If you were hit by a bus today or were otherwise incapacitated, would your loved ones be able to quickly locate your important information or know how to handle your affairs? Many of us have a great handle on our finances, but our record keeping systems might not be obvious to family members or friends who might need immediate access to them in times of emergency. Here's a step-by-step guide to organizing your vital information so it can be conveniently and safely accessed when needed.
The Goal: A Master Document or Folder with All Your Important Information
Perhaps the easiest method for creating a centralized document or set of files would be creating a Google Spreadsheet that you could share with your family and friends and keep updated regularly. We've created a basic Master Information Kit template just for this purpose. The spreadsheet includes prompts for the information below, but you can customize it for your particular needs. To use the template for yourself, in Google Docs go to File > Make a copy... to save it to your Google account (make sure your version of the document's sharing settings go back to the default "Private").
Update: Due to high traffic to the template, Google Docs is only showing it in list view, making it impossible to copy. This zipped file has downloadable versions in PDF, XLS, and ODS formats. You can still import these into your Google Docs account.
There are really only a few steps to setting this organizer up: gathering your records, securely sharing them, and keeping them updated. Follow along and you'll have your kit set up in no time--and a little extra peace of mind.
Step 1: Gather Your Vital Records to Keep in the Master Information Kit
The most important personal records: First, there are a few documents that you obviously should keep in a secured location (a fire safe or safe deposit box):
Social Security card
Birth certificate
Passport
Any other official, hard-to-replace documents
Scan these items so you can have a digital record of them as well. If you encrypt the digital files, e.g., with one of our favorite encryption toolsTrueCrypt, and you can even upload them to Google Docs and share the files with your loved ones (make a note of them in the spreadsheet).
You'll also want to add to your emergency records kit:
Contact information: Both your contact information and your emergency contacts' info. This includes your nearest relatives, your will executor(s), and employers.
Will and medical directives: Add a copy of your will/living trust and medical letter of instructions (keep the originals with your legal representative). You can upload a PDF file to Google Docs for this purpose.
Insurance: Homeowners, auto, medical, life, disability, and other insurance agents/brokers contact info and policy numbers
Financial accounts: Bank, investment, and credit card/loan accounts information, including institution names, phone numbers, and account numbers
Health records: Immunization records, allergies, dietary restrictions, medications, medical/surgical treatments
Pet information: Description of each pet, vet contact information, and any important medical notes
Property: Car information, home purchase papers/deeds, and other home inventory items.
Again, adjust for your relevant information. Our Master Information Kit spreadsheet includes individual sheets for most of these pieces of information, so just make a copy of the sheet (File > Make a Copy) and start filling it out, in section at a time.
Step 2: Export Your Accounts Information
Account Passwords: For login information to important accounts, it's best not to store your logins in an online document like this. Instead you can export your logins from password managers like Keepass, LastPass, or 1Password to a CSV file and then encrypt it so it can be shared securely. Our spreadsheet template includes a sheet specifically for describing your method of storing these files--the location of your vital documents, and any passwords needed to locate them.
Step 3: Share Your Master Information Kit and Vital Documents
The Google Docs spreadsheet is easy to share. Once you've filled out your version of the spreadsheet, click on the Share button and you can email people who you want to be able to view or edit the document. (Think people who you'd also consider emergency contacts.) For your encrypted files, like the logins mentioned above, you could upload them in Google Docs, store on an encrypted USB thumb drive, or use something like Dropbox. Give the recipients your encryption password but for security reasons, only let them write down a hint to the password. E.g., vacation spot 2010 + pet bday + myfavoritesinger'smiddlename. Also, if you use Dropbox, make sure you encrypt sensitive information first. An encrypted zip file seems an ideal solution.
