Michael Geist's From Radical Extremism to Balanced Copyright anthology is now a free download - Boing Boing

Major Canadian copyright text is now a free download

Cory Doctorow at 5:19 AM Thursday, Oct 14, 2010

Michael Geist sez,

I am delighted to report that From "Radical Extremism" to "Balanced Copyright": Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda, the new peer reviewed book from Irwin Law on Bill C-32 and Canadian copyright, is now available online. All 20 chapters plus the introduction can be downloaded from the publisher under a Creative Commons licence. A print version of the 652 page book is available for purchase for $65. The book covers a very broad range of issues including Canadian copyright history, digital locks, ISP liability, creator concerns, educational provisions, and access to government and fact-based works. As the back of the book summarizes:

This book represents an effort by some of Canada's leading copyright experts to shift away from the sloganeering that has marked the debate to date by moving toward an informed analysis of Bill C-32 and the future development of Canadian copyright law. Edited by Professor Michael Geist, an internationally regarded authority on Internet and technology law, it responds to the need for non-partisan, informed analysis of Bill C-32. An exceptional group of Canadian scholars from coast-to-coast have come together to assess Canada's plans for copyright reform and the digital agenda in this timely volume that features context for the reforms, analysis of its impact on technology, business, education, and creators, as well as a look ahead to future copyright and digital issues.

From "Radical Extremism" to "Balanced Copyright": Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda (Thanks, Michael!)

Check out James Wilk's syllabus on the Science of Nudge - fascinating - wish I could take it.

Media_httpwebmecomdrj_jjpat

"Change is at the center of the presidential campaign debate, and health care reform remains an urgent—and elusive—national priority. Meanwhile, a recent surge of books testifies to the need to understand key factors underlying change in society, nature, organizations and our own lives. Whether probing complexity or randomness, unraveling ecosystem dynamics, exposing self-defeating policies and actions, spotting tipping points or devising effective ‘nudges’, the search is on for ways of fathoming complex issues to achieve change effectively.

Dr James Wilk is a new Fellow of the Academy whose career has been dedicated to investigating the dynamics of change in nature and human affairs. His scientific work has yielded a rigorous approach for pinpointing tiny interventions that swiftly catalyze the precise transformation desired—with minimum resistance, effort and risk. He has wide experience applying these minimalist approaches successfully to major issues in the world of affairs, where he has long advised leading CEOs, and he has worked extensively with health sector leaders in the US and UK.

For those interested in change, whether within institutions or in the wider environment, this introductory course is a unique opportunity to explore an intriguing new scientific perspective and conceptual framework. Offered as nine lectures with seminar discussion, the course will present these ideas in depth and explore how they are applied in identifying the smallest actions sufficient to secure any given desired state-of-affairs."

Read the full course description:

http://web.me.com/drjameswilk/Course_details/ScienceOfNudge.html

James Wilk, Oxford don can change any workplace with minimalist interventions - what's the secret???? I want to know

Media_httpcdniwiredco_rafch

OK I want to know -what's the secret??? how do I take his course? read his work? (he doesn't seem to publish much)

Excerpt from wired.co.uk

By Tom Cheshire, 7 Sept. 2010

Philosopher James Wilk claims he can transform any workplace with his "minimalist interventions". Big firms pay him handsomely. But is he for real?

Patrick Borgen took the post of chief surgeon at Maimonides Medical Centre in Brooklyn, New York, in January 2009. His brief: to cut surgical errors. It was a big task: the 30-day mortality ratio -- the ratio of observed to expected deaths -- had rocketed to 1.43 in 2008, earning Maimonides “high outlier” status. (The ideal score is 1 or less.) Borgen knew that the culture of the surgical department had to change, but he didn’t know how.

Hospital president Pamela Brier suggested that Borgen meet James Wilk, a 54-yearold Oxford philosophy don who teaches a course on Wittgenstein at St Edmund’s Hall when not running Interchange Associates, a five-person think tank.

“I didn’t see how someone with no intimate knowledge of an amazingly complicated hospital could accomplish this,” says Borgen. “He had no background in healthcare politics or finance.” Borgen met Wilk that March in a quiet room at the New York Academy of Medicine, where he began to outline his problem, the same way he had done many times before for management consultants. So he was surprised when Wilk said he didn’t even want to hear about the problem. Instead, Wilk asked Borgen to describe, in fine detail, how his department would look if he were to come back from a holiday. Two four-hour sessions later, the two men had their solution. One element was geographical: over the years, surgeons had landed wherever there was office space. Borgen identified a hallway in the hospital and started by clustering six heart surgeons together on the same corridor.

