Kevin Kelly has a big article on digitizing books in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. He wades into the swamp of intellectual property issues resulting from Google’s Book Search efforts.

He also fleshes out the copyright “orphan” issue, at least 75% of the books in contention in Google’s scanning effort are works that have been pretty much left for dead by the publishing industry: books that are out of print, with unclear copyright status, an unknown rights holder, & are basically unavailable to most readers.

The publishing industry is of course trying to extort money for works that they’ve already abandoned.

There are important decisions happening every day (Net Neutrality, The recent Supreme Court/eBay decision, the EFF’s suit against AT&T) that will impact the digital environment, access to information, privacy, etc. I don’t think we talk/think/debate about them often enough.

This from the New York Times gives a whole new meaning to hot monkey love.

“If the earliest hominids are bipedal, it’s hard to think of them interbreeding with the knuckle-walking chimps — it’s not what we had in mind,” said Daniel E. Lieberman, a biological anthropologist at Harvard.

So there’s a place near our house called “I <3 Pho", having never tried we went. Can't really say i liked it, or the accompanying intestinal havoc it brought forth. Anyway saw this video and had to share.....

First the good news. I was too lazy to run by the store and grab lunch today and thought the cafeteria at work was closed. Growly belly is a sad thing. But YAY- it’s community outreach meeting day so the cafeteria is full of free munchies. I grabbed a bag of chips and a giant muffin and tummy is much happier. There is such a thing as a free lunch after all.

The bad news is that someone spammed the comments. I’ve turned on comment confirmation. I hate it but oh well.

The ugly: thanks to sitemeter I think I know the spammer’s ip address. Anyone know how to kick someone’s ass via their ip? Phuxy- I think you are probably best suited to the task.

And I am having a really hard time getting pissed off enough to write anything today. So instead you get random techy music crap.

I finally got my replacement mp3 player (I bought a new one that broke 2 weeks after I got it). To be fair, I think I had a nasty file on my computer because in the space of a month I killed my hard drive and 2 different mp3 players- so I don’t think it was the new player but they were nice enough to replace it anyway.

The big bummer was the 60 gigs of music I lost. Mephistopheles heroically recovered a small part of it and Shakespeare Bill let me hijack his hard drive before he ran away to travel the world (Thanks for the Huey Lewis Bill, it won me some points in the cheesy love song contest) and I am slowly recovering the rest. Lesson learned- back up on external hard drive is now mandatory. The really good news was that i had been better about backing up my photos than i thought, so while I lost my pics from visiting the naughty professor in San Francisco I do still have pictures from Europe. Mephistopheles decided I was officially cool when he saw pictures of me in front of the Max Plank Institute for Theoretical Physics in Germany, so I’m glad I recovered them. (I will never have another reason for being at a school for theoretical physics again- really was a fluke that I was there at all).

Since I have the mp3 player I can now return to regularly torturing students with my own music selections instead of just an internet radio station’s playlist. Today it’s Ok Go! Get over it is a fantastic, rocking song. Very happy making. You’re so damn hot is pretty cool to.

I have to say how much I love this little player. The original one I got was pink (no red, unfortunately), but they were out of pink when they sent the replacement. Now I have the silver. It’s cheaper than an Ipod and doesn’t require me to use the evil Itunes. Itunes’ only value to me is as a glorified radio tuner, I really really hate it. This player let’s me use it in hard drive mode so I can just drag and drop files onto it instead of having to make playlists in another program (like windows media player- which I also hate) and then lets me make playlists right on the player. Nice.

Rock on kids. Rock on!

I might have emailed this to y’all a while back, but it’s worth watching over and over. Pluck, pluck, pluck away.

It seems to be local news day, and while it’s been good for the environment it’s been bad for those of us not making the median income in Seattle.

First I ran across this bit on the Stranger’s Blog:

City Calls $1,022 a Month “Affordable “
Posted by ERICA C. BARNETT at 03:48 PM
The city council’s housing committee just voted to put off a motion that would grant $1.5 million in tax breaks to a U District developer in exchange for “affordable” rental units that would cost nearly $200 more than the average rent for the neighborhood. In exchange for the tax break, the developer, Lothlorien Apartments, would make 30 percent of its units “affordable” to renters making up to 70 percent of the Seattle median, or $38,150 for one person. For a one-bedroom, that works out to $1,022 a month; for a studio, $953. The average rent for a one-bedroom in the U District is between $757 and $843, depending on whose numbers you believe. Although the postponement won’t likely change the deal offered to Lothlorien, the Seattle Displacement Coalition’s John Fox said today’s discussion “shows the council is serious about reconsidering the criteria” for the tax-break program.

Reconsidering the criteria for tax breaks is great, but they might want to reconsider the guidelines they put on the Section 8 housing program last year while they are at it. Seattle Housing Authority, in an effort to increase the number of people it serves, drastically lowered payment standards and changed minimum occupancy levels (that may be in violation of HUD guidelines) in August of 2005. Now that the economy is going again and rents are on the rise, the lowest income Seattle residents are going to be pushed out into the suburbs in an effort to find housing that is within the payment guidelines, or will find themselves struggling to stay in the city when their rents eat up a larger portion of their incomes. The new guidelines set the rent for a one bedroom apartment in Seattle at $762 including utilities. Knock off the SHA average of $34 per month if the only utility the tenant pays for separately is electric, and the real rental allowance for a one bedroom apartment is $728. If you use the lowball Seattle Times rents then the only areas that fit the voucher standards are White Center, Beacon Hill, Ranier Valley and North Seattle.

This isn’t the first time SHA has had a problem with keeping the guidelines too low. Tenants in 2002 claimed that they were paying far above the 30 to 40 percent of their income (the standard set by HUD) because SHA kept the voucher guidelines low and tenants had to make up the difference between what their landlords charged and what SHA would allow. The 2005 guidelines lowered the ceilings even further.

Expanding the Section 8 program so that more people can participate is good, but not if it pushes the poorest people in the city even further into poverty. Either more units need to be created that match the rental standard or the rental standard has to be increased. I don’t have a problem with giving a tax break to guarantee more low income housing access, but the guidelines used for those tax breaks should probably mirror the city’s own rental standards. Requiring developers to offer more units at SHA levels in exchange for tax breaks would increase the number of truly “affordable” units that are available.

King County is going to join the Chicago Climate Exchange. Yay.

The only negative thing I’ve got is make sure the standards aren’t set to low or the market won’t have any value.

From the Washington Post:

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves — and to be treated by the health care system — as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

That’s right chickies. Since you may someday get pregnant you should act like you are about to be pregnant all the fucking time.

No mention that a woman ought to be given advice by their doctors about how to stay healthy because it would be beneficial to her own health. No, it’s all about the health of a potential fetus.

Experts acknowledge that women with no plans to get pregnant in the near future may resist preconception care.

Ya think? Now why on earth would a woman with no plans to get pregnant possibly be resistant to being treated like a womb with legs? Just for that I am going to smoke an entire pack of Marlboro 100’s, drink a couple of vodka tonics and seriously neglect my folic acid intake. While I’m at it I’m gonna lick lead paint from walls and clean litter boxes with my bare hands.