The 2011 Volkswagen Jetta should make its debut later this summer and arrive in dealerships shortly after. However, the popular fuel-sipping Jetta TDI may be delayed until early 2011. A Volkswagen official told the guys over at Inside Line is expected to show up a little late. No reason was provided for the delay.
The 2011 Volkswagen Jetta TDI is expected to carry the same direct-injected 4-cylinder diesel making 140-hp and 236 lb-ft of torque. It will be available with either a 6-speed manual or the company’s DSG dual-clutch transmission.
The FordMondeo is due for a mid-cycle refresh for the 2011 model year and all signs point to a debut at the Paris Motor Show this September. But ahead of its big reveal, spy photographers have caught the new Mondeo out in the open, and while the basic shape hasn’t changed, there’s something far more interesting under the hood.
The major stylistic upgrades are up front, where the Mondeo’s fascia picks up a few cues from the Fiesta and the 2012 Focus, including a larger lower grille and slimmer upper section. The front foglamps have been re-shaped and a strip of LED running lamps tie the design into Ford’s B-segment hatch.
At the back, the tailgate gets a subtle re-shaping above the license plate pocket and it appears the lights have been modified under the camo tape. The most important changes will be in the engine compartment, where the Mondeo will get the new 2.0-liter Ecoboost inline-four and the Powershift dual-clutch transmission. Expect all the details to be revealed shortly ahead of the Paris show this fall.
It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL! After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from holiday issues of the British Medical Journal. Enjoy!
“Objective: To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic. Setting: Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling. Participants: Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs. Interventions: Limited. Main outcome measures: Family and twin studies, magical ability, and specific magical skills. Results: Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable. Conclusions: A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist, controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature. Magical enhancers regulating gene expression may be involved, combined with mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2 and MCR1.”
Assortative mating—people tending to mate withothers like themselves
Chromatin—complex of DNA and proteinthat constitute chromosomes
Epigenetics—heritable changesin gene function not involving changes in DNA sequence
Epistasis—actionof one gene modified by another
Founder effect—increasein gene frequency when a population has only a small numberof original settlers (founders), one or more of whom had thatgene
HapMap project—haplotype (series of correlated alleles)map of the human genome, currently being analysed in populationsof African, Asian, and European ancestry
House elves—human-likecreatures with distinctive magical abilities who are bound to,and act as servants for, several magical families
Histones—mainprotein components of chromatin
Metamorphmagus—someonewith the ability to change their physical appearance
Muggle—someonewith no magical abilities
Squib—someone with virtuallyno magical abilities who comes from a magical family
Mayor Richard Daley is upping the ante as he bets against his Philadelphia counterpart on the outcome of the Stanley Cup finals.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, however, is not. Win or lose, Nutter has pledged to volunteer in a community garden within his office of sustainability. Cheesesteaks, Philly’s signature foodstuff, are not on the line.
Daley likes to be known as a "green mayor" too, but he’s setting that aside and bringing it in his finals bet. At a United Center news conference, Daley announced he’s putting up even more Chicago
products than he did during the conference finals against San Jose.
Surrounded by piles of sausages, beer, pizza, candy and other Chicago delicacies during a news conference at the United Center to announce the bet, Daley said the Hawks have increasingly taken on the character of the city.
"That’s our motto in Chicago: ‘I will.’ We never, ever give up," Daley said as representatives of the companies donating to the wager stood with him. "And I think that’s what the excitement is all about. It’s all about where they come from, how they accomplish it, such a young team, a mature team, and nothing is ever taken for granted. And what we have behind us here is a group of young entrepreneurs and all types of businesses that are proud to be supporting the Chicago Blackhawks."
"It isn’t the big shots or anything, this is all the working metropolitan area of Chicago, and across the country," Daley said. "They look at this team as ‘Hey, this is our team. This is a working team.’"
