Apparently, there are at least a few out there who have a hard-on for eradicating crimethink.  In their latest effort, a newly sanitized edition of Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will [...]]]> Regular readers of the LS know how we feel about thought control through the implementation of Newspeak.  (We think it is retarded).

Apparently, there are at least a few out there who have a hard-on for eradicating crimethink.  In their latest effort, a newly sanitized edition of Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be published as part of a collection that is more suitable for classroom consumption, i.e., sans all uses of the “n-word.”  In its place, the publishers, NewSouth Books, have inserted the word “slave.”  Also deemed too offensive for print: “injun”

H/T Evren Seven

Contraband

This article was originally published on The Legal Satyricon

Director Kappos, of the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), writes on his blog this week about how the Office intends to fast-track the examination of patent applications that deal with so-called “green” technologies.  Great headline for a month ago, when [...]]]>

“Awe!  Come ON!  I made a movie about it.  That proves it’s true.”

Director Kappos, of the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), writes on his blog this week about how the Office intends to fast-track the examination of patent applications that deal with so-called “green” technologies.  Great headline for a month ago, when the popularized position was that anthropogenic climate change (formerly known as “global warming”) was a *proven* phenomenon.  However, recent developments have put those findings in serious doubt.

In case you haven’t been keeping up, as Director Kappos clearly hasn’t, emails were leaked last month from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit – a world-renowned climate change research center – which reveal a “trick” being employed by researchers to massage temperature statistics (source).  Seems that a decline in temperature didn’t fit into the doomsday scenario that’s being thrown about to justify new grant money, new cap-and-trade legislation, and new taxes.  The emails openly discuss the deletion of historic source data and ways to discredit scientific journals that have published skeptic papers, as a couple of examples (source).

Moving back to the IP tie-in, the USPTO is continuing to drink the climate change kool aid by proposing that so-called “green” patent applications should be given priority treatment in examination.  Kappos’s announcement of the policy was timed to coincide with the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.  In that announcement, the Director explains the impetus for such an initiative:

As I have often said, the USPTO is committed to dramatically reducing the backlog and average patent pendency time across the board.  As we work toward this goal, we are going to pilot a program that will give priority to applications that combat climate change and foster job creation in the green tech sector.  The Green Tech patent pilot program will decrease the time it takes to obtain patent protection for green tech innovations by an average of 12 months.  (source)

One has to wonder what other types of applications will be “de-prioritized,” in order to let climate-change-fighting inventors skip the line.  It seems clear that this initiative would do absolutely nothing to improve the average pendency time across all patent applications.  It is truly odd that, at the Patent Office, where a science degree is required to prosecute or examine applications, they’re not letting a silly thing like the absence of a scientific foundation stop them from disparaging the majority of the inventing community.  It certainly isn’t stopping the charlatan proponents of climate change theory from generating a city-sized carbon belch to gather and talk about how to reduce carbon emissions.

Once again, the Director concludes his blog post, claiming that he welcomes comments and feedback, but somehow my comments thereto on this subject failed to clear moderation.

Thanks to the socialist wing of our highest court, the language of the Fifth Amendment has been perverted to include economic development as a justifiable reason for disregarding private property rights.  In the latest episode of “how can the government make sex to me, without even buying [...]]]>

“All your property rights are belong to us!”

Thanks to the socialist wing of our highest court, the language of the Fifth Amendment has been perverted to include economic development as a justifiable reason for disregarding private property rights.  In the latest episode of “how can the government make sex to me, without even buying me a drink first,” a developer in New York has convinced that state’s highest court that the New Jersey Nets need a new arena more than 146 people need to keep their homes (source).

