z_Ideas

Unnamed file-sharing accused to be named, making it possible to accuse them?

Ten internet service providers have been ordered to hand over the details of 150 UK customers accused of illegally sharing software. Over the next two weeks, they are expected to provide the names, addresses and other personal details of the alleged file-sharers. (BBC)

'05, Year of the Disaster

More frequent floods and drought, blamed by some scientists on global warming, brought a near 20 percent rise in natural disasters in 2005, researchers said on Monday. But the death toll fell to 91,963 from 244,577 in 2004 when the figures were swollen by the impact of the Asian tsunami, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) and Belgium's Louvain research center said in a report. (Reuters)

Vatican backs evolution

The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion. (Reuters)

Jays lose again (TM)

When something becomes a historical fact, is it public domain or can a corporation own it?

That's at the heart of a legal challenge an American fantasy baseball league has launched against Major League Baseball. According to a story from Associated Press (click here to see full story):

In a lawsuit that could affect the pastime of an estimated 16 million people, CBC Distribution and Marketing wants the judge to stop Major League Baseball from requiring a license to use (baseball) statistics.

The company says baseball statistics become historical facts as soon as the game is over, so it shouldn't have to pay for the right to use them.

Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to "commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles" of big league players.

Jim Gallagher, a spokesman for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball's Internet arm, declined comment on the lawsuit, scheduled for a hearing this summer in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, Missouri.

It seems farfetched. Baseball games generate revenue for team owners and the league, but can only do that by taking place as events of public record. The league and teams make their money by creating the possibility of a baseball game, by offering people a chance to watch the game live or on television, and by generating an interest in their product that generates revenue, such as television or newspaper advertising, for third parties.

The league and teams, however, don't manufacture the outcome of a game. If they did, then they could claim they owned the scores and stats. But the assumption is that the games are not rigged. The outcome cannot be known in advance, or controlled by the teams and league (we hope), so how can it be owned?

It can't. It would be like owning the outcome of a historical event, like a war or election. Imagine the Liberals demanding a fee from companies that wanted to reprint the election results -- they will probably try that one day, but anyone can see the attempt would be doomed.

One hopes the MLB's cash grab is as equally doomed. The next step in the its logic would be for the league to demand a cut of all betting income, since the win that produces a $50,000 payoff for a lucky gambler would be the property of the league, and therefore require some kind of compensation.

On the other hand, perhaps the league, in its copyright madness, will be willing to pay for the right of its teams to use city names in their official names? The New York (TM) Yankees (TM)? The Toronto (TM) Blue Jays (TM)? Seems fair to me. The Blue Jays get way more out of this city in terms of free media coverage, fan loyalty and brand recognition than the city gets as being the "Toronto" part of the equation.

There has always been a lovely relationship between sports teams, the cities they are located in, the fans and the media. Seems like a silly thing to let a copyright jihad spoil it all.

Next step: day-glo bacon

Taiwan, home to the world's first transgenic glowing fish, has successfully bred fluorescent green pigs that researchers hope will boost the island's stem cell research, a professor said on Thursday. By injecting fluorescent green protein into embryonic pigs, a research team at the island's leading National Taiwan University managed to breed three male transgenic pigs, said professor Wu Shinn-Chih of the university's Institute and Department of Animal Science and Technology. "There are partially fluorescent green pigs elsewhere, but ours are the only ones in the world that are green from inside out. Even their hearts and internal organs are green," Wu said on Thursday. (Reuters)

SCIENCE BRIEFING, 01-11-06: Suitcases in space; Ant U.; Reagan was right -- trees pollute!

A  telescope turbo-charger called ET has found its first planet outside the solar system, and a Canadian device that looks like a suitcase in space is tracking possible faraway Earths, astronomers reported on Wednesday. (Reuters)

British researchers said on Wednesday they had uncovered the first proof of teaching in non-human animals -- ants showing each other the way to food. The ants studied over two years by scientists from Bristol University used a technique known as tandem running -- one ant led another ant from the nest to a food source. It was a genuine case of teaching as ant leaders observed by Professor Nigel Franks and Tom Richardson slowed down if the follower got too far behind. If the gap got smaller, they then speeded up. (Reuters)

German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. (Reuters)

Editor's note: Before any goes and claims that this new research proves that plants contribute to global warming, they should remind themselves that there were plants on earth long long before global warming became a pressing issue. Got it? It's not the trees' fault. It's the man-made gases.