Step 4. Regularly Update Your Everything Document
You'll need to update your files/master records book when you update your accounts. Like setting up an emergency plan or a 72-hour emergency kit, this master information kit will need to be reevaluated regularly--consider doing so at least yearly (e.g., at tax time, when you're already looking at all your accounts) or, better yet, quarterly. Set up a reminder on your calendar so you won't forget. When you get your reminder, don't wait--just quickly look over the items in your document and if anything has changed, update it. If not, you've only lost a couple of minutes of your day toward a very good end.
More Resources for Creating a Master Information Kit
If you're a Quicken user, for example, you may have access to Emergency Records Organizer built into the program, which can compile your emergency documents for you, based on the info you put in Quicken. It should be in the "Property & Debt" menu or you might find the program under your Quicken folder under Program Files. Erik Dewey's free Big Book of Everything is a very thorough organizer for all your affairs, with placeholders for you to record your bank accounts, insurance policies, tax records, and more. The 44-page Big Book of Everything is available in PDF or Excel format. There are also a few personal documents organizers in dead-tree version, like For the Record with the same purpose, in case you want pre-printed book. Our emergency documents template (zip file) is a simplified version for the most essential information and with an eye towards sharing on Google Docs (or downloading and saving). Whichever method you choose, having all your vital information in one easily accessible place can be comforting, for both you and your loved ones. Do you have all your important information organized somewhere or tips for creating this "everything document"? Let us know in the comments. You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter.
Ars Technica's Anders Bylund does some guesstimating about the total losses incurred by Newscorp in their purchase of MySpace, coming up with a figure of at least $1B, including operating losses since the acquisition.
So all things considered, MySpace has cost Murdoch's empire something like $1.3 billion. Even if my assumptions are way off, the final cost can't be less than $1 billion. That fiasco isn't putting Murdoch out of business: News Corp turned a $2.9 billion dollar profit in the last four quarters and generated $2.2 billion in free cash flow, for example. But it still stings as Murdoch's dreams of an end-to-end interactive media empire falls apart. And his shareholders have been trailing the broader market as well as rivals Viacom and Disney over those five painful years.
My latest Guardian column, "Publishers and the internet: a changing role?" looks at how today it's possible to "publish" a work without distributing it, without duplicating it, without doing any more than connecting a work with its audience, sometimes without knowledge (or permission) from the work's creators:
In a world in which producing a work and getting it in front of an audience member was hard, the mere fact that a book was being offered for sale to you in a reputable venue was, in and of itself, an important piece of publishing process. When a book reached a store's shelf, or a film reached a cinema's screen, or a show made it into the cable distribution system, you knew that it had been deemed valuable enough to invest with substantial resources, not least a series of legal agreements and indemnifications between various parties in the value chain. The fact that you knew about a creative work was a vote in its favour. The fact that it was available to you was a vote in its favour.
Partly, this was the imprimatur of the creator and publisher and distributor and retailer, their reputation for selecting/producing works that you enjoy. But partly it was just the implicit understanding that no company would go to all the bother of putting the work in your path unless it was reasonably certain it would recoup. So "publishing" and "printing" and "distributing" all became loosely synonymous.
After all, it was impossible to imagine that a work might be distributed without being printed, and printing things without distributing them was the exclusive purview of sad "self-publishers" who got conned by "vanity presses" into stumping up for thousands of copies of their memoirs, which would then moulder in their basements forever. But just as the internal functions of publishing were separated out at the tail of the last century, this century has seen a separation of selection, duplication, preparation and distribution. Every work on the internet can be "distributed" by being located via a search-engine without ever being selected or duplicated or prepared.
The Dressler brothers created this amazing commemorative table for the YMCA of Canada, integrating more than 100 "significant objects" donated by nationwide YMCA associations into its design. I really dote on this kind of assemblage of sentimental stuff -- it makes the whole thing feel like the product of some kind of spell. Compare with the wonderful Six-String Nation.
