From the Venus Project:
The Venus Project presents a bold, direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. There are many people today who are concerned with the serious problems that face our modern society: unemployment, violent crime, technological unemployment, over-population and the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems. As you will see, The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems by actively engaging in the research, development, and application of workable solutions. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium.
Designing the Future by Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project [PDF]
Venus Project FAQ
Continue reading about The start of civilization: redefining our culture, designing the future
From Mary Annette Pember at The Progressive:
This Thanksgiving, as an Ojibwe woman, I will grieve for what Europeans did to native peoples here. But I will also give thanks for life.
I will grieve because Europeans killed most of us quickly and directly at first and later resorted to more cunning means of forced assimilation, such as boarding schools and discriminatory land allotment. It is estimated that there were between 7 million and 10 million indigenous individuals inhabiting what is now America at the beginning of European contact in the early 15th century. By 1900, there were only about 230,000 of us left.
Some might wonder why a Native-American woman would give thanks on a holiday that highlights the beginning of the end for many tribes. I give thanks because that’s what we Ojibwe do. We express gratitude for the great gift of life given to us by the creator.
Traditional Ojibwe religion is deeply rooted in the understanding that life, ever moving, ever changing, is a tremendous gift. This understanding dates way back before the days when the Wampanoag Indians sat down with the Pilgrims for that now famous meal.
We also understand that there is no escaping life’s relentless nature. We are leaves on a tree, in various states of growth. At some time, we will turn color, fall from the tree, swirl colorfully around some kid’s feet and join the soil once again.
Continue reading about “As a Native-American, I’ll have mixed feelings about Thanksgiving”
From Lamar Hankins at Freethought San Marcos:
In America, most of us have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, though there are still plenty of people without enough food and shelter, especially since the great recession hit just over a year ago. Actually, the Great Recession has been going on much longer for those of us on Main Street and Side Street and Back Street. It was only when Wall Street started hurting that the politicians got concerned enough to respond to their needs. The needs of Main Street, Side Street, and Back Street have yet to be met, except for getting rid of a few clunkers for cash to stimulate moribund automobile and truck sales.
Congress has virtually ignored the high rate of unemployment, which exceeds 15%, if those job-seekers who have become discouraged from ever finding a job are included in the official unemployment figures. If the Works Progress Administration worked during the Great Depression, why wouldn’t it work during this Great Recession?
[...]
In the rest of the world, malnutrition, chronic hunger, famine, and death are greater concerns than food insecurity. In the world, ten children die of hunger every minute–one every six seconds–according to the United Nations World Food Programme, which adds that, “For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry.”
And America goes merrily along for over eight years now spending about $265 million per day in Afghanistan, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Associated Press figures reveal that the War in Iraq has cost American taxpayers about $400 million per day for the last six years. All of this is happening while about one-seventh of the world population is hungry or starving to death.
The United Nations has estimated the cost of ending world hunger at about $195 billion a year, less than $535 million per day–about $130 million less per day than the cost of prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These figures do not include the secondary costs of the wars for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, nor do they account for the money needed to take care of the physically and mentally wounded veterans and their families in the US and among our allies.
[...]
As most Americans sit down with friends and loved ones for Thanksgiving dinner this week, thanking god for our good fortune seems hollow, self-centered, and crass, an exercise in arrogant pride. A Thanksgiving Blessing more in keeping with our reality might read like the following:
A Universal Blessing for America’s Thanksgiving Dinners
For the blessings of the earth that gladden our lives, we give thanks.
Blessings are not shared equally. May we find within ourselves hearts of generosity and sharing.
Continue reading about Reflections on Thanksgiving in America 2009
From Pew Research Center:
The journey home for Thanksgiving won’t be quite so far this year for many young adults. Instead of traveling across country or across town, many grown sons and daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall, which now doubles as their recession-era refuge.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that 13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year. Social scientists call them “boomerangers” — young adults who move in with parents after living away from home. This recession has produced a bumper crop.
Census Bureau data confirm that proportionately fewer young singles are living solo now than before the recession. Overall, the proportion of adults ages 18 to 29 who live alone declined from 7.9% in 2007 to 7.3% in 2009. Similar drops in the proportion of young people who live by themselves occurred during or immediately after the recessions of 1982 and 2001.
The current decline has been particularly steep among young women; the proportion who live by themselves fell by a full percentage point to 6.1%. Among young men, the share living on their own fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.4%, a statistically insignificant change.
