> There can be no question that the use of the figurative term "Butt-Head" negates the impression that Defendant was seriously implying an assertion of fact. It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase "butt-head."
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the judge said/wrote that...
Care to elaborate? I've always held Sagan in utmost esteem and I'm curious others' takes are.
The last time I read his Wikipedia entry it mentioned that contemporaneous scientists felt he wasn't contributing much to the field despite his fame, but I think public outreach is immensely valuable in shaping the next generation of discoverers and policy makers.
i saw sagan speak at berkeley in the mid nineties. he was shockingly and brazenly rude to the person running the a/v setup, through his microphone, so the entire overflowing audience could hear every last detail. it was way over the top. appreciate all he’s done for science and outreach but it seems he had an intense personality.
Unfortunately many prominent/famous people present an extremely curated and sanitized version of their personality to the public, and often treat people poorly in private. Shame to learn that seems to have been the case for someone like Sagan.
I've never publicly said this before, but I had this experience with Donald Knuth - I emailed asking him for copyright permission for something on Wikipedia, and he gave it (public domain), but he was extremely nasty about it because I had to reply asking for clarification and apparently receiving an email was extremely disruptive to him.
I try not to talk to public figures, most of them are only nice when in the context of what they are trying to sell. The rare exceptions deserve the praise they get.
I don't even know why I'm writing this......... it was years ago.
Another perspective is that we idolize many prominent/famous people and when they have a normal range of emotions (fear, anger, disgust, resentment, frustration, etc.), or just having a bad day, we judge them for it.
Also, though our culture prizes it highly I think "being famous" is probably in many ways very weird and bad and seems to drive many people insane. I don't think I could handle it and would not wish it on an enemy.
The reasonably famous people I have interacted with had public and private personas that were very distinct from each other. The public persona is what most people but the private persona can be very different. Being famous is basically an acting job. And to become famous you usually have to be very driven and can't always be nice.
I met him once. Right after Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter there was an event at the Mountain View Holiday Inn where he talked about it. I'd arrived a bit early (as an attendee), and while waiting for things to kick off I snuck out for a cigarette.
Halfway through it, there was Carl (f*cking) Sagan walking across the parking lot towards me! I dropped/stubbed my cig and told him how much I was inspired by 'Cosmos' and especially by the Library of Alexandria episode/ He said yes, it was really good and that was mainly down to his wife's work. And then he signed my cheap paperback copy of 'Cosmos' and headed in to the seminar.
I'm sure he could be a dick. But that certainly wasn't all he was.
Similar to all the ragers about NdGT. Scientists awful at marketing angry about guy who can function well on the radio and tv and inspire funding and the next generation.
Reminds me of all the people still mad about dodgeball in HS. Neil would have pummeled anyone in dodgeball and the nicest dude in person.
That was my thought as well! I clicked on this expecting to read a tale of some sort of corporate overreach.
As much as I respect Carl Sagan for his contributions to science (and promoting public knowledge of scientific concepts), he does sound like a butt-head.
A link to the JudyRecord of the judgement [1] yields a better quote:
Because a reasonable factfinder could not conclude that "Butt-Head Astronomer" implied that Plaintiff was a less than able astronomer or that Plaintiff was legally wrong in asking Defendant to cease using Plaintiff's name, the only remaining assertion is the bare statement that Plaintiff is a "Butt-Head Astronomer." Clearly this phrase cannot rest on a core of objective evidence. Plaintiff does not suggest any other assertions of objective fact that could be reasonably implied from the phrase.
Based on an analysis of the factors identified in Unelko, the Court has no reason to conclude that the statement made by Defendant implies an assertion of objective fact. Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 21, 110 S. Ct. at 2707 . Therefore, the statement is protected under the First Amendment and cannot form the basis of a claim for libel.
Therefore, the statement is protected under the First Amendment and cannot form the basis of a claim for libel.
That's kind of odd. What does the First Amendment have to do with libel law? Doesn't 1A constrain only the government from prohibiting or forcing speech?
Libel laws, themselves, are a restriction on free speech, no? If I sue someone for libel and win, it's not me that's restricting the other party's freedom of speech, it's the government. I merely asked them to do it.
It is not a restriction on free speech, libel exists within a particular context where there is demonstrable material damage to the person that was the target of said statements, which have to be demonstrably false and demonstrably published in bad faith. Libel laws, then, deal with the reparation of said inflicted damage.
