The situation around the Government House appears to be deteriorating as of late August 29, with the police unable to control PAD demonstrators pushing out of the Government House compound. Very small numbers of protesters have attempted to use violence to impede RTP progress into the Government House compound, though the majority of protesters are employing civil disobedience tactics by sitting or laying down and have discouraged the use of violence by their activists.
Bad news.
Please consider this posted by commenter jbg. He directs the viewer to a YouTube video of the German version of “The Office,” which tried to pretend it wasn’t a ripoff until Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and the BBC threatened a lawsuit. But that’s not the part jbg liked. The part jbg liked is midway through this clip:
Via Ain’t It Cool News.
What taking the bar exam did to my living environment (and I’m usually such a clean person):
This video was taken after day two of the bar exam.
Two guys pleaded guilty to defacing a historic sign at Grand Canyon National Park — in order to correct its grammar. The visit was part of a road trip across the United States, which the two launched in order to eradicate typos across the nation. They called themselves the Typo Eradication Advancement League and apparently maintained a blog, although I’m disappointed to report that it’s taken down now.
In addition to paying restitution and serving a year’s probation, they can’t enter any national parks for a year, which is totally going to mess up their trip home.
I dug up two potentially interesting links today in the course of my work. One is from the blog of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, which RD will be able to join when he is admitted to the California bar this fall. During the course of a post on the evils of multitasking, I saw a reference to a British study in which they found that people who answer a lot of phone calls and emails while working were actually less effective than people who had just smoked marijuana. (Can you imagine that study being undertaken in the United States?) I can’t find the study on the Kings College, University of London Institute of Psychiatry Web site, sadly, but I’d love to know more details about this study. I would never dream of working on drugs, but I certainly see a substantial difference in my own ability to concentrate between working by myself in a room and working in a big open office.
The other is a short academic paper (PDF) from an economist at George Mason University that compares contingency fees for lawyers to “contingency fees” — tips — for waiters. Among other conclusions, the author concludes that contingency fees for waiters must be effective because no restaurants advertise a no-tip policy. I have reservations about that (public perception as “nicer than fast food” must count for something, plus who would wait tables for no tips?), but it’s interesting. If you are at all interested in legal contingency fees or academic spats, it’s also worth reading for how the author takes a colleague to task for miscalculating the rise in lawyers’ income over the past 50ish years. (IMO, neither is really being accurate because of how different types of lawyers get very different fees.)
Continuing my policy of posting things when they make me think of RD, I’ll quickly note that RD’s undergraduate alma mater, Tufts, was one of more than 100 colleges and universities whose presidents are calling for a national debate on whether to lower the drinking age back to 18. I have no idea what he’d think about the merits of the proposal, nor am I sure it would make much of a difference safety-wise. But lowering the drinking age would certainly remove a pain from the butts of the people who have to enforce the rule on college campuses.
If you are among the many human beings with hair, a cosmetic… something (not really a surgeon)… in Beverly Hills would like to help you get rid of it.
He or she would also like to LASER YOUR FACE.
Ever wondered which food combinations would taste good, and which would taste bad? Wonder no longer.
(Published under Troeltsch’s login, but actually Lorelei.)
For extremely boring work-related reasons, I needed to check a fact about Nissan cars today. So I typed nissan.com into my web browser and discovered that the site is actually owned by Nissan Computer Corp., a small computer sales and repair business in North Carolina. Perhaps not surprisingly, a major feature on the company’s front page is a big fat banner about their ongoing lawsuit with Nissan Motor Corp. USA. Being bored by cars and interested in lawsuits, I clicked the link.
Turns out that Nissan Computer Corp. is owned by a guy whose last name is actually Nissan (via Jerusalem, not Tokyo — same word as the month on the Jewish calendar). He figured out that nissan.com would be useful before the automaker did. Inevitably, the automaker sued him in 1999 for cybersquatting, copyright infringement and trademark dilution. Many details are here (though in a somewhat selective way), but this thing has been to the Ninth Circuit and narrowly avoided cert. If you are interested, a magazine article on the subject is here and a law journal paper is here. In the end, Nissan Computer got to keep its site but spent a lot of money, and it took nine years.
Even beyond the case itself, there were several things that I thought would interest RD about this case:
1. Before Nissan Computer, Mr. Nissan had an auto repair company called Nissan Foreign Car — and he got sued over the computer company!
2. Mr. Nissan’s first name is Uzi. Good thing he didn’t piss THAT company off.
3. On Mr. Nissan’s site, which is updated more frequently than it might appear, we learn that Nissan is partly owned by Renault and Renault is partly owned by the French government. Thus, Nissan Motors is part French. I believe this information is supposed to be damning. Perhaps he’s concerned about the French head-butting the American small business to death.
