Money Figure Fred Malek: “I would favor unlimited contributions to candidates with full disclosure.” [1/27/12]
• Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “We’d be a lot wiser to say you can give what you’d like to a campaign. They must report it immediately…” [12/21/11]

Although Republican supporters of unlimited money in politics seem to have decided that supporting campaign disclosures is an important part of their messaging strategy, the GOP’s actions betray any suggestion that they actually stand behind transparency. Following Citizens United, Democrats introduced the DISCLOSE Act to bring more transparency to the murky world of campaign finance. It passed the House in 2010 but failed to break a Republican filibuster by a single vote.

In other words, Republicans seem to care a whole lot more about letting corporations and the very rich buy elections than they do about protecting the American people’s ability to know about it.

Jan. 31, 1961: A Chimp Named Ham Spaces Out #NASA

Jan. 31, 1961: A Chimp Named Ham Spaces Out

via Wired Top Stories by Matt Simon on 1/31/12

A little fellow named Ham (for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, his place of training) hitches a ride on the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket to become the first chimp in outer space. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to follow Ham?s lead, did so just two and a half months later.

As Anonymous protests, Internet drowns in inaccurate anti-ACTA arguments

As Anonymous protests, Internet drowns in inaccurate anti-ACTA arguments

via Ars Technica by timothy.lee@arstechnica.com (Timothy B. Lee) on 1/30/12

After the Internet's decisive victory over the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this month, online activists have been looking for their next target, and a growing number of them have chosen the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was signed by the EU last week. Indeed, the renewed focus on ACTA even led a group of Polish politicians to hold paper Guy Fawkes masks—the symbol of Anonymous—over their faces in protest at the way ACTA has been pushed through. In the US, over 35,000 people have signed a petition urging the White House to "end ACTA," despite the fact that it has already been signed by the US.

At Ars Technica, we're as committed as anyone to defending free speech, fair use, and the open Internet against draconian new copyright laws. But it's important for the debate to be informed by accurate information. Unfortunately, many of the claims about ACTA that are circulating among the treaty's opponents are highly misleading or outright inaccurate. We've been covering ACTA for over four years, and hopefully we can shed some light on a tricky subject.

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Canadians from all corners of industry, culture, education, law and civil so...

Canadians from all corners of industry, culture, education, law and civil society oppose Canada's SOPA

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 1/30/12

Michael Geist sez, "Throughout the fall, I ran a daily digital lock dissenter series, pointing to a wide range of organizations representing creators, consumers, businesses, educators, historians, archivists, and librarians who have issued policy statements that are at odds with the Canadian government's approach to digital locks in Bill C-11. While the series took a break over the Parliamentary holiday, it resumes this week with more groups and individuals that have spoken out against restrictive digital lock legislation that fails to strike a fair balance. Recounting the series to date, it illustrates that no amount of spin can disguise the obvious opposition from groups representing millions of Canadians to the Bill C-11 digital lock provisions. This includes leading business organizations, creators groups, consumer associations, educators, librarians, representatives of the visually impaired, civil liberties groups, archivists, and historians."

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter: The Series To Date

She’s Not What She Seems

She’s Not What She Seems

via Slate Articles by Jonah Weiner on 1/30/12

A few years ago, the singer and songwriter Lizzy Grant reinvented herself online. This seems overwhelmingly unremarkable behavior in the 21^st century, particularly for a would-be pop musician, but it proved scandalous. Grant, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from upstate New York, recorded an EP and an album in the late 2000s. Some time before the summer of 2011, according to a recent Billboard story, she deleted her social-networking profiles and a site bearing her name, and withdrew her album, Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Rey, from iTunes. Last August, she uploaded a music video to YouTube under the stage name Lana Del Rey—goodbye Grant. The clip was for “Video Games,” a beguilingly morose love song. Helped along by music blogs and BBC Radio 1, which supported the track early, the video became a hit: Today, it’s been viewed more than 22 million times.

Lilia Ziamou: Unleash the Power of Technology: How Museums Can Create Engagi...

Lilia Ziamou: Unleash the Power of Technology: How Museums Can Create Engaging Experiences

via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by Lilia Ziamou on 1/30/12

How is technology changing the way we experience a museum? And what technologies are likely to create engaging experiences for a museum's audience? I've been thinking about museum audiences and engagement for some time now and had these questions in mind while visiting various exhibitions in NYC. Checking out a museum's website or Facebook site can definitely enhance visitors' overall experience with the museum, but I was primarily interested in experiences that enhance people's engagement during their visit.

In my recent trips, I was especially impressed by two exhibitions that are using interactive technologies to build audience engagement: Modernist Art from India: The Body Unbound at the Rubin Museum of Art, and Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration at the American Museum of Natural History. Although the exhibitions in these two museums are of very different nature, they both use novel ways to engage visitors with interactive technologies.

