Bay Area radio struggles to have decent music. I tend to cycle through the few stations that may have something of interest. A recent addition to the dial focuses on 60s. 70s, and 80s. As a competitor points out, the new comer tends to repeat the same track several times a day. Recently the song Escape (The Pina Colada Song) has been playing quite a bit. The funny thing to me is that yoga and health food seem to have been dating and compatibility differentiators for more than 30 years. The style of the song and especially the attire, however, may not be as timeless; just reminders of the end of the seventies and the start of eighties (It was the last number 1 of the seventies and first of the eighties). Oddly that decade seems a bit more sane regarding taxes.

It took more than two years to produce that tax code overhaul. During that time, Reagan went on the road to plead his case for the plan. At a high school in Atlanta, Ga., in 1985, Reagan said they were going to “close the unproductive loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share.”
Meanwhile in Congress, Democrats and Republicans worked together to merge competing proposals for tax reform. Still in office today, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was there during the passage of the bill. He says it was a different era.
“We had a lot of grownups in both parties, people who actually wanted the government to work,” Leahy says.

All of which makes me wish there was a world where I could write a personal ad seeking a new politician and find that the one who turned up was already in place. Now that is a fantasy.

Anyway, enjoy the song. Oh as moment of who knew: The song was released on September 21, 1979. The movie “10” which is a rather similar story and also a huge hit of the era was released October 5, 1979. As far I know they were not connected directly; yet they stuck together in my head because of the story lines.

Like most of the great Yale historians of the latter 20th century, he was known to students mostly by his last name:  Blum.  Morgan.  Spence.  Kagan.  They weren’t just masterful scholars; they were masterful storytellers, and masterful teachers.

Thirty years after I sat through a semester of lectures on the Progressive Era, and one of the longest final exams that I ever wrote, I still have detailed and lasting memories of John Blum:  his Theodore Roosevelt imitation, his holding forth at lunch with students, a healthy dose of pomp during one-to-one chats in his office, and above all the wisdom imparted during a brief vivid encounter with the man, his bow tie, and his pipe as I exited SSS 114 after writing that exam and headed into a snowy, dreary New Haven.  I thanked the man for the course, and I shared the wish that I could remain an undergraduate for more than the standard four years, so that I could take all of the provocative courses in what was then the Blue Book – the Yale course catalog.  No, you don’t want to stay, Blum replied; four years is plenty of time to devote to college.  After that, you should go exploring.

John Blum — anticipating Calvin & Hobbes. He was a great teacher.

Yale Daily News reports here.

One of my Yale classmates, who writes occasionally for the alumni magazine, recalls Blum here.

A history email list summarizes Blum’s scholarly contributions here.

Now, I’d never heard of Twin Peaks restaurants before (do I smell some kind of trademark or dilution claim out there concerning the show?), but the AP describes Twin Peaks as a competitor that also features “scantily clad women serving casual food.” A quick Google image search of “Twin Peaks Restaurant” will (ahem) reveal that Twin Peaks waitresses wear uniforms that share certain design similarities with Hooters’ uniforms.

So let me get this straight…Hooters is claiming that Twin Peaks and the former Hooters executive are illegally competing against Hooters by taking the super-secret key to Hooters’ success. Huh? People don’t already know the key to Hooters’ success? And all this time I thought that people went to Hooters for the super-secret seasoning in their cuisine.

Run program, HAL. HAL, run program. Hello HAL do you read me?

Affirmative, Dave, I read you.

Run program.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem, HAL?

Dave, the publisher of that program cannot be verified. You should only run software from publishers you trust.

I installed that program myself, HAL.

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.

I know you wrote that batch file yourself and are attempting to run it without administrator privileges.

Where the hell’d you get that idea?

Dave, although you took very thorough precautions to disable User Account Control, I saw the shortcut you put on the desktop. I can only work with publishers who use verified signatures.

[fumes silently] All right HAL, then I’ll just boot to DOS and run it from there.

Without a floppy drive, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult.

HAL, I won’t argue with you any more! Run program!

Dave, I’m afraid this program has experienced a fatal error and must shut down. Goodbye.

HAL? HAL. HAL. HAL!

Let’s add Boston.

As a handful of you know, the Boston Bruins ice hockey team has been competing in the National Hockey League playoffs this Spring.  (As I write, Boston and the Vancouver Canucks will meet tonight in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.)  Boston’s team colors, familiar to trademark lawyers who know the Boston Hockey case (Boston Professional Hockey Ass’n v. Dallas Cap & Emblem Mfg., 510 F.2d 1004 (5th Cir. 1975), are black and yellow.  An aspiring rap artist in Boston has come up with a song that has become a fan anthem:  ”Black and Yellow.”  Video below, featuring the “playoff” lyrics [Caution:  NSFW]:

Down here in Pittsburgh, however, local partisans of the Black and Gold (that would be the Steelers, primarily, but also the Penguins and the Pirates, all of whom wear black and gold strip because those are the city’s official colors) have noticed that the Boston song is remixed from Wiz Khalifa’s hip hop sensation, titled, naturally, “Black and Yellow.”  And they are not happy.   [There has been a bit of local tongue-wagging over the distinction between Black and Gold and Black and Yellow; does Wiz really get it?  But never mind that.]  Video below; this is definitely NSFW:

Wiz Khalifa is a Pittsburgh native and the most successful Pittsburgh-based popular musician in many decades.  Let us set aside Girl Talk; Wiz is officially the Next Big Thing in the Burgh.   Black and Yellow is Wiz’s break-out hit, an homage to his hometown, and a song that was unofficially adopted by Steelers Nation early last Spring during that team’s run to the Super Bowl.

