The Chronicle’s Wired Campus had a nice wrap-up of the goings on in the supposed post-mass-lawsuit era at the RIAA: Ray Beckerman, a lawyer in New York who writes the blog Recording Industry vs. the People, went looking for new lawsuits against alleged illegal file-sharers, found three, and called the Recording Industry Association of America’s stated end of its mass-litigation campaign a “total fabrication.” Ars Technica characterized the RIAA as cagey, for fudging the definition of...

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where Google invited K-12 students to play around with their homepage logo. This year’s theme what “What I Wish for the World.” It’s time to vote for your favorite: [W]e’re pleased to announce the approximately 400 state finalists and the 40 regional winners. They were chosen by a panel of independent judges, all experts in design, but now it’s your turn. We invite you to help us select the four national finalists by voting on...

Remember that 1897 NYTimes story on music industry complaints that revenues had fallen fifty percent because “Canadian pirates” were flooding the market with “spurious editions” of copyrighted music? Well in that context it’s worth remembering that the United States has quite a pirate history of its own. Over the weekend All Things Considered interviewed Matthew Pearl about his new novel, The Last Dickens. A mix of fact and fiction, the novel looks at Dickens’...

Kirby Dick, director of the new film Outrage, was interviewed on Fresh Air this week by Terry Gross. She asked what level of hypocrisy merits ruining, somebody’s life and career? Mr. DICK: I looked at their voting records… and if their voting records were substantially anti-gay, I think in the case of all the politicians I had focused on, they were anywhere between zero and 25 percent pro-gay, the rest was anti-gay. And that to me, over oftentimes a two-decade career, was certainly an...

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that I made it through all of the links below without saying what I thought… An oversight. I marveled in every minute of its escapist glee; I left believing J. J. Abrams has arrived at genius and each of his new young stars is destined to be a screen idol (or stuck locked in sequel hell). At once retro and exuberantly now, it made me feel young again; I felt as I did as I watched the original Star Wars on opening night at Mann’s Chinese Theater in...

The story of the cow that escaped a slaughterhouse in Queens, was named Molly and taken to Farm Sanctuary, a vegan farm where she could roam free in upstate New York, sent me back to Michael Pollan’s December 2002 New York Times Magazine cover story, An Animal’s Place: There’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable...

Obama Foodorama: Later today, when the President announces his 2010 budget, which slashes 121 programs and about $17 billion, there’ll be one crucial area where spending will increase. Working with his closest advisers, President Obama is attempting to redress the longstanding civil rights grievances of black American farmers, by proposing a $1.25 billion deal to settle the ‘Pigford Claims,” a longstanding discrimination against USDA. The funding could benefit as many as 80,000...

The Chronicle: Grove City College, a Christian institution north of Pittsburgh, has suspended a student whom officials found to be working in the gay-pornography industry, reported The Herald, in Sharon, Pa. It’s against the rules, obviously, but look what else is, too: Grove City’s student handbook lays out possible penalties for specific infractions, including a suspension of at least one week for “possessing pornographic material” or “premarital sex (heterosexual or homosexual),”...

NO! But before getting into it… I linked yesterday to Marion Barry’s “We may have a Civil War” over gay marriage quote. Ta-Nehisi Coates puts Barry & his quote in some much-needed perspective: I don’t think that can be said loudly enough. There are 12 members of the City Council. Seven of them are black. One is Marion Barry. To anyone who’s followed Barry’s career, I’m not sure why “Marion Barry Is A Demagogue” is breaking news. It’s...

According to AP, the NH House passed it. The vote wasn’t expected until tomorrow. And last I heard Governor John Lynch said he believes marriage to be between a man and a woman and feels the state’s civil unions are sufficient for equality. LATER, clarity: The bill legalizing same-sex marriage is on its way to the desk of Gov. John Lynch following a narrow vote of approval in the House today. The House voted, 178-167, to accept a Senate-approved compromise (HB 436) that would let gays...