Continue reading about Home for the holidays and every other day
From Jacqueline Keeler:
I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving.
This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.
Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing “Land of the Pilgrim’s pride” in “America the Beautiful.” Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing “Land of the Indian’s pride” instead.
[...]
I see, in the “First Thanksgiving” story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.
Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.
Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.
From the Angry Black Woman:
Fucking MARVELOUS. Western corporations fuck up the planet, western environmentalists march in an persuade, sometimes by economic might, governments that in order to fix it, the citizens of the fucked up places must give up their land. WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP BULLSHIT REASONING IS THIS SHIT GODDAMMIT?!?!?!?!?!?!? I am so SICK of this everlasting insistence that Westerners know better and to hell with studying the local set up to see WHAT it is and WHY it has worked the way it has, no. We must import Western ideas wholesale and impose them on every damn place, completely ignoring the fuckery they bring into other people’s lives until said other people have suffered/hurt/died, in the case of Africa; according to PDF From Refuge to Refugee: The African Case MILLIONS of people; and god knows how many in Asia; and have had to raise holy hell before we back off!
From the Jacki Rand Choctaw at the Daily Iowan:
Native social values, based on an alternate calculation, have always been simply counterintuitive to a capitalist mind. The “kindness” of Native nations, sovereign then and sovereign today, not to mention their lands, rivers, minerals, timber, and other resources — for which they received virtually nothing — are the original source of United States “greatness.” Theft and exploitation of indigenous resources and labor, human-rights violations, and commodified African bodies, without which there would be no American ingenuity, created the big boost to U.S. world domination.
This Thanksgiving, I exhort Americans to honor their first president’s decree with petitions to the government of his and other founders’ creation “to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord.” Recognize our treaties, humanity, and agency in your ancestors’ survival. Absent that, we will continue to meet you, treaties in hand, in the courts of the land.
Continue reading about On Thanksgiving, recognize the contributions of Native Americans
From Winter Rabbit at DailyKos and cross-posted at Native American Netroots:
Frank James, a Wampanoag tribal member, would have given a speech in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1970; however, the ones in charge of the Thanksgiving ceremony at Plymouth Rock denied Frank James from ever uttering it. I learned about this in The Thanksgiving Day Massacre…Or, would you like Turkey with your genocide?
The timeline itself along with basic knowledge of the Pilgrim’s religious beliefs exposes the fact that historically speaking, Thanksgiving was literally about gratitude for genocide. Furthermore, the low population counts of the Pequot in more recent years points to how the devastating effects of the English’s, or Separatists’, or Pilgrims’, or Puritans’ crime of genocide almost destroyed the Pequot population. The English, who no doubt formed an American Colony in New England, claimed the land as theirs by the Doctrine of Discovery, which is still in effect today as federal law. To be accurate, the word genocide was not created until 1944 by Raphael Lemkin;nonetheless, the word genocide is appropriate when discussing the near extermination of the Pequot. To be clear, the Doctrine of Discovery legally applied to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England, but not to the Pilgrims in New Plymouth. What was the difference?
Continue reading about The Massacre for which Thanksgiving is named
From Ojibwa at DailyKos:
When the subject of slavery in the Americas is discussed, many people assume that this is about the 13 million Africans who were captured, enslaved and transported to the Americas to work on the plantations. Yet the history of slavery in the Americas starts long before this. From the very beginning of the European discovery of the American continents, Europeans were involved with slavery: not African slaves, but American Indians.
From Workplace Prof Blog:
No more jumps out of the page and slaps you in the face, but the Eleventh Circuit still does not think that a worker often called ‘boy’ established a racially hostile environment.
In Alexander v. Opelika Pub. Schs., No. 08-11014 (11th Cir. 11/10/09), a public school employee in Alabama who allegedly was called “boy” eight times over two years and heard a supervisor comment about a noose did not present sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment on his racial harassment claim.
If we’re lucky, the 11th Circuit’s miserly construction of Title VII will be slapped down again by the Supreme Court.
From the NYT:
The most important new antidiscrimination law in two decades — the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act — will take effect in the nation’s workplaces next weekend, prohibiting employers from requesting genetic testing or considering someone’s genetic background in hiring, firing or promotions.
[...]
The biggest change resulting from the law is that it will — except in a few circumstances — prohibit employers and health insurers from asking employees to give their family medical histories. The law also bans group health plans from the common practice of rewarding workers, often with lower premiums or one-time payments, if they give their family medical histories when completing health risk questionnaires.
