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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 |
alexx_kay
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1:48p |
Strawberry update
Been lax about these, but have been harvesting pretty steadily (on non-rainy mornings). Got a few weeks of a steady quart a day, but we're now a few days past peak, and down to less than a pint. Still enough to feed the house (and guests!), but no longer enough to bring in and feed my office-mates. |
drcpunk
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11:46a |
Recent Reading
34. Death ad Resurrection, by R. A. MacAvoy. A pleasant read, with enough plot for three or four novels, but I do wish it had paid more than lip service to the protagonist's complex family baggage. 35. Black Butler #12, a manga. 36. Black Butler #13, a manga. The current sequence is an interesting revelation of character ad backstory all around, with a desperate battle raging in the foreground / background, depending on where the focus is. 37. Dark Streets, by Peter Cakewood and Ken Walton. RPG, using Renaissance Deluxe / Clockwork & Chivalry rules, set in 18th century London. I'm currently running the scenario in it for Kerberos Club Fate Edition, swapping out the Cthulhu mythos for Sidhe politics. Maybe I'll have opportunity to run it as is (probably using BRPS), because it's a fine scenario. I'm just trying to avoid many mythos elements in the Kerberos game. 38. Some Kind of Fairy Tale, by Graham Joyce. This is the first book of his I've read which I've actually liked. There are several things that bugged me, but on the whole, I like the take on how things would go down if someone had been taken by the sidhe a decade or so ago and then returned, oh, now. 39. The Drowning Girl, by Caitlan Kiernan. Not to my taste, but very well written. 40. Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone. This was as good as I'd been told it was. The cover makes it look like urban fantasy, which is not inaccurate, but this isn't our world. I liked the strong female characters -- and the strong male ones -- but I could have done without the "oh, and by the way, the bad guy you've been hating is totally a misogynist" that seems tacked on. I mean, yes, okay, this fits the known facts, but why does he have to be a misogynist? He's got a splendid Master Plan of Evil that totally doesn't require misogyny, and I don't like the implication that being a villain means you're going to be a misogynist (at least, if you're male). 41. Alarums & Excursions #452. 42. Red Shirts, by John Scalzi. Fun and a fast read. I read it all on Saturday at Balticon, and I had a lot of non-reading fun that day. 43. 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I enjoyed it and thought of it as old fashioned sense of wonder sf. After reading it, I found myself a bit disturbed by gender issues, which gets complicated given the theoretical norms of the book. 44. Alarums & Excursios #453. 45. Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia. Why, yes, I have been reading for the Hugos. I don't think this is as strong as Massively Parallel or Force Multiplication, but it's still plenty good. 46. Locke and Key: Clockworks. This is the 5th of a six part graphic novel series, and, oddly, stands alone better than the 4th part did, probably because so much of Clockworks is the backstory that readers have been getting tantalizing hints about since the beginning. I'm very glad two books of this were nominated for the Hugo because I'm not sure I would have read them otherwise, and this is exactly the sort of thing I like. Fantasy / Horror blend, definitely for mature readers. 47. Saga, volume 1. This one has an advantage over Schlock and L&K because it is the first volume, so there's no sense of missing backstory. It's also very good. 48. Saucer Country, volume 1: Run. I liked Saga better, but this is also strong, and the subtitle is apt. |
magid
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11:35a |
Wild & Woolly
The yarn store on Lexington green, Wild and Woolly, is closing by the end of the month (and Windsor Button closed a couple of months ago too; it is a sad time for local yarn shops....). A knitting friend forwarded an email that in addition to the store closing sale, this morning there would be extra discounts given, so we went on a yarn quest. As it turned out, I had a fully-punched loyalty card from them, and though the wording on the card was that it was good for $30 of full-price yarn, they were nice enough to apply it to the yarn I was getting.... after the closing sale discount of 40% (already marked on the skeins) and the extra 20% before 10 A.M. this morning. So I bought the yarn shown here (one skein all alpaca, three skeins mostly alpaca and some wool, one all wool, and that eyelash red stuff so very very synthetic):  .... for $1.20. I'm still rather impressed with myself, and suspect thrifty female ancestors are doing the opposite of spinning in their graves. (Though come to think of it, that would seem appropriate for yarn deals.... :-). |
dglenn
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5:27a |
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girlgenius_feed
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4:00a |
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girlgeniuscomic
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12:57a |
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xkcd_rss
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4:00a |
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| Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 |
teddywolf
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10:56p |
Said tonight to a roommate who had trouble sleeping last night as she pondered the problems of existence: "And [Browngirl]? All the problems of the world don't mean squat when you're faced with somebody flashing their underwear." |
autographedcat
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3:58p |
Boba Fett Isn't Dead
Boba Fett Isn’t Dead
TTTO: “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus
Red on green Mandalore armor
Back on the track
Boba Fett isn’t dead
The hunter left the sarlaac pit
The Jedi have all fled
Skywalker downs the sand skiff
Boba Fett isn’t dead
Boba Fett isn’t dead
Not dead! Not dead! Not dead!
