Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

Nyet!

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 13, 2009

Uncle Joe

Uncle Joe

Remember the Stalin “defamation” lawsuit?  Commie Fail — Uncle Joe stays a tyrant:

The late-evening ruling was a rare victory for Stalin’s critics in their fight against efforts to rehabilitate the dictator, who according to the rights group Memorial ordered the deaths of at least 724,000 people during a series of purges that peaked in the late 1930s. But defendants said that having the case even make it to court was evidence of a chilling tendency to question the dark side of Soviet history.

Well, you can’t have everything, comrades.  It’s all you can do sometimes just to un-make an omelet.

Posted in Oppression, Orient, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »

Con-grat-u-la-tions

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 13, 2009

Congratulations to William Jacobson of Le-gal In-Sur-rec-tion, who celebrates his millionth Internet visit in less than one year and thanks a whole bunch of famous bloggers, plus me, for their support.

Now that I know how smashingly successful a person can be with a blog in such a short time, of course, I regret any role I had in demonstrating my own water-treading mediocrity.  Which is exactly what you’d expect of someone having such a quality.

Next time I see someone so obviously talented attempt to succeed, I will remember this first rule of the Creed of the Cruddy and do everything I can to squash him like a bug — which, of course, in Internet terms means ignore him.

AmadeusSalieri5_smBut seeing as how William is now important and all with his million little visitors (yes, I have a far more selective appeal), I guess I’ll go back to pretending to be happy for him.

Hurray, hurray, hurray. 😉

Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »

Leben zol Columbus!

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 12, 2009

That’s the refrain of the old Yiddish song celebrating the New World — the land of Columbus (saved from revisionism here).

I had never quite understood why Columbus was named after a city in Ohio.  I mean, the place is pretty much landlocked.  But then I took Spanish and learned what I doofus I was — he was actually named after yogurt!

Or was it he was named after kishkes?

Either way it was evidently better than they had in the Old Country.

Posted in Americana | Leave a Comment »

The price of health

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 8, 2009

Over at Dean’s World Eric Rall is asking how exactly did the cost of medical care get so expensive beginning in the 1980’s?

I threw out this idea:

I’d say, yeah, an acceleration of the completely predictable outcome of the third-party-payer system, plus vastly enhanced technological capabilities. Thanks in part to the trial lawyers and in part to cultural factors, developing technology and the threat of liability for failure to utilize it made it more or less mandatory for doctors, at least in private practice, to max out on technological solutions — especially in diagnosis — utilizing techniques meant to solve the hardest problems. Also, the “average” medical technique is a lot less average as your population gets older and older and more and more medically complicated.

Makes sense, no?

Posted in Gelt, Scientificus, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »

The FTC, and me, and thee

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 8, 2009

Ever notice how some people never pay you any attention at all?  It’s still the high school cafeteria, isn’t it?

I have a decent B-level-blogger existence on the Internet, but it does gall sometimes.  You can’t have all the Instalanches you might like, but I have nothing to complain about; and in general I have gotten my props.  But no question there are some cliques you just aren’t breaking into if you’re me.  There are certain bloggers who absolutely refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything I write,  or even my existence at all, even when it would appear that, on the merits — for all sorts of reasons that these calculations are based on — they ought to.  I could name them, but dignity does have to step in at some point.

And even then you’ve got other people paying attention to all the wrong things about me altogether!  Can’t win for losing, you know.

Well, Walter Olson (who certainly does pay me enough attention) has rounded up some notable posts, and his own thoughts, on the outrage of the new FTC power grab over blogger “disclosure,” a topic that I first got excited over two years ago by publishing this piece in LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® back before I had this blog and that one had to contain a broader range of topics.  Both Patrick of PopeHat and Glenn Reynolds have seen fit to link back to it, longingly, and as Patrick says, “Ron Coleman called this.”

If only anyone had paid attention to it then!  But, you know… no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.

Posted in Medialites, Narcissus Rex, Oppression, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »

A shanda!

