Sleepy linkspam

[next_to_normal]

You guys. I have been super-tired lately, partly because I've been super-busy at work. So last night I was falling asleep on the sofa at, like, 8:30 and I was like, "Maybe instead of sleeping on the sofa, I should just go to bed? EVEN THOUGH IT'S ONLY 8:30." So I did. And I figured I'd be up at 4am or something and be wide awake. NOPE. I slept until my alarm went off at 7:30 the next morning. I SLEPT ELEVEN HOURS. And I am still tired.

Anyway.

* I've never read Flowers in the Attic, but I am excited to see Kiernan Shipka getting work outside of Mad Men.

* Laura Prepon will be a much smaller part of Orange is the New Black in season 2. I don't dislike Prepon or anything, but I don't think this is a bad thing. AT ALL.

* I love this article on its own merits - an attempt to determine the greatest musical ever - but I especially love it for the way that professional writers and legit theater people are agonizing over these choices and basically approaching the entire thing like fangirls on the internet choosing their favorite episode of Buffy. "Green: So let’s each pick six. Ephron: That’s impossible! Oh. I feel such pain when I get to 4, 5, and 6." And then: "Wolfe: I cannot live with that. I can’t live with West Side Story not being among the finalists." Also, now I want to sit and think about what my favorite musicals have in common (er, high body counts?) and what that says about me... (uh...)

* Rob Reiner did a sort of live commentary on The Princess Bride. I had no idea there were people inside the ROUSes!

* A very excellent and thought-provoking argument against the Strong Female Character. It pretty much NAILS what bothered me about Peggy Carter in Captain America, which I could never quite put my finger on (and why I'm eager to see the Agent Carter short in which she's the star, not Cap).

* Here's a look at why Agents of SHIELD needs to succeed and why that might be a challenge.

* An interesting examination of the clone science in Orphan Black and its real-world relevance.

* LMAO! South Korea basically made shippy Sherlock/Watson vids as actual ads for the actual show Sherlock. IT IS HILARIOUS.

Comments

[owenthurman]

Nobody seems to remember the ages of the Orphan Black characters. They're in their mid twenties.

Patents last for twenty years in the USA and -- I believe -- Canada. Twenty-odd years ago, they lasted for seventeen years.

So Cosima and Sarah and Alison have been in the public domain for years already.

---

That Sherlock/Watson video is so very Korean, isn't it?

[next_to_normal]

Well, it also skips over the fact that the DNA sequence Cosima decoded wouldn't actually be legally binding - they'd still have to file the paperwork with the USPTO (or the Canadian equivalent) for it to be a legitimate patent. We don't know when (or if) that paperwork was filed.

And more importantly, it ignores this part of the definition: a patent grants exclusivity in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted. Given all the secrecy around the clones, I think it's safe to say that public disclosure DIDN'T happen.

The precise legal terms of the hypothetical clone patent are kind of beside the point. It's the questions it raises about personhood and autonomy and who owns women's bodies (which, as Tatiana Maslany has mentioned, have a lot of current parallels with women's reproductive rights issues) that are really compelling. As the article states, "How much should biology, and a person in particular, really belong to a company[?] What even constitutes a person? Orphan Black poses these questions in a real life climate with a constantly changing idea of what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of ownership of biology."