+ the UFOs of 1909 (aka the Scareship Panic) - here and here
+ let's be kind to that nice Mr Hitler (Pat Buchanan in barking moonbat mode yet again) - here
+ Lobachevsky meets Barbie ("plagiarise, plagiarise, that's why God gave you eyes"?) - here
+ Geoffrey Nunberg questions hype about Google Books - here
Start with publication dates. To take Google's word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, André Malraux's La Condition Humaine, Stephen King's Christine, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780-1950, and Robert Shelton's biography of Bob Dylan, to name just a few. And while there may be particular reasons why 1899 comes up so often, such misdatings are spread out across the centuries. A book on Peter F. Drucker is dated 1905, four years before the management consultant was even born; a book of Virginia Woolf's letters is dated 1900, when she would have been 8 years old. Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities is dated 1888, and an edition of Henry James's What Maisie Knew is dated 1848.+ Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discuss Lolita ("readymade souls in plastic bags" "shocking, I think it's shocking") in a studio decorated by Liberace - here
+ 'Open Secrets' by Michael Madison, a paper in the forthcoming The Law and Theory of Trade Secrecy: A Handbook of Contemporary Research (Elgar, 2010) edited by Rochelle Dreyfuss & Katherine Strandburg
the law of trade secrets is often conceptualized in bilateral terms, as creating and enforcing rights between trade secret owners, on the one hand, and misappropriators on the other hand. This paper, a chapter in a forthcoming collection on the law of trade secrets, argues that trade secrets and the law that guards them can serve structural and insitutional roles as well. Somewhat surprisingly, given the law’s focus on secrecy, among the institutional products of trade secrets law are commons, or managed openness: environments designed to facilitate the structured sharing of information. The paper illustrates with examples drawn from existing literature on cuisine, magic, and Internet search+ It's art, not obscenity ("nude plinth man sparks complaint") - BBC here notes complaint by an ex-detective after a man stood naked on a Trafalgar Square plinth as part of the ongoing 'One and Other art' installation
A police spokesman said it was not a crime to appear naked in public. ... Mr Holwell, 24, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, said he confirmed with event producer Artichoke that he would be permitted to undress while on the plinth. Afterwards he said: "I was chatting to my mates about it; they see me as a bit of an exhibitionist, this seemed the natural way to go." Mr Holwell, who works in a double-glazing factory [which is presumably quite different to a law faculty], added: "It's the human form, everyone's the same, it's not like I'm showing off something that no one else has got." But Mr Williams-Thomas, a former Surrey Police detective constable, said his three children, aged between eight and 13 years old, were "very shocked and embarrassed" by Mr Holwell's nudity. ... "I fully expected that the surrounding police or organisers would stop this man. To my total surprise they stood by and did nothing."An Artichoke spokesperson commented that "We have been working with the Metropolitan Police for several months and they agree that there is nothing illegal in nudity, provided no obscenity is committed, which is why they did not intervene in this case".
