Just another nerd.
Steve Jackson Games has created a Munchkin Level Counter app for the iPod Touch and iPhone. The app not only provides a helpful level counter to keep track of your progress, but also includes a “Boon” option which the player can use once per game and awards one of 150 in-game advantages such as treasure or yet another way to stab your friends in the back.
A bit pricey at $4.99, but I’m sure they’ll sell plenty of these.
The Blog Herald has an article, Hey Blogger, Are You Insured, suggesting that bloggers might want to consider libel insurance as a protection against potential lawsuits, even though it estimates the cost of such insurance might cost around $1,000/year. To bolster its case, The Blog Herald cites a WTTX-TV report suggesting that bloggers are being successfully sued for libel, and for comments that are fairly ordinary and on their face appear non-libelous at that,
Cases against bloggers are growing as the number of bloggers rises, according to the Media Law Resource Center, which posts legal actions against bloggers. Damages, too, can be stiff.
This year, a court awarded $129,794 to an Ohio woman after a blogger said her property was haunted, reports Media Law. Another blogger was ordered to pay $1.8 million after referring to someone as a “failed lawyer.”
Huge awards for calling someone a “failed lawyer” or insinuating a property is haunted? Oh noes…better run out and get libel insurance right away, right? Maybe not.
What WTTX-TV leaves out is that both of those cases were won because the party being sued never showed up in court to contest the charges. Since the defendants failed to appear, the judge in each case entered a default judgment against the blogger. In fact in the haunting case, the owner of the property in question also named the author of a book that made similar statements as a defendant as well. The judge dismissed the lawsuit against the author — who bothered to appear — but entered a default judgement against the blogger.
In other words, you may not necessarily need libel insurance, but you damn well need to make sure you or your lawyer appear in court after receiving notice that a lawsuit has been filed.
But are there other cases of libel lawsuits against bloggers? Yes, and according to the Media Law Resource Center they’ve been able to find a grand total of one — that’s right, just one — lawsuit against a blogger that went to trial and resulted in a monetary judgment against the blogger. And, in that case, the blogger more than deserved it.
In that case, blogger David Milum had a dispute with an attorney over fees from a previous case. So Milum did the rational thing and alleged on his blog that the attorney had bribed a judge in order to receive favorable treatment for a client. That case went to trial, and Milum was ordered to pay $50,000 in damages to the attorney.
Which was the right decision since Milum’s claims were clearly libelous.
So, if you are going to make up stories accusing judges and lawyers of corruption or making up other pernicious falsehoods then, yes, you probably should take out a libel insurance policy. But for ordinary critical statements of public figures and semi-public figures, there doesn’t seem to be any great rash of libel lawsuits in general, much less successful ones.
Which probably explains this paragraph from the Blog Herald story,
Blogging has become such a risk, that several well-known insurance agencies have begun including libel protections under certain homeowner’s and umbrella policies.
Certainly — and I bet they’re also more than happy to sell you life insurance for your children. That’s money in the bank right there.
Think Geek sells this awesome Horror Movie Shower Curtain and Bath Mat. Looks like the bath mat is $14.99 and the shower curtain is $17.99. That would give my kids perpetual nightmares or otherwise I’d be tempted.
The Cyborg Name Decoder helpfully reveals your cyborg name (and, really, can you live one more minute not knowing?)
The New York Times highlights ongoing innovation in incandescent bulbs ahead of new energy efficiency requirements set to take effect in 2012. Like most people, I assumed that meant widespread switching to compact fluorescent bulbs, but apparently there are still quite a bit of efficiency gains to be had in incandescents,
The first bulbs to emerge from this push, Philips Lighting’s Halogena Energy Savers, are expensive compared with older incandescents. They sell for $5 apiece and more, compared with as little as 25 cents for standard bulbs.
But they are also 30 percent more efficient than older bulbs. Philips says that a 70-watt Halogena Energy Saver gives off the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt bulb and lasts about three times as long, eventually paying for itself.
…
And a physics professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Shawn-Yu Lin, is also seeing improved incandescent performance by using a high-tech, iridium-coated filament that recycles wasted heat. “The technology can get up to six to seven times more efficient,” Mr. Lin said.
As I’ve said before, my main concern with light bulbs is less energy efficiency than durability — I want a light bulb I only have to change every 10 years. Every little step toward that goal is to be applauded, with the energy efficiency options not a bad thing to throw in as well.
American Atheists points to this Pew Poll that surveyed both old and young people in order to measure the similarities and differences in their lives. AA focuses on the stated difference between the two on the importance of religion in their lives,
Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults than younger adults. Two-thirds of adults ages 65 and older say religion is very important to them, compared with just over half of those ages 30 to 49 and just 44% of those ages 18 to 29. Moreover, among adults ages 65 and above, a third (34%) say religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, while just 4% say it has become less important and the majority (60%) say it has stayed the same. Among those who are over 65 and report having an illness or feeling sad, the share who say that religion has become more important to them rises to 43%.
American Atheist responded to this with,
“Translation: 56% of the younger generation thinks religion is not very important. That’s more than half, folks!”
I wanted to dig into the numbers to see if that excerpt was overstating the degree of irreligion among the young, and so downloaded the full report (1mb PDF) If anything, however, the situation is even better/worse (depending on your point of view) than that excerpt lets on — significant percentages of young people classified themselves as atheists/agnostics/no religion,
| Age Group | % Atheists / Agnostics/ No Religion |
| 18-29 | 25% |
| 30-49 | 18% |
| 50-64 | 13% |
| 65+ | 7% |
For the 18-29 year old group, more people identified themselves as atheist/agnostic/no religion than identified themselves as Catholic. This is, of course, entirely consistent with other surveys of religious belief that have shown dramatic increases in unbelief/lack of religious affiliation over the past couple decades, but is still kind of amazing to actually see accelerate.