,hl=en,siteUrl='http://0ldfox.blogspot.com/',authuser=0,security_token="v_SeT2Tv8vVdKRCcG9CCW-ZdIfQ:1429878696275"/> Old Fox KM Journal : January 2004

Saturday, January 31, 2004

THE SORRY TALE OF GEORGE SOROS:


"Soros reminds us of the guy who passes the board and gets into a private club or cooperative apartment house, and then tries to make it difficult for the next guy. One thing we do know for sure, in the advertisement that Soros and friends ran in the press, basically urging that everyone should be liable for paying taxes, mention was made of an organization that was formed by them to support their aims. The office of this organization was in Boston or Philadelphia (coming from New York the geographic lines are blurred). We called and told them, to their eager delight, that we wanted to make a contribution. But we wanted to make sure it was tax deductible. We were assured it was. We were reminded of the old Southern preacher who said, 'Don't do like I do. Do like I say do'. "

--Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder
Subject: Time Off From Work

Two factory workers were talking while on the job.

"I think I'll take some time off from work." said the man.

"How do you think you'll do that?" said the blonde female. So the man proceeded to show her...by climbing up to the rafters, and hanging upside down.

Just then the boss walked in, saw the worker hanging from the ceiling, and asked him what on earth he was doing.

"I'm a light bulb", answered the guy.

"I think you need some time off," said the boss.

So, the man jumped down and walked out of the factory. The blonde began walking out too.

The boss asked her, "Where do you think you're going?"

The blonde answered, "Home...I can't work in the dark."

Friday, January 30, 2004

I found what appears to be a very useful website for Landlord Tenant Law in the US. It appears that this site has compiled all of the LT Law in all 50 states. It seems worth looking into.

RKonig

http://rental-housing.com/rental/ltlaw.htm

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Q. Will a case law opinion on Westlaw display a red or yellow KeyCite flag if it has been, in effect, weakened or overturned by a statute?

A. No. Our editors don't give an opinion a KeyCite flag unless it has been explicitly cited and called into question. A statute is unlikely to cite to an opinion at all, let alone state that an opinion is unconstitutional or invalid. In our case, the statute effectively rendered the opinion invalid. Nevertheless, it doesn't get a flag without that explicit reference.

Here's A Tale of Two Opinions, demonstrating how a statute could indirectly put a KeyCite flag on an opinion. Opinion #1 has been reversed by Opinion #2. Opinion #2 cites to a specific statute as the basis for reversing Opinion #1. Does Opinion #1 get a red KeyCite flag? Yes, because Opinion #2 contains an explicit negative reference to the statute and Opinion #1.

Example:
Opinion #2, State v. Shedrick, 574 N.E.2d 1065 (Ohio 1991), displays a yellow KeyCite flag on Westlaw. The explanation for the yellow flag under Negative Indirect History is a treatment note, Called into Doubt by Statute. The treatment note is attached to State v. Bonner, 1994 WL 105521 (Ohio App. 1994). In State v. Bonner, the court cites to the statute as the basis for weakening State v. Shedrick.

Monday, January 26, 2004


Haunted by e-mail


Published: January 24 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: January 24 2004 4:00

It can be tempting to regard e-mail as ephemeral - easily deleted without leaving any obvious physical presence. Yet many have come to realise that e-mails provide a record more permanent and indestructible than many older forms of communication. Messages sent by Conrad Black were cited last weekend in a claim from a company in his media empire for repayment of more than $200m (£108m). And Downing Street officials will learn next week what Lord Hutton made of their e-mails in his inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the weapons inspector.

The complaint filed against Lord Black accused him of taking money "through various improper means" from Hollinger International, which controls his newspaper interests. To demonstrate the Canadian-born press baron's contempt for the company's public shareholders, it damagingly quoted an e-mail in which he said Hollinger "served no purpose as a listed company other than relatively cheap use of other people's capital . . ."

The e-mails submitted to the Hutton inquiry could also feature in its final verdict. In Lord Hutton's investigation, they were a sizeable part of the evidence provided by Tony Blair's office. In many cases, they were the only record of exchanges between officials at crucial moments. Their publication so soon after the event provided electrifying insights into the role of the prime minister's advisers in compiling the Iraq dossier. What Lord Hutton made of them will be known only when he publishes his report on Wednesday. But the precedent has already led senior MPs to demand similar access to e-mails in future parliamentary inquiries, describing them as "the richest source of an audit trail".