From Slate:
This June, in Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court held that the city of New Haven discriminated against white firefighters when it rejected the results of a promotion exam that eliminated almost all of the minority candidates. Frank Ricci and other white firefighters, as well as one Latino, claimed that the city intentionally discriminated against them on the basis of race, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, by rejecting the exam simply because too many of the highest scorers were white and thus denying them promotions.* New Haven’s defense was that it rejected the exam because using it would have violated another part of Title VII that prohibits tests that have a disparate impact on minorities—meaning any test that needlessly screens out a disproportionate number of minorities. During oral argument, Justice Souter worried that Ricci’s lawsuit put New Haven in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation”: liable for disparate-impact discrimination against blacks if it used the test and liable for intentional discrimination against whites if it didn’t use it.
Sure enough, last week, just as New Haven prepared to promote a group consisting almost entirely of white fire captains and lieutenants based on the exam results, a black New Haven firefighter, Michael Briscoe, filed a disparate-impact lawsuit against the city. Like Frank Ricci, Briscoe is a sympathetic plaintiff. He received the highest score of any candidate on the oral portion of the lieutenant’s promotion exam. But he isn’t eligible for promotion because the city based 60 percent of each candidate’s score on the written exam. On this part of the test, Briscoe—like most black candidates for promotion—did comparatively badly.
Continue reading about The future of disparate impact doctrine
From the National Journal:
Cyber-defenders know what to prepare themselves for because the United States has used the kinds of weapons that now target the Pentagon, federal agencies, and American corporations. They are designed to steal information, disrupt communications, and commandeer computer systems. The U.S. is forming a cyberwar plan based largely on the experience of intelligence agencies and military operations. It is still in nascent stages, but it is likely to support the conduct of conventional war for generations to come. Some believe it may even become the dominant force.
Senior military leaders didn’t come of age in a digital world, and they’ve been skeptical of computerized attacks. Mostly younger officers, who received their early combat education through video games and Dungeons & Dragons, wage these battles. To them, digital weapons are as familiar and useful as rifles and grenades. [...]
Today, cyber-warriors use the global telecommunications network to commandeer an adversary’s phones or shut down its Web servers. This activity is a natural evolution of the information war doctrine.
[...]
President Obama confirmed that cyber-warriors have aimed at American networks. “We know that cyber-intruders have probed our electrical grid,” he said at the White House in May, when he unveiled the next stage of the national cyber-security strategy. The president also confirmed, for the first time, that the weapons of cyberwar had claimed victims. “In other countries, cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness.”
[...]
Military officers describe cyberspace as the fifth domain of war, after land, sea, air, and space. But cyberspace is unique in one important respect — it’s the only battlefield created by humans.
[..]
In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military “botnet,” an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. “America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere,” he wrote.
[...]
Presumably, China has no interest in crippling Wall Street, because it owns much of it.
[source: National Journal]
Party like it’s 1999? From commondreams.org:
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and related legislation. [...]
The repeal of Glass-Steagall removed the legal prohibition on combinations between commercial banks on the one hand, and investment banks and other financial services companies on the other. Glass-Steagall’s strict rules originated in the U.S. government’s response to the Depression and reflected the learned experience of the severe dangers to consumers and the overall financial system of permitting giant financial institutions to combine commercial banking with other financial operations.
[...]
What lessons should be learned from the 10-year debacle?
First, Glass-Steagall’s key insight was in the need to treat regulation from an industry structure point of view. Glass-Steagall’s authors did not set out to establish a regulatory system to oversee companies that combined commercial banking and investment banking. They simply banned the combination of these enterprises. Cleaning up the current mess, we need strategies that focus on industry structure — meaning, especially, that we must break up the big banks — as well as more traditional regulation.
Second, we need to return to Glass-Steagall’s more particular understanding: depository institutions backed by federal insurance protection cannot be involved in the risky, speculative betting of the investment banking world. (Notably, the Glass-Steagall problem is now worse than it was before the financial crisis, following JP Morgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, and Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch.) Moreover, we need not just to reinstate Glass-Steagall, but infuse its underlying principles throughout the financial regulatory scheme. Commercial banks should not be in the business of speculation. They have a job to do in providing credit to the real economy. They should do that. Their job is not to engage in betting on derivatives and other exotic financial instruments.
Third, giant financial institutions exercise too much political power, and for that reason alone must be broken up.
Fourth, we need broad reform in the area of money and politics. We need public financing of Congressional regulations, even stronger lobbyist reforms, and tight restrictions to close the revolving door through which individuals spin as they travel between positions in government and industry.
