Thursday, June 14, 2012

Philosophy

I may have missed my calling in life...

I read an article about East-Asian philosophy and how it's generally ignored by western philosophers.  Of course that got me on a trek to find a book on Korean philosophy written in Korean.  I still haven't succeeded but I will keep searching till I find one.  I kind of wish I had studied philosophy in school.  Of course now that I'm looking into East-Asian philosophy I see how lacking my understanding of western philosophy is.  I took a class on ethics in college and that only whet my appetite for understanding philosophy.

Honestly I don't really know where to start.  I really want to take a class on philosophy especially eastern philosophy.  I think I might try finding an iTunes U channel on philosophy.  I also need to find a good philosophy book, I've kind of gone digital when it comes to reading (don't get me wrong, I love the feel of a good paperbound book sometimes but eBooks are just so convenient.

I don't usually ask for comments... but anyone reading this have any ideas/suggestions for good teach-yourself philosophy books/sources?

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Call Guinness Book of World Records!

I have officially blogged two days in a row!

You want to know what's on my mind today?  Well, if you're reading this I assume you care...  I HATE copyright law.  No offense if any of you work in that field I'm sure you can look yourself in the mirror every night after putting in a hard day's work squelching creative thought.  I'm exaggerating of course, but seriously.  The reason I've been thinking about this all day is an article we read (in Korean cir 2010) about the Korean version of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) suing Starbucks for not paying royalties.  The defense (according to the article) was that they had a contract with the American copyright company which is where the music came from so there shouldn't be any issue.  Well, apparently the court ruled in favor of the copyright company.

Then after reading the article I looked into some other examples in the US.  Apparently I was previously mistaken.  I thought that as long as you didn't have a certain number of people attend you could charge admission without having to pay royalties.  According to some of the web forums I've researched basically boil down to: if you buy a movie or song for private home use, you cannot show, watch or listen to that entertainment with anyone but your own family.  Which is disconcerting because we just bought an awesome home projector/home entertainment system and we were hoping to host many a fun movie night in our home.