Posts for November, 2009
Against Monopoly
I’ll be on The Peter Mac Show tonight from 9-10pm CST [note: the time has been moved up from the previously scheduled time], discussing IP. Listeners may call in; I’ll put up a link for the audio later. Go to http://www.libertynewsradio.com/ to tune in.
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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Conservation is about saving wildlife and wild places in specific locales.
Steven Sanderson is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society, so he has to say that. But of course we all know that conservation is also saving crop varieties in genebanks, don’t we. Don’t we? Hello?
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Dr Shock MD PhD
How to Create a Great PowerPoint – Take 2.0 from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo
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This is a very long video but it addresses some useful tips and tricks how to make nice slides in powerpoint. It starts with a ballroom presentation or a presentation without bullet points. This will get you updated on [...]
Against Monopoly
Defenders of patents commonly say they are against innovators’ ideas being “stolen” or “plagiarized.” This implies that patents simply permit an innovator to sue those who copy his idea. This position betrays either disingenuity or ignorance about patent law. Let me explain.
Under copyright law, someone who independently creates an original work similar to another [...]
Against Monopoly
I posted the following comment to Cory Doctorow’s BoingBoing post Competition and Google Book Search:
Cory, Google is not perfect but the attacks on them for attempting this seem to me to be demonizing the wrong party. The problem is copyright law–a state legal system. The state is, as usual, to blame. Why some people [...]
Against Monopoly
Truly fantastic speech by Jeff Tucker on the problems of intellectual property.
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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Here’s part two of that series on late blight I mentioned back on Wednesday. Of course you cannot do justice to the whole story in a teeny blog post, and the author does link to one of the books about the Great Famine. There are many, many more.
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bjoern.brembs.net
Björn Brembs
INVISIBLE OCTOPUS – http://www.youtube.com/watch…
8 hours ago
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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Today’s Economist has a Leader and two articles about feeding the hungry, one on Monsanto and one on markets. Not surprising, coming hard on the heels of this week’s World Food Summit.
There’s also this at the Economist blog, a neat information-rich video that explains IFPRI’s view of climate change (including differences in prediction [...]
Dr Shock MD PhD
Recommended reading is a weekly summary of interesting posts and selected links I posted on Twitter
Evidence in Medicine: Correlation and Causation
Source: Science-Based Medicine
Now this will be in my link book. Done with no further information needed about this topic, ready, end of story
There are two general approaches to subverting science-based medicine (SBM): [...]
Against Monopoly
EBay just sold a large portion of Skype after a long legal dispute with Skype’s founders. What interested me was the Skype’s code evolved from the founders’ earlier venture, the file-sharing system, Kazaa. In effect, the experience with the “illegal” Kazaa allowed the founders to develop technology that had a great value, [...]
Science Commons
Since the release of CC0, I’ve been talking to many people about when and how to use it. A group of scientists and science policy experts recently endorsed public domain data sharing, and the use of CC0 to do so, in a letter to Nature. This is a significant affirmation of our approach to [...]
Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza viruses possessing mammalian-type PB2-627 were detected during the Qinghai Lake outbreak in 2005 and spread to Europe and Africa. … Here, we report that H5N1 avian influenza viruses possessing mammalian-type amino acids in PB2-627 or -701 are selected during replication in ostrich cells in vitro and in [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Over at his other place, Jeremy expounds on an unusual idea for “solving” hunger. What do you think? Does he have too much time on his hands?
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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Overall, we must conclude that claims of a global crisis in agricultural pollination are untrue.
That’s from a New Scientist digest of a Current Biology paper by the authors themselves. Roughly, the argument is that (1) bees are responsible for the production of a lot of our food, yes, but not that much; (2) [...]