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 5, 2009

From the Telegraph of London (via Insty):

A photograph of the Iranian president [Ahmadinejad] holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

Oy, not only an antisemite — but the worst kind!  A Jewish one!  And from a family in the shmatta trade, even!

This is only partly funny.  It is also only partly surprising.  Jews do have a way of rising in prominence regardless of where they are.  When they are in the wrong place, unfortunately, their rise … does the Jews, and the world, no favors.  And typically, unfortunately, they assert their purported non-Jewishness very assertively against Jewish values and people, perhaps to “prove” how not-Jewish they are or, perhaps, for more complex moral and psychological reasons.

Which is why they should, you know, be in the right place, by which I do not mean a place found on the map.

And in this case, by the way, what’s the real story?  Well, continue with the article:

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

Well, there you have it.  No wonder they converted — they had a Jew-hating mamzer like this for a kid!

UPDATE:  Glad I got that in before the inevitable debunking:

Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. “There is no such meaning for the word ‘sabour’ in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name,” he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word “tzitzit” to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article’s findings that the “-jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending,” he stated.

Turban-tip to LGF.

Posted in Faith and Works, Oppression, Orient, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »

Isn’t it Rich

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 4, 2009

Glenn Reynolds:

When you’ve lost Frank Rich, you’ve lost conventional-wisdom punditAmerica.

Not his smoothest phrase ever, but Glenn is right on.  This is a phenomenal departure by the one-time “Butcher of Broadway” from the party line, and an encouraging sign that even for some of the biggest Kool-Aid-guzzlers, there’s hope.

I don’t mean “hope” for major political change, or anything like that.  Come on!

Rather, it’s a sign there’s hope for something once again resembling a remotely honest, tell-it-like-it-is “Fourth Estate” — the very terminology of which makes me think that, in fact, something else is going on here, too:

Obama is toeing what turns out to be the third (or fourth) rail of American journalistic politics:  K Street.

It turns out that PunditAmerica’s jealousy of the ascent of the lobbyist class to the status of de facto branch of government — now more powerful than the mainstream media, whose own former privileges as “owners” of the official truth have been dashed beyond recognition — trumps its class loyalty to a President whose ability to bestow the MSM with specialness has eroded concomitantly.   And that is in all likelihood what is motivating Frank Rich, at least as much as political idealism, to nail his thesis to the cathedral door.

Still and all, good for you, Frank.  And it’s not even a year since Election Day.

Posted in Gelt, Liberal punks, Medialites | Leave a Comment »

Accurate but true. But false. Or something.

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 29, 2009

And thats the way it is.

And that's the way it is.

New York’s Appellate Division to Dan “Time Travel Typist” Rather: It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for a guy disemployed for $6 million a year, but, sorry Charlie, you’re done:

At the outset, we find that Supreme Court erred in declining to dismiss Rather’s breach of contract claim against CBS. Rather alleges that he delivered his last broadcast as anchor of the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005, and that, since he was only nominally assigned to 60 Minutes II and then 60 Minutes, he should have received the remainder of his compensation under the agreement in March 2005. Rather claims that, in effect, CBS “warehoused” him, and that, when he was finally terminated and paid in June 2006, CBS did not compensate him for the 15 months “when he could have worked elsewhere.” This claim attempts to gloss over the fact that Rather continued to be compensated at his normal CBS salary of approximately $6 million a year until June 2006 when the compensation was accelerated upon termination, consistent with his contract.

Contractually, CBS was under no obligation to “use [Rather’s] services or to broadcast any program” so long as it continued to pay him the applicable compensation. This “pay or play” provision of the original 1979 employment agreement was specifically reaffirmed in the 2002 Amendment to the employment agreement. . . .