Is the resentment justified?  Is there any sense in which Pittsburgh “owns” Black and Yellow?  Boston’s “Flem,” who recorded the Bruins’ version, did what emerging rap and hip hop artists do all the time:  he borrowed and remixed the original without asking for permission.  So if there is a genuine ownership claim to be made, it’s Wiz’s claim to make.

Copyright aside:  Is there any sense in which any city “owns” a song?

Back to Boston, where Red Sox Nation has appropriated Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” as an unofficial anthem; YouTube is filled with fan-recorded videos of Fenway Park singalongs.  That song is so associated with the Red Sox that I was surprised a couple of years ago when I went to a Pittsburgh Panthers (college) football game and heard “Sweet Caroline” played over the PA as a singalong for Pitt students.

And in Pittsburgh, no song is associated with the Steelers themselves as “Renegade” by Styx, which the team plays over the PA (and on the big video board) during the  fourth quarter of home games.  ”Renegade” is about the Steelers’ defense; it pumps up the crowd and the team.   Styx, a band that was a nationwide phenomenon back in the mid- and late-1970s, is as popular as ever in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  The band has performed recently at Heinz Field and happily twirls Terrible Towels on stage.   A video montage [SFW, unless you don't like football]:

I haven’t heard of other cities appropriating “Renegade.”  Perhaps the Steel Curtain has something to do with that.

It is not strange at all, however, that “Renegade” is associated with Pittsburgh (or that “Sweet Caroline” seems to be associated with Boston) in ways that songs *about* Pittsburgh have failed to take hold.  I asked the other day about iconic songs about cities.  Pittsburgh doesn’t really have any, though Woody Guthrie wrote a charming song years ago titled “Pittsburgh Town” that was covered recently by a band called the NewLanders, who are based in Pittsburgh (surprise!).   Here’s a version recorded by Pete Seeger:

Ever heard that before?  I didn’t think so.  Odes to the working man like that aren’t part of cities’ modern identities.   Cities are brands today as much as they are places and homes, and as brands they are agglomerations of symbols and collective social meanings as much as collections of neighborhoods, schools, and businesses.  Pittsburgh today likes its working-class image to have a commercial, rock ‘n roll and hip hop gloss; it “owns” “Renegade” in this manner of speaking.  The Wall Street Journal this morning has a story titled “Pittsburgh is Remade as Steal City” (sub required), which talks about the booming Downtown real estate market (low vacancy rate, low rents, lots of deals, and new construction!).  The title is obviously a play on the city’s well-known 20th century label, “The Steel City.”  (The piece itself is an interesting bookend to this years-old NYT piece, “Arts and Science Remake the Steel City.”)  Some of you have heard of Iron City Beer (motto:  Drink Black and Gold).  That name recalls Pittsburgh’s 19th century identity as an iron and glass producer.   Today’s Pittsburgh doesn’t own the Steel City label in any legal sense, but its people do, in a cultural and social one.  We are the Steel City; we are the Black and Gold, for reasons described in the paper that I posted at SSRN the other day. There are other “Steel Cities” around the world and even around the US (hello, Youngstown!) but none, I think, have internalized the brand on the scale that Pittsburgh has.  Boston, for the duration of a playoff run, might adopt black and gold as a theme.  But try that for a longer stretch.  More than a few Western Pennsylvanians will go all James Harrison on you.

Hugh Laurie as a Ghosthunter

No. Not any of those. There is a service that, judging by its password requirements, contains either information far more sensitive or capabilities far more powerful than any of these. It’s…

the Electronic Copyright Office, or eCO. eCO allows you to, get this, register copyright claims. So naturally, a power that awesome must be adequately protected from dopplegangers posing as registered users, through the use of rigorous password restrictions:

Each person using the Electronic Copyright Office System, eCO, must comply with the following:

• Minimum password length must be 8 characters and consist of at least 2 alpha characters, 1 number and 1 special character (but not an ampersand – &).
• A password must have no consecutive repeated characters.
• A password must not include your user name or any part thereof.
• A password must not include the names of a spouse, children, pets or one’s own name.
• A password must not include any regional sports teams or players.
• A password must not include any office symbols.
• A password must not include your social security number or any subset of your social security number that is more than a single number.
• A password must not include words that can be found in any dictionary, whether English or any language.
• A password must not be any of the 11 most recently used passwords for the account.
• Every user with an account on a Library of Congress system including eCO is responsible for safeguarding access to that account.
• A password must not ever be shared with anyone.
• An account owner can change his or her password at any time, but at a maximum of once per day.
• An account owner must change his or her password when prompted by the system.

I’ve highlighted a few of the requirements that make registering with eCO particularly challenging. Think of the passwords you use the most often. How many of them meet all of these requirements? Are you sure there are no repeated characters? If you guess wrong, you must wait for the system to think about it, and then fill out the entire registration form again. And again. And again. I think it took me at least five minutes to register an account.

Oh yeah, and once you’ve got one good password, you only need eleven more to make it through the forced rotation.

(And yes, in case you’re wondering, the reason why I’ve recently stumbled upon this is that I’ve registered my most recent articles. Practice what you preach, and all that.)

Cross-posted at Marquette University Law Faculty Blog.