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statler
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Seems like a colossal IF. But hey, if they can pull it off without being constantly shut down or sued to oblivion (or poisoning their patrons) best of luck.
palindrome
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Enough to fill the rose bowl once per day.
tobyjug
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Zero effect? It heightens the overall level of toxic Jackassery in the world, affecting every reasonable person. Look what it has done to you already...an otherwise sensible fellow championing the cause of the affluent going dumpster diving to look green.
I'll bet he is green when he climbs out, among other colors and smells.
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Brad Plaid
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No question the level of waste is tragic but dd'ing is not the answer. Some logical brainpower needs to be applied to figuring out a better redistribution of unused food, not hippie ideology.
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I saw this as an opportunity to explore options with partnering with grocery stores getting rid of old food instead of straight-up dumpster diving, since I doubt the Board would allow it. Maybe a stipulation is that since they are getting the food at such a low or no cost that they have to maintain certain prices and maybe have an outreach to those in need in the community.
underground
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blade_bltz
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Thanks and I hit the nail on the head!
Lurker
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9954913/Royal-
charter-The-press-must-resist-this-assault-on-liberty.html
Royal charter: The press must resist this assault on liberty
Between them, MPs and the Lords are adding to the risks of political interference in the wake of the Leveson Report
By Jacob Rees-Mogg
8:43PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
The Government and Parliament have decided to license the press and to coerce newspapers into agreeing. The press ought to resist. Small bloggers have already successfully done so, it seems, as on Monday night the House of Lords passed an alteration to the Commons’ first stab at legislation.
Last week, the Lords passed a small amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which means that any royal charter that regulates an industry – such as the charter that would back the proposed new press regulator – cannot be changed except by the mechanism set out in the charter. This is meant to protect the press from further political intrusion, beyond that in the draft charter. However, it creates two risks of increased interference.
The first risk is that it could protect an unreasonable regulator from being removed. The ultimate person in charge of the recognition body’s members is the Commissioner for Public Appointments. He is selected by the Crown, so it is conceivable that a government could appoint someone hostile to the press in an effort to stiffen control. It would then be harder for a successor government to restore press freedom. This undermines the principle that Parliament cannot bind its successors, which is a key part of the Constitution.
The second risk is that it bolsters a royal charter that is already a powerful instrument. There has been much argument to say that there is no statutory underpinning of press regulation, but a royal charter is just as much law as a statute. The difference is that a statute may overrule the prerogative and not vice versa. Anyone who remembers the history of the later Stuarts will know about the Quo warranto proceedings, which were used to take away privileges or extract money. This was because royal charters had legal force – as they continue to have, unless superseded by legislation.
This is extremely worrying, because charters are exclusively the preserve of the Executive, the Queen in Council, rather than the Queen in Parliament. They are not subject to any detailed democratic scrutiny and may be issued by the “mere motion” of the Sovereign, inevitably on the Prime Minister’s advice. This means, once the precedent has been set to regulate by means of a charter, that a new charter could be issued without any reference to Parliament. As long as it builds on, rather than replacing or amending the first charter, there would be no need for it to secure a two thirds majority in both houses.
As the Lords prepared the manacles, so the Commons forged the ball and chain. Another convenient Bill was also amended last week, this time the Crime and Courts one. It introduced eight pages of statute to coerce the press into accepting a licence, while giving the Government cover to pretend that it is voluntary. Exemplary damages may be awarded against any publication that does not volunteer to sign up to the Government’s scheme, and costs may be charged to newspapers which choose to remain independent even if they win a libel action.
This financial penalty for those who resist state licensing could be severe. A routine libel action is already expensive, and punitive damages could put publications out of business. Equally, bearing the costs of unjustified action where the claimant has lost and the newspaper has been vindicated is in no sense just. It opens the door to speculative libel actions with little risk for mischievous claimants.
This is redolent of the approach taken in the 18th century, when libel laws were used to prevent the press from reporting in a way the government did not like. The Left would do well to remember John Wilkes, who was declared an outlaw in 1764 for “an obscene and impious libel”. He had regularly attacked the government in the North Briton newspaper, edition 45 of which was burned by the hangman as a seditious libel.
It was not only in the 18th century that libel laws were used to suppress truth. Robert Maxwell was notorious for his willingness to resort to law, and he is not the only less-than-reputable businessman to have done so. In 1957, The Spectator lost a libel action for saying three Labour MPs were drunk in Venice. Many years later it was revealed by one of them, Richard Crossman, to have been true. Clearly, libel actions can impede a free press, and punitive libel is even more likely to do so.
