I can’t believe I never sat back to think about this. How do magicians copyright their very livelihood without any copyright laws? Here’s an essay that delves into the idea.
Intellectual Property Law Concerning Magic
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Monthly Archives: September 2007
Lesson for 9/23
Work in progress
1.Review last week
2. Divide into houses
3. House coats of arms
4. Comic story – photos to answer questions(?)
Holy Order of the Lion
I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but my wife and I started up a thing called Holy Order of the Lion at church. It’s been going for some years, but I’m actually a “Captain” in it this year.
Battle with Aslan
To take out White Witch. Sunday
School should be like this
If you see things tagged with The Lion, it’s a place for my co-teacher and I to talk about the next week.
(Wow. I’m listening to Toby Mac’s Portable sounds (wonderful album) and I just heard the real lyrics. “I thought you fell off the face of the Earth” versus “thought you found the face of the Earth”, like he had biffed it or something.)
With Holy Order, today we talked about Paul and how everything from his life before Christ, like his pureblood religious genetics, really ends up like rubbish. I took the kids on a tour of Heaven, with The Carpenter opening a massive wooden door into a giant banquet hall, feast in progress, with armored warriors from around the globe comparing battle scars. “I remember when…” “I was there when…”
Imagine 2nd-6th graders and a heavenly version of Henry V’s St. Crispin’s speech. (Here’s the messenger.)
Get Smart – about my childhood
I would always watch this at my grandma’s house.
And the new Rock movie? Just like Suburban Commando.
But what about the Iron Man trailer? I liked it when the song came on, but then the digitized voice from the song on the title screen?
Elizabeth – The Golden Age
In the trailer Elizabeth gives her Braveheart/Aragorn speech on a horse in a field.
Discovery Channel is leading a team of “scientists” to search for ion traces of ghosts and psychic little girls.
The Haiku
Saturday viewing
must be slow when not airing
deadly catch and myths
Definitions of Awesomeness
Page
In medieval times, a page was an attendant to a knight; an apprentice squire. A young boy served as a page for seven years, from the age of seven (after cutting hair) until he was fourteen. At age fourteen, he could graduate to become a squire, and by age 21, perhaps a knight himself. Similar pages served in castles, and great houses fetching things and running messages for aristocrats and royalty. These boys were often the scions of other great families who were learning the ropes of the manorial system by watching and learning.
Squire
The English word squire comes from the Old French escuier (modern French écuyer), itself derived from the Late Latin scutarius (“shield bearer”). The Classical Latin equivalent was armiger, ‘arms bearer’.
A squire was originally a young man who aspired to the rank of knighthood and who, as part of his development to that end, served an existing knight as his attendant or shield carrier.
Knight
The word knight derives from Old English cniht, meaning page boy, or servant (as is still the case in the cognate Dutch knecht, German Knecht, Norwegian and Swedish knekt and Danish knægt for servant), or simply boy. (In a parallel development, the word “Samurai” in Japanese also comes from the verb “to serve”.)
A squire could hope to become a knight when he had learned his lessons well. Once the squire had established sufficient mastery of the required skills, he was dubbed a knight. In the early period, the procedure began with the squire praying into the night, known as vigil.
The night before his knighting ceremony, the squire would take a cleansing bath, fast, make confession, and pray to God all night in the chapel, readying himself for his life as a knight. He would dress in white which was the symbol for purity. Then he would go through the knighting ceremony the following day. Knights followed the code of chivalry, which promoted honour, honesty, respect to God, and other knightly virtues.
Martyrs
Nigeria
On Sunday, December 10, 2006,Christians at Nairobi Pentecostal Church (NPC) called a three-day fast after a letter written to their bishop warned of an attack on Christian radio station Hope FM and other churches. According to Compass Direct News, the threat comes seven months after a raid on the station, located on church property, left a guard dead. “NPC Bishop Boniface Adoyo called for the fast in a letter read to church members on Sunday, saying the threatening letter also mentioned other churches targeted for attack over unspecified reasons,” Compass Direct News added. On May 12, eight unidentified gunmen stormed the station, shot and killed a guard and torched the building after a broadcast aired, comparing teachings of the Bible with the Quran.
India
In 2005, more than 200 acts of violence against Christians occurred in the first four months of the year. Several pastors and evangelists were martyred, and radical Hindus brutally beat Christians arriving for a seminary graduation ceremony in Kota.
Mutant Haiku
The Haiku
We did not die in
the giant world-destroying
battle with “Uber”
Reallymeanpeople
My Fox team won! Yeah!
The Zinikers lost. No wonder they’re so Ziniker.
The Haiku
Reallymeanpeople
know how to play football but
they will never love.
