Quickies

For your Easter reading pleasure, a list of Biblical Vulgarities and Obscenities. Keep it handy when a self righteous fundamentalist approaches you and informs you of how the Koran oppresses women.

Six independent Canadian record labels are pulling out of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). Why? It's not in their interest to be in it.

The independent labels note that if CRIA's proposals are implemented, they "would have a material negative effect on the future growth of Canadian independent music."

The truly amusing thing, as Michael Geist reports, is that leaves only the 4 foreign major labels left in the "CRIA". In other words, no "Canadian" content in that association.

Tennessee Guerilla Women reprints a Paul Krugman editorial that's hidden behind the NY Time's firewall. Clips:

Here's the bottom line: about 32 percent of the tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people whose income this year will be at least $341,773. About 53 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population...

Again, the point isn't merely that the Bush administration has squandered the budget surplus it inherited on tax cuts for the wealthy. It's the fact that the administration has spent its entire term in office lying about the nature of those tax cuts.

ZDNet reports that the governments in the U.S. (state and federal) are expressing interest in passing laws that require ISPs to log the surfing of their users. The idea being that they can subpoena those logs in order to prosecute for crimes ranging from drugs to pornography and anything in between. Get this: they also want the ISPs to log your chats and emails. Either we're witnessing the erosion of free speech or the beginnings of more people turning to encryption or both. Hopefully, people will turn to more encryption anyhow.

Speaking of privacy rights, England has a greater number of it's citizens DNA stored in databases than any other country in the world - by far. Also interesting is that the data indicates that they share the same prejudices against minorities that the U.S. law enforcement system has.

Is it any wonder then that an English politician has called for random drug testing in all schools?

Despite what your Congressman might tell you, the BBC reports that scientists claim that fetuses cannot feel pain.