Truffles

Posted on 2014-12-18 by arjaybe
Credit - Scott Darbey - CC-BY

Credit – Scott Darbey – CC-BY

Just a quick note as a heads-up. If you like truffles you’d better enjoy them while you can. If this gets out, someone will want to make them illegal. It appears truffles contain a chemical, anandamide, that affects the brain the same way cannabis does. Just like tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), anandamide locks onto receptors on neurons, producing psychoactive effects. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the effect doesn’t last as long since anandamide breaks down in the body more quickly than THC does. So, in effect, truffles encourage animals to eat them by giving them a chemical reward, but without debilitating them too much.

Credit - Alistair Campbell - CC-BY

Credit – Alistair Campbell – CC-BY

Check out this article at the BBC for more details.

rjb

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Hunter

Posted on 2014-12-12 by arjaybe
Credit - Kathleen Conklin - CC

Credit – Kathleen Conklin – CC

hunter-Wil-Wheaton

Review – Hunter – a short story by Wil Wheaton

Let’s get this out of the way. Wil Wheaton played Ensign Wesley Crusher on the TV series, Star Trek the Next Generation. He has carried on with acting and other creative endeavors and you can catch up with him at his personal website.

With that out of the way, the purpose of this post is to review Wil Wheaton’s short story, Hunter, available from Unglue.it. Hunter is licensed Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-SA,) so it can be downloaded and shared freely. It’s only about 2500 words, so it should be a quick read. The author describes it as “a short Sci-Fi story set in a dark and desperate world.”

After the invasion, when the colonists were reduced to a dwindling force of resistance fighters, Pyke decided to surrender and work for the invaders. He became a very efficient hunter, capturing rebels and turning them over to his cruel masters. As his victims grew in number, he found himself enjoying the work, taking sadistic pleasure in their fear and pain. And now his latest quarry, a young girl, is running into a trap.

Download Hunter, by Wil Wheaton, from Unglue.it, or from his own website.

rjb

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Bound by Law

Posted on 2014-12-05 by arjaybe

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“A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true?” The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School has produced a comic book, Bound by Law, explaining US copyright. Even though specific to US law, it’s still useful elsewhere.

An independent documentary filmmaker is led by two guides through the thickets of copyright law as she tries to learn what she can use in her film. Does she need to get the permission of the people whose images she records? Does she have to pay the rightsholder of the song being played by the street busker? Does she have to pay for the program on the television set in the background? What is Fair Use? With so many details to worry about, and the potential for so many expenses, does she want to bother making the film at all? These are the kinds of problems that beset creative people in this age of copyright extremism.

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At the same time that she learns about the roadblocks thrown up by copyright, she also learns how it is meant to protect her own work, once she produces it. Would she want to bother creating something if it could be taken and used by anyone without recompense, or even acknowledgement? This is the line that copyright law tries to draw. Protect creators’ rights to encourage them to create, in the hope of getting new works that will one day enter the Public Domain, there to inspire new creations.

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The comic book, Bound by Law, does a good job of explaining US copyright law in a graphical, entertaining way. It has been licensed Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA) by its creators, Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. You are entitled to download it for free, and you can make copies and share them, as long as it’s not for commercial purposes (NC,) you attribute the creators (BY) and you share any derivatives the same way (SA.)

Copyright law is hard, and getting worse. Bound by Law will help you begin to understand it.

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rjb

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