A crude analogy, if you stab somebody, the crime is not the knife, it is the stabbing. No need to put a restriction on knives (although there's some but you get the idea).
This is just straight up not true, as anyone who passed a K12 government/civics class in the US can tell you. Libel laws _are_ a restriction on your 1st Amendment rights - that was never really in question.
Originally, libel was considered completely devoid of 1A protections. Most defamation laws even allowed you to sue for *truthful* statements. However, in the landmark case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan), the USSC reversed this and ruled that the 1st Amendment partially applied to libel and laws must be scoped as such.
>as anyone who passed a K12 government/civics class in the US can tell you
That's unnecessary, but probably you need to retake such class.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, if anything, established new criteria intended to further protect the rights given by the 1st Ammendment; among those the so called malice standard that I referenced in my earlier comment.
> However, Apple lost its motions for a more definite statement of Sagan's Lanham Act claim. Apple had argued that Sagan's complaint had admitted that his name was only used internally at Apple, and could not, therefore, have been "in commerce" as required by the Act. Judge Baird noted that Sagan's complaint only asserted that Apple's attorneys had stated that the name was only used internally. Finally, Judge Baird denied Apple's motion to strike Sagan's invasion of privacy count as redundant in light of the right of publicity claim. She noted that the former asserted an additional request for punitive damages, and that the other redundant elements did not prejudice the defendant in any way.
INAL so hard for me to parse this, but does this mean that some elements of the lawsuit were allowed to progress?
My reading is that they tried to argue that the first complaint/lawsuit was invalid as well — the one that forced the name change itself — and that was upheld
Lawyers will often argue the equivalent of “we didn’t do it and even if we did it was fine” - if you win the first part, you’ve won, and if you lose the first part you still have the second.
> In response, the project manager changed the computer's code-name to "Butt-Head Astronomer." Sagan filed suit in federal court for libel [and] the use of likenesses.
I feel like the latter legally counteracts the former. For it to be his likeness, has has to admit that he is infact a "Butt-Head Astronomer". If you openly admit you are something, it's not libel?
Apple had the legal right, sure, but they should have just respected Sagan's desire for them not to use his name without being dicks about it.
They used his name without permission for a codename, he asked them to stop, so the changed the name to "Butt-Head Astronomer", in a way that everyone involved with the project knew it was a reference to him. I pictured a bunch of people with the emotional maturity of 15-year-olds when I saw that.
> They used his name without permission for a codename, he asked them to stop
There's some additional context that makes me more sympathetic to Sagan here too. The "Carl Sagan"/"BHA" machine (Power Macintosh 7100) was introduced alongside two other machines whose codenames reference fraudulent/unproven science:
If I remember correctly, it might have had something to do with Carl Sagan's catchphrase "billons and billions". The machine had "billions and billions" of something (bytes, MIPs?)
> Apple had the legal right, sure, but they should have just respected Sagan's desire for them not to use his name without being dicks about it.
To me, it sounds like Carl Sagan is being a dick. It was an internal name, so who cares. It's kind of an honor. I don't really understand the cringe-inducing sainthood that the online tech/nerd community bestowed upon Carl Sagan over the past 30 years. I don't even think he did that much original research.
I mean - it's his name. Who gives a flying fuck what apple was doing with it - clearly he learned they were using it, so it wasn't all that "internal" was it?
MacWeek published an article about the code name, along with the code names "Piltdown Man" and "Cold Fusion" for two other Power Macs. That's how he found out. So, two well-known scientific hoaxes and him. Sounds like they were implicitly calling him a hoax as well, though I think they were just hoping to make "billions and billions", and putting those three names together was something MacWeek, not Apple, did.
Sure, Sagan probably shouldn't have sued a second time, it just triggers the Streisand Effect. But it's understandable why he was pissed off.
This is a ridiculous take in the context of the suit. It's internal, it wasn't used in any promotional/public material. Someone leaked it to him (most likely broke an NDA). Besides, I'm sure he's not the only "Carl Sagan" around, anyway.
It was obviously named for him and if it was actually internal only it wouldn’t have been known.
I think of it like trying to protect a trademark, it’s fair to try to protect somebody from using your name, especially when the usage doesn’t have anything to do with fair use.