Among Chicago’s offerings should the Blackhawks lose to the Flyers:
*Three dozen Abundance Bakery red velvet cupcakes
*100 Al’s Beef italian beef sandwiches
*Six boxes of Allen Brothers USDA prime long bone ribeye steaks
*Billy Goat Tavern three dozen double cheeseburgers
*Bobak’s Sausage Co.: 100 Italian sausages and 100 gourmet chicken burgers
*Vienna Beef: 1961 Maxwell Street Polish Sausages and 2010 Chicago style hot dogs
*Terry’s Toffee: 30 pounds of toffee
*The Lyric Opera of Chicago: two tickets to Verdi’s "A Masked Ball," two lyric fleece pullovers and baseball hats
*Chicago Public Library: books by seven Chicago authors, including "The Adventures of Augie March" by Nobel Prize winning author Saul Bellow.
Sick of everyone playing with your Android, draining the battery? It’s as bad as the first weeks of the iPhone, somedays. Download the free Fake Battery app, so you have a legitimate excuse not to lend your phone to someone. More »
The Facebook SDK for Android is the result of an engineering intern’s project and will allow Android developers to easily integrate the Facebook platform into their apps. It is now available as a beta. [Facebook] More »
It’s here! On Thursday, Her Madgesty and The Design Gods commonly known as Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana released the first commercial promo for their joint line of sunshades, adeptly-titled MDG. In the ad, the crimson-lipped music legend romps around with a sexy twentysomething as she works it for the camera.
The sunglasses will each bear the logo MDG and are set for release at Sunglass Hut locations and D&G flagship stores across the globe next week. In August, The Material Mom — who models the latest D&G collection in the high-end label’s Spring/Summer ad campaign — will release her own line of children’s clothing — on sale exclusively at Macy’s.
Sources have told Japanese magazine Best Car that the release of the Toyota FT-86 sports car has been delayed by two years. That means we won’t see Toyota and Subaru’s rear-wheel-drive baby until 2013. What’s the reason for the delay?
Apparently a lot of Toyota fans have shown a sense of frustration with the design of the FT-86 Concept. Toyota designers may head back to the drawing board to make a couple of changes.
Also, Toyota feels that a launch date of 2011 may be too premature with the global economic slowdown effecting sales, which we’re not to sure about. Why wouldn’t you want a sub-$20,000 rear-wheel-drive sports car that pushes 200-hp in a time where you’re constantly staring at your bank account.
Refresher: Inspired by the sporty 1980s Corolla AE86, the production version of the FT-86 is reported to be powered by a 200-hp 2.0L boxer Subaru engine sending power to the rear-wheels. Prices are set to start above $20,000.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft might be considering lowering the price on its Zune Pass service in order to better compete with Apple and RealNetworks. Currently the service gives you unlimited music streaming and 10 song downloads for $14.99/month. [Bloomberg] More »
Fortune has a great story up: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission requested that Warren Buffett, the head of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway, come testify. He declined. The panel — charged with investigating the causes of the financial crisis and known for its aggressive and public grilling of Wall Street executives — asked again, this time using somewhat stronger language. Buffett again said no. So the FCIC subpoenaed the Oracle of Omaha, in all caps no less. “YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to appear and give testimony,” their letter read.
And, lo and behold, Buffett will testify on Wednesday on the subject of ratings agencies. Berkshire Hathaway controls a major stake in Moody’s, one of the three big credit raters.
Mark Mcnairy New Amsterdam is the footwear label from the newly appointed lead at Woolrich Woolen Mills. Present London just got some in stock that includes a simple suede gibson – available in navy and nubuck, and camel suede on a classic red brick sole. Two exclusives also arrive in the form of saddle shoes – comes in navy and grey suede. Available now at Present.
De nuevo volvemos a tener un caso de un vehículo oficial pillado a más velocidad de la permitida, en este caso la Guardia Civil ha cazado a un flamanete Audi A8 del presidente de Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, que circulaba por una autovía a 170 km/h.
La primera noticia que se facilitó, decía que era el vehículo de los escoltas el que había sobrepasado el límite, pero parece ser que al final era el propio vehículo oficial del presidente extremeño. El cual ha reconocido los hechos, y ha culpado a su agenda de tener que desplazarse tan justo de tiempo.
La parte buena es que al menos lo ha reconocido, pero esto es demasiado habitual, además en este caso aún es un presidente de una comunidad autónoma, pero incluso se han dado casos de concejales que los pillan a 180 km/h con sus vehículos sin motivos aparentes de tanto apuro.
