Beautiful Time Lapse Video of Antarctica
At Holy Web!, a video by Anthony Powell:
Go to http://www.antarcticimages.com for a better quality version of this clip.
Blog: http://www.frozensouth.com
" Virgin: the world's best passenger complaint letter?"
Courtesy of The Telegraph, a tour de force in evocative writing. I reprint only the opening salvo.
Dear Mr Branson
REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008
I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.
Look at this Richard. Just look at it:
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?
You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they.
An instant classic. I'll have more on the beginning of Sen. Fumo's defense later today.
Why Should Companies Have Lawyers Review Contracts? An Example from the Max Planck Institute
Here's the original (now replaced) cover to the latest issue of MaxPlanckForschung, the flagship journal of the Max Planck Institute:
As MPF later explained,
The cover of the most recent German-language edition of MaxPlanckForschung (3/2008) depicts a Chinese text which had been chosen by our editorial office in order to symbolically illustrate the magazine's focus on "China". ...
Prior to publication, the editorial office had consulted a German sinologist for a translation of the relevant text. The sinologist concluded that the text in question depicted classical Chinese characters in a non-controversial context. To our sincere regret, however, it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker.
Contracts are a lot like a foreign language. There's a whole body of interpretation -- i.e. case law -- of which non-lawyers are generally unaware. There are also numerous known unknowns and unknown unknowns with regard to the interpretation of a specific contract in a given factual scenario. That is, there are times when an MBA who has done a lot of contracts will, like a German sinologist, not suffice.
Language Log has a long explanation of the deeper meaning here. I've posted their rough translation below the fold.
Continue Reading...
"Why You Can't Travel Back in Time and Kill Hitler"
More than a dozen reasons, at science fiction site io9. An example:
Making History by Stephen Fry: A history student and a physics professor manage to send a permanent male contraceptive pill back in time where Hitler’s father will consume it, ensuring Hitler will never be born. But without Hitler, the Nazi party is ripe for the leadership of Rudolph Gloder, who shares Hitler’s genocidal agenda, but is far more efficient, stable, patient, and charismatic. Free from Hitler’s personality flaws, Gloder was able to take over all of Europe, so that, in the alternate present day, an extremely conservative US is in a cold war with the Nazis.
"Supreme Court Upholds Bill Of Rights In 5-4 Decision"
From America's Finest News Source:
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled to uphold the Bill of Rights, the very tenets upon which American society is based. "After carefully considering the relevance of the 10 inviolable rights that comprise the ideological foundation on which our nation is built, the court finds that these basic freedoms remain important for the time being, and should not be overturned," read the majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who cast the tie-breaking vote. "Until such time as it can be definitively proven that citizens no longer require the protections provided by the Bill of Rights, it shall remain the principal legal guidance for the United States of America." The Supreme Court's latest decision comes on the heels of last month's 6-3 ruling to abolish the pursuit of happiness from the three inalienable rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence.
"Philly lawyer's mural of justice draws objection"
The Associated Press has picked up the dispute between Paul Rosen, who wants to paint a mural on a parking lot near Rittenhouse Square, and his neighbors, who apparently believe public art is beneath them. The dispute was covered in depth last month by Philadelphia Magazine (the same issue with a feature on Jim Beasley, Jr.).
The mural has been designed by Michael Webb, who also did the lovely mural facing our own parking lot, a part of which you can see here at night. (Unsurprisingly, Slade McLaughlin's lights are still on.)
Both articles lay the elitism thick on the opponents; I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they haven't made that easy, and haven't made clear why they're actually opposed. If you're not going to voice the specifics of your opposition to something as presumably unobjectionable as a privately-paid public arts project then people are going to assume the worst, an assumption reinforced by anonymous ad hominem attacks like this one:
Elitism aside, a few people thought that Paul Rosen’s allegorical tribute to Justice was actually a thinly disguised advertisement for his law firm. “I can’t imagine that [Paul] would not put his name on it,” says one person who was at the Ethical Society meeting. “That’s a form of advertising and opens the door to other things. The next thing you know, they’ll put up something showing a little boy run over by an automobile or a doctor removing the wrong leg or something like that, and the phone number of some law firm.”
Please. If there's some reference to the Spector, Gadon & Rosen Foundation down by the artist's signature, then so be it. The same is true for virtually every privately-funded public arts project in the country, and, if I recall correctly, most of the benches in Rittenhouse Square.
