interesting things
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Obama administration’s 2014 budget is calling for a strategic review of the Tennessee Valley Authority, opening the possibility that the largest U.S. public utility could be sold.
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/obama-budget-talks-sale-largest-public-utility-195516479–finance.html
The TV series Firefly aired for only four months in the 2002-2003 season. But it left behind many devoted fans. In one episode, the character Jayne Cobb received a gift of a knitted hat. It was shown for only a few minutes on that one episode, but the hat became a symbol for the fans, and many wanted one just like it. As 20th Century Fox Television had cancelled the show, they did not market merchandise from the series, and so knitters stepped in to fill the demand. Then in December of 2012, Think Geek began selling an officially-licensed Jayne Hat. One thing led to another, and Fox TV started sending cease and desist orders to Etsy crafters, some who had been selling the hats for years. Â
“When I first got the cease and desist, I felt like I’d been thrown out of an airlock,” said Angela of Ma Cobbe’s Shoppe, who had been selling Jayne hats on Etsy for almost five years.
“I’ve seen some copyright infringement on Etsy, but I always thought that the hat was something of my own. Yes, it’s inspired by a hat worn by a character in a show that is the intellectual property of Fox, but each independent hand-knitting seller puts their own spin on it. They write up their own patterns with subtle shifts in color and design to appeal to everyone.”
“The irony of it is that it’s the fans of the show who have propelled the hat into the iconic symbol that it is. The hat itself had only a few measly minutes of screen time in one episode– an episode that Fox didn’t even air.”
The entire story and the controversy on the internet is explained at Buzzfeed. Link Â
Some Etsy sellers are striking back by re-labeling their wares. Link
(Image credit: Goddess Vicky)
Wayward surveyors in the 19th century misplaced the state border and blocked needed access to the Tennessee River, Georgians claim.
via WSJ.com: Lifestyle http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324000704578388472029592836.html?mod=WSJ_GoogleNews
The Obama administration suggested it would consider a sale of the Tennessee Valley Authority, surprising the federal corporation’s leadership.
via WSJ.com: What's News US http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324240804578415390739276974.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
The day ends with the NRA issuing a “key vote” threat on Manchin-Toomey. After all that. The wording is credited to Chris Cox, the NRA’s executive director of legislative action, a rare media presence.
We hope the Senate will replace the current provisions of S. 649 with language that is properly focused on addressing mental health inadequacies; prosecuting violent criminals; and keeping our kids safe in their schools. Should it fail to do so, the NRA will make an exception to our standard policy of not “scoring†procedural votes and strongly oppose a cloture motion to move to final passage of S. 649.
And so we have a test, at 11 am, of whether Republicans and red state Democrats are willing to buck a fringey NRA position even though it’ll knock their ratings down by, at most, a letter grade.
The whole letter:
Dear Senator,
I am writing regarding the National Rifle Association’s position on several firearms-related proposals under consideration in the Senate.
S. 649, the “Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013â€, introduced on March 21, contains a number of provisions that would unfairly infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners. This legislation would criminalize the private transfer of firearms by honest citizens, requiring friends, neighbors and many family members to get government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution. The NRA is unequivocally opposed to S. 649.
In addition, the NRA will oppose any amendments offered to S. 649 that restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms; including, but not limited to, proposals that would ban commonly and lawfully owned firearms and magazines or criminalize the private transfer of firearms through an expansion of background checks. This includes the misguided “compromise†proposal drafted by Senators Joe Manchin, Pat Toomey and Chuck Schumer. As we have noted previously, expanding background checks, at gun shows or elsewhere, will not reduce violent crime or keep our kids safe in their schools.  Given the importance of these issues, votes on all anti-gun amendments or proposals will be considered in NRA’s future candidate evaluations.
Rather than focus its efforts on restricting the rights of America’s 100 million law-abiding gun owners, there are things Congress can do to fix our broken mental health system; increase prosecutions of violent criminals; and make our schools safer. During consideration of S. 649, should one or more amendments be offered that adequately address these important issues while protecting the fundamental rights of law-abiding gun owners, the NRA will offer our enthusiastic support and consider those votes in our future candidate evaluations as well.
