Patents like this are a logical consequence of the extension of patentable matter to software and business methods but extending patents to software and business methods has created huge legal costs without any increase in innovation.
Most importantly, patents can reduce innovation and are especially likely to do so in fields where innovations build on innovations. In fields of cumulative innovation, previous patents owners become veto players who can threaten to holdup the new innovation unless they are granted a share of the proceeds. In theory, bargaining can result in an efficient outcome. In practice, it means lawsuits, delay, waste and reduced innovation.
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Tyler Cowen on why medical patents must die (via curiositycounts)
It’s sad that this even has to be expressed.
It’s also typical.
(via curiositycounts)
“My imagination functions better when I don’t have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith
Chocolate, peanut butter and bacon cookie cake … This is how I know I’m loved. (Taken with instagram)
The art: Bruce Conner, THE CHILD, 1959-60.
The news: “Texas Toast: Rick Perry’s Death Penalty Calendar,” by Andrew Cohen on TheAtlantic.com.
The source: Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Historical note: “Conner was outraged at the death sentence given to Caryl Chessman, who had been arrested in Los Angeles for rape and robbery, but who claimed that the confession he signed was the product of police brutality. (Despite worldwide protest, Chessman was eventually executed in 1960.) To protest this decision, Conner collected scavenged materials to create the assemblage THE CHILD (1959), which presents a shrunken, grotesquely gnarled, and mutilated man-child modeled in wax. The figure is wrapped in nylon hosiery and tied to a high chair; a horrendous cry seems to come from the hole that has taken the place of a mouth. Here Conner revealed the death penalty as a relic of barbarism that mocks society’s claim to civilized status. To encounter THE CHILD in its original shape elicited a great frisson. The Museum of Modern Art, realizing its import, acquired it soon after it was made, but found this mordant sculpture so disturbing that it has almost never been on view. Unfortunately, it is now in a state of great disrepair. ” — excerpted from “Art of engagement: visual politics in California and beyond,” by Peter Selz and Susan Landauer.
It’s interesting … the neglect of the piece extends the metaphor, mirroring the current state of the American prison system and the refusal of the citizenry to address the horrid fate of so many men and women.
It should be displayed in the foyer of the Texas governor’s mansion, I think.
Fucking Rick Perry.
(via theatlantic)
The Fraggles and their voices/puppeteers.
scanned from Jim Henson: The Works :: Random House Inc :: 1993