Not dead! Not dead! Not dead!
The bounty hunters file past his tomb
Strewn with time’s lost contracts
Adrift in spacial slip
Alone on a darkened ship
The clone
Boba Fett isn’t dead
Boba Fett isn’t dead
Boba Fett isn’t dead
Not dead! Not dead! Not dead!
Not dead! Not dead! Not dead!
Not dead!
Oh Boba
Boba’s not dead
Oh Boba
Boba’s not dead
Boba’s not dead
Oh Boba
Boba’s not dead
Oh Boba
Boba Fett is an interesting character. He has about 20 minutes of screen time and five lines of dialogue in the original Star Wars trilogy, and still became one of its most enduring and popular characters. I can’t really think of anything else quite like it in popular culture.
If you’re like me and your Star Wars knowledge is primarily limited to the films, you may be unaware of the complex storyline that Boba Fett is at the centre of. In particular, you may not be aware that the character did not die in “Return of the Jedi”, but in fact escaped his fate and went on to have many more significant adventures in what is called the “Expanded Universe” of Star Wars lore.
I don’t recall with whom I was chatting about Star Wars (though I have a vague memory it was either Bryan Provost or Nigel Cox), but their reaction to my comment about Fett dying in RotJ was a forceful “Boba Fett isn’t dead!”, which managed to connect to the iconic refrain of this classic Bauhaus song. Not sure what to do with it, it sat in my unfinished songs folder for weeks, until the rest of it presented itself to me.
If you’re unfamiliar with the original tune and want to skip to the bit that has words in, jump to the 2:50 minute mark of the video linked above. Mirrored from Home of the Autographed Cat. |
jducoeur
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4:43p |
Going to Italy
So Kate and I will be heading to Italy in October (for our honeymoon). We're mostly good on where we're going, how we're getting there and what to see while we're there. (Florence and Rome, flying in with a train in between, and lots of stuff, respectively.) But we haven't worked out where to stay (lots of ideas, but still brainstorming) and we certainly haven't started exploring any "special" meal possibilities (we'll mostly do casual fare, but it might be nice to do one or two nice dinners over our week and a bit). Anybody have any recommendations? |
filkerdave
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4:08p |
LYR: GLaDOS
OK, I admit that this is kind of insta-ish, and the scansion's a little forced, but... GLaDOS Words: © David Weingart 2013 Music: "Luka" © Suzanne Vega My name is GLaDOS I'm a personal'ty core I live at Aperture Maybe you've been through here before I must admit that I'm impressed At how you lived through all my tests Just don't ask me what they're for Just don't ask me what they're for Just don't ask me what they're for I think it's 'cause you're clever You don't ever talk out loud Maybe it's because I'm crazy And skipping tests is not allowed But only turrets can surpass My deadly neurotoxin gas You just won't breathe in anymore You just won't breathe in anymore You just won't breathe in anymore But I think I'm okay I'm tot'lly in control again Although of what, it's hard to say I'm doing Science anyway It's hard to kill you, this I know You want your freedom, so just go Doing Science, I'm still alive Doing Science, I'm still alive Doing Science, I'm still alive My name is GLaDOS I'm a personal'ty core I live at Aperture Maybe you've been through here before I must admit that I'm impressed At how you lived through all my tests Just don't ask me what they're for Just don't ask me what they're for Just don't ask me what they're for It's hard to kill you, this I know You want your freedom, so just go Doing Science, I'm still alive Doing Science, I'm still alive Doing Science, I'm still alive  DW comments
This entry was originally posted on my Dreamwidth journal. You may comment there or here. Current Mood:  accomplished |
alexx_kay
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3:19p |
"Hobbit-ception"
