Jack Fear

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Commented on Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book
@#19: Helprin doesn't really write in the Tolkien tradition, but he has written a trilogy that heavily references and reimagines Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake—itself a reimagining of old German and Russian folk tales—so the substance of your assertion is correct:...
Commented on Santa Claus Conquers the Martians gets the Mystery Science 3000 treatment from Cinematic Titanic
That's... kind of odd, actually. The classic MST3K crew of Hodgson, Murphy, & Beaulieu already riffed on this movie, back in their early Comedy Channel years. Seeing the Cinematic Titanic project return to the same wells as MST3K, inviting direct...
Commented on Take on Me: literal video version
Bondolo, I like the way you think. Music videos for the visually-impaired!...
Commented on What would you do if you ended up in the year 1000?
Thinkerer (#26) is correct: the loaning of money at interest was generally forbidden to Christians in Medieval Europe (which is why it fell to the Jews to invent banking as we know it - and from such germs of historical...
Commented on Death of the sitcom frees up 2,000 Wikipedias worth of cognitive capacity
Mm. Considering the percentage of the project's total pages that are devoted to cartoons and Star Trek, I think Shirky might in fact have it backwards: if people didn't watch so much television, there might not be any wWkipedia at...
Commented on Re-creation of "Who's On First routine"
Rain Man called. It wants its bit back....
Commented on Commerce Dept docs: Cheney and oil execs decided to take Iraq's oil in spring 2001
How is this news? We know from the 1998 letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century that regime change in Iraq was on the neocon wish-list at least since the mid-90s; I'm not sure what these...
Commented on Classic SF movies rendered as Russian folk-art woodcuts
I ran across these a couple of years ago; here's another page, with all the images at full size. Some not-so-classic films in there, too—Firewall? Anaconda II?—and some that I don't recognize at all; of course, it doesn't help that...
Commented on Steven Brust's unauthorized Firefly fanfic novel
@Jessant: You think it's his penis that's notable here, rather than the fact that he's got, oh, nineteen books in print? Genuinely curious: are there women authors with comparable bibliographies who are also conspicuously writing fanfic? Enlighten me, please....
Commented on Steven Brust's unauthorized Firefly fanfic novel
Um... I can understand and appreciate if Mr. Brust wants to license his own original works under Creative Commons, but isn't it a bit... presumptuous for him to do so with a derivative work whose characters and situations are protected...
Commented on Fine news
Many happy returns! TEAM PARENTHOOD GO!...
Commented on Alan Moore documentary on AlterTube
Yes. He'll have to. For the fans. Because it's more "cool and respectable" to "think of the fans" and service corporate trademarks than it is to, I dunno, write the stuff that you want to write. Which people only buy...
Commented on Secret safe-words of the Emergency Broadcasting System
That's quite worrying, actually; some of the words chosen as "safewords" look to me like words that could conceivably be part of a real emergency announcement—i.e., "The Governor has declared a state of emergency in parts of Topanga Canyon, where...
Commented on Video of people from 1 to 100 hitting a drum
I dunno, DJQ - #41 was jammin' out pretty good. I liked #87: "STOP THAT BANGING!"...
Commented on Electric knife and watermelon
That's odd: I've got an electric knife myself—I use it to carve the Thanksgiving turkey—and it didn't come equipped with either attachable feet or a handle-mounted groinprong. Is it defective, do you think? Should I try to get my money...
Commented on Vinegar as wonder substance
See, I've never understood anything that advises you to use "a paste of vinegar and baking soda." Granted, chemistry isn't my strong suit—but isn't the end result of mixing vinegar and baking soda just salt water and CO2?...
Commented on Hollowed out editions of your favorite books
Whatever next? Pre-assembled jigsaw puzzles?...

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jere7my commented on Santa Claus Conquers the Martians gets the Mystery Science 3000 treatment from Cinematic Titanic
Jim, your username is unwittingly apropos! According to one version of the events, Joel approached Jim Mallon (original MST3K producer, voice of Gypsy, and current rights-holder to the property) with the idea of reviving MST3K for the 20th anniversary. Mallon nixed the idea, choosing instead to work on his own solo MST3K projects. (There's apparently bad blood between them — Joel says creative differences with Mallon were the reason he left the show in the first place.) So Joel & crew formed Cinematic Titanic, and Jim Mallon is producing MST3K Flash animations on mst3k.com. Mike, Kevin, and Bill already had...
glittertrash commented on Hollowed out editions of your favorite books
I am partial to a little book-evisceration when I'm looking for gifts for the weed-fond, shiftless teenage boys I happen to be related to (their universal response: AWESOME!), and my supplier of the hard stuff is a librarian who is necessarily incredibly unsentimental about the books that would otherwise be going in the dumpster out back. Anything that can be re-homed or rescued by a loving reader is, long before it arrives on my desk (she donates many a crate of books to children's charities, then she sells them at library sales, then she has 'give-away boxes', then finally when...
ancarett commented on Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book
#26, copyright is an impediment to ideas as anonymous posters are having their videos, writings and commentary pulled off of all sorts of sites with lawyers trying to track them down. As long as rightsholders perceive a possible loss of income, copyright will inspire draconian enforcement on the part of some....
J.Roberts commented on Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book
Hmm. I was all set to get good pissed about Helprin's book until I read the full text of Lessig's review of it. I don't have a problem with Lessig's overall thesis that the sections of the book relating to copyright are poorly researched. I've no doubt that on matters of copyright law, Lessig can kick Helprin's ass with both hands behind his back. But did he have to be so *personal* in his criticism? I mean, being called a "blogger-ant" is pretty tame, after all. Hell, call me an ant. No problem. Ants are actually pretty cool. The review...
Slizzered commented on Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book
I've just finished reading Helprin's book on copyright (in fact, it is about far more than that). If someone had told me a month ago that I would immensely enjoy reading a book about such an obviously dry topic, I would have died laughing. But you know what? No matter what it's perceived failings might be, it is one helluva good read. I would recommend it to any aspiring writer, not for what it says about copyright so much as its reflections on the book publishing industry as a whole. Also, the title "Digital Barbarism" strikes me as particularly apt...

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