The surviving members of Monty Python's Flying Circus have reunited to voice an animated adaptation of Graham Chapman's incredibly funny, very weird memoir A Liar's Autobiography. The film will include recordings of Chapman reading from the book as well. Regrettably, the movie will be in 3D, but with luck I'll be able to find a screen where it's showing without the need for dark, greasy, migraine-inducing prosthesis.
These new spy watches from Korean manufacturer ECWOX are capable of recording at 720p, and are waterproof. They'll be available worldwide later this year.
The "It's New" section from the Jul, 1960 issue of Mechanix Illustrated featured a particularly and deightfully demented grab-bag of innovations of the day, from a French electric monorail to a gas machine of anesthetizing large mammals.
FIRST successful gas machine for anesthetizing large animals is demonstrated on nag by Dr. E. Wynn Jones. U. of Okla.
ROTOCRAFT and ducted fan test bed is flatbed trailer towed by a truck tractor at 60 mph at Cornell Aeronautical Labs.
WATER SKIS. German-made, are propelled by aquatic version of ski poles with end discs.
TIRE-INFLATING machine, a French device, above, makes certain front tires receive equal pressure--for improved steering. Two tires are connected. below, and columns of mercury show when equal pressure is obtained. Can also be used for rear set.
Redditor Oskario uploaded this image of himself, armed to the teeth and beyond ("Context: Myself in conscript training in the Finnish Army, 2007"). A top-rated comment from afnj: "You are over encumbered and can not run."
Rob, Dean and I from Boing Boing were out with various friends in Google+ video chat ("Hangout") for the first time this evening. A number of Boing Boing readers and random internet people also popped in and out of the hangout. Dannel Jurado from Etsy rocked out to some dance music. David Ulevitch from OpenDNS ran Tor. Everyone was in different cities around the US and other countries.
Oh my God. If you needed final, definitive notice that The Smurfs is going to be horrifying even by the standards of 3D-animated remakes of 1980s cartoons that were not as good as you remembered anyway, here you go! Smurfette is advertising Marc Jacobs-esque fare, neither within the price range of mortals nor haute enough to be ironic or actually cool. Thank you, Harpers Bazaar and Sony! She does look pretty smurfy in Vuitton, though.
a novel approach to photographic imaging is making its way into cameras and smartphones. Computational photography, a subdiscipline of computer graphics, conjures up images rather than simply capturing them. More computer animation than pinhole camera, in other words, though using real light refracted through a lens rather than the virtual sort. The basic premise is to use multiple exposures, and even multiple lenses, to capture information from which photographs may be derived. These data contain a raft of potential pictures which software then converts into what, at first blush, looks like a conventional photo.
I still don't quite get the talk about ray tracing. The part that makes sense to me, however, seems to explain it all: the camera has a wide-open aperture and an infinite depth of field on the main optics, but a bubble-wrap like plane of different lenses in front of the sensor, which thereby ends up capturing a fly-eye myriad of differently-focused fragments of the same scene. The software assembles a final composite depending on which of these you later focus on in post. It improves upon established focus stacking techniques because every image is taken simultaneously as a single exposure, at the cost of dividing up the sensor's megapixelage between them. Something like that, anyway. I'm going to play Minecraft. Previously: Lytro promises focus-free shooting
First, more science communication is happening, in more ways. Scientists are taking initiative to talk to the public and to journalists, helping to make sense of the flood of information so that people come away educated, instead of overwhelmed. And advocates are finding fun ways to bring basic science—the stuff that isn't fresh news, but sure does help when you need to actually understand the news—to people who have traditionally been overlooked by science education programs. Sports fans, for instance. That's the good stuff.
The bad stuff: Turns out, it's frustratingly easy for science to become as polarized as politics, with a mentality that divides the world into the Smart People (who already know everything) and the Idiots (who won't ever know anything).
