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LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 31, 2008
A judge denied bond Thursday for a part-time evangelist charged with murder in the death of his wife, a mother of eight whose body was kept in a freezer for at least three years.
Yeah, you just might want to keep this one on one of your somewhat shorter leashes, I think.
Posted in Americana, Oppression, Sisyphus | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 26, 2008
So, Iraq turns out to be kind of a non-loss, kind of thing, after all, huh? Well, it’s never too late to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, is it? Or… too early:
Senator Failure
Message to Michael Yon: Once in awhile you should step away from the field where the action is actually taking place and into the far rear echelons of politics back home, where facts and first-hand observations can’t get in the way of popular memes and biases, and if you had done so you might have been able to learn that the war has long since been over, dood. We LOST it by congressional fiat.
Also worth stating is that while the senator who declared the surge in Iraq a failure received some criticism for doing so, the pronouncement was, if anything, too late. The proper time to declare a war effort a failure should be the moment when the first American body bag is filled. That’s how you teach our enemies not to mess.
Almost perfect (link added). If only Robert had mentioned The Children…
Posted in Politics and Poker, Sisyphus, Stragety, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 24, 2008
Beautiful plaza in God’s oven, Phoenix
Originally uploaded by Ron Coleman
This is a really beautiful picture that, in the air conditioned comfort of home and after using two different computer programs to leach the excess photons out of it, actually makes Phoenix look like a place you would want to be in the summer for one or two minutes.
Have I mentioned that it’s not?
I could barely even open my eyes while taking this picture. That was with sunglasses. Dark ones. Of course there was also a waterfall in front of me. You never heard of the waterfall in the middle of the western Arizona desert? Yeah. Coleman Falls. It runs off my scalp down the smooth bed of my shiny forehead, cascades right past my squinting eyes, and deposits in the gentle basin forming around my shirt collar.
But with computer simulation, it almost as if the color green could be perceived by human sight in Phoenix in July. So you enjoy that.
Posted in Americana, Sisyphus | 9 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2008
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!
In one city (New York), a judge determines that an Internet retailer’s use of thumbnail product images, even
those published by a manufacturer to sell its own products, is permissible “fair use” when used by the Internet retailer to sell that manufacturer’s own products, and hence dismisses a claim for copyright infringement by the manufacturer. In another city (Phoenix), that same fact pattern and the same statute results in a trial for copyright infringement!
In the same city (New York) that dismisses the copyright claim, the same judge rules that a claim for tortious interference with contract can go forward to trial despite the absence of any proof of direct communication or transaction between my client and the allegedly-interfered-with party, or of a coherent damages claim, or specific knowledge of who that party is or what its contrast says. In the other city, a judge says no set of facts could render such a preposterous claim for third-party interference with contract actionable and throws out the identical claim before trial!
Later, in the latter city — Phoenix — the judge throws out all the other side’s damages claims for copyright infringement during the trial — the best of times! — and dismisses their unfair competition claim too on our motion after the close of their evidence. But that same Phoenix judge keeps on an advisory jury on to determine whether my client has committed copyright infringement. The jury comes back and says my client mostly had committed infringement, handing me my first ever jury trial loss — the worst of times!!! (That’s for me, not for my client, though, so he’s happy and it goes back to “best.”)
And I spend four days and nights in Phoenix, an architecturally and ecologically stunning location where everyone is as nice as pie — the best of times! But in July it is THE HOTTEST PLACE I HAVE EVER BEEN IN AND EVERY MINUTE SPENT OUT OF DOORS IS LITTLE MORE THAN A TASTE OF SATAN’S VERY OWN FIERY HELL SUCH AS IS RESERVED FOR THE WORST OF SINNERS …
The worst of times.
I’m going home tonight with a pretty good trial result and leaving all those scorching rays behind me — so it goes back to the best!
Posted in Americana, Lex scripta, Sisyphus | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 12, 2008
The Feds “seized” IndyMac, the loosey-goosey mortgage lender:
IndyMac will reopen fully on Monday as IndyMac Federal Bank under Federal Deposit Insurance Corp supervision, but tensions ran high as customers at a branch at its Los Angeles-area headquarters read a notice in the window saying it was closed.
At another branch down the road, a man who said he had more than $200,000 in an account — twice what is normally FDIC guaranteed — argued with a security guard who was closing up.
Of course. The security guard could have exercised his discretion and pulled out a wad of $200K for the guy. Why stop at arguing with him when you could hit him in the face with a pie?
But these are desperate times for people with too much money in the wrong bank, and such irrationality is not really funny. I wish I could have $200,000 to put in a bank, but if I did, I bet I’d be pretty distraught over the prospect of half of it perhaps going underwater with the speculative real estate market.
