The Austringer

Congress has decided to consider bills in the House and the Senate to limit copyright remedies in the case of “orphan works”. There are loads of works that are created and somehow their distribution gets ahead of the credit that links them to their creator. Under current copyright law, prospective users have to demonstrate permission to use all created works, else they risk large liabilities when the creator of the work sues them for infringement. The new legislation aims to limit the liabilities that users of copyrighted works run when they incorporate “orphan works” — that is, copyrighted materials whose owners are not obvious — into their own works or derive new works from those.

The Senate Bill is online. There are a number of issues in the bill, but the following part looks to give infringers way too much latitude:

‘(e) Copyright for Derivative Works and Compilations- Notwithstanding section 103(a), an infringer who qualifies for the limitation on remedies afforded by this section shall not be denied copyright protection in a compilation or derivative work on the basis that such compilation or derivative work employs preexisting material that has been used unlawfully under this section.

The proposed legislation makes it such that a creator of a work must go to greater lengths to protect their work. Currently, all created works are assumed to have strong protection and users must justify all uses. Under the new legislation, unless the link between creator and created work is officially registered, an infringer can use whatever comes to hand and the creator of the work can only seek “reasonable” rates for use of the work, if the infringer is in the commercial sphere, and will be completely out of luck if the infringer can claim educational or religious use of the work. The new legislation burdens creators to spend time and money on administrative trivia simply to protect what is, under current law, already theirs. When infringement happens, and the new legislation is aimed at making sure it does, the creator cannot even expect to be compensated for the costs of taking up a claim through the legal process. Creators have to rely on the good faith of infringers to engage in negotiations to determine compensation for use; if they are forced to go to court, infringers are almost certain to be able to force creators to spend more on lawyers and court costs than the limited “reasonable” rates for use of the work will put at issue. And you may be sure that the creators are going to include a mass of people who have casually created works that are infringed by corporate interests with plenty of legal talent either on retainer or on staff.

For those who want to make themselves heard arguing against these bills, here is a site for sending email to your Congressmen and Senators.

An article talks about a falconer’s Harris’s hawk that got loose in the vicinity of the Lavender Pond Nature Reserve in the United Kingdom. It apparently interacted with people on the grounds of the reserve, going so far as to eat peanuts being tossed to squirrels. Why it wasn’t simply grabbing the squirrels and eating them, I have no idea, save that captive-bred HHs don’t always do what seems reasonable. The last sentence says that the falconer returned a few days later to get his bird.

There’s a picture that ran with the story. It shows a HH in a tree. One can clearly see that it has jesses on. What’s less clear is that toward the bottom of the frame, it looks like the jesses come together and may be connected by a piece of metal, which here in the USA would likely be some type of clip or swivel, used to go between the jesses and a leash of some sort. The article is not clear about whether the picture is a stock photo or whether it is a picture of the peregrinating HH herself. However, a loose HH with jesses somehow tied together is in grave danger of getting that loop entangled on some projecting object and getting stuck in place. That usually means starvation or becoming the prey of some other predator. Raptors tend not to be vocal when in compromised condition, and they also tend to blend into foliage, so if they get stuck somewhere, they aren’t likely to respond to calls and will be tough to see. So if you see a bird of prey with looped jesses, the situation is serious. Calling your relevant wildlife officials wherever you are is a good first step.

Remember the Brunswick County (North Carolina) School Board and their stated intention to see about inserting creationism into the science curriculum? Apparently, they’ve gotten the word that what they proposed has a legal history, and is unconstitutional.

Remember how I said it could come to pass that antievolution advocates might contact board members and try to reform their statements to come into line with current labels for religious antievolution? Well, it looks like someone has suddenly had a complete reorientation of their rhetorical approach, but it was the citizen who urged the board to incorporate creationism, Joel Fanti.

Fanti said he learned about the court cases after addressing the board and now thinks the idea of teaching creationism as part of the curriculum will be crushed. But he plans to ask the school board to encourage “evolutionists” in the schools to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their theory.

“Instead of making it a religious issue, let’s make it a scientific issue,” said Fanti, who identifies himself as a chemical engineer.

