NYT Goes all "Forrest Gump" About Horses

The NYT Editorial page is determined to lionize horses with this dimwitted piece about Barbaro, the racehorse who was just put down.

The piece asks "Why should we feel so much grief at the loss of one horse?"
I hadn't felt so much grief, so I wanted to know.
The way I saw it, plenty of noble cattle were slaughtered for t-bones today and I wasn't sad. For that matter, dozens of Iraqi people were blown up at the bazaar this week and I went to work anyway. What's so special about Barbaro that I'm supposed to be wearing sackcloth and ashes?

The Times explains the answer, which is something about how Barbaro was a very athletic horse. And, of course, "It was tragic because of what every horse is."

And what is every horse?

You would have to look a long, long time to find a dishonest or cruel horse. And the odds are that if you did find one, it was made cruel or dishonest by the company it kept with humans. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly every horse — Barbaro included — is pure of heart.

Oh, good thing you qualified that with nearly every horse. I mean, you wouldn't want people thinking the NYT was defending Hitler's horse, or the Four Horses of the Apocalypse (steeds to the Horsemen).

And the statistics about dishonest horses' bad human influences ("odds are") are an indispensable disclaimer for people who are considering entering into business dealings with horses. You wouldn't want to be swindled by that one sneaky horse who's been around people. Make sure that if you're lending money to a horse he hasn't picked up any filthy human vices.

Other than that, I think the NYT has convinced me that every day, in every way, I will strive to become more and more like a horse.

Lithuanian Visitor to Litvak Chronicles

Today at around 5:00 am the blog got what I believe is my first Lithuanian visitor!  Or, at least, my first visitor with a URL in Lithuania:

 

Domain Name		takas.lt ? (Lithuania)
IP Address		82.135.243.# (Joint Stock Company Lietuvos Telekomas)
ISP		Lietuvos Telekomas
Location		Continent  :  Europe Country  :  Lithuania   (Facts) State/Region  :  Vilniaus Apskritis City  :  Vilnius Lat/Long  :  54.6833, 25.3167 (Map) Distance  :  4,319 miles
Language		Lithuanian

 

I guess he was searching for Litvaks and this blog is the 7th listing for "Litvak" on Google Lithuania .

I'm famous!

 

Testimony for Sale!

If you want to confirm that some plaintiffs' lawyers are slimy, check out this piece about the fee dispute between law firm Thelen Reid and guy from France Francois Marland.

 

The case involved a whistleblower suit on Marland's behalf against a consortium of French banks who'd used a shell company to secretly buy an insolvent California insurance company in violation of California law restricting foreign ownership of insurance companies.

Deep breath. 

Yawn--  I mean... the plot thickens.

 

When the California Department of Insurance brought a suit, too, Thelen got Marland's permission to represent it as well. 

(Legal Ethics Rule #1:  You can represent clients with potentially conflicting interests unless they waive the conflict -- and sometimes not even then.  Actually, this is the only ethical rule most big firm lawyers deal with frequently.)

 

Under the fee-sharing agreement, Thelen Reid provided legal services and Marland and some lawyers he put together would secure documents and testimony ... especially Marland's testimony. 

 

The article notes that "[t]he fee-sharing agreement in the dispute has raised the hackles of legal ethicists, who say some provisions skate dangerously close to buying Marland's testimony."  Actually, it looks like they fell through the ice.

 

And stop snickering at the phrase "legal ethicists."

 

In the 1999 version of their agreement, "Marland and a group of lawyers he'd assembled would receive 52.5 percent of Thelen's take (65 percent if the case settled quickly). The large cut would be in exchange for securing documents and testimony, among other services. A later amendment would reduce Marland's cut by two-thirds if he failed to testify at all, and by half if he testified only before the grand jury but not during the civil trial."

 

If that's "not buying testimony" then Murder, Inc. was "not hiring contract killers."

 

The article makes a big deal out of the fact that Marland wasn't a lawyer at the time of the first fee-sharing agreement (it's okay to fee-share only with a lawyer).  But even if he'd been a lawyer, that doesn't mean you can pay for his testimony. 

 

Hey, maybe that could be Litvak's Rule of Legal Ethics, if it were a rule of legal ethics.  Actually, it's just law that applies to everyone.  You can't sell testimony.  Even if you're a lawyer!

Go figure.

Lore: Funny :: Google : Information

I mean it.  Check out this piece.

I'm ashamed to say I got the Shadowrun reference at the very end.

China: Orphans Need Svelte Parents

The NYT has an article about China's restrictive adoption policies.

According to the article, among other restrictions, "the new regulations call for a body mass index of less than 40."

 

So, if you're trying to decide whether you want fries with that, think about whether you also want to adopt a Chinese baby.  FYI.

Missile, Schmissile

China developed a "satellite killer" missile and yesterday used it to destroy one of its own satellites. The New York Times reports that this action challenges the United States's supremacy in SPACE.

Pentagon officials now plan to use our own missiles to shoot down all of our satellites.

(I'll be here all week! Take my wife, please!)

For Every Thing There Is a Season

It's too much SHPOSiness for one day.  Delicate readers may want to skip the rest of the post...

 

This afternoon I stepped into a bathroom stall at work and whoever used it last didn't flush.

Yes, but "grosser than gross"-- no toilet paper in the bowl.

No toilet paper! In! The bowl!

And I don't think he took it with him, either.

I'm going to stop shaking hands.

 

With these people, the time for "this is how big people do it" is way past.  And the time for methodical harpooning is long overdue.

