"Food of Love", Part Two

The Music and IP Conference -- known
for its commitment to fun, fantasy and fiddling

Yesterday we published the first batch of "If music be the food of love ..." competition entries. Today we publish the rest.  So, "If music be the food of love, then copyright is ..."

THE FOOD CHAIN

… the salt that in judicious quantity heightens the enjoyment and in excess renders all unpalatable (Anthony Gallafent, Gallafents)

… the preservative (natural, organic preferably); Do not give me excess of it, but enough to encourage the musicians to play on... (Chris Rycroft, Lewis Silkin)

… the hotly debated E colouring within that food, a debate which is never far from the media’s eye (Ben Prangell, Shipley Solicitors)

 … the bright, red ketchup of creativity— a rich and popular source indeed! (Denise McFarland, 3 New Square)

… a bit like marmite: you either love it or hate it! ((i) Alex Freelove, Herbert Smith; (ii) Andrew Clemson, Cleveland)

… a farmer, who uses manure (traditional protection) and undoubtedly harmless chemical fertilizers (advanced protection, keeping the recent developments of technology in mind) instead of doubtful chemical fertilizers (too strong a protection, which hinders the broad public availability of copyrighted material), in order to grow the crops which provide the said food (Kunal Chandra Agrawal, National Law University, Jodhpur, India)

… dessert (Rebecca Dimaridis, Jeffrey Green Russell Solicitors

… the kitchen (Sunelle Geyer, Department of Mercantile Law, UNISA)

… the Tupperware we use to keep the mice off (nb. mouse can gnaw through current Tupperware thickness in 50 years, although there is some risk of European chefs inserting extra (albeit thinner) Tupperware inside all new and even existing products (Dave Sant, BBC Future Media & Technology)

… the way to feed the composer and spread the love (Mary Smillie, Bird & Bird LLP)


IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

...its prophylactic (Nigel Urwin, Lee Bolton Monier-Williams)

... the fridge that preserves it for others to enjoy long past its sell by date (Ben Prangell, Shipley Solicitors)

... the recipe for love going insane (Aliki Foinikopoulou, Greece)

… the gastric bypass (James M. Dedman IV, Gallivan, White & Boyd, P.A.)


SELF-AWARENESS AND DISCOVERY

… the morning after (Steve Hartman, Novartis)

… probably the reason why I am fat and happy! (Andrew Clemson, Cleveland)

… the wise man's drug (Rebecca Dimaridis, Jeffrey Green Russell Solicitors)


AND THE WINNER IS ...

… a madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet (Désirée Fields, McDermott Will & Emery) [Says the IPKat, this looks like an elegant graft, a literary nod to Romeo & Juliet].  Well done, Désirée! Please get in touch so we can organise your prize, complimentary admission to the Music and IP Conference on Wednesday 8 December.

Book Gift Ideas

If you are looking for some books to give as gifts, here are some that I have reviewed over the last year or so which you might want to consider. It's never too soon to start your gift shopping.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Burst This!: Frank McKinney's Bubble Proof Real Estate Strategies

End the Fed

Master Your Debt: Slash Your Monthly Payments and Become Debt Free

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller

Buy--DON'T Hold: Investing with ETFs Using Relative Strength to Increase Returns with Less Risk

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them *Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, ... consultants, health officials and more

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Dividend Stocks For Dummies

How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy

Super Sectors: How to Outsmart the Market Using Sector Rotation and ETFs (Wiley Trading)

What Investors Really Want: Know What Drives Investor Behavior and Make Smarter Financial Decisions

The Forever Portfolio: How to Pick Stocks That You Can Hold for the Long Run

Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope your holiday is happy, healthy and enjoyable!


- John

Telecom Stocks: the Forgotten Utilities

Telecommunication stocks seem to be the forgotten utility. Most income investors have filled their portfolio with electric utilities, natural gas utilities, and water utilities, which, in general, provide stability and steady income. Telecom stocks can help round out a utility portfolio.

Of course, telecoms can carry some risks: land lines are decreasing, cell phone usage is increasing, and more and more households are now using cell phones as their primary if not their only phone. The phone companies aren't standing still; they are pushing many other services in addition to the usual telephone services. Also, much of the negative news has already been built into the price of many of these stocks.

Many of these stocks have some decent yields, creating some interesting income opportunities. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has turned up about a dozen of these telecom stocks yielding around 3% or more. As a matter of fact, six of the stocks yield more than 6%.

Alaska Communications Systems Group, Inc. (ALSK) is a provider of both wireless and landlines in the home state of Sarah Palin. The company has a market cap of $467 million, trades at 39 times forward earnings, and pays a generous yield of 8.2%. The operating cash flow of $93 million significantly covers the dividend payout of $38.3 million.

Another high paying telecom stock is CenturyLink, Inc. (CTL), with a 6.8% dividend payout. This Louisiana based company pays $833 million in dividends, easily covered by the $2.09 billion in operating cash flow. The market cap is $12.8 billion, with a forward PE ratio of 13.

Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q), one of the few stocks with a single letter stock ticker symbol, is a $9 billion market cap, a forward PE of 17, and a yield of 4.7%.

