Monthly Archives: July 2007

USPTO Sanity

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Every once in a while the US Patent and Trademark Office gets one right. They have just done so by tossing out four patents previously awarded to Monsanto:

Monsanto has filed dozens of patent infringement lawsuits asserting the four challenged patents against American farmers, many of whom are unable to hire adequate representation to defend themselves in court. The crime these farmers are accused of is nothing more than saving seed from one year’s crop to replant the following year, something farmers have done since the beginning of time.
PUBPAT > Monsanto Patents Asserted Against American Farmers Rejected By Patent Office

Digestion of Potter

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Digestive Biscuits

By way of The New York Times came a link to The Guardian Unlimited and their Digested Read of the latest Harry Potter (excerpted here):

Harry knew he was up against it this time. A favourite character from an earlier book had been killed off within the first 80 pages. That Rowling woman meant business. “OK,” said Harry, grimly, as Ron and Hermione embraced. “There might have been time for that kind of adolescent awakening in books five and six. Now, it’s time to get serious.”…It was the morning of Fleur’s wedding to Bill Weasley and Harry, Ron and Hermione were examining the strange bequests they had been left in Dumbledore’s will.

“Why have we been given this effing rubbish?” Ron laughed. “I’ve told you before that book seven is not the place for jokes and swearing,” Harry answered sternly. Just then he saw Ginny passing. He didn’t know why – though he suspected it was something to
do with letting the reader know that although he was a goody-goody on the outside, he was a rampant horny hetty on the inside – but he kissed her passionately. “Stay safe for me,” he whispered knowingly…

“I’m leaving you two,” Ron declared one day. “I need to create some narrative tension.” …
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling | The digested read | Guardian Unlimited Books

Couches of Consternation and Sofas of Suffering

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From the New York Times weekly feature, Paper Cuts, in which they ask prominent (or favorite) writers for a playlist. Here is one of Sarah Vowell’s entries. I like the quote:

13) Disorder in the House, Warren Zevon. Why say you’re blue when you can say you’re “sprawled across the davenport of despair”?
Living with Music: A Playlist from Sarah Vowell – Paper Cuts – Books – New York Times Blog

Actionable Slight of Mouth

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Republican Senator Arlen Specter (PA), took AG Alberto Gonzales to task yesterday for his repeated prevarication on the subject of just what went down in the hospital room of his predecessor several years back. Here, from Time Magazine, we have an interesting side note (emphasis mine):

Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: “My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable,” Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.
Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole – TIME

Do yourself a favor and follow the link, there are many more such juicy nuggets in the full story.

Late news of the late

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I was totally blown off course and beached on the sands of emotion tonight when I received this message in my personal email account:

From: “A Friend”
Subject: Theresa Duncan
I’m a freelance writer with an assignment to write about her recent death–did you know her very well?

I am shocked!!

I have known Theresa on-line for about a year, and always found her blog, The Wit Of The Staircase, to be a pleasant diversion, a reliable guide, and a valuable window into areas of interest which I would not otherwise have followed. She taught me about the importance of scent and the art of parfum, the proper place of art criticism and the value of the use of the third person.

Theresa was so young, barely 40, and now her husband, Jeremy Blake, has followed her into the abyss of suicide. I know not why for either. I have abandoned the third person here, because this is just so abjectly personal that there is no way that the third person could do her and Jeremy the honor that they deserve for the contributions that they made in life, and the promise that they left us. I am so, so upset and pissed off at them both right now.

Sleep well, my young and foolish friends, my children of the staircase. I will never forget you.

Tough Talking Mama

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From The Note over at Mickey Mouse dot com, comes this collection of observations about Elizabeth Edwards taking Hillary Clinton to task for net being fem enough.  Jeez, what’s next?

…Elizabeth Edwards’ sharp tongue is again dominating the 2008 race — and that may actually be a good thing for the candidate.
In a jab that will be the subject of a good dissertation on feminism some day, Elizabeth Edwards posited that her husband — not Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. — is the best candidate for female voters. “Sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women’s issues,” she said when discussing Clinton in an interview with Salon.com. “I’m not convinced she’d be as good an advocate for women.”
Straight-talking spousal comments are often massively distracting to campaigns. (Imagine if Teresa Heinz Kerry had taken a swipe at Laura Bush, or if President Clinton were to argue that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., isn’t man enough for the job.) But whether it’s her battle with cancer, her real-mom looks, or her general likeability, there looks to be little downside for Edwards in having his wife mix it up.
The Note: Elizabeth Edwards Dukes it Out on Her Husband’s Behalf

And now for this brief announcement

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/. has brought this Ars Technica article (covering a story first broken by Information Week) about Micro$oft receiving a patent for a technology to data-mine your hard disk for advertisers. Makes me glad I don’t use Micro$oft products.

Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an “advertising framework” that uses “context data” from your hard drive to show you advertisements and “apportion and credit advertising revenue” to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware…
“Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements,” says the filing. “The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier.”
The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest to sell you stuff. It would inspect “user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink),” and more. How could we have been so blind as to not see the marketing value in computer status messages?
Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems

What did they mean to say?

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Pawn just loves it when people misspeak, or misstype, and the resultant sentence means something else entirely. One example was in a La Crosse, WI, newspaper where a letter writer, writing about the forces which keep gay people from coming out wrote “People never seem to amaze me.”

Here is another fine example, penned by one Andi, who was responding to an article over at The Caucus at The New York Times about a sequel to the popular Obama Girl video. Note the misspelling of “underlying” in the 3rd sentence (if you can ignore the absurd banality of the opening sentence):

I didn’t realize that our culture had stooped to popifying our politics. Not only that but this is by far the most sexist political ad I’ve ever seen. It is representative of the underling paternalistic value in our culture and supports sexist ideas and social constructs. If this strikes you as an over the top comment think about weather or not there would ever be anything like this made promoting Hillary.— Posted by Andi
Obama Girl 2: Electric Boogaloo – The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog