Drew's Samoan Circle

I met Drew in Penn Station and he shared this, one of his two tattoos:


It's a cool design that he saw in an encyclopedia and took to an artist at State of the Art Tattooing in Southampton, New Jersey.

Drew ascribed his own meanings to the piece, creating his own interpretation of the designs.

The main circles he regards as two pinwheels, spinning in different directions. These two, as a whole, represent progression, as life moves forward.

Also, along the edges, in addition to some traditional design aspects, Drew pointed out two half-circles and four quarter-circles. These fragmented wholes represent the realms of dreams and realities.

By ascribing his own meaning and understanding of the tattoo and its elements, Drew makes the impersonal design (out of a book) more personal and special.

Thanks to Drew for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

X5 and CEO – Are they still riding side by side?

Design fetishists and car maniacs will certainly remember those puzzling news from Munich and Turin, with the Munich District Court (Landgericht München I) confirming a claim for design infringement raised by the famous – Munich based (!) – car factory BMW against the Chinese version of its X5 model called CEO, while the Turin District Court (Tribunale di Torino) had dismissed the very same claim against the very same contested design a few months earlier. The truth is that both courts addressed validity but draw deviating conclusions. While the Italian court found the ML novelty-destroying over the X5, the Munich judges did not. The defendant – the German importer – appealed to the Munich Appeal Court (Oberlandesgericht München). After a hearing on May 14, 2009, it took quite a while for the court but now the dismissal of the appeal has become public. Good news for BMW: X5 apparently does not infringe ML but CEO still infringes X5!
Since the first generation of the X5 is protected only by German national and corresponding Hague designs (not: Community designs), the Munich Appeal Court couldn’t render a Europe-wide ban on the CEO. Hence, BMW will have to go on a country-by-country ride and attack the CEO wherever a judge will be prepared to grant injunctive relief …

"Dial 800".....Our Eight Hundreth Post!

800 posts on this blog!

Simply amazing....and I really didn't think I had it in me- and I still don't.

I just want to take a minute to thank all who have taken time to visit blog, readers from over 100 nations, and a special thanks to those who have offered their comments and their feedback, and to all who have mentioned this blog on their websites or publications.

In the coming weeks I might not be publishing as much as I normally do- I like to add two or three items a day, but I'll be scaling that back just a bit in coming weeks. The holidays are beginning, time will become more precious.....and I have the possibility of jury duty looming in December (yeah, you're right- bad timing, it really sucks).

And actually, I do need to take a short slow down. When you start writing an entry and you go back to proof read, and not only have a zillion spelling errors but the absence of subjects and predicates in the sentences- well, you may need to take a break from writing for awhile.

But then again....tomorrow I just might have changed my mind.

(BTW....the hairy "800"- like an "800 pound gorilla? Get it?)

Thanks again everyone for your support!

More GOP Reaction To Terrorist Trials in NYC (So What Did You Expect?)

Do you remember John Shadegg?

You know- the Arizona Republican who dangled Baby Maddie as a stage prop on the floor of the United States House of Representatives during the House debate on the health care reform bill?

Well, this might be old news by now, but Mr. Shadegg decided to attack the decision to try five terror suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 suspects in lower Manhattan.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the city of New York can handle the security....but here's a look at what Shadegg said to earn a spot on Keith Olbermann's WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD last night.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Notice that the O'Reilly guy mangaed to take the two top slots last night).

To be fair, Shadegg did offer an apology to Bloomberg yesterday, but not until he was smacked down by by House Democrats and rebuked by some New York Republicans for his loose cannon tactics.

But it gets worse from the GOP'ers.

Texas Republican Louie Gohmert glibly told FOX NEWS that trying terrorists in Mew York could be a job creator, according to nydailynews.com.



After eight imprisoning these guys for six years or more, isn't it time to bring them to trial in the state where they took the lives of more than 2,000 innocent victims?

I say yes. We have a Constitution- no matter what O'Reilly says- and its time to do the right thing. To those who are afraid of future terror attacks even if they were to be held by military tribunal down at Gitmo, they would be looking for a soft target anywhere, not exclusively in New York City. That argument doesn't wash.

These men were never a part of a foreign army of combatants. What they are accused of doing were multiple acts of air piracy and murder. They weren't defending another country- what they are accused of was simply murder, many times over. Treat them like any other accused criminal. Military tribunals should be reserved for military personnel, not pirates.

