Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

One of my favourite authors, Will Shetterly, offers us a parable for our time...

(under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license)

It was time for another Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension to keep Disney's star property out of the public domain. Somebody's nephew had a bright idea. Instead of telling Congress to add the standard twenty years to the length of copyright, why not go for the big time? Extend copyright by 500 years.

Somebody's niece added a smarter reason: A 500 year extension would let Disney track down Shakespeare's heirs and buy all rights to the Bard. No matter how much the heirs wanted, the deal would pay for itself in no time. Every school that ever wanted to perform or study Shakespeare would have to send a check to Disney. Every newspaper or magazine or radio show that wanted to quote the Bard would have to send one, too. So Disney asked, and Congress gave, and the World Intellectual Property Organization followed Congress's example. Disney paid off Shakespeare's heirs, then used the Shakespeare profits to buy all rights from the heirs of Dumas, Dickens, Twain, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker and more. Once most of the films in every other studio's library were subject to Disney's copyright, they went bankrupt or became divisions of Disney.

Read on for a copyright farce...

House of Flying Daggers is a Shakespearean tragedy set on an existentialist stage. Three lives meet and are then torn apart, ricocheting against each other, while around them momentous events move to a climax. In a time of rebellion, a Robin Hood-like organisation is upsetting the status quo. Two policemen connive in a scheme to trap its leader, a scheme involving a mysterious blind girl with links to the rebels. But no one is as they seem...

The film gives us all we expect from a lush drama: wonderful photography, superb music, and enthralling wire-fu. But the story comes down to this: three lives in the autumn. As winter falls, so does doom.

And then, suddenly, dramatically, we are left, the three lives complete as a tableau in the snow. Still the larger picture is incomplete. Our tragedies may end, but the world goes on.

A strangely moving film that belies its action heritage with a deeper message.

Yves Klein's IKB 79 is one of my favourite paintings. A single sheet of dense, almost electric blue it captures the eye, and the imagination. I could sit in front of it for hours...

Klein rejected the idea of representation or personal expression in painting, and became obsessed with immaterial values, beyond the visible or tactile. He began making monochrome paintings in 1947 as a way of attaining total freedom. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented colour, International Klein Blue (IKB). He executed a series of paintings using IKB, as well as sculptures made from objects such as sponges dipped in the colour.

(And it's a good thing to discover that the Tate has its entire catalogue online - even if not all the pictures are digitised yet.)