I was reading Tegan’s blog a couple of weeks ago. She was telling this really interesting story about some friend of hers who had purchased an e-book for his Kindle or Nook or whatever and wanted to lend the book to his wife. But because of the DRM restriction, he was unable to. Then Tegan found for him a, let’s say, non-standard copy of the book. The act of obtaining the pirated copy may have been – OK, almost certainly was – a legal wrong, but Tegan categorized it as a moral right; I found myself agreeing with her assessment.
I know I’ve done similar things for the greater good. The only example that comes to mind involves the purchase of marijuana for a friend’s uncle who was on chemo. This was – the statute of limitations has run out, I’ll put it that way.
Which always brings me back to Dickens: Sometimes, at least, “The law is a ass.”
I always notice when people put the wrong word in an article, such as it’s for its, or effect for affect. I’m not talking typos, I’m talking errors. I’ll admit that, in the past, I might have thought less of that writer. But in a blog post by a very intelligent friend of mine, he used it’s when he meant it’s several times. I wrote to him about this privately, and he replied, “My dear old grammar died when I was very young so I never learned proper punctuation.” I was charmed enough to let it pass.
I’ve found myself unable to create any Best Of lists for the year, best of the music I bought, or movies I’ve seen, for a couple of reasons. 1) I just didn’t buy that much music or see that many movies, and of those I listen to or see, many predated 2010. But, moreover, 2) I’ve lost that ability to remember what music I even bought this year. I wouldn’t know about the movies if I didn’t blog about them. It appears I’ve lost the ability to think about life in 12-month segments.
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When Governor Cuomo (that’d be Andrew, not his father Mario) was giving his State off the State address earlier this month, I was live Facebooking. It was fun. It could be addictive. I’m not likely to do it again any time soon, for that very reason!