‘Reblogging’ on WordPress

WordPress have released a new feature to help their bloggers ‘reblog’ posts that they find interesting. When the ‘like and reblog’ feature was announced at the beginning of June, it caused quite a lot of discussion, with comments ranging from the unreservedly enthusiastic that typically greet all new features to the downright negative accompanied by requests for an opt-out option.

The main problem seems to be one of copyright concerns. The majority of bloggers are not professional writers and don’t realise – or choose to ignore – the fact that, simply put, all writing belongs exclusively to the author or, after his death, to his estate, unless assigned otherwise. Copying and pasting someone else’s text is a form of stealing.

US National Spelling Bee

The BBC website brings news of Anamika Veeramani, a 14-year-old Ohio girl, who has won the annual National Spelling Bee context. The word that gave her victory was Stromuhr.

At the moment of writing, if you do a Google search Define:stromuhr the results page says:

No definitions of stromuhr were found in English

 
The German wikipedia page does have an entry, though, and even a limited knowledge of German leads me to believe it corresponds with the definition found in the Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary:

Journalism and art: a blurred border

Seeing the headline “Election campaign to be captured by official artist” on the BBC website, I clicked through and was slightly surprised to find the story was then titled “Photographer Simon Roberts is official election artist”. The report tells that:

Simon Roberts has been commissioned by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art to document campaigning activity in the run-up to polling day.

 
I suppose photographers are artists, but I had had visions of of someone working with paint or other pigment on paper or canvas; I’d have been less surprised by the use of the word “artist” if it had referred to sculpture or other plastic art, although photography is the most immediate and perhaps most “portable” of the visual arts and therefore most responsive and appropriate for something that is essentially a documentary project.