Your Tuesday Sausage Platter

A particularly diverse set of link sausages. No guarantees on species... or planet of origin.

• Dance has nothing to fear but dance itself. And critics. And the public. And the financial downturn. And the music available for dance. And...
• If you really, really need any proof that the S&M dorks are in charge in publishing, ponder S&S's decision to sign up a YAish trilogy based on an iPhone app. And while you're at it, ponder whether there's a rep for that.
• Dan Glickman has decided to abdicate his throne resign as head of the MPAA. Glickman is actually an improvement over his predecessor Emperor Palpitine Jack Valenti, if only because he hasn't been so stridently (and cadaverously) unwilling to accept that there was anything — anything at all — wrong about the film industry. Not enough of an improvement to excuse the MPAA's continued violations of antitrust law and attitude, but I think I'm supposed to be thankful for small favors. With my luck, they'll appoint Ben Silverman or a Redstone or Dick Cook — all notoriously hostile to "the talent" and notoriously prone to NIH (not invented here) Syndrome. <SARCASM> Of course, antitrust considerations are irrelevant. <SARCASM>
•    It was twenty years ago today
     Maggie Thatcher told the band to play...
  and the thought of the Baroness in paisley as a lead singer (or, worse yet, still in office) is just as frightening, if not more so, as the implications of the historical revisionism in that review essay, the books under review, or Europe's view of itself. Of course, it could start by considering the deep-seated hostility in Europe to the US's First Amendment... which we adopted largely because of Europe's own history. At least Europe has better beer: Even light-bodied Europilsners are better than the diluted horsepiss that passes for "beer" over here, particularly from the American brand in question in that lawsuit.
• Speaking of stuff that only us boomers really remember, the LAT proposes a bunch of things from m-m-m-m-my generation that should be allowed to die. My list would be different (for one thing, anything and everything related to Led Zeppelin would replace the horror of Beatles reissues)... but they can pry my first-month-of-issue vinyl copies of Who's Next and Dark Side of the Moon from my cold, dead pectoral fins (if the remoras don't get them first).
• Writer Beware — a SFWA writer-protection effort also sponsored by the MWA — contrasts the (un)ethics of referral fees with Thomas Nelson's new "self-publishing" arm.
• Professor Lipton muses on what do authors really want from copyright? Of course, she could have invoked much older situations, too: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro... the list goes on. However, this aspect of copyright is not being considered at all in the Google Book Search settlement — yet more proof that the purported class representatives are inadequate.
• Last, and far from least, the Supreme Court has issued its first actual decision of the October 2009 term (PDF), summarily reversing a rather elementary civil-and-appellate-procedure gaffe out of the Seventh Circuit. At the moment, therefore, the Ninth Circuit is not the most disfavored circuit! We'll see how long that lasts...

  Also this morning, the Court agreed to hear a critical case on whether judges may order GITMO detainees released into the US. Although technical this is a more important case than it appears, because it will go a long way toward revealing just how devoted to federalism the newer justices really are.