No? You should. Most of us come from some form of a normal family, especially if we define normal loosely enough. But there are orphans out there. Now, Congress seems to be on the cusp of making more of us orphans through legislation called The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act in the Senate). The intent is to allow museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions to use works that are no longer protected by copyright laws.

This is of major concern to illustrators, photographers, cartoonists, and people who make a living by art, but it affects the rest of us as well. Your images posted on the web will be free game for commercial use if these laws pass. The law creates a bureaucratic nightmare for getting a copyright. Your photos could be used to sell products without your consent. From a form letter to Congress on the Illustrators Partnership of America:

The Orphan Works Act will affect all images from professional paintings to family snapshots. This includes any image, whether published or unpublished - or any that resides or ever resided on the internet. It will force me to register every image I make with privately-held commercial registries. All unregistered works will be exposed as potential orphans for commercial infringement.

This radical change to U.S. copyright law will shift the burden of diligence from infringers to rights holders. All of us will have to regularly monitor the unauthorized use of our most personal work - an impossible task because infringements can occur anytime, anywhere in the world.

The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) and Lamar Smith (R-TX).

From Angela:

Brent Rowell, a native of Bristol, Tenn., currently lives in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar. He and others knew Cyclone Nargis would hit the Southeast Asia country on May 3, but no one expected the storm to kill more than 43,000 and leave tens of thousands missing and more than a million residents homeless. 

Head to her house to get the link for the full account of what happened.

H/T: Silence

In answering a letter over at his blog about recent natural disasters, Sam says this:

I perused the article you reference and agree that you need to do more than discuss or agree/disagree. I’d start from the standpoint that the author’s argument is true - that people act more when it’s close to home. If you need more proof, check out this link about recent giving in the wake of tragedy.

More money went to Katrina than the tsunami or Burma, even though there were far (FAR) fewer deaths. Why is that?

In other words, I’d ask the class the question, “If a kid drowns in Burma, and no one’s around to notice, does it matter?”

Of course if does, like Gandhi’s son said in the Post article. But how can it matter TO US? That’s the real question of ethics, whether you’re a utilitarian or not - human behavior mainly operates on the question of what does it matter TO ME.

There’s a whole lot more.

Head here to read the rest. 

We spoke of the suicide of Megan Meier last November here at MCB.

A woman accused of “cyber-bullying” a 13-year-old girl into committing suicide was indicted Thursday.

Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Mo., is accused of setting up an account on MySpace.com, along with others, to pose as a 16-year-old boy, “Josh Evans,” in 2006.

Ashley Grills, a 19-year-old employee of Drew’s, told “Good Morning America” that she created the fake MySpace profile, but said Drew wrote some of the messages.

She said it was Drew’s idea to find Meier on the Internet and see what she was saying about Drew’s daughter, a former friend.

Apparently the courts don’t think highly of this, and nor did we back last year. One of the things in the brought up repeatedly in the comments was we didn’t think that Drew would be punished.

Apparently we were wrong.

There is this conference called TED. TED stands fot technology, education and design. It’s been going on since 1984 and the scope continues to grow. It brings together some of the greatest thinkers, doers, and innovators from around the world together in one place. They post the video from each speech on the site.

This link is to one of the speeches (and it’s pretty short for TED, around 4 1/2 minutes), done by Alisa Miller, who is the head of Public Radio International. It discusses what news organizations cover - how though we want to know more about the world around us, what we get is much less than we want. All TED talks are interesting, some open your eyes. The maps in this one are astonishing. Enjoy.

Newscoma doesn’t and she loves them.

I have said before that probably my most favorite southern delicacy is pickled okra. Not the slimy kind but pickled. You could pickle a Ho Ho and it would delight me to no end. I’m a pickle person and I buy them like a maniac. In the past two weeks, I noticed that a jar of pickled okra went from $2.29 to $3.59. A jar of pickles (Klaussen kosher baby dills) went from $2.79 to $3.89.

