If we need more evidence the world is imploding on its own good misdeeds, we need look no further than the weight of the ridiculousness that the Urban Dictionary is now being used in courts of law to define colloquial phrases and to help educate judges and juries as to “meaning in the street.”
If you had access to a 3D printer and could create only one thing out of plastic, from scratch, what would you make? An implantable human ear replacement? A filter for pumping clean water in thirsty third-world nations? What about forming something fun and whimsical like, say, an acoustic guitar? Or, would you take the tunnel of least resistance, and the road of the lowest common human morality, and choose to print a plastic gun for killing people?
Do you know there’s a move afoot to make it illegal for good people to make video recordings of the deeds of bad people breaking the law by hurting farm animals?
On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country’s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.
Each video — all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists — drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald’s, which said the video played a part in its decision.
Continue reading → Ag-Gags Punish the Recording of the Circle of Death
John Wiley & Sons came up bupkis in the Supreme Court of the Unites States in their Copyright infringement case against a Cornell student who was reselling Wiley textbooks published in Thailand in the USA at a highly discounted rate. One would think that ruling is terrible for textbooks and for authors — the opposite is true.
Continue reading → Predatory Pricing Policies and Owning the Right of First Sale
I’ve never smoked marijuana. I have a terrible allergy to the weed. However, I do favor voting “Yes” on November 2, 2010 in support of California’s Proposition 19 — just like my international spokesdog friend Skippy O’Connell found in the delightful image below.
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