A code name that you publicize with somebody’s name is using them as an unwilling participant in promoting your products.
If nothing else it's respect for the science communicator side of Sagan, who 'obviously' would get increasing praise with the STEM-advocates over the past decades.
That aside, wanting your name struck from a project, internal or not, is reasonable if someone has something against the business practices of a company. That's about the only, to me, valid reason for requesting the cessation. Doubling down with butt-head astronomer instead is pretty dickish, though.
So what if they used his name? It was just “Carl Sagan” not “Carl Sagan Sucks”.
If a parent named their kid “Carl Sagan” should another Carl be able to demand the parents change a child’s name? Completely ridiculous case and I’m glad the judge saw through the nonsense.
Yes. If someone more famous than you appears with the same name, you can be told to stop using that name. At least online. (I dont cite to cnn often, but they were the first reasonable result when i googled around for the story.)
2011. "London -- Several Facebook users have had their profiles deleted from the social networking site because they share their name with a soon-to-be princess.
Kate Middleton, 33, from Melbourne, Australia, had her account shut down last week, after Facebook suspected her of pretending to be the fiancée of Britain's Prince William."
I don’t understand how one private company having a specific username policy means anything. They could tell people to stop using a username for any reason they want to.
That is completely different from being compelled by law to not use a name.
Until a court tells you that you have to abide the policies of the online platforms. Not being allowed to use facebook can have realworld implications. Actors dont use stagenames just because they sound better. They are often to avoid these sorts of legal issues. (Like the three different "Brian Cox" presenters on the BBC. Luckily they rarely cause confusion as they are very different people.)
According to the article, he did not ask, he had his attorneys send a letter demanding they stop using his name, which isn't quite the same. That's something you do after you did ask politely and were rejected and lost hope you can resolve such an issue amicably.
I am not saying the people working for Apple were right, or that their reaction was right, but Sagan does not look good to me either in his initial reaction.
>> That's something you do after you did ask politely
Not necessarily. With famous people you won't get a polite note or phonecall. Your first and only contact will probably be their lawyer/agent who will stamp out a standard threatening letter. The actual flesh-and-blood person might not even know that the letter is being sent as the attorney/agent has power to initiate actions. Same too for huge corporations. Open up "Mickey Mouse Land" and your first contact from Disney will be a very scary demand letter delivered by a man in a very nice suit.
maybe you lack imagination, that's not the only optic one can picture, it could be that they did it in a tongue in cheek way rather than a challenging way, and didn't really care that much.
It's interesting how the slur is even a double entendre. They literally butted heads with an astronomer about using said astronomer's name. In that sense, they were being honest and deferential to his request. I love the ambiguities the English language affords.
I have experienced cases of classically educated manager types being offended by project codenames using Greek mythology characters.
E.g. Zeus et al. are bad because of all the bad stuff they did.
Story: All the blue collar workers and engineers working on the project for 3 years using the Greek codename thought it was awesome and we’re going to put up a team poster with the image/codename when it was finally just finished.
One walk through by upper management canceled the poster because one of them was offended.
The norse gods are in favor now. I doubt anyone would complain about Project Oden. In a decade or so the MCU will have moved on and Egyptian gods will probably be cool.
Oden and Norse mythology are connected with white supremacy. In the current environment where an extremely dubious connection between the ok finger gesture and white supremacy caused people to lose their jobs and be vilified in the press, using names from Norse mythology is a risky choice.
My grandfather was in the US Air Force and has served as lieutenant general. He told me a story about the time he met Carl Sagan. He organized a conference on space for USAF officers and someone suggested he invite Sagan to give a keynote speech. My grandfather told me that Sagan was trouble from the start. He (or his office?) cancelled or delayed the conference multiple times and his list of demands for lodging rivaled those of a rock band. He also said he was rude and never smiled. After he gave his speech, one of the colonels asked him a question that my grandfather said was good and interesting but Sagan dismissed him in one sentence and didn't even want to engage him on it. BTW, that colonel is now a general and in charge of USSF!
I've seen scientists reacts strangely to military people. There are all sorts of reasons, mostly based on false assumptions about the sort of people who chose a military life. But equally, lots of famous people are just jerks. Many at the top of thier fields, be them scientist or admiral, got there by walking over or past other people.
> mostly based on false assumptions about the sort of people who chose a military life.
