The Biz Boil is back! We've been on hiatus and munching on gigantic pots of newsworthy goodness, along with some shrimps, corn and crabs; but now it's time to get back to business briefs, news items and interesting asides from the Business Journal staff. To submit an item, idea or complaint, click here.

Occupy this!
The last time there was this much talk about Charleston being “occupied,” there were Yankees shelling the city and trying to beat the Confederacy into submission. That situation is still working itself out, but the denizens who started protesting Wednesday at Brittlebank Park aren’t the first to “Occupy Charleston.”

Here’s a map, click to make it bigger

During the Revolutionary War, the Brits also laid siege to the Holy City by attacking the walled city as the Colonials took flight to fight another day. So if you’ve lived through floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, malaria, Yankees, British forces and more than a few gator encounters, the Occupy Charleston protesters are going to have to just get in line.

We’ve been occupied before, and you’re way nicer than those other occupiers.

But don’t get us wrong, the eclectic mix of college students, out-of-work professionals, professional hippies and others who feel wrongly impinged upon by the current financial situation are showing a sincere need to belong to something. Psychology aside, the collaborative effort should be a great resume filler.

Think of all the job applications that will now have items such as: experience at teamwork, relationship building and tent pitching.

As we were perusing the Occupy Charleston website in anticipation of relaunching the Biz Boil after a months-long hiatus, we wondered what Charleston, in 2011, might do to prepare for word that the city was about to be reoccupied.

Top 10 Things Charleston Should Think About to Get Ready to Be Occupied (again)

1. Issue special commemorative coin to sell to trinket-buying cruise passengers.
2. Mayor Joe orders the city to drill out the cemented cannons along the Battery.
3. RiverDogs holds a hot dog and beer special for only $17.80.
4. North Charleston — led by Mayor Keith Summey driving a backhoe — prepares to invade once “South Charleston” is too weak to resist.
5. Determine strategy with a daylong Risk marathon.
6. Recount lessons learned from the ongoing Ohioan occupation that began once Interstate 26 was finished.
7. Ask Savannah for help. (Ha! Just kidding!)
8. Go to Trader Joe’s for Two Buck Chuck and pumpkin ice cream.
9. Make T-shirts showing all of the sieges Charleston has survived.
10. F&B establishments sell mint juleps with 99% bourbon and 1% sugar.

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Because everyone needs a bulletproof smartphone

At the opening of DuPont’s new $500 million Kevlar plant in Berkeley County last week, there was a lot of talk about the multitude of products we were about to find ourselves using with super-strength, high-tech fiber.

You were going to ride on it, find it in sports equipment and in work gloves — and, if you’re in law enforcement or the military, it’s already around your body, on your head and under your rear.

The old Razr still holds up pretty well, aside from the LACK OF KEVLAR!!!	Among other things, the new Droid Razr sports speed, smarts — and KEVLAR!!!

Materials science is cool, and doing it in the Lowcountry is even cooler; but Kevlar is becoming a marketing bonus for companies that use and license the product.

When we saw the fiber listed in the product specs of Motorola’s newest smartphone, the flashlight app came on in our brains: DuPont isn’t just selling a fiber for what it can do. It’s selling Kevlar for what it has come to represent in popular culture — strength, toughness, American innovation and unstoppableness.

Way back before phones were really smart, Motorola exploded on the scene with a thin phone called the Razr, and everyone wanted one. Yes, the company whose name sounds like a 1950s record player came up with (for a moment) the perfect marriage of design, marketing and technology in a slim package.

Then the iPhone and a cornucopia of Google-powered Android phones elbowed in and sort of took over the universe of mobile telephony. This week, Motorola announced a retro return of the Razr, running Android under the Verizon Wireless Droid brand. Along with proclaiming it the thinnest smartphone in the world, other specs included our favorite locally produced bulletproof fiber.

The marketing language from the original news release below is as sharp as, well, a razor. But if this marketing genius helps a local manufacturing and R&D operation sell more South Carolina-made stuff, then so much the better.

Because let’s be honest, who doesn’t need a bulletproof, cut-resistant smartphone?

“Measuring 7.1 mm thin, made with KEVLAR® fiber for strength and Corning® Gorilla® Glass for scratch resistance, the DROID RAZR is ready to face the elements. Speed limits are just an illusion with a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor and Verizon Wireless 4G LTE. DROID RAZR customers can expect to rip through the Web with speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G.”