The Rubin Museum of Art uses QR (Quick Response) codes to increase visitors' engagement. Although QR codes are ubiquitous, they are very rare at art museums. In the case of the current exhibition Modernist Art from India: The Body Unbound, scanning the QR codes provides visitors with an interactive timeline that presents significant events in modern Indian art and in modern Indian History through photographs and video. What makes this so engaging?

First, technology is 'cool.' This is what a group of college students told me. They were visiting the museum for a class assignment and they noticed the QR codes as they were coming up the stairs and entering the exhibition space. Because technology is perceived as edgy and cool, it has the same effect on its surroundings.

Second, technology enhances the viewing experience itself. In this case, it allowed the viewers to act and interact in a space they expected to experience in a rather passive manner. They came to 'see' the paintings, as they said, and all of a sudden they were getting involved by using an interactive technology. And that made the exhibition more exciting to them.
Third, museum visitors can often be intimidated by their lack of knowledge. Technology can be used to draw in even first time visitors. This group of students had no familiarity with the art, but they were familiar with the technology. The QR code was a familiar element in a new context and this made the information interesting and enhanced their overall experience.

At the American Museum of Natural History, Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration features multiple interactive technologies to create an immersive viewer experience. How do interactive technologies achieve this goal?

First, technology can be empowering for the viewer. The museum uses an interactive display, the Mars terraforming table, that engages visitors by enabling them to transform Mars into an Earth-like Planet.

Second, technology enhances the viewer engagement by enabling the process of discovery. The museum uses an interactive tabletop that allows visitors to explore the landscape in Mars. For example, zooming on craters and volcanoes created an immersive experience.

Third, technology can be leveraged to create a multisensory experience. Consider an exhibition that describes in words how the Moon smells. By clever use of technology, simply pushing a button allows the visitor to actually experience the smell. This enhanced the overall viewing experience by engaging different senses.

These are really exciting time for museums. By going beyond traditional design, museums can leverage technologies to transform visitor experience.

Tennessee Restaurant Throws Out Anti-Gay Lawmaker #WIN

Tennessee Restaurant Throws Out Anti-Gay Lawmaker

via ThinkProgress by Igor Volsky on 1/30/12

A restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee refused to serve state Sen. Stacey Campfield, the man who sponsored the state’s “don’t say gay” bill, compared homosexuality to bestiality, and most recently told Michelangelo Signorile that it’s virtually impossible to spread HIV/AIDS through heterosexual sex. “I hope that Stacy Campfield now knows what if feels like to be unfairly discriminated against,” the Bistro at the Bijou wrote on its Facebook wall on Sunday. The restaurant has received an overwhelmingly positive response. (HT: Michelangelo Signorile)

Pamela Poole: How Twitter Became My Morning Paper

Pamela Poole: How Twitter Became My Morning Paper

via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by Pamela Poole on 1/30/12

"Are you on Twitter?"

If your answer is "No," then this is for you. And if you're over 45, chances are that's your answer. But before you write off Twitter as a time suck, or a toy for kids, you should know that most Twitter users are between 26 and 44. Grownups like it, and for good reason.

For quite a while now, reading my Twitter timeline has been one of the most gratifying and important activities of my day. But back in 2008, this was what I had to say about it:

You know those sci-fi movies where some guy suddenly has the ability to read the minds of everyone around him and his eyes roll up in his head and he collapses in a heap, frothing at the ears and utterly insane because he can't handle the flood of inanities? That's why I've been avoiding Twitter.

At the time I wrote that, Twitter was still young, and the prompt its founders had come up with to get people to use it was "What are you doing?" In response to this we got a lot of sandwich eating and jogging in the early days. This drove many people nuts away.

Near the end of that article, I acknowledged that Twitter hadn't reached its full potential, and it has, indeed, grown up since then. Now, instead of asking what you're doing, the Twitter homepage says "Follow your interests. Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what's happening around the world." Not terribly sexy, but it accurately describes what Twitter has evolved into for the most part.

Back in 2005, and for years before that, I'd get up in the morning, drink my tea and read the LA Times with CNN on in the background. Then for a couple of years I drank my tea and read my RSS feed reader (a topic for another day, perhaps). Now I drink my tea and read my Twitter timeline instead.

What does that mean? Well, first of all, I "follow" friends and industry experts (web, business, tech), as well as publications of all kinds (online and offline), organizations, politicians, and interesting (funny, brilliant, militant, creative, good-hearted... ) strangers. I get a much more well-rounded and current view of what's happening in the world and in my areas of interest than I ever got from my old newspaper/CNN combo (I don't follow CNN on Twitter because this is their idea of news, nor do I follow the LA Times. I don't live in SoCal anymore, and I have bigger fish at my fingertips with Twitter. Sorry.) And -- bonus! -- I have my faith in humanity renewed almost daily. Do you get that from your local paper?

