No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that–

(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work. …

PRIVATE-SECTOR RESEARCH WORK- The term ‘private-sector research work’ means an article intended to be published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of such an article, that is not a work of the United States Government (as defined in section 101 of title 17, United States Code), describing or interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a Federal agency and to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review or editing. Such term does not include progress reports or raw data outputs routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency in the course of research. [emphasis added]

If public money is used to fund scientific research, does the public have a legitimate expectation that the knowledge produced by that research will be shared with the public? If not, why not? (Is the public allocating scarce public funds to scientific knowledge-building simply to prop up that sector of the economy and/or keep the scientists off the streets?)

Assuming that the public has the right to share in the knowledge built on the public’s dime, should the public have to pay to access that knowledge (at around $30 per article) from a private sector journal? The text of the Research Works Act suggests that such private sector journals add value to the research that they publish in the form of peer review and editing. Note, however, that peer review for scientific journals is generally done by other scientists in the relevant field for free….

The public is all too willing already to see public money spent funding scientific research as money wasted. If members of the public have to pay again to access research their tax dollars already paid for, they are likely to be peeved. They would not be wrong to feel like the scientific community had weaseled out of fulfilling its obligation to share the knowledge it builds for the good of the public. (Neither would they be wrong to feel like their government had fallen down on an ethical obligation to the public here, but whose expectations of their government aren’t painfully low at the moment?) A rightfully angry public could mean less public funding for scientific research — which means that there are pragmatic, as well as ethical, reasons for scientists to oppose the Research Works Act.

via The Research Works Act: asking the public to pay twice for scientific knowledge. | Doing Good Science, Scientific American Blog Network.

Or as one wag of a commenter at Gawker noted,

• Megyn Kelly on fire hoses: “It’s a sports beverage, essentially!”
• Megyn Kelly on police dogs: “It’s a family pet, essentially!”
• Megyn Kelly on tasers: “It’s static cling, essentially!”
• Megyn Kelly on rubber bullets: “It’s a pencil eraser, essentially!”
• Megyn Kelly on hand grenades: “It’s a Fourth of July firework, essentially! God bless America.”

via In The Alternate American Universe, Pepper Spray Joins Pizza as a Vegetable : TreeHugger.

The Photo That Will Start A Real Revolution didn’t take long to turn into a meme, nor did it take long for the outrage at the event to spread around the world. But perhaps the best article I [Lloyd Alter on Treehugger] have read is Alexis Madrigal’s Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike. Madrigal notes that Pike is representative of changes in policing since 1999′s battle of Seattle, a militarizing of policing (these were not even municipal police, but campus cops!). This new brutal form of policing coincides with the change in coverage of these events, as video cameras in phones become omnipresent. Ten years ago the cops might have pepper-sprayed kids and said they felt threatened and might get away with it. A hundred videos make that impossible today.

via Outrage Spreads After UC Davis Pepper Spraying : TreeHugger.

UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike walks down a line of people seated quietly on the ground in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, and spray them all with pepper spray at very close range. He is clearing a path for fellow officers to walk through and arrest more students, but it’s as if he’s dousing a row of bugs with insecticide.

via Police officer pepper-sprays seated, non-violent students at UC Davis – Boing Boing.

Politico reports that House and Senate negotiators are likely to approve agriculture appropriations language that would allow the tomato paste on pizza to be counted as a vegetable serving under the USDA’s new school meal guidelines. Count this as the result of lobbying efforts by processed food giants ConAgra and Schwan Food. Schwan is one of the world’s largest purveyors of frozen pizza and pitching for its sauce is Sen. Amy Knobluchar, Democrat of Minnesota, where Schwan is based.

The new pizza rule comes quick on the heels of a Senate amendment prohibiting the USDA from limiting the quantity of potatoes served in school meals. That was pushed by senators from potato producing states Maine and Colorado.

via Processed Food Industry Shows USDA Who’s Boss in the Cafeteria | Lunchbox.

