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A Patent Tree Grows In Seattle
theodp writes "Among the featured attractions for the kids at the just-opened $10 million Bezos Center for Innovation in the $60 million Museum of History & Industry in Seattle is a 'Patent Tree'. The museum opening marks the end of a week for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that saw his personal and managerial life put on display with the release of an excerpt from The Everything Store, a new book by Brad Stone, who reveals how he found Bezos's long-lost biological father."
Indoctrinate early and often. It helps keep discussions from being logical, which in turn helps stop people from realizing when the side of an issue they were led to believe in is designed to make their life worse for the benefit of others.
With apologies to Joyce Kilmer:
"Patent Trees" (2013)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a patent tree.
A patent tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A patent tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A patent tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only the Bezos Center for Innovation can make a patent tree.
"Indeed, as I learned, there were on the planet where the little prince lived -- as on all planets -- good plants and bad plants. In consequence, there were good seeds from good plants, and bad seeds from bad plants. But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth's darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin -- timidly at first -- to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.
Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces..."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince", 1943)
Circumcision is child abuse.
So the guy who pretty much sparked off the patent arms race with his "one click" patent non-sense is now building a shrine to his climb up the ladder of success, which largely consisted of him stomping on the fingers of everyone he climbed over. And it's in Seattle no less, pretty much the city that bathes itself in Irony showers daily.
Beautiful symmetry. Brings a tear to my eye.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I think it was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (except in this case, probably just the evil part.) Or, if you're a corporation, I guess it might be the Tree of Everlasting Life.
For every single individual driven to the point of self-destruction to achieve an objective, there are thousands who are not successful possessing the same level and degree of drive. Not everyone is in the right place, at the right time, for the right reason.
The truth is, sensationalized stories that put one man upon a pedestal over the thousands that got him there are the worst kind of fascist, industrialist tripe; this is childish aggrandizement in the extreme. You will find amongst these stories there is no one thing that these men do that works, and very little of what they do makes sense.
They should call it Anchar
Bezos is synonymous with bad patents in my mind... all because of his one-click patent which makes a mockery of the entire patent system and undermines any validity his other patents might have.
To me a patent means that someone with money and power has staked out an area in the playground that he will bully others to protect... it has less and less to do with innovation.
They were all either adopted or step-sons. I suspect that'll be grist for the annoying pop psychologists but I kinda find that angle interesting myself.
Customers with purchase histories similar to yours, and those who looked up Joyce Kilmer: also considered this product!
"Hello, Monsanto, have you ever heard of a Round Up Ready patent tree? What's that? Yes, I was thinking the registered trademark symbol when I said Round Up. But about that tree... Yes, a patent tree. You haven't? Great. In that case, could I get the name of a Seattle Round Up distributor?"
Since it is no longer in fashion to pay artists to paint him as a heroic figure on a horse like Napoleon, or sculptors for larger then life marble busts so he can be a pretend emperor, he has a "patent tree". It's a substitute for a huge model of his penis.
So McDuck is funny, and even though he inevitably screws up because of this greed, he always realizes his folly and things turn out well in the end. Bezos wants to own the world, and it would fit in with his ego if the Blue Origin launch vehicle was designed to go to the moon and carve an image of his face that could be seen by everyone on Earth.
I prefer the fictional duck.
Why is Snark Required?
I still don't know what a "patent tree" is.