Of course, I didn’t get them. I wanted them, but they didn’t jive with the budget. They weren’t necessary. I can do without a frakking jar of pickles. And yes, I’m making a point. It’s not about pickles but you guys are smart. You know where I’m going here.

Money can get even tighter in the rural parts of the country. Nothing is nearby, not the grocery nor the bank nor the workplace. You have to burn gas to get anywhere. The rise in costs hits harder out in the boonies. ”Coma mentions hearing a guy talk about needing to go to a neurologist after he’d already spent $2,000 in medical costs. He’s not going - there’s no money for that. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen

We are sharing food at the office. Some folks don’t eat if we don’t so we do. I wish I were kidding but I’m not.

As Aunt B.says, dwell on that sentence a bit. It isn’t all roses in Mayberry, folks. There they don’t know what the technical definition of a recession is and they don’t care. It’s not technical, it’s personal, and it’s more and more like hard times out there. Most of the people running our government have no idea what it’s like - and never will.

We have another stamp hike today and Chip isn’t happy.

No sooner than I was done with those I bought the new 39 cents stamps in the 100 count roll.  And wouldn’t you know it, they would raise the rate again.  This time to 41 cents.  WTF?

Again, I say, what’s up with that?  Last I heard, the US Postal Service was out of debt and had a great thing going.

No wonder why I’m starting to use E cards.

Read the rest here.

In breaking national news …

The death toll from a powerful cyclone that slammed into Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta was raised to more than 22,000 people on Tuesday, state media reported.An additional 41,000 people were missing as a result of the cyclone, which triggered a massive storm surge that swept inland and left people with nowhere to run, killing at least 10,000 people in one town alone.

This is catastrophic.

Sharon Cobb writes this overnight:

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a loving daughter and sister, hanged herself last week.

I just wanted you to know her name. The “D.C. Madam” is how almost all of us know of her, and that’s to our shame. We are taught to dehumanize prostitutes so much that we don’t even use their real names. They’re just “things.

Read the rest at her house.

Sometimes there is this rare concordance in the force or something that just makes magic. I like news and I have news feeds on my iGoogle. Today from MSNBC, we have these two news items one right after the other and there’s no getting around the glaring fact that they ought to be related somehow. Why don’t they require Congress to get a few of these? Oh ye, I remember. Someone might use on on a Congressman or a Senator. We can’t have them telling the truth.

New U.S. weapon: Hand-held lie detector

Petraeus, Crocker face second day of questioning

Aunt B. writes about today’s economy and what she overhead an intern talking about with her mom about finding a job in today’s market.

Anyway, yeah, so I was about to welcome her to the club when she went on about how she wasn’t seeing any job openings on the internet or at this company or that company and it dawned on me that the panic in her voice was a little different than when I graduated.

And it scared me, too, because, frankly, I have no discernable skills.  If my employer decided to cut costs by cutting me, I don’t know what I’d do instead.

So, I don’t understand why, with this financial crisis, it’s okay to bail out the big banking companies, but not the little guy who’s going to lose his house.  I don’t even understand what bailing out these big financial companies has to do with a free market.  Why is it that we have to let the market do its thing when it’s regular folks who are about to be crushed by it but when the market is about to do its thing all over the banks, the government has to step in?

More over at Tiny Cat Pants. 

Whatever your views the fact remains we are and will remain in the country well into the next year, the next administration and for who knows how long. Casualties, costs both economic and ethical, and more are still to be counted. I mourn for our losses and for the future. Seems all the decisions that led us there and those made in the early days were - at best - full of colossal blunders.

Read more at Cuppa Joe

Foreclosures are just bad for everyone involved.  Not only do decent hard-working people lose the roof over their heads, but to rub salt in the wound, the value of your home dips because of their hard luck.  My friend and colleague Butch gives us a scenario about about how foreclosures hurt the neighborhood.

The lender just wants enough money to pay off most of the loan regardless of what it’s worth.  The house could go for $150,000, but the bank sold it for $125,00 just to get rid of it. 

