Last week I was confronted head on with an uber cheerful person and he was clearly not undergoing this fine new treatment.

Fred von Lohmman gave a lively talk tonight about public interest law (and I hope he inspired at least some NYUlawites to follow in that path) with a focus on Youtube’s content ID system now being used by Warner Music to automatically delete/censor videos, such as this one from Youtube. Go Google. Go Youtube. Go Warner Music.

Copyright Digital Slider and the Spinner

As an die hard anthropologist, I never thought I would cavort so much with legal types. But given the nature of my project, it is pretty much impossible to avoid. Thankfully, the legal crowd dealing with digital issues, is pretty entertaining, interesting, and fun to listen to. And probably one of my favorite legal thinkers is coming to NYU to give a talk this coming Monday. If you are into this sort of thing and have not heard FVL speak, do make the time to join.

Given the fact that patients have been shamelessly and copiously sharing information on the web since, well, it first sprung up, it is nice to see that the medical establishment has gotten on board with the idea of collaboration. Medpedia is firmly an expert project (though it looks like anyone can provide suggestions) and I am not bothered by this limitation. What I do hope to see is a recognition of the controversies that abound in the realm of medicine (Lyme disease, fibromylagia, and a real hot rod issue = autism). There is much about diagnosis and therapy in medicine that exists in the “I am not sure (how to diagnose/treat” category and I wonder if this will be reflected in this new project. I certainly hope so.

Welcome, Congress, to our generation’s electric sun.

Earlier, I had posted the Wikileaks link to these congressional reports with comments of my own but I thought I would pen down a few thoughts as I finally electronically leafed through some of them. These reports remind me a little bit of another set of reports that are publicly available, which are the Congressional Quarterly reports, which are an excellent resource for research. They are a bit dry but provide a wealth of information and perhaps more important, citations to law cases, journalist articles, and academic pieces (everything that journalistic pieces, in other words, do not do). It does 1/2 the research for you, as I like to think.

The few reports I have scanned from the leaks remind me, in fact, of the CQ reports, in content, style and tone. And while I thought CQ reports published on a wide range of topics, these semi-private reports are far more extensive in terms of topics and far more specific as well:

CRS: Humane Treatment of Farm Animals: Overview and Issues, December 10, 2008
CRS: FDA’s Authority to Ensure That Drugs Prescribed to Children Are Safe and Effective, December 2, 2008
CRS: African American Members of the United States Congress: 1870-2008, December 4, 2008
CRS: The Pigford Case: USDA Settlement of a Discrimination Suit by Black Farmers, January 13, 2009
CRS: Selected Legal and Policy Issues Related to Coalbed Methane Development, March 9, 2004

I look forward to hearing/learning more about how they are used (I can’t imagine that each report is read by many) and why exactly they were hidden away as they don’t seem to be the type of information that should be kept classified.

Have you seen the New American Passport? If you have, you know it is kinda creepy. First, the abundance of patriotic pictures (eagles, presidents, flags, you get the picture) is in fact so patriotic, it might burn a hole in your hand if you hold onto it for too long. Aside from the visual creepiness, well, it is also RFID enabled and depending on your take, this is creepy (or not). But whatever your view, here is a great example of how easy it is to crack, . RFID is, as Chris Paget puts it succinctly “available to be queried by a suitable reader.

This is a great little video/animation Steamboat Mickey, which references one or more events from each year, starting in 1928 and ends in 2008. The music, which accompanies the animation, is fantastic and is by Owen Chapman, an assistant professor of communication at Concordia and a great DJ/sound artist.

So, on the one hand, I am not surprised about this news about a study which found that high fructose corn syrup, which is of questionable health value, is laced, with a significant amount with mercury.

On the other hand, I am surprised that this is not splattered all over the front pages of all the major newspapers. This is serious stuff. Mercury is extremely poisonous and is known to cause all sort of health problems from immune system dysfunction to massive neurological damage.

Might more of our foods be laced with heavy metals, aside from fish, HFCS. It is very likely.

More on this, but later.

update: Since the article I linked to did not mention the amount of mercury found, here is the original publication (and as a small aside, why newspapers don’t link to these documents is beyond belief). Page 9 of the PDF is particularly telling because it reveals how it was difficult for researchers to obtain more samples so that they could enlarge the sample size….

If you are in the NY-area and would like to help out with the project described below, they are looking for volunteers. Help FLOSSIFY the enormously popular book Digital Foundations. The event is being hosted Feb 6-8 at the lovely Eyebeam with some Free as in Beer and Grub provided!

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FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
For a long time educational courses have been cheap marketing
for proprietary software companies. Can a student really afford all
those expensive softwares required by the courses? No. Ever hear of a
software company kicking up a fuss because students are using
‘unofficial’ versions? Well, it does happen but not often. And why not?
Because proprietary software companies know, as the universities know,
that once the students leave their training they will be indoctrinated
with those tools and simply slipstream into being paid up proprietary
software citizens. Simply put, unlicensed software used in education is
tolerated because it is cheap marketing.

This is how tools become ‘industry standards’.

FLOSS Manuals is fighting this flow by converting textbooks that
use proprietary software to using free software in their examples.

We call this process “FLOSSify”. We convert the book from
closed software to Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) hence we
‘FLOSSify’ the book.

Our first text book is the wonderful Digital Foundations book produced
by Michael Mandiberg and Xtine Burrough
(http://digital-foundations.net/). Its a text book designed to teach
software by teaching design. The current toolset it uses is the Adobe
Creative Suite and we will convert these examples entirely to using free
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations will focus on a fun 3 day event at
Eyebeam, NYC. Anyone is welcome to attend and some food and beer will be
provided. Come and meet some of your old geek friends, make some new,
and help make a step towards unshackling education from proprietary
software.

FLOSSIFY 1 : Digital Foundations
Eyebeam, New York City
Feb 6-8
starts 10ish
finishes when we are done
fast connection, a table, some chairs, and beer and food provided
contact adam@flossmanuals.net for more info

venue:

http://eyebeam.org/

540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
Tel. 212.937.6580 Fax: 212.937.6582