It's not the bloody that's allegedly the perpetrator's, but semen found on the shawl. I'm surprised nobody else replying to you seems to have done their homework either.

The USPTO isn't funded by campaign contributions, it's funded by patent application fees. Much easier to follow the money than assume ulterior motive being applied in a more roundabout way.

I have an HP inkjet and it usually spits sheets of paper clear across the tray and into the air. Mine is on a shelf so that my printouts can rain down onto my desk.

What were they making you do? Was it extra programming projects, crossword puzzles, or mopping the floor? Just curious

Generally if a dowsing attempt succeeds, people will write posts bragging about it all over the Internet. If it fails, they're not inclined to write posts about being unlucky suckers.

...and Texas also has silly blue laws, so liquor stores are all closed on Sunday, and armed TABC agents rough up customers at locations accused of violations.

I rather prefer the liquor laws in Chicago -- if ever there was a city that learned its lessons from Prohibition...

We've been paying for roads by the mile for decades, via gas taxes -- an effective way of making people who drive more, pay more.

That might be true if gas taxes were more than double what they are now.

Funds from gas taxes go to a fund accessible to the federal highway administration -- which is to say that they don't pay for city streets at all, which are covered purely by property taxes. Even then, the FHWA only covers about 49% of highway costs, meaning that the majority of the costs of highways remain borne by the states, and are paid out of different taxes.

(This is a sore point because so many folks wrongly consider cyclists freeloaders on account of not paying gas taxes -- when the amount of wear put on roads is proportional to cubed vehicle weight, making the road wear caused by cyclists negligible, whereas the property taxes and state sales taxes paid are not).

ULA / GenCorp (who acquired Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in 2013) has the right to produce the RD-180 domestically as part of its partnership with NPO Energomash.

Since they have the plans, access to the current production line and certainly the ability to make the engine, patent encumbrances would not be an issue.

The problem is cost -- the RD-180 is very labor intensive to make, and it would also require tooling, testing, certification and undoubtedly test flights to bring the US-made version to equivalence of the Russian one. It may be cheaper to use a new design and start from scratch.

"Earned" offshore, when 99% of the work is not the sales but the engineering -- which is very much onshore effort.

This is a place where Europe's VAT approach has it right.

The police kicked down the door, breaking the glass and maneuvering through the room with guns drawn. The living room was empty. They searched the kitchen. Nothing. One of them kicked in the bedroom door and swung his assault rifle in a wide angle as he crashed through.

Immediately he saw that the floor was covered with spam. A computer's hard drive had exploded under pressure and was oozing a liquid discharge of strange attachments and cryptic URLs across the desk and onto the floor. " Couchsurfing sucks... here's a better couch!" they yelled, one after another. Then the fumes struck him.

Overwhelmed, he stumbled backward, spraying vomit across the living room as he fell. He lay on the spammy floor unconscious, convulsing, muttering the same thing over and over. "Delete... delete... delete... delete..." The other officers quickly ran out of the front door, dragging him along by the legs as they struggled to cover their eyes which were lachrymating upon exposure to the spam. One of the units outside called for backup and unwound a yellow tape labeled "POLICE LINE - DO NOT EMAIL" around the residence. A forensics van pulled up, and several officers strapped rubber gloves onto their hands and Pentagon-surplus armored spam filters on their faces. They reentered the building, treading lightly, taking flash photographs, and laboriously stuffing individual spam emails into each of 10,000,000 Ziploc bags.

About twenty minutes later, Detective Protagoniste and the Commissioner arrived at the scene in their unmarked car.

"Well, what do you make of this mess, Detective?" asked the Commissioner, as they approached the building. Protagoniste picked up one of the bags, and held it up to the light, and replied, "Commissioner, as of now, the spam's been caught... but not the Spammer!"

Heat death is scheduled to happen a googol years from now. If the Big Rip hypothesis is true then the universe's life is already a half over. Then dark energy expansion will successively disintegrate galaxies, then solar systems, planets, humans, atoms, and protons in a cataclysmic disaster.

Corporations are to be afforded the divine rights of human beings! [This article has multiple issues. Please help improvement or discuss these issues in chambers.]

(On the discussion page it looks like all the recent edits are coming from five guys at the Supreme Court.)

Maybe eagles want to watch TV too.

If we ever learn to design new genes and proteins quickly, there are a bunch of starter projects:

Give mold the ability to synthesize CBD and THC. It would motivate you to wash your dishes- so you can use a razor blade to scrape off a gooey film of cannabinoids from the slimy ceramic in your sink, puff away, develop the munchies again, refill the sink with dirty dishes, and complete the cycle.

Insert a couple genes into E Coli that can synthesize cannabinoids in your intestines, so you can get a buzz after eating regular brownies.

Give cows a few genes for synthesis of cannabinoids during lactation. THC milk would also go great with regular brownies.

Design a virus that invades the human nervous system and inserts genes into white matter cells to induce synthesis of Adderall.

Engineer mosquitos that have the ability to synthesize heroin.

Make puncturevines that synthesize injectable human vaccines for measles, mumps, pertussis, polio, flu, rubella. and accumulate them in those tack-shaped goathead seeds. Plant them near people who think vaccines cause autism. Also include genes for synthesizing tire sealant, so their needles stop blowing out my bike tires when they reach the curb.

Give chili peppers the ability to synthesize and retain methamphetamine. Pulverize them and you can get meth with that "Chili P signature" like Jesse was selling in the first episode of Breaking Bad.

Create bees that can successfully avoid any areas tainted with anything manufactured by Bayer.

Resurrect DNA from extinct giant bird Palagornis sandersi but modify the legs a little so that the birds can hold bombs and chemical weapons.

Design trees that grow both apples and oranges, so we can finally compare them.

They should insert the THC gene into mold spores. It would motivate you to empty the sink so you can scrape the scum off the ceramic with a razor blade and roll it into a joint.