Invent Later

The great thing about America is that anybody can have a website. I have a website, and you probably have a website, and now the Patent Office, in association with the shadowy Ad Council, has a website too.

InventNow.org is a bizarre attempt to drum up business in the patent office by appealing to our nation's worst inventors: Children. When I first saw the web ad for InventNow, I thought perhaps it was designed to hector computer scientists and mechanical engineers, a testy reminder from the American government that we pay you to invent. Invent now!

But no, the government has decided to focus its energies on children, with come-ons like, "have you been thinking about the next big thing in skateboards?" Sure, every self-respecting child has been thinking about the next big thing in skateboards, but to what end? Few children have drill presses or lathes in their workshops, few children know how to draft blueprints, and I feel comfortable saying that there will never be a "next big thing" in skateboards. They work fine already.

I think the website knows in its heart that children can't invent. Suggestions range from not-really-inventions ("Invent" a new sport! "Invent" a way to tell that spring is coming!) to the hilariously difficult ("A car that doesn't use gas." Hey GM: Invent now!). There's not much middle ground.

Bearing that in mind, and the likelihood that any child who does InventNow will be swallowed alive by patent attorneys, perhaps it would be safer for the wee ones to focus on the "trademark" side of the US Patent and Trademark Office. Have you been thinking about the next big thing in catch phrases?

The Fall Lineup

If you follow Fox's hit TV show House, and I know you do, then you could recite the premise in your sleep: Hugh Laurie's character is a drug addict and a sarcastic bully, but also an impossibly good doctor, so it's cool. This is an okay concept for a TV show, but if I were a television producer, we'd see a version of House in which House is not only a huge jerk, but also desperately incompetent.

As formulaic as the original show is, I think it would respond well to this tweak in its underlying plot. Indeed, I can see it now. House cows the other doctors into accepting his ignorant diagnoses. House manipulates patients into unnecessary surgery. House performs countless small cruelties in service of his pet theories -- but they never amount to anything more than cruelty. And when the patients ultimately don't get better, an unrepentant House throws the blame on someone else. House makes smug wisecracks throughout, but here they just sound pathetic and hollow.

Eventually the viewers would begin to wonder why the hospital didn't just fire House, but thematically the answer is clear: They're all afraid of him. This could be made explicit (House has some power of blackmail, or perhaps they don't know what a junkie like him might do) or just be a timid unwillingness to contradict such a self-assured person.

This could play as a black comedy, and a lot of the humor would be derived by contrast with the "real" House, but I think a tragedy would be more powerful. Sure, it would be hard to write a serial tragedy, and viewers might rebel at the enormous injustice. But I think we've all seen enough genius doctors, enough medical miracles, and enough, well, justice on TV to last us into the next century.

It Came To Me In A Dream

States with panhandles that stick out clockwise:

• Idaho
• Utah
• Texas (2x)
• Mississippi
• Maryland
• West Virginia (2x)
• Connecticut

States with panhandles that stick out counter-clockwise:

• Nebraska
• Florida
• Oklahoma
• Maryland
• Alaska
• Alabama