We hope the Senate will replace the current provisions of S. 649 with language that is properly focused on addressing mental health inadequacies; prosecuting violent criminals; and keeping our kids safe in their schools. Should it fail to do so, the NRA will make an exception to our standard policy of not “scoring†procedural votes and strongly oppose a cloture motion to move to final passage of S. 649.
A classic Raymond Loewy logo heads for the ash tray, Lucky Strike rebrands. LSMFT.
via Coudal Partners Blended Feed http://coudal.com/archives/2013/04/lsmft.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoudalFreshSignals+%28Coudal%3A+Fresh+Signals%29
In a move that’s sure to inspire thousands of sad-face GIF reposts, social-blogging site Tumblr declared Storyboard, its ambitious year-old editorial initiative, an unqualified success Tuesday night and immediately celebrated by shutting it down and canning its entire crew.
“After hundreds of stories and videos, features by publishers ranging from Time to MTV to WNYC—not to mention a nomination for a James Beard Award and entries into this year’s NY Press Club Awards—we couldn’t be happier with our team’s effort,” Tumblr creator David Karp wrote on the site’s staff blog around 10 p.m., adding: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on.”
Why do you shutter a project in the dead of night if you “couldn’t be happier” about it?
Storyboard was a splashy high-profile blog (within the Tumblr community, at least) that showcased the social media property’s top-shelf original content, as well as the users who produced it. Its triumphs regularly garnered thousands of “likes” and reblogs; these included a profile of a barista who makes intricate portraits in coffee and steamed milk; a gallery of hip-hop quotes posted on the New York streets that they name-check; the insanest hand-drawn maze ever; and Donkey Kong in 17th-century Japanese prints.
This didn’t seem like a term-limited experiment, certainly not to the talent Karp had poached to run it: editor-in-chief (and Gawker vet) Chris Mohney from BlackBook, along with executive editor Jessica Bennett, a Newsweek refugee. (A third editorial worker, Sky Dylan-Robbins, was also cut loose.) Bennett offered no hints to the bloodletting in her own goodbye post:
RIP TUMBLR EDITORIAL. WE PRODUCED SOME AWESOME MOTHERFUCKING SHIT / REDEFINED JOURNALISM / WON SOME AWARDS / OBSESSED OVER ONE DIRECTION / ALL THAT. IT WAS A GREAT RIDE> NOW: ANYONE WANT TO HIRE ME?
So why did Storyboard die? The conventional explanation would be that it experimented with doing wonderful things that don’t generate profit, and it succeeded on both counts. Yet with a crew of three, it didn’t exactly demand a massive subsidy. And if Tumblr’s own sunshiney sales reports are to be believed, the company was already headed toward profitability this year.
Which suggests that Karp—a 26-year-old high school dropout who’s theoretically worth $200 million—could, indeed, have been happier with his editorial experiment. Tumblr’s users and freshly unemployed journalists could surely be happier with him, even as they’re committed to the platform he built. Late Tuesday, a user asked Mohney on the fired editor’s blog: “Was it always the plan for Storyboard to only run for a year?” Mohney replied: “amusing noncontextual animated image dot gif.”
At Download the Universe, i09 editor Annalee Newitz critiques a new e-book about epigenetics — the science of how environmental factors can influence genetic expression — and violence. The book makes some pretty terrible (and non-scientific) insinuations about the idea of an inherent propensity towards violence and Newitz does a good job of both taking down the specific book and explaining the nuance behind a complicated topic. 
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via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/04/10/read-this-before-you-read-anot.html
For the Facebook generation, it’s second nature to share accounts.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/times-writer-tangles-with-the-ethics-of-password-sharing/
“Nerd culture†may be, at this point, thoroughly subsumed into the capitalist mainstream (see: The Big Bang Theory, the explosion of Comic-Con’s popularity, they’re seriously gonna make more Star Wars movies, etc.), but there’s still a group of geeks out there swapping obscure bits of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
They’re high-level quiz-bowl players, and a recent cheating scandal has brought their insular world into major news sources’ spotlight in all the wrong ways.
Read Alan Siegel’s story at Slate for more surprisingly dramatic details, including the declaration that “[e]verything you touch you destroy.â€
via The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2013/04/scandal-in-the-world-of-quiz-bowl/