OHIM Board of Appeal rules on functional designs

According to Alicante News, OHIM's Board of Appeal has invalidated a design on the basis that it is dictated by technical function (Decision of the Third Board of Appeal of 22 October 2009 in case R 690/2007-3). This is unsurprising - but what certainly is surprising is that the Board has not followed the Opinion of the Advocate General in the Philips case, nor that of the UK Court of Appeal in Landor & Hawa v Azure (which followed the A-G in Philips) but has gone its own way. To quote:

“That provision [i.e. CDR 8(1)] denies protection to features of a product's appearance that are ‘solely dictated by its technical function'. Those words do not, on their natural meaning, imply that the feature in question must be the only means by which the product's technical function can be achieved. On the contrary, they imply that the need to achieve the product's technical function was the only relevant factor when the feature in question was selected.”

To UK ears, this sounds much like the House of Lords in Amp v Utilux. It is also, of course, consistent with the treatment of trade marks by the ECJ in Philips, as suggested by the Dutch courts.

The complete decision is not yet available on the website. In the meantime, here is a link to the first instance decision. Will this be appealed to the CFI? Will the ECJ follow OHIM, or its own A-G? We await these answers (and your thoughts, dear readers) with bated breath.

Rebecca's Reiki Symbols of Healing

Last week I met Rebecca, who was waiting for an Amtrak train in Penn Station.

She had these tattoos on her inner wrists:


I recognized that they were kanji, but I didn't know that they were reiki symbols.

Reiki is a Japanese healing art, and Rebecca is a certified reiki practitioner.

As part of her certification and training, she studied enough to know that these symbols are accurate and refer to graphic representations of healing. Her right wrist speaks to long distance healing, and her left wrist refers to balance and healing.

Since reiki practitioners work with their hands, it seemed fitting that she had these symbols on her wrists.

She noted, as my wife has told me about her wrist tattoo, that the pain was very intense on this part of her body and that she passed out not once, but twice, in the course of having these tattoos inked over two sittings.

The tattoos were done at Gothic Tattoo & Body Piercing in New Hampshire.

Thanks to Rebecca for sharing her healing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

More On The Music On This Blog

Wang Chung; Jack Hues(l) and Nick Feldman(r)

A few weeks ago I added a music player from Playlist.com and wrote a short blog entry about what went into selecting music.

Well...forget what I said in that last entry, because there is little rhyme reason why I add or delete something, other than I like the particular song and think it would fit here, and on some occasions I just want to expose people to an artist or song that has been forgotten or ignored. There's a great deal of really good music and amazing artists who for some reason never find wide acceptance, or have written or performed a great song that for whatever reason fell the the popular cracks.

Most people hear Wang Chung and think about their two US hits from the 1980's, Dance Hall Days and Everybody Have Fun Tonight- you know, "everybody Wang Chung tonight". Many have forgotten that the group also wrote and performed the soundtrack from a classic 1980's crime drama, To Live And Die In LA , directed by William Friedkin and starring William (L) Petersen, John Pankow, and Willem Dafoe and has early career appearances by John Tuturro, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jane Leeves- she doesn't say a word in the film but she does make an impression. I always like the music from the action sequences and thought the theme was a good example of 1980's electronic movie theme music (of anything not composed and sung by Kenny Loggins). I followed that song with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers playing Don't Come around Here No More because (a) I like that song (b) SOUTHERN ACCENTS is a much under- rated Petty album (c)TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA segues nicely into it.

The instrumental Persuasion is included because Richard Thompson has always been a favorite. Sometimes his memorable lyrics and evocative singing makes you forget what an incredible guitarist he is, with a style distinctly his own. There is a rye and wicked sense of humor as well; later on in this playlist there is his version of OOPS I DID IT AGAIN. And for a laugh, look for his version of JANET JACKSON, as he tells the epic story of her Super Bowl wardrobe "malfunction".

Fools Overture by Supertramp leads off because I love the epic scope of it. Its provocative in its nature, referencing the insanity of war and its packaging in patriotism; in the this case the song samples Winston Churchill's famous "never surrender" speech. Whether you go along or not with the song's point of view, it is something unique and memorable. That's why I decided to lead off with it.

One last song i want to talk about, John Prine's humorous The Sins Of Memphisto. Many years ago on the old NASHVILLE NETWORK there was a show called THE AMERICAN MUSIC SHOP that usually included rock, folk, and country acts in various combination. John Prine was featured on one show. He sang SINS OF MEMPHISTO, but first told the story of when he wrote the song and recorded it, no one told him that the name of the fictional devil was "Mephisto" and not "Memphisto"...but the result was so good he never bothered to change the lyric or recording.

Signing off....."Hugh Jee"