The Goodson Blogson

This weekend would have marked the 23rd Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, a world-renowned celebration of nonfiction filmmaking. Although this year's festival was canceled due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the festival website continues to provide information about the selected 2020 feature-length and short films that would have been a part of this year's festival . Festival organizers have also shared a list of past Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant Award winners (a prize that brings first-time documentary filmmakers to the festival) with information about where their films can now be streamed. Current members of the Duke University community have access to a number of resources for streaming documentary films, beyond your own consumer subscriptions to platforms like Netflix and Hulu. If you'd like to host your own documentary film festival this weekend, here are some options available with a NetID, featuring some favorite titles fr...

The Duke University community now has access to PLI Plus , a full-text database of publications from the Practising Law Institute. PLI is a leading provider of legal education programs, and their online library includes full-text access to more than 1,500 PLI course handbooks, answer books, form publications, and treatises. (The Duke Law community may recall that PLI titles were previously available electronically via Bloomberg Law , but PLI Plus is now the exclusive online source for these publications.) Some notable PLI titles include the treatises Sack on Defamation: Libel, Slander & Related Problems and Soderquist on the Securities Laws , The Pocket MBA: Everything an Attorney Needs to Know About Finance , and the textbook Working with Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You . Titles can be searched or browsed at the PLI Plus site, and chapters are available for online viewing or for download as PDFs. In the coming weeks, records will be added to the Duke Librari...

Are you one of the millions of users who downloaded the Pokémon GO app in its first week of release? Or have you spent the last few days confused by your friends' sudden stream of social media references to "PokéStops," "Poké Balls," and "Pidgeys"? For the uninitiated, Pokémon GO is an augmented-reality game, available in the US on iPhone or Android mobile devices, which encourages players to head outdoors in search of computer-generated creatures which pop up on your screen. Users catch the Pokémon by throwing a virtual ball, then engage in competitive battles with other users' Pokémon. The game was an instant cultural phenomenon, capitalizing on nostalgia for the Pokémon cartoons of the early 2000s and the prevalence of smartphones. Almost immediately, users began to flood public spaces which have been designated as Pokémon "Gyms" (including many churches, parks, and even the White House ). Despite safety warnings from municipal pol...

The average torts casebook contains a fascinating – and sobering – history of negligent acts and liability for injuries, from bringing fireworks onto a crowded train to being hit by a stray baseball and countless other misfortunes in between. But now there's a place where seminal moments in the history of U.S. tort law will really come to life. This weekend, the American Museum of Tort Law had its dedication ceremony in Winsted, Connecticut, and officially opens its doors on Sunday. The new museum is the brainchild of consumer advocate (and Winsted native) Ralph Nader, whose 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed revolutionized the consumer protection movement and resulted in the passage of federal automobile safety standards. The New York Times reviewed the museum's development and opening exhibits. These include such well-known examples as the McDonald's "hot coffee" spill, tobacco and asbestos litigation, and the defective automobiles which spurred the publication...