On the stealing of jokes and cryptomnesia

What is a trope? The website TV Tropes explains:

A trope is a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize. Tropes are the means by which a story is told by anyone who has a story to tell.
How often have you watched a new movie or TV show and noticed that it is drenched in tropes? I notice this constantly. TV shows and movies resemble other movies and shows so often that some have written, tongue in cheek, that there are actually only an extremely limited number of plots. Are there only seven plots? Are there only six plots? [More . . . ]

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Conflicting copyright instructions from legal research company

Thomson Reuters (formerly West Publishing) sent me a DVD with Missouri Jury Instructions today. The DVD comes with a document called "Forms on Disc Guide." That document gives me the following advice:

Although you may access the forms directly from the disc, we recommend you create a directory on your hard drive and copy the contents of the disc into that directory. The forms can then be accessed from your hard drive and the disc can be kept with the book for safe keeping.
Sounds like good advice. But wait! The Copyright Notice, another document on the same DVD, contains this warning:
© 2016 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Govt. works. All rights reserved. The data on the disc is licensed by West, part of Thomson Reuters, and no part of the data may be copied, downloaded, stored in a retrieval system, further transmitted or otherwise reproduced, stored, disseminated, transferred, or used in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, use by multiple users on a wide-area network, local area network, intranet, or extranet, or similar method of distribution, without prior written permission. Any authorized reproduction of any part of the data must contain notice of copyright as follows: © 2016 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Govt. works.
Therefore, Thomson is 1) telling me to copy its jury instruction forms onto my hard drive AND 2) telling me that if I have "copied" or "downloaded" this information on my "retrieval system" I would be in violation of copyright laws, unless I have first obtained "prior written permission" from Thomson Reuters. This second warning is especially silly in that the whole purpose of having jury instruction "Forms" is to copy them as part of the process of using those forms to prepare jury instructions, and then "transmitting" those instructions to a court and other attorneys for use at trial. All of this not carefully thought out by one of the world premier providers of legal products to lawyers.

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Police misconduct analogized to child abuse

child abuse analogyWell . . . this sums it up perfectly. Found this on FB.. It's not surprising, is it? There are bad doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers. We should make sure everyone out there is well trained. If they can't be trained to do their job safely, they shouldn't do it at all. -- "Assuming one is against police when they're against police brutality is like assuming one is anti-parent when they're against child abuse." How about this quote too, to keep things in perspective? brutality

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FBI continues to target journalists and their sources

In 1990, I was fired for being a whistle-blower by the Missouri Attorney General, who subsequently spent time in prison. Therefore, the topic of this post is an issue that speaks loudly to me. If you believe in participatory democracy, it should speak loudly to you too. If you are wondering why there is very little investigative journalism anymore, the attached article lays out one of the big reasons. If you were a whistle-blower trying to get important information to the public regarding government corruption or wrongdoing, you can now be easily identified by government spying without any need for a search warrant and without probably cause, at the un-monitored and unlimited discretion of "law enforcement" agencies including the NSA and the FBI that have repeatedly trampled on your constitutional rights. [More . . . ]

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