A US District Judge rejected the government’s arguments to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act
Eighty years after they were written, a previously unknown story and a handwritten letter ascribed to Ernest Hemingway have surfaced, stirring a literary and legal dispute between people who want to see them published and people who do not
Looks like Elvis Costello doesn’t like the FBI talking about what you can do with his discs once you buy them. Above the obnoxious FBI anti-piracy warnings he has added: The artist does not endorse the following warning. The FBI doesn’t have his home phone number and he hopes that they don’t have yours
— via BoingBoing
Singer Cat Stevens and his daughter were escorted off a diverted transatlantic flight by FBI agents. The pop star, who converted to Islam, was denied access to the US because his name was on a security watch list
, government security sources said. The Transportation Security Administration said the singer was denied access to the US on national security grounds
and would be returned to Britain
What seems to be an embarrassing blunder by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in its hunt for online pirates has prompted Linux Australia to contact its legal representatives and warn of a possible breach of Australian law
Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Ramones that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55. Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band’s longtime artistic director Arturo Vega
Big detailed map of Springfield, including the whereabouts of the Matlock expressway (not completed), The Gilded Truffle, 99c Porno Store and other gems — via Lucie
Warren Ellis lets Spider Jerusalem out his box again with short story that shines the harsh glare of a cathode ray tube on the horror of politics.
It was true. B-roll from SPKF coverage spilled across the television screen, and there they were, just under his shirt collar, accidentally revealed by a make-up artist as she tried to relieve his unearthly grey pallor. A steel bolt in either side of his neck, marked with the unmistakeable sooty scars of electrical contact.
Go now and read the rest.
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris’s most intriguing recent discoveries — via Die Puny Humans
Bruno Bozzetto has a delightful animated short called Olympics, featuring the unfortunate Mr Otto
A poll of almost 43,000 people has shown Britain’s most popular screen scientists to be a pair of Muppets — Dr Bunsen Honeydew and his hapless assistant Beaker. It’s obvious that the polled audience never grew up watching Julius Sumner Miller torture Sydney school boys or Rob and Dean on the Curiosity Show
On 1 January 2005, Elvis Presley’s That’s All Right
— a 50-year-old tune currently enjoying the #3 chart spot in Great Britain — will enter the public domain. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer’s heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalogue income in Europe. As That’s All Right
is being hailed by some as the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, the implications are that every year after 2005, more recordings that defined the genre will fall into public domain
An online photo gallery from the wedding of Robolympics founder David Calkins with Simone Davalos of the Long Now Foundation includes delightfully bizarre photographs of Stormtroopers loose in an amusement park — via boingboing
The American Library Association recently published the new 100 most frequently banned books list of 2003. Of the banned books, Harry Potter was in the number 7th place in the most frequently banned. Also included were Where’s Waldo
and The Giver
along with Goosebumps
and How to Eat Fried Worms
. These books were banned from various public institutions. This means that they were banned from various public libraries and public schools around the United States
I’ve made something amusing for work that I’m quite happy with and thought I’d do a shameless plug.
It’s a quirky travel quiz in flash with some toony retro air hostesses and hawaiian shirts.
Check it out for a spot o’ fun.
Yes, hear Simon, Theodore and Alvin at their true speed, sounding respectively like an accountant, a hot-dog vendor, and a lunatic. Put it on repeat and you’ll drift gradually into madness — it’s like an acid flashback to foetal languor, the surreal sounds that filtered through the uterine wall.
Don’t blame me if you need to poke your eardrums out with sharpened sticks after listening to it — via said the gramophone
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been named. Ralph Fiennes, who played memorable evil guys in Red Dragon
and Schindler’s List
, has signed on to portray the wicked warlock Voldemort in the next Harry Potter
movie
Yep, U2’s new album Vertigo
, due out in November, was stolen at a photo shoot. The guys are gonna release it to the iTunes music stores if it turns up online elsewhere, like on file-sharing networks. And I’m guessing if they can find it online too. Hmm…
Apple has taken the G4 powermacs off the web store. Yeah you can still check out their specs and whathave you, but click on the buy now
graphic. I defy you to purchase one on this site, you just can’t. This means that work will now be purchasing me a G5 instead! (insert numerous sarcastic damnings of all sorts).
Next week will go down in history as the only one where I actually want to go to work. This one was the one I least wanted to go back to work as I spent the previous week doing life drawing and painting classes at The Rocks.
And finally, checkout how mac fans are showing their love ‘n’ support for Steve Jobs.
How many other CEOs of other huge techy companies spark such a public response?
The BBC’s Dr Who revival has been saved: the Beeb has reached an agreement with the estate of Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks, who will be making an appearance in the new Who episodes after all — via BoingBoing
There’s a new fad sweeping the underground: guerrilla drive-ins [BugMeNot]. Essentially, someone sets up a DVD player, LCD projector, and wireless transmitter next to any blank wall (preferably on someone else’s property — to make it more fun), and people come to watch movies. As you would expect, the movie studios aren’t too thrilled
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