BLOG LOOT IS BACK (& Better than Ever)
By Christopher Hayes
Blog Loot, as some of you may remember, is a shout out to all of our fellow bloggers fighting the good fight and providing you both useful and useless information on a daily schedule. The following “Loot” is for those who enjoy a little bit of everything.
The “Miller Test Strikes Again”
Marty Klein at Sexual Intelligence highlights the ridiculousness of the “Miller Test”, which we all know is the legal test for determining the obscenity of sexual material. Our lovely tax dollars, during the biggest recession since 1929, were used to prosecute a case against a guy who merely made some DVD’s for adults to enjoy. (Thank you Bush Administration). Klein points out the contradictory nature of a law where the mere depiction of a legal activity can be illegal. In his own words: “sex is so special, that we’re not allowed to see or hear about things that we’re allowed to do.” The Satyricon also wrote about the dismissal of the US v. Stagliano on July 16th, but Klein goes deeper by highlighting the problem of censorship, where someone can be sent to prison for making a videotape of something that is technically legal. Makes you wonder about that First Amendment doesn’t it? Although I’m still conflicted about “2 girls, 1 cup.” Were those girls doing it for drugs or what?
Check it out over at “America Wins, Government Loses Huge Obscenity Trial” with props to Dr. Marty Klein @ Sexual Intelligence for his thought provoking analysis.
Once a Marine, Always a Marine?
Our next Case brings us into trademark law, a favorite topic in these here parts. John Welch, over at the “TTABlog” comments on the case In re Eagle Crest, Inc. The case in question hinged over Eagle Crest’s (a clothing company) attempts to register the trademark “Once a Marine, Always a Marine” for their manufactured clothing items. Interestingly, other common Marine expressions like “Hooah” and “Gung Ho” are also owned trademarks. Welch points out the difficultly in drawing the line between unregistrable common phrases and registrable ones. Why should “Once a Marine, Always a Marine” be in the public domain and unregistrable, but “Hooah” can be bought and sold? (source)
Shiny Happy People Love Twitter
Venkat, at SPAM NOTES, highlights the differences between the types of people who tweet, and those who blog. Venkat argues that Twitter posts are overwhelmingly positive in nature because negative remarks lead to fewer followers (according to research.). On the other hand, Venkat points out that in blogging, particularly in the political blogosphere, many of the better blog posts involve “skewering someone.”
I’ve never caught onto this whole twitter thing – I mean what critical thinking goes into “I’m hanging out at the mall” or “ I just masturbated”. Why do I care, and how long would that keep my attention? 3 seconds? Randazza is a notorious twitter hater (source). Apparently it runs in his family.
A blog post may not keep my mental consciousness much longer, but it just might if it’s making fun of someone or something. Basically I’m a sucker for anyone bashing anyone, particularly if it’s an issue I care about. That’s the nature of being human – someone dissecting someone and destroying him or her is always going to be infinitely more interesting than someone kissing someone’s ass. Probably because people are doing too much ass kissing in their own life, that they don’t want to read about it. Never fear though, there’s plenty of drama on Twitter — as we reported here, here, and some fool tried to start up here, getting Randazzapwned in the process.
Bad Haircuts Can Cause You to Get Punched In the Face
Popehat tells us about a kid who likes to wear a stupid looking, some might say hideous, haircut. However, the local middle school in a Texas town says this kid isn’t allowed to wear a hideous haircut because “that might bring attention to them” and a bully may punch them in the face for looking retarded.
I’m disappointed that there is no photo of the kid, but I guess since the kid is 12 we are SOL. Apparently even Justin Bieber or Anton Chigurh (no idea who that is) would not wear this haircut. On a side note: I hate Justin Bieber, so that is part of what attracted me to this blog post. Anyways, Ken, at Popehat, rightly points out that no matter how conformist you look, a bully is going to pick you out of the crowd – particularly if you are the type of person who was planning on wearing a hideous haircut to school in order to look different. The deeper question is whether a public school district should be enforcing conformity… Popehat wonders if this is really a ploy to limit other “non conformist ideas” from disseminating in a place of learning. I wouldn’t be surprised, it is TEXAS after all. So much for bucking broncos, cowboys, and rugged individuality – at least at Godley Middle School. (source)
