interesting things
To update followers of the Prenda Law porn-trolling copyright lawyers saga, Judge Wright has just issued a catastrophic order [.pdf] imposing sanctions and making criminal referrals, entertainingly littered with Star Trek references.
via MetaFilter http://www.metafilter.com/127792/Hes-dead-Jim
Contribute your two cents to the growing thread:
A reader writes:
Is it that Polikoff and Gladstone are under the impression that teaching children to write in cursive somehow takes up too much time? Or that children are vessels into which we can only fit so much, and therefore we should not try to teach them anything “unnecessary� Pure hogwash on both counts. Learning to write legibly and speedily by hand is, in my own humble experience, invaluable. Any endeavor that requires note-taking in any real degree, especially in real time, becomes immensely more easy and pleasurable if one writes well in cursive, and it’s much faster than “print†letters.
And think about the utilitarian logic of not teaching “unnecessary†things to children. Should we not teach them music, drawing, singing, dancing, sports or any other of the manifold pursuits that give life depth and richness but do not technically serve any real economic purpose? Preposterous.
Furthermore, writing well and attractively by hand deepens our engagement with our language, instills respect for the written word, and frankly just looks better, in my opinion. It also isn’t really very hard. Like most worthwhile things, it just takes practice. And I reject this silly sophistry that says making things beautiful, and teaching kids to do simple, humble things like writing nicely is something we don’t have the resources or time to give them. Instilling in them a deep sense of craft, and of craftsmanship, is in fact of the highest importance.
Another reader who defends cursive:
The greatest lesson I ever learned came from an idealistic young woman who spent a year in the late sixties teaching sixth grade at the American Community School in Hampstead between gigs with the Peace Corps.  When asked by a fellow student why we were studying a seemingly insignificant thing, she replied, “You’re not here to learn stuff.  You’re here to practice how to learn stuff, because no matter how old you get, you will always need to learn.â€
Another:
Cursive, as it’s taught in schools now, was actually not intended to be for handwriting.  â€Looped cursive,†with its letters that look nothing like print, originally comes from letterforms inscribed
by copperplate engravers.  Credit for this knowledge goes to Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay, calligraphers who for years have had a side gig running handwriting improvement workshops for doctors!  They also take issue with the “ball and stick†method of teaching print handwriting, as each letter often requires two or more strokes, and advocate instead for italic-style handwriting, which is much more natural (I’ve attached the best comparison I can find).  As an added bonus, italic handwriting easily transitions into cursive.
Who knows if any of this will be relevant in the digital age, but apparently the difficulty of writing in cursive also assists memory.
Kirsten Powers on Kermit Gosnell and how the abortion rights community shuts down suggestions of regulation.
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via The Daily Beast – Latest Articles http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/06/abortion-rights-community-has-become-the-nra-of-the-left.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
Howard Kurtz’ mea culpa on his own “Reliable Sources†yesterday made for an extraordinary 15 minutes of live television. (Full disclosure: I am an occasional guest on the show.)
Kurtz’ apology for his most recent journalistic transgression – his “inexcusable†erroneous report last week about openly-gay NBA player Jason Collins — extended from his personal statement of contrition to a bracing interrogation by two excellent media reporters.
NPR’s David Folkenflik and Politico’s Dylan Byers grilled Kurtz about Collins as well as other mistakes from the past that Kurtz admitted he had sometimes waited too long to correct. It was riveting, powerful, and frequently uncomfortable to watch.
The backstory: In a Sports Illustrated piece that broke April 29, Collins became the first active male pro athlete from a major U.S. sport to come out. Kurtz wrote in his Daily Beast blog that Collins had not disclosed he had been engaged to a woman, and chastised him for it. He repeated the assertions in a video on The Daily Download, where he is a paid contributor.
In fact, Collins had written of the engagement. Kurtz had missed it, he said yesterday, because he had read the piece “too fast†and “carelessly.†On May 2, Kurtz left the Daily Beast. He said it was by mutual agreement; HuffingtonPost, among others, said he was fired.
The live interrogation on CNN was not Kurtz’ idea. He made that clear in his opening statement when he said the network had invited the questioners.
Folkenflik confirmed this in an interview with TVNewser. (Byers declined an interview because he said he was writing his own blog about the show). Folkenflik was pitched by a CNN executive “who doesn’t directly oversee the show,†he said, not naming names. “He’s a respected figure within CNN.â€
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
via TVNewser http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/how-howard-kurtz-came-to-be-interrogated-on-his-own-cnn-show_b177997
Penis scientist Rush Limbaugh is reportedly upset with executives at his flagship station WABC and its parent company, Cumulus. He’s so mad, in fact, that’s he’s reportedly threatening to leave the company. Why? Because Lew Dickey, Cumulus’s CEO, is (probably correctly) blaming Limbaugh’s “slut†comments last year for declining ad revenue at the company
Several major advertisers dropped support for Limbaugh after the “slut†incident, but Limbaugh and a source who spoke with the Daily News said the show’s earnings were “very minimally impacted in the short term.â€
Politico, however, notes that Dicky, on an August 2012 earnings call, said Cumulus’s top three stations lost $5.5 million. Some of those losses, Dickey said, were because of the boycotts agains Limbaugh. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company was still suffering because of the comments, blaming them for roughly a third of the company’s revenue losses.