What are the odds that Fanti would suddenly come up with and adhere to the current DI talking points all on his own? Coincidence? Or will we see Fanti urging the board at the next meeting to adopt either “Explore Evolution” or “The Design of Life” as supplemental texts for the science curriculum? Stay tuned… we should know something more after the October 21st school board meeting.

Nor can Fanti dispose of the religious freight the arguments that he apparently would prefer as “weaknesses” carry.

The Supreme Court decision in Stone v. Graham will likely play a role in a future case over the latest re-labelings of religious antievolution. Part of the reasoning there was this:

The preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature.

The ensemble of arguments advanced as “weaknesses” or as “scientific information” under the misused “academic freedom” label is simply a subset of the old, tired, bogus religious antievolution that we’ve seen for decades if not longer. The preeminent purpose in pushing those as part of a science curriculum will never be secular, as teaching students falsehoods serves no secular purpose. One cannot “make it a scientific issue” when all one has is the same old false information presented under a new label, without scientific credibility or accountability.

Hat tip to John Pieret.

Sarah Palin’s approval rating dropped recently. How much? Well, that may be a matter of some discussion.

The Political Wire blog puts it like this:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s favorable/unfavorable ratings have suffered a stunning 21 point collapse in just one week, according to Research 2000 polling. Last week, 52% approved and 35% disapproved of the GOP vice presidential nominee (+17 net). This week, 42% approved and 46% disapprove (-4 net).

I’m certainly among those who would have been in the 35% last week and the 46% this week if anyone had bothered to poll me. But I have an issue with that “21 point collapse” figure. The problem is that while we are given poll percentages as our basic data, the net points, as they are called, are from a different scale. If someone had a 100% approval rating on one poll and somehow completely disgraced themselves and earned a 100% disapproval rating on the next, the net points tally would be -200. The net points count every person’s opinion twice, as it were, and thus don’t correspond to how the casual reader will first take the message that Sarah Palin’s approval rating took a 21 point tumble. At least, I was expecting far more dramatic changes in the percentage scores based on that first number presented.

How could the original statement be altered to make it correct? That’s rather simple.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s favorable/unfavorable ratings have suffered a stunning 21 out of 200 possible net point collapse in just one week, according to Research 2000 polling. Last week, 52% approved and 35% disapproved of the GOP vice presidential nominee (+17 net). This week, 42% approved and 46% disapprove (-4 net).

As it is, based on the percentage numbers, the net change from one week to the next was that 10% of the poll respondents became disapprovers of Palin, and apparently 1% of the poll respondents undecided about whether to approve or disapprove of Palin shifted to disapproving of her, though that last is beneath the usual stated resolution of such polling techniques and should not be relied on. But we don’t need smoky, mirrory math to describe that. One can find a real number that comes close to the 21 net points number, and that is in what proportion of Palin’s former approvers have jumped ship to disapproving of her: that’s a loss of 19% of Palin’s former approvers, as 10/52*100. That is a serious alteration of the political landscape. We could even call it stunning and not be relying on a technique illuminated in the classic, “How to Lie with Statistics”.

Last Saturday, there was a “Frontiers of Science” workshop led by Rob Pennock. This was part of a series of workshops given for secondary school science teachers on science topics, and Prof. Pennock took up effective lab instruction in evolutionary science as his topic. The featured subject was use of the Avida-ED software platform as a means of giving students an interactive laboratory experience in which they can observe an instance of evolution occurring as they watch.

The late dearth of posts was due to getting prepared for this workshop. Part of my tasks included the creation of a new lesson plan for use with Avida-ED to be given its first outing at the workshop. This took up the misconception that fitness is some property inherent to an individual, but must instead be thought of as a property that is defined relative to the conditions of its environment. Rob assigned me to lead the workshop on this new lesson plan. There were both good points and some procedural difficulties encountered, but overall it was well-received, and at least one attendee expressed her intention to use the lesson plan for her class. I’ll be modifying the lesson plan to incorporate improvements based on the experience.

