"Polysyllabic" is an insult in BoingBoing world now? I hope that was just an insult-without-thinking kind of thing. Allergies to academic-speak shouldn't shut down your own rational thought process, and there's frankly nothing especially academic -- or objectionable -- in the sneered-at sentence. Unless you think the very idea of using the word "patriarchy" is, like, so last generation.

I find many Americans annoyingly nationalistic, but I don't have to worry about my own safety or that of my family by saying that.

Maybe not, but there are certainly plenty of places in America where you would have to worry about your physical safety and the safety of your loved ones if you criticized America.

Is anyone publishing the personal information of the thugs who published the Chinese student's personal information?

Killing fair use would be the most effective measure I can think of for the media conglomerates to destroy what's left of Americans' respect for the concept of copyright.

Gogol Bordello are amazingly awesome, and I second the recommendation for Super Taranta, though any of their albums are a good introduction.

Baldhead and Elguapostrikes, aww, you guys are so cute. "Six or seven months"? I'm afraid you missed the cooler-than-thou train by a few years on this one.

It's true that Powers had a huge part in defining the look of 1950s science fiction art, but Ed Emshwiller also deserves credit (though Emshwiller painted in more commercial styles in addition to his abstract stuff).

Chang, Powers would have been pleased to be compared to Tanguy. I had the opportunity to tell him how much I loved his work and how much it reminded me of Tanguy, and he thanked me for not saying it reminded me of Dali.

Jeff, it's very unlikely that the art was marketed to hippies or acidheads or had anything to do with the drug culture, inasmuch as the heyday of Powers (and the abstract style in science fiction) was the 1950s.

Moondog's music is beautiful, and while it's not standard anything and therefore is weird by most standards, I think a lot of people would be moved by it if they got a chance to hear it. In New York you can find a few of his albums at the New York Public Library, including Moondog, his 1971 orchestral jazz album, and the joyous 1997 album Sax Pax for a Sax. People who like the places where kinds of music bleed together should check them out.

How many people have died or killed others because they were drunk in the Netherlands in the last year?

Sigh.

Jason said more articulately what I came here to say. The Lower East Side's artists can find other places to live easily enough, and they take their scenes with them. It's not like there's some deep-rooted culture of Artists in the Lower East Side that has been lost. The old, poor neighborhood is being destroyed, and can't just pick up and move; if artists care to make a statement about something other than pity for themselves, maybe they could make some art about that.

I hate being an Asshole Copyeditor -- I love you to death, Cory -- but please, please, can you change "infamous" to something else, even if it's just "famous"? "Infamous" means to be famous for bad things. The modern misuse of it to mean "really, really famous" is not yet a fight we've completely lost. You have lots of readers. Please fix this!

Hine's facile set of opposites in comparing the 1970s to the 1950s doesn't say much about his powers of historical observation beyond his specialized subject matter. In particular, "personal exploration rather than social progress" is a bizarre comparison, inasmuch as the seventies were a decade of great steps forward for women and for gay rights and were still seeing advancements for racial minorities (before the 1980s began undoing that progress) and didn't feature (say) widescale public political persecution as did the 1950s. Whatever one thinks of the 1970s in comparison to the 1960s, I think very few people would care to argue that the 1950s in America were a time of social progress.

As for "defeat rather than victory", the 1950s was the time of the Korean War and the acceleration of the Cold War. "Corruption rather than trust" would be better rendered as "exposed corruption rather than naive trust". "Fragmentation rather than national unity"? Considering the real message of "national unity" in the 1950s was conformity, I'll take the fragmentation, thanks. "National unity", alas, has been in vogue again for some time.

The legacy of he 1970s, thanks to the birth trough, is forever doomed to be defined in the media by the larger generations that came before and after, and condescended to by both. I suppose I should be grateful that Hine is willing to allow that some aspects of his subject turned out to be "even positive".

If MKHobson's comment is deleted, go ahead and delete my responses to it as well, if you want.

Taking Scalzi's admonition that this is merely a draft statement under advisement, it is still ludicrous for SFWA to even consider blaming Scribd for knuckling under to SFWA's clearly deliberate use of the DMCA to intimidate.

Capobianco has managed to top Burt for contemptibility. That is the kind of disingenuousness that you know the author is completely aware of, and is only hoping to fool people coming late to the issue. Shame on him.

Then you're just contributing to the problem. In fact, you're funding their efforts. Do you not see a problem there?

Perhaps it's not the only thing that SFWA does, and other things might be worth paying for. Do you see your error in logic here?

In my opinion, they're not absuing it at all.

Inasmuch as Cory has detailed very specifically the ways in which SFWA has abused the DMCA process, can you explain why you think SFWA has not? How SFWA pretending to represent people they don't represent, and forcing the takedown of texts they have no right (or reason) to take down, is not abusing the DMCA process? Deplore Scribd all you like; we're talking about a specific issue here, in which SFWA is clearly and grossly in the wrong.