Boing Boing has unveiled its new linking policy.
Fodors.com, which now has a travel blog, wants to prohibit anyone from deep-linking into its content (“‘deep linking’ past the FODORS.COM homepage is strictly prohibited”). So even though the Fodors bloggers deep-link into other sites, Fodors’ lawyers want to prevent you from doing the same thing. Someone at Fodors doesn’t get the Web at all.
Via Lessig, an electronic version (in Microsoft Reader format) of the Constitution of the United States. Note the following technological or legal restrictions: You can’t view it on a Mac and you can’t print it. If you purchase the Adobe Reader version instead, you can view it on a Mac, and you can print it, but only twice a year.
Here’s a better idea. Google it and do whatever the hell you want to with it.
Justices Keep ‘Under God’ in Pledge (washingtonpost.com): The Court threw out the case not on the merits of its arguments but because the justices concluded that the plaintiff had no legal right to sue on his daughter’s behalf.
However, the three justices who did comment “supported some version” of the White House’s Humpty Dumpty claim that “under God” does not actually refer to God Himself but to a historical idea of God. The White House is basically saying here that the phrase “under God” means that the U.S. is not one nation currently under God but is instead one nation founded under God a long time ago.
From Wordspy:
Humpty Dumpty language noun. An idiosyncratic or eccentric use of language in which the meaning of particular words is determined by the speaker.
Am I reading this correctly? Does the British government require daily worship in schools? Noncompliance of the law aside, even the idea of forcing children to pray and worship daily seems to fly in the face of what a modern democracy should stand for.
Update: I’ve done a little more research. This Guardian piece publishes the text of a speech by David Bell, chief inspector of schools, on the 60th anniversary of an education bill known as the Butler Act. A portion of Bell’s speech indicates that these are state schools in question, not church schools:
But we are still left with some weighty questions. What, as a society, do we think about collective worship in non-denominational state schools? Arguably, the 1988 Education Reform Act added a further layer of complexity when it added the requirement that collective worship should be wholly, or mainly, of a broadly Christian character.
Ironically, or not, the United States has a famous “Butler Act” of its own: namely, the 1925 Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
Cory Doctorow writes that Sony’s electronics division is being pummelled by its entertainment holdings. (Wired did a good article on this last year.) What strikes me from Doctorow’s piece is how closely Sony Electronics is beginning to resemble the companies that Christensen discusses in Innovator’s Dilemma. From Doctorow:
Sony, who invented the walkman and made billions off of it, has now become an irrelevant player in the personal stereo market, with a market share that’s barely a blip on the chart.
If I were still in school, this might make an interesting case study.
The Times reports that many broadcasters are practicing extreme self-censorship to avoid FCC sanction. Among the programs censored? Masterpiece Theater and the Rush Limbaugh radio show.
Having won the wars on terror, drugs, poverty, childhood obesity, AIDS, cancer, mad cow disease, and SARS, Congress turns its eye to our nation’s most troubling epidemic: smoking in films.
“Our surroundings are so thoroughly saturated with images and logos, both still and moving, that forbidding artists to use them in their work is like barring 19th-century landscape painters from depicting trees on their canvases.” — Roberta Smith, writing in the _New York Times_.
The government withdrew a subpoena for abortion records yesterday, Newsday reports. The government is defending itself against suits that challenge the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and requested medical records of women who’ve sought abortions in New York hospitals.
A district court judge ordered the hospitals to comply, but New York Weill Cornell Medical Center refused, and the judge held the hospital in contempt. Last week, an appeals court blocked the contempt charge and agreed to resolve the issue. The government now has withdrawn the request in hopes of circumventing a drawn-out appeals process.
