bob tarantino

"no clear indication"

One of the stranger things about studying legal philosophy is coming across all the lunatic implausible scenarios invented by the philosophers to illustrate their point (an actual example from a class I took many years ago: a madman has commandeered a tank and is blowing up a neighbourhood, killing dozens - your task is to attempt to stop him; complication: the madman has also kidnapped a bunch of babies and strapped them to the outside of the tank, with the result that any attempt to stop him will also kill the babies; discuss the moral implications of either trying or not trying to stop the madman in the tank).

It is useful, then, to be reminded every once in a while that life as it is actually lived is so much stranger than any fiction we could come up with:

During his glory days as a pro wrestler, Verne Gagne shared the spotlight with other burly men in trunks, guys with names like Killer Kowalski, Mad Dog Vachon, The Crusher and Baron Von Raschke.

But all of that seemed well in the past until just weeks ago, when authorities say Gagne, 82 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, apparently body-slammed a 97-year-old fellow patient at the suburban nursing home where they both lived, causing the man's death.

"a very happy result"

Okay, I'll ask.  Andrew Potter posits that "most of the important theoretical developments that gave rise to what we call “the sixties” actually happened a decade or two earlier".  David Frum argues, in his How We Got Here - The 70s: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life - For Better or Worse (which is really an underappreciated book, IMHO), that the "1960s have a reputation as America's turning-point decade, but ... that the 10 years following mattered more" (those aren't Frum's words, but Amazon's, but they capture his argument).  Both Frum and Potter are smarter than me by a few orders of magnitude, but the question is begged - did anything of consequence actually happen in the 1960s?  Aside from, say, "Stray Cat Blues"?

The Great Canadian Crime Comic Caper

The publication of The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, written by David Hajdu, has prompted a slew of stories in the media about the mid-1950s efforts in the US to censor the contents of comic books.  Canadians, being innovators in all things, can take pride [/sarcasm] in the fact that we were well in the vanguard on this one: Canada made it illegal to publish or sell "crime comics" nearly five years before the US Congress began looking into the matter.

Chapter One of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe provides a detailed examination of the history of the enactment of the "Fulton Bill", as well as the history of prosecutions thereunder.  Even better, the "crime comics" provisions of the Criminal Code remain in effect, as Sections 163(1)(b) and 163(7) - so it is technically still illegal in Canada to sell a crime comic.

"they have made the franchise a lucrative one"

The big news early last week was the opening round of sales figures for Grand Theft Auto IV - the latest videogame release which, inexplicably, warranted prime time news coverage.  Back around the last time a game release was front-page news, Richard Poplak penned a thoughtful piece pointing out that a few hundred million dollars in gross sales is slightly less impressive when the per-unit cost hovers around $75.

"It's not easy"

Hey, you never know when this might come in handy:

• how to permanently erase a computer file

• how to permanently erase a text message from your phone

Or just, you know, kill the information registry.

It's Just an & - But Who Owns It?

Simon Fodden at slaw ruminates on the ampersand:

The ampersand has going for it that it’s a place for the type designer to fool around and get fancy. We all have some Platonic notion of what a letter ‘a’ or ‘g’ should look like, for instance; but the ampersand is a one off, a sport among the pedigreed.

He provides some examples of the design varietals which various of his computer system's fonts provide for the & symbol.  Which got me to thinking - to what extent is there copyright in a font?

Turns out that is something of an issue among typeface designers.  The typeright organization, for example, advocates for the "legal protection [of fonts] as intellectual property", and offers a FAQ on the issues surrounding use of fonts and a set of arguments/counter-arguments on the issue of extending copyright protection to fonts.  Here's a somewhat old (1998) piece about copyright in fonts [.pdf] by Jonathan L. Mezrich - as well as some further information from the mid-90s, collecting various statements from the US Copyright Office.

"if being geeks is our full-time job"

The 12-year old Bob Tarantino would have pretty much died of happiness if confronted with a summer like that of 2008, what with enough comic book movies (Batman, Hulk, Iron Man) to satiate the most ardent fanboy's entertainment needs.  MTV hosts a roundtable discussion on "the greatest summer in comic book film history" (their term), which contains this pearl of wisdom:

I wish they had found someone more interesting than Gwyneth Paltrow to be in "Iron Man." I mean, she's Gwyneth Paltrow. She's OK, but it's kinda like vanilla yogurt as opposed to some flavorful, yummy yogurt that would have added a little something extra to it. "Oh, it's Gwyneth Paltrow, but now she's got red hair!" She's still Gwyneth Paltrow.

