Posts by David Hood
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Those discoveries had imminent practical application
Well, Maxwell unified electromagnetic theory in the 1860s. Marconi made then technology innovation broadcasting radio a generation later, in 1901. Half a generation later (1922s) the BBC began broadcasting. Marconi probably didn't foresee the application
JJ Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, Rutherford discovered the proton and improved the explanatory model in 1918. Transitors were invented in 1947 (the way Bell labs lawyers shaped the design says a lot about the tradition of commercialization of science). Thomson probably didn't see electronics coming.
If it is the Higgs (as seems likely at this stage) the separation of mass from spin at a fundamental level may well do dramatic things in a generation.
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About not needing banks, this came up on my after dinner reading list yesterday
Peer-to-peer lending via the internet hits £250m -
Just on children in protests, I found this story (from recent Russian protests) well worth a read. To repeat here the bit I read out aloud to the household
There was a phalanx of riot police on this bridge, too, blocking another route to the Kremlin. In front of them stood a young brunette in a short red dress and wedge platform shoes. She was waving the orange flag of the opposition Solidarity movement, and, judging by the expression on her face, she thought she was Moscow’s Lady Liberty—the icon of the protest. I thought she was, too. It was just so Russian: a woman in heels, even during a violent protest, self-consciously, calculatingly, making herself into a consumable, sexy image while those around her talked about fair elections and Putin’s villainy.
I was wrong. My friend, Olaf Koens, a Dutch reporter, had the better eye. (He does some television work.) But after hours of documenting the violence, his iPhone was dead. He smacked my arm and said, “Look! Look! There’s the picture!” -
Capture: Howling at the Moon, in reply to Fooman,
What I am curious about is the appropriate of digital images (scans) of images that are out of copyright, e.g. any photographs taken in NZ before 1944 had no copyright (expired after 50 years) when the 1994 Copyright Act was passed – this legislation did not re-instate such copyright.
Broadly, I would agree with you however, as I understand it the test for orignality (being copyrightable) is (in New Zealand, which differs from the U.S. law that most discussion is based on) from the "independent labour and skill" of the artist, evidenced by:
(a) "very fine work involving a high degree of concentration, skill and care";
(b) work "of great delicacy and intense application";
(c) "remarkable" work; or
(d) work of a "high standard".
So, in a legally untested kind of way, it is quite possible that a careful reproduction of archival material attaches a copyright to the reproduction, where the original was public domain.More pragmatically, most people that have a need to use archival material, have an expectation that they will need to have an ongoing good relation with the archive into the future, so have not been inclined to push matters.
Lilith also asked:
And don't libraries and museums often retain the copyright in their collections, even if it's more than 50 years old?
Short answer no, long answer they hold the original work and so control access to it in conditions of use, which can boil down to a very similar effect.
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Capture: Howling at the Moon, in reply to Brent Jackson,
I have had a picture, marked with Creative Commons Non-commercial license, used to illustrate a feature in the Herald online edition about a year and a half ago (note, they did attribute (in a non-linked text-only kind of way)). I suspect they had licensed the professional agency shots only for the print edition, and were substituting my picture for the online one in lieu.
The word I got from people involved in the area professionally is that it probably wouldn't be worth my time to pursue the matter so I haven't done anything about it. -
Not local, but thoroughly, thoroughly awesome.
Canterbury Tales Remixed album
http://bababrinkman.bandcamp.com/album/the-canterbury-tales-remixed
We bought this last night. -
An old photo of my daughter, but one of my favourites
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For a South African Freedom Day gathering I was invited to, I sculpted a bread lion in a cage. As we snacked on the cage the lion became free. Then we ate the lion.
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Lilith __,
Generally, for creating voids I fold up some cardboard and use a layer baking paper to stop the dough sticking to it. Since the cooking temperature is well under Fahrenheit 451, this works pretty well. I thought I'd leave a few dough balls out of the body and have a support column while cooking. So a similar idea to yours.
I wonder if a small steel bowl inverted under the body (making it hollow) would solve the cooking time problem.
This actually reminds me of something on my "will get around to it if the right potluck event comes up"- I thought I might sometime do a "something in a cage" bread sculpture by baking the two parts separately, doing the cage by inverting a square cake tin, and putting strips of firm dough over the outside to form the cage structure (with something to stop the dough sticking to the tin). I reckon this should create a breadstick cage, that I could put over the solider bread figure baked separately.
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Islander,
Wonder if I can recreate it in scone – or maybe, damper? – dough?
Any dough firm enough to hold its shape should work fine- that one was a fairly standard hand made dough. I just put it in the oven without a second rise so that it would better hold its shape.
That said, that particular construction is both easy and hard- the assembly was easy (balls of dough placed together for the body, intermixed with rolls of dough for the tentacles) and was easy for people just to pull apart to eat, the cooking time was hard as the thin tentacles bake much faster than the body (I actually got it a little wrong and it was slightly underdone in the middle). Next time I'll approach it slightly differently.
For those wanting to give bread sculpting a go, keep in mind that snipping the dough with scissors is an easy way to make scales (I once did a dragon this way) and dough (hopefully soft dough) pushed through a sieve or a garlic press makes hair.