This is hardly a new lesson. Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney-general, made devastating use of e-mails in his cases against Wall Street abuses. The most notorious was written by Henry Blodget of Merrill Lynch, describing as "a piece of shit" a company the investment bank publicly recommended.

The US government's case against Frank Quattrone, the former Credit Suisse First Boston banker charged with obstruction of justice and witness-tampering, appeared to hinge on a two-line e-mail. According to prosecutors, this urged employees to destroy material evidence after subpoenas had been issued for records of the bank's handling of high-technology company initial public offerings.

And it was an e-mail that led to the conviction of Arthur Andersen for impeding justice after the collapse of Enron, and indirectly to the accountancy firm's collapse. The jury concluded it showed the auditor had altered documents after Enron refused to go along with recommended changes to an internal memo.

Paper documents can be burnt and conversations held in circumstances that make eavesdropping very difficult. But, once sent, an e-mail leaves traces that may return to haunt the writer, long after the event.



Find this article at:
http://news.ft.com/s01/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281277997&p=1012571727248

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Newspaper headlines in the year 2035..................


Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia.

Tiny white minority still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's sixth language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops & livestock.

Baby conceived naturally.... Scientists stumped.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally,but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $27.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesday only.

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules incarceration violates the constitutional rights of convicted criminals.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

Capital Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75%.

Florida Democrats still don't know how to use a voting machine!

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

An out-of-towner drove his car into a ditch in a desolated area. Luckily, a
local farmer came to help with his big strong horse, named Buddy. He hitched
Buddy up to the car and yelled, "Pull, Nellie, pull!" Buddy didn't move.

Then the farmer hollered, "Pull, Buster, pull!" Buddy didn't respond.

Once more the farmer commanded, "Pull, Coco, pull!"

Nothing.

Then the farmer nonchalantly said, "Pull, Buddy, pull!" And the horse easily
dragged the car out of the ditch.

The motorist was most appreciative and very curious. He asked the farmer why
he called his horse by the wrong name three times.

The farmer said, "Oh, Buddy is blind and if he thought he was the only one
pulling, he wouldn't even try."

Monday, January 19, 2004

New York Times surveys


In Off With Their Heads, Morris cites the news media for distorting the news, pushing a blatant liberal agenda. He lacerates Howell Raines' New York Times for its desperate attempts to pump up anti-war sentiment through the buildup to the Iraq War.



Morris also makes the case that the three broadcast networks slanted their news coverage on the war in Iraq by emphasizing casualties and downplaying other significant progress. He refers to Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Maureen Dowd and Peter Arnett as the Sky-Is-Falling Brigade. "The American media establishment has blundered and blundered badly" in what Morris describes as a "credibility gap, but this time it's not official Washington that Americans disbelieve - it's the media itself that we can't trust to tell the truth."

Morris' case against the New York Times is lengthy and well researched.

From that chapter:

The New New York Times: All The News That Fits, They Print
There is a new New York Times. Howell Raines's New York Times. No longer content to report the news, he admits to "flooding the zone" - and floods it with stories that carry forward his personal crusades and the paper's editorial views. And the Times doesn't stop at slanting the news; it also weights its polls. The surveys the newspaper takes regularly are biased to give more strength to Democratic and liberal opinions and less to those of the rest of us.

The newspaper has become like a political consulting firm for the Democratic Party. Under Raines, it is squandering the unparalleled credibility it has amassed over the past century in order to articulate and advance its own political and ideological agenda. For decades, the Times was the one newspaper so respected for its integrity and so widely read that it had influence well beyond its circulation. Now it has stooped to the role of partisan cheerleader, sending messages of dissent, and fanning the flames of disagreement on the left. Each month brings a new left party line from the paper, setting the tone for the government's loyal opposition.

Reading the New York Times these days is like listening to Radio Moscow. Not that it's communist, of course, but it has become almost as biased as the former Soviet news organ that religiously spewed the party line. Just as Russians did under Soviet rule, you now need to read "between the lines" to distinguish what's really happening from what is just New York Times propaganda.

Morris spends great time on explaining the polling methodology used by the Times. He makes the case that the paper spends its own money to fish out positions that are most critical of the Bush Administration. He also goes into an interesting discussion of the use of weights in poll data, which is an industry-wide method to statistically compensate for inaccuracies.

