What if I attached a 4’33″ long mp3 of silence?

If I recorded it myself, would that be a forgery or a performance?

What if I used a kazoo instead of a piano?

Would 4’34″ of silence be a derivative work?

Would 15″ of silence, accompanied with this commentary, be an acceptable use excerpt?

Would the sound of one hand clapping be the appropriate sign of appreciation?

Cory Doctorow says:

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

Just WTF sort of delusional thinking gives a principal (or any official, for that matter) the idea that covertly monitoring a child at home is within the purview of his position?

Safer (in a fire-prevention sense) cigarettes have been the goal of activists and researchers since the late 1920s. The Coalition for Fire Safe Cigarettes has been demanding state-by-state legislation (since Congress has yet to make any laws in that regard). Within the last five years, all but one state has already passed laws requiring that only FSCs be sold in-state.

Alex Johnson of MSNBC reported last January that

There are no reliable statistical data demonstrating that fire-safe cigarette laws actually reduce fires. [...] And injuries and deaths due to fires began declining for several years before such laws came on the scene, making researchers reluctant to declare any cause-and-effect relationship.

Research saying they are effective merely notes that the FSCs go out rather than burning down to the filter — which is fine, but apparently they never tried just dropping a burning cigarette of any kind on flammable material. Which may be one reason that FSC is more accurately said to stand for “Fire Standards Compliant”.

Johnson and others report numerous complaints of smokers, such as: smoking more due to having to drag on the cigarettes to keep them lit; various effects such as more coughing, irritated eyes, coppery taste; “flare-ups” and dropping embers when they have to be relit. I’ve only heard complaints about them from smokers I know, but a few smokers are reported to have said they like them because they can be relit later if they go out in the ashtray. Store owners may be another group that approves of them: one is quoted as saying “We’ll sell more lighters.”

Saulius Mikalonis, an environmental attorney posting at Green Blawg, has this to say in “Fire-Safe Cigarettes – Poisoning Smokers to Save Them?“:

However, the material used to retard cigarette burning contain hazardous chemicals, which in turn result in greater amounts of hazardous materials being ingested by smokers through their lungs.

Note that he snarkily heads his post with a quote from Peter Arnett — “So you had to destroy the village in order to save it?” — that “was a response to an army officer after he explained why the army had destroyed a Vietnamese village during the Vietnam War.”

David Jaromnak has opened a petition (“Repeal Fire Safe Cigarette Laws“) sponsored by Citizens Against Fire Safe Cigarettes (CAFSC):

The Citizens Against Fire Safe Cigarettes appeal to State/Commonwealth governments to review the facts and repeal the FSC laws. Failure to do so will result in increased health costs and deaths. If not repealed, the CAFSC will seek legal recourse through the judicial system and State Superior Courts. If necessary, the appeal will be made to the Supreme Court of the United States.

image: Zwei zigaretten.jpg, Wikipedia

I’m sure you’d appreciate that a lot more if you grew up in a small Southern Baptist country church.

In any case, now that I have your attention, what do you think of this question asked at The Washington Post: “Is blasphemy a crime?” It has become so in Ireland, where it can cost you about $35,000 and give you a criminal record.

The UN, since 1999, has each year passed a non-binding resolution condemning “defamation of religions”, but the latest attempt was for a binding resolution — that is, all member countries would have to criminalize blasphemy.

Jason Kuznicki of the Cato Institute thinks that “Blasphemy Laws Are an Admission of Failure“.

It’s not just the humanists or libertarians who think this is a bad idea.

WorldNewsDaily has their their own perspective.

Tom Strode at the Baptist Press says “ERLC, 100-plus groups oppose United Nations ‘defamation of religions’ resolution“. [ERLC is the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission]

Whether you’re Wiccan, Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Hindu, Scientologist, FSM Pastafarian, agnostic, or atheist — I don’t care. What I do care about is being free to think and say whatever I want about your or my religion without fear of it being a criminal act.

Anti-blasphemy laws are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

Earlier times, if I remembered dreams at all, they were generally incoherent, often nightmarish. Occasionally there was no memory of content at all, just waking up with a pervasive sense of menacing evil. I didn’t look forward to them at all.

Or it may just be that They have upgraded our substrate, so that dreams within dreams are more performant.

Perhaps my next dream will be a pixelated Raven saying “Nevermore“.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

A quote from the commentary on the third law:

Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation – or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

If you like the Stupidity grid, you may also be interested in Jerry Pournelle’s “The Pournelle Political Axes“; then try out “The Political Compass“, a test whose result may well annoy you: see their FAQ.