You wait a whole day for a bus to arrive, then 3 come along at the same time. Such also seems to be the case with Dropbox, which has recently received its first Windows Mobile client, and has not just been blessed with a second, this time a free effort by d1k_is from XDA-Developers.com.
While not as polished as Cloudfiles, this app has many interesting features, such as allowing one to take a picture and then automatically upload it to your Dropbox.
The full list of features (current and future) are below.
An excellent catch from Ben Smith at Politico — today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a rare comment on the domestic economic situation:
“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institution, where she was discussing the Administration’s new National Security Strategy.
Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion alone. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.
Clinton went on to cite Brazil as a model. “Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy,” Clinton said. “And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty.”
Indeed: In Brazil, the rich are getting richer, but so are the poor. In the United States, for a decade now, the rich have gotten richer while the earnings of everyone else have stagnated.
Mark Perry (left) next to the Nissan LEAF battery mock up
Nissan shocked everybody a bit earlier this week when they announced they had developed a DC fast charging station that had the capability of getting a Nissan LEAF’s 24 kWh battery pack from zero to 80% full in under a half hour. It wasn’t so much the fast charging capability — also known as Level 3 charging — that shocked. We’ve all known Level 3 charging was coming. No, it was the price of their charging station.
At about $17,000, it represented an astounding departure from the $60,000 to $150,000 prices that have been quoted for the better part of a year and a half for a fast charging station. I had a chance to ask Mark Perry, Nissan’s director of product planning and strategy for North America, about just how Nissan had pulled it off and what kinds of plans Nissan has for bringing their Level 3 charging station to the U.S. (more…)
A 79-year-old man from Utica, NY entered an AT&T store with a hit list of names and a 357 Magnum. He opened fired, hitting one employee, before an off-duty police officer who was shopping at the store pulled his own gun and shot the attacker dead.
The shooter, Abraham Dicken, had held a grudge against the store’s employees for months, even threatening them with a gun once before. His hit-list contained the names of six employees.
It wasn’t the first time that Dicken had been in the AT&T store and given the staff trouble. Authorities said that he had been in the store numerous times in the past, even brandishing a handgun to employees.
U.S. authorities issued a tsunami warning today in the Pacific, after registering a 5.2 degree magnitude earthquake in Vanuatu, near Australia.
The island of Vanuatu, suffered earthquakes of 7.2, 5.7 and 5.2 degrees on the Richter scale. U.S. officials canceled the alert issued tsuanmi after three consecutive earthquakes.
The warning of the Tsunami Warning Center in the Pacific, part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was issued at 17.39 GMT, just twenty minutes after the earthquake. The three strong earthquakes occurred between 5:14 and 5:45 pm.
The alert had affected the coast of Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia, but was canceled shortly after the realization that the earthquake has not caused a tsunami.
The quake, of magnitude 7.2 degrees on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, occurred at a depth of 35 kilometers.
The epicenter was registered in the Republic of Vanuatu, 210 km north-northwest of the town of Luganville, and 340 miles sursuroeste of Lata.
Vanuatu authorities clarified that in the main island has not felt the earthquake and, therefore, hasn’t caused any damage or injury in the area.
Fernand goods such as footwear and bags are all made in Michigan in the United States. Finding its way all the way to the Japan market however, is the Gravity Bag model. The simplicity of the design of the Gravity Bag is what makes it truly original. A braided strap gives it striking detail, as well as function. An easy open flap allows fast access to your items, and the beige color makes it that much more desirable. Available now at Japanese retailer, Second Stage.
High-end jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. posted an impressive 22% rise in sales for its first quarter ending April 30, 2010, compared to the same period in 2009. Once luxury companies start rebounding, that’s generally a positive sign for economic recovery. So should we take this to indicate the growing strength of the U.S. consumer? Sort of, but we shouldn’t get carried away.
If you break down the Americas’ stores contributions, you quickly find that its flagship New York store made up a very large portion of that 22%. In nominal terms, Tiffany had $57 more in Americas sales for the first quarter of 2010. Using the data provided, you can estimate how this breaks down for its flagship versus the others in the Americas. If you do, you find that around $47 million came from that single store. Only around $10 million came from the rest. That breaks down into a 26% increase for the NY store, and a 13% increase for its other U.S. locations.