[Source: commondreams.org]
Continue reading about Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, 10 years later
From the Albany Times Union:
After a local Schenectady denizen’s FOIA request to access the local city code — to learn whether he was running afoul of any local ordinances due to an unruly dog — is denied, he learns he must pay at least $200 to have access to the city code.
Two options seem unreasonably expensive for an individual: He could purchase a copy of the code in a paper binder from General Code for $656 or on a CD-ROM disk bundled with General Code’s software for $200.
General Code is a private sector company the city has contracted with for about $20,000 “to create a comprehensive, searchable electronic version of the code that eventually will be posted on the Web and available to all.”
Schenectady is not alone — with lovely blue states like Oregon and California in the mix.
See also: Professor Posts “Illegal Copy” of Guide To Oregon Public Record Laws and dares the AG to respond.
Open-access champion Carl Malamud’s “All the Government’s Information” is a must.
Continue reading about Copyrighted city laws available to you for only $200
From the Sylvia Rivera Law Project:
In October 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. This law makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity by expanding the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. In support of this goal, it expands the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute such crimes instead of or in collaboration with local authorities. The law also provides major increases in funding for the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement to use in prosecuting these crimes – including special additional resources to go toward prosecution of youth for hate crimes.
From the Angry Black Woman:
Someday someone will explain to me this fascination America has with the idea that Michelle Obama has white relatives like it’s remotely unusual for a descendant of slaves in America. I notice with all the talk of “So and so was impregnated by X slaveowner” and the rush to interview the white relatives so they can say the obligatory “I’d love to reunite with that side of the family and talk about our history” no one discusses exactly how so many mulattoes came to be born during and after slavery. I know the story of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been played as very romantic, but I sincerely doubt that even if it was that way for them, the same is true of Michelle Obama’s great great great grandmother’s relationship with the man that bought her when she was 6 and impregnated her at 15.
Read the rest of this excellent piece here.
Continue reading about Race, Psychology, and Family Dynamics
From talkingpointsmemo.com:
ACORN is suing the U.S. government over a law passed recently by Congress that bars the controversial community group from receiving federal money.
In a complaint filed this morning in U.S. District Court in New York, ACORN charges that the law is unconstitutional, because it’s a bill of attainder — that is, it targets a specific individual or group for punishment.
The complaint, brought on behalf of ACORN by the Center for Constitutional Rights, also mounts a broader push-back against ACORN’s conservative critics. According to a draft version examined by TPMmuckraker, it claims that the law to defund ACORN was passed thanks to “a public relations campaign orchestrated by political forces” that are hostile to its work registering low-income voters. And it charges that ACORN “earned the animosity of political forces who are dedicated to the proposition that the fewer poor people who vote the better.”
Complaint for Injunctive and Declaratory Relief [PDF]
Bill of Attainder Fact Sheet [PDF]
ACORN v. USA Exhibits [PDF]
ACORN v. USA Memo of Law [PDF]
From the NYT:
About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation’s veterans.
Hmmmm.
From the Guardian (UK):
It is very hard for the average person in the street to come to a sensible conclusion on peak oil. It’s a subject that prompts a passionate polarisation of views. The peak oilists sometimes sound like those extraordinary Christians with sandwich boards proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh. In contrast, the the international economic establishment – including the International Energy Agency (IEA) – has one very clear purpose in mind at all times: don’t panic. Their mission seems to be focused on keeping jittery markets calm.
Faced with these options the majority of people shrug their shoulders in confusion and ignore the trickle of whistleblowers, industry insiders and careful analysts who have been warning of the imminent decline in oil for over a decade now.
Continue reading about The Guardian’s reality check: world running out of oil
Surprise, surprise! What a joke NY politics has become. Ain’t nothing extraordinary about these “extraordinary” sessions.
From Gotham Gazette:
The Senate yesterday decided to table a vote on same-sex marriage during its extraordinary session. Supporters said they were worried they didn’t have enough votes for the bill to pass. Gov. David Paterson said he wanted the bill to come to a vote regardless of the head count. The Senate has also been locked in negotiations over a plan to reduce the deficit, but they failed to come to an agreement on this, too. Paterson scheduled two more extraordinary sessions for next week.
Continue reading about Lazy New York Legislature Accomplishes Nothing
From Americablog.com:
Last week, Maine’s Bishop, Richard Malone, gloated after his campaign to repeal Maine’s marriage equality took away the rights of same-sex couples in that state. In Maine, the Bishop turned his church into a political operation.