In making introductions of workshop participants, many of the teachers expressed the concern that they quite often encounter students or parents who have the idea that evolution demands that one must choose between faith and science, either rejecting evolutionary science and accepting faith, or accepting evolutionary science and rejecting faith. In some instances, teachers related that they’ve told students to inquire of their pastors what their denomination’s stance is on the matter. For many students attending mainstream Christian denominations, they are told that their denomination does not hold to the “conflict model” so effectively sold by religious antievolutionists, and they can study without fear that they are somehow going against their church by learning the material.

For any science teachers tuning in now, you should be aware of the Clergy Letter Project and its message from over 11,000 Christian clergy that says that one can have a vital faith and not dismiss evolutionary science.

Not long following the Brunswick County School Board announcing plans to get intimate with creationism, there is a report that the state officials have clarified for BCSB and its counsel that, yes, the 1987 Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard put paid to notions that evolution could be balanced with creationism in the classroom. It would still be reasonable to keep tabs on future meetings of the BCSB to make sure the history lesson is absorbed.

I suspect an editor at the Miami Herald didn’t get the picture from Cammy Clark’s report on Jennifer Lewis’s research on bottlenose dolphins, for it appears with the headline, “Dolphin researcher’s method decried as `cruel’”. Well, yeah, if you look hard enough for people ignorant enough, you can get that sort of reaction. It doesn’t seem like something a responsible journalist would do to saddle a solid article with an irresponsible yellow headline like that, but it does sound like something a partisan at the paper might do to a perfectly reasonable news story.

Lewis is using a procedure for biopsy acquisition developed by Richard H. Lambertsen in the 1980s. (The paper is one of the earliest that I assisted in the production of.)

Richard H. Lambertsen. 1987. A Biopsy System for Large Whales and Its Use for Cytogenetics. Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 68, No. 2 (May, 1987), pp. 443-445.

The problem with Lewis’s procedure is that she is apparently collecting biopsy specimens from dolphins in view of people with misplaced sensitivities.

But the sight of someone shooting icons of cute nature is too frightening for many in the Keys, triggering debate.

”This is cruel,” said Sheri Sullenger, founder of the Florida Keys Wild Dolphin Alliance. “They could become infected and even die. And the dolphins appear like they are being hunted, and are starting to change their behavior.”

Clark’s report addresses Sullenger’s assertion.

Biopsies have the potential to harm or kill, said Keith Mullen, marine mammal program manager at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in St. Petersburg and the person overseeing Lewis’ work under the federal permit.

”But done safely with training, the risk is very minimal,” Mullen said.

He said he knows of only one documented case in which a dolphin died after a biopsy sample was taken by a crossbow: in 2000, in the Mediterranean Sea.

”It’s amazing how quickly they heal,” Mase said. “They are adapted to recovering from shark bites.”

They could become infected, sure, but the risk, as shown by decades of practice, is pretty darn low.

”We have happy, healthy dolphins,” said Donna Fielder, who runs Captain Seaweed Charters. “If we were having sick or injured dolphins, and they were showing up dead and we didn’t understand what was going on, then absolutely come in and do the research to assist in solving the problem.”

I’m sorry, Ms. Fielder, but you have no clue about the health status of the dolphins in the area. You may see dolphins doing what you perceive as cavorting, but on the one hand that doesn’t even guarantee that those dolphins have the health status that you assign, and on the other it does not speak to a population’s health status. Purposely remaining ignorant until after a mass stranding is, well, idiocy.

Again, Clark’s report has the relevant rejoinder within it.

”People in the Keys are emotional about the dolphins and sometimes it’s hard for them to understand the science,” said Blair Mase, Southeast Stranding Coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries. “They don’t want any harm to come to them, and neither do we. But the amount of information we gain is so valuable to help us protect them better.”

So, why would the editorial staff undo the careful research of Clark with the inflammatory and pandering-to-the-ignorant headline they chose? It’s a mystery.

Given the comment on my earlier thread pointing out a surgical alternative to use of CPAP machinery, I’ve been doing some looking into treatment of obstructive airway syndrome (OAS). This evening, I came across another alternative, oral appliances (OAs). These are structures applied in the mouth that are supposed to provide an open airway mechanically, but without the need for a power supply, as CPAP devices require. OAs apparently don’t have as much research behind them as either CPAP or surgery, but it’s a good thing to have some acquaintance with the options before spending one’s limited time in conference with one’s physician. That way, discussion can move on to more substantive issues related to personal treatment rather than being taken up with the physician giving tutorial information about methods.