While we're at it, is that anonymous commentator in favor of negligently running over children or amputating healthy limbs? Is there something wrong with either of those parties recovering compensation for their devastating losses?
Like Calling the Cops to Report Stolen Drugs: Sen. Mitch McConnell's Preposterous Larceny Complaint
Is this really something he wants to admit?
Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) squared off in a debate with Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford. But on Lunsford's podium a GOP operative had placed a small voice recorder, presumably to pick up some off-mic comments Lunsford might make -- apparently a violation of the debate rules.
(The recorder itself -- sans recording -- was eventually returned.)
Now, from here the accounts differ. According to the Lunsford campaign, Lunsford actually didn't see the recorder. But since it was nestled in among his papers it was included when he handed his papers off to his staffers after the debate -- staffers who say they later erased the recording since it violated debate rules to have a planted recorder on the opponents podium.
According to the McConnell staffers, however, Lunsford did see the recorder during the debate and essentially confiscated it. Richard St. Onge, II (who, in a separate story, may have absconded with his name from some neo-gothic southern novel) is the GOP operative who planted the recorder. And according to St. Onge, when he went up to Lunsford after the debate to demand his recorder back, Lunsford said, "No you won't get it back."
And now St. Onge and the chairman of McConnell's campaign have filed a criminal complaint against Lunsford for petty larceny and destruction of property -- because of the erasure.
Pathetic. McConnell's campaign better have a letter from some lawyer affirming that the contents of a surreptitious recording of a third-party are their "property," otherwise they're in for a malicious prosecution suit and verdict. (If they have the letter, then the lawyer is in for one.)
Philly Folks: Take A Gander Inside Starr's New Ghastly Restaurant
Citypaper has a bunch of pictures inside Butcher & Singer, where Striped Bass used to be.
"megan" in the comments there writes:
nice tablecloths. way to take the most beautiful restaurant space in the city and turn it into a low end capital grille.
Indeed. What's with the dogs-at-a-bar backdrop?
BS opens the Monday after next.
Palin on Reagan on Freedom
I thought I recognized that quote...
In her closing statement last night, Palin relied on a pleasant sounding quote from Reagan:
"It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."
Jonathan Chait noted the context of Reagan's quote.
In fact, Reagan was not warning about a general lack of vigilance about freedom, he was warning what would happen if Medicare was enacted.
"Single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans" happened in March
The optical afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. It was so bright that immediately after the blast, Swift's UltraViolet and Optical Telescope and X-Ray Telescope indicated they were effectively blinded, originally leading researchers to think something had gone wrong.
"For a few precious seconds, the luminosity was a million times that of the whole galaxy," explains Dieter Hartmann, a Professor at Clemson University.
And on top of that, the burst shattered the record for the farthest object that’s ever been visible to the naked eye. The previous record was a spiral galaxy called M33, which is thousands of times closer than the March 19 explosion.
The explosion, which took place halfway across the universe, was so far away that it took its light 7.5 billion years to reach the Earth. In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that neither the Earth nor the Sun had come into existence.
To top it off, it was a supernova-collapsing, planet-destroying, blackhole-creating gamma-ray burst. Here's Bad Astronomy:
A GRB is born in the fury of an exploding massive star, when its core collapses into a black hole. A vast amount of energy is released, more than the Sun’s entire lifetime’s output. A hellish mix of forces focuses, squeezes this exploding energy and matter into beams, extremely narrow cones of emission, cosmic blowtorches which march across space. If you are too close, and in the path of a beam, well, saying "you’re toast" doesn’t quite cover it. But if the beam misses you, you don’t get the gigantic burst of light; the energy drops of very rapidly if the aim of the GRB is off. Even a miss by a fraction of a degree is enough to change its apparent brightness hugely.
Wordle Word Bubbles for Obama and McCain's Speeches
Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture (an economics / finance blog) posted wordle word bubbles for the candidate's speeches:
Here's Obama's:
and McCain's:
and, for reference, here's the Declaration of Independence:
The Art of Presentation: John McCain Goes to Middle School
Talking Points Memo raised a good point while watching McCain's nomination speech on television.
Why was he giving it in front of a green screen?
As the camera panned out, the whole backdrop was revealed:
Ah, okay. He's giving his speech in front of... a mansion?
Then TPM's readers solved the mystery: it's a picture of a Middle School in North Hollywood, California.
