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By Erich Vieth on November 06th, 2009
Advertising, the good old-fashioned way
Check out this collection of vintage magazine advertising, for a chuckle.
Author Archive for Erich Vieth
Erich Vieth is an iconoclastic attorney, musician and writer living in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. He and his wife Anne Jay have two daughters, aged 9 and 11.
By Erich Vieth on November 06th, 2009
Onion: Children oppose readily available health care
The Onion reports that Children clearly oppose health care:
Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare
By Erich Vieth on November 06th, 2009
Protesting and spelling
Teapot protesters and their misspelled signs . . .
It’s time to add “amnesty” to the list of the 100 most often misspelled words.
By Erich Vieth on November 05th, 2009
Our love-hate relationship with animals
In “Flesh of your Flesh,” published in the November 9, 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert reviews several books that investigate the kinds of creatures we eat. Well, actually, we love our creatures too:
Forty-six million families in the United States own at least one dog, and thirty-eight million keep cats. Thirteen million maintain freshwater aquariums in which swim a total of more than a hundred and seventy million fish. Collectively, these creatures cost Americans some forty billion dollars annually.
We love our animals, but we also love to eat them:
This year, they will cook roughly twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, sliced from some thirty-five million cows. Additionally, they will consume roughly twenty-three billion pounds of pork, or the bodies of more than a hundred and fifteen million pigs, and thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, some nine billion birds. Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know—barbaric.
Isn’t this a contradiction that we love our pets but that we don’t care that we treat farm animals so incredibly badly?
Kohler quotes Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals: “Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.”
By Erich Vieth on November 05th, 2009
Representative Alan Grayson makes the truth hurt.
Some would call it a stunt, but all indications suggest that Alan Grayson was spot on. Lots of people are dying because of the lack of health insurance. Many of those people live in Congressional Districts overseen by Republicans who prefer the status quo. Grayson simply added 2 plus 2, and it made the Republicans livid.
If they don’t like it, then they should do something about it. That’s how I see it. The solution is not to hide the facts that people in your district are dying from a problem that might have a solution but that you are not seeking any solution.
By Erich Vieth on November 05th, 2009
Truly speaking truth to power
Mahmoud Vahidnia is my newest hero, based on this startling account of his intense public challenges to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His brave exchange with Khamenei is a crime punishable by prison in Iran.
By Erich Vieth on November 04th, 2009
Congress Approves $500 Billion For Monument To Human Folly
As reported by The Onion, “Congress Approves $500 Billion For Monument To Human Folly.”
In recognition of mankind’s inherent propensity for tragically foolish decisions, Congress allocated nearly $500 billion Monday for the construction of a new national monument honoring human folly.
By Erich Vieth on November 03rd, 2009
Court reporters and multitasking
If you are one of those people who finds it difficult to multitask (I am one of those), you might appreciate this story involving court reporters. I work as a lawyer during the day, and quite often I need to take depositions, which are reported in real time by court reporters who use a special keyboard to take down every word of the deposition. The best court reporters are truly incredible to watch. To be a court reporter, you need to take down at least 200 words per minute without mistakes. You would think that trying to take down every word spoken by everyone in a room would completely occupy your working memory, but good court reporters can do their work proficiently with mental processing capacity to spare.
Last week I spent an entire day taking depositions. After the depositions were finished, I asked the court reporter what she was daydreaming about. She smiled, because she knows that experienced court reporters are perfectly capable of daydreaming about such things as grocery shopping or going to the beach at the same time that they are taking down every syllable of every word spoken in the room.
I asked this particular court reporter how often she has to go back and look at her transcript to see what was being said, because she was thinking about something else at the time she was taking down the testimony. She told me that she was once working for a judge who was going to sentence a man convicted of murder. The big question that day was whether the man would be put to death or whether he would get a life sentence. This court reporter was assigned to preserve all of the court proceedings regarding this momentous sentencing. After she was done taking down the testimony, and after she left the courtroom, someone asked her whether the judge sentenced the accused to death. This woman hesitated before replying that she did not know, even though she was a court reporter. To find out, she went back to her tape (the strip of paper on which the court reporter’s keyboard prints out the testimony), and looked for the critical part. She found out that the judge had actually sentenced the man to death, but she had no memory of this.
