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17 August 2010

Zaštita intelektualne svojine u srednjem veku

Pitanje - da li su i kako srednjevekovni autori štitili svoja prava?

Odgovor je zanimljiv - kletvom! Naime, na Got Medieval blogu piše da su mnoge knjige počinjale kletvom poput:

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the one thousand two hundred twenty-ninth year from the incarnation of our Lord, Peter, of all monks the least significant, gave this book to the [Benedictine monastery of the] most blessed martyr, St. Quentin. If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgment the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ili:

Should anyone by craft of any device whatever abstract this book from this place may his soul suffer, in retribution for what he has done, and may his name be erased from the book of the living and not recorded among the Blessed.

Brown is new Green

Pročitajte tekst o VW bubi koja ide na metan proizveden od ljudskih fekalija.

Kad smo već kod ljudskih fekalija, ovde možete pročitati vrlo zanimljiv tekst o ocu Stivena Levita, autora Frikonomiksa, poznatim kao Dr. Fart:

In his 40-year career, Levitt has seen only two patients (both men) who farted upward of 140 times a day, but these extraordinary cases were lactose-intolerant individuals and, once dairy products were cut out of their diets, they returned to the normal range of acceptability. "These two were the biggest farters of my career. One of them complained that his sex life had been ruined by his chronic farting," Levitt says.

Dobar blog

Skrećem pažnju na vrlo zanimljiv blog Market Urbanism, koji se bavi libertarijanskim pristupom temama poput gradskog saobraćaja, parkinga, stanovanja, zemljišne politike i slično. Evo kako autor objašnjava kako je blog nastao:

Growing up in suburban Chicago, I felt there was something inefficient about the land patterns and transportation of the suburbs. When I discovered urbanism in freshman architecture/planning coursework, the concepts made sense, despite the paternalistic bent of the professors who advocated urbanism. Thus, I became conflicted between my urbanist instinct and my free market instinct. Through study and practice of building and infrastructure design and construction, economics, planning, development, and urban economics I came to the realization that our problems with sprawl, congestion, and automobile dependency were the result of socialistic economic planning of our transportation system and land use, not due to market failures as many urbanists proclaim.

Market Urbanism examines how market forces and property rights enable complex, yet vibrant and economically robust communities and regions to emerge through the “spontaneous order” of the land use and transportation marketplace. When left to market forces, as opposed to intervention, land use patterns and transportation systems reflect a society that is economically and environmentally more efficient and just than when imposed in a top-down fashion by government.

Pogledajte sledeće postove - o poreklu podele grada na zone, o mogućem ponovnom uvođenju privatnih autobusa na ulice Njujorka, o sistemima masovnog saobraćaja. A, ako želite da isprobate kako izgleda upravljanje saobraćajem iz perspektive centralnog planera, probajte igricu Gridlock Buster.

Cvrčak i mravi

Nova Vlada Slovačke, sastavljena od reformista sa početka 2000-ih, odbila je da učestvuje u paketu pomoći Grčkoj. Slovačka je desetak godina sprovodila tržišne reforme i ispunjavala uslove za ulazak u evrozonu, dok je Grčka trošila i falsifikovala budžetske podatke da bi prikazala ispunjenje kriterijuma evrozone. Slovačka još uvek ima dosta manji dohodak po stanovniku od Grčke, ali je po planu EU, koji je prihvatila prethodna vlada, trebalo da učestvuje u spasonosnom paketu.

Ova odluka je, prvo, znak zrelosti. Neslaganje sa Briselom znači da je nova vlada očigledno prerasla provincijski kompleks od kojeg neke da-ih-sada-ne-imenujem-ali-svi-znamo-ko-su istočnoevropske zemlje još uvek pate. Ako se zdrav razum kosi sa direktivom iz Brisela, izaberite zdrav razum. Da su toliko pametni, EU političari ne bi na prvom mestu doveli svoje zemlje u dužničke krize.

A drugo, ovakva nova slovačka vlada je sama po sebi dobra vest i još jedan pokazatelj da je severoistok danas najzdraviji deo Evrope. Nije zapadna Evropa, nego Češka, Poljska, a posebno Slovačka i tri baltičke zemlje, primeri na koje se treba ugledati. Zapadni deo EU još održava nekakav standard samo po sili inercije.