My daughter the artist
She drew this today:
Her first stick person.
The Haiku
A good dad you are
blogghing while daughter ballets
to Tom Jones CD
My wife had trouble eating just now. My daughter was telling her, “And there was a giant frog under your bed.” She started whispering, “It said Riiiiiibit Riiiiibit.”
50 Cent and Kanye West
So, who won?
I was too busy living life.
Madden 08 Internet Problems
This is the first time I’ve seen a Wii game in need of a patch. And a boot to the head. I can barely connect to play and when I do it’s very choppy.
However, in place of these subtractions, the Wii version adds in online play and a party mode. Online mode currently has problems, though, because EA is having server space issues, but that will hopefully be fixed soon.
“Now that Madden NFL 08 is available, the development team at EA is doing some tweaking to make sure our online experience is as smooth as possible. Since there is currently a high volume of people playing online, this is the best time for us to monitor and maximize the experience. As updates are taking place over the next 24 hours, some fans may experience an interruption in online play. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience as we make the necessary updates.” – EA
The Haiku
Pigs in a blanket
Console my fears of a
Wii run like Microsoft
What I learned from High School Musical 2
The X Position – You can look like a clock until you look like a goalpost.
The Dance-Along instructional video is no fun without a partner.
Just like at my high school, all of my friends were conveniently in the same English class so we could break out in dancing at the same time.
Breakdancing, jumping off of lockers, and sliding on a gum-free floor is totally cool with the administration.
High school cafeterias are structured specifically in stage layers.
The bell at 3:10 is not enough of a warning to dismiss. That’s the fake bell. The real bell dismisses after the first song.
A guy in pink and turquoise button-down shirts-pants combos, with a pink cabby hat, will never be bullied.
No one carries backpacks and/or binders anymore.
Band people always wear sousaphones.
Your dad as coach can call you “dawg” and everyone will be down with it.
Grand pianos float only in resort pools.
No one slips while flipping in a kitchen. Kitchens have a specific dance floor set aside. Enough for four rows of dancers. It’s soundproof, too, so your creep of a boss won’t hear the dancing. He’ll just pop his head in and give a quizzical look.
Sprinklers are timed to interrupt kisses.
Laying on your back on the piano actually helps support your diaphragm.
Basketball skills translate into caddying skills – you know which club fits which lie.
Your semi-friend’s older sister’s rules of dating still apply to you.
The 5ft. deep sign in the pool is there for decoration. Above the water your feet can touch the ground. When you dive, it takes a while to reach the bottom.
When you’re the golf instructor, you can walk up, grab a young, blonde 10 year-old, tell her, “Hey, cutie!” and not fear a lawsuit at all.
College basketball players think that high school players are cool – they want to “get down, bro.”
The owner of the resort can tell the same “stepping on the ball joke” as long as he is walking into the shot with friends.
“Viva la basketball” is a catchy phrase.
No matter how flamboyant you dress, you step on the mound, you throw manly.
Throwing dirt at each other in baseball is awesome. Throw dirt and kicking your heels is art.
Pick-up baseball games still use the electronic scoreboard. And draw a huge, clapping crowd.
College ballers don’t dance to “get their head in the game.”
When you have girl issues, you can’t shoot the ball worth junk.
“We’re breaking up. I’m leaving. My mom’s here in the mini-van.”
Not only does Simba find his true self in a reflecting pool, so can a high school baller.
Drummers don’t have to hit the high hat for a high hat sound.
Fans make you sing awesome.
It’s disturbing to hear a 3 year-old sing word-for-word, calling himself Troy Bolton.
The Haiku
Head in the game
We’re all in this together
Please kick my teeth out
It begins
We shall see how both
teams do – only problem is
lack of turtle shells
Robotech and Voltron movie
This just in from the nerdwire
By Borys Kit Sat Sep 8, 2:51 PM ET
TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) – After slipping on a mask for Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire might be slipping into a giant robot for “Robotech.”
After a lengthy negotiation, Warner Bros. Pictures has picked up feature rights to “Robotech,” a 1980s Japanese cartoon series with giant robots known as mechas. Maguire is eyeing the lead role, and will serve as a producer.
“We are very excited to bring ‘Robotech’ to the big screen,” Maguire said. “There is a rich mythology that will be a great foundation for a sophisticated, smart and entertaining film.”
A sprawling sci-fi epic, “Robotech” takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.
The $686 million worldwide box office success of “Transformers” has inspired other studios to assemble giant robot movies. Last month, Fox-based Regency picked up 1980s Japanese anime series “Voltron.”
British human-cow hybrid chimeras
Have we not learned from Max Ride, House of the Scorpion, and Animorphs? Mixing DNA = no bueno, even if you are a sensei rat.
