1. Hmm. That “is this” in the tweet above should be “of this” – but that’s what happens in the fast-paced world of the Twitter. And I think you can figure it out.
This tweet is about the controversial Wikileaks. Over the past week or so, Wikileaks has exposed Australian government plans to censor IP addresses (which the government has attempted to justify by claiming these are child porn — or similar — sites). Australian internet users are upset. Repercussions are ongoing.
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2. This is pretty huge. I would hope that all university faculty elsewhere would immediately follow the MIT lead — since, after all, information should be free. But I doubt it.
Nevertheless, this represents an important shift in thinking about scholarly publishing as we know it — from one of the most respected universities in the U.S.
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3. Another tweet in the direction of MIT.
The tweet takes you to an MIT student site: YouTomb, which keeps track of YouTube videos that are taken off YouTube every day for obscure and possibly illegal reasons – mostly because somebody somewhere is afraid of outdated and overly complicated copyright laws enforced by outdated and overly paid copyright lawyers.
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4. Melissa, in my CMMNA100 class, first showed me the “grass-mud horse” controversy in an online NYT article. You can read what it’s all about in the link above (which also points you back to the original NYT article).
Meanwhile, this week, China suddenly began blocking ALL YouTube content. Is there a connection? (Because, after all, we do read for the links.)
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5. Because it is the best song ever sung — well, maybe the best song ever sung is this song. But that song is starting to look more and more like this song. So, for the moment, The Love We Had wins.
While Gladys Knight was no slouch, Marvin Gaye had it all over her on Grapevine. While I might argue against its being the greatest song EVER SUNG, it’s pretty fine.