This weekend, the Catholic Bishops are getting credit for undermining women’s rights in the new health care bill through the Stupak amendment.
Continue reading about Catholic Bishops Against Social Justice
Here is the round up of today’s news on H.R.3962 – Affordable Health Care for America Act, which the House passed last night in a 220-215 vote (with only 1 Republican voting – Joseph Cao – R-La., calling it a “decision of conscience“). The bill contains a public option, however there is some debate over how “robust” the public option will be in practical terms (i.e., who will be eligible for the public option).
Democrats say the House measure — paid for through new fees and taxes, along with cuts in Medicare — would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while creating a government health insurance program. It would end insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill. [Source: Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House]
The passage of the bill came at the expense of reproductive rights, with restrictions on abortion “barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions” by a vote of 290-194 (see NYT: Abortion Was Heart of Wrangling; see also Reproductive Rights Prof Blog). Follow the links below to see how members of the House voted on the bill and the controversial Stupak/abortion restrictions amendment. Next up: passage of the bill in the Senate (the chamber of congress that has the greatest and most special kind of prima donnas and attention whores (read: Jackass Lieberman) who will undoubtedly find a number of ways to play politics with human rights, i.e., since health care is a human right). The culmination of this epic melodrama/circus show is expected to happen before the end of the year when President Obama hopes to sign the bill into law. This is so fun that I can hardly wait until we get to immigration reform.
In other news, the U6 has unemployment figures at 17.5%, as mentioned here last month.
Affordable Healthcare for America Act Headlines
Roll Call on Affordable Health Care for America Act
Roll Call on Stupak/Abortion Restrictions Amendment
Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House
Abortion Was at Heart of Wrangling
Gay Benefits in Health Bill (editorial comment: this NYT headline is so dumb — I didn’t know the “benefits” had a sexuality)
From the NYT:
One whiz, Anthony W. Crowell, the mayor’s counselor, went beyond legalisms. He trivialized the two plebiscites in the 1990s that established a two-term limit for major-office holders.
To underline how unimportant the mayor considered them, Mr. Crowell noted that the 586,890 people who formed the majority in a 1996 referendum represented a trifling 17 percent of all registered voters in the city. Others in the Bloomberg administration invoke a different standard. Term limits, they say, had support at the polls from only 1 of every 15 city residents.
O.K., then what is one to make of the 557,059 votes that Mr. Bloomberg received on Tuesday to win his coveted third term? They amount to a mere 13 percent of registered voters. The 1-in-15 standard for all residents also applies.
Might I add that the narrow 5% margin of victory cost $200 per vote for the well-known, incumbent figure with all kinds of institutional privileges and connections.
From the Washington Post:
During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a “reasonable suspicion,” according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week.
FBI officials cautioned that each nomination “does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously watchlisted person.”
The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government’s “no fly” list.
Read the rest of the article here.
Continue reading about 1,600 names suggested daily for FBI watchlist
From the WSJ:
Lawyers for years have added language to some contracts that stretches beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. But more and more people are encountering such everywhere-and-forever language as entertainment companies tap into amateur talent and try to anticipate every possible future stream of revenue.
Experts in contract drafting say lawyers are trying to ensure that with the proliferation of new outlets — including mobile-phone screens, Twitter, online video sites and the like — they cover all possible venues from which their clients can derive income, even those in outer space. FremantleMedia, one of the producers of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” declined to comment on its contracts.
The terms of use listed on Starwars.com, where people can post to message boards among other things, tell users that they give up the rights to any content submissions “throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed.”
Lucasfilm Ltd., Star Wars creator George Lucas’s entertainment company that runs the site, said the language is standard in Hollywood.
[...]
Some legal experts rail against such language as imprecise and unnecessary. Ken Adams, a Garden City, N.Y., attorney and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who advocates for clarity in contract language, says references to outer space and the end time are silly.
That kind of language could even be a way of drumming up business, he says. “It adds an aura of magic — you’re dabbling in the occult and you of course need a lawyer to guide you through the mysteries.”
Read the rest of the article here
Continue reading about Lawyerese that stretches beyond Earth’s atmosphere
A new report by the Center of New York City Affairs finds that half of the children housed in New York’s juvenile correctional facilities suffer from mental illness, yet there is not one psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse on staff at the state Office of Children and Family Services which runs the facilities.
Read the full report here [PDF]
Continue reading about Reforming New York’s Juvenile Justice System
