I first found this photo over at Washington’s Blog. The post where it appears makes a (short) argument about the ban of media coverage apparently imposed by BP and US officials and the alleged suspension of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution it represents (it links to another blog for a longer argument about this issue). At the very end of the post, the author seems to put forward a legal point supporting the publication of such pictures as the one shown above:

In addition, use of such images is also protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, reproduction is protected under the “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases”, since:

(1) The images are of historical significance;

(2) They show facts which cannot be conveyed effectively in any other manner, and

(3) Therefore the Constitution trumps copyright law. (more)

Now, what exactly are those “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases” ? It’s not a law, but a “line of cases” and it could plausibly be used to challenge the ban of some media access to the site of the disaster (see The New York Times: “BP and Officials Block Some Coverage of Golf Oil Spill”). How? Under the jurisprudence constante or the stare decisis legal principle (it depends of the number of cases won using the same argument). Here’s an example of such a case: Los Angeles News Service, Robert Tur v. Frank Tullo; Charles Bicket; Audio Video Reporting Services (1992).

The heart of this case heavily relies on the work of Professor Melville B. Nimmer (1923-1985) who’s still consider today as the authority on copyright laws. More precisely, the argument ask for a suspension of the idea/expression dichotomy on which copyright laws traditionally rely:

Copyright law incorporates First Amendment goals by ensuring that copyright protection extends only to the forms in which ideas and information are expressed and not to the ideas and information themselves.

Indeed, Professor Nimmer had suggested in the past that in some exceptional circumstances, the dichotomy between the content (idea) and it’s form (expression) doesn’t serve adequately the First Amendment. There are cases where the value of the expression is more important to the public than the idea it could express:

Professor Nimmer has suggested the idea-expression dichotomy and the fair use doctrine may not adequately protect First Amendment interests in some circumstances. 1 Nimmer @ 1.10[C][2], at 1 – 81. Citing the exclusive photographs of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the Zapruder home movie of the assassination of President John Kennedy as examples, Nimmer proposes that “where the ‘idea’ of a work contributes almost nothing to the democratic dialogue, and it is only its expression which is meaningful,” copyright protection of the expression should be limited in the interest of public access to information necessary to effective public dialogue. Id. at 1 – 82-1 – 84. Nimmer explains:

No amount of words describing the “idea” of the massacre could substitute for the public insight gained through the photographs. The photographic expression, not merely the idea, became essential if the public was to fully understand what occurred in that tragic episode. It would be intolerable if the public’s comprehension of the full meaning of My Lai could be censored by the copyright owner of the photographs. . . .

For what I understand, it means two things. First, that in certain circumstances the idea of the creator or less important than the form he creates (that is : what he gives form to, or what he in-forms: thus the concept of information). For example, Zapruder’s ideas about what he wanted to film, how he wanted to film it, what he wanted to say are less important than the raw (but this is problematic) expression of the event he caught on film. Second, that this expression is of public interest since the idea of the assassination could not be convey with the same efficiency by another form (a textual description for example). Therefore, the expression should fall under the Fair Use doctrine.

I should add that I’m not a lawyer and that I don’t know much about US copyright laws. I’m more interested in this “dichotomy” between the idea and it’s expression. I find it problematic, to say the least. The exceptions represented by the “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases” may be approached from the perspective of the relation between the medium and the message (be it in law, in sociology, in philosophy or in communication studies, with or without McLuhan in mind).

Therefore the community cannot be thought of as abody, as a corporation in which individuals are reflected in each other so as to confirm their initial identity; as a collective bond that comes at a certain point to connect individuals that before were separate. The community isn’t a mode of being, much less a “making” of the individual subject. It isn’t the subject’s expansion or multiplication but its exposure to what interrupts the closing and turns it inside out: a dizziness, a syncope, a spasm in the continuity of the subject.

