Monday, January 17, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Adorable French girl recounts astounding Winnie the Pooh plot

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 10:23 PM PST

Suzuki Beane: lost 1961 beatnik kids' book from Louise Fitzhugh and Sandra Scoppettone

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 10:19 PM PST


Zack sez, "In 1961, author Sandra Scoppettone and illustrator Louise Fitzhugh (later the author of HARRIET THE SPY) did a satire of Kay Thompson and Hillary Knight's ELOISE called SUZUKI BEANE, about a miniature beatnik. The charming tale is decades out of print (a revised version with new illustrations and 'corrected' text was done some time ago, but loses much the charm of the original), but you can read the original -- albeit with a few upside-down pages -- on Scribd. It's a funny and surprisingly sweet tale of class conflict and a bygone era. Interestingly, this came to my attention because someone posted on YouTube a failed SUZUIKI BEANE TV pilot produced by Desilu in 1962 -- it features Victor Borge as Suzuki's father, Hugh."

Suzuki Beane (Thanks, Zack!)

 


Stupid legal threat of the young century

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 12:38 AM PST


Boing Boing has been on the receiving end of one or two stupid legal threats in our day but this one from the firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh takes the cake, the little cake topper, the frosting and all the candles, as well as the box and the cake-stand and the ornamental forks.

Back in July, I posted about the research on the academic advantage some people with autism exhibit. In the comments, someone else used the word "scam" in a message board post that was totally unrelated to Academic Advantage (Here's the quote: "Went to college expecting it to be the place of knowledge, an all encompassing and way to get information instantly. I quickly found its a scam...").

Here's where it gets good. The legal eagles at Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh represent an (apparently extremely touchy) company called Academic Advantage and they apparently earn their keep by using alerts or searches for "Academic Advantage scam" to see who's badmouthing good old AA, and then they fire off a legal threat and demand that the content be removed from the Internet posthaste. (Funnily enough, Boing Boing isn't even in the first screen of Google results for academic advantage scam -- though there are certainly plenty of people who seems upset with AA's service!)

There's no legal merit to this, of course. "Commercial libel" is damned hard to make stick (that pesky First Amendment!), and it takes a lot more than a blog post that contains the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" to make a workable legal case.

No, this is pure legal thuggery, a completely indiscriminate bid to intimidate bloggers and publishers into censoring themselves by threatening dire legal consequences.

And the sad thing is, it probably works. Most people don't know the law (see EFF Bloggers' Rights articles), and can't afford to ask a lawyer what they should do in a situation like this. All we can hope is that the next time someone gets a letter over "academic advantage scam" or similar false positives, they get to this blog post and discover that our legal pals at Dewey, Cheatham and Howe Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh know even less about the law than they do about the Internet.

As always, your first stop when receiving stupid legal threats should be the good, good people at Chilling Effects. And to the lawyers at Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh (whose motto is "Experienced Attorneys. Proven Results." and who boast of degrees from Harvard, NYU and UCLA): shame on you. What would your parents say if they could see you squandering your top legal educations with this kind of careless, sloppy farce?

Re: Libel committed on your BoingBoing website (PDF)

Vertical take-off!

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 06:00 PM PST

Hed: "British defense chiefs unimpressed by proposed Harrier replacement." YouTube via Roger Ebert.

Pee Wee Herman + Andy Samberg + Anderson Cooper = best SNL EVAR

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 10:32 AM PST

Poor Anderson Cooper. Watch: "Andy and Pee-Wee's Night Out." Here's a Hulu link. This is the funniest chunk of SNL I can recall in a long time. (* region-blocked for non-US, sucks, sorry, if so try this alternate link or this one, while it lasts).

Now this is Velvia.

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 10:10 AM PST

5360297561_ea830d7543_b.jpg Photograph (and snark) by Jason Weisberger.

Housewife's LSD trip, 1956: Harvard Psychedelic Club

Posted: 16 Jan 2011 09:58 AM PST

[Video Link]

Over at Huffington Post, author Don Lattin posts this wonderful archival video clip, and explains:

Here's some rare footage of an experimental LSD session that I came across doing research for my next book, a group biography of British writer Aldous Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard, and Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's from a television program, circa 1956, about mental health issues. The researcher, Dr. Sidney Cohen, was dosing volunteers at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Los Angeles
Go read the rest of the post. I love the part where the subject is having a transcendental realization, and a lab-coated Cohen asks her if she felt like she felt like there were no "inside," if she felt like she were instead one with everything. She replies, more or less, "well I would be if you weren't here."

Then, as she descends further: "Everything is alive. This is reality. I wish you could see it. I wish I could talk in technicolor."

Don Lattin's book: "The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America"

(via @BumbleWard via David Carr)
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

CrunchyTech

Blog Archive