Agriscience farm is teaching architects, builders, educators

Photo and story from Tom Eblen in H-L:

Locust Trace AgriScience Farm

is a learning experience for all involved

...Locust Trace is a different kind of public school, designed to prepare high school juniors and seniors for careers in the equine industry and agriculture, where a return to sustainability is the trend. School officials wanted their facility to set a good environmental example — and be less expensive to operate and maintain.

The $15.5 million campus is one of the most "green" developments in Kentucky. It also has become a laboratory for new building methods and materials that is attracting national attention from architects, builders and educators.

Locust Trace was built on 82 acres off Leestown Road that the federal government donated to the school system. From the very beginning, Hill and other planners studied the site's location and topography to make the best use of it.

The design team collaborated with dozens of people from the school system, community and various industries. That included everything from seeking the advice of Kentucky Horse Park experts about footing in the livestock arena to technical assistance on air-flow technology from Lexington-based Big Ass Fans.

Sunlight and prevailing winds were analyzed to orient the classroom building and large arena building to make the best use of sunlight and natural breezes. The buildings use 21 Big Ass Fans — large high-volume, slow-speed fans — to help regulate indoor air flow and temperatures.

The arena building, for instance, is heated and cooled with five large fans that pull air through louvers along a roof gallery that are opened and closed manually or with automatic sensors. Clerestory windows along the gallery provide most of the arena's light.

Both buildings make extensive use of solar energy. Sunlight is maximized by window design and "solar tubes" that funnel magnified sunshine through the ceiling. Roof-mounted photovoltaic panels convert sunlight into as much as 175 kilowatts of electricity.

Power not needed immediately is fed into the Kentucky Utilities grid to offset power drawn from it on cloudy days. Electricity is shut off at night, except for a few outlets needed to run things like fish tanks...

Historic Snaps

The Next President

This from Tom Eblen at H-L:

A job ad for the next UK president

Job Description: overworked, underpaid

Lee T. Todd Jr.'s decision to retire as president of the University of Kentucky in June has me thinking about what the advertisement seeking his successor should say.
Not what it will say, but what it should say.

Wanted: University of Kentucky president. As UK's 12th chief executive since 1869, you will be taking on perhaps the toughest job in Kentucky. It pays about a half-million dollars a year, but you could get more money for less work at another state's flagship university.

By the way, your salary will pale in comparison to the millions that go to your head basketball and football coaches. Don't expect any sympathy from the faculty and staff, who are generally underpaid and haven't received a raise lately. Or students and their parents, who have seen tuition double in recent years.

There is a lot right with UK. The university is more open, collaborative and entrepreneurial than it used to be. Enrollment, student performance, research and diversity are growing, and the university is producing some outstanding graduates, including doctors, engineers, architects, diplomats, business people and, believe it or not, world-class opera singers.

You will be succeeding Lee Todd, a passionate, energetic and visionary leader ...

Economists recommend directions for tax reform

This from Tom Eblen in H-L:

This is the time each year when Kentucky lawmakers usually engage in their own version of insanity: doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

The situation has gotten so crazy, though, that this year could be different.

Kentucky's tax system has been out of sync with the economy for more than a decade, creating ever-larger deficits despite frequent budget-cutting and quick-fix tax increases.

The General Assembly is finally considering comprehensive tax reform, and lawmakers got some good advice Wednesday at a standing-room-only symposium organized by the University of Kentucky's Martin School of Public Policy and State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach.

In presentations by six economists and other experts, it quickly became clear that the tax system's inability to reliably provide enough revenue to meet Kentucky's needs isn't the only problem.

Compared with surrounding states, most of the economists agreed, Kentucky taxes property and the sales of goods and services too little and taxes income too much. That hurts economic growth because it puts Kentucky at a competitive disadvantage for attracting human capital and the businesses that employ it.

"We are discouraging younger, more-educated workers from moving to the state," said UK economist Kenneth Troske.

Kentucky's low property taxes are a legacy of rural heritage, political pressure from property owners and 1979 legislation that capped property tax increases at 4 percent a year, even though property values have often risen much more than that.

"We have a great tax code for a manufacturing economy and an agrarian economy and a poor tax code for a knowledge economy," said Joseph Reagan, president of Greater Louisville Inc.

Kentucky's 6 percent sales tax applies to goods but few services...

Did adults learn anything from Obama speech controversy?

This from Tom Eblen in the Herald Leader:

With all of the public attention focused on President Barack Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren, I had to wonder: Did the adults learn anything? ...

It was a pep talk about personal responsibility, not politics. But from the way the right-wing fringe and some Republican Party officials reacted to it beforehand, you would have thought Obama was planning to sprout horns and advocate devil worship.

There was a lot of bluster about Obama "overstepping his authority," even though previous presidents have made similar speeches. Timid school officials offered opt-outs for students whose parents objected. Cowardly school officials skipped the speech all together.

Last week, Steve Robertson, chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky, called Obama's plan to speak to children "very concerning and kind of creepy" and an attempt "to circumvent parents" and "gain direct access to our children."

Robertson and some talk radio entertainers focused on an ill-chosen phrase that federal education bureaucrats used in material prepared for teachers. The phrase, suggesting that teachers could have students write letters to themselves about how they can "help the president," was reworded to how they "can achieve their ... education goals."

It seemed like a lame excuse for objecting to a presidential speech, because that's exactly what it was.

This from Politics K-12:

Kids Have Choice Words for Obama-Speech Controversy

The honor of introducing President Barack Obama at Wakefield High School today
went to senior Tim Spicer, who has to be one of the most popular kids in school today.

