Dowbrigade

WASHINGTON (AP) — Violent and property crimes dipped
in 2002 to their lowest levels since records started being compiled 30
years ago, and have dropped more than 50 percent in the last decade,
the Justice Department reported Sunday.

The rate of violent crimes — rapes, robberies and assaults — was about
23 victims for every 1,000 U.S. residents 12 or older last year. That
compares with 25 victims per 1,000 in 2001 and 50 in 1993.

from CNN….

Its a tough time to be a Saudi. Under increasing pressure
to deal with the popular, virulent anti-Americanism which is proving
to be such a fecund petri dish of terrorism for Saudi youth with too
much time on their hands, the government is spending millions on a sophisticated
US public relation campaign and looking for more ways to cooperate with
the US government.

The Saudi royal family, which owes its position atop the world’s
biggest proven pot of petroleum to a post-WWI land-grant from the victorios
European powers, has maintained that positon through a Faustian pact
with

radical fundamentalists who channel popular
anger at being kept in ignorance and underdevelopment away from the government
and directly at Jews and Americans.

Now Adam Zagorin, Time magazine’s national
economics correspondent, reports that while their governments are publicly
feuding,
FBI and IRS agents are in Riyadh working with their Saudi counterparts
to form a joint task force to trace terrorist financing.

Of course, Adam Zagorin
also reported, in sixth grade, that putting 12 Bufferin tablets in a
can of Coke, shaking
it up, and shooting it down your throat would get you high. It doesn’t,
Adam. It just makes you very, very sick. Don’t ask how I got
this information.

from
Time

The
New York Times reports that when the temps climb in the Big Apple,
so
do New Yorkers – to the roofs.

They charge through security doors
and climb up fire escapes, and nervous landlords or busybody building
superintendents are
no match. Their stories are varied and twisted.

"Sometimes you’re up on the roof, you have a little
music, you close your eyes, you could be at the beach," says Leon
Ichaso, a filmmaker. "It’s celebratory. There’s a sense that they
can’t catch you up there."

I’m wondering what you’ve been up to Leon, and who exactly "they" are….

from the New York Times

"I don’t even know how to begin this story, so stupid and extreme
it is."  So begins Lawrence Lessig in a relevatory article
on the US reaction to a World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) meeting on “Open collaborative models to develop public goods”
including open-source and free software. WIPO is affiliated with the
UN.

Enter Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office, who, at the prompting of Microsoft and software
industry lobbying (according to this story by Jonathan
Krim in the Washington Post) proclaimed
“that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which
is to
promote intellectual-property
rights.”  She was further quoted as saying, “To hold a meeting
which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us
to be
contrary
to
the goals
of WIPO.”

Lessig lights into Lois here: "If Lois Boland said this, then she should
be asked to resign. " Of course, this unleashed a torrent of comments.

follow
the fun at Lessig Blog (see blog for latest developments)