Patents on Tax Shelters

I knew the good old Patent Office was granting a lot of outrageous patents lately, but I never knew it was this bad. They are issuing patents for tax shelters, bits of legal fakery used to avoid paying income tax. Finally a few congressmen got up the backbone to attempt to outlaw this scam on the part of the patent office. They issued this press release just before Thanksgiving.
About time. While they are at it how about outlawing "business methods" patents, and patents on software? And requiring a working model before granting a patent. And outlawing patents on genes. And outlawing patents on obvious ideas and prior art?

Selling Jaguar and Land Rover to the Indians?

A meeting of 60 shop stewards at Jaguar and Land Rover moved to support a buy out (buy up?) by India's Tata Motors Ltd. Jag and Land Rover still employ 16000 workers in Merrie Old England. The union continues to oppose a sale at all (they want to continue as part of Ford) but if they have to be sold, they like Tata better than the other possibilities. They see Tata as "the only company among the final bidders with enough money, clout, and experience in our industry" to successfully manage the brands, according to a labor official who attended the meeting.
Ford acquired Jaguar for $2.5 billion in 1989 and Land Rover for $2.75 billion in 2000. I wonder what Ford was thinking when they bought the British brands in the first place. I understand that after paying $2.5 billion for Jag, the proceeded to pour in a lot more money to improve the product. Jag has always had a sexy product, but a product with a well earned reputation for unreliability. I owned one once. For the last 40 years the unreliability rep has been so strong as to overwhelm the good styling, handling, and interior trim level. Eighteen years of Ford improvements hasn't been able to turn that around. You have to wonder if the time and money put into Jaguar would have been better spent on Lincoln, Thunderbird, Cougar and Mustang.

New Hampshire primary is wide open

At Thanksgiving dinner, now that the date is fixed, we played the "who ya gonna vote for?" game. Surprise. No one at the table had made up their mind yet. All the serious Republican candidates would be OK with everyone. All of them have some flaws that would have to be overlooked. The young folk like Obama better than Hillary.
If my family is representative of the whole state, then anyone could win the Republican primary. We only have 46 more days to make up our minds.

The right to bear arms

The Supreme Court is going to take the Washington DC gun control case. A DC citizen took DC to court claiming that he had a right to keep a loaded piece at home and the DC anti gun ordinance outright bans ownership of handguns and requires long guns to be stored unloaded and disassembled. Case lost the first time, but won on appeal. Now the Supreme Court has stepped up to decide if "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" means you can keep a loaded gun in your house in case of burglars.
The newsies have hyped this as the case of the century. I wonder. In actual fact American citizens believe they have a right to keep a gun in the house, and in the car and in the cash drawer and other handy places. I doubt they will give up this quaint colonial custom anytime soon, no matter what the court rules.
So the Supreme Court can rule two ways on this one. They can rule that the 2nd Amendment means what it says. This will please the vast majority of ordinary citizens and outrage the chattering classes. Or they can invent a penumbra or something, rule that the 2nd amendment is "inoperative" , turn the vast majority of citizens into lawbreakers, and make the chattering classes happy.
If the court has two brain cells firing, they will rule that the 2nd amendment means what it says. But they are nine lawyers, and lawyers are dumb as rocks, so it's anyone's guess what the ruling will be.

There oughta be a law, (Pt 2)

Defacing a good old movie on TV with those channel icons oughta be illegal. Even worse are those full motion mini advertisements. Having your videotape of some favorite movie covered with advertising graffiti takes much of the simple pleasure out of watching the flick.

There oughta be a law (Pt 1)

Actually there oughta be a law making telemarketing a death penalty offense. That's fantasy, but we could make a law forbidding ringing my telephone and failing to answer when I do pick the phone up. Often as not, after going to the trouble of answering the phone, the line is dead and stays dead. Lets demand the telemarketer not disturb us unless they can furnish a sales pitch rather than a dead phone line.

Tomorrow Never Dies

How have the Bond movies fallen? 40 years ago Bond gets an Aston Martin DB5, a real car. Q spends some time checking 007 out on the machine guns, the ejector seat and so forth. Fast forward 40 years and we have the same scene, the Q briefing 007 for the new car. But, instead of something hot, Bond gets a 4 door luxury sedan, painted gray no less. Jeez, what a come down from the Aston Martin.
Then for the big chase scene, we have James driving the thing by remote control from the back seat using a trackball on his cell phone. Yuck, Gross. You gonna drive a car, lets do it right, from the drivers seat, using the wheel. For extra points use a decent 5 speed manual transmission and a clutch. Skip the slush box.