By David Steele Overholt (February 3, 2009) (Question 2,Reading 2)

Note:  Sorry this came in late, I came down with a nasty cough over the weekend and was out of commission until last night.

I received an e-mail from my friend a couple weeks ago telling me she just watched Lie To Me on Hulu and just knew I would love it.  I watched it and definitely found it interesting – although, after watching the second episode decided it would have made a much better movie than a series.  All this to say, the information about Marston and Paul Eckman was very interesting.  It’s obvious that Marston’s approach – his marketing of the lie detector and his unfaltering belief in its capabilities – was confounded and only guised in scientific rhetoric.  His decision to pinpoint a specfiic use for the detector, namely lying, shows more to me that he had his own commercial obligations and persuasions (intended) rather than attempting to hypothesize and gain a real understanding of his device’s uses.  This is also evident in Marston’s Madison Avenue-style advertising scheme of creating Wonder Woman.

In response to Apple and Best Buy’s corporate branding the unbrandable, its always disconcerting to hear and think of what can actually be lawfully copyrighted and then backed by punishment.  Having already seen the behind the scenes version of Improv Everywhere, they definitely didn’t show the amount of real frustration and confusion for the store employees (although some found it funny) and especially the police in the shortened video.  Private establishments can lawfully refuse service to anyone, but they forced one specific Best Buy to kick out its own patrons due to their own decision to profit on khaki pants and blue shirts.  It makes me curious if I can walk into an Apple Store with a shirt on that says Genius.  But what if I have a MENSA membership card?  This automatically made me think of Donald Trump’s copyrighting of the phrase “You’re Fired” and the current problems over the ability to have a patent ownership on strands of DNA.