MOSCOW — When Vladimir Putin jumped into the ring to congratulate the winner of a bloody martial arts fight and was greeted with a cascade of boos from a large part of the 20,000-plus crowd, the experience seemed just this once to set him back on his heels, if only for a moment. Throughout much of the world, politicians can expect to provoke the boo-birds when they show up at sports events, but Sunday evening’s bout — shown live on national television — was a first for Russia’s authoritarian prime minister. He recovered and managed to say his piece, but by Monday the Russian blogosphere was alight with arguments, put-downs, debunkings and catcalls. Read full article > >

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Putin booed by Russian fight fans, in rare public show of disapproval

From the moment he opened the Bazaar in Los Angeles, Jose Andres gave Tinseltown something to gaze upon other than its own navel — or Katherine Heigl ’s. In her four-star review for the Los Angeles Times, critic S. Irene Virbila wrote: How to describe the experience at the Bazaar by José Andrés in the new SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills? Fellini-esque, a gastronomical circus, a flirtation with the flavors and soul of Spain? Los Angeles has never seen anything remotely like this exciting restaurant from Spanish chef Jose Andres. Read full article > >

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Could Jose Andres open a Bazaar in Washington?

Ben Chworowsky, 21, of Waukesha, Wis., participates in the one-week “Advanced Training Course” at the Extreme Seal Experience in Chesapeake, Va. Chworowsky wants to prove to himself that he is strong enough to become a Navy Seal. He intends on enlisting in the Navy as soon as he can. Read full article > >

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‘I want to become a SEAL’

The sight of Derrick Rose making one of those dynamic, twisting, acrobatic drives to the basket or Russell Westbrook breaking down a defense and dishing to Kevin Durant should serve notice that the NBA is moving a little more swiftly these days. The playoffs used to be a time when veteran teams used their experience and patience to brush aside young, exuberant upstarts and make them wait their turn. But this postseason is showing that, aside from the Dallas Mavericks, the youngsters aren’t willing to wait. And why should you expect them to when they are accustomed to getting everything else at the touch of a button? There is no better time for a takeover than right now. Read full article > >

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What the Wizards should take from this postseason

No surprises here: CBS News has announced that 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley will replace Katie Couric as anchor of the evening news, effective on June 6. The program will be renamed CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. “He has the experience,…

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Pelley to Replace Couric at CBS News

Fifty years ago it was not even certain that humans could survive the experience of spaceflight. With his one-orbit flight, Yuri Gagarin demonstrated that they could. Since that April 12, 1961, feat, (only) 522 people have gone into orbit, an orbiting space laboratory has been continually inhabited since 1998, and 12 astronauts walked on the surface of the moon. Even with this record of accomplishment, the future of 21st century spaceflight remains uncertain. Will humans stay close to planet Earth, or will they some day in the next decades once again set out for distant destinations? Cold War competition sent Americans to the moon. What will be the compelling rationale for this century’s human space exploration? The answer is not clear.

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The Future of 21st Century Spaceflight Remains Uncertain

A reporter reflects on the experience of one American battalion and how success and failure go hand in hand.

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A Year at War: The Endgame in Afghanistan

In an exchange with The Choice, Andrew Ferguson recommends that families enjoy the admissions process “while you can,” as “this experience may be one of the last extended periods of intimacy parents and children will share.”

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The Choice: Questions for ‘Crazy U’ Author

TV chef Ken Hom was in a hotel in Tokyo when the earthquake hit, he talks about his experience of the disaster.

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VIDEO: TV chef Ken Hom: This was the big one