– ESPOSITO, Roberto ([1998]2010). Communitas. The Origin and Destiny of Community, tr. Thimothy Campbell, Standford: Stanford University Press, p. 7

From here it emerges that communitas is the totality of persons united not by “property” but precisely by an obligation or a debt; not by an “addition” but by a “substration”: by a lack, a limit that is configured as an onus, or even as a defective modality for him who is “affected”, unlike for him whi is instead “exempt” or “exempted”. Here we find the final and most characteristic of the opposition associated with (or that dominate) the alternative between public and private. those in other words that contrast communitas to immunitas. If communis is he who is required to carry out the functions of an office―or to the donation of a grace―on the contrary, he is called immune who has to perform no office, and for that reason he remains ungrateful. He can completely preserve his own position through a vacatio muneris. Whereas the communitas is bound by the sacrifice of the compensatio, the immunitas implies the beneficiary of the dispensatio.

– ESPOSITO, Roberto ([1998]2010). Communitas, tr. by Thimothy Campbell, Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 6

(…) and a definition is overthrown in two ways, by being proved to be false or incomplete. It may indeed have a third fault, that of having no relation to the matter under consideration, but it will hardly be made faulty in this respect, except by fools. We make a false definition, if we say, A horse is a rational animal; for a horse is indeed an animal, but irrational. It is an incomplete one, if you say, A horse is an irrational animal; for to be irrational is common to a horse with other beasts; and that which is common to anything else will not be peculiar to the thing defined.”

– QUINTILIAN, Institutes of oratory: or, Education of an orator. In twelve books, Book VII, Chap. II, §23-34 (tr. by John Selby Watson, Henry G. Bohn, 1856, p. 38 – Goolge Books)

The last part of this argument is used by Roberto Esposito in his essay Communitas to stress the fact that “In all neo-Latin Languages (though not only) common is what is not proper, that begins where what is proper ends” – ESPOSITO, Roberto ([1998]2010). Communitas, tr. Thimothy Campbell, Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 3

Allegedly, Robin Parks was laid of by the U.S. Postal Service back in December 2009. Yesterday, he went on what some described as a “shooting rampage”: while driving and being intoxicated with alcohol, he randomly shot a three cars. It happened in Polk County, Florida, just a few days after the Cumbria shootings which left 12 dead (including the shooter, Derrick Bird). Just as it was the case with Bird, Robin Parks “didn’t fit the profile of someone who would go on a shooting rampage (…)”. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said of him “he lives in a house with a manicured lawn” (The Ledger)

So, another crazy shooter right? Yet, chances are good you never heard of him. As of today, a search on Google News shows only a few links to the case : The Miami Herald, The Ledger, The Tampa Tribune. Nothing from The New York Times, The Associated Press, nor Reuters. And you won’t find a thing about Robin Parks on Wikipedia. How’s that?

The main reason would be that he didn’t kill anybody : he injured two people. So for the media, there’s no “killing spree”. Scholars who define mass murder as the killing of four or more won’t see a case here. And yet, the guy lost it. In a way or another.

There are problems with the way we – the general population – come to understand those events. Just as there are problem with the way media treat them. A quick search will show that there are also problems with the way science had been trying to explain them in the past decades. Those problems – those biases – may nonetheless be representative of something.

Yeah, Tumblr is definitely a disaster for SEO. I have had massive problems with pages not being indexed on Google. The URL structure is worthless and post titles are virtually non-existent. If you want a blog that ranks well on Google you would do yourself a favor by not using Tumblr. (Bjorn Stromberg: “Tumblr and SEO”, May 22sd, 2008)

To be fair, it worth reading Topherchris post on the subject of search engine optimization and Tumblr (he works for Tumblr).

I became aware of the problem with this post. It was reblogged as is by a Wordpress blog (Innovation is Dead). If you try a Google search for “Beastness Jaclin”, the Wordpress blog comes up first. My Tumblr post doesn’t even come up (it uses tags, it’s making use of descriptive URLs and, of course, in my settings, I’ve allowed search engines to index my blog).

