Guest Blogger KBB: A Summer of T Issues

Last week it was swimsuit Technology making the headlines. This week it is Trademarks making the headlines. In case you haven’t followed the news, it seems that “Ibswbse” (see Note 1 below) has trademarked their name, the letter “I” as well as most common inspirational phrases in the English Language. What does this have to do with swimming you ask?

Well, Thursday morning was my last long course swim. How depressing! Yet I was even more depressed when I arrived, at my usual 6:26 AM, to find none of the usual lane 3 suspects. So I did some looking around the pool. A lot of new faces, many wearing CMS swim caps. Suddenly, a cold chill ran up my spine. “Of course,” I thought. "Ibswbse” has planted spies at our workout to make sure that no one is infringing on any of their trademarks!!” Coach Bill was even suspiciously quiet, not daring to mutter his normal inspirational phrases for fear of retribution.

Clearly, this trademark issue can change the face of Master’s Swimming across the world. How can we improve without our coaches using “Ibswbse” trademarked inspirational phrases? Fear not, I have a solution that will work quite well for MIT Masters, as we are a smart and educated bunch. We will get Coach Bill a set of flags and he can provide encouragement using Semaphore code! For those of you who may have forgotten the Semaphore code you learned in your boy/girl scout days, you can brush up at http://inter.scoutnet.org/semaphore/semaphore.html.

Thursday’s workout… Well, to be honest after all the research I needed to complete to be sure I didn’t get KT sued for using trademarked words and phrases in her blog, I forgot most of the workout details. (And the blog is a day late!) I do recall a set of 10 x 150’s in there somewhere.

See you all next week in flip-turn hell (short course).

kbb TM

Note 1: The code for deciphering the words and letters in quotes above is to substitute each letter with the letter to the right in the alphabet. (See Note 2).
Note 2: You need to move one letter to the right, as I suspect that “Ibswbse” has already trademarked moving to the left.