second thoughts on Nkinis

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:34 PM -0500 12/21/04, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>>    French monokini and bikini were both app. coined by Louis Reard and
>>>>patented by him in 1946: see Femmes d'Aujourd'hui (1972) 12 July.]
>
>What does this mean? I don't think a word can be patented, can it?

there have been other attempts, one famous one being when Pat Riley
supposedly patented "three-peat" after his Lakers won two
championships consecutively in the late 80's.  Of course then they
didn't win, and it was only in the 90's when his nemesis Phil Jackson
won two "three-peats" with the Chicago Bulls, courtesy of Jordan,
Pippen, and company.  There was speculation that the companies that
made up Three-peat tees and sweatshirts to celebrate the events would
have to pay royalties to Riley, and whether that would partially make
up for the fact that his teams never accomplished the feat.

In our own world, more or less, Arnold or someone else may recall the
rumor that the IBM-based syntactician Peter Rosenbaum had patented
"Raising", so that every time someone else mentioned the rule--or, we
liked to think after one too many tokes of banana peel, every time
someone said something of the form "I believe John to have kissed
Mary" or "A unicorn seems to be approaching" [yes, those were both
considered instances of Raising back then]--Rosenbaum would demand a
couple of cents.

larry