I have just finished my first play in 25 years, and I had SO much fun! I'm going to have to do it again. Most of our performances of Coriolanus were in Laurel's Sellers Theater. Our final shows were held at DC's Warehouse Theater.

Got to the theater way early last night. Final nights of a run have a feeling all their own, and this one was no exception, people remarking that it would be the last time they wore that costume, or said this line. The audience began arriving relatively early as well, and just KEPT arriving. When the citizens took the stage for the first scene, we were rather surprised that it just seemed there were lots more people than had attended the other nights. When we exited through the audience, we could hardly believe that the place was PACKED FULL and people were still arriving, causing our intrepid director, to scramble to find them chairs.

The show went exceedingly well, and I must say that applause from a large group sure beats applause from a few stragglers and a few echos. Striking the set went relatively quickly, and the cast party was a much needed time to bid adieu to all the wonderful people with whom I was privileged to perform in this show, as well as the great technical crew who kept us in the right place at the right time with the right light and sound. I won't be able to audition for the next Rudes play, as we will be in Bonaire (which totally sucks because I live right around the corner from where rehearsals will take place...), but I'm hoping to maintain the contacts and the friendships established by the months of work for this show. I am planning to audition for Julius Caesar and the Tempest as they come up, and perhaps will be able to do my second and maybe third play in 25 years of acting only in the occasional courtroom :-).

This has been a wonderful experience with a group of people who were exceedingly welcoming to the newbie and gave me a true sense of home. Heartfelt thanks to all of you, and please keep in touch.

Posted by mikki at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Cole: "Less Safe, Less Free":

Georgetown law professor and award-winning author David Cole critiques the Bush administration's “preventative paradigm” in the "war on terror” in his new book Less Safe, Less Free, which will be released this week.

Dean Harold Koh of Yale Law School applauds the book:

This compelling, necessary volume demolishes the doctrine of preemptive self defense as a dangerous oxymoron, whose acceptance will surely render us less safe, less free, less American, and less able to lead globally through the rule of law.

Cole and Jules Lobel published an article adapted from the book last week in The Nation, entitled “Why We’re Losing the War on Terror.” They write:

In the name of the "preventive paradigm," thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants have been singled out, essentially on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, for special treatment, including mandatory registration, FBI interviews and preventive detention. Businesses have been served with more than 100,000 "national security letters," which permit the FBI to demand records on customers without a court order or individualized basis for suspicion. We have all been subjected to unprecedented secrecy about what elected officials are doing in our name while simultaneously suffering unprecedented official intrusion into our private lives by increased video surveillance, warrantless wiretapping and data-mining…

The real problems arise when the state uses highly coercive measures -- depriving people of their life, liberty or property, or going to war -- based on speculation, without adhering to the laws long seen as critical to regulating and legitimizing such force.

Posted by mikki at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google: The $4.6 Trillion Fair-Use Economy:

Google Public Policy Blog: "The Economic Value of 'Fair Use'"

"The study -- which I encourage you to check out -- concludes that the "fair use economy" in 2006 accounted for $4.6 trillion in revenues (roughly one-sixth of total U.S. gross domestic product), employed more than 17 million people, and supported a payroll of $1.2 trillion (approximately one out of every eight workers in the US). It also generated $194 billion in exports and significant productivity growth. Using a methodology similar to a previous World Intellectual Property Organization guide, the results of the study demonstrate that fair use is an important economic driver in the digital age."

Posted by mikki at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

www.rudemechanicals.com. Be there or the barbarians win! SEE Coriolanus vs. the Volsces. SEE the Volsces vs. Coriolanus. SEE the Citizens. SEE the Tribunes. SEE the Soldiers. SEE the marvelous high tech effects. You will laugh and you will cry. You will feel light and heavy. You must attend, or all will fall in broil!

Posted by mikki at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A seriously bad day in the history of the Internet...

DoJ slams net neutrality, says all packets not created equal:


Looks like the big money men got to the Justice Department -- today, the DoJ said ISPs should be allowed to charge higher fees for "priority" traffic on the internet. This is supremely bad news.

The agency told the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing high-speed Internet practices, that it is opposed to "Net neutrality," the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user.

Here is the full text of the DoJ statement: Link, subtitle is "Antitrust Division Says Regulatory Proposals Could Limit Consumer Choice and Deter Network Investment." (Thanks, Gary in Florida, and many others)

Posted by mikki at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Part of Patriot Act Struck Down:

The HuffingtonPost reports a federal judge in New York struck down part of the USA Patriot Act, holding investigators must have a court's approval before they can order Internet providers to turn over records without telling customers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers."

The American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law, complaining that it allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court order required for other government searches.

