In Need of Nitrites

One of the problems with doing link sausages out here in Kalifornia is that grocery stores — unlike those in hunting-happy East Central Redneckistan — don't stock curing salts. Thus, these link sausages are not merely uncured; they're probably diseased.

• There's a difference between "pro-market" and "pro-business". Unfortunately, it's a distinction that, for both ideological and other (darker) reasons, no longer exists in American discourse, especially involving the Heffalumps. Too many of them forget that there is no market without enforceability of promises at the market — and that necessarily means government, under some name or another.
• Priceless headline: GOP Convention Security Preparations Include Use of a Drone. It's perfectly appropriate to have a drone or three doing overwatch on a convention full of them, isn't it? They certainly won't be making charitable donations to the poor, which is sort of ironic as one of the major functions of government is to step into the shoes of all of those purported charitable organizations that (in a rather distorted view of history) "used to" do that sort of thing before the rise of "big government." Did I mention "drones"?
• Sometimes nihilism is just all too appropriate, as when Kanye West recently defeated a copyright-infringement claim by citing Nietzsche as an independent source of a quotation. This is even more disturbing if one actually reads the underlying passage(s) in Nietzsche... auf Deutsch. Let's just say that infinite recursion is only the beginning of the strangeness and leave it at that; the translation to the rather generic English "stronger" leaves a lot out, too. Let's also hope that this doesn't mean that Kanye West might be on his way to helping create some kind of a "national literature".
• Also on the copyright front, the DoJ has seized several "app pirate" domains in the name of copyright enforcement. Too bad the DoJ task force only looks at these things if a well-financed distributor/middlecreature complains; even well-considered objections from the actual creators, however even-tempered, will be ignored as a matter of policy (related to a 1986 directive that white-collar crime investigations must exceed a certain ascertainable monetary value — a value that has steadily risen over the years — or the federal government won't even investigate it... even when jurisdiction is exclusively federal).
• It continues to amaze me that lawyers are so ignorant of their own responsibilities to respect copyright. I suppose it shouldn't; between the outrageous and excessive prices charged for strictly legal materials that lawyers (among others) really do need to do their jobs and the continued belief by the organized bar that it is special and far, far beyond any possible criticism by the hoi polloi, it's really not that amazing.
• The Copyright Office says it wants to know what users think about searching copyright records. My answer is much simpler than it wants to hear: Get rid of registration and records unless the Copyright Office is also going to get into the business of enforcing transfer requirements... and, in particular, if it wants to act like a land registry, that it also takes on and performs the responsibilities of a land registry. That, however, is an argument that I can't win, if only because Congress wants the constant income-stream from registration payments!