Then, in the morning and a couple of times a day, I read my timeline; the things the people/organizations I follow have tweeted. This morning, for example, I was cracking up reading the blow-by-blow "coverage" of yesterday's Republican debate by comedian Andy Borowitz. I learned that Senator Sanders of Vermont introduced the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act. (He rocks!) Steve Silberman, an erudite geek and writer tweeted that the Monty Python cast would be reuniting to make a sci-fi spoof. (Can't wait!) I clicked a link to see a piece an artist friend (online variety) made with some Android phone apps. I read an article, thanks to io9 (a delicious blend of science and sci-fi), on a couple of primate studies that were trying to help determine whether girls naturally prefer dolls to toy trucks. Charles Bukowski (or, rather, BukQuotes) said "The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable," and I had to agree. I learned Putin wants to institute a national reading list. (Sounds pretty sovietsky to me.) OpenCulture tweeted a link to free downloadable courses by great philosophers from Bertrand Russell to Foucault, which I marked to check out later. And, sadly, I learned that Twitter is going to start allowing censorship of tweets in some countries. (And this news so soon after they announced that $300M investment they got from a Saudi prince. Hmmm...)

Now, you may think being on Twitter would just add to your information overload. But it's quite the contrary, actually. With Twitter you have the power to separate the wheat from the chaff. Think about it. Somebody at your preferred newspapers/magazines/TV news stations decides what info to put in front of your face. Those people are making decisions about what you see (and don't see), and you have nothing to say about it. With Twitter, you choose to follow people/organizations you trust, and you depend on them to share meaningful info. I feel I'm in better hands with the people I follow on Twitter than with mainstream media. And I often hear news before traditional news channels make it public, or news somebody doesn't want to be public at all...

(Until a few weeks ago, I was following more publications and blogs on Twitter, but many of them have recently gotten into the nasty habit of tweeting the same thing over and over in order to reach more eyeballs, which can really take up a lot of space in your timeline and your brain if too many people are doing it. So I have demoted most of them back to my RSS feed reader. And I read my feeds after I've read Twitter. Maybe.)

Now, you can't expect Twitter to instantly meet all of your information needs. (I actually have two separate accounts, one for professional interests and one for personal interests.) It took me about a year to get timelines that were satisfying, and I still tweak them regularly (adding and removing people). My advice is to start by following a few people and publications you respect and the rest should come naturally.

Also, I rarely use Twitter on the Twitter site itself. It's not user friendly enough. I most often use an iPhone app (Tweetbot), and occasionally the official Twitter desktop app (only because there's no Tweetbot desktop app). You'll find lots of articles out there that talk about the tools you can use to tweet and strategies for finding people to follow.

Plus, I haven't even touched on the topic of being a meaningful (non-sandwich-describing -- unless of course you're a foodie and have foodie followers who want to hear about your arugula) tweeter yourself, or what a "mention" is, or the basics of twittiquette... But, again, there are all kinds of articles about these things out there.

And this post is only about using Twitter to consume information. It's a natural place to start. But it is so much more than a personalized, 24-hour news channel. As you may have heard, Twitter has been used for everything from helping revolutionaries communicate to bashing McDonald's. It has infinite potential to connect and unite people, shine light into dark corners, open and enlighten minds, call people to action, call the powerful to task, make you smile... It is much bigger than its 140-character limit would suggest.

I hope you'll give it a try. And feel free to ask me for tips. I will close with my favorite tweet of all time (by Preschool Gems) for your reading pleasure:

World's Largest One Stop Shopping for Free Online Courses!

World's Largest One Stop Shopping for Free Online Courses!

via Dean's Corner on 1/28/12

OpenYale courses.

Looking for free, open source learning materials about any subject, from top experts in the world? I used to think that MIT's OpenCourseWare and Yale's OpenYale courses were a "one stop shopping" source for this, until I came across this stunning, worldwide, multi-lingual collection of course materials.

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Shelly Palmer: Google = Skynet... Yikes!

Shelly Palmer: Google = Skynet... Yikes!

via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by Shelly Palmer on 1/27/12

The Shelly Palmer School of Connected Living has one primary thesis: "Technology is good." I believe that all technological progress is good and that the story of the evolution of mankind is inextricably linked to the story of the evolution of our technology. We are tool builders, and we are tool users. It is, in large measure, what separates us from virtually every other species in the known universe.

I also acknowledge "Technology is good" is an optimistic point of view. I am, by nature, an optimist. I believe in lifelong learning and I aspire daily to the joy of striving to realize things that exist in our imaginations. It may be one of our higher callings; it is certainly one of mine.

So, I am usually one of the guys who says things like, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Which is my way of acknowledging that firearms are simply tools to help us throw rocks faster and more accurately and, if you need to throw a rock, it's probably better to throw it faster and more accurately.