Wilk also proposed developing a protocol for handovers between anaesthetists supervising an operation, and those on duty in the ward. Borgen taped a list of back-up surgeons, with their pager numbers and specialities, to the refrigerator in the common room. “It sounds simple,” admits Borgen, “but it immediately established a team culture.”

Within a year, Borgen reckons, surgical errors at Maimonides reduced tenfold. The 30-day mortality rate dropped to 1.08, cancelling the “high outlier” tag. Borgen estimates that 20 to 30 lives have been saved as a direct result. In January 2010, the hospital received the Distinguished Hospital Award for the first time from Health Grades, a healthcare-ratings company, putting it in the top five per cent of hospitals in the US.

For the advice, Wilk charged a flat quarterly fee of £150,000. “I couldn’t have imagined that the return on the investment would be as much as it was,” says Borgen. Wilk’s solutions were examples of what he calls “minimalist interventions”. He says he has executed 750 of these interventions since the late 80s, mostly for major companies including Shell and Prudential Financial, plus the NHS and others whose identities are confidential. Wilk says that he can solve any problem, no matter how large or longstanding, with an easy, custom-designed and entirely personal consultation. He claims he can do this from scratch, usually in four hours, no matter what the sector. He has spent 35 years researching the methodology behind interventions, he explains, completing postgraduate work across philosophy, psychology, social science and cybernetics.

“Everybody’s had experiences where they’ve had some big success in their life. They look back and realise it was down to one or two small things that they did,” Wilk says at his Georgian townhouse in Bath. “If they’d known to do them early on -- one phone call, a dinner with one person -- it would have saved a lot of effort. My point is, you can find those things in advance.”

Read the full article:

http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/10/start/the-oxford-don-wi...

Time for a trip to Texas: Video Sneak Peek: Insane Kinetic Sculpture Tests Limits of Math, Art, Man | Underwire

Excerpt from wired.com:

The atrium in the Dallas Hilton Anatole hotel is Texas-big, lofting more than 150 feet in the air. Owner Harlan Crow — legendary real estate investor and eccentric collector of ego-size dead-dictator statues – needed to fill it.

What happened next was perhaps the most ambitious kinetic sculpture ever commissioned, the Nebula.

Conceived and designed by Berkeley, California, artist Reuben Margolin, and built and installed by Mark Sabatino’s Gizmo Art Production in San Francisco, the sculpture seems to swim, as a motor on the ceiling rotates a massive truss holding 445 stainless steel cables connected to 15,000 reflectors, shimmering like jewels.

Margolin, whose celebrated kinetic works include the “magic wave,” the “pentagonal wave“ and many others, says the Nebula is by far his most difficult piece to date.

“The thought was, to make something that is … beautiful and to make something that draws you in and to make something that really does justice to this space, and makes you appreciate that actual grandeur of the atrium,” he told Wired.com.

In other words, the Nebula is an insanely complex engineering feat that has to be seen to be believed....

Read More http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/video-sneak-peek-insane-kinetic-sculpt...

Report: Natalie Portman May Star in Alien Prequel | Underwire

Natalie Portman may be too mature to star in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — the 29-year-old actress dropped out of that film last week — but she’s evidently not too old to kick some ass in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel. Portman is reportedly the frontrunner for the lead female role in 20th Century Fox’s reboot-in-progress.

Natalie Portman stars in the upcoming Black Swan.
Image courtesy Fox Searchlight

According to Vulture, Portman has the inside track to portray a Colonial Marine general in the planned sci-fi movie. Her main competition: Swedish actress Noomi Rapace of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo fame.

If Portman wins the gig, it would represent a marked departure from her recent string of art-house dramas, including Brothers and the upcoming Black Swan, opening Dec. 1, in which she plays an anguished ballet dancer.

A script rewrite turned in earlier this week by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof has fueled new momentum for the project, estimated to cost about $150 million.

The studio might shoot for a PG-13 for the movie, according to sources who said the original Alien might have gotten that rating if a few F-bombs were excised. “The later Aliens movies were action movies, but the original Alien was a horror-suspense film,” an unnamed insider told Vulture. “This returns the franchise to its roots.”

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