Of course, 13% isn’t bad — but it isn’t 26%, or even 22%. What this likely means is that consumers are, indeed, stronger, but most of the impressive result is coming from New York.
Why does this matter? Because New York City isn’t a microcosm of the rest of the U.S. economy. Its economy was explicitly bailed out, as the financial sector benefitted hugely by government intervention. As a result, Wall Street got back to business as usual much more quickly than the rest of the U.S. Lawyers, consultants and accountants located in Manhattan consequently made more money, as did all other companies based in New York City, down to the hot dog vendors. All would have been worse off without a rescue. As a result, Tiffany, and likely other luxury retail stores in Manhattan, benefitted disproportionately. New York City’s wealthy recovered more quickly than average Americans.
Additionally, wealthier individuals are generally coming out of the recession more quickly than low- and middle-class Americans. Part of that has to do with the broad stock market recovery that the U.S. experienced since March 2009 lows. That wealth effect will be felt a lot more by the rich, since they have bigger investment portfolios than other Americans. Consequently, it makes sense that luxury would begin to rebound. After all, not many poor or even middle-class Americans shop at Tiffany’s.
The session kicks off with U.S. Copyright Office official Steven Tepp defending ACTA, by saying right from the outset, “Quite candidly, we’re in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of copyright piracy.” What kind of epidemic? Well, he uses that old line about how organized crime groups and terrorists are being funded by copyright infringement — a claim that the industry keeps making, but which makes little sense. Even if it were true that some crime operations are selling bootleg DVDs and such, aren’t they under the same, if not more, pressure from unauthorized internet file sharing?
But, even more to the point, tossing out the “organized crime” and “terrorists” claim (never with any actual evidence, of course) is a pure moral panic. If organized crime groups and terrorists are a problem, go after them for their organized crime and terrorism efforts. Don’t claim that we need to put in place restrictive copyright laws that impact everyone just because law enforcement is unable to stop these organized crime groups. And it’s worth pointing out while Tepp claimed this is all about organized criminals and terrorists… pretty much all of his comments following that had nothing whatsoever to do with either, but were more directed towards file sharing.
Tepp’s next point is to back this up by quoting the widely laughed at (even by Tepp’s own bosses) USTR Special 301 report, which has no actual methodology, other than to repeat whatever complaints are made by the entertainment industry and the pharma industry, without any effort to back that up with facts or data. That’s not evidence. That’s just US companies begging the government for protectionist policies against competitors. Amusingly, Tepp won’t even name the countries he’s talking about, so that people can point out the mistakes or problems in the USTR’s report. He refers to “one Latin American country” or “one Western European country,” by which he means Spain, but never says that — perhaps because the USTR’s report on Spain is misleading and not accurate. For example, he claims that in Spain (er this “Western European country”) “internet piracy is no longer prosecuted and that government seems to be moving in a number of wrong directions with regards to online enforcement.”
That’s insulting to the Spanish and blatantly incorrect. Spanish copyright law has recognized that private, non-commercial file sharing is not the same thing as commercial counterfeiting. It’s really quite misleading and disingenuous for Tepp to kick off this talk by saying he’s not talking about internet downloading but about organized crime and terrorists… and then just a couple sentences later, complain about Spain not punishing kids for downloading some songs for their iPods. Furthermore, the big complaint about Spain is that it properly recognizes that a search engine or a tool should not be blamed for the actions of users. The US used to believe that too. But does Tepp explain any of this? Nope. He makes it out like the Spanish gov’t is supporting terrorists. This is blatantly untrue and misleading. And, honestly, claiming that Spain’s decision to create copyright laws that make sense is the country going in “the wrong direction”? That’s insulting.
However, it does show how the whole ACTA debate is being distorted by the industry. They’ll claim over and over again that it’s about stopping organized crime and terrorists, but then immediately assume that people doing file sharing online should get lumped in with those people.
From there he goes on to pull out the usual bogus (and legally false) claim that these actions “rob” the United States. Uh, what? If the US is being robbed, charge the perpetrators with theft, and move on. A government official should not be making such legally incorrect statements to support a policy. This is not about anyone being robbed. This is about countries that have made reasonable determinations on how copyright law should be applied. And many folks have figured out how to work successfully within those legal regimes. That a few US companies don’t want to adjust shouldn’t lead the US gov’t to forcing other governments to change their laws.