Very good point. The prejudice against military people is very real, especially in tech. I took my military service off my resume and unless directly asked about it I try to avoid disclosing it.
Any company with a culture that causes vets to hide thier service should look long hard at their diversity program. If they cannot tolerate a former soldier they are probably pretty intolerant of all sorts of other groups too.
I was walking home one day, in uniform through a rural area, when i helped push a car out of a ditch. The lady driving seemed to recoil at me. But then her husband explained that i was not a hunter, that the camo was a uniform. She was vegan. She has seen me walking through the area in early mornings and thought i was scouting for deer.
Military service isn't a protected characteristic or something inherent in a person. It's a choice, and one people may take issue with if they're anti-imperialist.
"The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) prohibits employment discrimination based on an employee's past, present, or future military service. This federal law applies to anyone who performs duties in the "uniformed services," whether involuntarily or voluntarily."
"Unlike many of the other anti-discrimination statutes, which apply only to employers of a certain size, USERRA covers all employers in the United States, irrespective of size. Part-time or probationary employees receive as much protection as full-time employees under USERRA."
So yes. Soldiers are a protected class for purposes of discrimination. If people in your employ feel they need to hide thier military service, that is a serious liability that needs to be addressed asap.
This lines up well with my theory that most people know so little about the military that they think what motivates a person's decision to join must be support or desire for imperialism.
I joined after 9/11 and watching live on TV while fellow humans had to choose whether they wanted to die from leaping out the window or die from fire and smoke inhalations. I wanted to help make sure that something like that never happened to my friends again. The idea of colonizing a foreign land never entered my thoughts.
Did you really just call out a solider for his post-9/11 service? Wow. Good thing HN isn't twitter. A tweet like that could come back to haunt a person. Save some hate for the firefighters and kindergarten teachers.
Well, I don't know that I would agree that what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan qualifies as "imperialism." I would call that "nation building," and the motives were/are a lot different (although not entirely void of Venn diagram overlap). Most of us really thought our sacrifice was making life better for people and giving them a chance to experience freedom.
At this point I think history has shown that nation building is a bad idea and doesn't work. I think we wasted a ton of money and blood (on all sides) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would have been better had we never gone at all.
Now all that said, I think it's terribly fallacious and prejudiced to assume what somebody's views are because they served in the military. The military is quite diverse. You'll find people with all sorts of viewpoints and all sorts of reasons for joining.
> Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending rule over peoples and other countries, for extending political and economic access, power and control, often through employing hard power, especially military force, but also soft power. While related to the concepts of colonialism and empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government [1]
The goal in Iraq was to topple the Hussein Regime (which the CIA told us had WMDs) and build up a local democratic government. The original plan was for US troops to leave after a few years.
If you want to go to "Bush lied and really just wanted cheap oil" then go for it. I have no idea what Bush's "real" motives were. I'm no fan of Bush but I don't think he was Hitler. Anyway what I've said is what I and everyone else I talked to thought about the effort.
> The goal in Iraq was to topple the Hussein Regime (which the CIA told us had WMDs) and build up a local democratic government
No, it wasn't; the war was conceived long before the WMD narrative (which did not come from the CIA) was concocted to justify it; both control of strategic resources and a regional powerbase as a lever to recast other regimes in the region to support the politico-economic vision of America as the metropolitan power were the motivations, as several of the architects of the war wrote openly in the years before the Bush Administration came into office. The architects of war in the administration initially sought to seize on blaming Iraq for 9/11 as the pretext for their preplanned war, raising it as early, IIRC, as while the attacks were still in progress.
That's quite a claim. You should probably include some citations to back up something like that.
But, for sake of conversation, assuming 100% accuracy on your part, it still seems really absurd to me to assume that the average military member was even aware of this conspiracy, let alone supporting it while simultaneously pretending that we thought we were building up a local democratic government.
It just occurred to me, we are probably talking about different things. My understanding of this thread was that the subject is the average military member, as those are the people who are being prejudged and stereotyped as discussed further up thread.
It seems like you are specifically talking about political leaders at the very top. If that is true, then we're probably just talking past each other, and we probably agree more than we think.
But neither concept should be laid at the feet of individual soldier. Those are the decisions of elected politicians, and the people that put them in office.
> But neither concept should be laid at the feet of individual soldier.
Well, no, individual soldiers don't, as a rule, have any more influence in the decision to go to war than the average civilian.