This was the most the internet has made me laugh at one sitting in years. First, the trailer for The Hobbit part 2 comes out. Then a pair of fans post a silly video of them squeeing at the trailer -- mildly funny. *Then* someone grabs a bunch of actors during the filming of The Hobbit part 3, and films *them* watching and reacting to the fan video. *THEN*, the fans filmed their reaction to the actor's reaction to the fans' reaction to the trailer. Come for the meta, stay for the ever-more-extreme facial expressions and contagious laughter. |
jducoeur
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1:53p |
Stepping back a bit
A note, probably more because I need to say it than that anybody needs to hear it. I'm burned out. Really on quite a broad level, but particularly on the SCA. There's a lot feeding into that -- certainly a lot of miscellaneous annoying politics over the past couple of years, plus a general feeling of having gotten stale. It's been building for a while, but this year has driven it home: my life has been *so* insane (between selling the house, planning weddings, settling Jane's estate, starting Querki and all) that I really need my recreational time to be fun, and I haven't been having enough fun in the SCA lately. So I need to step back and refocus a bit. This isn't an "I'm quitting!" flounce -- I expect to stay active in some guilds, and maybe even take up some new ones. It *does* mean that I'm largely taking the summer off from events, though: I've gotten into too much of a mindset of feeling that I *have* to go to local events (combined with some dumb ego about the proportion of local events I've been to over the past 30 years), and that's a lousy reason to attend. Hence the timing of this note: I'm probably going to skip Known World Dance, and I don't want anybody taking that as a Statement or some sort of criticism of the event. I had really planned on attending, but have realized that I just can't deal with the effort right now. By and large, I'm just taking a pass on most/all events for a few months, to clear my head. I already didn't go to Cohasset Wars, am definitely skipping Pennsic, and GNE is 50/50 at this point. It's going to be a quiet SCA summer for me. I expect I'll ramp my activity level back up down the road, but need to do it for the right reasons, which means finding my Fun again... |
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law_multiverse
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1:58p |
Man of Steel
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2013/06/18/man-of-steel/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=man-of-steel http://lawandthemultiverse.com/?p=2433 I just got out of Man of Steel, and there’s something of a doozy of a legal question pretty early on. There are some very mild spoilers inside, but no real plot points, so proceed at your discretion.
I. Background
The issue here is that when Lois Lane (in her canonical role as a reporter for the Daily Planet) shows up at the site of what we later learn is a crashed Kryptonian ship, she is met by Col. Nathan Hardy of the US armed forces, who doesn’t really want her there. In typical Lois Lane style, she confronts the problem directly, and says something to the effect that the only reason she’s there is that “We’re on Canadian soil, and an appellate court overturned your injunction.”
Say what now?
II. Civil Procedure
Let’s set aside the subject matter of the discussion for a second to do a brief review of civil procedure. An injunction is a court order for a particular party to do or not do something, usually the latter. So for there to be an injunction in place, the military must have sought such an order from a trial court. But from Lane’s description, it’s not entirely clear which court. And I don’t mean which Federal District Court, but which country. We are in Canada, after all, and there is a reference earlier in the movie to the site being manned by researchers and armed forces from other countries. That’s never made clear, so let’s just assume that since Lane is an American, and she’s talking to an American military officer, that we’re talking about Federal District Court. If we’re not, all bets are totally off.