In case you’re not familiar with United States property law, I’ll give a quick primer.  Owning “real property,” here in the U.S., essentially amounts to having the privilege of using U.S. laws and U.S. courts to enforce your rights against others.  If you don’t want your neighbor to build that fence 3 feet into your back yard, you can file a law suit and prevent him from doing that.  Since property rights come from the government, the government can potentially refuse to recognize your rights.  The Bill of Rights to our Constitution, recognizing this, includes a limitation on our government’s ability to just up and decide to turn you out of your house.  The Fifth Amendment states, among other things, that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Seems fair.  If your community needs a school or a road, and the only way that public utility can be built is to dispossess someone of their property, the government can do it, but they have to pay the fair value.  It would be better if property rights were inviolate, but clearly it’s going to come up occasionally.  The Founders came up with a plan, i.e., eminent domain, to make it reasonably just.  That worked just fine for 200 years — until some limousine liberal Supreme Court Justices decided that they knew what’s best for all of us, in their infinite paternal benevolence.

In 2005, the Court ruled 5 to 4 that handing people’s homes over to private real estate developers could be considered “public use,” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment.  Luckily, most red states have reacted by providing state law protection for property rights (thanks be to his Noodly Goodness for the Tenth Amendment).  But the Empire State (guess which way they typically vote) is apparently okay with assisting private real estate developers in perpetrating a land grab in Brooklyn.  The following is a dramatization of what occurred:

So on this Thanksgiving, make sure you say thank you to Justice Stevens and his socialist, intellectual elitist colleges, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, for taking a collective crap on the vision of our Founders — who gave King George the finger for, among other reasons, disrespecting property rights of non-royals.  (To this day, Britons still have to rent property from the Crown, rather than own it.)  It certainly is confidence inspiring to know that a real estate developer can march into a New York court, waving a page from Hugo Chávez’s playbook, and come away with an endorsement.  Clearly, we’re moving in the right direction as a nation.

This article was originally posted on The Legal Satyricon.

Dr. Brooke Magnanti, Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science, in [...]]]> If you’re a fan of Showtime‘s adult series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” (or even if you aren’t), you may be interested to know that the real-life anonymous author of the blog and book that inspired the series went public earlier this week.  (Source)

Dr. Brooke Magnanti, Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science, in an interview with The Times, talks candidly about how she got into the biz of having sex for money.

Dr. Brooke Magnanti
(a.k.a. Belle du Jour)

I was finishing my writing — I was getting ready to submit my thesis.  I saved up a bit of money.  I thought, I’ll just move to London, because that’s where the jobs are, and I’ll see what happens.  So I did.  I submitted the thesis but I was still preparing for the viva — there was quite a lot of writing and studying still to do.

I couldn’t find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn’t have my PhD yet.  I didn’t have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva; and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would.  The difference between living in the Highlands and living in London is massive.  I hadn’t really thought that one through.

I have a pathological aversion to being in debt.  My mother’s family are Jewish; there’s this hoarding thing, saving, being prepared — if you’re in debt somebody could come and knock at your door and take it all away tomorrow.  It got to the point where I didn’t have quite enough money for my rent.  I asked my best friend if I could borrow some money and he posted me a cheque.

I was looking at this cheque.  It wasn’t even the total of my rent; it was a quarter of it or something, some stupidly low amount like £120.  I thought, ‘But once I deposit this cheque, I’ll still need money for next month.’  And I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t borrow this money knowing that I couldn’t pay it back and that I’d need more pretty much straightaway.  And that was when I started to think: what can I do that I can start doing straightaway, that doesn’t require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that’s cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in?  (Source)

The Times article, while a little on the long side, is still worth the read.  It discusses, in some detail, how Belle du Jour has *disproved* some of the time-honored preconceptions about the world’s oldest profession.  One of the reasons that she gives for coming forward is that so many doubt her story, claiming that it must be fiction.  How could a prostitute actually feel empowered by her career choice?  Even claim to enjoy the work?

When asked about whether she thought being a prostitute hurt her emotionally, Dr. Magnanti answers “I’ve felt worse about my writing than I ever have about sex for money.”  Somewhere, Andrea Dworkin is screaming in anguish, rolling over in her grave.

H/T Odie

Check out the first letter of each line

(source)

H/T bobby

This story was originally published on The Legal Satyricon.