I don't normally go for political conventions. But I did choose to attend this year's Netroots, a gathering of capital-P Progressive bloggers and activists that took place in downtown Minneapolis between June 16 and 19. Josh Rosenau, a science blogger and the programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education invited me to watch the panel he'd put together, all about how to engage the public on science—especially the sort of science that intertwines with politics. I came away from the experience both charmed and frustrated.
I'll start with the charm, because, frankly, that made up the bulk of the experience. You know that special sort of glee you feel when it turns out that the issues you're concerned about are at the top of somebody else's radar, too? There was a lot of that.
For example, one of the things I love about writing for BoingBoing is that I'm able to reach the portion of our audience that isn't necessarily prone to picking up science magazines or regularly reading science news websites—the only places my work would otherwise turn up. Sure, there's a lot of overlap between readers of BoingBoing and readers of, say, Discover. But it's not a 100% overlap. Come for the cute cat videos, stay for deconstructions of the concept of "peer review." That's what I always say.
But here in the warm embrace of the Internet it's easy to forget how little science news makes its way to the general public. Dedicated science journalists were among the first people laid off at newspapers and TV channels. That's why I like what Dr. Heidi Cullen and Climate Central are trying to do. Most Americans get their news from local television, Cullen said, and they consider local news to be more honest than cable. So Climate Central works with TV meteorologists (often the closest thing to a science reporter or a scientist in an average American's life) to help them find ways to insert quality climate science into nightly newscasts.
King Context
Another thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is the problem of context. These politically contentious issues—climate change, vaccinations, stem cell research—we tend to talk about them primarily in the context of political tension. They come across as contests to be won, rather than as actual issues of science and average people end up unsure of who to trust. That's probably why Americans understand controversial science less well than they understand the basic stuff. In 2008, 44% of Americans could correctly define DNA, but only 20% could do the same for stem cells.
I don't necessarily think the key to solving this problem is more (bigger! harder!) repetition about the facts behind controversial science issues. Instead, I think the solution starts with the basics. If you help people understand why peer review is valuable in a context that doesn't press their political buttons, they're probably more likely to respond well when you call them back to that information later, in a more controversial context.
I love what panelist John Abraham and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team are doing—matching scientists with journalists to make sure that science gets its say on controversial topics. But I think that the work of another panelist, Darlene Cavalier, is just as important ... even though it might not seem so at first.
Cavalier is the brains behind the Science Cheerleaders, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. There are cheerleaders. They are talking about science. And you ought to resist the urge to brush this off as fluff. That's because Cavalier is using the concept as a way to get often-ignored populations excited about the basics of science. At Netroots, she told the audience about taking a team of Science Cheerleaders into a Philadelphia bar during a football game to talk about geometry. When you've got a drunk guy swiping your megaphone to yell about vectors, I actually think you're doing something right. (Plus, it was more than a little awesome to watch her video clip wherein several pro-sports cheerleaders discussed their other careers in medicine, biology, neuroscience, and math.)
If you assume cheerleaders are bimbos and bar patrons won't care about math, then you're never going to get those people thinking seriously about the science of climate.
A Bad Case of the Stupids
Which brings me to what I didn't like. Shawn Otto has done some good things, including promoting Science Debates for political candidates. But the perspective on science education that he presented at Netroots Nation was way off-base.
No discussion about how to reach the general public with science should start with a clip from Idiocracy.
Otto's message was basically this: Most of America is just stupid and they aren't capable of understanding science in any meaningful way. So we, the enlightened ones, are going to have to push them over to our side on science-based political issues by using fear and a good public shaming.
I might have agreed with that a year ago. But that's before I finished researching Before the Lights Go Out, my upcoming book about the future of energy in America. Along the way, I learned some pretty interesting things. First off, Americans have a lot of reasons to care about energy. One person's list of concerns might not match yours, but they might still be interested in the same solutions. The Climate and Energy Project, a Kansas-based non-profit, found this out when they did a series of focus groups. They expected to find a lot of people who thought climate change was a lie. What they didn't expect was that many of those people would be taking action on energy change, anyway. A guy can call environmentalists liars, and still choose to own a Prius and swap out his light bulbs for CFLs. So, maybe, instead of calling him stupid, we should ask him why he did that and try to find some common ground.