He told Alyson, who called in just a few minutes ago from the school, that not only did he get a presidential seal as a thank-you gift from Obama, but he also got the president to autograph the introductory remarks he had carefully typed out.

Spicer acknowledged, though, that he was far more nervous meeting Obama before the speech than actually standing in front of a televised audience and introducing the
president. As for the all of the hubbub that preceded the speech, Spicer told Alyson the controversy was "pointless."

And 14-year-old Elizabeth Brantley, who was one of 40 9th graders who participated in a round table before the speech with Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, called the controversy "kind of dumb."

Another 14-year-old, Max Rosenberg, had even stronger words in speaking to Alyson, saying people who didn't want Obama to address students are "racist." ...

The Bad Old Days

State historian James Klotter described Kentucky schools in the 1940s as being "in shambles."

Today, Tom Eblen provided a reminder of what that meant, courtesy of a 1944 report from the Committee for Kentucky. The committee's members were non-partisan public citizens - amazingly - none of whom were ever candidates for public office. They pointed out problems in a series of reports and encouraged the state to address them.

Kentucky was a mess.

One in four native Kentuckians had left the state in the early 1940s for jobs elsewhere. One in three Kentucky children received no education; seven of eight never graduated from high school. Kentucky had the nation's second-highest rate of illiteracy. Poverty and ill health were rampant...

... Kentucky in the early 1900s hadn't invested in education or in developing a modern economy and infrastructure. Like most other Southern states except North Carolina, Kentucky had looked backward rather than forward. There was a "clannish family society" and a lack of diversity in the work force.

Harry Schacter, the president of the now-defunct Louisville department store Kaufman-Straus wrote that,

Some powerful business interests didn't support the committee's work. "Those who were the beneficiaries of the status quo were not at all interested in any change," he wrote. "Those who were victims of the status quo were too apathetic to be much concerned about change."

Tom asks if any of this sounds familiar.

Welcome to the Blogosphere Tom Eblen

I had the pleasure of lunch with Tom Eblen a few weeks ago and was pleased to hear that he would be heading back out to the streets - to leave management behind and return to journalism. Congratulations, Tom. I hope you enjoy the return to your roots as much as I have mine. KSN&C will be watching.

In fact, I've already noticed the nice look to his blog. KSN&C has gotta do something about its humble banner.

Tom opens his tour of the blogosphere with an examination of Dudley's big plan for downtown Lexington.

Blogging is Not Defamation

There is an interesting post over at the Kentucky Law Review blog. Interesting to bloggers that is.

Turns out the court has looked at trademarks and bloggers but very few suits have been filed against bloggers.

Finis Price at TechnoEsq writes that in BidZirk v. Smith, 2007 WL 3119445 (D.S.C. Oct. 22, 2007), the Court held:
1.) Linking to a photograph published on another website is not a publicity rights violation;
2.) Blogger’s remarks are in the context of news reporting or commentary and thus are immune from trademark claims. (Granting the same protection given journalists though not specifically labeling bloggers journalists.)

In the BidZirk case, the court not only granted summary judgment, but sanctions against Plaintiff’s counsel as well.

In New York, a personal injury attorney was "asked" by Avis to cease and desist from using its logo in a blog post that discussed a court ruling against Avis. The attorney,Eric Turkewitz, apparently posted the logo again (see right) to blog a post questioning just where it is the lines are drawn. It seems pretty clear that one may not use a company's logo as a trademark, but this personal injury attorney is clearly not in the rental car business, and it's hard to imagine that anyone might become confused about that; and perhaps ask the attorney if they can borrow his car.

I haven't run into any of this trademark stuff. But I have had my hand slapped when I've gotten lazy....or...in a hurry, is more like it.

There have been two such occassions when I posted too much of an article, even though I linked to and fully attributed the source. Fair use doctrine is still apparently somewhat subjective but the Copyright Act says that "fair use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says the Copyright Act sets out four factors for courts to look at (17 U.S.C. § 107):
The purpose and character of the use.

• Transformative uses are favored over mere copying.
• Non-commercial uses are also more likely fair.

The nature of the copyrighted work.

• Is the original factual in nature or fiction?
• Published or unpublished?
• Creative and unpublished works get more protection under copyright, while using factual material is more often fair use.

The amount and substantiality of the portion used.

• Copying nearly all of a work, or copying its "heart" is less likely to be fair.

The effect on the market or potential market.

• This factor is often held to be the most important in the analysis, and it applies even if the original is given away for free. If you use the copied work in a way that substitutes for the original in the market, it's unlikely to be a fair use; uses that serve a different audience or purpose are more likely fair.

Linking to the original may also help to diminish the substitution effect.

Note that criticism or parody that has the side effect of reducing a market may be fair because of its transformative character.

In other words, if criticism of a product is so powerful that people stop buying the product, that doesn't count as having an "effect on the market for the work" under copyright law.

So what's a blogger to do?

In my first admonishment came from Tom Eblen, managing editor of the Herald-Leader. Some story was "hot," I was running out the door and I posted the whole thing. But Tom was very cool about it. I asked him if he wanted to take the story down or just behave myself in the future. He suggested that simply behaving would keep me out of the "principal's office." The Herald-Leader's policy is something like not posting more than half of the story. Seems fair to me. After all, H-L shouldn't miss an opportunity that a reader of KSN&C might wish to click over for more. If I post the whole thing, that's less likely.

The second complaint came from Education Week. The "nice lady" said Ed Week's policy was one paragraph. Hardly consistent with the Copyright Act, but I didn't fuss about it. I took it down, and may not link to them again. Unless, I change my mind tomorrow.