None of this is to deny that the press will sometimes behave badly. If the choice were between a free and irresponsible press or a responsible state-controlled one then freedom must prevail. The powerful and politicians will never like this because it can threaten their authority. This is where Hacked Off has been so clever, for it has exploited the sad stories of a handful of people who came briefly into the public eye as a cloak for the peccadilloes of celebrities. It will not say who funds it, but some of the luminaries in favour of licensing have disreputable pasts. Politicians are little better. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have both suffered, so in a fit of pique have abandoned their liberal principles.
Fortunately, there is a fine tradition of individuals within the press standing up against punitive laws in the cause of free speech and justice. This is how Parliament came to be reported, and governments properly held to account. Even my highly law-abiding father, who edited The Times, was willing to challenge stultifying laws. It is to be hoped that newspapers and periodicals will not sign up to coercive licensing, and will succeed in preserving liberty.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is the Conservative MP for North East Somerset
charter-The-press-must-resist-this-assault-on-liberty.html
Royal charter: The press must resist this assault on liberty
Between them, MPs and the Lords are adding to the risks of political interference in the wake of the Leveson Report
By Jacob Rees-Mogg
8:43PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
The Government and Parliament have decided to license the press and to coerce newspapers into agreeing. The press ought to resist. Small bloggers have already successfully done so, it seems, as on Monday night the House of Lords passed an alteration to the Commons’ first stab at legislation.
Last week, the Lords passed a small amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which means that any royal charter that regulates an industry – such as the charter that would back the proposed new press regulator – cannot be changed except by the mechanism set out in the charter. This is meant to protect the press from further political intrusion, beyond that in the draft charter. However, it creates two risks of increased interference.
The first risk is that it could protect an unreasonable regulator from being removed. The ultimate person in charge of the recognition body’s members is the Commissioner for Public Appointments. He is selected by the Crown, so it is conceivable that a government could appoint someone hostile to the press in an effort to stiffen control. It would then be harder for a successor government to restore press freedom. This undermines the principle that Parliament cannot bind its successors, which is a key part of the Constitution.
The second risk is that it bolsters a royal charter that is already a powerful instrument. There has been much argument to say that there is no statutory underpinning of press regulation, but a royal charter is just as much law as a statute. The difference is that a statute may overrule the prerogative and not vice versa. Anyone who remembers the history of the later Stuarts will know about the Quo warranto proceedings, which were used to take away privileges or extract money. This was because royal charters had legal force – as they continue to have, unless superseded by legislation.
This is extremely worrying, because charters are exclusively the preserve of the Executive, the Queen in Council, rather than the Queen in Parliament. They are not subject to any detailed democratic scrutiny and may be issued by the “mere motion” of the Sovereign, inevitably on the Prime Minister’s advice. This means, once the precedent has been set to regulate by means of a charter, that a new charter could be issued without any reference to Parliament. As long as it builds on, rather than replacing or amending the first charter, there would be no need for it to secure a two thirds majority in both houses.
As the Lords prepared the manacles, so the Commons forged the ball and chain. Another convenient Bill was also amended last week, this time the Crime and Courts one. It introduced eight pages of statute to coerce the press into accepting a licence, while giving the Government cover to pretend that it is voluntary. Exemplary damages may be awarded against any publication that does not volunteer to sign up to the Government’s scheme, and costs may be charged to newspapers which choose to remain independent even if they win a libel action.
This financial penalty for those who resist state licensing could be severe. A routine libel action is already expensive, and punitive damages could put publications out of business. Equally, bearing the costs of unjustified action where the claimant has lost and the newspaper has been vindicated is in no sense just. It opens the door to speculative libel actions with little risk for mischievous claimants.
This is redolent of the approach taken in the 18th century, when libel laws were used to prevent the press from reporting in a way the government did not like. The Left would do well to remember John Wilkes, who was declared an outlaw in 1764 for “an obscene and impious libel”. He had regularly attacked the government in the North Briton newspaper, edition 45 of which was burned by the hangman as a seditious libel.
It was not only in the 18th century that libel laws were used to suppress truth. Robert Maxwell was notorious for his willingness to resort to law, and he is not the only less-than-reputable businessman to have done so. In 1957, The Spectator lost a libel action for saying three Labour MPs were drunk in Venice. Many years later it was revealed by one of them, Richard Crossman, to have been true. Clearly, libel actions can impede a free press, and punitive libel is even more likely to do so.
None of this is to deny that the press will sometimes behave badly. If the choice were between a free and irresponsible press or a responsible state-controlled one then freedom must prevail. The powerful and politicians will never like this because it can threaten their authority. This is where Hacked Off has been so clever, for it has exploited the sad stories of a handful of people who came briefly into the public eye as a cloak for the peccadilloes of celebrities. It will not say who funds it, but some of the luminaries in favour of licensing have disreputable pasts. Politicians are little better. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have both suffered, so in a fit of pique have abandoned their liberal principles.