Politicians may have manipulated climate change into becoming a straw man for partisan slap fights, but that doesn't mean Americans are stupid. You can see this reflected in the polls. Between 2006 and 2010, American concern aboutclimate change fell. But during the same years, American interest in alternative energy and sustainable lifestyle choices remained strong.
Today, somewhere on the order of 60% of us believe that climate change is a serious threat supported by evidence. But, depending on the poll and the specific questions being asked, between 70% and 90% of us support things like increasing funding for alternative energy and mass transit, raising fuel efficiency standards for cars, instituting tougher energy efficiency standards on other areas of our lives, and requiring utility companies to get more of their energy from renewable sources. Even a majority of self-described Republicans support alternative energy and energy-change policies that you might suspect they'd be against.
My point here is that writing the majority of Americas off as idiots isn't going to solve your political problems, and it doesn't even reflect the political reality that those Americans profess to believe in. The lack of political action on climate change is a big a problem, but we're more likely to get that solved using the ideas of Heidi Cullen, Darlene Cavalier, and John Abraham, than those of Shawn Otto.
"What's Up," by Thaitanium. This is the country that invented Muay Thai boxing, so have no doubt that there are indeed genuine badasses among the citizenry. (thanks, Alex Ringis!)
The thing we're facing now is that, you know, the State Department is suddenly really cozy with Twitter because they are like, "Oh wow, we were trying to get this done with AK-47s and you guys got it done with Tweets. Can we be friends?"
[Video Link]. As Mark explained in a prior BB post, "Ray Harryhausen is a stop-motion-animation wizard who is widely regarded as the master of old-school special effects."
Ooooh. Dave Munger, the co-founder of ResearchBlogging.org, has a new blog—Science-Based Running. Coverage includes topics like the connection between marathoning and heart disease, and the evidence (or lack thereof) behind ideas like carbo-loading.
It's not meant as a knock against the Japanese maglev, which will (in approximately 34 years) carry passengers 320 miles in a mere 67 minutes. Instead, this is more about the way imagining what could be reminds us of what might have been. Some of the things on the list are relatively practical—like Germany's "Rail Zeppelin." Other projects are a little more, shall we say, fanciful. Like the image above, which depicts a proposed network of rail lines leading directly to St. Paul, Minnesota, from such exotic locals as London and, um, the North Pole.
I once had a job where the company, which was based in a house, built me an office in a prefab shed in the backyard. I liked it a lot, but it didn't have the pop futuristic appeal of an Archipod! But it wasn't $34,000 either.
'The Pod' is an insulated sphere of approx. 3m in diameter.
Constructed predominantly from timber, the world's most replenishable construction material, insulated to a standard exceeding that of current Building Regulations. The structure is prefabricated in sections small enough to be carried through a house. So no matter where you live, we'll be able to get the 'Pod' onto your site.
A couple of years ago, some researchers at Keele University in England published a study purporting to show that swearing relieved pain. It was a small study (just 67 participants) and the explanation—that swearing perhaps triggers a fight-or-flight response from the amygdala that suppresses awareness of pain—is completely speculative.
But even if that study is right, some new research may have uncovered a flaw in the "Swear and Feel Better" plan. Swearing may deaden physical pain, but it could also deter other people from offering you emotional support. At the very least, swearing in front of other people is associated with feeling like they aren't offering you as much emotional support.