Why would he use that?
Apparently it's Walter Reed Middle School. Like Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
There are three possibilities:
- as part of a "small town" theme for the convention, the RNC wanted to showcase the San Fernando Valley, a racially diverse section of Los Angeles of particularly high population density;
- after showing slow-motion video of the World Trade Center attack, the RNC sought to use an almost-Nabokovian depth of irony and subtlety to convey that domestic freedom and prosperity are dependent upon the sacrifice of soldiers in foreign wars; or,
- some technician searched an image database for "Walter Reed" and used the above without double checking what it represented.
What do you think?
Which is Worse: Suing Over Your Hit and Run Bentley or Blackmailing Your Kids?
Two heroes today in legal news.
A Coney Island businessman is suing the city for damaging the Bentley he was driving when he killed a Brooklyn dad in a hit-and-run accident.
Harry Shasho, who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, says the NYPD failed to safeguard the battered black 2005 Bentley GT luxury sedan that was impounded as evidence of the fatal crash. He's asking for at least $190,000. ...
Shasho says the Bentley was in "excellent condition ... with no noticeable defects or damage" when he turned himself in, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The police report tells a different story. It describes the car as crumpled and the windshield "depressed and fractured" by the violent impact with [victim Louis] Couch that left his body parts strewn across the street.
The suit seeks damages from the city, the NYPD and the Brooklyn district attorney's office.
In the civil suit filed Friday (we’re still trying to get our hands on a copy) Blitzer accuses Ross [his father-in-law] of stealing $195,000 from him. The suit reportedly details Ross’s estranged relationship with his daughter, Allison Blitzer. When Blitzer was pregnant, Ross said that he hoped the child would die and that Blitzer’s gravestone should be carved with an obscenity, according to the suit.
Ross had success earlier in his business career for importing the Smurfs cartoon characters to the U.S. from Belgium, but had lost his money due to bad business decisions, according to a separate civil complaint filed by Blitzer. From there, the harassment continued with phone calls, emails and threats of derailing Blitzer’s career.
Last month, Ross enlisted the services of Jackson, the lawyer. Blitzer eventually put Jackson in touch with his lawyer. In an Aug. 5 phone conversation, Jackson said if Blitzer gave Ross $5.5 million, Ross would stop harassing him and promise not to communicate with his daughter and grandchildren. The next day, Jackson sent a letter to Blitzer’s lawyer doubling Ross’s demand — asking for $5.5 million to not communicate with Blitzer’s family and another $5.5 million for not contacting Blackstone [Blitzer's employer].
I'm guessing "my Bentley was fine after I killed someone with it then sped off" probably comes off even worse to a jury than "I demanded $11 million to stop harassing my children and grandchildren."
Did you catch the hidden Hero #3 in there? The blackmailer's lawyer was in on the whole thing. Now he'll have time for a refresher on habeas corpus.
The New Era of Marketing: Two New Brilliant Web Ads
How cool are you?
Do you have a video showing your cell phone do this?
When someone makes fun of a minor glitch in your product, how do you respond?
Oops - A Thought On Typos and Proofreading
For those of you unfamiliar with LexBlog, who does the back office work for this site, every day they collect ten posts from their clients and post them on Kevin's blog. I was fortunate enough to have a post selected for the 15th:
Can General Counsel can litigation costs?
Wait, what was that title?
Oh crud, it wasn't their typo, it was mine. It's now fixed.
As I've said before, I think it's a waste -- sometimes to the point of dishonesty if you're billing hourly -- to obsess over typos. They happen. The difference in time it takes to go from 99.9% appearance to 100% is seldom worth the effort, and it comes with costs. Just look at this quote by Stephen Cozen after the Second Circuit said his insurer clients couldn't go after Saudi nationals for 9/11:
It just seems to be totally wrong to us to have a decision be made on who gets immunity and who does or does not get immunity, based not on law but because of political decisions made by the diplomatic corps.
Inartful, but it was better to get his point across before the reporter's deadline than to mince words or prepare a statement.
That said, you really should pay attention where it counts. Like, you know, the title of the post. Oops. Just goes to show the value of proofreading either by setting down your work and coming back to it later, or by having someone else review it.
At least I didn't mess up the title of my magazine, like so:
Oy.
How to Go Bankrupt
Ain't that the truth:
"How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways, gradually and then suddenly."
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (hat tip: Free Money Finance).
