People who are regular viewers of films like the Runaway Bride and Hitch are often bad communicators.

Psychologists found that lovers frequently thought their partner should know what they want without the two of them having to talk.

Ha!

Rom Coms Can Ruin Relationships Say Psychologists | UK News | Sky News

I much enjoyed this article.

6 Myths About GM, Ford, and Chrysler

Twitter can be used to network, make friends or keep up with Britney Spears. And soon it will become a way to transfer money over the Web.

Twitpay made the New York Times.

Send Money Through Twitter With Twitpay - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

(Unfortunately for non-subscribers this essay is currently behind the paywall.)

The fact that I even had to look this up is a testament to the absurdity of our intellectual property system:

A work that was created on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death...

Works Originally Created before January 1, 1978, But Not Published or Registered by That Date

These works have been automatically brought under the statute and are now given federal copyright protection. The duration of copyright in these works is generally computed in the same way as for works created on or after January 1, 1978: the life-plus-70 or 95/120-year terms apply to them as well. The law provides that in no case would the term of copyright for works in this category expire before December 31, 2002, and for works published on or before December 31, 2002, the term of copyright will not expire before December 31, 2047.

Unfortunately, this is still confusing. This work was created by an author who died in 1910. 1910 plus 70 is 1980. So, this work ought to be in the public domain. Therefore it is a disservice that it has been placed behind the New Yorker's pay wall, and you've the right to republish it in full on MemeStreams.

However, this is where it gets odd. The law provides that in no case would the term of copyright for works in this category expire before December 31, 2002. So, its not 1980, its 2002. I guess.

But it gets even more bizarre. If the work was published sometime between 1978 and 2002, apparently the term of copyright would not expire until 2047. Thats lifetime of the author plus 135 years! Presumably because the New Yorker waited until 2008, the copyright expired in 2002, which is lifetime of the author plus 92 years. Doesn't it seem counter intuitive that by waiting to publish this the New Yorker shortened the length of its copyright protection? No less counter intuitive, perhaps, than the notion that intellectual property rights ought to be held for centuries in the first place.

Do we need to get a lawyer in order to find out whether or not we can republish this thing?

RE: The Privilege of the Grave

President Bush took credit yesterday for "keeping America safe" from terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, arguing that his administration had prevented more bloodshed at home through aggressive policies

Thats inarguable. Why is "keeping America safe" in scare quotes?

and that such a result should outweigh any second-guessing of his methods.

That, on the other hand... well, did we really say that?

There's room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made.

Sounds like the opposite of how the WaPo framed him. He isn't saying his approach shouldn't be questioned. He is just saying that it worked. It did work. It might have caused a number of extremely problematic malincentives that trouble us for years to come, and it may have swept up a bunch of innocent people, but I ain't saying that it didn't work.

Bush Says His Post-9/11 Actions Prevented Further Terrorism

Chrysler LLC announced late Wednesday that it is stopping all vehicle production in the United States for at least a month.

All 30 of the carmaker's plants will close after the last shift on Friday, and employees will not be asked to return to work before Jan. 19.

wow...

Chrysler shuts down all production - Dec. 17, 2008

The parliament justly thought, that the king was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. And in the event it has hitherto been found, that, though some sensible inconveniences arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet the advantages overbalance them, and should render the English grateful to the memory of their ancestors, who, after repeated contests, at last established that noble, though dangerous, principle.

From Hume's History of England

Just in case there was anyone out there who hadn't already figured this out, the NSA is spying on the entire country.

Two knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that the clash erupted over a part of Bush's espionage program that had nothing to do with the wiretapping of individual suspects. Rather, Comey and others threatened to resign because of the vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data. These sources, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence matters, describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country's largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004...
The NSA's powerful computers became vast storehouses of "metadata." They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients.

None of which is protected by the 4th amendment according to our fancy legal system.

By one estimate, the amount of data the NSA could suck up in close to real time was equivalent to one quarter of the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica per second. (The actual content of calls and e-mails was not being monitored as part of this aspect of the program, the sources say.) All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity.
. . . By 2003, Yoo had moved on, and a new head of the OLC, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work. Goldsmith found Yoo's legal opinions justifying the program flawed. His reasons are based on a mind-numbingly complex area of federal law, but the basic analysis comes down to this: the systematic collection and digital transmission of huge amounts of telephone and e-mail data by the government constitutes "electronic surveillance" under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the exclusive law governing domestic spying in national-security cases. For such activities, FISA requires a court-approved warrant. Therefore, the program was illegal.

Its not clear to me what the current legal status of such a call records program would be in the wake of the FISA amendments.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Did the NSA Call Records Program Cause the Major Controversy Within DOJ, and If so, What Does It Tell Us About the Legal Issues?:

Your parents might have worried when you chose Philosophy or International Relations as a major. But a year-long survey of 1.2 million people with only a bachelor's degree by PayScale Inc. shows that graduates in these subjects earned 103.5% and 97.8% more, respectively, about 10 years post-commencement. Majors that didn't show as much salary growth include Nursing and Information Technology.

Wow. Things have certainly changed a great deal in the past 10 years. Here is the definition of "mid-career:"

Full-time employees with 10 or more years of experience in their career or field who are Bachelors graduates.

For the graduates in this data set, the typical (median) mid-career employee is 42 years old and has 15.5 years of experience.

I get the impression that in general, there is a stronger correlation between age and salary than there is between merit and salary.

Salary Increase By Major | WSJ

This guy Madoff lost billions of his clients money like all the hedge funds. Those losses are not covered by any agency. Only fraud is covered. So what do you do? I think that Madoff is just a fall guy. The losses of his fund were the same as other funds, mutual and hedge and personal losses. By saying it was a Ponzi scheme (fraud) by this one guy all those rich investors will be covered from their losses unlike the rest of the world. .

It turns out crime does pay.

Madoff is buying a tax payer bailout of his hedge fund.