Okay. Her statement indicates not only that the military has sought and obtained an injunction, but that she—or presumably the Daily Planet on her behalf—has fought that injunction in court, lost, filed a timely appeal, had that appeal heard, and had the appellate court throw out the underlying court’s injunction. At that point the military either declined to seek review by the Supreme Court or the Supreme Court declined to intervene.
Even from a strictly civil procedure standpoint, this is a little implausible. Assuming for the purposes of argument that the military would have sought an injunction in the first place—more on that in a second—the wheels of justice do not tend to move particularly rapidly. Litigation takes time. Years, frequently. Getting a single case from complaint to verdict inside of twelve months is moving along at a pretty good clip. Moving from there to a final appellate judgment in less than a second year is also pretty impressive. The record is most likely New York Times Co. v. U.S., the case about the Pentagon Papers, which the New York Times published on June 12-14, 1971. The Department of Justice sued immediately, and the case went from S.D.N.Y. (328 F.Supp. 324) on June 15, to the Second Circuit (444 F.2d 544) on June 23, to the Supreme Court (403 U.S. 713) on June 30, 1971. That’s about two weeks. Even Bush v. Gore took about a month.
But the Pentagon Papers was about the past publication of classified documents. This is probably a First Amendment case, but it’s more about the right to investigate than the right to publish. We’ll talk about why in a minute, but convincing the courts that an issue like that constitutes an emergency on the scale of New York Times Co. v. U.S. or Bush v. Gore sounds like a tough sell at best. The movie doesn’t really say one way or the other, but I took it as implying that the find was less than a few months old when Lane helicoptered in. So the timing is problematic.
III. Military Access Restrictions
Then again, why the military would need an injunction for this sort of thing is also unclear. The military generally doesn’t have to ask the courts for permission to exclude civilians from the areas in which it is operating. All those embedded journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan? They’re there at the Pentagon’s good pleasure, not of right. We’re not talking about places where the military has operations generally—the military does not gain jurisdiction by driving tanks around—but places where the military has established a base of operations, even a temporary one. The military has more or less absolute control over who is permitted to be there, and the courts aren’t going to say anything about it. If you walk up to a military base without a pass, you’ll be stopped at the gate and asked what you’re about. Even if the base has areas that are open to the public, trying to go anywhere that the base commandant says that you can’t will result in you being stopped. Persist, and you’ll either be physically removed from the base and told not to do that again or (and especially if this isn’t your first rodeo) arrested for trespassing on military property, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1382 and a misdemeanor. Good times. And no, the fact that we’re in Canada doesn’t count: the courts have interpreted the statute to include all those areas which the military “occupies and controls,” even those not part of the United States. You can’t just show up at Camp Rhino any more than you can Camp Pendleton.
So when Lane says that the military’s “injunction” was thrown out, it’s probably best to assume that she’s speaking casually and that what’s really happened is that the Daily Planet has sued for permission to access this site despite the military’s objections, not that the military has sought an injunction which the Planet opposed. There’s no obvious reason that the military would need an injunction for this sort of thing: it is statutorily authorized to restrict civilian access to military facilities.
IV. The First Amendment and Investigation
Unfortunately, changing the procedural details doesn’t really solve the problem. The First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that media companies exist in some kind of constitutionally protected category, and that people with press passes have rights that the rest of us do not. Rather, the freedom of the press simply means that one has a right to put in print anything that one would have a right to speak out loud. As this was most decidedly not the case for much of British history, one can see why the Founding Fathers sought to conflate the rights to freedom of communication in this manner. The courts have recognized that the First Amendment also serves to protect “rigorous public debate,” particularly where politics are concerned, but this is more of an animating principle than it is a concrete right in and of itself.
What this means is that lots of things that journalists would really like to be able to do are not actually protected by the First Amendment. The most well known example would be the so-called “reporter’s privilege,” i.e., the right of a journalist to decline to reveal the identity of confidential sources or to disclose their investigative work product. Courts do not like doing that sort of thing and invoke the First Amendment when they decline to do so, but this is one of the least absolute First Amendment freedoms. A journalist actually went to jail for refusing to disclose confidential sources related to the Plame affair, and both district and circuit courts ruled against her. Suffice it to say that the farther one gets from actual publication, the more attenuated one’s First Amendment rights become.