Don't Open Yourself Up to Mockery: Paris Hilton Edition
Not too long ago I posted about not exposing yourself to ridicule at trial, since it's as effective a rhetorical weapon as any other.
John McCain stepped out of the serious and into the sarcastic -- and got burned:
John McCain stepped out of the serious and into the sarcastic -- and got burned:
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
A Dispute of Which I Was Unaware: The Dalai Lama is "Lying"
Well that's interesting:
I'm generally aware of protests about the conditions in Tibet for those not directly affiliated with the Dalai Lama -- he lives in a palace, they live in squalor -- but I wasn't aware about a religious freedom protest.
I'm generally aware of protests about the conditions in Tibet for those not directly affiliated with the Dalai Lama -- he lives in a palace, they live in squalor -- but I wasn't aware about a religious freedom protest.
The Pitfalls of Pleasing Everybody
A telling anecdote from Seth Godin:
Greg sent me an article about a bridge in Folsom. $117 million spent, it needs a name.
How about "Johnny Cash"? He's famous, he made Folsom famous, he's dead, his daughter said yes, he has fans, they need tourists... you get the idea.
City Council votes 4 to 1 against.
The two key money quotes:
“Why would we promote a prison? We are known for a lot more things than the prison.”
and my favorite:
In regards to the Folsom Lake Crossing name, King said “just about everybody I’ve talked to is happy.”
Here's the takeaway: If you are willing to satisfy people with good enough, you can make just about everybody happy. If you delight people and create change that lasts, you're going to offend those that hate change in all its forms. Your choice.
In a month you'll have forgotten why you think the people of Folsom are boring and backwards, but you'll still continue to think it.
Big mistakes linger for a long, long time.
Reminder: Philadelphia Is Great
QuizLaw, who for some reason "frequently speak[s] ill of my hometown of Philadelphia," nonetheless gives a shout-out to our murals program, which is well worth appreciation. If you're local, take the time to enjoy it over the holiday.
"30 Most Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth"
"Happy Birthday To You's complex, sordid copyright history"
Via Boing Boing is this research paper:
It's always possible to be totally, completely wrong on the law and nonetheless make a killing. Much business litigation arises from the same: one party is totally, completely wrong, and yet is making money anyway until someone has the persistence and resources to sue them into compliance.
"Happy Birthday to You" is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many - including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft - have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. The song that became "Happy Birthday to You," originally written with different lyrics as "Good Morning to All," was the product of intense creative labor, undertaken with copyright protection in mind. However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.Of course, the fact that "it is almost certainly no longer under copyright" hasn't stopped the following: "By the early 1990s, the song was generating well over $1 million per year,89 and by 1996, reported Forbes magazine, it was “pull[ing] in slightly less than $2 million a year.”"
The falsity of the standard story about the song demonstrates the dangers of relying on anecdotes without thorough research and analysis. It also reveals collective action barriers to mounting challenges to copyright validity: the song generates an estimated $2 million per year, and yet no one has ever sought adjudication of the validity of its copyright. Finally, the true story of the song demonstrates that a long, unitary copyright term requires changes in copyright doctrine and administration. With such a term, copyright law needs a doctrine like adverse possession to clear title and protect expectations generated when, as with this song, putative owners do not challenge distribution of unauthorized copies for more than 20 years. And Copyright Office recordkeeping policy, which currently calls for discarding correspondence after 20 years and most registration denials and deposits after five years, must be improved to facilitate resolution of disputes involving older works.
Over two hundred unpublished documents found in six archives across the United States have been made available on a website that will serve as an online appendix to this article.
It's always possible to be totally, completely wrong on the law and nonetheless make a killing. Much business litigation arises from the same: one party is totally, completely wrong, and yet is making money anyway until someone has the persistence and resources to sue them into compliance.
"The Change You Deserve"
There's nothing more I could add to this wonderful post about the new GOP slogan at 43(B)log.
Be careful about the ideas and imagery your words convey.
Be careful about the ideas and imagery your words convey.
"Is Jodie Foster Responsible for Reaganomics?"
That's so preposterous it might be true:
Mundell's explanation, according to a report in The Financial Times, works like this: Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley, claimed he shot the president in an effort to impress Jodie Foster. (The movie features a scene in which De Niro attempts to assassinate a politician.)
The wave of sympathy for Reagan in the wake of the shooting deterred Democrats in Congress from voting against his proposed tax cuts.
