Spiegel Online: Will Russia’s Bloggers Survive Censorship Push?

”With so many of their media sources controlled by the state or government-friendly oligarchs, Russians have turned to their bloggers to keep informed and give voice to their grievances and concerns. But many of those in power are now seeking to impose rigid limits on online freedom.” The internet’s like water ... it finds the nooks and crannies, and escapes most political control structures.

WyoFile: A Legacy of Prejudice: Lawsuits, Failed Pacts Tell Ugly Story.

”Whites here may have legitimate concerns about the quasi-independent state on their borders, such as issues relating to law-enforcement jurisdiction or water rights. But that doesn’t explain the bigotry that often seems a holdover from another time: the high-school sports fans mocking Indian players as ‘prairie niggers,’ for example, or the white civic leader, subsequently elected to the county commission, declaring in a private meeting, ‘I hate goddamn Indians,’ to cite examples from the voting rights trial.” Many think the ‘wild West’ is a part of the past.  Live out here for a while, you’ll realize it’s alive and well — and not the fantasy perpetrated on us kids through “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke.”

ProPublica: FDA’s Findings on Salmonella-Linked Egg Farms: Mice, Maggots, Manure.

”One of the reports, for Wright County Egg [PDF], found “excessive amounts of manure” blocking the entrances to some henhouses—“approximately 4 feet high to 8 feet high” in several areas.” If you’ve traveled west Texas, and seen the feedlots with cows standing on piles of excrement 12 feet high or more, you won’t be surprised. Industrial livestock management needs a kick in the kiester.

NY Times: Ansel Adams Photo Dispute Has a Reversal.

Raises a question. If the Earl Brooks photographs are so hard to distinguish from Adams’ famous ones ... is Adams as special as we deem?  Over time, this may impact the value of his Yosemite works.

The Economist: Scientific misconduct: Monkey business?

“At the least, then, Dr Hauser stands accused of setting the study of animal cognition back many years. Trying to discern an animal’s thought processes on the basis of its behaviour is notoriously tricky and subjective at the best of times. Now, his critics fear, no one will take it seriously.” Bad science hurts us all.

ProPublica: Take It With a Grain of (Sea) Salt: Gulf Microbe Study Was Funded by BP.

”While having BP as a funding source doesn’t invalidate the research, in the very least it’s probably at least worth mentioning in the same breath.” Indeed. 

Discove Magaziner: SPEECH Act now a law: big win for libel reform!

”American authors, journalists, and bloggers can breathe a sigh of relief: with broad bipartisan support, a short time ago President Obama signed a bill into law that makes sure that the awful and regressive libel laws in the UK cannot be enforced here in the United States.”

rc3.org: Government regulations and freedom.

Read the quote.

Time: The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS.

“Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.” The government’s following Facebook Places, Google, OnStar and others.  This is a pretty broad interpretation.  I don’t think it will stand challenge.

Bloomberg: Egypt to Improve Museum Security After Van Gogh Theft.

”Egypt plans to set up a security control room to monitor all museums after the theft of a $55 million Vincent van Gogh painting in Cairo, Zahi Hawass, head of the country’s antiquities agency said today.” Routing everything to one place, allows for a single point of failure to radiate outwards. Not wise.

LA Times: Ansel Adams Publishing Trust files suit against Rick Norsigian.

”The suit, which was filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges trademark infringement and other claims.” I suppose it had to come to litigation. Shame, though.

Mashable: Philadelphia Tax Code Sparks Big Controversy with Small Bloggers.

Ye gods, don’t let NM know they can collect gross receipts on internet ad revenue. Next thing you know, we’ll have to register our blogs as businesses.

NY Times: Inside the Knockoff-Tennis-Shoe Factory.

“Counterfeiters played a low-budget game of industrial espionage, bribing employees at the licensed factories to lift samples or copy blueprints. Shoes were even chucked over a factory wall, according to a worker at one of Nike’s Putian factories. It wasn’t unusual for counterfeit models to show up in stores before the real ones did.” Bonus points to the author for using the verb ‘chucked’.

In These Times: Jailed Hikers: the Untold Story.

A bit different than what we’ve generally heard.

ProPublica: Experts: Argue All You Want, Mosque Project on Firm Legal Ground.

“Focus for a moment on basic rule of law: 45 Park Place is located in a C6-4 zoning classification (’General Central Commercial’) where houses of worship are allowed ‘as of right.’ Assuming that this particular proposed house of worship meets the setback, height, and bulk requirements of the Lower Manhattan special zoning district, the city’s denial of a zoning compliance permit would be flagrantly ultra vires: Building inspectors, after all, cannot simply fabricate a new ‘honor-the-9/11-dead” zoning district on the spot’.”

Macworld: Pink Floyd albums leaving iTunes for the great gig in the sky.

”You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street.
You’re nearly a real treat,
All tight lips and cold feet ...”

ProPublica: No More Regulatory Shortcuts for Deepwater Drilling Projects.

“The Obama administration announced Monday that it is no longer fast-tracking offshore drilling projects in deep water by exempting them from detailed environmental review. Specifically, that means projects that use either a subsurface blowout preventer or a blowout preventer on a floating rig will need significantly more environmental review before drilling is allowed.”

CNN: ‘Terror babies:’ The new immigration scare tactic.

I will personally kick the ass of anyone victimizing newborns for their self-serving political agendas.

NY Times: How to Spot an A.T.M. Skimmer.

Didn’t realize thieves have gone this high-tech.

ProPublica: Proposed Lowe’s Drywall Settlement.

”… the handful of attorneys who quietly negotiated the deal will receive a separate payment of $2.1 million. Victims will be compensated mostly in Lowe’s gift cards, offered in the amounts of $50, $250 or $2,000, depending on the level of documentation they can provide.” Doesn’t sound fair at all ... if they’ve got plasterboard installed in their houses, a gift card doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good in buying services to replace the stuff.

Journalism.UK: US libel tourism bill signed into law.

”It’s hugely embarrassing that other countries are passing laws to protect their citizens from libel actions in our high court [snip] English libel lawyers claim that libel tourism is not a problem, if this is the case why has President Obama just signed into law a measure to protect his citizens from our courts?”

NY Times: Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal.

”Whether there is something called originality or not, the two scholars who began their concluding chapter by reproducing two of my pages are professionally culpable. They took something from me without asking and without acknowledgment, and they profited — if only in the currency of academic reputation — from work that I had done and signed.”

BBC News: Woman starts fight over chicken nuggets.

The cops plucked her off to jail, eventually.

SF New Mexican: Driver faces DWI charge in diner crash.

Just down the road. Old Las Vegas Highway seems to attract drunks like a light attracts bugs.  Safer on the interstate now after dark, esp. because of the center barrier they recently installed.

Vanity Fair: Stealing Mona Lisa.

”Stealing the Mona Lisa was as simple as boiling an egg in a kitchenette.”