Weighting polls is a perfectly legitimate practice, when corrections are needed. For example, often more women than men answer the telephone for pollsters, so they adjust accordingly to improve the poll's accuracy. Morris describes situations where their polls on subjective questions are down-right manipulated:

Acting like the chief campaign strategist for the left, the Times generally conducts six to eight public opinion polls each year. But lately the Times seems to me to be deliberately misinterpreting and weighting its data to suggest that its liberal ideas have a popularity they don't actually enjoy. The polling seems to have one major purpose - to help the Democratic Party set its agenda, encouraging it to embrace the Times's own liberalism on a host of issues. Then, from editorials to op-ed articles and a blizzard of front-page stories, the newspaper relentlessly expounds its views, doing its best to create a national firestorm on the issues it chooses to push.
Jack Shafer, the media critic for the on-line magazine Slate, described the new policy to Newsweek on December 9, 2002: "The Times has assumed the journalistic role as the party of opposition" to the current Bush administration. According to Newsweek, "many people around the country are noticing a change in the way the Old Gray Lady [the Times's pet name] covers any number of issues. . .. ." The magazine pointed out how Raines believes in "flooding the zone - using all the paper's formidable resources to pound away on a story."

Other newspapers often try to do the same thing. What is unique about the Times's approach is the sharp departure it represents from the paper's past. Long priding itself on objectivity, political neutrality, and even reserve in reporting news, the Times is renowned as our nation's primary voice of objective authority. As such, it occupies a unique place in our national iconography. But Alex Jones, author of The Trust, a book about the Times, describes the Times's latter-day style of news coverage as "certainly a shift from the New York Times as the 'paper of record.' "

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Gun-free England sets an example for gun violence?

Look just because Peter Jennings doesn't tell you about shootings in England, doesn't mean they aren't happening.

Where do they get these evil guns?
Key points: Bush's speech to the UK at Banqueting House

Here are the key points from President George Bush's keynote speech in London on the first day of his state visit.
Three pillars of peace and security

Watch the video from the BBC.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

I would like to thank everyone who responded with suggestions for energy legislative/regulatory publications. I was asked to summarize for the list so below is the results. Interestingly most publications deal with the legislative side of the coin. Thank you all again.


Congressional Green Sheets http://www.greensheets.com/

CQ Weekly http://cq.com/corp/show.do?page=products_cqweekly

Electricity Daily http://www.electricity-daily.com

Energy Central www.energycentral.com

Energy Legislation Wire (BNA) (ELMO) http://www.bna.com/products/corplaw/elmo.htm

Energy Washington from IWP news, http://energywashington.com

Environment and Energy Daily (E & E Publishing) www.eenews.net
Inside Energy http://www.platts.com/marketing/inside_energy/index.shtml

Inside FERC http://www.platts.com/marketing/inside_energy/index.shtml

Power Daily North America http://www.ioenergy.com

Laura Speer
Director of Library Services
Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman LLP

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Teaching Math in 1950:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80.
What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:

A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money.
The cardinality of set "M" is 100.
Each element is worth one dollar.
Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M."
The set "C", the cost of production, contains 20 fewer points than set "M."
Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M".
Answer this question:
What is the cardinality of the set "P" of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20.
Your assignment:
Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990:

By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20.
What do you think of this way of making a living?
Topic for class participation after answering the question:
How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the
trees?
There are no wrong answers.

Teaching Math in 2000:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.
His cost of production is $120.
How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60 ?

Teaching Math in 2005:

El hachero vende un camion carga por $100.
La cuesta de produccion es.............
TV connection
Television recording devices like TiVo free viewers from rigid network schedules by letting them decide when to watch their favorite programs. But such devices are still subject to at least one limitation: They must be plugged into a television set.

A new Web site called ShadowTV will let subscribers watch CNBC and NBC News programs whenever and wherever they like, as long as they have access to a computer with an Internet connection. The site (www.shadowtv.com) will maintain a two-week archive of all CNBC programming as well as "Today," "Meet the Press" and "NBC Nightly News."

The service is offered on a two-week trial basis at no charge, and will then cost $12.95 to $29.95 a month.

From Journal Sentinel wire reports

Saturday, January 10, 2004


Status of message MsgID6_E5R0QDOD
Sent At Tracking ID Recipient Status Date Delivered
1/11/2004 4:19 am MsgID6_E5R0QDOD 305-772-8827 Message accepted by network NONE

Enter the Tracking ID and the Recipient of a message for which you would like the status.

Tracking ID: MsgID6_E5R0QDOD Recipient: 305-772-8827


"Drop that fry, ass-ole, and put your hands up! You move, you're dead!"

