Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those laws, works published in 1955 would be passing into the public domain on January 1, 2012.

“What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2012?,” Center for the Study of the Public Domain

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint’s falsetto. Only you
Don’t know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There’s no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

-Sylvia Plath

From the best and most motivating thing I have read in a while. Read the whole thing here:

Create (something dangerous). Mediocrity isn’t a quest to be pursued — but a derelict deathtrap to be detonated into oblivion… Create something: don’t just be an “employee,” a “manager,” or any other kind of mere mechanic of the present. Be a builder, a creator, an architect of the future. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a sonata, a book, a startup, a financial instrument, or a new genre of hairstyles — bring into being something not just fundamentally new, but irrepressibly dangerous to the tired, plodding powers that be. 

Umair Haque, Mastering the Art of Living Meaningfully Well, Harvard Business Review Blog Network, December 28, 2011

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.” – TSE

“[Amphitryon, the step-father of Herakeles] undertook a campaign against the Teleboans, inviting Kreon [king of Thebes] to join him. Kreon agreed to do so, if first Amphitryon would free the Kadmeian Land [Thebes] of its Fox. For a wild Fox was creating havoc in the land. But despite Amphitryon’s attempts, it was fated that no one would subdue this Fox. As the land continued in torment, the Thebans once a month would set out one of the citizen’s children for it, for otherwise it would have seized many of them. Amphitryon went to Deioneus’ son Kephalos at Athens, and after promising him a share of the booty from the Teleboan expedition, persuaded him to bring to the fox- hunt the Dog [Laelaps] which Prokris had received from Minos and brought from Krete, for it was also fated that this Dog would catch whatever it chased. Consequently, when the Fox was chased by the Dog, Zeus turned them both to stone [the only solution to the contradictory fates of a Fox destined never be caught being chased by a dog destined to catch whatever it chased].”

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 57 (Aldrich translation)