Testify.

"Violate the terms, and we'll report you ourselves"

Everybody wants a piece of the action:

Even criminal hackers want to protect their intellectual property, and they've come up with a method akin to copyrighting — with an appropriate dash of Internet thuggery thrown in.

Professional virus writers are now selling a suite of software on the Internet with an unusual attachment: a detailed licensing agreement that promises penalties for redistributing the malicious code without permission.

It sounds like in this case the hackers were relying on their EULA to (purportedly and, one suspects, facetiously) enforce their rights, rather than copyright per se.  Copyright protection of course extends even to immoral or illegal works - it even covers works which themselves are infringing of other works.  One policy issue which perhaps arises is whether copyright protection should extend even to works whose sole purpose is to commit a crime?

"those sexy montages of explosions and buffoonery"

The Top 25 Opening Credits of 80s Television Action Shows.  There's really nothing else I can add.  Fine, one word: Manimal.

"cast of lowlifes"

And here I thought the book would have no relevance to anyone.  As I explain in Chapter Five of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, it remains a crime in Canada to publish blasphemous material.  That provision of our Criminal Code, as with so many, is derived from English law - where it appears that free speech is due to get a bit of a workout:

The leader of a small evangelical group went to Britain's High Court on Tuesday in a bid to sue the producers of ``Jerry Springer: The Opera" for blasphemy.

... Earlier this year, a lower court rejected a request to issue summonses against "Springer" producer John Thoday and Mark Thompson, director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp., which televised the show in 2005.  Green's lawyers are asking three High Court judges to allow private prosecution for blasphemous libel.

Evidently the English anti-blasphemy law has been successfully used as recently as 1977.

"the sheer presence"

So, after reading this story, am I correct in assuming that I'm the only person who immediately thought of the glory days of Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik?  How did it go?  "Iran number one! Russia number one!  USA *ptui*!"  Good times.

(source: WWE.com)

so sleepy

So... anybody have a good cure for jet lag?  Having been roaming around Japan for a couple of weeks, I'm in the midst of a bout so bad I can barely see straight.  The whole "fall asleep at 9:00pm, wake up at 3am, wonder why the gods have cursed me with lack of sleep, fall asleep at 5:30am, wake up exhausted at 7am, repeat"-thing is getting a little old.  But you should totally check out Japan if you have the chance.  Remind me to tell you about it later.

Look Out!

It isn't terribly often that you come across entirely new language in reviewing contracts, but this is a first for me:

"'force majeure' shall mean any event beyond the control of any of the parties, including, without limitation, any act of God or other deity" [emphasis added]

flavour can't be beat

Fine, I'll be the one to ask the question. At the 19 second mark of this insanely catchy Mini-Wheats commercial, why do the dancing guys turn around and smack their own ass?

Aye Bee Cee

From the Truly Random Musings department - while reading this story about Toronto real estate entrepreneur Harry Stinson, I came across this sentence: "Stinson, a veteran developer and one of the pioneers of the condo-hotel boom in the city, has filed under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act..." [emphasis added]  A couple of sentences later, this reference: "CCAA presents an opportunity for companies to restructure under a formal plan of arrangement..." [emphasis added]

Here's the thing: not that it comes up very much, but in about 99% of the cases where I've heard people (well, lawyers - draw the line where you wish) refer to the act in question during conversation, they refer to it as the "cee cee double-aye".  Why is that?  You rarely hear it referred to as the "cee cee aye aye", and never as the "double-cee double-aye".  Why does "cee cee double-aye" sound better?  It's not any more efficient - it has the same number of syllables as some of the alternatives.  Who studies these things? Linguists? Anyone out there have any explanation for this usage?

"primarily to serve the elites"

I hesitate to link to this, because I think people might actually die laughing while reading it.  Kathy, I'm looking at you.  (Hat tip: Cosh)

Pay Attention!

