A site called the Drudge Retort, a liberal answer to the Drudge Report, was ordered by the Associated Press (AP) to cease and desist using snippets of AP articles in its own articles this past week.
Drudge II complied, but objected that copyright law permits the "fair use" of copyrighted material, in limited portions, for scholarly and academic purposes.
I doubt I’d consider either Drudge I or Drudge II scholarly or academic, but I defend their right to quote from published sources and comment on them. This is the meaning, to me, of a free press. I do it all the time here and on my other blogs.
Anyway, a spat ensued, and eventually AP backed away from its legal threat and said the organization "needed to rethink" matters.
What really galled AP, from what I can determine from reading between the lines, is that Drudge and other sites were using the quotations as tie-ins to advertising.
Paraskavedekatriaphobia is a word formed from three Greek words: paraskevi (Friday,) dekatreis (thirteen) and phobia (fear or phobia), meaning "fear of Friday the 13th." Triskaidekaphobia means just "fear of the number 13."
There you go. Learn something everyday. Happy Friday the 13th!
I came across this site that lists the highest–and lowest–gasoline pump prices in each state and counties, parishes, areas, etc., within that state.
I checked it against my local knowledge, and while it was good, it didn’t list the stations that I know to consistently have the lowest prices. Still, it beats not knowing where to save money.
PS Unless I’m mistaken, look for gas prices to reach $5 a gallon by the Fourth of July, or shortly thereafter. They’ll come down in September or October for the presidential election and then continue their upward march after the new president is elected.
Much was made on the video waves about his earlier confusion of the word numnah with numbnut, but 13-year-old Sameer Mishra finally won the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee with the word guerdon. Watch below: