A Heavyweight Battle

Obviously the big news from the week that past was the lawsuit filed by Cardinal IG against Oldcastle. I mean we are talking heavyweight fight here. Now I have to be honest here though, when I read the suit info on USGNN, (Click Here) I have absolutely no idea of what it all means and what specifically Oldcastle is being accused of doing. Cardinal obviously feels pretty confident that its patents and property have been breached, or else there’s no way they’d file a suit in Federal Court. This may be one to pull up a seat and watch- and it will probably be better than the Mayweather-De Lahoya Fight that was supposed to save boxing. Hopefully more details will come out so I can comment, but until then we’ll sit back and anxiously await. Oh and a side note, in the past Oldcastle has used the firm of the former Solicitor General of the United States Ted Olson- so I’ll be curious if those guys will be taking this one on too.

Elsewhere…

- Saw Spiderman 3 this weekend- actually a pretty good movie really. The glass and glazing angle? Tons and tons of glass get broke in this movie, curtainwalls destroyed, storefronts demolished and even glass jars and bottles broken (that’s for the Glassbuild portion of the audience). I swear between real and computer generated breakage there had to be a good couple hundred thousand feet broken. So we now know if the commercial building economy starts to falter we need Spiderman to come to our cities and fight, because he’s verrrry good for business.

- And while we are on pop culture, on of my favorite shows ended their season this past weekend. "Survivor", who’s season started with a bossy architect, ended by announcing that next year, it’s competition will take place in….. CHINA…. Wonderful, even my favorite shows are ended up with the communist Chinese. Should be interesting though, having a show about survival in a country that pretty much ignores human rights or environmental records.

- And on that front, great line from “24” this week:

“Within a decade they will have surpassed this country in every way”- Phillip Bauer telling his grandson the reason they are moving to… CHINA. And by the way I think he was talking glass and aluminum…

- Hurricane Season got off to an earlier than normal start this past week- I wonder if the experts who are predicting a dire season will be right. My take last week on the lawyer and his column on possible Florida statutes elicited a decent amount of feedback. I was surprised at how many people felt the lawyer was right (obviously ignoring some of his more bizarre comments) and that a statute like that was wrong. My renewed take on that is I see nothing wrong with the statute, the blame needs placed on the insurance companies- the statute makes sense because it protects people and property. Unfortunately this is a fact of life, the weather pattern is brutal and to be honest any sane home owner should WANT Shutters or Hurricane Impact Glass in their structure. The fact that the government is possibly asking for it is not a bad thing- they are simply giving these homeowners the answers to the test. The problem is the insurance companies should be stepping up to the plate and incentivising the homeowners instead of damaging them.

- This week’s video is a humorous piece from Saturday Night Live… with a look at how big companies make decisions… (no clue why 2 videos are there and I can't get rid of either!)