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I am freaking out here. Skip Beat!, perhaps my favorite manga of all time—no, really—is going to be made into a TV anime this fall! I really hope they don’t soften the manga’s darkly humorous edge and make it all girly. That would be a tragedy indeed.

What is good tequila? As Gruber says: “bookmark immediately.”

Regarding the AP/Drudge Retort contretemps:

• The Media Bloggers Association is “a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of “blogging” or “citizen journalism” as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, to every citizen.” Basically an advocacy group available to bloggers and non-bloggers alike. They also offer legal advice and help to individual bloggers like Rogers Cadenhead of Retort when they are faced with legal action.
• Here’s the actual backstory of the issue from Robert Cox of the MBA, who has been involved in this affair from the beginning. Apparently prior to the 7 takedown notices filed last week (whose validity is indeed still up for debate), the website had gotten several perfectly valid takedown notices for clear violations of the DMCA.
• Cox’s reaction to some of the misinformation promulgated by bloggers and press alike.

The once and future banana. Ha!

One interesting note—when your great-grandparents go on about how bananas used to taste so much better in the old days, they’re not lying.

Who knew?

Howard Kurtz in his latest Media Notes column: “Taking offense has become a political art form,” referring to how in this year’s presidential campaign between an old man and a black man, the candidates’ camps have been crying foul over hurt feelings and the insensitivity of the other side. (Via InstaPundit)

I was going to write a fluff piece on getting some SIGG water bottles, but then, as I often do, I did some research so I would know what I was talking about, and this isn’t going to be fluffy anymore.

So a few years ago, it was discovered that 95% of Americans^* have levels of a chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA for short) in their urine. BPA is an estrogenic chemical (i.e. mimics the hormone estrogen), and its structure and presence can “duplicate, block or exaggerate hormonal responses.” According to its critics, which are legion.

BPA is present in polycarbonate (as opposed to polyethylene or polypropylene) plastic cans and bottles—like the Nalgene sports bottles most people have no doubt owned once or twice in their lives—and has been found to have leached into the water or food contained within.

Now, there is some debate (mostly between plastics-industry sponsored studies and government-funded studies) about the relative harmfulness of having BPA in your system, but the news is quite alarming nevertheless. Government agencies at this point are not concerned enough about potential deleterious effects of ingesting BPA to have banned its use, so policing, if it happens, has to happen at an individual level.

I had only heard (or to be fair, absorbed) the barest minimum of facts about this when a colleague of mine was telling me why he had shown up to work one day with this gorgeous aluminum water bottle, and I asked him where he got it from. He focused more on the fact that no water bottle he’d ever had didn’t alter the flavor of the water inside if it was left overnight, and that only bottles like the non-reactive aluminum ones that SIGG, a Swiss company, made had your water still tasting good after a day or two. And, as I said, these particular bottles are powder coated in a huge variety of beautiful designs, so I wanted one, just because it would be pretty.

So I got a couple, a large one and a small one, and when I was in the store, I noticed that popular water bottle manufacturers like CamelBak and Nalgene are now making BPA-free bottles, no doubt in an effort to reach out to disgruntled consumers.

As for me, I’m going to keep my pretty SIGGs and get rid of my old Nalgene bottles, if only because the water does still taste good after it’s been in the bottle a while.

^* This is according to my single source article, which is admittedly a couple of years old. Prachee, I’m sure you’ll know more or be able to find more relevant scientific data, and be able to tell me if what I read is wrong or disingenuous.

Have you heard about this? It’s a doozy.

Last week, the Associated Press filed 7 DMCA takedown notices against the Drudge Retort^†, a Digg-style social news website, alleging that its users’ practice of linking AP articles and briefly quoting headlines and leads (never more than 79 words) was not fair use.

Now, apparently the AP’s official policy is that fair use of their content means use of 4 or less words. I am not kidding. Use 5 or more, and you owe them a minimum of $12.50.

The—big surprise—resulting uproar and fledgling PR nightmare has had the AP backpedaling, saying that their initial filings were “heavy-handed,” and planning to meet with representatives from a trade group (the Media Bloggers Association^*) to come up with “a more thoughtful standard.”

Sauce for the goose
Turnabout, however, is evidently fair play:

Now, in a slightly ironic twist, the AP is taking content from a blog site. Namely, mine.

In a news item about the e-mail from Judge Kozinski’s wife that I posted on this site, an AP article lifted numerous passages.

I counted 154 words quoted from my post. That’s almost twice the number of words contained in the most extensive quotation in the Drudge Retort.

Look. A huge portion of the blogosphere is all about news analysis and discussion. Hashing and rehashing, action and reaction. Take that away and all you’ve got is catblogging and what-I-ate-for-dinner-last-night—scintillating stuff indeed. Not to mention that if the purpose of quoting news articles is almost always to react to them, how is this legally any different from quoting a book in a book review, which is fair use under the DMCA?

Well, as embarrassing as this already is for the AP, it’s bound to get worse before it gets better. And they deserve it. (Via InstaPundit)

^† No, that is not a typo. I meant to type “retort” rather than “report.” The Drudge Retort started out as a left-wing parody of the conservative Drudge Report.

^* Who? Are these guys, whoever they are, really representative of the blogging community?

this ALA article about conflicting absolute positions changed my life. No, really.

And on the subject, here’s an intriguing new CSS layout technique: faux absolute positioning.

becomes intimately conversant with the dangers of big government, the perils of over-regulation. Which is why, even given the scandalous nature of executive pay in many American companies, whatever we do, we should avoid legislation^† unfairly tying the hands of boards—whose responsibility it is not only to put together fair and competitive compensation packages for talented executives, but also to tie pay to performance—in the same way Californians have, year after year, tied the hands of government to make sound budgetary decisions.

^† Yes, I know they’re talking about Europe, but the issue looms large here as well.

The Economist‘s cover story from this week’s print edition says that things are going better in Iraq.