Rather’s claim for lost business opportunities due to CBS’s failure to release him to seek other employment is insufficiently supported. Since, according to Rather’s own allegations, an immediate result of the September 8, 2004 broadcast was criticism that he was biased against Bush, it would be speculative to conclude that any action taken by CBS would have alone substantially affected his market value at that time. Rather’s claim for damages for loss of reputation arising from the alleged breach of contract is not actionable. Dember Constr. Corp. v. Staten Is. Mall, 56 A.D.2d 768, 392 N.Y.S.2d 299 (1st Dept. 1977).

Rather’s cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty must also be dismissed. Supreme Court held that the issue of “whether a fiduciary duty has been created in the course of the long relationship between Rather and CBS is really a question of fact.” Previously, the court determined that “the length of [Rather’s] contractual relationship with [CBS], and the nature of the service that [Rather] performed under his contracts” created an issue of fact that could not be resolved on motion. This was error.

Rather claims that his “four-decade history” with CBS constituted a “special relationship that imposed fiduciary duties upon CBS toward [Rather].” The law in this Department, and indeed enunciated in every reported appellate-division-level case, is that employment relationships do not create fiduciary relationships. Simply put, “[the employer] did not owe plaintiff, as employee, a fiduciary duty.” . . .

Wow. Some people will say anything in court papers, huh.  Or elsewhere.  Anyway, it’s as predicted here.

Courage!, Dan!  Or was it Kenneth?  (Hat tip to Insty, who says, “Loser loses again”!)

Posted in Lex scripta, Medialites | Leave a Comment »

On the Final

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 27, 2009

I first posted this two years ago.  But it’s so good I’m posting it again (joke will become readily apparent).

I have been pondering this link from Instapundit for a couple of days now. It is about, in one sense, a cutesie trend on American campuses now called a “last lecture”:

Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted “Last Lecture Series,” in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

Now the lecture in question in the article really was the last chance, for all practical purposes, for the professor involved, who is dying. I was, however, rather put off by this idea. The man was facing his end, I realized; how churlish could I be about such a topic?

On the eve of Yom Kippur, however — when among Jews the congregation as a whole admits to a state of sinfulness generically, but as individuals reserves the most intimate of confession for the private communication between Man and his Creator — I’ve had the chance to contemplate the matter some more. Regrettably for those among us who circulate heart-warming emails and who yet care about my opinion (uh, hi, Mom), I want to go with my initial instinct, at least as to the general trend; as to the case in the article, perhaps that requires more thought.

The “last lecture” trend is truly the emblem of ours, history’s most narcisstic era. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Narcissus Rex | Leave a Comment »

My smarter half

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 25, 2009

Here’s something that’s kind of interesting, and instructive, about social media and professional, as well as online-social, relations. I published this on LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® a couple of weeks ago (for good measure I just pinned it to the top again there, which I may do from time to time):

Secondary Trademark Infringement — the website:

This website is dedicated to an examination of the law of secondary liability for trademark infringement – the idea that someone other than a direct infringer can be liable for infringing another’s trademark. Secondary liability for trademark infringement is a relatively recent development in the law, and it has evolved entirely in the courts. . . .

Of all the contexts in which secondary liability has been raised, whether contributory or vicarious, the Internet has by far generated the most interest and attention. The advent of Internet commerce has created new problems for the law to address. On the Internet, buying and selling take place among a seemingly infinite number of parties at lightning speed, making it difficult both to police and remediate infringement. These issues came to light in Tiffany v. eBay, where the court observed that “more than six million new listings are posted on eBay daily, and at any given time, some 100 million listings appear on the website.”

That’s from the overview of Jane Coleman‘s new short treatise on contributory and vicarious liability for trademark infringement — those are the two different types of secondary liability, you know — which is the first work to analyze and digest thoroughly the entire law on this developing subject.

And talk about thorough! Be sure and read it through and through so you’ll be ready to comment incisively when the Second Circuit does its work on Tiffany v. eBay (oral argument was in mid July, by the way). You’ll be the hit of the party.

End of the post.   But here’s the point I want to make on this blog:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Lex scripta, Social networking | Leave a Comment »