As to the fact that there is some kind of qualified privilege in most jurisdictions, if a court can find a reason other than the First Amendment for denying requests put to journalists, it will usually try to base its decision on those grounds. These include things like state shield laws, but courts also freely rely upon the discretion granted them in the federal rules pertaining to discovery (particularly Rules 22 and 37). Courts are sensitive to the power of discovery and do not take kindly to making third parties fish through archives. The fact that newspapers could easily be forced to do this on every single case is a good reason for the courts to view such requests skeptically completely independent of the First Amendment. If a litigant can come up with a really good reason, a court may permit the discovery, but the fact is that it is a journalist’s job to be where interesting things happen, so forcing them to give testimony whenever they see something interesting would actually make it impossible for them to do their jobs. That’s the kind of burden courts think about when deciding to grant discovery requests to third parties.
But now we’re talking about an even more attenuated claim of privilege than the disclosure of confidential sources or even non-confidential investigative information. While there is a general right to publish, and a qualified right to resist disclosure of the sources and fruits of one’s investigations, there is no general First Amendment right to access people, documents, or places. Take the Pentagon Papers for example. The First Amendment protects publication, so once the Times got hold of them, the courts weren’t going to stop them from being published. But the First Amendment does not guarantee you access to anything, so if the Times had asked for the papers, the government would have said no, and if it had sued for access, it would likely have lost. Leaks of classified information have been in the news for a few years now, but note that the people who might get in trouble are almost always the people who gave information to the media. The media organizations themselves have tended to receive little attention, which is partly why the recent flap about the Department of Justice investigating them was received so badly.
This is to be distinguished from things like the Freedom of Information Act. Congress may decide to grant access to various things via such mechanisms as the FOIA, but that is a statutory privilege and is strictly limited to those things covered by the statute. It does not, for instance, cover classified materials, and it provides no access whatsoever to facilities, property, or even people. It is strictly limited to documents, and even getting those can be one heck of a fight. But it is based purely on Congress’s legislative authority, not the First Amendment.
So we’re talking about a court ordering the military to permit a reporter to investigate, in person, in an active military site. That’s just not going to happen. Indeed, according to this article, the military basically doesn’t have to permit journalists access to military bases if it doesn’t want to, and the courts are usually deferential to the military on these issues. So even if the Daily Planet had sued for access to this military site, it’s beyond me why any court would have ruled in their favor.
V. Conclusion
So the way the movie handles this particular issue, i.e., justifying Lane’s presence on a military base, was basically botched. There’s really no way of making what she says even remotely plausible.
What makes this annoying is that there’s actually a pretty simple solution: Show Perry making a phone call to the Secretary of Defense (or maybe General Swanwick in order to avoid introducing another character), who just happens to be his college/drinking/golfing buddy, and who turns around and orders Col. Hardy to give Lane access. Kind of like how Richard Castle gets assigned to Det. Beckett’s department in Castle: he parties with the mayor.
Must the military permit access to these sorts of sites? No, probably not. But general officers and the Secretary can order such access if they want to. So instead of making up a line about some court (we know not where) countermanding an order (we know not what) to deny her access (we know not why), she can just say “Perry White was roommates with General Swanwick at Columbia, and they haven’t missed their quarterly golf outing for twenty years. You don’t like it, take it up with the Pentagon.” Boom. Done. And the audience gets a scene with Laurence Fishburne and Harry Lennix playing golf, which would be awesome. |
dglenn
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5:27a |
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infolaw
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3:21a |
The Law of Internet Intermediaries: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2013/06/17/the-law-of-internet-intermediaries-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/?p=1706 I have a short essay, Middlemen, up at the Florida Law Review Forum. It’s a response to Jacqui Lipton‘s thought-provoking article, Law of the Intermediated Information Exchange (bonus: first page is at 1337!). And, it has a footnote about turtles. Here’s the introduction:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The Internet was supposed to mean the death of middlemen. Intermediaries would fade into irrelevance, then extinction, with the advent of universal connectivity and many-to-many communication. The list of predicted victims was lengthy: record labels, newspapers, department stores, travel agents, stockbrokers, computer stores, and banks all confronted desuetude. Most commentators lauded the coming obsolescence as empowering consumers and achieving greater efficiency; a few bemoaned it. But disintermediation was inevitable.