As I touch on in one of the chapters from the upcoming Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, sometimes clients get grumpy at their lawyers for paying so much attention to such seemingly trivial matters as spelling and punctuation.  The tendency is completely understandable: lawyers tend to get paid by the hour, after all, so you generally want them to be worrying about material matters, and not whether a semicolon is in the correct spot.  But sometimes, it's really important where the comma goes, as Rogers has learned much to their chagrin:

It began as an arcane legal dispute between two Canadian companies, but a fight between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc. over the placement of a comma in a multimillion-dollar contract has ignited an international debate over the importance of language.

… The comma quarrel — which threatens to cost Rogers at least $1-million because of a simple grammatical issue in the contract — has been called an English teacher's delight, reinforcing the value of basic punctuation and grammar in the business and legal worlds.

Or consider the case of this poor bastard, who meant to go to Sydney, but ended up in the rather less enchanting Sidney.

"high atop the pious pecking order"

Aspiring writers of fiction face the daunting proposition that, not only have all the best stories already been told, but they've actually occurred.  I thus give you this story about a holy relic once housed in the Italian village of Calcata.  In case you're wondering whether to click the link, allow this edited version of the subtitle to guide you: "Did the Vatican Steal Jesus' Foreskin?"  True story.

They Don't Actually Say That

People say to me, Bob! Where will you be Sunday night?  I say, here, watching the world's greatest rock and roll band.  Then they say to me, Bob! Where were you on Friday night?  I say, attending the blogstravaganza.  Photos are available at various locations, including over at Nicholas' (I kept saying to Kathy, "He's a hell of a guy, but he can't take a picture for the life of him".  She kept saying, "But he's got a new camera".  I kept saying, "No, seriously, he can't".  I'm pretty sure I got the better of that argument.) and James'.  Shouts to co-organizers Joey and Jason for pulling a pretty darned assorted group of bloggers together.

Holy Hannah

Am I the only person who finds this to be a startling number?

According to numbers released recently by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Maclean's had a total circulation of 371,562 for the first six months of this year, a drop of 3 per cent from the same period last year and a 7.1-per-cent decline relative to 2004.

However, 7,795 were single-copy sales (per week) on the newsstand, which represents a 51-per-cent increase beyond the 5,147 single copies sold during the first six months of 2005. [emphasis added]

Less than 8,000 copies of Maclean's are sold off the newsstand in your average week?  8,000?  What's that as a percentage of the total population?  Three ten-thousandths?

Dreams Die Hard

You can't keep a good man down.

Pam Anderson Files for Divorce from Kid Rock

The Slate Review

Good stuff at everyone's favourite online magazine (okay, my favourite online magazine):

• an Explainer on how airlines set their ticket prices
• Howard Dean's future at the DNC
• where lawyers, advertising and sex intersect
• magazine editors evidently believe that the colour green on a cover will result in lower sales
• Timoth Noah admits he wants to read OJ's book

"Some people may call me crazy, but I really love to play"

When it comes to the new technology that the kids are all excited about, I'm the latest of late adopters - I just got around to acquiring a PlayStation 2 last weekend.  There are, however, advantages to being a bit behind the curve [emphasis added]:

Days of waiting paid off for Sergio Rodriguez, one of the relatively few able to buy Sony's PlayStation 3 when the coveted console went on sale early Friday.

He was among the die-hard gamers and entrepreneurs across the country who braved foul weather and heckling by passers-by all week for the chance to shell out $500 or more for the sleek game machine.

With shortages resulting from production problems, many had camped out for days without knowing if they'd be going home empty-handed. At some stores, the crowds got rowdy and stampeded for the shelves, injuring a man in Wisconsin and forcing authorities to shut down a Wal-Mart store in California.

In Connecticut, two armed thugs who got wise to the PS3's high price and tried to rob a line of people waiting outside a Putnam Wal-Mart store at 3 a.m. One person who refused to give up the money was shot, state police said. In Lexington, Kentucky, four people waiting outside a Best Buy were hit by BB pellets, though none was seriously injured, according to television station WKYT, whose own reporter was hit as she interviewed buyers.

Nice.

"Actual risk to O.J."

OJ Simpson's story and the reactions to it (to his trial, to his acquittal, to his subsequent actions and attitude) speak volumes about morality, legality and race relations in modern America.  This post has nothing to do with those things.  Instead, if you've been wondering about whether OJ could wind up with his can back in the, uh, can, because of his loathsome upcoming Fox "If I Did It" special, Explainer explains all.