Friday link bomb

A friend recently alerted me to this excellent essay on why journalism sucks. Said friend is going into radio.

At Vjack's place, we find Shelley the Republican is still fooling people/ S'ok, man, everyone falls for her!

The internet was sent into a flurry this week over a hoax. I'm glad it was a hoax, but I must confess to thinking: I wish I could think of shit that crazy. Also, I have no idea whether this is a hoax.

Greta Christina has an admirable post on lack of evidence backing up (some) pro-gay rhetoric.

Ed Brayton and Michael Shermer recently published very valuable criticisms of the new Expelled movie. The Discovery Institute has responded. There's at least one counter-response out there somewhere, but it's not worth the trouble of linking to, as the DI response seems to be based on the assumption that their readers aren't actually reading the criticisms of Expelled.

Also on the Expelled front, there's some debate about whether the makers of Expelled are going to lose their profits to lawsuits over copyright infringement. Brian Flemming, who knows the movie business pretty well, says yes:

Fair-use exceptions are possible*, but if the Expelled producers simply used "Imagine" and "All These Things That I've Done" to underscore the emotion of the film's images, which appears to be the case, well, that's not fair use. It's just...use. That's how all movies use music. Fair-use exceptions have to be, you know, exceptional.

Russell Blackford takes up the opposite position, in spite of his general dislike of Expelled. Personally, I suspect the argument might sort of work if they had explicitily said "this is how atheists think! They sing this song at their atheist summer camp!" But it sounds like they didn't do that, and their usage definitely falls under "underscore the emotion of the film's images."

Oh, and one last thing: Viva la Google bomb!:
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