Four For Friday - 12 September

Q1 - Food in Class: A friend reports that while waiting for his college course on Cross-Cultural Communications to start, a co-ed sat next to him and started eating her lunch (chicken-friend steak and mashed potatoes with a very strong aroma). Do you feel it's appropriate to bring your lunch to a college or university class and eat during the lecture/discussion? Would you personally do this?

I'd say no and that this inappropriate. Especially a meal. It's one thing to be diabetic and need to manage one's meals and bring an apple (well, maybe not something so crunchy) or a nutrigrain bar or something small and snack-like to keep the blood sugar where it should be until such time as one can eat a full meal. But classtime is just that: classtime.

Q2 - Publishing: A federal judge this week ruled against Steven Vander Ark, and U.S. author who was seeking to publish an encyclopedia about the Harry Potter series of novels. U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson concluded Vander Ark's already drafted "The Harry Potter Lexicon" would cause Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling "irreparable injury," and even went so far as to award Rowling and her publisher $6,750 in statutory damages and permanently blocked Vander Ark's publication from ever seeing the light of day. How do you feel about this? Should anyone be allowed to write a guide or reference book about another author's characters, or should only the original author or their publisher have the rights to publish guides about characters they created themselves?

Wow. How interesting. I suspect the right side to be on is the author's - only he or she can know what their characters are truly like. If the other one wants so badly to print such a compendium, he needs to include something in the title about it being HIS VIEWS, and not the author's.

Q3 - Staying Sharp: Everyone knows exercise helps maintain muscles and keep bones healthy. But can exercising your brain really help you remember and improve the way you think? Paying attention to your cognitive skills and taking steps to ward off Alzheimer's Disease is becoming more popular. Do you do anything in particular to exercise your brain?

I think I do all the time, without realising it as such. I do these memes all the time, and for the most part, I answer them all seriously and pull from my mind and memory things that are not normally on the surface. That is a form of exercising the brain. And I try to keep knowledge cycling through. I read all the time, and re-read as well. It all contributes. I also do jigsaw puzzles, mindless yet thought-generating.

Q4 - Retail: If you were forced to work at a retail store for 10 hours every week for the next year, which store would you choose to work for and why?

Any bookstore for the REALLY obvious reasons! But I would really hate to return to the hated world of retail sales!