Copyright course

I’m doing a book review on Tuesday.

copyrightYou know, I think I understand quite a bit about US copyright law. Still, I decided to take a four-week online course, Copyright for Educators and Librarians, run by Duke University. The instructors are Kevin Smith, M.L.S., J.D., Lisa A. Macklin, J.D., M.L.S., and Anne Gilliland, JD, MLS.

It has a hefty syllabus to read each week, plus a half dozen video lectures. The latter is rather interesting, but the former, much of it right out of the copyright law itself, is dry and occasionally self-contradictory. Work for hire, public domain, fair use – all complicated issues, and those were the ones I KNEW about. The rules regarding the term of copyright in the United States, based on various changes in the law, are mind-bending.

The week runs from Monday to Monday. There’s online class participation each week, and a 10-question test for the first three weeks, with a paper for the fourth.

Did OK the first week. But this coming period is complicated by a book review I’m doing on Tuesday, a wedding and another party I’m attending later in the week, plus a probable lengthy visit to the ortho guy, and quite possibly a vacation, though that is still in flux, after the expense of the recent car trouble. The bride at the wedding is named after me, no lie.

So I need to be terse here. I may not be commenting on your blogs or your Facebook pages; the former I’ll eventually get to; the latter, probably not, especially those FB quizzes. I may be slow approving your comments – but please make them anyway, especially re: yesterday’s post, because it’ll make The Daughter happy! – off and on, for the next three weeks, the duration of the course. It will not affect my blogging, in that I’ve now written a post for every day through August 14, seriously, and August 15 is started; but I’ll be slow to write on current events, significant deaths, and the like.

Know, however, my schadenfreude over the Happy Birthday song lawsuit is very great.

The Lydster, Part 124: the acrostics

Obsessive
Behavioral
Expectations for
You

acrosticThis past year, for spelling, there was this predictable pattern for the homework of approximately 20 words.

Monday: put the words in alphabetical order. Sometimes tricky when you have six words starting with st
Tuesday and Wednesday: write ten sentences each night, using the spelling word. The sentences, more often than not, involved the cats; “Perhaps Stormy and Midnight will be friends.
Thursday: take one word and make an acrostic out of it. This is something I never had to do, but she got into it.

With her permission, nay, insistence, some of The Daughter’s acrostics, in no particular order. All (c) 2014 Lydia Green.

Curved,
Is
Round,
Cylinder,no
Lines,
Ends where it begins

Dating
With
A dwarf can be
Rough but
Fun

Always
Under
The
Umbrella at
Midnight in
New York
***
(Stormy my cat)

Hears everything
Ears perk up
Rapidly runs from room to room
Sometimes very quiet and cuddly
Eyes glow in the dark
Loves to be crazy
Fears Midnight

Horses jump
Over the fence
Running free
Satisfying the crowd
Eating hay
Saves the day

Obsessive
Behavioral
Expectations for
You

Delicious
Entree with a side of
Lettuce
It’s
Great.
Happy
Thanksgiving

Crayola presents all new colors:
Red
Aqua blue
Yellow
Orange and
Neon green

There are others, but those were the ones I could find easily.

Lateral Epicondylitis and other ailments

tennis elbow.2915397_cios-2-173-g001Wednesday morning, 3 a.m. – that’s a Simon & Garfunkel song and album! – I awoke to some excruciating pain near my right elbow. It had been bothering me for over a week, and I had called my primary care physician Tuesday with the symptoms, which included prickly pain radiating from the elbow to the fingertips. My doc says it’s probably tennis elbow, ironic because I no longer play any racquet sport.

Apply ice, take pain meds, call the ortho guy (no appointment until August 4!) But the pain exhausted me, so I stayed home from work Wednesday. Ah, maybe I’ll catch up on reading or TV or something; or better still, I’ll take a a couple naps instead.

Go to work on Thursday. The wrist brace, secured the LAST time I had this ailment, on the LEFT side, helped some. Per usual, rode the bike to the bus stop. Put the bike on the bus rack gingerly, get on the bus, bus pulls out, I use my swiper card, take two steps. Apparently, they hose down the floors at night, and the right side of the aisle was still wet.

I did a classic banana-peel fall, landing on my coccyx, my back (STILL stiff and sore), my right elbow (oh, stars, that hurt!), and my head. Fortunately, I still had my bike helmet on, because, while it may have facilitated a little neck strain, it kept me from slamming my head on the floor. Not sure that I would have gotten up on my own power had THAT happened.

Ever have a day when you felt a bit crummy, stayed home, then returned to work the following day, only to feel worse?

Ellmers v. Aiken

It’ll be interesting to see what type of representative NC-2 wants.

112_rp_nc_2_ellmers_reneeEarlier this month, reporter Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner wrote “an article about the GOP’s poor messaging on the ‘war on women’ narrative. I posted some comments from Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., who said GOP men need to bring their messages ‘down to a woman’s level.’

“Ellmers called me a ‘liberal woman reporter’ and said I had taken her quote ‘completely out of context.’

“Below are her full comments from the event…, along with the audio of her segment. I have bolded the comments I used in my original post.” Having looked at the link, I feel Ellmers was treated fairly.

This story is still interesting to me because:
1) it IS the GOP war on women, being propagated by a woman
2) it is a classic “blame the press” ploy, which might work on a few, but not to anyone who bothered to read the transcript

Let me express my inherent bias here: all things being equal – and all things are NEVER equal, I’d be inclined to support a female candidate over a male candidate. In this case, though, if I were able to vote in the Congressional race for North Carolina’s Second District, I would support the male candidate.
Clay Aiken
That guy, BTW, is Clay Aiken, best known to me as the second-place contestant on an early season of American Idol; we even own one of his albums. You may have also seen him – I did not – on Celebrity Apprentice, where, I am told, he presented himself well.

Aiken had an odd row to the Democratic nomination. He had a tough primary fight with his opponent, 71-year-old Keith Crisco, back in May. Aiken won by a small margin, but Crisco had not yet conceded the race when Crisco suffered injuries from a fall at his home and died. Crisco associates say that he was about to concede the race to Aiken the next day.

It’ll be interesting to see what type of representative NC-2 wants, a two-term woman who appears to be over her head in Congress, or an openly gay man with a bit of entertainment fame. Last time out Ellmers won with 56% of the vote. As noted, my rooting interests are with the singer.

Sorry, Leslie

It’s sister Leslie’s birthday.

LeslieI have mentioned my particularly lousy March 2014 HERE and especially HERE. About St. Patrick’s Day, give or take 24 hours, sister Leslie called and asked how I was, and I told her.

Unfortunately, I was more than a tad short of patience. When she started giving me advice, which I found to be well-meaning but frankly unhelpful, I petitioned to get off the phone. When she insisted I stay on the phone… well, I don’t really remember much after that, because I had departed the conversation emotionally at that point.

What WAS evident, even in my stressful state, was that she was feeling hurt, when all she wanted to do was help. I feel bad about that. And we haven’t talked since then, although we’ve had brief Facebook encounters.

It is, however, her birthday, and I always try to call her on that day. So I need to practice that apology speech…

Ramblin' with Roger
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