He need not worry, however: Our Congress is forever committed, bipartisan like and with great humility, solemnity and profundity, to perpetuating, nay, ratcheting up its policy of classic moral hazard, and will make sure that more money from the trough is found to fork over and above any stated FDIC insurance limit.
Because it is only money. Your money.
Cross-posted on Right-Wing News.
UPDATE: “Too big not to fail”!
Posted in Americana, Gelt, Sisyphus | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 8, 2008
Heartless cruelty and brutal callousness about a patient’s condition? Yes, but with 20-20 hindsight a
prosecutor decides that when a medical staff member charged with the duty of caring for patients instead treats one in obviously desperate distress like garbage, a jury shouldn’t even be given the chance to decide whether that action was criminal:
A nurse at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was not criminally negligent despite refusing to examine Edith Rodriguez — who was kneeling and screaming in pain with a perforated bowel — and telling her to get off the floor, according to the report by Deputy District Attorney Susan Schwartz.
“Prompt intervention would not have saved her life,” Schwartz wrote in the report to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department about the May 2007 death.
“It cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt” that the nurse’s actions were a substantial factor in the death “or that any member of the MLK nursing or medical staff was criminally negligent,” the report said.
Doctors made a wrong diagnosis and failed to treat the patient properly until it was too late, but “a mistake, even a negligent mistake, does not amount to ‘criminal negligence,'” the report said.
Given that recitation of facts (and of course I have seen neither the actual report nor the primary documents and testimony or interviews), the prosecutor’s unwillingness to even let this near a jury has got to raise some questions.
For some reason this story seems to be of a piece with emergency room reality. Years ago, after falling in the subway and breaking my wrist and elbow and first trying an emergency room, I got back on the subway train to the Port Authority bus station, got onto a commuter bus and then drove ten miles back to my house with one hand rather than wait what seemed to be endlessly for treatment in the emergency room of Beth Israel Hospital. My last recollection of the emergency room is that it looked like the post-battle scene in Gone with the Wind.
Another time I once accompanied my then-67-year-old father to a hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey, Holy Name Hospital, on a Father’s Day when he was doubled over with abdominal pain. He was asked, after filling out the forms, to sit in the waiting room, where his pain got more and more intense. We asked the admitting nurse to get someone to see him, or at least some place where he could lie down, he hurt so much.
My dad ended up lying on the floor of the waiting room for over an hour. No one accommodated him before then. It was a kidney stone. Maybe you have heard about how those kind of hurt. This two-bit outfit left an old man on the floor for an hour without even finding a way to make him comfortable until, the interests of triage being what they are in a brutal M*A*SH*-type environment in Bergen County, New Jersey, one of the couple of wealthiest counties in America, a doctor could see him. My mother, being my mother, wrote to the entire board of this hospital to complain afterwards. Not a single one of them responded.
That’s what happened to a clean, neat, good-looking, middle-class Jewish white man in a suburban hospital on Father’s Day. Is it any surprise that someone several rungs lower on the socio-economic ladder, notwithstanding (indeed) the place on that ladder of the nurse in question, is treated no better, and maybe even somewhat worse? It happens from coast to coast. And will it be any wonder that this attitude will persist if there is no consequence for it?
Watch this story. The private lawsuit will have to serve the public, seeing as how Los Angeles County has declined to. As for my dad, thank God, he’s fine now. Me, I’ll never play the violin again.
UPDATE: People are taking notice.
Posted in Sisyphus | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 6, 2008
[A]n increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.
Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.
How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”
Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there.
Yeah, don’t bother. If you have to reach me, voicemail is about 17th on the list after email, IM’ing, texting, emailing my wife, smoke signals, a Facebook poke and skywriting. 
In the ’80’s we thought voicemail, the kind of mainfraim version of telephone answering machines that were the text-messaging of our college years, was cool. That got old fast, though. I remember being impressed when I worked for super-lawyer Ted Wells and finding out his voicemail was disabled. If you wanted to leave a message, you could leave it with his secretary. Awesome. This was about 15 years ago, and email hadn’t even become part of corporate life, but I already knew no one with anything better to do sat down tapping his feet scribbling down a message out of voicemail.
I never was able to get such privileges, although I did get to a point where my secretary’s job was to check my voicemail regularly and turn the message into an email … which doesn’t mean that’s always what happens, just that that was her job. I will stare at, or perhaps more accurately ignore, that little red light a long, long time if I have any semblance of an idea of what the message might be. In contrast, with my BlackBerry cellphone permanently attached to my hip, you’re likely to get a work email back from me within minutes, if not seconds, unless I really, really want to avoid you.
