Tyler Cowen’s “Good and Plenty” promotes the use of market mechanisms to fund culture. He’s recently turned his attention to valuation problems raised by time spent on the web:
Much of the Web’s value is experienced at the personal level and does not show up in productivity numbers. Buying $2 worth of bananas boosts [...]

[Read more →]

I’d resolved to ease up on the YouTube clips but I couldn’t let this one pass unblogged:

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Personally, I’m pleased about this, though I suppose some people might find it odd to be pleased about adding new parties to litigation.  Still, if this turns out to be a significant opinion on fair use, which it will probably be, I really think that the artist should be heard.
Garcia’s own web site is here.  [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

From here:
… [The] Panera [Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain] has a clause in its lease that prevents the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from renting to another sandwich shop. Panera tried to invoke that clause to stop the opening of an Qdoba Mexican Grill.
But Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke cited Webster’s Dictionary as well [...]

[Read more →]

This article, which I couldn’t resist reposting in its entirety, is from Daily Finance:
A push to tweak existing copyright laws to help newspapers profit from the content they produce has attracted some very vocal opposition in a short span of time, but the idea continues to gain currency nevertheless. Jason Klein, president and CEO of [...]

[Read more →]

The company pummels the crud out of suitcases, too. Via.

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Slate Pundit and law school graduate Mickey Kaus has just discovered Section 230 but he doesn’t think it “will hold up.”

[Read more →]

Wired editor Chris Anderson, in a book entitled Free, in passages defining “free lunch” and the “TANSTAAFL” acronym, decides to get his authorial words for free from Wikipedia and to include them in Free without attribution. Guess what? Turns out that when it comes to lifting other people’s writing, there’s no such thing [...]

[Read more →]

From here:
I went to the Patent Office trying to register some of my inventions. I went to the main desk to sign in and the lady at the desk had a form that had to be filled out. She wrote down my personal info and then asked me what I had invented.
I said, “A folding [...]

[Read more →]

Stories told in a single sentence. From here:
When I was 5 or so my mom would tell me to lie down before she tied my tie and I just now realized at the age of 19 that she did this because she’s a funeral director.
As you were breaking up with me, all I could think [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Prequel:  A Sequel in the Rye
J.D. Salinger has persuaded a district court judge to elevate a temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction in his effort to prevent American audiences from reading 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which uses an aged Holden Caulfield in a narrative sequel to – or parody of — [...]

[Read more →]

I sometimes wonder if the flipside of the AI campaign to make machines more humanlike is a pharmacological campaign to make humans as quiescent as machines. As global competition increases the value of productivity, an underground world of neuro-enhancing drugs is a growing part of campus life. But what about “emotional enhancements?” [...]

[Read more →]