That made me miss Tim Hunter.

Neil Gaiman? Not an ass, and one can read his non-fiction with relaxation and ease.

Just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

Seen the movie a dozen times, but never read the book.

Sigh.

I do love that book. I first read it for Book Club in 7th grade (it was the favorite book of Mr. Clarke, the club's moderator), and saw the movie soon after.

It's one of the best movie adaptations ever, IMO. There was an additional scene added for the movie that I truly love, though--when Scout and Jem are laying in bed and Scout asks about their mother, all while Atticus sits on the porch and listens to them. So touching!

Isn't it wonderful? "Scout, stand up. Your daddy is passing by."

I'm sitting here wanting to cry because the scene where Scout finally sees Boo in Jem's room keeps coming to mind. The look on her face when she finally saw him, "Hey, Boo."

Honey, I've changed my mind. Next girl we have is being named Jean Louise.

Mary Badham was so incredible in that movie.

Gregory Peck had a story he loved to tell about the first day of filming... Harper Lee was on the set, sitting quietly and watching those first bits of film roll, and after his very first appearance as Atticus (walking across the porch or down the walk or some such minor bit of business) he noticed that she was puddling up. "Are you all right, Miss Lee?" he asked, thinking Damn, I'm good! Check me out!

And she said through her tears, "Oh, Mister Peck, it's just... you have a nice little potbelly just like my daddy did!"

Bwahahaha!!

OSC than I say that they see a lot of sublimated homosexual subtext in his writing.

OOOhhhh yeah. With a heaping helping of pedophila. The book about the golden-haired boy singer made me really worry if being Mormon was causing OSC to repress a little too much.

OSC was being sarcastic, saying that anyone can claim anything is plagerism. Gaiman, who I always thought did get a bit plagarized (Harry Potter is lots like Tim Hunter), seems to be taking the high road and being quite decent about it all.

I think mostly it's just that JKR is astronomically rich, and seems to be beating someone up for money. The fact that that someone is a fan makes it worse.

I think mostly it's just that JKR is astronomically rich, and seems to be beating someone up for money. The fact that that someone is a fan makes it worse.

Well the fan in question seems to be a major league asshole. Took a lot of peoples work and a (claimed) non-profit site and turned it into a for-profit exercise. The other end of that stick is that lexicons are one area where "Fair use" really does including really large amounts of source material. The law on this I don't know. Gaiman seems to think it a legal grey area. My position is that grey areas in copyright law should generally be settled in terms of putting things into public domain. Creative work builds on other creative work. The more we shrink the creative commons the more we slow the long term ability to progress technically or artistically.

Copyright is a lot more rigorous than in was in 1968. Real compensation for most artists has not noticeably increased . I don't think the rate of artistic and technical innovation has increased either. Not that we have not had a lot of innovation. But I don't think strengthening copyright law accelerated it in any way. (To be clear I don't think anything accelerated. We are not progressing any faster than in 1968; progress continued; the rate of change did not increase.)