March, 28, 2002 archives

the vikings 2002 regular season schedule was released. no monday night games (for the first time in fifteen years). it's going to be a rough year following the vikings from la—not many nationally televised games after last year's dismal showing.

once & again got cancelled (that is, won't be getting renewed for next season—all of this season's episodes are going to be aired). that's too bad, it was a good show—lots of great acting and solid writing.

michael kinsley opines on making millionaires of the families of 9/11 victims, and ties it to a notion of how social justice, in the united states, is coming (haphazardly and expensively) in the courtroom instead of from the legislative and executive branches. priceless quote: “We are too concerned about justice in specific situations and not concerned enough about justice in general. That makes justice highly arbitrary and dependent more on publicity than on morally relevant factors.” (i also like the phrase “competitive victimhood”.)

in the tussle over the rights to the big pot o' money being generated by disney from winnie-the-pooh, it turns out that disney destroyed documents. oops.

it's a shame that the article doesn't point that the original winnie-the-pooh books would be in the public domain if it weren't for the corporate welfare handed out in the form of retroactive copyright extensions. the “disney pooh” from the movies and other spinoffs would still be copyrighted, of course. and probably trademarked, too. (the copyright on the books, with the original illustrations by ernest shepard, would have expired in 1984, under the terms in place when the books were originally published.)