That being said, neither is it the case that the imperialist urge is isolated to a closed decision-making cabal; the ideological bloc advocating war for overtly imperialist reasons included people in all walks of life. Military personnel were not especially innocent, any more than they were categorically guilty.
One might get offend at your comment, but after realizing you aren't even aware that military service is a protected class, it's pretty clear it's ignorance driving your views.
Someone like Sagan who values collective human consciousness probably wouldn't meld with guys bent on militarizing space. Deep philosophical differences. Hard to judge your story without knowing what question exactly was asked.. Guess:
"Is Space the ultimate high ground??"
It’s a pretty simplistic view to regard someone doing something that you don’t understand as irrational, especially when you’re not in or will ever be in their shoes.
You’d think past some age, people wise up to the nuance of the world.
Carl Sagan had different existential assumptions. He constantly writes about the need for humanity to value it's collective and fragile existence as a whole, whereas the military cares more about WHO gets to exist and which group of people dominate the other.
Excerpt: THE PALE BLUE DOT OF EARTH Image: NASA
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
That is a radically simplistic view of the military. I can say from experiance that very few in armed service think that way, certainly nobody in leadership positions. The armed services see themselves as a tool of thier government. The life-taking part of the job is only ever done when asked by that government. People on the outside would be shocked to see how much effort goes into the preservation of all lives. Google "maneuver warfare" to get a better idea of realworld military thinking.
A soldier does not pick their enemy. Politicians decide if an enemy exists and then points them out to the soldier. The existential concept of enemy has nothing to do with the soldier as they cannot create nor uncreate their enemy. Only politicians, and the people who elect them, control such things.
Stalin actual toyed with the concept of a totally volunteer army, one where volunteer soldiers would elect their officers and only participate in actions with which they agreed. It didn't go well. Such an army is next to useless in the real world.
For myself, I can't imagine putting myself in a position to give politicians the power to tell me who to kill. Just... no. Are there really people who put that much faith in politicians? I don't understand that kind of thinking at all.
I soldier could have choosen to reject the concept of „enemy“ by not being a soldier and not letting a gouvernment define distinct groups of people as „enemies“
I suspect Sagan understood the roots, purposes, and goals of the post-WW2 "war department" and US space programs at the time, far better than you do today.
Go look up the origin of the phrase "military industrial complex" and you'll see how horrified people "in the shoes" felt about the state of the military at the time.
Carl proves himself to be the pejorative here. I can only imagine the lawyers on both sides convening for a healthy series of drinks at their clients’ expense. This is as petty as it gets, and it would serve Sagan’s mythology well to have it forgotten.
100 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadOh, to have been a fly on the wall when the judge said/wrote that...
The last time I read his Wikipedia entry it mentioned that contemporaneous scientists felt he wasn't contributing much to the field despite his fame, but I think public outreach is immensely valuable in shaping the next generation of discoverers and policy makers.
I try not to talk to public figures, most of them are only nice when in the context of what they are trying to sell. The rare exceptions deserve the praise they get.
I don't even know why I'm writing this......... it was years ago.
That doesn't excuse being nasty to somebody, though.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/07/the-destruction-of-th... https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1nqrl0/carl_sag...
Reminds me of all the people still mad about dodgeball in HS. Neil would have pummeled anyone in dodgeball and the nicest dude in person.
As much as I respect Carl Sagan for his contributions to science (and promoting public knowledge of scientific concepts), he does sound like a butt-head.
I think Apple engineers were being butt-heads when they got annoyed at this and renamed the project "BHA".
But that should have been as far as Sagan went; suing for libel because someone calls you a "butt-head" is really foolish.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage
Because a reasonable factfinder could not conclude that "Butt-Head Astronomer" implied that Plaintiff was a less than able astronomer or that Plaintiff was legally wrong in asking Defendant to cease using Plaintiff's name, the only remaining assertion is the bare statement that Plaintiff is a "Butt-Head Astronomer." Clearly this phrase cannot rest on a core of objective evidence. Plaintiff does not suggest any other assertions of objective fact that could be reasonably implied from the phrase.
Based on an analysis of the factors identified in Unelko, the Court has no reason to conclude that the statement made by Defendant implies an assertion of objective fact. Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 21, 110 S. Ct. at 2707 . Therefore, the statement is protected under the First Amendment and cannot form the basis of a claim for libel.
