Green Comet

The Happy Birthday song has been around for a long time. It is so popular and so ubiquitous that it’s part of the Commons. It’s obviously in the Public Domain, belonging to everyone, free for everyone to sing.

If you believe that, then it could get you in trouble. It cost filmmaker Jennifer Nelson fifteen hundred dollars. She was making a documentary about the song and found out during the process that someone holds the copyright on it and wanted her money. She paid the ransom so she could get on with her project, but now she’s taking them to court to try to set Happy Birthday free. Here’s a copy of the complaint on Scribd, the document sharing site. The Hollywood Reporter also has an article on the class action lawsuit.

With another angle on the harm caused by excessive copyright, here’s an article concerning the problems it is causing for Oliver Sacks. It contains a link to an essay by Sacks in the New York Times Book Review, where he complains about the dearth of large-print books. From Sacks’ essay:

“I came out frustrated, and furious: did publishers think the visually impaired were intellectually impaired too?” – Oliver Sacks

When something like Happy Birthday can still be shackled by copyright more than a century later, something is wrong with copyright law. You can find my previous posts on copyright here, here, here and here.

rjb

An intriguing site called Pearltrees has included a link to Green Comet in its interactive display. Specifically, it has linked to the post Aquatic Ape – The Theory Evolves. Pearltrees looks like a place where you could end up following your curiosity for hours as you’re led down its trails of connected ideas. You can also join the site and post your own “pearls” to add to their growing crop of interesting ideas.

I hope you enjoy the trip.-)

rjb

The Washington Post has published two articles, one by a politician and one by scientists.

edit – I should mention that the politician is Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. To me that sounds like making someone who can’t skate the captain of your hockey team.

The politician says that all this talk about climate is hurting the economy, and it’s not really real anyway. Watch for references to things like lost jobs, hardworking Americans, costly regulation and scientific uncertainty. Don’t look for facts that hold up to scrutiny. This is a politician, after all.

The scientists deal in facts, verified data, actual things that have actually happened. They don’t rely on emotion-laden spin, which might put them at a disadvantage.

This is the kind of thing that scientists have to deal with when politicians think they can talk their way around reality. If their coastlines are endangered by flooding, maybe they can pass a law against the tide coming in.

rjb

Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean no one’s out to get you. That old saying is true for some people. Paranoia can be a useful trait for a spy, say. Or a despot. But for most people it’s just a problem. Paranoia, loosely defined as a psychological disorder involving delusions of persecution or grandeur, can cause intellectual impairment, hallucinations and just plain crotchetiness. At the extreme it can lead to homicidal tendencies or the need to rule the world. It causes suspicion of other people and can make for a very difficult social life. Paranoia is not a viable survival trait outside of a few very specific situations. It’s not a good evolutionary trait either. The human species wouldn’t be successful if everyone was paranoid. Still, it would be just as bad for us if we were completely free of suspicion. If the tiger didn’t get us the loan shark would. Continue reading →

Here’s an interesting diversion sent to me by my brother, George Bowering. Caution: he’s been known to mess with his own Wikipedia site. It was sent to him by Spider Robinson, who says he got it from John Varley. Quoting Spider Robinson:

“Here’s the broadest possible perspective:

http://hereistoday.com/

Sent me today by John Varley. Just keep clicking “Okay,” at whatever rate suits you. The further I went, the slower I clicked.

Spider”

Perspective is right. I hope you enjoy it.

rjb

There are two pipelines here that are making news: The Keystone Pipeline and the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Neither one is completed yet, but the attempts to make them so are meeting stiff resistance. The Keystone Pipeline is meant to transmit Canadian tarsands oil to the southern United States for refining. The Northern Gateway would take tarsands oil to the west coast, where it can be sent away overseas. The resistance to these pipelines is focused on the potential damage to land and people in their paths should they fail and spill their oil.

A reasonable person might ask, “Why don’t those Canadians refine their own oil? Why don’t they take their time and maximize the long-term benefits from their resources?” When the proponents of the current plan are asked such questions, their answers tend to be, “Jobs. Look at all the jobs. Do you want to take jobs away from those poor people? What are you, an urban elitist?” When you cut through the smokescreen, the real answer is always that the resources need to be turned into money as quickly as possible.

Chances are that both pipelines will eventually be built, so our focus should be on making them safe and ensuring that the people in harm’s way don’t end up subsidizing the incomes of the people who will be making the money. The answer should be simple. Have the shareholders indemnify us for all potential damage. They’re getting the reward, let them take the risk. If it’s as safe as they say, they should have no problem with that.

rjb

Among the most popular posts on Green Comet is the Cave Art series, parts One, Two and Three. They make a nice summary of the state of the discipline for anyone with a casual interest. A good way to get a sense of what is out there in the way of cave paintings and rock art in general. On Scienceblogs I found a post by Greg Laden that goes into it in more depth, with emphasis on when and where our human ancestors began to produce it. From his post, How are art and human evolution related:

“Art is almost certainly important and has a place on (the) list of things to consider when wondering about the evolution of our species.” – Greg Laden

Laden does a good job of exploring the subject and makes useful suggestions for further thought and exploration. If you enjoyed the Cave Art series, I recommend furthering your education with his blog post.

rjb

Those of you who read my post, Bipedal – The Aquatic Ape Theory, might be interested to learn of this guest blog on Scienceblogs by Marc Verhaegen. He is a much more learned and erudite writer than I, and you will get a much greater depth of information from his post than from my brief outline. Here is a short quotation:

“It is often assumed that Alister Hardy’s and Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape theory (AAT) suggests that more than 5 Ma (million years ago) there was a semi-aquatic phase in our past (explaining e.g. human fur loss, fatness and upright bipedalism), which was followed by a savanna phase on the African plains. In 2011, AAT proponents published an eBook, ‘Was Man more aquatic in the past?’, which showed a rather different picture of AAT.” – Marc Verhaegen

He was kind enough to comment on my post, and you can see that at the link above. If you are interested in the Aquatic Ape Theory, or in human evolution in general, I encourage you to go and read his Scienceblogs guest blog.

rjb

June 09, 2013 – The theory continues to evolve. See this post and ensuing discussion at the blog, The Aquatic Ape.

rjb

Here is yet another great photograph of my valley. It first appeared here. I know. I know. You’re choking on the bile of envy, aren’t you?-) I can’t help that, but I can at least share a little of my good fortune.

rjb

You wouldn’t normally think of snails as farmers. If anything they’d be more like cows, grazing through the day. Cows aren’t that smart. When they’re relaxing, chewing their cud, they’re probably not planning how to grow their next crop of grass. So what of snails, then?

Snails aren’t very brainy, even compared to cows. There’s the question of whether they can even be said to have a brain. They have a nervous system which has a clump of neurons at the head end, which might be a brain. Or it might just be an aggregation of nerve cells, a mere ganglion. We have similar clusters in our nervous system. One example is the solar plexus, located in the abdomen just below the diaphragm. It does a lot of very important work but you wouldn’t call it a brain. Continue reading →