I'll miss Gore Vidal. He grew up down the street from where I live now

Authors Guild Wants $750 Per Book Google Scanned

Last week, the Authors Guild requested that a judge order Google to pay $750 per book in penalties for illegal copying of the works it had scanned for its Google Books project. (At 20 million books, that could add up pretty quickly.) The Authors Guild also wants a ruling definitively stating that copying books is not fair use.
$750 is an interesting figure, as Mike Masnick points out on Techdirt that it is actually the minimum statutory damage possible under the law. The Guild would be entitled to ask for up to $150,000 per work, which gets ridiculous pretty quickly. Of course, even $750 per book would total $15,000,000,000—that’s fifteen billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Google insists there is no evidence that its scanning has harmed even a single author, and that it has actually helped many—and that in creating an index rather than making the works available in whole form, it is making a transformative fair use.
Of course, by a strict reading of the law without exception, Google would be in trouble. It doesn’t deny that it did completely copy books that didn’t even belong to it. But the fair use defense exists to allow for uses that would ordinarily be violations but turn out to have beneficial uses that qualify them for exceptions. The crux of this case is whether Google Books qualifies for such an exception.
It kind of reminds me around some of the legal arguments in the early years of cable TV, that I learned about when I was studying broadcasting at college. Cable TV started out as networks of antennas designed to bring broadcast TV to people who lived in valleys that couldn’t get signal, and grew out from there.
And as cable TV operators found money in it, the cable TV operators and the TV station operators each claimed that the other was unfairly benefiting from its own effort: the station owners felt that the cable operators were making money from their content, and the cable operators felt the station owners were leeching a wider viewership from their network build-out. “You should pay us for the use of our stuff!” each side told the other.
To make a long story short, cable TV networks are still around today, no matter how much TV station owners once thought they were unfair. I suspect that Google Books will prove transformative enough that the courts will, eventually, deem it a fair use, at least to some extent.
Authors Guild Wants $750 Per Book Google Scanned is post from The Digital Reader

I love Maine in the summer time

Go placidly amid the noise and haste

                    Bart has a ball that I had to go into the water and get for him


Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Alone
by
Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

She Walks In Beauty

 

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Kenny Rogers in concert

Shepherdstown

We discovered Shepherdstown, which is in the West Virginia panhandle, about three years ago and we go there often, driving out on the weekends.  It’s a college town, filled with interesting and eclectic shops and wonderfully good restaurants of every type.  We go there each Halloween and set up a table and give candy to the kids who parade up and down main street in customs because most of the houses in the area are spaced fairly far apart from one another.   Here’s the web site for that blog http://halloweeninshepherdstownwva.blogspot.com/

Here are some photos of the town

There is an English woman in town who runs two restaurants, this one serve British food and its pretty good, actually. 

This is my favorite place to eat in West Virginia, The Blue Moon Cafe.  It used to be agas station in the 1940s, one of those old fashioned tyoes with the roof over the pumps. It's a great place, the food is very, very good and they play jazz.

                                     Halloween, this guy is a local dentist

There's Mary in the window

Mary and Bart

This a lock on the Potamac River just on the edge of Shepherdstown. In the 1820s, I've forgotten the actual date, Irish workers who were digging the nearby C&O canal, went on strike.   Protestant-Irish workers, who the Irish had underbid for their jobs, attacked the Catholic Irish on the lock. It was a bloody battle, several people were killed. The state doesn;t have a memorial there.    

 

At one point we decided to sell out house in McLean Virginia (about 1 hour and 45 minutes away) and buy this house which came with five acres overlooking the Potomac and was priced much, much, much less than our home in McLean. In the end we back out because the property had just enough problems to scare us off.

Paw Paw tunnel on the C& O canal, built through the center of a Mountain by Irish workers who were promsied $1 for two days work. Most were never paid.

  
From this point you can see West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and a small part of

Pennsylvania.

Life is short, take chances, dream big

Worcester Square (In New England it's WOO-STA)

I used to live in the Worcester Square neighborhood of New Haven Connecticut. In those days it was an old Italian neighborhood with the best Pizza anyway, Pepe's Pizza. I went back there a few years ago and took this picture and although they aren't clear or wonderful in anyway, I take great joy. They remind me of a happy time and place in my past when I was very young.  

This little boy goes to a nearby Catholic school and at the end of the school day he goes to his parents Italian restaurant. I watched his mother make an enormous plate of pasta for him, open up a soda for him and turn on cartoons on the TV for him. He is much loved. And that's really just about all you need, to be loved. Everything else is background noise.  
 

You can be who you want to be

Either

Half the world

A poem

Poetry

Kerouac