Chewin in the Chung

41 minutes, with one cigarette break and only three or four bouts of cursing.

If you are prone to browsing the USPTO, please take a look at patent number D490,285. What in the HELL is that supposed to be? It's a design patent, so there are no claims. Just a box wrench with a big lumpy disc under the head. Seriously, if you have any idea what the idea is supposed to be, let me know. The disc is not supposed to have any utility, but people do try and sneak implied functionality into their design patents.

There is still a lot about patents that I do not understand. We do tools, which is very straightforward:
The ratcheting teeth of the gear wheel either contact the C-ring or they don't. That kind of thing. But go do a search for issued patents http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html and search for "hedgehog" in the title. 31 results, many involving hedgehog polypeptides. I had no earthly idea that this was a field of human endeavor.