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I bring you now to high legal drama in the baking world.
“The famous “nooks and crannies” in Thomas’ brand English muffins — and the closely guarded manufacturing secrets used to make them — played a key role in a recent court battle over a top-level executive’s decision to switch jobs and a federal judge’s injunction that barred him from starting the new job.
In his 37-page opinion in Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. v. Botticella, U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that Chris Botticella, a former senior vice president at Bimbo, cannot start to work for Hostess Inc. because his extensive knowledge of Bimbo’s trade secrets makes it substantially likely, if not inevitable, that he would disclose Bimbo’s secrets to Hostess.
According to court papers, Thomas’ English Muffins generate about $500 million in annual sales for Bimbo, and there are three secrets for making their “nooks and crannies” texture — the recipe, the engineering and the process. Most Bimbo employees know only one of the secrets, and Botticella was one of just seven people with knowledge of all three.” (Legal Intelligencer)
Who will get sued next? That dog in the Bush’s baked beans commercial? At least this case doesn’t set that much precedent, seeing as the court opted not to decide whether Botticella could be punished for “bluffin’ with [his] muffin”.
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Contrary to popular belief, Abraham Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on an envelope. He meticulously wrote several drafts, crafting a 278-word speech to memorialize a battle that killed nearly 50,000 Americans — more than 1,000 times as many as had died in the first two battles of the Revolutionary War.
On Nov. 19, 1863, in the third year of war, the lanky, bookish lawyer spoke.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The speech was 278 words. It took no more than three minutes, and Lincoln was roundly criticized by the Confederacy for his use of a teleprompter.
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The outrage! The outrage! Las Vegas is apparently pissed because President Obama used their city as a metaphor for profligate spending.
“You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage,” a lesson lost on untold Las Vegans last decade. “You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. And it’s time your government did the same.” (Las Vegas Sun)
“The president needs to lay off Las Vegas,” Harry Reid said. “How dare he insult any American city,” Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons added, calling it “another slap in the face of the hardworking families in Nevada.”
Really, Nevada? You think Obama’s statement reflected poorly on Las Vegas? That people will hear Obama’s statement and think, “I was going to visit my cousin in Southern Nevada, but Obama thinks that whole region is a waste of desert, so instead I’ll spend my money in a more worthwhile place, like, say, Sacramento.”
He was clearly just referring to “Vegas” as a metaphor for gambling, and if there’s a reason Vegas is associated with frivolity, maybe it’s because that image has been the key to the city’s outrageous growth. Forbes judged the “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign as the best local travel advertising campaign ever. (Apparently, “Go West, Young Man” didn’t make a big enough splash on TV.)
Obama’s conciliatory response, in a letter to Reid, included this phrase:
There is no better place to have fun than Vegas, one of our country’s great destinations.
Obama didn’t apologize, thank goodness. Instead, he gave Vegas what they seem to have wanted the whole time — free advertising. Too bad his staffers cut out the line about the incredible $18.85 lobster buffet at the Bellagio.
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This Canadian mining company is apparently digging underneath people’s property in search of lithium. Why, you might ask?
“These elements are used for all kinds of high-tech equipment, including exploration of the moon,” Lemay said. “I am convinced that governments will use them for war and eventually to develop electric tractors.” (http://bit.ly/dcB9Og)
Tractors? Moon exploration? War? O brave new world, that has such lithium-enabled technologies in’t!
Every morning, promptly at 7:45, I arrive at work and begin searching for news. Newspapers in the West (with a capital ‘W’) tend to strike me as almost foreign.
A wolf-dog hybrid is recovering after being freed from a heavy, steel pipe that was stuck on her head in Boulder County, encasing her face down to the neck.
Several local groups coordinated efforts to save the animal, which had become dehydrated and stressed. The rescue took several hours, and a side grinder — a hand-held power tool — was used to cut away the 6-inch diameter, 1/2-inch thick pipe.
This two-paragraph article in the Denver Post, if you can call it an article, raised so many more questions than it answered. What is a wolf-dog hybrid? Where did it come from? How did its head get stuck in a pipe?
And once this tragedy had been discovered, why was it crucial that “several local groups coordinated efforts?” It seems to me that only one person was necessary to operate the power tool that freed the wolf-dog.
Baffling. But then again, I’m a city kid and I don’t know the ways of the wolf-dog. Perhaps these rescues are a frontier tradition dating back centuries, painfully banal to Coloradans but incomprehensible to an imperialist Easterner like myself.
I’ll just try not to let this keep me up at night.
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Here goes.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was apparently testing its website.
Plaintiff: MICKEY MOUSE
Defendant: DONALD DUCK
Jurisdiction: Federal Question