Fortunately, there is a fine tradition of individuals within the press standing up against punitive laws in the cause of free speech and justice. This is how Parliament came to be reported, and governments properly held to account. Even my highly law-abiding father, who edited The Times, was willing to challenge stultifying laws. It is to be hoped that newspapers and periodicals will not sign up to coercive licensing, and will succeed in preserving liberty.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is the Conservative MP for North East Somerset
BostonUrbEx
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This was great. My grandfather grew up in Gloucester (in fact, he never even left the the island which East Gloucester and Rockport are on until 128 was built) and my family will still frequent up there through the summer. His father and/or grandfather was a fisherman. And my grandfather's first job was working for Gorton's, where he worked an assembly line for fish sticks. I bet he knew some of the people in the video.
I'll have to show him this.
JohnAKeith
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Okay, can someone indulge my vanity? Where is that post where someone said I should be mayor and wrote a fake story about it? It may have been lurker or ablarc?
Lurker
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http://spectator.org/archives/2013/03/29/shush
Shush!
By Daniel J. Flynn on 3.29.13 @ 6:09AM
Today’s public library could be mistaken for a halfway house, homeless shelter, or federal penetentiary.
I write from the public library, which doubles as my city’s daytime homeless shelter. I spend four hours a day there reading and writing. Other patrons, often accompanied by all of their worldly possessions, go there to sleep, masturbate, and stare blankly at the lights. Isn’t this what the local Greyhound terminal is for?
A diversion program for juvenile delinquents apparently meets daily on the first floor. Since the building’s architect imprudently designed the library as a giant open space without walls, their promiscuous use of the “f” word and spirited imitations of famous rappers travel unimpeded to me on the third level — more of a platform two stories above the ground than a separate floor. To encourage such misbehavior, a local library — thankfully not the one I visit — begged its town’s government for $2,000 to buy video games. Libraries once served as refuges against noise. Now the library’s cacophony makes an iPod necessary equipment to drown out the din.
Openness yields to secretiveness elsewhere. Computer cubicles double as makeshift peep-show booths. To protect privacy at the public library, staff has generously equipped computer screens with a tinted gloss that makes the visuals invisible to all save those who look upon them at a direct angle. I mostly glimpse social media and computer games on the screens when I pass. Occasionally, pornographic videos jump out at passersby. Noticing the behavior, rather than the behavior itself, is terribly offensive, so I make it my business to mind my business around pervs who make their business everybody’s business.
My travels have awarded me similar experiences beyond my parochial outpost. A visit to the Boston Public Library invites the question: what good is a beautiful building that smells like urine? In San Francisco’s main library, I witness four legs sharing a bathroom stall, a transsexual engaging herself in a heated argument, and a security guard loudly informing a fellow patron: “You can’t take your shoes and socks off in here.”
Last week, a librarian at the Harvard archives chastised me for holding up a document with both hands to read. The paper, one of many Xeroxes of the original in the folder, required no delicate handling. But I meekly obeyed and appreciated the archivist’s commitment to her craft. Shushing and scolding should be part of the job description.
My library outsources this aspect of the job to burly men far less intimidating than so-stern four-eyed matrons. The presence of several security guards, buttressed by a city policeman doing rounds, serves as a tacit acknowledgement that the library attracts the wrong crowd. Since my dress code roughly matches a Hill Street Blues-era Bruce Weitz, the homeless making a home of the library mistake me for one of their number. It would be terrible if anybody saw through the disguise. The badge bearers haven’t questioned me about my unusual library activities yet. How long before a face buried in a book brings suspicions?
The alleys of books require the uniformed patrols as much as any urban alley. Earlier this month, police arrested a didler for molesting a 15-year-old girl at a library in Queens. Around the same time, a registered sex offender attacked a 13-year-old boy in the bathroom of the Orange County Library. Three weeks ago in Newton, Massachusetts, a thief stole a patron’s laptop and attacked him when he objected. Cell phone conversations interrupting the solace of quiet remain the least of a library-goer’s concerns.
Mission creep invites creeps. Library, which traces its etymology to the Latin word for book, has come to mean free DVDs, CDs, video games, and Internet. To the ne’er-do-wells roaming the stacks, library means a place to cop a free feel and grab a free laptop. When librarians go slumming for patrons, the slum’s problems become the library’s.
The bizarre folkways that surround stimulate anthropological interest more than formal complaint. Alas, unpleasant company is always the price of free.
Shush!
By Daniel J. Flynn on 3.29.13 @ 6:09AM
Today’s public library could be mistaken for a halfway house, homeless shelter, or federal penetentiary.
I write from the public library, which doubles as my city’s daytime homeless shelter. I spend four hours a day there reading and writing. Other patrons, often accompanied by all of their worldly possessions, go there to sleep, masturbate, and stare blankly at the lights. Isn’t this what the local Greyhound terminal is for?
