Lost for words

Cory Doctorow, who knows a thing or two, points out the fact that it is not possible to own some digital material!
You can of course sell what you like as long as the great washed and unwashed desire to buy it. In order to avoid any doubt I am, of course, only referring to that which the law and m'learned friends would approve of. (Thank god for that. We don't want the peelers round stomping their big boots on the antimacassars and the like looking for contraband and the stuff you should have turned over to the Receiver of Wreck years ago... Ed)

In an article in the Grauniad he points out that it is not possible to buy a digital copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). This raises a number of interesting questions.  I was struck again by the fact that the interweb has changed forever things we have taken for granted as being part of the fabric of society - You sell... I buy - and changed them in ways we do not recognise or see where they will leave us.

But the point is that we have sleepwalked into a new way of accessing some very ancient tools. Commercial decisions married to the lawyerly norm of asking for the world, the moon, and your first-born in rental agreements have birthed a new, non-negotiable relationship between people who live and die by words and the lexicographers whose work serves them. A university whose name is synonymous with the perpetual archiving of books is now telling scholars that their crucial references can never be their property, and that their ongoing use of those works is subject to continuous monitoring and indefinite retention.

I particularly like the idea of a lien on your first-born.

Have a gander at it and of course remember Aaron Swartz.

(Glad to see you back. Have a good break? Weather fine? Relatives and young thriving? Get much reading done?
Now about the price of coal and the vital editorial work I do for this enterprize - any chance of a sub...Ed)

More Holidays?

Another wee flower for the collection.

And a strange naming of streets...

From Grope to Grove to Union!?

At least we know what the Gauleiter  has been up to this summer.

Chocolate Pickles

and he's grown a mustache.

Well Well

Couldn't resist the pun!

Doomt, Doomt, I Telt Ye!

Maybe it was the delayed effect of seeing the World's End (not the world's end I hope, of course not, otherwise we would not be here... only my little joke...Ed!) or the curry afterwards but when the daily update concerning the Scot's latest bid for freedom popped into my inbox, courtesy of the much maligned Mr Googles, the lead story was

Scottish independence would lead to a 'complete nightmare' in immigration policy

The Scottish Daily Record reports Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, claiming the above. Of course, I see it all. Lines of the undead slumped by the side of the A1 just waiting for the word. WWII surplus army lorries, their tattered tarps flapping in the breeze just north of Carlisle. The signal to move would be the declaration of independence. Closer inspection of the transport would reveal the horror contained within. 

Interesting fact about Scottish Independence, No. 1 in a series.
Have you ever seen
Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, and
Michael Moore, The well known prankster and filum maker,
in the same room?

(Now you come to mention it, I have not... Ed)

Summer Filums

We went to the local flea pit twice in one week.
West Side Story
Neither of us had seen it, or seen it all the way through, or could remember seeing it all the way through!
What emotion, what music, what dancing, what panstick, and that was just the sharks! Lenny could certainly write a tune or two.
No credit for our own dear Wills scratched on the wall at the end, such a difficult name to get right!

The World's End
A bit of a contrast. However, as part of the deeply moving Cornetto Trilogy it provided a useful reminder of the perils of drink, drugs and the undead! I have yet to see Shaun of the Dead or can remember seeing it all the way through! That is a treat to come.