Jacqueline Lipton’s article “Law of the Intermediated Information Exchange” shows how foolish that conclusion was. Tower Records and Borders bookstores folded, and newspapers struggle to survive. But music fans don’t buy directly from Universal Music or Sony Music—they get the latest Jay-Z or Muse tracks from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. College students surf Craigslist to find listings of apartments for rent. News junkies stay glued to Reddit, or Twitter. Kayak collects cheap flight reservations for us. And Google helps us find . . . everything. We simply swapped one set of middlemen for another.
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| Monday, June 17th, 2013 |
gnomi
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10:05p |
Shot in the Dark
Is there anyone out there who meets the following criteria: 1. Knows "Sports Night" well enough to beta a fic based on it. 2. Knows "Glee" well enough to beta a fic based on it. 3. Is willing to beta a ~2100-word story I've been having a lot of trouble finding someone who fits both 1 and 2. If you are that person, I would really appreciate your help. Current Mood: apprehensive |
gnomi
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9:09p |
With Apologies to William Shakespeare
To post unbeta'ed or not to post unbeta'ed, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler online to suffer the slings and arrows of snarky comments Or to take arms against a sea of unnecessary commas And through Track Comments end them? (a ponderance as I approach what I believe is the end of this thing I'm writing.) Current Mood:  creative |
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law_multiverse
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8:48p |
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conterpoint
[ gorgeousgary ]
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7:45p |
A Few Good Volunteers
Just a few days left before Conterpoint kicks off! As all good cons do, we are looking for volunteers to help us keep things running smoothly. The key areas are: (1) Registration - In particular, we are looking for one or two folks to help with the morning (9am to 11am or noon) shift. (2) Con Suite - On the flip side from registration, we need folks who can watch the con suite Friday and Saturday nights during the later hours (after about 10pm) (3) Interfilk - We need one or two trustworthy folks to help collect money on Sunday afternoon, as the main Interfilk crew will be wrapped up in the "Reaching for Space" concert. E-mail or message me if you're willing to help with any of the above. Thanks! |
nefilk
[ gorgeousgary ]
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7:44p |
A Few Good Volunteers
Just a few days left before Conterpoint kicks off! As all good cons do, we are looking for volunteers to help us keep things running smoothly. The key areas are: (1) Registration - In particular, we are looking for one or two folks to help with the morning (9am to 11am or noon) shift. (2) Con Suite - On the flip side from registration, we need folks who can watch the con suite Friday and Saturday nights during the later hours (after about 10pm) (3) Interfilk - We need one or two trustworthy folks to help collect money on Sunday afternoon, as the main Interfilk crew will be wrapped up in the "Reaching for Space" concert. E-mail or message me if you're willing to help with any of the above. Thanks! |
jducoeur
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5:44p |
The Poker Rosetta Stone
For the more technically-minded folks here, it seems a good time for a reminder: if you are intrigued by the stuff I'm talking about with Querki, I have a separate Querki Development Community,  querki_project. Today's post talks about the new "How It Works" convention, and specifically the Poker Space's How It Works page. If you want to start getting a sense of how Querki thinks, and how you build a Space, this is a good place to start. (It's still for programmers only, I'm afraid -- it's going to be a while before things evolve to the point where non-programmers really want to get their hands dirty. But anybody with real code experience may find this interesting.) Comments and questions are encouraged, preferably over in the development journal... |
dglenn
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xkcd_rss
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girlgenius_feed
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osewalrus
