Donating plasma

My preferred type of gift-giving (considering I don't participate in the typical activities) at this time of year would be blood donation - except that I can only donate blood once every twelve weeks; so today for the first time I gave plasma instead. I can do this every fortnight. I guess I am 3/5 perceived typicality for a plasma donor (Bove, Bednall, Masser, & Buzza, 2011 [behind pay/study-wall]). I have the time available to give... others might find the time if it were recognised as a valid volunteer/participation activity (Is it recognised by Centrelink?).

Blood blitz this Christmas and New Year | Australian Red Cross Blood Service via kwout

I like and believe it is important that, in Australia, blood/plasma/platelets are *donated* (ie not *sold* by the human-producer).

I understand that if production of medicinal products from plasma is not in government hands (would that ever have been an option?) that a commercial enterprise would need to have a profit-motive - and yet I am curious as to the *level* of profit that stands to be made by such commercial enterprise [in Australia I understand this is CSL Biotherapies] from my donation. Can anyone suggest a way to discover that?

Another concern I've discovered stems from a threat to Australia's self-sufficiency in blood-product supplies from the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States of America. I read of this in a 2004 submission from the Australian Red Cross Blood Service to the Australian Government - Where stands that threat now?

What would I think/feel if I found that Australia was importing plasma products from companies who buy plasma from humans (who do not then qualify as "donors")? It seems wrong, although I can't pinpoint why... is it just wrong for Australia to buy what we're not allowed, individually, to sell? I don't want that law to change, but so long as it stands, I think that restriction should be respected in the other direction - that others (government, doctors, companies) in Australia should not be allowed to buy products obtained through payment (or reimbursement) to the original individual human supplier.

Australian Red Cross Blood Service | Do something special, GIVE BLOOD via kwout

Reference:
(Behind pay-wall):

Bove, L. L., Bednall, T., Masser, B., & Buzza, M. (2011). Understanding the plasmapheresis donor in a voluntary, nonremunerated environment. Transfusion, 51(11), 2411-2424. doi:10.1111/j.1537-2995.2011.03168.x

Trip notes going up at family blog

For anyone who might be interested, I've finally got back to actually publishing some of the notes I had jotted on our trip (to Canada and the US back in June/July), over at the family blog Counting Everything. Only four days in so far, the rest will have to wait till assignments are finished for the year.

BBQ like you've never BBQ'd before

Update Feb 2010: I've been informed that George Patterson Y&R were the agency who created this year's poster series for AustraliaDay.org. Hooray :-D I love their VB and LG ads.


BBQ like you've never BBQ'd before
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

Over the weekend, The Courier (Ballarat) displayed an impressive, amusing ad from australiaday.org.au that almost has me planning a BBQ. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good copy of the image anywhere on the Australia Day website, and elsewhere only a scan Viktor Blanke recorded, so my lovely sister scanned the newspaper ad for me.

[Update Australia Day: We did have a BBQ and the boys re-enacted the patriotic advertisement for me]

BBQ for Australia
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

I've been trying to identify the patriotic propaganda image upon which I believe this is based. Something from the Second World War? At first I thought... the image asking women to take up jobs to support Australia's war effort? But then I found that floating image:

Australian Women in War - Logo via kwout

and realised it is not quite the one this is probably inspired by. Can anyone help?

Ah, I searched again and Paul D Wade felt it was "reminiscent of the communist worker posters".

Perhaps like this before it became a mousepad

Or

PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Pop and Propaganda – Chinese posters and Wang Guangyi via kwout

No I'm almost sure I've seen one of a very similar structure, perhaps American?

Can you identify the image this harkens to?

Here is one:

although I'm still sure there are others.

Wondering about Second Life Photography Ethics

Update: 1 April 2010:

Thanks to Ordinal Malaprop, I am now informed that Linden Labs has decreed a Snapshot and Machinima Policy.

