Scrivener's Error

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Scrivener's Error	Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.

30 January 2009

link to: 10:01 [GMT-6]

All-Natural Sausages

There are parts of the internet that do not get used to make internet link sausages. You won't find any of them here; this post includes only all-natural ingredients (for some value of "natural").

Maybe swarming locusts just need some Prozac to keep from interfering with humanity's attempt to swarm the whole damned planet. Some whacko somewhere is going to write a book on insect psychology and earn a guest shot on some talk show explaining how insects aren't bad — they're just emotionally disabled and need our understanding...
Not everyone is suffering from the current economy. Exxon's record profits indicate that somebody was doing well last year! For those of you wondering why automobile makers never tried to develop better hybrids and electric vehicles before now, look beyond the short-term commodity pricing issues — after all, the theory of "peak oil" has been around for a couple of decades now — and figure out who owned the critical enabling/blocking patents on battery technology from the mid-1970s until about 2002.
Just for amusement, here's a primer on book design. Of course, I have about six caveats for this beyond the "you can break any of these rules if you really need to" closing of the piece. The most important of which, in this week or so before the next Kindle will probably be announced, is this: These principles apply only to printed materials. They do not apply to on-screen text, whether you're talking about a blog or an e-book. Anyone who tries to establish such rigid left-right/up-down rules is going to deserve the screams from those whose devices, or methods of work, do not conform to the screen size preferred by the designer!
Without much further comment (aside from my always-present disdain for WFH), there's more Marvel legal nonsense afoot. It appears to me that Daredevil must have been in charge of acquiring visual rights at some point... not just because he's blind, but because he's an attorney working outside his specialty (there's that prohibited "s" word again).
Here's a new dimension to the "war on drugs" about which I can't say much more, if only because I haven't seen the actual orders and mission statements in question. On the face of things, it appears that the in-theatre commanders are right; it is also possible, however, that things are being misinterpreted. Like that never happens to military orders.
I come here not to praise John Updike, but to bury his literary legacy — preferably at a crossroads stuffed with garlic and its head chopped off. It's been my sad experience that most of the praise for Updike comes not from those who have read and carefully considered his works, but from those who have aspired to his position in the pantheon of cold war American belles lettres. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is far less satisfactory a portrait of a salesman than, say, Willy Loman; the less said about much of the rest of Updike's oeuvre, the better. If one really wants to read about Southern New England suburban ennui, one is much better off with Frank Wheeler or Harold Roux.

The real problem with Updike was his subtle antiintellectualism. He wrote primarily about (and for) the incurious and those whose only conception of an intellectual life might have been reading the novels of John Updike. He dismissed virtually anything that was adopted primarily by people who did not inhabit his novels, even when he tried desperately to adopt their tropes (and almost uniformly failed). His inability to create credible characters whose primary motivation was not sexual gratification, or some variation of that, reflects problems that... well, read The Hair of Harold Roux instead.
Of course, sausages do have components other than meat. Although I believe that PETA should stand for "People Eating Tasty Animals" (I'm a vegetable-rights activist, myself), it takes much more time than I have to peel this onion of the layers of hypocrisy surrounding NBC's rejection of PETA's proposed Super Bowl ad for being "too sex~~ist~~y" (sorry, Nigel). NBC???? The home of Grey's Anatomy (etc.) complaining about sex being used to "sell" something during a sports broadcast? And that's just the beginning.

<SARCASM> Of course, it's perfectly ok to object that sex is unwholesome during a game designed around barely controlled mayhem. I'll just flip the channel to the news from Southwest Asia and watch a few heads getting blown off instead.</SARCASM> Besides, I think the eggplant enjoyed itself... which is more than I can say for anyone else.

Labels: arts, copyright, culture, intellectual property, mass media, military, miscellany, politics, publishing, science

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Sausages?

Internet link sausages, as frequently appear here, are gathered from uninspected meaty internet products and byproducts via processes you really, really don't want to observe; spiced with my own secret, snarky, sarcastic blend; quite possibly extended with sawdust or other indigestibles; and stuffed into your monitor (instead of either real or artificial casings). They're sort of like "link salad" or "pot pourri" or "miscellaneous musings" (or, for that matter, "making law"), but far more disturbing.

I am not responsible for any changes to your lipid counts or blood pressure from consuming these sausages... nor for your monitor if you insist on covering them with mash or sauce.

Archives

Warped Weft

Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
Legal, free music is available through
- ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
- Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
- Janis Ian (artist)
- John McCutcheon (artist)

Other Blawgs, Blogs, and Journals

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
- Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
- Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
- Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
- Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
- Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
- Professor Rick Hasen (Loyola-LA Law)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law)
- Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
- Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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