We learned today from the carnival of law blogs hosted this week on Securing Innovation, the business blog of IP.com, that some people are marking the invention of the ballpoint pen on the birthday of its inventor, Laszlo Biro. Apparently, folks in England, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand call a ballpoint pen a biro. Who knew?
Anyway, knowing Igor’s artist-in-residence Jay would appreciate Biro-Art, we seached the interwebs for a biroday card to amuse him, but the best we could come up with was this, which we knew would make sense to Steve.
Happy biroday, Igor.
And for no reason at all, attorneys in Maine or as they are sometime known, lawyers in Maine.
Via today’s NY Times:
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down…
…Christopher Cox, the commission chairman, said he agreed that the oversight program was “fundamentally flawed from the beginning.”
“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” he said in a statement. The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate” of the program, and “weakened its effectiveness,” he added.
What the hell, let’s give him the “Moronic Statement of the Decade” award while we are at it, for, one more time:
“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work”.
The last six months??? How about the last fifty thousand years? Jackass.
Here’s an idea, you know that program whereby the I.R.S. may audit you? Let’s make that voluntary — you know, opt-in / opt-out, whatever works for you.
Or that annoying thingy where the cops pull you over for drunk driving? Same deal, you want out of that program? No sweat, we’ll give you a special decal for your windshield. You know, the “honor” system. It could work, who knows?
“Who are these guys?” (thanks Paul, for everything)
Sarah Palin has picked out an All-American set of names for her children.
Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
People, crabmommy is seriously worried.
Are you telling me that someone who calls her kid Track is sufficiently level-headed to have her finger near the nuclear button? And I ask you, if these people get into the White House, what on earth is going to happen to baby names countrywide? Forget Utah and its weirdo baby names, our entire country would go nuts with the newly ordained Palin power monikers: as a result we’d see a nation spawning kids called Hurdle, Liverpool, and whatever-all novel names they can dream up. In short, it’s going to be a baby-naming free-for-all, and I’m not sure our country can handle it.
What would your name be if Sarah Palin was your mother?
Posted by John on
September 29th, 2008 - 12:44pm |
language + pop culture + product names |
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