And then, the kicker. Like Ron Kirk recently claimed, Tepp says that now that the ACTA document has been released, it’s proved all the “wild internet rumors” to be “false.” Um. Except that’s not true. The details showed that there are massive problems with ACTA, in that it only exports the restrictions with none of the exceptions. While it is true, technically, that it is “consistent with US law,” today, that ignores the fact that US law is constantly changing, and ACTA would lock in aspects of the law, without allowing Congress to make important and necessary changes for fear of “not living up to our international obligations.” Fixing problems with current case law (not statutory law) on what constitutes “contributory” infringement? ACTA limits that. That’s a huge problem that many people pointed out in those “wild internet rumors” and it was proved 100% true.
Later on Tepp makes even more bizarre claims (amusingly, right after he slips up and calls it a “treaty” despite all the efforts of US negotiators to make sure they never called it a treaty). He says that ACTA has no intention of changing whatever balance each individual country makes in terms of copyright sanctions or exceptions. He specifically says:
“ACTA very clearly, from day one, has never been about changing the balance of copyright law. It doesn’t talk about rights. It doesn’t talk about exceptions… ACTA’s just saying, whatever the infringement provisions and exceptions you have in your law, are up to you (consistent with all those other treaties we’ve all negotiated and agreed to), and you should have some minimum type enforcement actions available so that the remedies for violating those rights… have some meaning… So to say that ACTA is exporting without exceptions is to ignore that it’s also exporting without rights. It’s not talking about rights or exceptions.”
That’s blatantly untrue. The provisions on secondary liability do exactly that — increase restrictions, without corresponding exceptions. And if it’s not changing what any country does, then what’s the point of the document in the first place? To say that it’s just setting a “minimum type [of] enforcement” is to say that it’s requiring specific copyright sanctions, which was exactly the complaint. Furthermore, the idea that this is needed to make sure enforcement “has some meaning” is again incredibly insulting to the decisions on copyright law that those other countries have made — such as Spain’s decision that personal, non-commercial copying should not be treated like for-profit, commercial copying.
Tepp is playing sneaky word games. When people complained about how ACTA exports enforcement provisions without the exceptions, Tepp focuses on the fact it doesn’t export rights, but ignores the enforcement provisions — which is what people were concerned about in the first place!
Anyway, he goes on to try to address the secondary liability claim, first by mocking the example that was brought up earlier of the Google execs found guilty of criminal privacy violations:
In terms of secondary liability issue, this is another red herring. The Google case in Italy, that happened entirely without ACTA. How is that possible? How could something bad happen without ACTA?
Once again, blatantly misleading. The example of the Google execs was used to show how secondary liability could create harm for American companies, by highlighting troubling secondary liability rulings in a different realm — in this case privacy law. It wasn’t saying that it was directly an example of what would happen with ACTA, but highlighting how secondary liability, as a concept, can lead to bad results. Tepp either feigned ignorance or was actually ignorant of the fact that this example was just showing secondary liability problems in privacy law, to suggest how those problems might also show up in copyright law. Mocking such a serious problem with secondary liability does not inspire confidence that Tepp or the US Copyright Office has even thought through the consequences of secondary liability.
That’s scary.
Tepp continues:
ACTA doesn’t mandate every jot and till of secondary liability. It sets forth the basic approach to it in the US and proposes that as standards to follow elsewhere. Could countries go beyond that? Sure. Have countries already gone beyond that already? Sure. Does ACTA require it? No… This is something ACTA does not require…
Um. What? Section 2.18.3 of ACTA, as it stands, appears to require third party liability (i.e., “secondary liability”) and the related footnote to that section defines it pretty clearly:
For greater certainty, the Parties understand that third party liability means liability for any person who authorizes for a direct financial benefit, induces through or by conduct directed to promoting infringement, or knowingly and materially aids any act of copyright or related rights infringement by another.
