The first textile quota in the United States was in 1789:

On July 4, 1789 in one of its first acts, Congress enacted tariff barriers on imports including cotton, leather, clothing, gloves, and hats (whether made of beaver, fur, or wool). Even foreign buttons were taxed, although the origins of the domestic button lobby remain obscure.

An excerpt from Tyler Cowen’s new book, Good and Plenty : The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding, a companion book to his In Praise of Commercial Culture:

The very existence of government jobs subsidizes the arts. Even in the best of times, most writers find it difficult to make a living from book sales alone. Many accept government jobs, hoping they will have time to pursue their own projects. Bureaucracy, despite its deadening effects, stimulates creativity by creating a realm of personal freedom for many employees.

Amazing vintage illustration blog: BibliOdyssey.

Link via Boingboing.

Genetically modified food not hardcore enough for you? Test tube meat is on the way:

Scientists can grow frog and mouse meat in the lab, and are now working on pork, beef and chicken. Their goal is to develop an industrial version of the process in five years.

If they succeed, cultured or in vitro meat could be coming to a supermarket near you. Consumers could buy hamburger patties and chicken nuggets made from meat cultivated from muscle cells in a giant incubator rather than cut from a farm animal.

Home chefs could make meat in a countertop device the size of a coffee maker. Before bed, throw starter cells and a package of growth medium into the meat maker and wake up to harvest fresh sausage for breakfast.

Via Jonah Goldberg

Nice example of the direction user-generated entertainment is heading:

YouTube makes a deal with E! to spin a The Soup segment into an online channel called Cybersmack, which will feature user-generated video clips that satirize pop-culture. The best clip gets $25,000, while the others get the satisfaction of knowing they’ve contributed to the TV network that wouldn’t allow The Simple Life to die.

I’m fairly convinced that with all the debate over media reform and choices for entertainment, that the experience of sitting down on a computer and browsing the internet is a) much better than any of the previous options for all consumers and b) substituting traditional entertainment to a massive, largely unreported degree. A television program and a web browser are not equivilents - their experiences are quite different - but the degree of substitutability between the two is of increasing significance.

Jesse Walker in Reason asks, when physical and ethereal property clash, which wins? “Your Right To Call Your Girlfriend Ends Where My 900-Seat Cinerama Begins”

Like in the United States, the Australian Radiocommunications Act 1992 currently bans mobile phone jammers. Nevertheless, I think it would be a fun toy.

I’ve written about social regulation of technology before, in Vi@gr@ $old h^r^: Is your annoyance our problem? and Can we remove the ban on mobiles in planes without killing each other?.

Yep, that’s fairly crude self-promotion, but what did you expect coming to a website called “chrisberg.org”?

In early 2004, 6 percent of Iraqi households had cell phones; now it’s 62 percent. Ownership of satellite dishes has nearly tripled, and many more families now own air conditioners (58 percent, up from 44 percent), cars, washing machines and kitchen appliances.

Useful knowledge in tandem with this Somalian data. Also have a look at Alec van Gelder’s paper on government action and the ‘digital divide‘ (he writes in the latest IPA Review on the same issue.)

I’ve seen this claim repeated once or twice around the internet recently, this time in an otherwise enjoyable article on intellectual property excesses:

Bill Gates had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.

Doesn’t really ring true. Even a cursery google will show that the story is not that simple. Here is the Bettmann Archive’s Wikipedia page, which notes that it was originally stored in 2002. This Newshour transcript, Frozen in Time, gives a tour through the Iron Mountain National Underground Storage Facility - does it seem like Corbis (owned by Bill Gates) is interested in hiding or preserving? And, at least as of 2004, the entire archive is being carefully but slowly digitised.

The accusation is a pure beat-up meme.

This is a far more appropriate way in which to discern whether GM food is ok for human consumption: the old fashioned way. Says a scientist who has genetically altered pigs so they are rich in omega-3 fatty acids:

“There should be no difference,” he said, adding that, as far as he could tell, the pigs “don’t smell fishy.”

The next IPA Review will be out any day now (partly counting for my semi-absence from this blog). I’ve uploaded my article, the germination of a response to Helen Coonan’s media reform paper, on this site: “Media regulations need massive, radical reform, not minor tweaking” (PDF).

My editorial and the table of contents is up on the IPA site, as well. I’ll also be putting up a number of other articles over the next little while - but, of course, you should BUY IT (or subscribe). Information wants to be free, true, but information can’t buy me food. Your money can.