An anti-Mormon Christian ministry, “Concerned Christians,” has distributed 18,000 DVDs to homes across Arizona, mainly targeting areas with high Mormon populations such as Mesa and Snowflake. 15,000 DVDs were distributed to homes in Mesa, Tempe, and Gilbert, 2,000 in Snowflake, and 1,000 in Tucson. The DVD, titled “Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith,” argues against the latter but not the former. The DVD was apparently produced by and distributed nationally by Living Hope Ministries of Brigham City, Utah, a Christian church that criticizes the Mormon religion. [UPDATE (July 6, 2007): My cousin and his wife inform me in the comments that this is not correct, contrary to the statement from the Arizona distributor in the Arizona Republic’s report, and that this was produced and distributed by TriGrace Ministries and GoodnewsfortheLDS.com.] That name was familiar to me–I suspected, and verified, that this is the same church that previously produced a DVD about how DNA evidence disproved Mormon claims about Native Americans being descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. In 2001, the pastor of Living Hope Ministries was Joel Kramer, who was the officiant at the wedding of my cousin Aaron Lippard, which I attended at their storefront church in Brigham City. Kramer, a former Tucson resident, has authored a book, Beyond Fear, which tells the story of how Kramer and my cousin Aaron traveled across Papua New Guinea solely under their own power. I read the book after seeing my cousin present a slide presentation about his harrowing trip (and show off his septum piercing, which was pierced by a New Guinea aborigine with a bird bone, by sticking a meat thermometer through it). I found the book enjoyable, though preachy and annoying in spots. Kramer’s voice as a writer struck me as arrogant and condescending towards my cousin, portraying himself as a Christian real-man and my cousin as an inexperienced, naive fellow who had much to learn about becoming a mature Christian male. A film Kramer has produced is called The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon, which is reviewed here by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. This review makes a point that I’ve made about Living Hope’s Mormons & DNA DVD and about Richard Abanes’ One Nation Under Gods–they don’t seem to apply the same standard of criticism to Christianity that they apply to Mormonism. I’m sure the same is true of “Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith.” ...

You aren’t allowed to say if you’ve received a National Security Letter. But there’s no law that says you can’t say that you haven’t received one. Thus, rsync.net has a “warrant canary”–they periodically post a cryptographically signed statement that they have not, to date, received any PATRIOT Act warrants or had any searches and seizures. If they stop updating the statement, then you can draw your own conclusions. The second of these library signs uses the same principle: “The FBI has not been here [watch closely for removal of this sign]." (Via jwz’s blog, where some commenters question whether the recent Washington Post piece by the recipient of a National Security Letter is truthful. Note that the ACLU has a lawsuit going on about this case, which I previously noted back in 2005.) ...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster has produced a FAQ about the causes of the WTC building collapses (along with other FAQs and factsheets): NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, http://wtc.nist.gov. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers. ...

Yesterday’s Washington Post prints a first-hand anonymous account from the head of a small ISP who received a National Security Letter from the FBI, which was an apparent abuse of authority: Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand – a context that the FBI still won’t let me discuss publicly – I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled. Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn’t abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters. Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case – including the mere fact that I received an NSL – from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie. I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.More at the Washington Post.

Although I’m not generally a fan of Arizona’s U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-District 2), I have to give him compliments for his stance on this issue. He’s one of only two Congressmen who has reached out to the Egyptian ambassador to the United States on behalf of Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman (also known as Kareem Amer), who was arrested, beaten, held in solitary confinement, and sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing his government in his blog. As the other Congressman is Massachusetts’ Rep. Barney Frank (D-District 4), this is about as bipartisan as it gets. Kudos to Franks and Frank. (Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

Here’s Demetri Martin on the Daily Show commenting on the Viacom lawsuit against Google. This is one that’s better to watch on YouTube than on Comedy Central… (Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.) Historical Comments cowmix (2007-03-24): "This video is no longer available."he he he

In a CNN interview, former Arizona governor and current pastry chef Fife Symington says he saw the “Phoenix lights” in 1997 and believes that the cause was an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The CNN coverage fails to offer any alternative explanations (see the “Skepticism” section of the Wikipedia entry on the Phoenix lights and Tony Ortega’s 1998 New Times story), or to note that Symington was the second Arizona Republican governor of the 1980s to be indicted on criminal charges, impeached, and removed from office. Also see the Arizona Republic’s coverage.