30 minutes of 80’s cartoon theme songs:
30 minutes of 90’s cartoon theme songs:
10 points to anybody who actually watched all 60 minutes.
Not really. But RD gave commenter Troeltsch admin access, and we (T & Lorelei) are using it to SUBVERT THE ROBOTS. Or rather, hopefully, supplement them with things we thought RD would consider posting.
First up: Thanks to the Olympics, we have been watching CNBC. Last night, we were surprised to see a promo for CNBC itself proclaiming that the station is “Fast. Accurate. Actionable. Unbiased.” Then we had to rewind it to confirm that it had actually said “actionable.” I am sorry to say that I cannot find it on YouTube — most people aren’t interested in CNBC house ads — but if you need proof, CNN blogged it months ago.
For those readers not familiar with the legal world, “actionable” describes something that can get you sued. Good job, CNBC publicity department! Various dictionaries do give “providing grounds for action” as a second definition, but it sure wasn’t the one I thought of first.
At this moment, my flight leaving the United States should have just taken off.
I say “should” and not “has” because I’ve handed off primarily control over RumorsDaily to my cadre of eager robots. From this point forward, unless I say otherwise, updates to RumorsDaily are being made without my direct control. I’ve asked the robots to keep you mildly up-to-date as to my travels, but they’re an unpredictable bunch, so who knows what they might decide to put up in my stead.
As a formal goodbye to RumorsDaily’s human master, here’s a picture of some of the currency I’ll be carrying with me:
Alright. All robots from here on out. Go go robot webmaster!
What happens when you take a North Dakota farmer, and suddenly hand him thousands of dollars worth of oil revenue:
“You can keep going up and up and up,” he says from his home, decked out with a massive fire pit in the living room, semi-circular leather couch and bright orange shag carpet.
He had worked on the home for more than 40 years. Now, he’s expanding it — just because he can.
Oh, and there’s a slideshow depicting the above described living room:
Said “North Dakota is the place you ought to be”
So they loaded up the truck and moved to North.
Dakota, that is.
Tufts’ IP department tussles with the RIAA.
It may say Giants versus Tigers, but this ticket confirmation is not for a game in San Francisco or Detroit:
Dear [DoorFrame],
Thank you for purchasing your 3 ticket(s) from etix.com.
This email serves as your receipt.
Your method of delivery is: Print At Home.
Your confirmation code is: XXXXXXX
Your ticket(s) are from the following venue(s): ??????Tokyo Dome?
You have been charged for the following:
Serial # Section Row Seat Price Conv. Fee Date Performance
__________________________________________________________________________________________
XXXXXXXX 41(Gate)6(Aisle) 22 114 JPY2,300.00 JPY0.00 September 21, 2008 6:00 PM ??vs???Giants vs Tigers?Delivery Fee: JPY0.00
Order Fee: JPY0.00
Total Price: JPY2,300.00Sincerely,
The Staff at etix.com
If you want to read more about this exciting game, you can TRY to do so here. I’m pretty excited about this.
Since I’m flying out of the country tomorrow, I figured I might as well just decide that I’m finished with this and throw it online:
If you’re exceedingly nerdy AND have very little taste in stickers, pins or magnets, you can pick up one of these at Cafepress for the next five minutes. Based on my past experiences with CafePress, I’m certain they’ll decide this violates one of their many, many restrictive and killjoy-based policies.
Past iterations of this idea can be seen here and here.
Sources for Creative Commons pictures: Wil Wheaton and Joss Whedon.
Sylvester Stallone explains the three seashells from Demolition Man:
OK, this may be bordering on the grotesque, but the way it was explained to me by the writer is you hold two seashells like chopsticks, pull gently and scrape what’s left with the third. You asked for it…. Be careful what you ask for, sorry.
Now you know.
I-Mockery draws up a handy explanatory graphic (featured to the right) to make this clearer than it needs to be. Click to enlarge a disturbing vision of our future. (Mildly NSFW).
Political Arthimetik posted a nice chart showing the percent of people supporting the Democratic candidate minus the percent supporting the Republican candidate in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Obama is fairing better than both Gore and Kerry at this point in the campaign:
I like graphs.
Discover Card’s Travel Services seem both handy, and terrifying:
Political Evacuation
We can arrange for repatriation on political grounds if you are in a country that needs to be evacuated, based on the decision of the United States government. In hostile or dangerous conditions, we’ll use all resources to maintain contact with you until an evacuation becomes practical or the emergency has ended.
It seems odd to rely on your credit card for this sort of service, but then again, who should you rely on?
