Who Is Your Lawyer?

Hey, You Trademarked My Marathon! I just got my annual email tickler from the Bank of America Chicago Marathon™ reminding me that registration is now open and that I only have 4 or perhaps 5 months before the 45,000 spots for runners will be closed. While I appreciate advance notice for a marathon that is not going to be run until late October, the whole get-it-while-its-hot attitude toward marathon registration is a bit irksome if you are not one of those people who is inclined to plan their life eight months into the future. I am not one of those people, and my past is littered with the detritus of unfulfilled commitments to marathons. While I harbored good intentions, life waylaid me several times on the cusp of my start time with an assortment of obstacles (read more . . . )

Peanut Butter and Jelly Follies The lowly peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Who would ever have thought it could evolve (or mutate) into so many different forms — from the peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich (Elvis’ favorite), to the peanut-butter-frosted jelly doughnut, to the Bukowski Tavern’s famous Peanut Butter Burger (with onions)? And who would have suspected that one day its humble provenance would be questioned, sparking a decade-long series of lawsuits over ownership rights? (read  more . . . )

How Chocolate Saved the World To 100 million Americans the word Hershey’s is synonymous with chocolate bars and those little kisses that fill the toe of your Christmas stocking. And these quintessentially American products (from Hershey, Pennsylvania) are nice, I admit, but they really can’t hold a candle to the ubiquitous chocolate chip. Whoever invented the chocolate chip is a god. Really. Among the millions of inventions heralded every year, there are a handful of designs that will run the full course of human history due to their sheer genius, and this is one of them. Just look at it. So simple, so elegant, yet a thing of such complexity. (read more . . . )

Say No to Nescafé If you are like me, you may have a vague recollection of a strange case filed some eight years ago in which Nestlé was accused of misappropriating the likeness of a former model to use on the labels of everyone’s favorite, Taster’s Choice Coffee. Sounds like much ado about nothing at first, even when you dig into the facts a bit and discover that the model, Russell Christoff, was paid $250 for a two-hour Nestlé photo shoot in 1986 and signed a modeling contract stating that he would be paid a whopping $2,000 (read more . . . )

Inventions That Changed The World Of the many technological innovations that have leapt onto the stage of world commerce and actually changed the way people interact with the world around them every day, there are a few that are so startlingly transformative they actually shock the public into a new frame of perception. I have a few personal favorites that I believe should be included in any list of life-changing  inventions.  Below is a brief sampling of what I find significant (read more . . . )

Tattoo You For the last year I’ve come across tattoos in odd places. One day I’m walking to my favorite San Francisco coffee shop — Cafe Amici — and I bump into a group of teenagers. I look up and one of the boys is shaking a little tin cup and has a tattoo of a pink hippopotamus on his forehead. Not a sticker, not a temporary tattoo, but indelible ink on his forehead. (read more . . . )

The Yoga Patent If you are of a certain age, you will recall when yoga came to the shores of America and staked a claim in the suburbs. Housewives with toddlers would don their college sweatpants and gardening blouses (this is pre-lycra, remember), and watch the daily half-hour of yoga brought to them by their local PBS station on 13″ government-issue black and white TVs. Yoga was racy (read more . . . )

Your Second Life A few years ago Julian Dibbell wrote a book called Play Money — Or, How I Quit My Day Job And Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, which detailed the year he spent trying to win a bet with himself. The bet:  that he could make more money by killing trolls and demons (or making armor) in Ultima Online than he ever had as a writer. (read more . . . )

Apple Yourself The first apple tale that changed the world is one you learned in Sunday school:  the All-Mother listened to the snake and plucked an apple from the bough for Man — who took a bite and learned that knowledge always comes at a price. Cast forth from Eden, fallen from grace, a bitter Adam glanced back longingly at the garden wall and berated Eve for plucking an apple from the wrong tree. “The other tree!! I said the other tree! The one with the apples that let you live forever!!!” (read more . . . )

The Roundest Patent In the centuries since Mary Queen of Scots invented the term “caddy” while swinging a spoon at St. Andrews, the golf ball has undergone its own Darwinian evolution. From its Edenic genesis as a leather  ball stuffed with goose down (the “feathery”) to the boiled rubber rock of 19th century (the “gutta percha”) the various branches and family trees of golf ball genealogy have diverged (read more . . . )