Thus if I read it correctly we (although the preamble refers to artists, that term is not defined and the policy itself grants permission to "You", defined as residents who receive permission, so I guess that means anyone with a camera button) are permitted (so long as we first check in land covenant that it does not prohibit snapshots) to capture and use snapshots of anything displayed in-world.

I had to work out how to do that in the new viewer:



In January 2010 I wrote:

Since returning to Second Life I've been searching for whether there are any particular rules or ethical considerations for publishing snapshots taken within SecondLife?

Would Second Life photographers, bloggers, creators, artists who might happen this way leave a comment with their opinions?

Some of my thoughts at this point:

1. Places: there are so many beautiful places, but they are someone's intellectual property... is it permissible to go snapping shots and sending them to Flickr in admiration? Is it actually comparable to taking photos of RL private land and buildings?
   
   • Assuming this is the case, I've begun posting snapshots of my Second Life travels to Flickr.
     
     
   • Today I chatted with Pipsqueak Fiddlesticks whose elegant creativity (her own and her choice and placement of others') at College of DuPage I have recently discovered and admired. I asked, in relation to SL landscape photography: whether the fact that objects are created puts any object in SL in the same category as artworks, which I believe require (or should require) permission before and attribution with publication of snapshots.
     We briefly notioned a scale of the nature of works: from art at one end to journalism at another. Pipsqueak said: "does a painter give credit to the company who made her paint" and "did Ansell Adams credit the creator of mountains?" We agreed though, that even in landscape photography there are times when acknowledging an object creator is courteous: such as if an object (say: a tree) is the focal point of the snapshot.
     
     
2. People: my personal ethics require permission to publish from anyone of whom I take a photo or who may appear in a photo. I know the world at large does not agree, but I wish it would :D --- however this will present a challenge if/when I want to blog about an event with a photo. I spent some time pondering how to achieve getting permission from a group of people. No tidy solutions yet.
   
   • So far no groups, but in 3/4 situations where I wanted other people in my photos I have obtained their permission both for the photo and for the right to post the photo to Flickr. For example:
     
     Cardboard cuppa with Troy Aristocarnas Flickrd with permission.
   
   
   • I admit that I do not recall obtaining permission from Clarissima and Kahuna Schumann to Flickr an image of them giving a concert at Music Island. While I believe it was right to not IM them mid-performance, and probably not right to ask mid-performance? I could have asked the event organiser in IM and if I did do so I have forgotten. Another aspect involved was that I wanted to email to Flickr and didn't want to risk losing the snapshot if I was disconnected while trying to gain permission. I could have saved to disk until I had permission.
   
   
3. Things: I was viewing some wonderful sculptures the other day month... If I were in a RL museum or gallery I believe photos are a no-no. Does that apply in SL? Unresolved at that point I opted not to snap.
   
   • So far I am assuming obtaining permission is the ethical approach. Before taking photos of Ritchey's Sealey's works at his gallery in Second Life I obtained his permission to snap and display at Flickr.
   
   Walking past a "snow gum" (2010). Ritchey Sealy kindly resized Snow Gum so I could try to appear to walk among the gums, and gave permission for Flickring the snapshot.
   • Flickr description: "If you've walked through the Australian bush - Ritchey Sealy's works bring back all the sensations and memories: the heat, the dry dusty air, the prickly scratch of dry grass through sandal or socks, the smell of eucalypt, the bullants. If you're more familiar with our beaches, rocky coast, rivers or hills, Ritchey has captured those sensations too. I am very happy to have discovered Ritchey Sealy's main gallery in Second Life. I've been back a few times, and anticipate repeated visits. Ex-pats: stop by for a touch of home."
   • Interestingly, in the discussion mentioned below, Lem Skall suggested that the limitations on photography in museums may be less about copyright and more about paranoia (effect of light on exhibits, and examination of security measures).
     

Next I'll try to remember to check whether the other person prefers to limit my usual CC attrib-noncommercial-sharealike licence. Indeed I should check that with artists who give permission too.