The sample sizes were small (13 women with rheumatoid arthritis and 21 women with breast cancer), but the technology was neat. The women wore "an electronically activated recorder" that periodically sampled ambient sounds, including speech. A lapel microphone recorded 50s every 18 minutes over two weekends for the arthritis sample and 50s every 9 minutes over one weekend for the breast cancer patients. Two months or four months after baseline the women repeated measures of their depression and perceived social support - the latter measured by agreement with statements like "I get sympathy and understanding from someone". The key finding is that higher rates of swearing in someone else's company, but not solitary swearing, were associated with an increase in depression symptoms and a drop in perceived social support. Moreover, statistical analysis suggested the effect of swearing on depression was mediated by the lost social support.
Of course, there could also be some socio/cultural factors at work here, too. All the participants in this study were middle-aged women. Would middle-aged men—or, for that matter, women of a younger, more-swearing-prone generation—feel the same way? There's a possibility that this study could have more to say about what middle-aged women expect from themselves, or who other people expect them to be.
From Cryptocurium, the confectioner who brought you Chocothulhu and the Lovecraft Lollipops, comes these Candy Crystal Skulls: "Each skull measures 3 1/2 inches long by 2 1/2 inches tall (about the size of a baseball) and is made of solid hard candy. Each has also been mystery flavored with six different flavor possibilities.The skull pictured has been dyed an ethereal green however custom color requests are welcome as always."
... what leaps out is that the expanding halo is limb-brightened, like a soap bubble, and fades with time. That strongly points toward something like a sudden impulse of energy and rapid expansion of material, like an explosion of some kind. Note that the ring itself appears to be moving, as if whatever caused it was moving rapidly as well.
Asterix board member calvin 737 was the first to suggest it might be related to a Minuteman III missile launch around that time. As more people on the forum dug into it, the timing was found to be right. The missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base (in California) at 03:35 Hawaii time, just minutes before the halo was seen. I noticed the stars of Cassiopeia are visible in the webcam, so the view was to the northeast, which is the right direction to see the missile as well. OK, the timing and direction are perfect, so the rocket is clearly the culprit... but how, exactly?
[An idea posted by board member neufer] was that this was from a detonation charge in the missile's third stage. There are ports, openings in the sides of the third stage. Those ports are sealed for the flight until the right time, when they're blown open by explosive charges. This allows the fuel to escape very rapidly, extinguishing the thrust at a precise time to allow for accurate targeting of the warhead. At this point, the missile is above most of the Earth's atmosphere, essentially in space. So when that gas suddenly released from the stage expands, it blows away from the missile in a sphere. Not only that, the release is so rapid it would expand like a spherical shell -- which would look like a ring from the ground (the same way a soap bubble looks like a ring). And not only that, but the expanding gas would be moving very rapidly relative to the ground since the missile would've been moving rapidly at this point in the flight.
In his original post, Plait also explains why he thinks this is the true explanation, and why several alternate ideas don't hold up.
Amazon announced today that its Associates program is to be terminated in California, in response to a new sales tax bill there. The move appears to be pre-emptive hardball to try and avert the bill being signed into law. UPDATE: Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the law. Here's the text of an open letter mailed to associates:
Hello, For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state. We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action. As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule. You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program. To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect their ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available. Regards, The Amazon Associates Team
The move follows similar shutdowns in other states, most recently Arkansas and Connecticut, where similar laws have been enacted. A similar bill is under consideration in Tennessee. California, however, is by far the largest U.S. state and represents an enormous revenue source for Amazon and associates. Headquartered in Seattle, Wa., Amazon says it should not have to collect sales tax in states where it has no physical presence. States want a cut of sales with a local connection, however, and Amazon's associates system blurs the location of economic activity in a way that looks mighty fat to the taxman. Who is making the sale? Where does the sale occur? And so on. Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has called for federal legislation that determines the issue once and for all.
Sherman Frederick is a great fan of Righthaven, the copyright troll spun out of the Las Vegas Review Journal where Frederick was CEO. Righthaven isn't faring well in the courts these days, and Frederick is lashing out at critics of his cherished conceit of making a fortune suing bloggers for quoting small snippets of text.