“There has been residual hangover … in terms of advertisers sitting out,†Dickey said in March. “Clearly that’s had an impact. … That’s something that we are dealing with on an ongoing basis.â€
But a source told the New York Daily News, “Lew needs someone to blame, (so) he’s pointing fingers instead of fixing his own sales problem.”
Another source spoke to the Politico:
“It’s a very serious discussion, because Dickey keeps blaming Rush for his own revenue problems,” the source close to the show told POLITICO. “Dickey’s talk stations underperform talk stations owned by other operators in generating revenue by a substantial margin. It’s not a single show issue… it’s a failure of the entire station. And trying to blame Rush for that is not much of a business partnership.”
So, would the top-rated radio host in the country actually leave the stations that broadcast him in his largest markets? Maybe. Less Rush would certainly be a good thing, though that seems very unlikely to happen.
Regardless, this will make for a boring section in John Cusack’s movie about Limbaugh.
[Image via AP]
To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com
via Gawker http://gawker.com/rush-limbaugh-threatens-to-leave-network-over-blame-for-493007045
When “The Great Gatsby†was published, on April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald, living high in France after his early success, cabled Max Perkins, his editor at Scribners, and demanded to know if the news was good. Mostly, it was not. The book received some reviews that were . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/05/13/130513crci_cinema_denby
In the summer of 2011, when David Graeber heard rumors of a mobilization against Wall Street, he was hopeful but wary. Graeber is an anthropologist by trade, and a radical by inclination, which means that he spends a lot of time at political demonstrations, scrutinizing other demonstrators. When he wandered . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/05/13/130513crat_atlarge_sanneh
On March 10th, Middlefield, Ohio police made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop of a man who had run a stop sign. But then James Gilkerson emerged from his stopped car firing 37 rounds from an AK-47 rifle. Amazingly the two officers in the cruiser sustained only relatively minor injuries and fired off 54 rounds of their owning, eventually killing Gilkerson.
You can see the shocking and somewhat disturbing dash-cam video released by local police just this weekend here.
Perhaps not surprisingly, in Gilkerson’s car police found eight 40-round magazines for the AK-47 and a bunch of militia and terrorist related literature.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer released photographs of the different books and pamphlets. And here’s where it gets even more interesting and, yes, more disturbing. TPM Reader JL notes that the 7th slide in the slideshow shows what appears to be a course manual for the Fighting Rifle course taught by a Tennessee outfit called Tactical Response.
Now, ring a bell?
Well, remember back not long after the Newtown massacre, a crazy gun guy down in Tennessee who was the CEO of a ‘tactical’ firearms training operation said he was “gonna start killing people” if President Obama issued an executive order on guns. Well, that was James Yeager, CEO of, yep, Tactical Response. If you don’t remember, here’s the initial video.
A short time later, Yeager clarified that he wouldn’t murder anybody “unless it’s necessary.” But that apparently wasn’t enough for the State of Tennessee which suspended Yeager’s carry permit because his comments suggested a “material likelihood of risk of harm to the public,” which sounds like a reasonable enough position.
Not to worry though, Yeager got his permit back last month.
Here’s the page on the Tactical Response website about the particular course Gilkerson appears to have taken. (Obviously, we only have this manual in his position at the time of his death. Conceivably he could have gotten it through some other means.) The course is next taught on May 18th and 19th. Sign up now. Here’s the couse description from the site.
You know how to shoot your rifle or subgun now let us teach you how to FIGHT with it! This course is far more advanced than any other rifle course you can attend (with the exception of our advanced course) and covers trajectory, battlesight zero, gear set-up, sling configurations, transitions to pistol, use of cover and concealment, practical ready and firing positions, close- and medium-range snap shooting, weapons handling, urban applications, team drills, firing while moving, multiple targets, plus the tactics required to employ this potent tool in combat. Every student leaves this class with empty mags, a red hot rifle, and a smile from ear to ear! This is one of our most popular courses.
This class is great for nearly any magazine fed rifle or subgun and any traditional military style rifle. We will show you how to run your MP5, AR, AK, RPK, FAL, M1A, G3, VZ-58 or whatever weapon you have!
Needless to say, one can’t lay any direct responsibility on Tactical Response for what Gilkerson did. But when you make it a habit of giving urban combat training on automatic weapons to civilians in a climate of gonzo threats to start civil wars or start blowing away government officials, it’s hard to say something like this is entirely unexpected.
We’ll call tomorrow and see whether Tactical Response has records of Gilkerson attending the course or any comment on these unfortunate developments.
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via Talking Points Memo http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/05/when_stories_collide_1.php
The event was staged a day after the NRA welcomed its youngest lifetime member, 3-year-old Elaih Wagan, whose grandfather purchased the membership.
The site had blamed the gay athlete for failing to disclose his previous relationship with a woman.
via POLITICO – TOP Stories http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/daily-download-retracts-jason-collins-video-163280.html
