Pictures That Lie

I added the image of a man who appears to by flying, propelled solely by his lung power. It is a funny picture because it shows a man in flight, being chased by three people. It's also funny because the method for flight in the picture is very irrational. This picture was ran in the April Fool's edition of Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung in 1934. It was made by manipulating the man jumping on skis to look like he was flying. The background was changed and the two pictures were merged of the man on skis with his flying device and the three men chasing him from behind. It was manipulated to be ran in the April Fool's edition of the magazine as joke for a product that allowed men to fly using their own lung power. The manipulation was not harmful because it did not have any lasting, negative consequences. It was published in an April Fool's article, so the joke was well taken and the picture was even distributed widely in the United States.

Visit to CLT

We visited the Center for Learning and Technology on the first floor of the library. The CLT has both Macs and PCs with all of the latest software, all of this can be taken advantage of throughout college as we probably will not be able to afford the software otherwise. The CLT also had top of the line equipment for video and audio editing that students can use for class assignments or for their own personal leisure. There is also a Video Conference Center which is equipped with satellite down-link and Polycom two-way video conference facilities that accomodate 32 people. This would be very helpful for classes to hold video conferences with other classes abroad or to hold meetings that could not be arranged in person. The computers in CLT are for use of the students and we can go down there and use them at anytime if we want a quiet place to work. Also if I was in a class that required use of audio or video editing, I wouldn't have to leave campus as I could do it all in the library.

Copyright Laws and Time

The copyright presentation given by Jason Hardin was very informative and interesting. Many interesting topics were discussed, one that stood out to me was the fact that U.S. Copyright laws currently state that the terms of a copyright last the author's life plus an additional 70 years. This is very interesting because the time period for the terms of the copyright were originally much shorter when laws were first established in 1790. The additional time period is due largely to the lobbying efforts of the Disney Corporation as they pushed for additional time from the original laws as they stood to lose millions, if not billions of dollars when the copyright of Walt Disney's work expired. On one hand, it is good to ensure that the author is given responsibility for their work. This has the effect of ensuring that authors are motivated because if their work is not credited to them, then why would anybody want to create new material? But on the other hand, extensively long copyright laws are detrimental for an audience that has to pay extra money or maybe cannot even access information that they want to. All in all, current copyright laws stipulate that a copyright lasts the duration of the author's life plus 70 years. With the many important copyright expiration dates approaching, it will be interesting to see if copyright law's are extended even further.

Copyright Laws and Time by Timothy Nelin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.