Thursday

Drinking Corner

This Drinking Corner is a two-fer: First, I might have found the most dedicated beer blogger in America and, if not America, then at least in Ohio. He runs the Ohio Beer Blog. It's updated frequently with good content.

While checking it out, I ran across this great article: America's 100 Best Beer Bars. I was pleased to see three of the bars are from Michigan and that one of them was my favorite hang-out when I attended the University of Michigan back in the 1980s: Ashley's. "Since 1983, this classic U of M hangout has been as smart as the grad students who frequent it. The 70-plus taps reflect a vast beer landscape, pouring local favorites like Founders Breakfast Stout, new releases like Left Hand Nitro Milk Stout and Belgian beauties like Tripel Karmeliet." I wasn't a graduate student, but Ashley's was only two blocks from my apartment and it was a quiet, serene place to enjoy some casual studies and a pint. It also featured a great window view of central campus and busy State Street. One of the finest places on earth.

SOPA

I haven't followed the Stop Online Piracy Act as closely as I ought. I guess it provides that your website can be wiped away without due process of law, if it's deemed that your site has violated copyright provisions in the Act. That's unpleasant. And un-American.

We're talking about copyright violations, giving such alleged violations more urgency than we do murder trials. The entire copyright law--statutory and common law--is a batch of vagary, yet SOPA is going to allow some bureaucrat behind the scenes to decide, "Yup, that's a copyright violation alright. Time to delete that site." Members of Congress don't see the potential for injustice and abuse?

I received this SOPA observation in the email yesterday:

“It's D.C. versus Silicon Valley in the SOPA fight,” observes colleague Greg Grillot. “You have Google, Mozila, Wikipedia, Reddit, Firefox and Boing Boing against it. And how many D.C. shills for it?”

“It's a true war: the last bastion of creative/productive ingenuity in America versus the swamp of D.C.'s parasitic, industry-conflicted bureaucracy.”