The ACLU said it was improper to issue so-called national security letters, or NSLs  -- investigative tools used by the FBI to compel businesses to turn over customer information -- without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena. Examples of such businesses include Internet service providers, telephone companies and public libraries.

Posted by mikki at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Real ID will 'strengthen' Americans' privacy, says Chertoff | Tech news blog - CNET News.com:


WASHINGTON--In another attempt to head off privacy advocates' attacks on the Bush administration's Real ID plans, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the national identification scheme will actually "strengthen" personal privacy by providing added protection against identity theft.

In written testimony submitted Wednesday to the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Chertoff made another pitch for his department's requirements, which generally say that starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved, "machine readable" ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. (Click here for a PDF of Chertoff's statement.)

A Real ID-compliant document will be of higher "quality" than existing drivers licenses and ID cards, thus helping to prevent terrorists and identity thieves alike from committing forgery, Chertoff said in his testimony. That improved quality will come about in part because motor vehicle administrators will be required to link into databases to verify the legitimacy of the underlying identification documents, such as birth certificates, that Americans submit when they apply for Real ID-compliant cards, the DHS chief suggested. Another senior Homeland Security official, Stewart Baker, made similar claims earlier this year.

Opponents of the Real ID, meanwhile, have cited numerous privacy and security flaws in the plan. One of their concerns is that the government's failure to require encryption on the cards' two-dimensional bar code could lead to information being swiped and harvested by outsiders for potentially invasive purposes.

Interestingly, not one member of the House committee asked Chertoff about the issue during Wednesday's wide-ranging hearing, which lasted about three hours and covered everything from hurricane preparedness to one Republican's call for more domestically-bred bomb- and cadaver-sniffing dogs. (It also touched, albeit briefly, on cybersecurity.)

Perhaps the silence is emblematic of the increasing controversy the plan has generated over the past year, with numerous states endorsing legal measures attacking or rejecting Real ID and Congress, just before breaking for its August recess, rejecting an extra $300 million in grants for states to implement the mandate.

Posted by mikki at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SFWA Shoots DMCA Shotgun, Hits Self and Innocents Too:

Cory Doctorow (himself an SF author), reports in his boingboing blog that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has begun to send takedown notices to sites that post unauthorized copies of SFnal works.

Problem 1: SFWA isn't the copyright holder in any of these works. It's a trade union of writers and sometimes acts on their behalf. It's not clear to me that SFWA has DMCA takedown rights here.

Problem 2: SFWA's list was hastily constructed and either not checked or poorly checked. As a result the target site, scribd.com, was told to take down a much wider variety of works than intended. This included Cory's own Creative Commons-licensed book, a teacher's bibliography, and other innocent bystanders.

Michael Capobianco, the President of SFWA, wrote an apology both to Doctorow and to scribd, attempting to correct the error. That may or may not be enough to mollify the injured, who technically have a legal recourse in suing SFWA for spurious takedown notices. Doctorow points out that such notices also make it harder for the entities (usually estates, publishers or agents) that have the legal authority to enforce copyrights to get their takedown notices respected. If sites think that SFWA is an enforcement authority they may not be willing to accept the word of people they've never heard of, who happen to have actual authority. Doctorow notes that his own agent also represents the estate of noted author Philip K. Dick and his agent has to be responsible for sending out DMCA notes on behalf of that estate. It's certainly conceivable that a legitimate copyright holder could sue SFWA for making life more difficult.

I'm with Cory in thinking that SFWA should have known better and should have been way more careful when it acted, rather than taking a shotgun approach. The union has been remarkably hostile to the public domain, a trend I find disappointing and distressing.

Posted by mikki at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How to Overdo Outrage:




How to overdo outrage:

“How can you overreact when it's your children?” she said.

...seven Iraqi men who were passengers on a plane scheduled to fly from
San Diego to Chicago on Tuesday night. Robbins was also on the plane but
was so terrified the men might be terrorists that she demanded to get
off, causing a delay that prompted the airline to postpone the flight
until the next morning.

“He looked so mean, the way he was looking at everyone,” Robbins
said. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie.”

And like this:

Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being
banned from airline flights, harassed at airports, strip searched,
roughed up and even imprisoned...

—
BUSH RESTRICTING TRAVEL RIGHTS OF OVER 100,000 U.S. CITIZENS,
by davidswanson,
AfterDowningStreet.org,
Mon, 2007-09-03 15:35

-jsq

Posted by mikki at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nepal airline sacrifices goats to appease sky god - Yahoo! News:


KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said on Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft on Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," said Raju K.C. (Eds: name correct), a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Local media last week blamed the company's woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia.

It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals like goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

Posted by mikki at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

US court rules that free speech trumps copyright (sometimes):


A major copyright victory -- the Tenth Circuit court has ruled in favor of Larry Lessig, et al, in Golan v. Gonzales, a case about the scope of fair use. The court has acknowledged that First Amendment freedoms must be considered when copyright law is made.

