Copyright exists to encourage new works. If your judgment, expressed through your selection and arrangement of public domain elements is more than minimal, you can claim a copyright. A book of public domain phrases used to tell a story would be copyrightable. A book of phrases in alphabetical order would not.

I appreciate your continuing engagement in this subject, and your discomfort with being forced to have some sort of insurance. However . . . I imagine the lenders who ate your debits are just as annoyed with bankruptcy as you are at the thought of mandatory heathcare. Why should they be unable to contract for an inescapable debit? Why should you be unable to risk an escapable debit in the form of healthcare bills (if you think that is a good bet)?

Since universal healthcare would help creditors and debitors alike, and since borrowing is a voluntary transaction, would a tax on credit be an acceptably noncoercive way to fund universal healthcare?

I've already started going through old software patents and adding "in the real world" to them. My one-click vending machine should allow me to buy an island.

But what about people who can't afford swimming lessons?

There are actually two types of Americans who say 'smitten': those who become lovestruck and those who play D&D. These groups are mutually exclusive.

It is a huge industry that I understand deals in a widely dispursed form of petty graft. I'd much rather we use our public university system (which is well regarded) to compile text books and withhold state funds from districts that insist on going elsewhere. Of course, we would have to pay the UCs something, but we wouldn't have to pay them enough to bribe local school districts. I think textbooks are a racket all up and down the line, but up through the HS level I have a hard time believing that you need or can even attract top level scholars to explain Algebra II (as someone else mentioned) or the Whiskey Rebelion or TekWar.

Because it claims to do something better than a netbook can. I am slightly eccentric though: I use a watch to tell time, a cellphone to talk and a camera to take pictures. It may seem silly, but there are a lot of people like me.

I'll hold off until they are cheaper though.

You aren't the only one

In LA tickets are about $10 or so, so you're at $120 just going to a completely run of the mill theater. At the Arclight it is $13 or $14, then there is parking, popcorn, drinks. $300 isn't implausible.

I don't think a court would find that this is fair use. Otherwise anyone could download anything so long as they intended to write a review.

I disagree. The humor of "I'm *, you insenstitive clod!" is fairly transparant: it isn't about animus it is about insensitivity (and clodishness).

I try not to make fun of people who suffer from some bizarre and cruel disadvantage because I don't know what it is like to, say, have my family mauled by amok giraffes. If I make a joke about that unfortunate circumstance and someone says "My family was mauled by amok giraffes, you insensitive clod!" the humor is 1) that there is no misfortune so unlikely that someone hasnt' suffered from it and 2) that I really should have known that someone sho suffered such a fate was likely to see their personal trajedy made into a punch line.

I think what makes the invocation of this line from an actual sufferer of the malady when it wouldn't be OK otherwise is that the statement is both true and a punchline and therefore the joker presumably has some insight into the actual amount of hurtfulness that is going to be inflicted (I've given the matter less thought than the length of this post would indicate, so there are likely other reasons as well).

I'd hate to be that woman. In fiction it's Hitchcock but in real life it would be Kafka (unless she is guilty AND works in a cotton swab factory).

The biggest profit you are going to make is manufacturing the drugs that wealthy people need to live in style. $1 a day to alleviate your allargies, $1 a day to keep you from getting pregnant, $1 a day so you can eat what you like and keep your cholesterol in check. There is sim[ly too much low hanging fruit to make highly speculative reasearch an appealing investment.

IANAL either, but . . . You can waive your right to sue by contracting to have any dispute settled by binding arbitration. Even then you can sue, but you have to argue that the contract or arbitration should not be acknowledged by the court before you can sue for them amputating the wrong leg. I suspect that most state medical boards have some ethical prohibition on conditioning care on the patients subsequent behavior (other than litigation and payment), if they don't they should.

Apparently in England there was a sign that said "Welcome to _____________ on ____________, Birthplace of William Shakespeare." Good thing the Nazis didn't have Wikipedia.