McMatch

You could of course program this, but it wouldn’t be nearly so dramatic.

You are going to build a matchbox robot [loh: yes, real matchboxes or any small containers] and teach it to play Hexapawn so that it always wins. To start with your robot will make random moves and will lose many times. But each time it loses you will discipline it and teach it strategies so it will ultimately win every time.

Atomic Rocket

If you’re into science fiction, you’ll find this site a great time sink.

This site was mainly intended for science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy. But anybody who is interested can play with the toys contained within, designing their own Planet Rangers Rocketships. It is assumed that the reader has enough knowledge to know the difference between a star and a planet, high school mathematics, and enough skill to use a pocket calculator. Computer spreadsheet and computer programming skills are a plus, spreadsheets in particular will make your life much easier.

Lots of interesting links, fascinating facts, and nostalgic book and magazine covers, movie and TV stills, and quotes.

The Language Construction Kit

If you want to go so far as to give your aliens (or future Earthlings) a language, check out Mark Rosenfelder’s site:

This set of webpages (what’s a set of webpages? a webchapter?) is intended for anyone who wants to create artificial languages— for a fantasy or an alien world, as a hobby, as an interlanguage. It presents linguistically sound methods for creating naturalistic languages— which can be reversed to create non-naturalistic languages. It suggests further reading for those who want to know more, and shortcuts for those who want to know less.

Gets your attention doesn’t it? Being such a fan of Microsoft, I couldn’t help but get a little buzz when I read that.

Actually, Microsoft is banned from selling versions of Word that contain a particular piece of “XML technology” which i4i has patented.

This is effective January 11, 2010. The injunction was originally granted last August, but was stayed until MS’s appeal, which they lost yesterday, was ruled upon.

I doubt that MS will actually stop selling Word; they’ll either drop the disputed technology or come up with some royalty agreement with i4i.

One concern I have, if they drop (or alter) the technology, is what effect that will have on the usability of older documents that were saved using the original code.

Just yesterday someone showed me a stack of diskettes they found while cleaning up their office, containing files generated with old software no one (that I know of) has any more. Fortunately, it was out of date material that could be discarded.

Archivists have legitimate concerns about digital artifacts. Not only is the software needed to process material soon out of date and no longer available, but the hardware needed to simply access the media is disappearing as well. For example, diskette drives are now usually special-order items rather than standard; how long before you can’t even get one at all?

But there are a few people who are thinking of The Long Now.

Exhibit 1. For the tv-mathematicians, let me point out that 60 + 63 + 70 = 193, not 100. Source: Truncated thoughts, Math is a tool of the liberal media, 2009-11-25.

You would think that after an error like this, someone would be more diligent in fact-checking and/or proofreading. But you’d be wrong.

Exhibit 2. For the arithmetically challenged, 59 + 35 + 26 = 120, yet again not 100. Source: Truncated thoughts, Math: still the tool of the liberal media, 2009-12-12.

I can overlook the occasional mistake (particularly if it’s my mistake). But in a relatively high-profile venue, repeating the same error within a month? Arrrgh.

images: these are half-size local copies to avoid hot-linking the originals at “Truncated thoughts”.

A Texas constitutional amendment from 2005 which says

SECTION 1. Article I, Texas Constitution, is amended by adding Section 32 to read as follows:
Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

has regained some of its former notoriety in the attorney general race: “Texas marriages in legal limbo because of constitutional amendment, candidate says“.

Language Log’s Mark Liberman provokes an interesting discussion of legal interpretation in “Does marriage exist in Texas?“:

As I wrote in 2005, this seems to be an interesting case for theories of legal interpretation, since on one hand, the intent of the drafters and supporters of the amendment is clear; but on the other hand, as Ms. Radnofsky says, “You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says.”

My first thought was similar to that of commenter Dan T

if the amendment in question were on the subject of illegal drugs, and section (a) said “Narcotics are defined for the purpose of Texas law as drugs which [some description of their properties and effects]“, and (b) said that anything identical or similar to narcotics was not to be made legal by the state or any of its subdivisions, then wouldn’t it be clear that the intent and effect was to ensure the continued illegality of narcotics (as defined therein) and anything “similar” (in some ill-specified way)?

But, IANAL, so I’m easily confused as to when intent trumps literal text and vice versa.

click here for full-size image