A panorama, that is.

Given the pitiful wages that postdocs and adjunct faculty earn, the debt accrued through grad school for two, the further problems that my medical issues have caused to our finances, and the rapidly rising cost of living, we need to sell our trailer so we can take down some of the debt. In order to further that cause, we gave the interior a thorough cleaning in preparation for taking pictures. My previous experimentation with the Hugin panorama tool made me confident that I could do a 360 degree panorama to show most of the stuff in the trailer. And here is the first one:

And another, with the beds raised:

And another, configured for cargo (”toy”) hauling:

Hand-holding the camera for panorama stitching wasn’t completely satisfactory, so I looked into panorama heads. These are devices that allow you to mount a camera and lens such that the whole apparatus rotates around an axis that passes through the nodal point of the lens. When that happens, things that were in alignment in foreground and background remain in alignment. Unfortunately, panorama heads start at about $80 and quickly run up to a couple of grand. The device at the low end of the scale, the Panosaurus, seems reasonably engineered. There are, of course, things one doesn’t get that the more expensive heads deliver. However, even $80 is out of my budget at the moment. In making my online searches, though, I came across a cheaper alternative: do-it-yourself. I spec’d out the materials, and my father-in-law Sam sprang for the parts: 48″ of 1×4″ oak, 1/4-20 insert nuts, washers, and wingnuts. From that $16 purchase, I’m putting together two homemade panorama heads and will ship one to Sam.

The homemade job doesn’t offer adjustments like the commercial heads do, but if one is careful in measuring where the lens nodal point lies and physical dimensions involving the camera/lens combination, one can get good performance out of the setup. The trailer panorama was made with the homemade head, and Hugin reported a mean alignment error of 0.6 pixels, maximum 20.6 pixels, and pronounced the fit “very good”. There were a total of 19 pictures aligned and stitched to make that panorama. I also used the Qtpfsgui HDR software, so each of the 19 pictures is actually derived from three separate bracketed exposures that were tonemapped using the same settings. The one thing that I didn’t nail down that I should have was the white balance used; you can see that the auto white balance thought the cabinets on one side of the trailer were slightly different in color from those on the other side.

Now, on the slim chance that anybody reading this is looking for a trailer, here’s the summary. The trailer is a 2006 model Northwood Desert Fox SW-21. That’s a 21-foot “toy hauler” model bumper-pull trailer, total length of about 25′ from hitch to rear end. It has a bathroom with shower and tiny tub, refrigerator (propane and electric, with automatic switchover), gas oven and range, microwave oven, two beds with electric lift, 4 kilowatt Onan generator, gas tank and pump, central heat and air-conditioning, and completely enclosed tanks for water and wastewater. Besides the two queen-sized bed mattresses, the dinette bench seats fold to make another bed, and the couch seat folds to make another. This model has insulation and the tank enclosure for all-weather use; if the heater is run to keep the interior warm, it also keeps the plumbing from freezing. Diane got this model trailer in order to have a place in the field in Wyoming where she was doing research back in February through April, 2006, and it worked fine through the cold weather there. We’ve used the trailer as a guest room for company and an emergency shelter for times when the electricity has gone out at the house we’re renting in addition to trips to places where we’ve dry-camped. For those unfamiliar with the toy-hauler concept, this trailer’s basic reason for being was to transport one or two “toys”: motorcycles, dune buggy, ATVs, etc., to a place where the toy could be used in the great outdoors, and while on the spot, provide a place to sleep and cook meals. The back of the trailer is a large ramp that folds down, permitting the “toy” to be loaded in and taken out. One reason I like this design is that it has a high roof; I don’t feel like I’m going to bump the top of my 6′ 3″ frame into the ceiling while moving around inside. We don’t have “toys” of the sort that the trailer was intended to carry, but the floor comes equipped with a number of internal tie-down points for securing a load from shifting around. We use a 2005 Ford E-350 one-ton van to tow the trailer, which it does fine with a weight-distributing hitch. We’d consider selling the van and trailer as a complete package. We’re looking to get Blue Book value on the trailer or both. We’ll toss in the macerator pump with the trailer; that’s a handy device for being able to dump the blackwater tank through an ordinary garden hose to either a distant dump station or septic system standpipe. [Other features that I missed initially: indoor/outdoor stereo system with AM/FM radio and CD player, bedside light and stereo power switches, roll-up awning, 6 gallon capacity propane gas water heater, kitchen sink, bathroom sink, carries two propane tanks, two 12V deep discharge batteries, exterior light with switch by electrical and water hookups, outside shower, and space for a bar-be-que. We never got the bar-be-que, but I'm sure that could be high on someone else's list of amenities to acquire.]