[1] https://www.judyrecords.com/record/zbvxoh5rdf1a
That's kind of odd. What does the First Amendment have to do with libel law? Doesn't 1A constrain only the government from prohibiting or forcing speech?
A crude analogy, if you stab somebody, the crime is not the knife, it is the stabbing. No need to put a restriction on knives (although there's some but you get the idea).
Originally, libel was considered completely devoid of 1A protections. Most defamation laws even allowed you to sue for *truthful* statements. However, in the landmark case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan), the USSC reversed this and ruled that the 1st Amendment partially applied to libel and laws must be scoped as such.
That's unnecessary, but probably you need to retake such class.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, if anything, established new criteria intended to further protect the rights given by the 1st Ammendment; among those the so called malice standard that I referenced in my earlier comment.
They can't punish it either.
INAL so hard for me to parse this, but does this mean that some elements of the lawsuit were allowed to progress?
I feel like the latter legally counteracts the former. For it to be his likeness, has has to admit that he is infact a "Butt-Head Astronomer". If you openly admit you are something, it's not libel?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule
They used his name without permission for a codename, he asked them to stop, so the changed the name to "Butt-Head Astronomer", in a way that everyone involved with the project knew it was a reference to him. I pictured a bunch of people with the emotional maturity of 15-year-olds when I saw that.
There's some additional context that makes me more sympathetic to Sagan here too. The "Carl Sagan"/"BHA" machine (Power Macintosh 7100) was introduced alongside two other machines whose codenames reference fraudulent/unproven science:
- The 6100 is "Piltdown Man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_6100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
- The 8100 is "Cold Fusion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_8100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
At the time, I saaw Cold Fusion as an aspirational codename for the best of the first-gen PowerPC boxes.
Sagan's inclusion is still weird, though, as the others are things, not people.
To me, it sounds like Carl Sagan is being a dick. It was an internal name, so who cares. It's kind of an honor. I don't really understand the cringe-inducing sainthood that the online tech/nerd community bestowed upon Carl Sagan over the past 30 years. I don't even think he did that much original research.
Dick move from a butt-head fruit.
Sure, Sagan probably shouldn't have sued a second time, it just triggers the Streisand Effect. But it's understandable why he was pissed off.
https://www.engadget.com/2014-02-26-when-carl-sagan-sued-app...
I think of it like trying to protect a trademark, it’s fair to try to protect somebody from using your name, especially when the usage doesn’t have anything to do with fair use.
A code name that you publicize with somebody’s name is using them as an unwilling participant in promoting your products.
Plenty of state secrets get leaked regularly, but you draw the line at funny internal product names?
That aside, wanting your name struck from a project, internal or not, is reasonable if someone has something against the business practices of a company. That's about the only, to me, valid reason for requesting the cessation. Doubling down with butt-head astronomer instead is pretty dickish, though.
Whether you are a fan of Sagan or not, I thing every person should have the right to chose if they want endorse a product or not.
If a parent named their kid “Carl Sagan” should another Carl be able to demand the parents change a child’s name? Completely ridiculous case and I’m glad the judge saw through the nonsense.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/01/25/kate.middleton.fa...
2011. "London -- Several Facebook users have had their profiles deleted from the social networking site because they share their name with a soon-to-be princess.
Kate Middleton, 33, from Melbourne, Australia, had her account shut down last week, after Facebook suspected her of pretending to be the fiancée of Britain's Prince William."
But it’s not the court of law and I think we can all agree that Facebook’s actions are depressingly dystopian.
That is completely different from being compelled by law to not use a name.
According to the article, he did not ask, he had his attorneys send a letter demanding they stop using his name, which isn't quite the same. That's something you do after you did ask politely and were rejected and lost hope you can resolve such an issue amicably.
I am not saying the people working for Apple were right, or that their reaction was right, but Sagan does not look good to me either in his initial reaction.
Not necessarily. With famous people you won't get a polite note or phonecall. Your first and only contact will probably be their lawyer/agent who will stamp out a standard threatening letter. The actual flesh-and-blood person might not even know that the letter is being sent as the attorney/agent has power to initiate actions. Same too for huge corporations. Open up "Mickey Mouse Land" and your first contact from Disney will be a very scary demand letter delivered by a man in a very nice suit.
