Sheldon wrote:

> No one here has created any recipes, in fact no one on this planet has
> created a recipe in perhaps 5,000 years, probably a lot longer.

This is plain-out nonsense on the face of it. Think about things like
mayonnaise. Think about things that use ingredients not heretofore
available. Think about technological change that makes milkshakes. Not
to mention ice cream. Potato chips. Cheeze-its. Tomato sauce.

It's this sort of blowhole madness that dilutes the small benefit of
Sheldon's plagiaristic posts where he says things here as though they
were his. And his copyright violations where he quotes passages from
books and thinks it shows him to be knowledgeable.

> The
> one thing every being on this planet has done since there are beings is
> eat... everyone has to eat (well, except Terri)... do you have any idea
> how many beings have passed through this planet throuhgout the
> millenia... ****ING ZILLIONS, and ZILLIONS, and ZILLIONS... they all
> had to eat and the vast majority had to cook.

Actually the vast majority *didn't* have to cook. NOt back when and not
today. In tribal and clan settings, labor was divided. Likewise in homes
of extended families. Likewise in most nuclear families. Likewise in
virtually every culture on earth.

> I can assure everyone,
> there is no one alive today who can create a recipe that hasn't been
> done before in some corner of the planet, zillions of times...

How preposterous. It would seem that sludgewit Sheldon doesn't read the
food mags. Or books. Why would he after that brilliant culinary
education he got as a U.S. Navy cook 40 years ago? They're known for the
delicate and sophisticated cuisines, you know.

I bet he did foams back then. And freeze-dried foods. Sure. And
concentrates of all sorts. And he microwaved things. Cooked in skillets
without fat because they were non-stick surfaces. No-fat cooking? New idea.

He can assure us - what? From that vast storehouse of knowledge and
wisdom that gets shot down most of the time? He can assure us that
there's nothing new. Brilliant. Typical.

> the fact
> that they are not written is of no consequence, people have been
> cooking since long before there was writing, and in fact most people
> who cook even today can't write a lick...

This is what non sequitur is all about. Irrelevancies piled on
irrelevancies... all tending toward false conclusions. To prove a point
that is no point.

> and that's why recipes cannot
> be copyrighted, they've all been done before.

And he administers the coup de grace to himself - by himself. Of course
recipes can be copyrighted. I have thousands of them that I've published
and they're mine. They can't be copied and used without my permission.
What can't be copyrighted is the list of ingredients. Any and all
headnotes, instructions and endnotes are "original expression" and, as
such, intellectual property and, as such, automatically copyrighted upon
creation. Just like the law says. So *every* recipe is subject to
copyright as an "original work" even if some component of it isn't. Just
like novels are copyrighted even though page numbers aren't and
individual words aren't.

Idiot. Pontificating poseur.

Pastorio