A diversion program for juvenile delinquents apparently meets daily on the first floor. Since the building’s architect imprudently designed the library as a giant open space without walls, their promiscuous use of the “f” word and spirited imitations of famous rappers travel unimpeded to me on the third level — more of a platform two stories above the ground than a separate floor. To encourage such misbehavior, a local library — thankfully not the one I visit — begged its town’s government for $2,000 to buy video games. Libraries once served as refuges against noise. Now the library’s cacophony makes an iPod necessary equipment to drown out the din.
Openness yields to secretiveness elsewhere. Computer cubicles double as makeshift peep-show booths. To protect privacy at the public library, staff has generously equipped computer screens with a tinted gloss that makes the visuals invisible to all save those who look upon them at a direct angle. I mostly glimpse social media and computer games on the screens when I pass. Occasionally, pornographic videos jump out at passersby. Noticing the behavior, rather than the behavior itself, is terribly offensive, so I make it my business to mind my business around pervs who make their business everybody’s business.
My travels have awarded me similar experiences beyond my parochial outpost. A visit to the Boston Public Library invites the question: what good is a beautiful building that smells like urine? In San Francisco’s main library, I witness four legs sharing a bathroom stall, a transsexual engaging herself in a heated argument, and a security guard loudly informing a fellow patron: “You can’t take your shoes and socks off in here.”
Last week, a librarian at the Harvard archives chastised me for holding up a document with both hands to read. The paper, one of many Xeroxes of the original in the folder, required no delicate handling. But I meekly obeyed and appreciated the archivist’s commitment to her craft. Shushing and scolding should be part of the job description.
My library outsources this aspect of the job to burly men far less intimidating than so-stern four-eyed matrons. The presence of several security guards, buttressed by a city policeman doing rounds, serves as a tacit acknowledgement that the library attracts the wrong crowd. Since my dress code roughly matches a Hill Street Blues-era Bruce Weitz, the homeless making a home of the library mistake me for one of their number. It would be terrible if anybody saw through the disguise. The badge bearers haven’t questioned me about my unusual library activities yet. How long before a face buried in a book brings suspicions?
The alleys of books require the uniformed patrols as much as any urban alley. Earlier this month, police arrested a didler for molesting a 15-year-old girl at a library in Queens. Around the same time, a registered sex offender attacked a 13-year-old boy in the bathroom of the Orange County Library. Three weeks ago in Newton, Massachusetts, a thief stole a patron’s laptop and attacked him when he objected. Cell phone conversations interrupting the solace of quiet remain the least of a library-goer’s concerns.
Mission creep invites creeps. Library, which traces its etymology to the Latin word for book, has come to mean free DVDs, CDs, video games, and Internet. To the ne’er-do-wells roaming the stacks, library means a place to cop a free feel and grab a free laptop. When librarians go slumming for patrons, the slum’s problems become the library’s.
The bizarre folkways that surround stimulate anthropological interest more than formal complaint. Alas, unpleasant company is always the price of free.
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Today's modern libraries (really media centers) are critical resources to those who are less fortunate and cannot afford a computer or internet access. Internet access is essentially mandatory now from K all the way through 12th and college. Assignments are submitted online and key teaching reinforcement tools are web-based, even at the elementary level. Those who are without a job and cannot afford the internet use the free internet access to search for jobs and build their resumes to hand out as well. E-mail is also a critical tool.
The good that our modern media centers do far outweighs the negatives that accompany them. Yes, the homeless hang out in them, but that is a problem on the larger scale and a call for broader outreach to improve homeless programs and to get people the help that they need.
On a related note, the BPL will begin lending out iPad 2s very soon. They will have resume-building apps and job seeking resources.
kz1000ps
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Is today's situation that unique in the history of libraries? Are there really that many more homeless than ever before? Are today's boors that much worse than yesterday's? And I don't ask this as some rhetorical question; I would really like some perspective on this matter.
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Best April Fool's you'll probably see today, courtesy of the Guggenheim NYC on Facebook:
Announcing Guggenheim Museum Expansion!
Updated 37 minutes ago
NEW YORK, NY - April 1, 2013 - We are pleased to announce that beginning today, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will begin construction to expand the original Frank Lloyd Wright design by an additional 13 floors. How do you like our new look? Renderings courtesy of Oiio Architecture Office.
Announcing Guggenheim Museum Expansion!
Updated 37 minutes ago
NEW YORK, NY - April 1, 2013 - We are pleased to announce that beginning today, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will begin construction to expand the original Frank Lloyd Wright design by an additional 13 floors. How do you like our new look? Renderings courtesy of Oiio Architecture Office.
Mustering my best Goofy laugh, but seriously, no, not at all. Pretty stupid if you ask me.