SHPOSes Ascendant

This past weekend, Tenderfoot's bike was stolen off the bike rack across the street from the police station.

 

This morning, I came outside and someone had stripped the front wheel off my bike.  I don't think anyone else on the block has had a bike touched, but we've each had our seats stolen, and now this.

 

Then, I step onto the B train and into-- a pile of (what I really hope was) dogshit.

Dogshit.  In the train.

 

I take back the nice things I said about New York.

$250m for 5 years

The Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team just signed a 5-year, $250 million contract with David Beckham.

I hear they offered him a cool billion, but he refused their condition (leaving Posh in Europe).

 

 

Some SHPOSes, but some Mensches, too

I know I complain about our SHPOSes a lot, but New York had lots of decent, admirable people.

When a man had a seizure and fell onto the subway tracks, Wesley Autrey jumped down and saved him , lying with the man between the rails as the No. 1 train screeched to a halt over their heads.

PIMPING

This YouTube link to a weird animated German music video's kinda interesting...

(Hat Tip: Lore)

Five THOUSAND Visits

If you check out the "visitor counter" at the bottom of this blog, you may notice that I've just passed the 5,000 visit mark.
Five thousand hits in about two years. Really, it's a testament to you, my throngs of readers.

For those of you who have a difficult time wrapping your mind around a number as large as 5,000, let me make it a little easier.

First, divide by two, because half those hits are probably from me visiting to marvel at my own cleverness.

Then remove another 500 for people who clicked through from Google image search looking for the picture of a goat and another picture of Parker Posey.

Now it's down to a slightly less mind-boggling 2,000 visits (thank you, Google spreadsheets!)

In Biblical times, when people lived to be several hundred years old, many of the most compulsive and brilliant thinkers would spend their entire adult lives counting to see if numbers like 2,000 existed or were merely theoretical. Historical sources tell us many of them went mad, but whether it was due to the endless counting or the consciousness-altering secrets contained in such numbers was never recorded.
Then people died off at around 35 for a few thousand years, and until the invention of computers "one thousand" was still just a story told to scare naughty children.

Now we know that even larger numbers exist-- numbers like a million, and that great worm of naughts and commas, the billion. The consensus among scientists is that there are about a billion things in the universe, give or take 1,000.

And 5,000, give or take 1,000, is how many visits there have been to my blog.
Excelsior!

Hang In There!

So the FDA is having a hearing about whether antidepressant labels should mention the risk of increased suicidal thinking.

 

Well, that's an interesting thought-- you're seriously depressed and your pill bottle says:

"Hey, man.  You ever think about just ending it all?  Eat me, and that could happen.  Happen more, that is.  Life is hard.  So hard."

 

I think a better label would say something like:
"Hey, man!  No pill is perfect, but this pill can help some!  Hang in there, things will turn around.  Come on-- would it kill you to at least finish the prescription?"

I Regret That He Has But One Life to Give for His Country

So, Ahmadinejad?

I hear you're hosting a conference in Tehran to debate whether the Holocaust really happened. 

You pretend millions of Jews weren't murdered and you state that the purpose of your nuclear weapons program is to kill another few million, which is okay because that hasn't really happened before.

All kinds of crackpot anti-Semites are scurrying to bathe in your glow-- David Duke, Robert Faurisson and various other "Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world." 

I hear even Red Skull is giving a talk.

Dammit, Mahmoud, you're making it awfully tempting to drop bombs on Tehran.  I wish we were too smart to fall for it ... but less every day.

Ancient Computer Rocks the Classical World

This NYT piece describes new research on the Antikythera Mechanism, built in the 2nd century B.C. to predict the movement of the moon.
2100 years later, and we're finally almost as cool as the Greeks were then.

Separated at Birth-- And Mama Only Loved One

They just have the same beguiling ne'er-do-well thing going on, is all.

And Who Will Police The Police?

So, uh.  Iraq is in the news again.

 

Gunmen dressed in Iraqi police uniforms and driving what appeared to be official vehicles rounded up scores of people inside a government building here today and drove off with them.

***

A spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, announced on state television several hours afterward that orders had been issued for the arrest of several police commanders who were responsible for the area where the kidnappings took place.

The kidnapping prompted an anguished address on the floor of Parliament, carried live on television, by Abed Thiab al-Ajili, the higher education minister and a member of the country's largest Sunni political bloc.

Mr. Ajili reported that 100 to 150 people had been taken, including employees and visitors to the building. He said he had repeatedly asked the government for additional security to protect his ministry and members of the university community, who have been under threat since collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime.

 

Arrest warrants have been issued for police commanders in connection with a 150-person kidnapping.

Iraq is seeking any police who are willing to try to serve the warrants, or anyone who will dress as police...

It don't take a brain surgeon to piece this one together

NY Times: "Neanderthals in Gene Pool, Study Suggests"

 

I thought they might be referring to my study of the sidewalks of New York.

 

Turns out the study has something to do with the distribution of a variant of a gene that regulates brain size.  Homo Sapiens - Neanderthal loving about 37,000 years ago, they say. 

 

Some days, I wish I could believe in Genesis.

Dowd Sizzles, Dubya Fizzles (Memailed)

Ouch! (Times Select, sorry, folks)

 

From Dowd's memailed column:

 

Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they're taking it back. 

****

Two trusted members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes.

 

 

 

Teapot D'oh!

Q:  What's the difference between President Grant and President Bush?

A:  Grant ended a civil war.