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Since beginning its campaign against college students in February, the RIAA has sent out 4,157 prelitigation settlement letters to 160 different schools in ten separate waves.

The schools targeted run the gamut. There are large state schools like Ohio State University, the University of Texas - Austin, and the University of Tennessee. There are also a handful of small liberal arts colleges on the list, including Swarthmore College, evangelical Christian school Bethel University in Minnesota, Gettysburg College, and Carleton College. And the elite schools in the US are well represented, too: Stanford, Northwestern, MIT, and the aforementioned Ivy League schools have all received missives from the RIAA. But not Harvard.

There may be another factor at work here: hostility towards the RIAA’s campaign on the part of Harvard Law School professors Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, who run the law school’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Responding to the RIAA’s claim that its litigation strategy has “invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music,” the profs called on Harvard to not betray the “trust and privacy” of its students.

“The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA’s messages. It should do so only if it believes that’s consonant with the university’s mission,” wrote Nesson and Palfrey. “[The RIAA seems] to be engaging in a classic tactic of the bully facing someone much weaker: threatening such dire consequences that the students settle without the issue going to court. The issue is that the university should not be carrying the industry’s water in bringing lawsuits.”

Should the RIAA decide to send prelitigation settlement letters to Harvard, chances are good that 1) the letters will not be passed on, and 2) some of the best and brightest at Harvard Law School will get involved in a big way. That doesn’t look too appealing, especially when the campaign isn’t going as smoothly as the RIAA would like.

“Since we economists don’t understand tipping, we can’t really say whether this new scheme will work,†Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor of economics, said in an entry on his blog.

A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,†Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.â€

The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.

The hang (or hang drum) was developed in 2000 in Bern, Switzerland by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer (PANArt Hangbau AG) and introduced at Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2001. Its name comes from the Berne dialect word for hand. The hang was the result of many years of research on the steelpan and the study of the diverse collection of instruments from around the world, such as gongs, gamelan, ghatam, drums, bells, etc. Udu-like sounds can be produced with the air resonance within the clamped shallow shells, with the notes sounding like bells or harmonically tuned steelpans.

The inner note on the bottom dome is the bass note, and when played in a dampened way allows change in pitch like a talking drum. Seven (in the bass version) or eight (treble version of the Hang) notes are tuned harmonically around a central deep note. The hemispheres are hardened by a process known as gas-nitriding.

as for the hang drum, everyone is oh so sad on the internet because the swiss guys that made it have taken to only selling them to you in person if you trek to Switzerland to get one from them. they also, as they cannot keep up with demand, make very few. though this model is cute in that intimate “i-made-a-journey-to-get-this-extremely-rare-and-sexy-instrument” kind of way, it seems to have created some sense of elitism or an -ism akin to it.

as such, i feel obligated to tell you (and in doing so, hope that you will convey this to anyone that expresses to you interest in getting one) that there is a steel drum company that is looking into making a drum like this available to people who do not want to / cannot make the journey / cannot survive the waiting list. the company is at http://www.pantheonsteel.com and on the main page, visitors will find the following link: Interested in the HANG PAN OR HAND PAN?

clicking it will open an email to kyle@pantheonsteel.com

emailing them to express interest is encouraged (by me) for anyone who would like to further motivate this company to produce these.

just thought i would let you know =)