I’m aware, as Topherchris puts it, that it may be “related to how one’s template is designed and content is constructed”. But it’s a pain nonetheless. I should be able to get good search result for all of my post without having to tinker with my CSS template. After all, simplicity is what made us choose Tumblr in the first place. I wrote to Tumblr support about this. All I got was this:

“We can’t control what Google and other search engines choose to index and show. For further assistance you could try contacting Google or another search engine directly.” (april 22sd, 2010)

Notice they didn’t point me to a source of information, didn’t mention tags or meta-data and didn’t say a word about the template I’m using. Hell, I would have been interested in buying a template that as a good SEO system.

So for the past two months, I’ve been playing with export/import tools : I’d like to move everything from this Tumblr account to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Granted, Tumblr is easy to use and, for me, it’s a great archiving tool for my personal needs. But as I understand it, I can’t do anything serious on it unless I start doing heavy research on how to modify my template. Which I won’t have to do on a Wordpress blog (I’ve been using this SEO plugin for years and it works great).

I know this post won’t show up on Google, so I’ll publish it on another Wordpress blog I own.

The study of those who murder more than once is replete with assumptions and speculations about causality. Two views frequently encountered are that the multiple murderer’s behavior is a mystery or that every multiple murderer is suffering from some type of psychiatric disorder. A common assumption found in the media and in the professional literature is that these murderers are “crazy”. Actually, after identification, most multiple murderers have been described as withdrawn, shy, and generally nondescript (…).

– BUSCH, Katie A. & CAVANAUGH, Jr., Jame (1986). “The Study of Multiple Murder. Preliminary Examination of the Interface Between Epistemology and Methodology”, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-23. Online / PDF

It is quite possible for this world to be destroyed by human folly. We used to think at once of nuclear war, but that is only one edge of a many-sided emer- gency in which human damage to the earth can come back on us. The perils manifest in many forms: proliferation of weapons, nationalisms, racisms, destruc- tion of animal and plant habitats, of soil, air, water, cities. Yet there is a pattern that connects them. These individual symptoms interlock to form a very big runaway system, which is the enactment of our own presuppositions, the underlying habits of thought that are deeply embedded in our everyday life as what we call ‘common sense.’

– NACHMANOVITCH, Stephen (1981). “Old Men Ought to be Explorers” [PDF]

Pour qui est immortel, comme les dieux, nu besoin d’Elpis. Pas d’Elpis non plus pour qui, comme les bêtes, ignore qu’il est mortel. Si l’homme, mortel comme les bêtes, prévoyait comme les dieux tout le futur à l’avance, s’il était tout entier du côté de Prométhée, il n’aurait plus la force de vivre, faute de pouvoir regarder sa propre mort en face. Mais se connaissant mortel sans savoir quand ni comment il mourra, Elpis, prévision, mais prévision aveugle, illusion nécessaire, bien et mal à la fois, Elpis seule permet de vivre cette existence ambigüe, dédoublée, qu’entraîne la fraude prométhéenne quand elle institue le premier repas sacrificiel. Tout désormais à son revers: plus de contact avec les dieux qui ne soit aussi, à travers le sacrifice, consécration d’une infranchissable barrière entre mortels et Immortels, plus de bonheur sans malheur, de naissance sans trépas, d’abondance sans peine ni fatigue, de nourriture sans faim, dépérissement, vieillesse et mortalité, plus de mâle sans femme , de Prométhée sans Épiméthée, , plus d’existence humaine sans la double Elpis, attente ambigüe, crainte et espoir à la fois face à un avenir incertain — Elpis en qui. comme chez la meilleure épouse, «le mal tout au long de la vie vient contrebalancer le bien».

― VERNANT, Jean-Pierre et DETIENNE, Marcel ([1979]2007). La Cuisine de sacrifice en pays grec in Jean-Pierre Vernant. Oeuvres, tome 1, éd. Seuil, coll. Opus, 2007, pp. 972-973

Plusieurs sources classiques traitant de Elpis via Theoi.com.