By David Pescovitz at 2:56 pm Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Tired of students bitching about the cafeteria food, some colleges are soliciting family recipes to add to the menus. From the Associated Press:
"It's a great connection with home for the students, and a way to de-institutionalize a college food service program," said J. Michael Floyd, food service director at the University of Georgia, which pioneered the approach 20 years ago with its annual Taste of Home competition...
From hundreds of entries that are taste-tested each year, Georgia has selected such winners as eclair squares, poppy seed chicken and bulldog punch bowl cake.
At Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, barbecued salmon and Thai eggplant dishes had their start in students' homes, as did the Ukrainian apple nut squares and whole-wheat cheddar buns.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 1:57 pm Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Coop says, "Bad little kids used to get coal in their stocking; now they get this!" It's true--a Dr. Laura Talking action figure. According to DrLaura.com, you just "Press her button" (!) and she says things like, "...proud mother of an American Soldier," "...this is the hill you want to die on?," and "Now, go do the right thing."
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 6:23 am Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Next Saturday, I'm hoping to nail up
all of my Xmas shopping in one swell foop by attending Felt Club, the semi-regular crafts fair in Los Angeles. The pre-Xmas one on Dec 9 promises to be the biggest and best ever -- a lounge hosted by Craft magazine, swag bags, raffles, and DJs Dirty Robot and Lance Rock. Plus, of course, plenty of crafty artisanal wares for easy, one-of-a-kind Xmas shopping.
Where: Ukrainian Cultural Center LA, 4315 Melrose Ave at Heliotrope
When: Sat, Dec 9, Noon-7PM
Link, Flickr Felt Club photos
By Cory Doctorow at 6:10 am Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Yesterday, I
blogged about Fox sending out bogus copyright takedown notices to websites that linked to material that they said infringed their copyright. There's no established law that says that linking to infringing material is itself infringing, but that doesn't stop Fox from just making up whatever copyright laws it wants and enforcing them through harassing, fraudulent letters.
There's more harm to this than the direct harm to individuals who post links that Fox doesn't like. Even worse is the chilling effect on people who write the Web, the fear that they're going to come under a legal hammer unless they validate the copyright status of every link they make (imagine if Google held itself to this standard! No Blogger, no search-results, no Google Groups).
Some Wikipedia editors have now taken the position that all links to YouTube clips and any other material whose copyright status can't be validated (that is, practically every single page on the Internet) should be ripped out of Wikipedia. That means that an entry about Stephen Colbert couldn't link to fair-use excerpts of his White House Press Corps speech; that an entry about the Katrina disaster couldn't link to eyewitness videos, and so on.
Link
(Thanks, Adam!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:02 am Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Looking for the right Xmas pressie for the British sf fan in your life? Aust Gate, one of the UK's finest sf bookstores, has just posted its Christmas Catalogue, including some signed copies of my latest novel. Aust Gate's proprietor, Iain Elmsley, has a talent for sniffing out obscure titles you won't see on the shelf at Waterstone's.
Link
(
Thanks, Iain!)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:58 am Saturday, Dec 2
• Comments • Share
Edgar Bronfman Jr, head of Warner Music, was asked if his kids steal music. He said they had, and that he'd made sure that they'd "suffered the consequences" but wouldn't say what he actually did to them, beyond giving them a stern talking-to.
However, Warner Music and the other big labels routinely sue the families of children who download music for their entire life's savings. That, in Bronfman's view, is the "consequences" of "stealing music" -- so did he turn over his entire life's savings to his employer?
We asked Edgar Bronfman, the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music.
“I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.”
We couldn’t begin to guess what that means. He explained to our Second Life reporter, Adam Pasick:
“I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”
Great, but what did he do to them?
“I think I’ll keep that within the family.”
Link
(
via NetZoo)