If Fox is showing this photo o their website, they KNOW the guy is a clown. Franken is wrong politically but he's a lot more enjoyable than O'Reilly's unreasonableness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882


Here
Waldo Emerson is truly the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature, published in 1836, that represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays.

Friday, January 09, 2004

Excluded Parties List System: "

The Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Lists and the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Lists are now available on the EPLS database.
The OFAC Lists are being identified on EPLS as Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) 'SDN and Blocked Persons List' and the BIS Lists are being identified on EPLS as 'Denied Persons List'. While these Lists are available on EPLS for access at a single location, they do not replace the Lists available at the OFAC and BIS web sites. Also, these Lists have not been fully incorporated into the EPLS database and do not have Search and Report capabilities. Therefore, until further notice, users will need to check each list on EPLS to determine an entities' or individual's eligibility status. "

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Techdirt Corporate Intelligence: "

Techdirt Tells You What YOU Need to Know -- Now
Techdirt is your business' corporate intelligence team. We build you a private corporate intelligence web site that we stock DAILY with the analysis, news and insight you need to run your business. We partner closely with you to deliver:

Custom analysis of trends and events most important to your business
Filtered news and insight about your industry, your competition, your partners and customers
Intelligence reports with answers to your specific business challenges
We make sure you have the knowledge and tools you need at your fingertips so you can...
Get important facts quickly
Get an honest analysis of events in your industry and how they impact you
Stay ahead of your competition
Track trends and developments in your market
Measure the impact of your corporate strategy
Look for new threats and opportunities
Increase your strengths and reduce your weaknesses
...All for less than the cost of a single employee. You leave the finding, filtering, summarizing and analyzing to us. With Techdirt, you will be better informed and have more time to execute.












Techdirt Tells You What YOU Need to Know -- Now
Techdirt is your business' corporate intelligence team. We build you a private corporate intelligence web site that we stock DAILY with the analysis, news and insight you need to run your business. We partner closely with you to deliver:
Custom analysis of trends and events most important to your business
Filtered news and insight about your industry, your competition, your partners and customers
Intelligence reports with answers to your specific business challenges
We make sure you have the knowledge and tools you need at your fingertips so you can...
Get important facts quickly
Get an honest analysis of events in your industry and how they impact you
Stay ahead of your competition
Track trends and developments in your market
Measure the impact of your corporate strategy
Look for new threats and opportunities
Increase your strengths and reduce your weaknesses
...All for less than the cost of a single employee. You leave the finding, filtering, summarizing and analyzing to us. With Techdirt, you will be better informed and have more time to execute. "

[UK hynotist books. timberlake?].

Saturday, January 03, 2004

The philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to . . . to . . . to . . ."

I forget. But it was important!
HOW TO USE HISTORYWORLD

World History consists of some 400 separate Histories AND 4000 tagged events. Choose HISTORIES to read a chosen subject, and to move seamlessly from one History to another. Try TOURS to travel through time on your own selection of interconnecting trails. Use WHATWHENWHERE to discover what was going on at any moment.

No more for him. He's on the wagon.


Journey from Newgate to Tyburn: "A Last Drink
Even in the eighteenth century the Tyburn Road or Oxford Street was a lively area, with salesmen and shoppers and people stopping for a bite to eat or for a drink. Those who found a seat in the Mason's Arms, a pub in Seymour Place, would get a special view of the prisoners, because this was their very last place to stop for food and drink. Before that they would have had a drink half way through the journey, at the Bowl Inn at St Giles.

The City Marshall knew that the utmost care had to be taken at this final stop. It was a custom for prisoners to have a drink - perhaps the alcohol would numb them before the execution. But the cellars of the pub still have the manacles on the walls, which show that prisoners enjoyed their last pint in unusual conditions.

As they left the pub and were loaded back onto the cart, prisoners would shout to customers 'I'll buy you a pint on the way back!' We might think it strange for people condemned to death to be cracking jokes, but it was just one of the many rituals that made the day such a spectacle for the thousands who, at some point, decided to watch. Some, who might have come miles to see 'the drop', were determined to have a good time - almost as though it was a holiday or they had gone to a carnival - and it was Saint Monday, a long weekend, after all! There were eight of these hanging days a year and they were considered to be the biggest tourist attraction of the day!"
Now THIS is truly amazing!

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674 to 1834


A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Now contains 45,000 trials, from December 1714 to December 1799