Satellite photo of Costa Concordia shipwreck

By David Pescovitz at 9:47 pm Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share

From DigitalGlobe, this striking satellite image of the Costa Concordia shipwreck off Giglio, Italy.

John Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

By David Pescovitz at 5:08 pm Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share

Avant-garde hero John Cale performs his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in 1992. Cale's version is available on the highly-recommended multi-artist cover album, "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Fan," from 1991. And yes, perhaps you also heard it in Shrek.

Puppets re-enact no-cameras-allowed corruption trial on the nightly news

By Cory Doctorow at 8:44 am Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share

Channel 19 in Akron, Ohio was disappointed that it wouldn't be allowed to take cameras into the corruption trial of Jimmy Dimora, a former county commissioner. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla: they bring the courtroom proceeding to their viewers' TV sets by re-enacting them with puppets. As Lowering the Bar notes, "I think that all court proceedings should be reported in this way, but would settle for either puppet coverage of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court or a full reenactment of the Rod Blagojevich trial."

News Team Not Allowed to Film in Courtroom; Turns to Puppetry Instead

Chris Dodd to Obama: Hollywood will stop supporting you because you were soft on SOPA and PIPA

By Cory Doctorow at 7:33 am Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share  

Former Senator Chris Dodd, now head of the MPAA, is pissed at Obama. He's threatened to withhold entertainment lobbyist money from Obama's upcoming re-election war chest over the administration's lack of support for SOPA and PIPA. As an ex-Senator, Dodd is prohibited from directly lobbying Congress for a couple more years, and some insiders tell me he feels that this hamstrung his efforts because he couldn't sit down over lunch with lawmakers who directly owed him personal favors and demand that they stay firm on SOPA and PIPA.

"Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake."

EXCLUSIVE: Chris Dodd warns of Hollywood backlash against Obama over anti-piracy bill (Thanks, mindofbryan!)

(Image: Blackmail - South Congress Avenue, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from swanksalot's photostream)

SOPA/PIPA mashup: how much Hollywood money did your lawmaker take? Name and shame with fellow voters

By Cory Doctorow at 6:24 am Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share

With PIPA off the legislative calendar and SOPA paused, this tool may seem a bit redundant, but it's a nice piece of advocacy work. Creator Jonathan Vanasco sez, "I tossed together a mashup over a few hours while sick on the couch. It uses the data from Propublica and SunlightLabs to create very-shareable profile pages for every Senator and Representative that were geared for 'viral': - language is designed to motivate people to read and share - leverages all the Facebook and Twitter tools to increase ranking - text and graphics are optimized for Facebook sharing, educating users about the issue and how much lobbyist money may be influencing things - automatic twitter suggestions for tweets with likely-to-share language ie: - challenge a senator to give back $x in media contributions - notes if a senator has received more media contributions than 50% of other senators - asks a senator how much money is needed for them to represent people, not lobbyists."

Hi. My name is Dianne Feinstein. (Thanks, Jonathan!)

Undercover UK cops infiltrated environmental groups, seduced women in the groups, fathered children with them, abandoned them

By Cory Doctorow at 2:39 am Saturday, Jan 21 • Comments • Share

Undercover police agents in the UK infiltrated environmental groups, had sex with their members, struck up long-term relationships with women in these groups, fathered children with these women, and then abandoned the children.

Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.

In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children's mothers for many years.

Good thing the police were there, though. Who knows what kind of unethical behaviour an environmentalist might be getting up to.

Undercover police had children with activists