The newspaper's fate, part II

Joseph Epstein, writing in Commentary here, tears a strip off newspapers in another attack on our cherished institution. He makes a lot of points, including this one explaining why he thinks fewer people take newspapers, in particular, and the media, in general, seriously anymore:

Much of contemporary journalism functions through leaks—information passed to journalists by unidentified individuals telling those things that someone supposedly doesn’t want us to know. Since these sources cannot be checked or cross-examined, readers are in no position to assess the leakers’ motives for leaking, let alone the agenda of the journalists who rely on them. To state the obvious: a journalist fervently against the U.S. presence in Iraq is unlikely to pursue leaks providing evidence that the war has been going reasonably well.

Administrations have of course used leaks for their own purposes, and leaks have also become a time-tested method for playing out intramural government disputes. Thus, it is widely and no doubt correctly believed that forces at the CIA and in the State Department have leaked information to the New York Times and the Washington Post to weaken positions taken by the White House they serve, thereby availing themselves of a mechanism of sabotage from within. But this, too, is not part of the truth we are likely to learn from investigative journalists, who not only purvey slanted information as if it were simply true but then take it upon themselves to try, judge, and condemn those they have designated as political enemies. So glaring has this problem become that the Times, beginning in June, felt compelled to introduce a new policy, designed, in the words of its ombudsman, to make “the use of anonymous sources the ‘exception’ rather than ‘routine.’”

No wonder, then, that the prestige of mainstream journalism, which reached perhaps an all-time high in the early 1970’s at the time of Watergate, has now badly slipped. According to most studies of the question, journalists tend more and more to be regarded by Americans as unaccountable kibitzers whose self-appointed job is to spread dissension, increase pressure on everyone, make trouble—and preach the gospel of present-day liberalism. Aiding this deserved fall in reputation has been a series of well-publicized scandals like the rise and fall of the reporter Jayson Blair at the New York Times.

Epstein goes on to say that most papers, desperate to prop up falling readership, are "whoring after the uninterested young" by turning themselves into glib entertainment sheets, or, as one British editor put it, "vewspapers." Epstein's preferred solution to the decline of print -- and it's a good one, even if we don't share his assessment of newspapers' worth -- is as follows:

My own preference would be for a few serious newspapers to take the high road: to smarten up instead of dumbing down, to honor the principles of integrity and impartiality in their coverage, and to become institutions that even those who disagreed with them would have to respect for the reasoned cogency of their editorial positions. I imagine such papers directed by editors who could choose for me—as neither the Internet nor I on my own can do—the serious issues, questions, and problems of the day and, with the aid of intelligence born of concern, give each the emphasis it deserves.

In all likelihood a newspaper taking this route would go under; but at least it would do so in a cloud of glory, guns blazing. And at least its loss would be a genuine subtraction. About our newspapers as they now stand, little more can be said in their favor than that they do not require batteries to operate, you can swat flies with them, and they can still be used to wrap fish.

SCIENCE BRIEFING, 01-10-06: Man-eating lions; planet-eating Americans; unhealthy hacks

Attacks on humans by man-eating lions are on the rise in Tanzania and Mozambique, raising the stakes in the conservation game as environmentalists strive to save the big cats from extinction. Lions in the area have developed a taste for human flesh because people have been sleeping outdoors to protect their crops from raiding bushpigs, which the cats follow onto croplands, a leading expert said. (Reuters)

Washington will brandish its faith in technology to solve global warming with the launch of a six-nation climate pact in Australia this week but critics say it looks half-hearted without tough targets or incentives. (Reuters)

Taking a taxi may be a relatively luxurious form of transport -- but it might also increase your exposure to common pollutants. A team at Imperial College London found taxi travel resulted in more exposure to pollutants than travelling by car or bus, or riding a bike. (BBC)

In Mark Steyn's world, people named Mohammed need not apply

Space tourists must be screened to ensure they are not terrorists, according to proposed regulations from the US Federal Aviation Administration. The draft report's suggestions aim to prevent a terrorist from destroying a spacecraft or using it as a weapon. However, the report has no strict proposals on the health of any would-be space tourists. (BCC)

(To understand this item's extremely hilarious headline, read post below entitled "What's in a name.")

Freedom of Speech, war-on-terror style

American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the London daily, The Guardian, and TV's Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children. Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning, the newspaper reports. He was released hours later. (Editor & Publisher)

According to the E&P report, the reporter was developing a story on the misuse of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British. He told U.S. authorities about the story and asked for an interview just days before the raid on his home.