I really ought to have read more before posting. In relation to contents 1 and 3, there was excellent discussion a couple of years ago stimulated by Bettina Tizzy in her post Proper attribution of images taken in virtual worlds at Not Possible in Real Life. Bettina asked "Where do we draw the line? What is the correct (and legal) way to attribute photography and video shot in virtual worlds?"

In the first few days of that discussion, aspects included:

• who is the artist? - with related issues of copying or the work/skill/talent involved in obtaining a good photograph of another's creation (Zha Ewry) and inspiration (Venk)
  
• who owns the image?
• what are the obligations for attribution?
  
• what are the limits of copyright (Ordinal Malaprop's opinion {expressed before Benjamin had his say} was interesting; as was Solo Mornington's on the rights obtained by purchase, although I don't agree that "come see my land" inherently includes "and take footage of it that you can use for whatever you like")
• is it simply a matter of politeness?
  
• does it ultimately all go to intention and context? (Alpha Auer)
• for example, is it really only an issue if you have a commercial objective (Lem Skall), or hope to make any sort of gain (Alpha Auer and again)? Princess Ivory, referring to the first point above about how with work and modification a piece of art becomes hers, claims commercial gain is irrelevant - ignoring the issue of whether she first had responsibility to obtain permission to make use of someone else's work to make her art.
  
• can we take guidance from the crediting practice in films: credit only those who create specifically for this film? (Zinc)
• similar notions of the scale from journalism to art that Pipsqueak and I touched on (theresecarfagno)
• methods of attribution (Alpha Auer recommends for using tags at Flickr)
• permission is separate to attribution, but here rose the issue of how onerous it would be to gain permission (Lem Skall) although neither law nor ethics read obey unless it is too hard, and as Alpha Auer pointed, if a real life photographer can do it.
  
• Does the different physics/realities between RL photography and SLcomputergraphicdisplay make a difference beyond semantics (A. Hosho thinks so, though his only point about ethics is in relation to "found art" & modification in relation to which Alpha Auer points out that SL prims are not in the public domain.)
• The Linden Labs Terms of Service (TOS) was quoted at length by A.Hosho; although it did not seem to me to support his? point of view: it gave creators intellectual property rights (but not data ownership) limited only by licence to Linden Labs to use creations at their discretion in or out-world and to other users of Second Life "to use your Content for all purposes within the Service". Within, not outside the service.
  

However, eventually a "legal mind" Benjamin Duranske took the legal thread over to his blog suggesting that attribution is irrelevant, and that copyright includes rights over derivative works and thus requires permission. Lem Skall suggested there that when SL photography is transformative (a term that I gather from his quote of wikipedia arose in a decision not in the Act, and which might be a fair use) rather than derivative then copyright is not breached. A word Lem did not highlight from that quote is aims - with which the wikipedia article identifies the purpose (particularly commercial) as a key issue. That article also suggests that if claiming fair use in this way the onus is on the creator of secondary work to "demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new".

Although Kean Kelly at Dreambits: claimed the discussion was about greed & profits I disagree - it was intended and remained mostly about acknowledgement, credit, recognition.

Please readers: help guide my ethical conduct :-D

Articulate: Magellan Strait

Alex and I trounced Div and Luke at Articulate twice last night.

And yet there were many things (particularly world and people) that none of us could describe well enough for others to recognise. So now I (and future team members) have a new curriculum!

Study for today is the Strait of Magellan:

Rounding Cape Horn via kwout

Wikipedia mentions that "it is considered a difficult route to navigate because of the unpredictable winds and currents and the narrowness of the passage."

Did you notice the mention of Francis Drake in the kwout above? He was one of the people the boys could not describe, I'll be checking my own possible memories about him another time. For now, an image of the Portuguese explorer after whom the strait is named:

Ferdinand Magellan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Ah that's why we can't vote online

(While I continue to pin new interesting posts through Bloglines I've decided to start unpinning some of the old ones by reflecting on why I wanted to keep it)

Gee, this one I've had since April last year! It caught my eye because I've often thought that automating vote-counting would be nifty. But as Cheilla pointed out (in the summary she tabled and her teacher shared online) as voting is supposed to be anonymous in the online environment protecting anonymity is not compatible with preventing (or detecting and identifying) fraud.

exon & copyright

In my efforts to learn these little words (not to stave off dementia, or become more clever, but because I want more versality to achieve better scores in word games) I've built on dictionary searches with image searches.

