Tim Wu (over on lessig blog) has listed a bunch of Jack Valenti quotes from over the years. Here’s a sample:

On the nascent cable industry, in 1974
“[Cable will become] a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.”

On the VCR, 1983
“We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault … and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.
We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry … whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR].”
“[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

On the public domain, 1995
“A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film’s quality?”

On the meaning of value, 1983
“Nothing of value is free. It is very easy … to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else’s property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled.”

And the Valenti slogan
“If you cannot protect what you own, you don’t own anything.”

[lessig blog]

Selma points to a fun little flash movie about depression and a cure.

Ellen asks “Is this serious?” Sadly, I think it just might be. Though I never really thought of my hot dog toppings as being that political.

It seems that the Gov UK isn’t able to take a joke:

Emergency advice parody misses Gov UK funny bone

The Cabinet Office has demanded that the author of the Preparing for Emergencies parody site, remove it from the Net immediately, and not put it up again in another guise.

The government launched an advertising and leafleting campaign yesterday, advising us all of what to do in the event of a national emergency. The idea is that because we live in a faster, 24-hour world, we are unlikely to have a stockpile of tinned food in our cupboards like our WWII surviving grannies, and are so less well-prepared for any terrorist strike.

Naturally, the campaign has an associated website, and as we all know, it doesn’t take long for things to happen in Internet-Land. The parody site went up almost immediately at the remarkably similar address www.preparingforemergencies.CO.uk, as opposed to GOV.uk. [The Register] [via dropsafe]

The author has refused to take the site down so far, but has added links to the real site in hopes to satisfy the powers that be. Here’s some advice he gives on what to do in an emergency.

General advice about what to do in an emergency

If you find yourself in the middle of an emergency, your common sense and instincts will usually tell you what to do. However, it is important to:

• Run.
• Really, really fast.
• Follow the advice of the emergency services, unless that advice is something other than “Run”.
• Try to remain calm and think before acting, and try to reassure others. Or, trample them in a desperate attempt to flee as the building you’re in is consumed by a radioactive cloud.
• Check for injuries. Here’s a hint: if it’s painful, it’s probably injured. However, hurting when you pee is probably not an injury related to the incident. But get yourself checked out anyway.

Wow, being in the army has some great perks, including things like new breasts!

Bigger breasts offered as perk to U.S. soldiers
Plastic surgery available on taxpayers’ dime
Updated: 10:34 a.m. ET July 22, 2004

NEW YORK – The U.S. Army has long lured recruits with the slogan “Be All You Can Be,” but now soldiers and their families can receive plastic surgery, including breast enlargements, on the taxpayers’ dime.

The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free — something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

“Anyone wearing a uniform is eligible,” Dr. Bob Lyons, chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio told the magazine, which said soldiers needed the approval of their commanding officers to get the time off.

Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said. [MSNBC]

The article doesn’t mention whether or not these were performed on men or women though.