Once again, Tepp is being misleading. He’s pointing out that ACTA sets the floor for secondary liability based on what’s in the US, but totally ignores the fact that secondary liability for copyright in the US is a highly dynamic area. It’s not in the statute anywhere — a law that tried to put it there did not pass — and really was only defined by the Supreme Court just a few years ago in a manner that many people find problematic. If ACTA sets that as the floor, then it limits the US from being able to fix the problems with the Supreme Court’s definition. At the same time, note that Tepp only talks about going “beyond” what’s in the US today. He doesn’t seem to realize that many countries find the US’s view of secondary liability as already having gone way too far.
He’s right that countries can already go further, and some do, on their own, but that does not minimize the fact that encouraging greater secondary liability will likely come back to haunt many US companies.
Thankfully, Michael Petricone from the Consumer Electronics Association responded to Tepp’s statements by making many of the same points I’m making. Later he highlights many of the other problems with ACTA, including the lack of Congressional oversight, and the failure to involve stakeholders and the public (Tepp, amazingly, says that the process has been open to anyone who wanted in). A great moment, about halfway through, is when Petricone challenges Tepp, by saying that if he’s right that “there’s no ‘there’ there,” then “why the secrecy?” Tepp’s response? Basically “that’s not my department.”
A few other points:
Richard Bengloff, from A2IM (representing independent labels), admits that they decided to support ACTA despite not having seen it. He says that someone from the RIAA “briefed him” on the background and that was enough for them to support it wholeheartedly. That’s scary. Considering that the specific language choices are really important for the kind of impact ACTA will have, to say that an entire organization was in full support of the document, without even knowing what it really said, is stunning and a huge question market for A2IM. Why would you trust an organization that blindly accepts an important document it hasn’t seen?
Later on Bengloff makes this hilarious statement: “We’re going to support anything of any type that stops this crime.” And, of course, he emphasizes the word crime. Like Tepp before him, he is deliberately mixing certain criminal activities and civil infringement for personal use as if they are the same thing. And, he’s being woefully uninformed if he thinks that ACTA will actually do anything to actually stop file sharing. He’s doing the labels he represents a great disservice.
Petricone does an excellent job responding to Bengloff on this point, noting that it’s ridiculous to say you’ll support “any” action designed to stop file sharing, when you don’t look at the wider consequences of those actions — including on other industries and the public at large.
Petricone also highlights how the entertainment industry has been blurring issues by lumping copyright in with counterfeiting, saying that if the agreement focused on actual counterfeiting, there wouldn’t be so many complaints about the proposed agreement.
Malini Aisola, from KEI, reminds everyone how silly it was that the USTR wouldn’t share the documents earlier, despite FOIA requests, claiming that keeping the documents secret was a matter of national security (a position that still has never been explained).
Tepp is incredibly condescending to Aisola, when she expresses concerns about some of the language in the text and how it will impact seizure of legal generic drugs. He reads off a press release from ACTA negotiators that says ACTA won’t impact that issue. As if the press release of what ACTA negotiators say the agreement will do has any impact on what the agreement actually says. Aisola has a list of text KEI would like included in the document, as a “consumer Bill of Rights” to ensure that what’s in the press release is true, and Tepp shoots her down by saying that such agreements don’t usually contain that kind of text. He says we should only discuss what’s directly in ACTA, and if it violates those principles — again, dismissing the idea that exceptions are important to making sure enforcement is not overly draconian.
A final point from Bengloff, equally as jaw dropping as his earlier comments: “If we don’t stop piracy, we won’t be in the music business because there will be no more creation.” Yes, that’s why more music is being created today than ever before, and there are more people making money from music than ever before. This argument that without strong copyright law there will be no more creation is beyond laughable. Lots of folks have figured out business models that work without involving copyright law. Pretending those models don’t exist is blatantly ridiculous. You would think that, as an industry association for independent labels, A2IM would be on the forefront of encouraging these better business models, but instead they’re sucking up to the RIAA demanding protectionism for the same copyright laws that have allowed the major labels to be the gatekeepers in the market, at the expense of indie labels.
It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL! After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from holiday issues of the 
A 79-year-old man from Utica, NY entered an AT&T store with a hit list of names and a 357 Magnum. He opened fired, hitting one employee, before an off-duty police officer who was shopping at the store pulled his own gun and shot the attacker dead.