Butch links to an MSNBC news article that I’ve seen floating around at Comcast, The Tennessean, etc.  And while you’re digesting that troubling information, here’s more from CNN.  My cheerful outlook is dimming.

Word on the street is that good old Client Number 9 will have more time to spend with the family starting next Monday.  New York Lieutenant Governor David Paterson will become the first African-American governor in New York history and the first legally blind governor in US history.

No, not that #9…this one.

Via Kleinheider, it is revealed (through the Nashville Post)…that the name New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer used to solicit prostitution is “George Fox”…referring to the brother of David Fox, a Metro Board of Education member.

George Fox, the man whose name Spitzer used and whose family Spitzer vacationed with on occasion, is a graduate of Brentwood Academy and runs the New York office of Titan Advisors. Brother David helms the Nashville branch of the company.

Titan Advisors recently issued this statement on the Spitzer connection:

“The news that his name may have been used as an alias comes as a great surprise and disappointment. Mr. Fox only became aware of Mr. Spitzer’s alleged activity when informed of it Monday morning by the media. There is absolutely no connection between Mr. Fox and the Governor’s alleged activity beyond the unauthorized use of his name.

Mr. Fox considers Governor Spitzer a close friend and is distressed by the news that has emerged. While he is disappointed that his name was involved, he appreciates the apology the Governor has personally communicated and he wishes the Governor and his family strength as they endure this difficult period.”

Yes, there is always a Nashville connection.

New York governor Elliot Spitzer, scourge of Wall Street corruption and sordidness in the Music Bizness, has just confessed to senior aides of personal involvement in a prostitution ring. Apparently several key clients of Emperor’s Club VIP (an ‘escort’ service catering to men in the New York, Paris, London, Washington and Miami area) were arrested recently, and lo and behold, Spitzer’s name apparently appears in court papers related to the arrest.

Spitzer is well-known in local music circles for having gone after ‘payola’ and ensuring that artists are paid their complete royalties when Spitzer was the Attorney General for the state of New York. I’m guessing that not a few music industry bigwigbiz types are less than secretly pleased with this news.

I’m also guessing that Spitzer’s future political plans have changed. Time Magazine had named Spitzer ‘Crusader of the Year’ when he was New York Attorney General. His next crusade will most likely be to save his name and reputation.

Writer and blogger Ken Levine, who has been on strike, was at The Shrine Auditorium at the WGA meeting last night and reports that although things aren’t perfect, writers could be back to work as soon as Wednesday.

The main points of the deal are that it gives writers jurisdiction over new media and a share of distributor’s gross, which is hugely significant since any other formula is just monkey points. By establishing precedents the guild believes it is now in position to share the revenue from emerging marketplaces such as the internet. The deal is hardly perfect. There are a number of holes (which the committee candidly acknowledged) but considering we were negotiating against mega conglomerates who would just as soon break the union, this deal is at least a start and livable.

The Hollywood Reporter adds there appears to be some optimism about the new deal but that today is crucial as well.

The camera crews that also lined the sidewalk were on hand primarily to record color shots of the assembling writers. Nothing will actually be decided at the Shrine, where members simply are being briefed on details of the proposed three-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

On Sunday, several important pieces of activity are expected.

Once the AMPTP itself signs off on the recently-drafted agreement — something that hadn’t yet happened by 7 p.m. Saturday — the WGA negotiating committee is expected to vote on recommending the contract to the WGA West board and WGA East council, which then both will meet Sunday afternoon or evening.

Once the matter is bounced into their court, the board and council have three options:

— Recommend the contract to the membership and end the strike.

— Recommend the pact but let members vote on whether to end the strike.

— Reject the tentative agreement.

If the optimism of the writers is any indication, this strike just might be over.

ORLANDO - Smokey returned to the top of the mascot mountain Friday night in the land of magical dreams as Smokey claimed his third national championship at the Universal Cheerleading Association National Championships at Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports Complex.

More here . . .

And more about some of the men who’ve portrayed Smokey over the years here.

