Apparently We Need More Accidental Criminals

I was reading my usual science blogs, and came across Weekend Diversion: And now, they're coming for me. Yeah, me. Because I write for you. at Starts With a Bang. Apparently Congress is creating new classes of felons that would have no idea they were doing anything even technically wrong. In brief,  U.S. Senate Bill 978 (that just cleared committee) makes it a Federal Offense (felony) if you happen to embed someone's video on your post that someday someone may claim infringed on a copyright. If I, for example, embed a video of some stranger's birthday party on this blog, that pans briefly across a television set that happened to be playing a commercial for shoes, that has background music by the Beatles, and in five years Michael Jackson's heirs decide that this infringed on their copyright on the music of McCartney and yank the video, I could technically be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. Even if the creator of the video, the owners of the network, and the shoe company and its marketing agent all had approved my use. Ethan Siegel has more details about this silliness and suggestions on his post.

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Italians vote no to water privatization

As reported by Alternet, the Italian people do not want multi-national corporations controlling their water supply.   The vote can be seen as a declaration that water is a basic human right, which should also be seen as a stern pushback to the Ayn Randian Free-Market Fundamentalism that prevails in many places these days.

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Things to see

I recently bought a new camera, which tempts me to take more time to see more of the things around me, then try to capture them. Feel free to click on the images for better views. Here's a sampling--first, a tale of two birds: This turkey at the local Farmer's market is deemed to be food, whereas the peacock at the zoo is deemed to be art. Tonight, my family and I walked through Forest Park, where we were treated to a strikingly pink sky (none of these photos in this post have been retouched except for cropping): Refusing to stand idly by, my 12-year old daughter, JuJu, borrowed her mother's iPhone and took some photos, including this yellow flower: [More . . . ]

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