Open now to only a handful of users, Stellar could become a hit if Kottke can figure out how to make it complement existing services Playing around on Twitter, I came across @yo_stellar , the handle for Jason Kottke’s latest project. Intrigued, I followed a link back to his blog where Kottke, a former web designer who has been blogging at Kottke.org since 1998, explained the basics behind Stellar , a new web app/site designed to help you “discover and keep track of your favorite things online.” A combination of the best that other social media platforms offer, the app is a way of aggregating your favorite things online and sharing them with others. While Kottke is still working on some bugs and invitations are limited (there are only a few dozen people using it right now) he did post links to the pages of some current users. I contacted him to find out more, but because the project is small and still a bit fluid, he referred me back to the original post. I anxiously await my invite — I’m not one of the lucky few with access — but in the meantime I took a look at some of the sample, or “fave” pages, Kottke posted to get a sense of the project. From what I could tell, they look very similar to a Twitter feed and essentially serve a similar function. It’s a place to collect text, pictures or videos that you enjoyed in one place and share them with others. Unlike Twitter, where tweets can only link to images, Stellar shows everything on the page, similar to a Tumblr dashboard. Also like Tumblr, under each fave-ed post there is the source of the original and links to other users who liked it. In addition, Stellar has a ”best of” page where you can see a user’s posts that were most liked by others — kind of like the most e-mailed section on the New York Times or any other major media website. I like the idea of highlighting posts that others enjoyed: It’s a good way of keeping track of how highly people value your opinion. The last page to look at is the “info” page which conveniently doesn’t display a bio. Instead, it provides links to other social media sites that the user has accounts on – Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, for example – confirming the idea that if you don’t have a web presence you might as well not exist. Stellar isn’t the first social media aggregator. There are many others — consider everything from OrSiSo to TweetDeck, both of which allow users to access and update their statuses on networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — but most require multiple, and often confusing, columns and tabs. Not a fan of the clutter and constant pop-up notifications, I use, instead, Mozilla’s Flock.com, a web browser with a sidebar that streams updates in real time. I prefer Flock because everything is blended into one feed and I can monitor updates while I’m working. Yet all of these options differ from Stellar in that they only benefit you in real time and aren’t helpful a few days, or even hours, later. Stellar is unique in that it doesn’t post everything. Rather, it seems like you pick and choose what you like best — a more selective group of your thoughts, critiques and images. While I wait for my invite, I’m curious to see how Stellar develops and distinguishes itself from the social media sites that it is essentially aggregating. For example, I’d love to see it link to apps like Instapaper so that others can see what you’re reading. I also wonder how Stellar will build a community: Will your Twitter followers automatically follow you to Stellar or will you have to create a new collection of friends? Most importantly, what does Stellar provide that Twitter and Tumblr don’t? It seems like Stellar is meant to be used in tandem with these platforms and to amplify the experience of using them, but what remains to be seen is whether it helps the experience or just adds another platform on which to express yourself. MORE ON STELLAR: Switched: Kottke Launches ‘Stellar’ Social Bookmarking Service All Things Digial: Jason Kottke Launches Stellar Bookmarking Site The Sly Oyster: Kottke Launches Stellar

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Jason Kottke Launches Stellar, a New Social Bookmarking Site

A British oil worker who was evacuated from the Libyan desert in a rescue mission by the British military has been speaking to the BBC about his experience.

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AUDIO: Rescued from desert by UK military

Queen stars Roger Taylor and Brian May open a new London exhibition of memorabilia to mark the band’s 40th anniversary, and call the experience “moving”.

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Queen stars launch ‘moving’ show

Queen stars Roger Taylor and Brian May open a new London exhibition of memorabilia to mark the band’s 40th anniversary, and call the experience “moving”.

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Queen stars launch ‘moving’ show

A teenager who was beaten and cut by her father after she refused to marry a man in Pakistan, has spoken to Newsbeat about her experience.

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VIDEO: Teen’s forced marriage nightmare

I wonder if co-authors Scott Turow, Paul Aiken, and James Shaipro managed to retain copyright in their New York Times op-ed lamenting the decline of copyright and stressing the relationship between intellectual property rights and the creation of intellectual property. I bet they didn’t. Unless Turow receives special famous author treatment, I bet they had to give the Times all intellectual property rights in their op-ed as a condition of publication. The standard New York Times freelance contract that I encountered some years ago required me to surrender all rights to every article I had written in the past for the Times and might write in the future. Surrendering a copyright is like surrendering a child to adoption: You surrender all rights of custody and control over your work. I declined to sign in exchange for a paltry payment and the presumed thrill of seeing my byline in the New York Times and stopped writing for that august publication, but I suspect I was in a tiny minority. The Times was hardly alone in treating freelancers like serfs. Publications routinely and successfully demand that freelancers give up all rights in their work in order to be published; online publications generally expect you to give up your intellectual property rights for free, instead of for the usual pittance. ( The Atlantic , which, in my experience treats writers with respect, is an exception, which is why my posts appear here.) Why not give in and give up all rights in your work? Surrendering a copyright is like surrendering a child to adoption: You surrender all rights of custody and control over your work. In fact, it’s no longer your work; it’s the property of the publication. You may not recycle, reprint it, or quote extensively from it in violation of fair use without the publication’s permission. The publication’s employees (editors) may rewrite what was once your work without your permission, altering your perspective as well as your language, including or omitting your byline at their discretion. Usually they disavow any intent to substantively alter your work, but I am always wary of people who make non-negotiable demands for rights they claim to have no intention of exercising. (When confronted with these contracts, I almost always offer publishers a perpetual license to reprint my work for free, but they almost always demand all rights, including the unilateral right to alter it, as well.) As a general rule, federal law locates intellectual property rights in the creators of intellectual property, which essentially means that absent an express surrender of copyright, publishers have no rights to a freelancer’s work, other than the right to its initial publication. What would New York Times editorial writers say about a corporation that required its consultants to cede all their rights under federal law as a condition of employment? I once posed that question to the Times , naturally to no avail. Media companies guard the sanctity of their own copyrights but tend to treat other people’s copyrights with a mixture of acquisitiveness and contempt. When editors at the Times publish an op-ed stressing the cultural value of copyright protections, it’s probably not your copyrights they have in mind.

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Copyrights and Copywrongs