To see the rest of the high paying telecommunications companies, check out the free Excel database of high yield telecom stocks, at wsnn.com.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Today is Boycott Scanners at the Airport Day: Here's a Money Making Idea

Unless you have been stuck on a train for the last few weeks, you couldn't have missed the news about the invasive searches at airports recently, and some of the horror stories that certain passengers have reported (and recorded). In addition, there was significant concern from travelers about radiation exposure from the new screening devices in many airports from the Backscatter X-ray machines. Travelers also have concerns about the Millimeter wave scanners. An Internet campaign was started to get passengers to protest the new machines today by opting for the pat-down search instead of using the scanners, which can reveal quite a bit.

If you want to get ready for travel during the Christmas season, you might want to check out the following:

Don't Touch My Junk! Hands Off! T-Shirt

Lead-lined underwear

Don't Touch My Junk TSA Pat Down Airport Pinback Button Badge

The book I Might As Well Be Naked: How to Survive Airport Screening With Your Clothes On

By the way, a friend told me about a possible money making idea. Apparently, there is some type of equipment that if located within the vicinity of the Backscatter X-ray machines, can pick up the signal of the images that those machines generate. (I haven't yet verified this, but maybe one of my readers can find a link to such a device.) So someone sits in their car at the airport parking lot with one of those devices, then runs the X-ray image through Photoshop, converts it from a negative to a positive, emails the picture to a co-worker at the location that the passenger will be arriving, the co-worker prints it out on glossy paper, stands outside the luggage area, and sells the nude picture of the passenger for $20 as they exit so the traveler can have it as a personal souvenir of the travel experience, similar to what they do at the amusement parks. Any entrepreneurs out there that want to make some money during the Christmas travel season?

"Food of Love", Part One

It has taken too long to get round to sorting out the best entries, but the "If music be the food of love ..." competition received a far larger response than usual. No entries were disqualified for arriving late or for not being contained within an email entitled "Food of Love", though we know who you are ...  Some entries were a little difficult to understand and required some intellectual input on the part of the judges, but we got there in the end.

The identity of the winner of the prize -- complimentary registration for this year's CLT "Music and Intellectual Property" conference on 8 December (programme and registration details here) -- will be announced tomorrow, along with the winning entry. Today, for the edification of readers, the 1709 Blog lists a sample of the better if ultimately unsuccessful efforts. Thanks, by the way, to all the entrants: your wit and in some cases wisdom is very much appreciated.

First, let's remind ourselves of the rules. Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night opens with Duke Orsino saying

"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it".

Competitors were asked to complete the following sentence: "If music be the food of love, then copyright is ..."   Today's batch of 10 entries has been tidily subdivided into "Law and Commerce" and "Philosophy, Culture and Aesthetics", though readers will see that these are in some cases only very loose descriptions.

LAW AND COMMERCE

... a bill of attainder (Anton van Dellen, 8 New Square)

… the tab (Henry Ward, 8 New Square)

… the prenuptial agreement (Ben Farrand, European University Institute, Department of Law, Firenze)

… the barcode on the box of heart-shaped choccies (Graeme Fearon, Thring Townsend Lee & Pembertons LLP)

… to ensure that,
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before….
at least we can get paid for it (Mike Edwards, Audible Magic LLC)

… ... what
Cheer’d EMI with justice of their cause,
With promise of high pay and great rewards:
But all in vain; they had no case to fight,
And for them no hope to win the day (Mike Edwards, Audible Magic LLC, via Henry VI, Part III)

… a method and composition for limiting unauthorized regurgitation (no prizes for guessing that fellow blogger Michael Factor, JMB, Factor & Co., is a patent attorney)

PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND AESTHETICS

… the joy of writing (Khadijeh Hamidian)

… responsible for turning the “Free Love” of the 60s and 70s into the “Tainted Love” of the 80s (Andrew Clemson, Cleveland)

… the pearly wisdom gates above (Rebecca Dimaridis, Jeffrey Green Russell Solicitors)

… why every serenader must sing his own song (Peter Smith, Serjeants)

More tomorrow!

Health Care Stocks that have Raised Dividends for Over 30 Years

Whether you like the new health care plan or hate the new health care plan, most people would agree that health will be a growing business during the next twenty years, with the baby boomers moving to an age where medical care and medicine becomes ubiquitous. Income investors who are looking for stocks to own for the long term should consider stocks relating to health and medicine in some way.

Surprisingly, there are five health care related stocks that have increased their dividends more than 32 years in a row, according to the Dividend Increasing Stocks list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. For example, the large pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories (ABT) has boosted its dividend every year for 38 years and currently sports a yield of 3.7%. The company, which has been around since 1888, has four divisions: pharmaceutical products, diagnostic products, nutritional products, and vascular products. The stock trades at ten times forward earnings.

Walgreen Co. (WAG) could also be considered a health care company as it operates over 8,000 drugstores all over the United States. The company's dividend has been bumped up for 35 years in a row and provides a current yield of 2%. The stock has a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 12.

Helping to get us through the cold season (pun intended) is Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KMB) which manufactures the famous Kleenex brand of tissues. The company also makes incontinence care products, surgical gowns, rubber exam gloves, infection control products, face masks, respiratory products, pain management products, and numerous other health care products. The stock currently yields a nice CD beating 4.2%, and has increased dividends every year for 38 years. It trades at 12 times forward earnings.

If you want to check out the other health care dividend increasers, including one that has increased its dividend for an amazing 48 years in a row, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com for the free downloadable Excel list which can be sorted and updated.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com