Wired News reports on Daniel Wright, a standup comic who gets his material by looking at new patents filed at the USPTO and making fun of them, keeping track of the best on his blog, Patently Silly:
Hardly a week goes by without Patently Silly featuring some new invention for pampering pets, be it the dog umbrella, pet product vending machine or meat-filled flying disk.
In the course of skimming thousands of patents each week, however, Wright also encounters an abundance of patents geared for the poultry and livestock industries. These patents — which bear names like "spinal cord removal tool with adjustable blades," and "animal sorting and grading system using MRI to predict maximum value" — offer a rather striking contrast to the soft and cuddly pet genre.
"If you're a dog, you get umbrellas and all kinds of good things," notes Wright. "But if you're a cow, you get stuck in an MRI that'll tell you how good your meat is going to taste…."
