And in other news.

Get this. I subscribe to yahoo message board about one of my favorite authors Kim Harrison. This is one of the emails I got today:

First of all, apologies for going way way off topic here, and secondly for sounding alarmist. Any non-US people can either skip, or just laugh.

Legislation has passed the US House that would potentially expose authors to liability for using trademarks (ie, no more trips to Star Bucks for literary characters) in their work. There is more information at http://www.authorsguild.org/news/threatens_free_expresion.htm. Contact information is provided for each senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee (I am planning on sending an e-mail to my darling senator, Arlen Specter).

I am not sure how close this is to reality, or if it really would result in authors being sued for using trademarks without explicit permission, but I thought it was important to bring to light here, given that there are a uthors and people who want to be authors on this list.

Again, my apologies to anyone who regards this as spam,,,I do not want to get anyone worked up, I just want to inform.

Frank Kellogg

I urge the readers of this blog to e-mail their senator too. This is just one more way for government and big buisness to take over our lives.

Ok maybe I'm done ranting now for the night.

ttfn