E.g. Zeus et al. are bad because of all the bad stuff they did.
Story: All the blue collar workers and engineers working on the project for 3 years using the Greek codename thought it was awesome and we’re going to put up a team poster with the image/codename when it was finally just finished.
One walk through by upper management canceled the poster because one of them was offended.
The internal codename for a project is not something to get worked up about. It was probably intended as a sort of tribute by whoever called it that.
Very good point. The prejudice against military people is very real, especially in tech. I took my military service off my resume and unless directly asked about it I try to avoid disclosing it.
I was walking home one day, in uniform through a rural area, when i helped push a car out of a ditch. The lady driving seemed to recoil at me. But then her husband explained that i was not a hunter, that the camo was a uniform. She was vegan. She has seen me walking through the area in early mornings and thought i was scouting for deer.
https://www.justia.com/employment/employment-discrimination/...
"The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) prohibits employment discrimination based on an employee's past, present, or future military service. This federal law applies to anyone who performs duties in the "uniformed services," whether involuntarily or voluntarily."
"Unlike many of the other anti-discrimination statutes, which apply only to employers of a certain size, USERRA covers all employers in the United States, irrespective of size. Part-time or probationary employees receive as much protection as full-time employees under USERRA."
So yes. Soldiers are a protected class for purposes of discrimination. If people in your employ feel they need to hide thier military service, that is a serious liability that needs to be addressed asap.
I joined after 9/11 and watching live on TV while fellow humans had to choose whether they wanted to die from leaping out the window or die from fire and smoke inhalations. I wanted to help make sure that something like that never happened to my friends again. The idea of colonizing a foreign land never entered my thoughts.
At this point I think history has shown that nation building is a bad idea and doesn't work. I think we wasted a ton of money and blood (on all sides) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would have been better had we never gone at all.
Now all that said, I think it's terribly fallacious and prejudiced to assume what somebody's views are because they served in the military. The military is quite diverse. You'll find people with all sorts of viewpoints and all sorts of reasons for joining.
Afghanistan is arguably more complex, Iraq (2003) was pure imperialism.
> Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending rule over peoples and other countries, for extending political and economic access, power and control, often through employing hard power, especially military force, but also soft power. While related to the concepts of colonialism and empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government [1]
The goal in Iraq was to topple the Hussein Regime (which the CIA told us had WMDs) and build up a local democratic government. The original plan was for US troops to leave after a few years.
If you want to go to "Bush lied and really just wanted cheap oil" then go for it. I have no idea what Bush's "real" motives were. I'm no fan of Bush but I don't think he was Hitler. Anyway what I've said is what I and everyone else I talked to thought about the effort.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
No, it wasn't; the war was conceived long before the WMD narrative (which did not come from the CIA) was concocted to justify it; both control of strategic resources and a regional powerbase as a lever to recast other regimes in the region to support the politico-economic vision of America as the metropolitan power were the motivations, as several of the architects of the war wrote openly in the years before the Bush Administration came into office. The architects of war in the administration initially sought to seize on blaming Iraq for 9/11 as the pretext for their preplanned war, raising it as early, IIRC, as while the attacks were still in progress.
But, for sake of conversation, assuming 100% accuracy on your part, it still seems really absurd to me to assume that the average military member was even aware of this conspiracy, let alone supporting it while simultaneously pretending that we thought we were building up a local democratic government.
It seems like you are specifically talking about political leaders at the very top. If that is true, then we're probably just talking past each other, and we probably agree more than we think.
Well, no, individual soldiers don't, as a rule, have any more influence in the decision to go to war than the average civilian.
That being said, neither is it the case that the imperialist urge is isolated to a closed decision-making cabal; the ideological bloc advocating war for overtly imperialist reasons included people in all walks of life. Military personnel were not especially innocent, any more than they were categorically guilty.
You’d think past some age, people wise up to the nuance of the world.
Excerpt: THE PALE BLUE DOT OF EARTH Image: NASA
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
-CS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
Stalin actual toyed with the concept of a totally volunteer army, one where volunteer soldiers would elect their officers and only participate in actions with which they agreed. It didn't go well. Such an army is next to useless in the real world.
Go look up the origin of the phrase "military industrial complex" and you'll see how horrified people "in the shoes" felt about the state of the military at the time.
One for the history books.
https://buttheadastronomers.bandcamp.com/