Broadcast Flag Rises from the Dead
By Staff, Public Knowledge
The dreaded 'broadcast flag' is back. Long sought by Hollywood, the flag is a tool to protect copyrights by preventing viewers from recording and copying content received via digital broadcast. Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission could not force television manufacturers to build the flag into their hardware. But as the Senate takes up digital TV legislation this week, the tech rights group Public Knowledge warns, the film and music industries have teamed up to press Congress to give the FCC that authority and to extend it to digital radio broadcasts. For more background and to contact your senators, see PK's action alert. -- Leif Utne
http://www.publicknowledge.org/action/night_of_the_broadcast_flag

The Museum of Bad Art
By Volunteers, The Museum of Bad Art
The most revered masterpieces of the art world have long been canonized by scholars and critics. But what about those choice creations that, while lacking in craft or comprehensibility, are just as evocative of profound insight and stirring emotion as their more acclaimed contemporaries? The Museum of Bad Art proudly defends the ugly and the unruly, filling its own alternative canon with purple lakes and scowling clowns. They may not be pretty, but these joyfully inept works of art are anything but awful. -- Brendan Themes
http://www.museumofbadart.org/

Monkmobiles and Bulletproof Robes
By Paul Schmelzer, Eyeteeth
Increasing violence against Buddhists in southern Thailand has put monks in peril, so Major Songphon Eiamboonyarith and other creative entrepreneurs are inventing devices to keep them out of harm's way. 'Monkmobiles' -- bulletproof sidecars with a special window for receiving alms -- and saffron-colored bulletproof vests are some of the inventions meant to keep the Buddhist monks safe in unsafe territory. -- Rose Miller
http://tinyurl.com/ex99y