This argument can be extended to less emotional subjects like the Sony Betamax case or the more recent (though seemingly ancient) Grokster case. Both of which ended up with the court deciding that, and I'm paraphrasing: "Technology good... people bad."

"If God intended us to fly, he'd have given us wings." Yep. I totally agree. God (please use your politically correct deity, this article is not about science vs. religion) gave us brains that saw birds and imagined what it would be like to fly. The same deity gave us thumbs, manual dexterity and the ability to create tools that enabled us to have wings. We fly because we are genetically gifted to do so. (You can decide how those genetic gifts were bestowed, like I said, it is not the point of this writing.)

The point is, that technology is woven into the fabric of our lives and it, in every case, in every civilization (past and present) defines how we interact, how we live, how we work... it literally defines everything about us, including the epochs and ages of our past.

The reason for my huge pro-technology buildup is that I am about to write something that is so out of character, so remarkably against one of my strongest personal axioms, I have to talk myself into writing it...

Google is about to go too far.

On March 1, 2012, Google will consolidate the privacy policies for 60 of its products creating the singularly most significant database of the Information Age. The aggregation of these data will empower Google to correlate and contextualize our thoughts, aspirations, actions, physical locations and the timelines for the basic processes of the doing of life.

I don't think any single thought about the aggregation of data or the use of technology has ever made me as uncomfortable as this announcement. On its best day, with every ounce of technology the U.S. Government could muster, it could not know a fraction as much about any of us as Google does now. But now is not what I'm worried about. I'm not even worried about this decade. At the current rate of technological change, taking into consideration the amount of information we are creating about ourselves, and adding in the computational power that will be available in about a decade, Google will equal Skynet circa 2022.

This is a guess, of course, it could be sooner -- but it won't be later. What do I mean by Skynet? First of all, get your Terminator lore together, but then just imagine a database that could automatically determine what you are most likely going to have for dinner after your bowling league Tuesday night, where you are going to have it, who it will be with, whether you are feeling good or have a cold, if you and your wife are fighting, how your day was at work, what you are thinking about buying, who is helping you with your decisions about it, what chronic illnesses you are dealing with, what meds you are on, etc., etc., etc. And this isn't even the scary stuff.

What scares me is the advance of analytical tools and the existence of yet-uninvented ways to manipulate data for good and, inadvertently, for bad. I'm not worried about bad people doing bad things. That is the nature of our world and, generally, it is easy to identify bad people who do bad things. I'm worried about the good intentions that pave the road to hell. I can't speculate about how our near-term-future, data-dependent culture will be negatively affected by the law of unintended consequences. That's because so many of the vocations and avocations that will be impacted have also yet to be invented. I just know that there are at least as many ways for things to go wrong, as there are for things to go right.

The sky is not falling and this is not a sensationalistic FUD-mongering exercise (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt). It is an admonition that the time has come for learned colleagues to start a Socratic discourse about what parts of the Genie need to stay in the bottle, and what parts can be let out. Imperfect metaphor? I don't think so.

This is a very complex problem and we are going to need very simple ways to describe it. Skynet can't win -- at least not in the world I want to live in. Let's get ahead of this while it's still just the subject of the occasional rhetorical blog post -- because, no matter what anyone tells you, the world of big data is never going away.

Best practices for fair use in libraries

Best practices for fair use in libraries

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 1/27/12

Pat Aufderheide sez,

When is it OK for me to put copyrighted material on e-reserves for students?

I've got an ancient VHS and the company that made it is defunct. Can I copy it to DVD for a prof's class?

A student's thesis analyzes advertisements and includes some of them. Can I put the thesis in our digital institutional repository?

Academic and research librarians can employ their fair use rights to make such decisions, and now they have a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use to help them decide what's appropriate. Librarians developed this code under the aegis of the Association of Research Libraries and with funding from the Mellon Foundation in sessions over the course of two years, in locations around the country. Legal scholar Peter Jaszi (Washington College of Law, American University) and communication scholar Patricia Aufderheide, who have facilitated several codes of best practices in fair use, also participated.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (Thanks, Pat!)

How the craziest f#@!ing "theory of everything" got published and promoted -...

How the craziest f#@!ing "theory of everything" got published and promoted - UPDATED

via Ars Technica by jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) on 1/27/12

Physicists have been working for decades on a "theory of everything," one that unites quantum mechanics and relativity. Apparently, they were being too modest. Yesterday saw publication of a press release claiming a biologist had just published a theory accounting for all of that—and handling the origin of life and the creation of the Moon in the bargain. Better yet, no math!

Where did such a crazy theory originate? In the mind of a biologist at a respected research institution, Case Western Reserve University Medical School. Amazingly, he managed to get his ideas published, then amplified by an official press release. At least two sites with poor editorial control then reposted the press release—verbatim—as a news story.

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