January 4, 2010

The men at the next table were talking about something.

We were having lunch in downtown Austin, and I wasn't really eavesdropping, but I liked the guys at the next table who were having an intense, serious discussion about some business project — a real estate development of some kind. After they left, I took a photograph of the diagram one of them drew on the table:

DSC06603

38 comments:

john said...

Holy shit Ann, that the schematic of OBL's bunker. You can tell by the bathroom on the lower level. You need to turn this in.

Could you tell what language they were speaking?

blake said...

Ridiculous, John.

It's the blueprint for a crude flux capacitor.

Fred4Pres said...

It is an interesting diagram. I like it a lot.

KCFleming said...

Fiasco. The support beams will never hold. I call insurance scam.

And those bathrooms will never pass code.

KCFleming said...

On second thought, it appears to be a diagram of Andrew Sullivan's thought process.

Palin's uterus anchors it all.

Wince said...

Technically, is publishing a photo of that drawing a violation of a copy right?

David said...

Terrorists, for sure.

natatomic said...

Well, it's either the inside of a TARDIS or the Astro Orbiter at Disney World.

Definitely.

chickelit said...

Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, used to have intense discussions about various projects in and around the capital city. One grand project was the so-called Nord- Süd-Achse. Construction had already begun on the foundations for the huge domed structure: an enormous trench was dug in front of the Reichstag, which back filled with water from the River Spree. When the conquering Red Army approached the Reichstag from across the river they found what later became erroneously labelled as an anti-tank ditch as shown in various postwar battle maps. The alleged anti-tank ditch was actually the water-filled trench for a planned U-Bahn extension as clearly defined in late war RAF reconnaissance photos
[Source: Tony Le Tissier, Berlin Then and Now]

Alex said...

EDH - if they drew it on a napkin and Althouse stole it then yeah it would be a violation of copyright. But table-paper thingie is public domain.

rhhardin said...

Napkins are the best place for doing math.

Lawyer Mom said...

Ooh! Proprietary, I mean, dietary blue prints. Am thoroughly titillated.

If I were their waitress, it'd be tip enough for me.

Anonymous said...

Huh? This diagram ain't shit. There are a gazillion diagrams diagrammed on napkins and envelopes and coffeehouses that are far better in every way.

And that weren't as rude and arrogant as these jerks were.

bearbee said...

Archaeologists.

Still unaware that Tut's tomb has been located and treasures excavated.

News sometimes travels slow.

AllenS said...

This was the diagram that the new york giants used to leave the Metrodome after the MN Vikings kicked their asses. God, what a piss poor team that the new york giants are. It's quite evident that the new york giants have very few fans left, and the ones that they have, don't have the balls to show up in public anymore. The new york giants are sucky.

AllenS said...

I just looked at the post before this one, and you know who showed up. Who knew?

gregwithtwogs said...

If the men at the table had been women, would they drawn the diagram on the table or fashioned it? Oh that is a question for a different blog at a different time.

Ann, how about fashioning a picture of the Statehouse standing a few blocks down on Congress?

Unknown said...

In contemporary TV or movies, this would be the blueprint of the EVIL developers who intend to despoil the wildlife refuge and cheat the old folks out of their homes. At this point, unwitting dupe (no lie) Julia Roberts bumps into crusading journalist Tim Robbins, who realizes the TRUE import of what she's seen and they fall in love while Gene Hackman, hitman hired by said EVIL developers, chases them all over Austin.

Watch your backs, Ann and Meade.

Scott M said...

I don't know what you guys are all concerned about. That's obviously two-thirds of a flux capacitor schematic.

blake said...

Scott M.,

That's what I said.

I don't know what schools are teaching if people can't recognize a basic flux capacitor anymore.

bagoh20 said...

The other guy just ask for directions to the restroom, but some guys really work that storytelling thing in everywhere.

Scott M said...

@blake

That's hysterical. I honestly didn't read down through the existing comments. I was kind of doing a drive-by comment. Still...

save_the_rustbelt said...

Over the past 35 years several of my clients started successful projects on bar napkins and Bob Evans place mats.

paul a'barge said...

That's a very accurate example of the kind of crap the neo-hippies are building in Austin lately.

One wishes they would all go back to Kah-lee-fornia.

Wince said...

Alex said...
EDH - if they drew it on a napkin and Althouse stole it then yeah it would be a violation of copyright. But table-paper thingie is public domain.


I don't think so. Stealing an orginal work is common theft of tangible property. No copying is involved, so it would not invoke the copy right laws.

Reproducing an original work in a
fixed medium, like this photograph, without permission or license is a technical violation of copy right.

The only question is whether Althouse could claim a statutory defense to infringement, such as fair use.

I don't see how the medium (paper table cloth) or open display would put the work in the public domain.

Scott M said...

Doesn't that depend on whether or not the artist left it at the table after he paid for his dinner and left?

It's one thing to draw something in a sketchbook and leave the sketchbook accidentally, but quite another to draw something on a disposable tablecloth and leave.

KCFleming said...

"I don't see how the medium (paper table cloth) or open display would put the work in the public domain."

This is why people hate lawyers with the heat of a thousand suns.

bagoh20 said...

This why we have juries - you can't trust lawyers with the law.

ricpic said...

If we locate here, here, right at the junction of State and Maine we can sell the suckers anything, anything!

Big Mike said...

Looks more like polywell fusion to me.

Ann Althouse said...

The men abandoned it, and I photographed it before the busman wrinkled it up for the garbage. I'm calling that fair use.

Michael said...

Well this is Texas and those were Texas developers talking and one of them was doodling. To be a Texas developer you have to have good boots which you can get from a number of places. And if you have good boots you need a ranch to go with it and a ranch, of course, requires ranch hands and ranch hands need a bunk house. You can't have a bunk house without a main house and you can't get to the main house without a Range Rover. But the ranch is too far from home and the Range Rover is too slow so you have to leave the Range Rover at the ranch and fly there in your helicopter which is parked on the helipad of the new building you are planning there in the restaurant to support it. And the boots....

traditionalguy said...

Pogo...So hate for lawyers was the actual cause of the Global Warming that ended recently. That is possible since Lawyers are secretly in control of everything. My guess is that these two Male doodlers who were sculpting out a new domain had to leave to make an appointment at their attorney's office to hire him to put legal protections around their ideas...We call that "papering the transaction".

ricpic said...

Michael's been watching too many reruns of GIANT. Nowadays even Texans are reduced to ranchettes.

Methadras said...

They were planning their next crop circle.

sort of runic rhyme said...

These days scribblings in a cafe usually invoke uninspired gated communities or unspired engineered edifices.

And a tax-deductible tab.

kentuckyliz said...

a linear flowchart of the new obamacare plan

raptros-v76 said...

For some reason, it reminds me of part of a map of Austin. Maybe that's what it is. The dark blotch in the middle could represent the UT campus. I mean, it looks about as useful a map as those photocopied parking maps that I grabbed when I was trying to figure out where my classes were back in August.