1,252 people were arrested at a climate protest in front of the White House.

The largest environmental civil disobedience in decades concluded at the White House this morning with organizers pledging to escalate a nationwide campaign to push President Obama to deny the permit for a new tar sands oil pipeline.

“Given yesterday’s baffling cave on ozone standards, the need for a fighting environmental movement has never been more clear,” said Bill McKibben, who spearheaded the protest. “That movement is being born right here in front of the White House and reverberating around the country.”

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has become the most important environmental decision facing President Obama before the 2012 election and sparked nationwide opposition, from Nebraska ranchers to former Obama campaigners. A petition with 617,428 names [including mine] opposing the pipeline will be delivered to the White House today.

Over the course of the two-week sit-in 1,252 people were arrested, including top climate scientists, landowners from Texas and Nebraska, former Obama for America staffers, First Nations leaders from Canada, and notable individuals including Bill McKibben, former White House official Gus Speth, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, filmmaker Josh Fox, and author Naomi Klein.

via A Climate Movement Is Born: Ozone Decision Spikes Total Arrests to 1,252 at White House Pipeline Protest | ThinkProgress.

So I can really relate to this Lithuanian mayor who decided to deal with illegally parked cars in a dramatic way.

Arturas Zuokas, 43, took the drastic action after becoming infuriated with motorists parking their luxury cars illegally around the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

The flamboyant politician decided to take the novel approach of fighting illegally parked cars by driving over them in a Russian tank [actually, an armored personnel carrier, but hey…).

He said: ”I wanted to send a clear message that people with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders.

Via Mayor runs over illegally parked car in tank

Howard Zinn You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

review by Brian Charles Clark
5 out of 5 possible stars
Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller; narrated by Matt Damon

Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

One day — I think it was a Tuesday — about 25 years ago, someone handed me a copy of a book and said, “You’ll love this.” The book was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. At the time, I was in college and had heavy stats and logic (if P then not Q and such nonsense) homework. I made the mistake of dipping into Zinn’s book over lunch and couldn’t stop reading for three days straight.

I was too young to have taken part in the radical ’60s and then in the ’70s – well, let’s forget the ’70s existed. In any case, I’d never heard of Zinn until I read A People’s History. But I quickly discovered that he was a member of a loosely affiliated cluster of radical activist philosopher-historians, a group that includes Noam Chomsky and many others, some of whom appear in this film. These activists were fighting the good fight against that relentless tide of greed called capitalism: they educated and advocated for civil and women’s rights, unions and labor rights, and against wars big and small, hot and cold.

Not only can you not remain neutral, but sometimes you've got to get out and push.

They also – and Zinn was a leader in this regard – led a movement of revisionism in the historiography of the Western world, especially the U.S. Americans have mythologized their history, like any people, I suppose, but the result has been a milquetoast telling of lily-white tales that, it turns out, bear little relation to reality. Today, we take for granted that women, Indians, Africans and Asians and working-class folks helped build this country, but not so long ago, if it didn’t come over on the Mayflower, it didn’t have a place in the history books used in K-12 classrooms.

With You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train, you get a rich scoop of Howard Zinn and his life and times. Fresh out of college, Zinn was hired by Spellman College, a school for African-Americans in the South when it was still under apartheid. Zinn rapidly emerged as a civil rights leader and spent his life as an activist and educator. By dint of sheer persistence, he was finally recognized as the hero and national treasure he truly was, but it took decades before that finally happened.

Originally released in 2004, Ellis and Mueller’s wonderful documentary on Zinn is also a people’s history of an era of resistance to corporate and government-sponsored violence and greed. It was re-released in a commemorative edition following Zinn’s death in 2010. The new edition is chock full of extras (about an hour’s worth) and is just as inspiring and relevant as it was when first released. My fear is that the film will remain relevant: the need to fight for our rights, to fight for justice, and to inspire activism through education will be needed far into the future. At least we have tools like this film to get the important conversations started.