"Life is Good ®" is one of the most banal and hypocritical trademarks in existence. These people make t-shirts that extol life's little pleasures, while simultaneously including that little ® symbol on the front of each one.

No one is ever legally required to use those ® symbols. The purpose of using them is to inform anyone who sees your product that you are the exclusive owner of the word or phrase you've placed it next to and if they use that word or phrase without your express written permission you will sue them for every god damn penny. Simply put, its a threat.

Its quite possible for you to defend a valid trademark claim without making that threat on everything you publish. The real value of making the threat is that it increases the amount of damages that you can collect for infringement. If someone genuinely didn't know that you had trademarked the phrase they might be able to respond to an infringement claim by simply ceasing their use of the mark. However, if they clearly saw and ignored your threat then you can go after them for statutory damages and attorney's fees. In other words, you can really fuck them.

I presume that most of their customers just don't see the ®. They wear it and the see the "life is good" message, and they don't see the "we'll fucking sue you" message positioned right next to it. I can't do that. I can't pretend that the t-shirts don't say "we'll fucking sue you."

And they're not fucking kidding about it either:

Although the company isn't eager to talk about it, LIG just wrapped up two years' worth of frivolous litigation against LG Electronics, the $35 billion Korean conglomerate that sells DVD players, cellphones, and refrigerators. In a suit filed two summers ago, LIG claims the Koreans' ``Life's Good" ad campaign infringes on their trademark, and alleges that LG's boring corporate logo ``is strikingly similar" to Jake, which it is not.

Assholes.

Whose 'good life' is it anyway? - The Boston Globe

Anxiety prompts the release of a chemical that bypasses conscious experience, automatically triggering similar feelings in anyone who sniffs it. This may allow fear to spread quickly and speed our ability to flee danger.

Fellow students smell your exam fear - life - 04 July 2009 - New Scientist

In light of Obama's failure to address the critical issue of laptop border searches in a timely manner, as promised by his Secretary, I am going on blog strike. I will not be posting to MemeStreams for the next week. This is very difficult for me.

Rape is violent, destructive, and a crime—no less so when the victim is incarcerated. Until recently, however, the public viewed sexual abuse as an inevitable feature of confinement...

Congress affirmed the duty to protect incarcerated individuals from sexual abuse by unanimously enacting the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

I'm glad to see the government taking this problem seriously, although I have to agree with Reason's take:

The recommendations read more like a desperate plea for basic competency in prison management.

To my mind, there are two possibilities here. Either the commission has wasted years of funding and produced a vanilla, restatement-of-the-conventional-wisdom report, or the extent of safety problems in America's prisons beggars belief, making a novelty out of even the most conventional policy proposals.

Its the later.

National Prison Rape Elimination Commission - Publication - Report - Executive Summary

A team of journalists investigating the global electronic waste business has unearthed a security problem too. In a Ghana market, they bought a computer hard drive containing sensitive documents belonging to U.S. government contractor Northrop Grumman.

Don't throw out hard drives without destroying them.

Reporters find Northrop Grumman data in Ghana market | ITworld

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.

Good.

Court Says Strip Search of Ariz. Teenager Illegal - ABC News

The reason we generally like markets is that the profit incentive spurs useful innovations. But in some markets, that's not the case. We don't allow a bustling market in heroin, for instance, because we don't want a lot of innovation in heroin creation, packaging and advertising. Are we really sure we want a bustling market in how to cleverly revoke the insurance of people who prove to be sickly?

Rescission

Now lawyers for the woman — if they don’t broker a settlement with the Recording Industry Association of America — are likely to go before Davis to attack the award. If they take Berkman’s approach, they have a big hurdle: The U.S. Supreme Court once rejected a cruel-and-unusual challenge to a 50-year prison term received by a California man caught shoplifting golf clubs.

