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.

14 November 2011

link to: 13:03 [GMT-6]

There Is No ConteNt Without ConteXt

... even for link sausages. Yes, sausages have context, too: They're ways to keep animal products (relatively) safe to eat for longer after slaughter, and to increase the proportion of a given dead animal that is consumed as a protein source in the first place by using otherwise difficult-to-prepare bits and pieces. McZorgle's "all meat patties" have nothing on the ingenuity of sausage-makers who use even the facial and tail muscles. And my deeply disturbed looks across the net are probably better left undescribed!

Sometimes even libertarians and economists admit that "context matters" — especially when, as in this instance, the "context" is created by badly-written, response-directive survey questions designed to highlight purported lack of economic knowledge in ideologically pure liberal social positions. This is an excellent example of the nonideological bias of the scientific method: Test your hypotheses against the evidence... and if more evidence comes along that contradicts the hypothesis, change the hypothesis to match the evidence instead of denying that the evidence has anything to do with the hypothesis. After enough testing, the hypothesis can become a theory — but every theory, such as high-school-chemistry favorite Boyle's Law (pV={constant}), has boundary conditions outside of which it does not hold. Further evidence may not contradict the theory, but instead define those boundary conditions. Boyle's Law is a subset of the Ideal Gas Law, which adds in considerations of temperature and quantity... and implies that real gasses are not ideal.
And then, sometimes, even the new theories run up against boundary conditions and have unintended consequences and unanticipated mechanisms (and interactions). This is, ironically enough, related directly to the analogy that I used in the preceding item — just as real gases are not ideal, real people (and populations) aren't, either.
Let's hear one more great big raspberry for further consolidation in the media industry, as EMI will probably get bought by somebody or other. And I say "somebody or other" because, under any rational view of antitrust law either here or in Europe, this is an anticompetitive purchase that will harm both competitors and the public... not to mention the suppliers, who seldom get much attention from anyone considering the antitrust implications of a given proposed transaction. All of that without considering the context of original position as it relates to freedom of expression and artistic integrity (note, carefully, the identity of the conglomerate).
If we understand cooking (and food preparation) in space, maybe we will remember when to corral the meatballs. And not to hire the Swedish Chef for an interplanetary voyage.
Last, a rather distressing link sausage. This is an explanation, not an excuse, about why a 2m-tall former football player did not stop a rape. There's a one-word answer: Panic.

One of the reasons that the military spends so much time training soldiers on responding to combat situations is to prevent panic from inhibiting their reactions under fire. And still, a disturbingly high proportion of soldiers do not fire their weapons in a firefight — even in all-volunteer armies — or, worse, fire indiscriminately, against their training. Similarly, highly trained rescue workers sometimes neglect their training and run back into collapsing buildings against orders only to become casualties themselves, or conversely do nothing. Consider that Mr McQueary probably had nowhere near the training for how to deal with a (hopefully) incomprehensibly unlikely situation that would have required him to assert force against an authority figure. Anybody who claims that "of course you should stop it in progress!" has failed to distinguish between should, must, and does.

This is not to say that I think McQueary is or should be off the hook for his failure to respond; sometimes, after all, a panic reaction can be (and is) properly construed as "cowardice under fire." But it happens... and I'm not sure that high-minded rhetoric about "moral responsibility" is appropriate from any elected official in this country, given the dubious "morals" of electoral politics. Neither am I sure that the university is off the hook for failing to teach its responsible employees how to either (a) effectively speak truth to power or (b) effectively and properly intervene in an authority figure's misconduct without making matters worse. My point is that I can understand what might have happened (and, based on what we "know" at this time, most probably — but not certainly — did). My secondary point is that the governor's rhetoric is not only unlikely to be helpful, but is implicitly a disclaimer of all responsibility... and that is definitely not morally defensible, because leaders — even those who come to leadership after an event — have some moral and actual responsiblity for everything.

Labels: culture, intellectual property, mass media, politics, 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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