i recently blogged about the clean indoor air legislation that seems to be on virginia’s horizon, and on shepherd fairey’s artistic talents. i may have typed too soon on both accounts.

in an otherwise horribly slanted article in today’s post, the reporter notes:

The fight over the ban is far from over in Richmond. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) yesterday criticized the bill approved by the House, saying it violated and “weakened” the terms of the deal he worked out with House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford.) In addition to dropping the ventilation requirements for smoking sections, the House version exempts bars that do not serve minors and would allow smoking on outdoor patios. “We need to get the bill back to the deal,” Kaine said.

weakening is what happens when something gets worn down. the house bill pretty much guts any meaningful legislation, although i wasn’t too crazy about the terms of the deal as reported earlier. if you’re passing clean indoor air laws to protect employees, having “separately ventilated smoking areas” isn’t going to cut it. exempting bars is even worse.

and shepherd fairey? well, he’s pre-emptively sued AP over his use of their photo of obama as the source material for his obey “hope” poster, and looks like he’s seeking a declaratory judgment that it’s fair(ey) use. whatever. it’s his previous unattributed use of other artists’ materials that’s bothering me. in those cases, he treated prior works as a clip gallery, not bothering to change them at all before working them into his designs. now, there’s an argument to be made that he’s simply doing the electronic equivalent of collage, but the difference there is that in a traditional collage, it’s obvious what has come from a third party. the computer-assisted design output has no such visual cuing.

anyhoo.