Archive for September, 2005

Sep 26 2005 03:01:00 PM EDT

Outrage, Art, Remix, Internet

I’m quoted in a New York Times Week-in-Review article yesterday, regarding the digital video made on the cheap and set to “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” by the Houston rap duo Legendary K.O.
Even if you don’t like the political sentiment of the piece, it’s clear to me that the feelings of rage and […]

Sep 23 2005 02:50:00 PM EDT

Waiting Away In Ritaville

James Ayres, the UT Austin professor of English who founded the Shakespeare at Winedale program (which I’ve blogged about here) lives in Round Top, Texas, about halfway between Houston and Austin (and thus possibly in the path of Hurricane Rita). On Thursday he e-mailed several of his former students, including me, about what it’s […]

Sep 21 2005 02:05:00 PM EDT

Is Google Print Infringement?

The New York Times reports today that the Authors Guild has sued Google Print for “massive copyright infringment” (according to the language of the complaint). The fact that (a) no one can download a complete work, or even most of one, that’s protected by our copyright law (you can get only snippets, based on […]

Sep 15 2005 04:44:00 AM EDT

Fuel Efficiency — Blood for Oil?

There are principled arguments that our nation should rely not on regulation but on market forces — specifically, on the skyrocketing prices of gasoline — to trigger fuel efficiency in new automobiles. But leave it to the Wall Street Journal to label government-imposed fuel-efficiency standards as “blood for oil.”
The theory here is that lighter vehicles […]

Sep 09 2005 01:01:00 PM EDT

RIAA’s Big Push to Copy Protect Digital Radio

Never mind that digital audio broadcasting is not significantly greater in quality than regular, analog radio. Never mind that its music quality is vastly less than than that of audio CDs. In spite of these inconvenient facts, the RIAA is hoping that the transition to “digital audio broadcasting” will provide enough confusion and panic that […]

Sep 07 2005 12:49:00 PM EDT

Does FEMA Get (or Give) A Bad Rap?

No, I’m not just adding to the zillions of blog postings concerning whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with other government agencies, deserves blame for mishandling the Hurricane Katrina crisis. (You may assume that I assume that the federal government in general, by failing to spend appropriated money on reinforcing New Orleans’s flood protections, […]

Sep 01 2005 04:49:00 PM EDT

What I Did On My Summer Vacation - Shakespeare

I took two weeks off in August, and spent one of those weeks performing Shakespeare dowin in Texas. Yes, I know, it’s not exactly the traditional vacation, but it was definitely something I needed to do. Twenty-five years ago, or so, I discovered the Shakespeare-at-Winedale program at the University of Texas, and over the […]