Having the van and trailer got us to a campsite in the Smoky Mountains where I could get this picture of Ritka:

And here are a couple of pictures of the rig on the road.

A report in the Wilmington (NC) Star-News recounts interaction at the meeting of the Brunswick County School Board. It’s the same old religious antievolution.

When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom.

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.

Please, please, Brunswick School Board, if you do go ahead with this plan, do have it taught by Joel Fanti. I really have a desire to see Mr. Fanti cross-examined by Eric Rothschild or Steven Harvey.

Besides the school board members all being in favor in sticking religious antievolution into the classroom, the report classes their legal advisor among the incompetent:

Board attorney Joseph Causey said it might be possible for the board to add creationism to the curriculum if it doesn’t replace the teaching of evolution.

Unless Joseph Causey just stepped out of a time machine bringing him to the present directly from, oh, 1986 or before, no, one cannot simply add creationism to the curriculum. That was the basis of “equal time” and “balanced treatment” labels for religious antievolution arguments, and those had local failures in court from 1975 to 1982, and the 1987 Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard quite clearly said “no” to inclusion of creationism.

Now, we might predict some outcomes in the case of the Brunswick County School Board’s consideration of creationism as a way to waste time in science classes there. Maybe Joseph Causey, Esquire will either buy or otherwise acquire a clue, and inform the board that what they are considering has been considered unconstitutional for over two decades. That could do the trick. If they check their insurance, they’ll likely be informed that attempting to defend creationism in the courtroom will not be covered by any provision of their insurance policy. However, we aren’t talking about these folks doing this in a vacuum. If I got the notice of this report, the Discovery Institute won’t be far behind, and is likely to be on the phone with one or more of the school board members posthaste. This is the sort of opportunity the DI doesn’t often miss having a go at. What we might see in that case is a sudden alteration of the rhetoric being spouted from advocacy of creationism to one of the trendier labels currently being pushed by the DI, either “academic freedom”, “critical analysis”, or “strengths and weaknesses” heading the list. Since it is a school board, I’d say that there may be a slight preference for “strengths and weaknesses”. “Academic freedom” seems to be what the DI offers to state legislatures so as to remove the possibility of a facial challenge to a law. So, come October 21st, we’ll see whether the Brunswick County School Board managed to get wise in the interim, or get taken by deceptionists looking to peddle the same old religious antievolution arguments under a different label.

If they do try the path of deception, I’ll note that judges seem not to take kindly to people trying to skirt rulings. The 1987 Supreme Court decision had already identified the essential untruth behind the urge to re-label what was plainly a religious doctrine, calling it a sham. The 2005 decision in the Kitzmiller v. DASD case cited that specifically, and noted the personal falsehood-telling ways of various principal actors on that school board as they tried to morph from being “creationism” advocates to being ‘intelligent design” advocates. The record caught up with them, and their strategies to deny the past failed.

OK, Brunswick County School Board, what you have said so far has been noted. I’m going to drop the reporter a note to make sure the documentation is preserved, so that there won’t be the unseemly behavior that we were treated to in 2005, when the Dover School Board advocates asserted that the multiple reporters who quoted them saying “creationism” must have invented it all. No, teaching creationism and evolutionary science doesn’t make everything peachy; that’s over twenty years out of date. Science is taught to students because it is important for them to know. Religious doctrines are not taught to public school students, because religious instruction should be a matter for parents to determine, not buttinsky school boards.