For some good technical information about the Constitutional problems raised by the $1.92 million Jammie Thomas-Rasset decision, note this blog post from the EFF. However, the author of this article has a point. For a look just exactly how weak the Supreme Court thinks that the 8th amendment is, check out Lockyer v. Andrade.

On November 4, 1995, Andrade stole five videotapes from a K-Mart store in Ontario, California. Two weeks later, he stole four videotapes from a different K-Mart store in Montclair, California.

As a result of his prior convictions, Andrade was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison.

"Andrade, like the defendant in Solem, was a repeat offender who committed theft of trifling value, some $150, and their criminal records are comparable, including burglary (though Andrade's were residential), with no violent crimes or crimes against the person." Because Andrade was 37 at the time of the offenses in this case, the 50-years-to-life sentence was effectively life without parole...

This is the sort of thing that people in the future will look back upon and remark about how barbaric and primitive we are.

Will File-Sharing Case Spawn a Copyright Reform Movement? | Threat Level | Wired.com

The worst thing about the Tiananmen square massacre is that it was totally effective. Movements for democractic reform ended in China, and through out the communist world. They have not returned. Chinese youth have become depoliticized. The protestors still remain in prison.

The lesson of history is clear. Iran is already threatening to "crack down" on the protestors. Eventually, they'll make good on those threats. Its going to be ugly, and as long that the state can prevent local media from accurately reporting about the events, its going to be the end of the movement for liberalization in Iran.

The problem with public street demonstrations is that they are only effective if the people being protested care about the opinions of the demonstrators or about the opinions of people who are influenced by the demonstrators. That is rarely the case.

The Party leadership expelled Zhao Ziyang from the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (PSC), because he opposed martial law, and Zhao remained under house arrest until his death. Hu Qili, the other member of the PSC who opposed the martial law but abstained from voting, was also removed from the committee. He was, however, able to retain his party membership, and after "changing his opinion", was reassigned as deputy minister of Machine-Building and Electronics Industry. Another reform-minded Chinese leader, Wan Li, was also put under house arrest immediately after he stepped out of an airplane at Beijing Capital International Airport upon returning from his shortened trip abroad, with the official excuse of "health reasons." When Wan Li was released from his house arrest after he finally "changed his opinion" he, like Qiao Shi, was transferred to a different position with equal rank but mostly ceremonial role. Several Chinese ambassadors abroad claimed political asylum....

State media mostly gave reports sympathetic to the students in the immediate aftermath. As a result, those responsible were all later removed. Two news anchors who reported this event on 4 June in the daily 1900 hours (7:00 pm) news report on China Central Television were fired because they showed their sad emotions...

Several editors were arrested, with Wu Xuecan, who organised the publication of an unauthorised Extra edition, sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

Rob Gifford, a National Public Radio journalist, said that much of the political freedoms and debate that occurred post-Mao and pre-Tiananmen ended after Tiananmen.... Gifford added that people born after 1970 had "near-complete depoliticization" while older intellectuals no longer focus on political change and instead focus on economic reform...

The Tiananmen square protests dampened the growing concept of political liberalization in communist countries that was popular in the late 1980s; as a result, many democratic reforms that were proposed during the 1980s were swept under the carpet. Although there has been an increase in personal freedom since then, discussions on structural changes to the PRC government and the role of the Communist Party of China remain largely taboo.

Iran and Tiananmen Square

Awesome Music, Beer, Festival Food, and Artist Markets... beat that....

Red Stripe will host the longest day of the year party at Candler Park. There are over 40 vendors in the Artist Market this year. That means that you can score some cool stuff from some of the area's most talented residents.

Admission is free, and wrist bands are available for 21+ for $5 to purchase beer.

Also, bring your dogs and kids, kids must be on leash..... I mean dogs.

Rusted Root and Guster will be playing along with other bands through out the day and they will have a Kids Zone & a Go Green Zone. The festival has something to offer for all genres of people, so come out and support a local Atlanta neighborhood!

Mid Summer Music Festival