This morning on the Howard Stern Show, there was some discussion of Timothy English’s book, Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll, along with playing some pairs of songs that had very strong resemblances. I didn’t realize that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was a derivative work, with the main guitar line closely resembling that in Spirit’s “Taurus”–and Spirit used to open for Led Zeppelin. (Apparently a lot of Led Zeppelin’s songs are derivative works.) An example of this kind of borrowing that I recognized myself was when Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” first started getting airplay–I immediately thought that the main guitar riff sounded almost exactly like that in Killing Joke’s “Eighties." It’s not clear which of these borrowings are intentional and which are accidental, but as English’s book makes clear, this is an extremely common occurrence. Some of these have led to successful copyright infringement lawsuits, but most haven’t–at least in the past. The Dr. Demento Show, which I used to listen to every week back in high school, used to have a regular feature called “Damaskas’ Copycat Game” which would play short bits of songs in sequence, demonstrating their similarity. Spider Robinson wrote a short story in 1983 called “Melancholy Elephants” which is a story about a woman who tries to persuade a Senator to oppose an extension of the term of copyright into perpetuity on the grounds that there are finite permutations of notes that are perceived as distinct musical melodies, and thus that the bill would result in an end to creation of new works. In the story, she succeeds in persuading him to kill the bill, while in reality, the equivalent bill–the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998–passed, and Larry Lessig and Eric Eldred failed to overturn it at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 (Eldred v. Ashcroft). While this didn’t extend copyright to “in perpetuity,” it has an economic effect virtually indistinguishable from copyright of infinite duration (as Justice Breyer’s dissent recognized). In 2005, arguments over the practice of sampling music came to a head, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that no sampling could take place without a license–not even for a 1.5-second, three-note guitar riff that N.W.A.’s 1990 song “100 Miles and Runnin’” sampled from Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass and Jam.” This decision led to a protest in the form of a collection of songs composed solely of that sample. [The Downhill Battle organization’s website has been down since November 2007, but can be found on the Internet Archive. -jjl, 6 Jan 2009.] (Related: An excellent short video documentary about the use of a six-second drum sample from The Winstons’ “Amen Brother.") UPDATE (December 27, 2011): The Economist, Dec. 17-30, 2011 year-end issue features an excellent article, “Seven seconds of fire," about the Amen break. UPDATE (May 18, 2014): The estate of Randy California, of Spirit, is suing Led Zeppelin over “Stairway to Heaven” being a derivative work of “Taurus." The site whosampled.com has a list of songs which have sampled “Amen, Brother." I should have noticed that the Killing Joke/Nirvana riff is also very close to an earlier (1982) riff in The Damned’s “Life Goes On” (I certainly listened to the album “Strawberries” enough times…). ...

Arizona has risen from #23 for reported mortgage fraud in 2005 to #7 in 2006, based on number of fraud cases out of the total number of home loans in the state: The top 10 states for 2006: 1. Utah 2. Florida 3. California 4. New York 5. Idaho 6. Michigan 7. Arizona 8. Georgia 9. Minnesota 10. Illinois

Edwin A. Abbott’s classic story has been turned into a movie, and it’s received a rave, 5-star review from Film Threat. It’s going to be available this spring on a DVD which includes the original text (though you can also find that online, as it’s in the public domain). This animated film features the voices of Martin Sheen as Arthur Square, Kristen Bell as Hex, Tony Hale from Arrested Development as the King of Pointland, and Michael York as Spherius. Joe Estevez, Martin Sheen’s brother, is Abbott Square–although he’s been doing tons of movies (IMDB shows 160 titles, 22 of which are dated 2006 or 2007), I haven’t seen any since MST3K covered 1990’s “Soultaker." If you check out the movie website, you can register for a discount on the DVD when it becomes available. UPDATE (March 20, 2007): Thanks to Gourami118, who points out in the comments that there are two Flatland movies. The five-star Film Threat review is of this movie by Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., which completed in January and is already available on DVD in a limited run of 1,000 copies. Call this one “Flatland: The Film” (based on its website), while the Martin Sheen one is “Flatland: The Movie.” ...