It took an hour and a half for it to warm up enough for me to take off my scarf this morning.

keep to the Fen Causeway

I had over a cord of cut wood from what I have previously cut up but have gone through about a quarter to a third of that in the first 20 days of December. Lows have been in the 20s F or below more often than not in December so far. The heat pump works great down to the high 20s, depending on humidity, so it will suffice during the day, but the wood stove in the living room has been what really heats the living areas to a toasty, tee shirt comfort level.

The wood stove has the additional advantage of attracting the dog and cat to lie on the carpet in front of it, but out a ways, as the stove stands on a ceramic tile pad. The advantage is that neither is now clamoring to be on our laps--at least not as persistently as otherwise. Fortunately, the house is well insulated.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

When it emerged that Alistair Darling was planning to announce a tax on bankers' bonuses in the pre-budget report, some figures in the City seemed to think that their human rights were about to be infringed.

Bill Dodwell, the head of taxation at the accountants Deloitte, revealed that he had taken calls from bankers wanting to know if they could use the Human Rights Act to protect their cash.

The prospect of legal action always seemed slightly far-fetched, but the joint committee on human rights - a committee of MPs and peers - took the issue sufficiently seriously to launch a mini-inquiry. And, in a report published today, it concludes that the bankers are not having their human rights abused.

Now suddenly they're more like fifty bucks.  WTF?

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Paris, under global warming snow.

As the Titanic was steaming towards New York, a machine room crew discovered that there was a hole in the hull, a hole that was getting bigger and bigger.

The Captain, made aware of the situation by his Chinese Second in command, realized that such a hole could only be contained if all the passengers gave their metals, be it gold, lead or copper, metal which would be welded into a plate that would be plated upon the hole in the leak

The lower deck crew was ordered first to surrender all their meagre belongings and they pointed out quite rightly that with what they possessed you could not make an armour plate larger than a handkerchief.

The Higher Ranking Crew when asked pointed out that everything they had was property of the Company and that willing as they were to make sacrifice, they could not surrender which was not theirs

The Captain then addressed the passengers; First class passengers were horrified and rushed to the cable room to send aggressive telegrams demanding the dismissal on the spot of the Captain and preferably that he should made to walk the plank. Who could blame them? They had paid for a fare from London to New-York with hard earned money earned by their beloved grand-grand-father and now their rights were trampled and obscene demands put on them.

Third class passengers, those parked in the holds were more than willing to contribute rags an d sweat but told that regretfully this would not sufficient

In the meantime the hole was getting bigger, and the First Class passenger complained bitterly that there was not enough tortoise taste in the soup and that they were incommode by the leaning of the ship and ordered the Captain to shift the hold scum to the other side of the ship so that they could enjoy their rightful rights to a luxury travel. How would they be expected to dance if the dance floor was leaning?

As the hole in the hulk was getting bigger and bigger the ship was slowed down and never even noticed the iceberg floating in the darkness on the starboard.

Finally, the ship arrived in New York, the corpses of the drowned machine room members and third class passengers that had been drowned were very discreetly disembarked.

The Capture never set his foot again on the bridge of a ship.

The first class passengers were so upset, they had to recruit new maids and servants to replace those that had been drowned.

Old Nils, Un elephant dans mon carburateur

Skennah Kowa

How the dogma has changed in 35 years.

I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!

Unit License Rights

Unit License Right^TM ("ULR") contracts provide use of select patented technologies via standard form licenses on publicly viewed terms. ULR contracts address the current inefficiency of technology transfer including the time, expense, redundancy and uncertain outcome of traditional bilateral licensing negotiation.

The Intellectual Property Exchange International ("IPXI") serves as the intermediary between the patent owner(s) and potential licensees. IPXI is authorized to market the IP licenses and facilitates one or more offerings of consumable "license rights."

Each ULR contract purchased gives the buyer the right to use a pre-established unit of IP, for example the right to make and sell up to an established quantity of products covered by the patents in question.

IPXI is responsible for auditing consumption of the units and publicly reporting this information. Importantly, in the event of infringement, IPXI is usually responsible for enforcing the rights under the patent or other IP.

Kudos to IPXI for ingenuity. It's a variation on the Canadian Income Trusts slowly being strangled by the tax-man.

My approach is for the IP to remain in custody and for "n'ths" to be available for sale within a partnership framework rather than a company and/or trust law framework.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

It's the best international finance of weapons movie i've ever seen.  i watched it because some guy i never met put it in my hands in a video store, and i thought what the hell.

i admit to getting more and more spellbound the deeper it got.  Brings up a few questions.  Is this a movie everyone else has already known about and seen?  Why didn't i hear about it?  Is it because...?

So, leave aside for a moment that i'm an idiot for not knowing about this film.  i'm watching stunned the entire time, it's a thriller, a modern thriller, but it's so classically Yurpeen that my Ardbeg breath is taken away.

At the end, they run the credits, and i discover (i didn't even look at the jacket of the film, partly because the disc comes just as a disc, in a box from the video store, and there's nothing except the title on the disc)

that the director is Tom Tykwer, who went to school with my ex.  Lola Rennt, Run Lola Run.  Perfume.

well i digress.  if top of the line international finance thrillers are your forte, you've probably already seen this.  i'm probably an idiot for even mentioning a film that's already garnered attention, especially by the ETerratti here.  Though i'm dumb enough not to have known of its existence,

But if not, three thumbs up.  How do you spell Lux em bourg anyway?

Skennah Kowa