Today I found an excellent image that helps me see and remember what an exon is (and learned more about gene structure and splicing along the way). I'd like to share it using kwout, but that image was closely marked with a copyright notice and it prompted me to reconsider whether the link and reference to source provided by kwout is enough to abide copyright law?

Lessons I learned at school and uni about 10% for study and citing references I'm sure don't come close, and I was never sure about use of others' images or diagrams for school assignments.

How does it work here? As yet I'm not sure. Let me track the places I stopped to think:

The first article I discovered by Wesley Fryer was interesting (he cited a YouTube video Privacy Issues, Photos, and the Internet, and discussed how not to make the mistakes that were made in the Chang case) but not quite what I need.

However Wes' Winter 2003 article in TechEdge, “Copyright 101 for Educators” could be more informative. First point to stand out:

Tools for the TEKS: Integrating Technology in the Classroom via kwout

His description of fair use seemed relevant and similar to what I've read before on copyright in Australia, but then I realised I needed to access Australian information.... so:

Australian Copyright Council Information...

Apparently, copyright material might, in some very specific situations, be used without permission...

Aside from the circumstances for libraries, educational institutions and government there is fair dealing (summary of which I kwout from wikipedia instead of the Australian Copyright Council because I could only find it in pdf at ACC)

Fair dealing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Important subsequent points were that

• "each and every such use for research or study must be evaluated individually to determine whether it is fair";
  
• "Among the criteria used to determine the fairness of a use are the purpose and character of the dealing, the nature of the work, the possibility of obtaining the work commercially within a reasonable time, the effect of the use on the potential market for the work or on its value, and how much of a work is copied.";
  
• "There is no special exception that allows you to use a work without permission just because it is used for a nonprofit purpose."
  

Hm, so maybe I could print a copy of diagrams or images for me or my children to study, but: even if kwout links to the source, the act of internet re-publishing (even by a tiny blog with a known readership of two [including me]) an image which does not have an appropriate Creative Commons licence would seem to be in breach of copyright.

I'm looking forward to the Copyright unit I'll be taking in July.

So, in the meantime, as I've not heard back from the source, I'm going to avoid the risk and not kwout the copyrighted sketch of an exon.

But then there was another image - a 3d colour image that was interesting if not particularly explanatory... it had no copyright notice; but being hypersensitive now I won't post that one either because it didn't have a CC license.

So, all I'm left with is words:

Exon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

plew or plu

plew - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Beaver Plew, From Discovering Lewis & Clark™ via kwout

mon

Mon people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Vocab: ANOA

So, my latest research to nibble away at the enormous wealth of words I don't know yet:

ANOA:

anoa: Definition and Much More from Answers.com via kwout

Flickr tells me that I could see one if I plan a visit to the San Diego Zoo or Zoo Leipzig.

Vocab: toea

Today, I learn: toea: 100 toea equal 1 kina in Papua New Guinea.

Again, an image search was useful too:

Scenarios for Internet Ethics

Thanks to my Bloglines account, and Francey from Gargoyles Loose in the Library, I now have a bunch of new scenarios to raise when discussing internet issues with my boys.

Our local library gave us material from the government's initiative to promote internet safety (can't remember what it is called), which didn't really address anything we hadn't already discussed ... but finding the material prompted a refresher discussion in a timely way for our exploration of Silkroad (about which more later, right now I want to PLAY).

IT goddesses

If I'd had daughters instead of sons, this calendar would be my first purchase.



I love the eye catching way it "smashes through perceptions of geeky technologists", and in the process aims to:

# Raise awareness of the diversity of Women in IT
# Raise money for non profit groups that run initiatives to encourage females to take up technology studies and to enter technology careers