Becoming the fifth state to permit gay marriage: The governor’s signature came barely an hour after the measure won final approval in the state Legislature, with a final 31-8 vote in favor in the Maine Senate. Baldacci said in a statement that while he has opposed gay marriage in the past, “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and ofequal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage. “This new law does not force any religion to recognize...

It’s virtually unanimous that the new Kindle e-book reader will have a larger screen and be designed to appeal to periodical and academic textbook publishers… WSJ Online: Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences...

Short answer: You might! Via Sugar Stacks, where you can compare foods, find out where sugar is hiding, and see how much of the sweet stuff you’re really eating. In other sugar news, last week Daniel Engber had a piece in Slate on the decline and fall of high-fructose corn syrup:

The ransom note: “I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.” The hacked Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program site is used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of Virginia’s...

AP, minutes ago. Later — The NYTimes: Jack Kemp, the ex-quarterback, congressman, one-time vice-presidential nominee and self-described ”bleeding-heart conservative,” died Saturday. He was 73. Kemp died after a lengthy illness, according to spokeswoman Bona Park and Edwin J. Feulner, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser. Park said Kemp died at his home in Bethesda, Md., in the Washington suburbs.

Towleroad’s Nathanial comments on BioWare reinstating use of the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ and ending its ban of any discussion of homosexuality in community forums: It’s become an entirely predictable narrative: Company makes discriminatory decision, internet explodes with anger, company issues lame explanation as to why they did so, company reverses offending decision as quietly as they can hoping that the issue will just go away and they don’t have to...

The digitizers at ProQuest have discovered not all content is serious academic research. Some is just plain fun: Bryan Benilous, a historical newspaper specialist at the digital-archive company Proquest, said he and his colleagues came across a Boston Daily Globe article from August 24, 1902, titled, “Face Book The New Fad,” describing a party game where revelers sketch out cartoony caricatures for fun. “I think it is interesting to note the similarities with this first iteration of Face Book...

Larry Kramer went back to his alma mater, Yale (’57), last week to pick up the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the university’s Gay and Lesbian Association. Kramer, you will remember, burst on the scene with the 1978 novel, Faggots, which portrayed the gay community of the time as shallow and promiscuous. He went on to a lifetime of ardent AIDS activism, co-founding GMHC and ACT-UP. Anyone who thought the author might mellow with age is sorely mistaken. Kramer arrived in New...

The Long War: Music Piracy in 1897 (NYTimes) Via Michael Masnick at Techdirt: The fact that it focuses on Canadian copyright laws as the problem…nearly perfectly mimics today’s claims from the recording industry. The article even talks about a recent conference held by industry members to create a committee to fight piracy. Basically, it’s the same exact story we see today — and the same bogus complaints. If the industry has shown one thing, it’s that it will consistently...

My headline is ripped from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show graphic. The story is here and here. Fire the guy! Statement from Louis Caldera, Director White House Military Office, on Air Force One flight over New York “Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize...

newsmap.jp. Very cool. Click-through for live view. Newsmap blog. More here.

The Centers for Disease Control is tweeting updates on the swine flu outbreak. Meanwhile, over the weekend Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy’s Net Effect looked at Twitter’s power to misinform: [D]espite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this platform’s unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu…...

Time has a report on a new study by Glenn Greenwald — yes, that Glenn Greenwald — finding that decriminalizing drugs in Portugal has worked: The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled. “Judging by every...

ET: Arthur passed away at her home on Saturday. The spokesman said she was battling cancer, but did not elaborate on the cause of death. In the video above Rosie sings the theme from “Maude” after Bea Arthur tells her that they [used to!] sing it instead of happy birthday at The Universal Grill in the village. I love that Bea went there. My friend Sam and I used to celebrate birthdays together there. Rest in sweet eternal peace Bea. UPDATE: Joe Gandelman adds this: As a professional...

Following up on my earlier post, minutes ago the CDC issued an Outbreak Notice — Swine Influenza in the United States. Time reports: The CDC is working with the World Health Organization to keep track of any additional cases to determine whether and when a warning of a pandemic would be warranted. In preparation for such a scenario, the CDC has created a seed stock of a vaccine against the swine flu, which could be pushed into production should the number of cases jump significantly. The CDC...