Here's where it gets good. His extended ad hominem in the Review Journal makes extensive use of poorly cited quotations from GametimeIP, a blog that -- in Frederick's view -- supports his position. These sorts of quotations are precisely the sort of quoting that Righthaven is suing over, with one important difference.
Righthaven doesn't actually have the right to sue over quotations from the Review Journal, because, as judges have ruled, the agreement that assigns "just enough copyright" to sue people is ridiculous and has no basis in law or reality.
On the otherhand, GametimeIP's author Patrick Anderson does, in fact, hold those rights, and he's putting them up for sale. Presumably, anyone who buys them could then sue Frederick on the same grounds that Righthaven used. And if Frederick won the case, it would establish that the sort of quoting Righthaven decries is fair use. If Frederick loses, well, he loses -- DMCA damages run to $150K per act of infringement.
Frederick also believes that linking without permission is illegal. In the event that he wants to link to this post, he should be aware of our linking policy.
Happy mutant Erik "Lizardman" Sprague, who I'm proud to say is an active member of the BB community, was immortalized in a wax figure unveiled last weekend at Ripley's Believe It or Not! Times Square Odditorium. I was delighted to see a new video interview with Erik on Huffpost Weird News. Bummer that HuffPo won't provide an embed link, but you can go here to see it: "Erik "The Lizard Man" Sprague at HuffPost Weird News"
If you were hit by a bus today or were otherwise incapacitated, would your loved ones be able to quickly locate your important information or know how to handle your affairs? Many of us have a great handle on our finances, but our record keeping systems might not be obvious to family members or friends who might need immediate access to them in times of emergency. Here's a step-by-step guide to organizing your vital information so it can be conveniently and safely accessed when needed. 
Perhaps the easiest method for creating a centralized document or set of files would be creating a Google Spreadsheet that you could share with your family and friends and keep updated regularly. We've created a basic Master Information Kit template just for this purpose. The spreadsheet includes prompts for the information below, but you can customize it for your particular needs. To use the template for yourself, in Google Docs go to File > Make a copy... to save it to your Google account (make sure your version of the document's sharing settings go back to the default "Private"). 
The Google Docs spreadsheet is easy to share. Once you've filled out your version of the spreadsheet, click on the Share button and you can email people who you want to be able to view or edit the document. (Think people who you'd also consider emergency contacts.) For your encrypted files, like the logins mentioned above, you could upload them in Google Docs, store on an encrypted USB thumb drive, or use something like Dropbox. Give the recipients your encryption password but for security reasons, only let them write down a hint to the password. E.g., vacation spot 2010 + pet bday + myfavoritesinger'smiddlename. Also, if you use Dropbox, make sure you encrypt sensitive information first. An encrypted zip file seems an ideal solution. 
So all things considered, MySpace has cost Murdoch's empire something like $1.3 billion. Even if my assumptions are way off, the final cost can't be less than $1 billion. That fiasco isn't putting Murdoch out of business: News Corp turned a $2.9 billion dollar profit in the last four quarters and generated $2.2 billion in free cash flow, for example. But it still stings as Murdoch's dreams of an end-to-end interactive media empire falls apart. And his shareholders have been trailing the broader market as well as rivals Viacom and Disney over those five painful years. 
The surviving members of Monty Python's Flying Circus have reunited to voice an animated adaptation of Graham Chapman's incredibly funny, very weird memoir 
Oh my God. If you needed final, definitive notice that The Smurfs is going to be horrifying even by the standards of 3D-animated remakes of 1980s cartoons that were not as good as you remembered anyway, here you go! Smurfette is advertising Marc Jacobs-esque fare, neither within the price range of mortals nor haute enough to be ironic or actually cool. Thank you, 
At The Economist, Glenn Fleishman 
Sherman Frederick is a great fan of Righthaven, the copyright troll spun out of the Las Vegas Review Journal where Frederick was CEO. Righthaven 