CNN and MSNBC are reporting that actor Heath Ledger, who has gotten rave reviews for his performance in Brokeback Mountain and in the upcoming Batman movie as the Joker in The Dark Knight, was found dead in his apartment in New York.

He was 28-years-old.

There is a huge conversation going on Twitter about it right now as I write this.

That’s where I heard of the news first.

Umm all-righty then.

You guys are going to have to talk about this amongst yourselves. I admit, when it comes to stuff like this, I’m not your girl.

When the Fed made a dramatic move to calm the stock market after the Crash of 1987, traders responded with an equally dramatic rally. So why was Wall Street largely unconvinced Tuesday when the central bank made an emergency rate cut of three-quarters of a percentage point? To paraphrase an old campaign slogan, it’s the housing market, stupid.

Bloggers are talking:

Smiley

Jim Voorhies

Tennessee Free

Sadcox

Leave a comment if you have some thoughts on all this.

Educate us. (Wait, me. Yeah me.)

The Newspaper Business Blog is talking about a Minneapolis newspaper that is opening up to readers to vote on which comics stay and which ones go.

Mark writes this:

Editors read day in an day out how they need to be more responsive to readers. When it’s time to change comics they trot out the “need to be more responsive to readers” mantra, and put things up for a vote.

Editors think that readers care about the newspaper’s position on presidential candidates, and a myriad of other topics and stories,  so they reserve the right to decide what gets published.

Editors know deep down, that they will get more blow-back from readers on changing a comic strip than they will from most front page stories.

He’s right.

Effective 2014, Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get a new, more secure driver’s license under “ambitious post-9/11 security rules to be unveiled Friday by federal officials.” (CNN). It’s called a “REAL ID.”

Sadcox is baffled at the interchangable terminology…

It’s not a National ID…

It’s a Federal Driver’s License. You recognize the difference, right?

No?

The rationalization for this plan, of course, is the same as that for any authoritarian program…a centrally mandated, controlled, and issued driver’s license will make it more difficult for con artists, drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, or terrorists to gain access to identification that could compromise our security.

…It’s funny. They keep calling it a “driver’s license,” but they never mention anything about driving.

I just find the whole idea not very well thought through, and really don’t see the point. Perhaps some of you can enlighten me.

Have you ever been interested in a story–or more-detailed information for a story, that isn’t getting much attention from national media (or is buried deep in a 40,000 count google result)?

Probably the most comprehensive local newspaper link-o-rama is newsvoyagers.com. Though I say “local,” most states have only one (or at most two) online journals that offer more than recycled national feeds or infrequently-updated local news. In any event happy hunting.

Both Mack and Aunt B. are writing about the terrifying story of Jamie Leigh Jones.

Mack breaks it down here:

Who would have thought that the biggest danger Jamie Leigh Jones faced when she was assigned to work in Iraq would be her own co-workers?  Apparently, she was housed with or nearby some of KBR’s best and brightest, some of whom, with the knowledge that they enjoyed total immunity from U.S. law, gang-raped her.  She asserts that she was drugged, then vaginally and anally raped and suffered physical and emotional injury.  She was then placed in a cargo container outfitted with a bed, placed under guard, and told she would be out of a job if she reported the attack.  Only after a sympathetic guard lent her his phone, was she able to reach her father, who contacted his Congressperson and informed him that his daughter was being held.  The Congressman, Ted Poe (R) Texas, said this to ABC news:

And Aunt B. adds this:

There are three details in the Jones incident that stick with me on top of the just disgusting gruesomeness of the accusations.  One is that our government had to rescue her from her employer.  Two is that crucial evidence in the case, her rape kit, was turned over to her employer.  And three that there still seems to be some controversy about whether these private companies are beyond any law.

They both discuss the obstacles this young woman had to go through after she was the victim of a gang-rape.

John Lamb of Hispanic Nashville has posted all of Senator Thompson’s comments from the recent Univision network debate. Fred seems to have gotten a pretty positive response from the audience, not backing down from his immigration position, but explaining it in a way that actually earned him applause.

I was especially impressed with Fred Thompson’s answer to this question, Read the rest of this entry »