Monday, January 12, 2004

Internet law - 2003 in review. c|net and News.com have a very thorough retrospective on developments in Internet law from 2003, by Doug Isenberg. A lot happened, ranging from the regulation of spam to VoIP, and browser pop-ups to file sharing. Relive the year in vivid detail. Thanks, Jurg! [Smart Mobs] 10:25:11 PM    comment []

Immigration has made us fat. Continuing the theme of immigration... we can blame immigrants for making us the fattest country on the planet. ... (This ties back to the August 25, 2003 posting "Lose weight by eating every meal at McDonald's".) [Philip Greenspun Weblog] 8:16:26 PM    comment []

Jan 12, 2004: Place your bets!. Which investigation do you think the Bush administration will finish first? "Find the Plame leaker," "Who bribed Nick Smith," "Tom DeLay selling legislation to Westar Energy," or Operation trash O'Neill? [Kicking Ass] 5:30:29 PM    comment []

Karen ?? Hmmm . . . what happened here? I'll have to resend this tomorrow, after checking it carefully for defex. 3:44:50 PM    comment []

Lust declared virtue, not vice: Lust has been wrongly branded a vice and should be "reclaimed for humanity" as a life-affirming virtue, according to a top philsopher. (BBC) Turns out that Oxford University Press has commisioned books on each of the Seven Deadly Sins and their relevance to contemporary life. Simon Blackburn is writing (has written?) the volume on lust. According to the Sunday Times, Prof Blackburn has defined lust as the enthusiastic desire for sexual activity and its pleasures for its own sake. The philosopher says that if reciprocated, lust leads to pleasure and best flourishes when unencumbered by bad philosophy and ideology... which prevent its freedom of flow. He points out that thirst is not criticised although it can lead to drunkenness and in the same way lust should not be condemned just because it can get out of hand, the paper says. Professor Blackburn is quoted as saying: The important thing is that generally anything that gives pleasure has a presumption in its favour. The question is how we control it. 10:44:05 AM    comment []

A Freelancer Tale: Paycheck Clears; Suit Demands It Back. The legacy of the Lingua Franca, a literate magazine for academics and like-minded folks that closed in 2001 and went into bankruptcy, lives on, but perhaps not in the way that its contributors may have hoped. By David Carr. [New York Times: Education] 7:24:43 AM    comment []

Prions: When Proteins Attack. These proteins are in our bodies, but something can cause prions to turn into malicious brain killers. Baffled scientists search for causes, treatments and a cure. By Randy Dotinga. [Wired News] 7:22:02 AM    comment []

Steve Mann, the cyborg. Salon has a great article about Steve Mann, the pioneer cyborg, that for many years has been mediating reality with his wearable apparatus. I'm convinced that computer desktops will someday be extinct and we will be free from desks and workstations. People like Steve Mann are the ones trying to prove this is possible despite today they might face the cumbersomeness of the devices and most importantly their poor social acceptabilty. [Smart Mobs] 7:17:13 AM    comment []

Doc on The Writing Fields. People of a certain age -- mine -- will remember Prince Norodom Sihanouk as the incumbent leader of a neutral and relatively peaceful Cambodia, before the war in Vietnam spilled over Cambodia's borders, leading to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the fall of the Cambodian government, and the killing fields. Now Sihanouk is an expat king in his eighties, writing a blog by hand with his queen, from France. Sources: Stuart Hughes, The Guardian, Yahoo News. 7:15:37 AM    comment []