(This is not the same thing as wanting to actually be called up on my cell phone. I do not want you to call me on my cell phone. Have I mentioned email?)
Until I get it completely ripped out, though, all I can do is count on our receptionist (no direct dial number! yay!) to offer to take a message, and to allow “VM” through only with a disclaimer: “He doesn’t really check it.” Because I live in a hierarchical world, however, as long as it’s out there, it’s hanging over my head. That’s what Ted knew: Once someone leaves you a message, you’re “it.”
Sometimes the person leaving that voicemail is a judge. And when he makes you “it,” you’d better be aware.
But everyone else, don’t leave me a voicemail. Not if it matters whether I hear it.
Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 24, 2008
“Asking for Coffee Not Grounds for Sex Harassment Suit”:
[Judge Berle M. ] Schiller found that plaintiff Tamara Klopfenstein failed to allege even a prima facie case of sex discrimination because she cannot show that she was treated differently from any “similarly situated” male employees since there was only one receptionist in the office and the job had always been held by a woman. . . .
Plaintiffs attorneys . . . said in an interview that they intend to appeal the ruling, and that Schiller erred by failing to recognize that some tasks are “inherently more
offensive to women.”
Not that there’s anything circular about that. If the plaintiff were to win such an appeal, it would amount to a ruling that by virtue of a job usually being done by women, it is inherently offensive to ask women to do it.
Such a ruling would surely do wonders for women’s employment prospects. Did President Clinton have any idea a person who would pass up the opportunity to craft such a doctrine was his nominee for this federal judgeship back in 2000? When are we going to break free of these sexist chains? Man, just wait till the next time someone asks me to move a refrigerator.
And it wasn’t just the coffee that stained Klopfenstein’s experience at this shop:
According to court papers, Klopfenstein worked for six weeks as a part-time receptionist and data entry clerk. In her suit, she claims that the office environment was tinged with sexism from the very beginning when a vice president of the company made a note after her initial interview that she “looks nice, dresses well.”
Well, who would want that in a receptionist?
After just a few weeks on the job, Klopfenstein claims that a male co-worker invited her to lunch in an e-mail that said “I feel bad you have been working here for a couple of weeks and we haven’t gotten to know each other yet.”
In her deposition, Klopfenstein testified that she found the invitation “very offensive” because “there is no reason why a man and a woman should go out to lunch together without any other party around. To me that’s a date.”
Being asked to lunch — “very offensive” indeed! And the guy actually was going to make everyone else leave the restaurant! Please, do we have to connect the dots?! Yet the law would not take notice.
Okay, I know what you’re wondering, but you’re afraid to ask. Given all this offensiveness and tingeing, I can hardly blame you, but I’m here to bring it all on home. What you want to know is: Judge Berle M. Schiller… uh, what kind of name is that? “Berle”?
It’s a boy’s name. (Hat tip to Overlawyered.)
UPDATE: Similar thinking from Classical Values (via Glenn).
Posted in Americana, Lex scripta, Sisyphus | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 22, 2008
A high-achieving but highly stressed type-A overweight middle-age man drops dead from a massive heart attack in his place of work — so it must be someone else’s fault!
Posted in Lex scripta, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 22, 2008
The Associated Press is getting the vapors, and says it’s all “spinning out of control”:
Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
Wow, is that what it is? Dour powerlessness? Not merely power dowerlessness?
I can certainly understand why certain things seem to the AP to be “spinning out of control” and why the AP, in particular, feels increasingly “powerless.”
On the other hand, maybe here I am making a mistake similar to the one being made by the AP. That obsolescing fossil is unable to understand a changing world. It is experiencing discomfort over an unprecedented amount of “noise” about that world in the form of the information explosion that it historically has managed. AP describes this vertigo as American “powerlessness,” even though more Americans have more control over their personal material circumstances today than ever before — despite the constant drumbeat of left-wing wags to the contrary.
But my mistake would be to assume that the AP is confused, when it could merely be the case that it publishing incoherent, poorly-reasoned, jejune high-school-yearbook-essay ramblings as “journalism.” It could just be that just as the AP is erroneously calling “the new powerlessness” what is merely just more information, and more dimestore analysis, being available about that big bad world of ours than ever, I am erroneously describing as MSM culture shock what is just really dumb writing. (Hat tip to Jane Coleman.)
Cross-posted on Right Wing News.
UPDATE: Disasters: Foe or menace? (Hat tip Glenn Reynolds.)
Posted in Medialites, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »
