Archive for 2010

AT AMAZON, outlet deals.

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY: Senate Landscape Shifts Farther in Favor of GOP. “It’s hit that point in the election cycle where the competitive nature of Congressional races are shifting rapidly. Unfortunately for Democrats, the overwhelming majority of those shifts are in favor of Republicans.”

HEH.

ARGUING AGAINST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OVERREACH. I haven’t read Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air, but it seems clear to me that we’re overdoing it on the intellectual-property front. As Robert Merges and I argued in an article for the Harvard Journal on Legislation some years ago, there are constitutional limits here, and courts should be willing to enforce them.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

OH, GOODY: More kinds of hepatitis, beyond A, B, and C. I didn’t know we’d gotten to G & H.

Plus, from the comments: “I heard about this one time at a famous club in NYC, a coupla long-time rockers hooked up after a show. The result was hepatitis CB-GB.” Well, it’s the funniest hepatitis joke I’ve ever heard, anyway . . . .

HOW TO SAFELY AND LEGALLY CAPTURE THE RAIN.

HOW MANLY IS YOUR DRINK?

HMM: Panel: College’s police force violates First Amendment. “It’s not every day that First Amendment issues get raised in a drunk-driving case. But last week the Court of Appeals threw out a DWI case involving an arrest by a Davidson College police officer, agreeing with the defense that Davidson is a religious institution and giving police powers to the school is unconstitutional.”

NEW YORK CITY’S BEDBUG PROBLEM — there’s a musical!

RECOVERY SUMMER! U.S. restaurants starved for business. “The number of restaurants operating nationwide dropped this year for the first time in more than a decade, a survey shows, with California accounting for almost a third of the losses.”

UPDATE: Reader Greg Pollard writes: “I wondered about the studio and related Hollywood layoffs mentioned in the article. Are you aware of any recent links or articles regarding that phenomenon? I suppose it’s poetic justice in a way, based on how caring the Hollywood crowd is toward large chunks of their potential audience.” No, it’s news to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Danielle Schlei sends this report and cautions: “As you can see from the LA times blog post, mostly IT & home entertainment are affected; not the folks who make decisions about what is produced. I live in LA and know people affected by this layoff.”