Footenotes

I love fake Easter grass.  Love it.  You might think that by the transitive properties of cellophane I’d also love Christmas tree tinsel but it’s not the same.  There’s something about a lush field made of brilliant mossy-hued plastic shred that makes me think of paradise.  Alas, there’s nothing sadder than standing in line at Rite-Aid to buy yourself a bag of Easter basket grass.  This is getting weird.

What’s in the news this week?  First up – just when you thought SOPA and PiPA were dead and buried now we’ve got CISPA to watch out for.  Just look at that list of sponsors!  You can tell this is some evil legislation.  Buzz has been building over the last week or so about the  new legislation that would give the government and ISPs  powers to monitor your online presence via eased restrictions on information collection.  This comes on the heels of similar laws being worked on in the United Kingdom that have caused quite a row amongst lawmakers.

And because I apparently hate the spirit of Easter joy here’s some more bad news: Several textbook publishers have come together to sue a small open source alternative textbook publisher for…wait for it…copyright infringement.  The story was covered in the Chronicle and picked up around open source blogs this week.  However this plays out will probably set the standard for how publishers deal with open source issues going forward so keep an eye on it.

First up this week, if you didn’t catch Joe Ugoretz’s post about the Google Art Project you should really check it out.  I had no idea this was going on and it’s awesome!  This is admittedly a little dangerous though because I already spend soooooo much time on the internet and I worry about my poor eyes.  Thank you for posting!

Digital Iniatives, the Graduate Center’s page for all things digital around the GC put up a great set of David Harvey lectures via Youtube.  If you haven’t had a chance to look around the site you should take a look.  Speaking of the GC, you should take a look at the blogging happening at the MALS78100 course.  I dropped in on a fantastic post about some reading they’re doing on visualizing networks.  If you tend to skip over the class blogs in your reading you’re missing some great gems.

Finally this week Francesco Crocco over at the CUNY Games network pointed us towards new research suggesting that violent video games actually encourage teamwork.  Generations of CUNY Commoners will be forwarding this link to their parents.

Till next week!