Great teachings but lives a tortured life of sewer-dwelling.
It’s one thing if your human-animal mutation happens on accident. Then you might be okay as a ninja. It’s also cool if your family comes from Thundara. Well then, yeah, I’m down with rollin’ like Panthro.
But when the whitecoats start tampering, humans become cattle and then we don’t have to be too concerned with wiping out a mistake or a piece of property. Will we have to legislate how much of a percentage of DNA equates humanity? Will we have to have an FDA stamp/seal of approval on future birth certificates?
Have we learned nothing from Gary Larson?
Heck yeah it’s monstrous:
Britain’s step towards the creation of human-animal hybrids has been condemned by the Vatican as a “monstrous act against human dignity”.
Days after the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority agreed in principle to license experiments for research, the Vatican’s Bishop Elio Sgreccia accused the quango of crumbling “when confronted by requests from a group of scientists”, who, he said, were “absolutely against morality”.
Two teams of scientists hope to be able to create stem cells from their work that could unlock the secrets of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
The so-called chimeras will be 99 per cent human and one per cent cow, and will be destroyed after 14 days.
A final decision from the HFEA is expected in November.
Bishop Sgreccia said the ruling crossed an important moral rubicon.
“That frontier, of the crossroads of distinct species, has been overstepped with the go-ahead of the British Government,” he said.
Catholic leaders in England and Wales have also expressed grave concern.
The Haiku
Song ‘I am my own
Grandfather’ now has been changed
to ‘own Cheeseburger’
The mother of hyperspace died in a nursing home
People who are a fan of the classics had at least two big losses this past week. Pavarotti got the big news write-up, but the one that truly gets me is that Madeline L’Engle passed away on Thursday. Her husband, Hugh Franklin (Dr. Charles Tyler on the popular soap opera “All My Children”), had died of cancer in 1986 and her son had died when he was 47 in 1999. L’Engle was 88 when she died in hospice in Connecticut. Her two daughters, Josephine F. Jones and Maria Rooney, are still alive.
Anyone that in 1962 can bust out Planck and Einstein, mixed in with some Shakespeare and Bible, rocks in my book. She said that when she dreams, she doesn’t set an age for the audience. She also said that children’s books are too tough for adults to understand. As a librarian I’ve said that Harry Potter brought a huge market of cool books for young adults. Marketers/moneymakers really took notice. Students are smart enough to realize when they’re being patronized and when they’ll support cool stories. Uglies by Scott Westerfield is an example. A Wrinkle in Time, with its ‘not-just-books’ media, is a part of that heritage. It’s a book that many people know. (Disembodied head with red eyes? Mrs Whatsit and Which? (Immortals don’t have a ‘.’ after their titles, remember? (even if publishers are sticklers))) If you haven’t read it and you’re a fan of crazy junk happening when hyperspace opens, read it.
Even freaking Sawyer from ‘Lost’ has read it!
Oooh. Dreadfully mysterious plot revealing?
‘The Joys of Love’, another young adult book, will be published next year.
“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.
“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”
Her faith gives me assurance. Pretty sweet tea time with Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and John.
It’ll make me feel better, even if 2/3 of the polar bears will be gone by 2050. Isn’t that when the Shadowrun megacorps say there’ll be a second morphing?
Epic Haiku – Origin Story
It was the last straw.
He had seen fire and seen rain.
Ant stole his donut.
DM of the Rings
Stealth Plane
Here are some sketches from tonight’s JV football game:
1 Peter 2:11
Stealth Plane
I’m actually pretty excited by how the Sharpie scanned. I drew both with no draft. In the rain. With wolves out.
The Haiku
For we are strangers
Citizens of another
Kingdom in the Sky
Why school is better than the Internet
From bbspot:
Reasons School is Better than the Internet
11. Teachers much less likely to sell your personal information to Russian mobsters than random Internet site.
10. Teenage girls at school more likely to be actual teenage girls than ones on Internet.
9. Teacher much less likely to compare you to Hitler than anonymous message board poster.
8. Getting new clothes for school much more rewarding than getting new clothes for Internet.
7. Getting stuffed in locker better than getting IP blocked.
6. You don’t have to have enough gum to share with the whole Internet.
5. GPA more useful for getting a job than Slashdot karma.
4. Recess at school makes you happy, recess on the internet makes you sad.
3. Feel less guilty about not doing homework than not being up to date on forums.
2. Bomb threats to school most likely will end classes for the day. Bomb threats to Internet largely ignored.
1. Teachers not as nitpicky as commenters on Reddit or Digg.
The Haiku
School also does not
have problems with lag or with
SPAM – BUY GRADES FOR CHEAP!