CLT visit

I often study in CLT, but I did not know so many resources are available:

3-D printer is mind-boggling. I would spread the word among my engineer and artist friends.

I often need to do the presentation in my club and I would like to check out the wireless microphone for my next presentation.

 the fancy presentation room are available for our use. It's a great place for group study and club meetup.

I could use scanner to digitize my notes in case of losing.

and so many more.

Photo Manipulatioin

I picked a funny photo that made me laugh: Giant whopper hopper in the back of the truck.

The original photo is probably the man being proud of his new truck, but the photographer Frank D amplified the whopper hopper and pasted it in the back of the truck.  The manipulation is for the design of the postcard.

It is not harmful. The obviously exaggerated design is the common method employed by photographer and artist to make a point, or just to make people laugh. It does not infringe anyone's right.

This video depicts the whole process of the manipulating a photo into an artful picture.  This speed art is inspired by the Cartoon film, "Up". This piece is based on the movement of the car from his home town to the another place.  The photo manipulation technology makes visible the fantastical image in mind and thus facilitates the idea sharing.
 

Excel Blog Entry

I learned IF function, absolute and relative cell, chart, how to design the calculation of balance and GPA, and numerous other skills. I am a psychology student and need to take statistic classes in coming semesters. I could imagine many functions in Excel would come into handy.  I find "sort&filter" one of the most helpful function. I no longer have to manually sort the names from A to Z. Besides, after the exercise of GPA calculation, I knew how GPA actually works.  One thing I do not like about program is that the users need to strictly follow the formula, and the emission of a comma or the addition of a space can result in the failure. For example, the failure of the long IF formula we exercised in class is probably due to such minor mistake. Maybe Excel can provide the failure shooter.

Legal and ethical issue of assisted suicde

Situation A
A first-year medical student in California whose personal blog is hosted by a large weblog content provider posts explicit directions on facilitating an assisted suicide in the interest of “serving the rights of competent, terminally ill adults.”  Is this legal? Is it ethical? A teenager in another state who is being treated for depression reads the post and succumbs to a fatal, self-administered overdose of drugs, crediting the blogger for “helping her do it right” in her last note to her family.  Who is responsible for the tragedy?  The teenager herself? The medical student? The weblog content provider for allowing the blog content to be posted? The parents for not monitoring their emotionally fragile child’s Internet access closely enough? What, if any, crime has been committed and who can and should be prosecuted?

Comments:

The assisted suicide is not legalized in California, so if the medical student is judged as "assisting", it's not impossible that he would be found guilty.  But was he really assisting? In the case of "assisted suicide", the "assist" is defined as the consensual help that one offers in response to the suicidal person's request. If the teenager asks medical student for the drug prescription and he consented, then he is assisting. We can imagine another scene; the teenager was searching the keyword "suicide drug prescription", and the blog of the medical student is the first result he saw and tried. In this sense, we can joke that the legal responsibility of the medical student depends more on his karma. This scene is of course just one of many possibilities, but the point is clear:  it is not the information-provider's fault if someone takes the information and uses it for a different purpose. It's the similar reasoning as the maker of a sword cannot be found guilty because the sword is used by someone else as a murder weapon. The medical student is protected under Free Speech Law.

The web provider cannot be blamed either, because the web provider does not hold the responsibility for the individual's act. As it is virtually impossible for parents to monitor everything of his children, parents are not to blame, either.  

It's almost impossible to tell whether medical student's act is ethical. The ethical issue of assist suicide has been hugely debated, and each side has sound reasons, so I would not elaborate on this topic. But I would suggest this medical student and people alike to take account of the potential risk and be careful with the information they provide.

Excel Linda.com

Every video is very clear, conversational, sometimes funny, and nothing is confusing.  I learned some convenient tips for pasting, knew the difference between function and formula and put in the time that changes with current time,etc.

copyright presentation

At April this year, I installed two chairs in the grassy area near the pregnant woman statue for three hours, I sat in one of them while anyone can sit opposite me, and we stare at each other's eyes in our utmost presence. This is the performance art that I made for my art design class, and  it had an unexpected and heartfelt effect on both me and my audiences.  Wait a second? what are you talking about?  Well, I know we the topic is copyright. Just like your reaction, I never associated my performance with the copyright infringement before last EIT class.

This performance art is called Artist is Present, originally performed by Marina Abramovic.  According to law, the copyright law first takes effect over an intellectual work when it is fixed in tangible medium, which pushes me to the verge of copyright infringement. But in my case, it's trick to tell whether I violated the rule or law. While it's virtually impossible to get permission from Marina Abramovic, I have two factors that may justify myself. 

The first factor is whether it's my own content. Everything becomes ambiguous and trick in the art. While the form of my performance art was inspired by and identical with that of Marina, it's largely different. Now I understand why the art professor asked me to write a paper to address differences between mine and Marina's. In that paper, I drew seven sound differences. 

The second factor is whether I am under fair use. Marina's art is a spiritual and educational work, and my intention was the personal experience, in another word, the self-education. The nature of original work and copying is far from profitable. 

Jason commended copyright as the stimulus to the intellectualism,but the confusion of whether an copy is infringement and the strict rule of infringement can prevent people from the experience and learning. For example, if I knew my performance art was on the verge of infringement beforehand, I may re-consider whether to do it and probably missed the profound experience. 

my experience of Copyright by Will Lin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

My Selfie