This is a very big victory. The government had argued in this case, and in related cases, that the only First Amendment review of a copyright act possible was if Congress changed either fair use or erased the idea/expression dichotomy. We, by contrast, have argued consistently that in addition to those two, Eldred requires First Amendment review when Congress changes the "traditional contours of copyright protection." In Golan, the issue is a statute that removes work from the public domain. In a related case now on cert to the Supreme Court, Kahle v. Gonzales, the issue is Congress's change from an opt-in system of copyright to an opt-out system of copyright. That too, we have argued, is a change in a "traditional contour of copyright protection." Under the 10th Circuit's rule, it should merit 1st Amendment review as well.

Link

Posted by mikki at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stephen Hawking writes a kids' sf trilogy:


Stephen Hawking has written a kids' science fiction trilogy called George's Secret Key to the Universe, the first volume of which is to be published in 29 countries this year, with subsequent volumes coming once a year. His goal is to create a rigorously scientific work of sf that turns kids onto sf -- that's my kind of book! Hawking's co-writers are his daughter (who came up with the idea) and the French physicist Christophe Galfard, whose thesis was based on Hawking's work.

The trio wanted to "provide a modern vision of cosmology from the Big Bang to the present day," without presenting it as magic, Galfard said. "All of what we see (in the universe) corresponds exactly to what has happened already," he added.

The sole element of fiction in the book involves supercomputer that opens a door allowing George and his friends to travel into space aboard an asteroid.

"I don't know of any other book quite like George's Secret Key to the Universe," Hawking, 65, said. "I think we may be unique."

Link to George's Secret Key to the Universe,

Link to Cosmos article

(via Futurismic)

Posted by mikki at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Jakarta Post - Panic erupts at Soekarno-Hatta over police's hijack training:


The police's anti-terror Special Detachment 88 team and bomb squad panicked the public Tuesday as they forced their way into a Garuda plane as part of a hijack simulation training exercise.

The public was told hijackers had planted two bombs and shot a hostage, because the airport's police chief said he wanted to see how the public would react to the crisis situation.

Jakarta Police Deputy chief Brig. Gen. Raziman Tarigan said the training was also required to ensure airport staff "were not dulled by routine".

The simulated drama unfolded at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, with four men acting as armed hijackers taking over a Jakarta-to-Narita flight and demanding US$1 million for the release of 44 non-existent prisoners.

But the training day was not announced at the airport and the bomb squad's actions saw the hundreds of citizens in transit believe there was a hijack situation involving guns, bombs and hostages.

The two-hour training exercise involved a Garuda Indonesia airplane, ambulances, helicopters, full teams from airport emergency units, the airport management Angkasa Pura, the National Police, the Jakarta Police, the Cengkareng precinct police and bomb sniffing dogs.

"We wanted to make this training as real as possible, so we didn't tell the public that the bomb was part of the security training," the airport's police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Guntur Sutianto said.

"We also wanted to find out how people would respond, what their level of obedience to the airport's guards would be when there's a crisis."

The training program was called Project for Contingency Exercises of Airport in Indonesia and the simulation involved 44 hostages and two bombs.

The exercise was held with the National Police and the Directorate General of Air Transportation, in coordination with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The training would help local security forces meet the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 17 standards to ensure contingency plans are developed and tested regularly, authorities said.

Indonesia joined the aviation organization in 1950.

The police force's Raziman Tarigan said the training was also conducted to fulfill the Aviation Law No. 15/1992.

This law surrounds preventive actions against threats to domestic aviation and national security.

Raziman said the exercise would also enhance the airport's security systems.

"The training is conducted every two years and aims to increase the readiness of airport staff so they will stay sharp and not be dulled by routine," Raziman said.

The training exercise at the Soekarno-Hatta airport was the fifth training simulation held by Japan's government through the JICA and the Indonesian government.

The training was previously held in Juanda airport in Surabaya, Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, the Civil Aviation Training Center in Curug, Tangerang regency, and Hang Nadim airport in Batam, Riau Islands.

The JICA team consisted of eight Japanese trainers providing the Indonesian teams with both theoretical and in-field lessons.

JICA also assisted the Soekarno-Hatta airport with security equipment including TV monitors, communication devices and projectors

Posted by mikki at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Worried about your personal information being compromised? Do you trust the government with the most personal of personal information?

Judge wants everyone in UK on DNA database | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:


The entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on the national DNA database, a top judge said today.
Lord Justice Sedley, one of England's most experienced appeal court judges, described the country's current system as "indefensible".

"We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven't, it isn't ... that's broadly the picture," Sir Stephen Sedley told the BBC.



Click on the above link for more

Posted by mikki at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)