I asked her whether she is ever asked to read back testimony during a court proceeding or deposition at a time where she became nervous that she might not have been accurately taking down the testimony. She stated that this never happens, and that she is always confident that she’s taking down the testimony accurately. If something starts going wrong, her full consciousness kicks in and she deals with the unusual situation fully aware. She has never been caught not taking down the testimony accurately.
I find it pretty amazing that someone could have their working memory so thoroughly occupied in the linguistic sense, and yet be able to think about other things. It’s even more amazing that when the court reporters daydream or think, they are often doubly-employing their linguistic abilities. It just seems like this would be impossible, but it’s commonplace.
Most of the court reporters today use a special stenographic keyboard, but there are a few who speak into something that looks like a muzzle. They hear the testimony in the courtroom with their own ears and simultaneously speak those words into this muzzle-device which is recorded by a tape recorder. In short, they “shadow” the testimony with their own voice. Later, someone types out that the court reporter’s words into a transcript. I’ve spoken to some of these muzzle-device court reporters over the years, and they to tell me that they are able to think about other things were daydream while they are taking down the testimony.
If you are wondering why we even have court reporters, that would be a good question. The main advantage is that when you have a court reporter, you have a person who is in a position to swear to the accuracy of the transcript, indicating who said exactly what. A tape recorder would simply record the sounds, and might not accurately pick up the exact words that were being spoken (for instance, because someone is mumbling or gesturing). When these sorts of things happen at a deposition, human court reporters ask the witness to speak up or to state their testimony in words rather than gesturing. This makes for a more accurate and more readable transcript. That said, some courtrooms are now employing tape recorders in lieu of court reporters.
By Erich Vieth on November 03rd, 2009
The problem with lobbyists
Jeffrey Sachs talks about the problem with lobbyists:
Lobbyists for powerful corporations are crawling over every piece of pending legislation- from health care, to banking regulation, to climate change — keeping a chokehold on deep reforms. Jankowsky says that lobbying is transparent. . . . Special interests have already spent $2.5 billion dollars this year on 13,000 lobbyists like Mr. Jankowsky and his colleagues at the firm Akin Gump, with many contributing their expertise to gutting financial oversight of Wall Street, delaying control of greenhouse gas emissions, and preventing real controls on health insurance costs.
By Erich Vieth on November 03rd, 2009
The beliefs of Scientologists
What do Scientologists believe? What follows is an excerpt from ABC’s documentary on Scientology. You’ll learn about the “purification rundown.” You’ll also learn a bit about Scientology’s confidential scriptures–meant only for those who have reached the highest levels of Scientology–including the teachings about the Intergalactic emperor named Xenu, who allegedly brought the spirits of his people to Earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes. These people were supposedly alive quadrillions of years ago (this is far older than the big bang). One Scientologist who appears in this video claims that it is against his religious beliefs to discuss his religious beliefs, leading to an entertaining ending, at least for those of us who don’t believe in Xenu.
By Erich Vieth on November 03rd, 2009
Gagging the experts when discussing the war on drugs
Jim Webb introduced a bill to “create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom.”
How shall we proceed? A recent amendment to Webb’s bill by Republican Senator Charles Grassley would bar the commission from “considering” “legalization” of presently controlled substances. See also, this post by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Rolling Stone reports in more detail:
Enter unreconstructed drug warrior Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has released the text of an amendment that would ensure the commission not reach any conclusions that threaten 40 years of failure. The commission would be prohibited, thanks to Grassley, from examining any “policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances.”
Here’s the text of Grassley’s proposed gag rule:
SEC. ll. RESTRICTIONS ON AUTHORITY.
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Therefore . . . let’s figure out how to revamp our criminal justice system but let’s not discuss the elephant in the room: the fact that the “war on drugs” that has ruined more lives than drugs ever could have ruined. It’s important to keep in mind that some conservatives see the light on the “drug war.”
By Erich Vieth on November 02nd, 2009
Dylan Ratigan asks why Tim Geithner still has a job
In a succinct and powerful video, Dylan Ratigan wonders why Tim Geithner still is our Treasury Secretary. Senator Maria Cantwell, who makes an appearance on this video, wonders this too, calling Geithner’s job performance “appalling.” I agree. It’s time for Obama to start fresh while we are not in crisis mode. He can do this without starting a panic by saying something like, “We thank Mr. Geithner for his service getting us through this crisis.” But then, by all means, throw the bum out and let’s pick an honest outsider (not another Goldman Sachs alum) to lead the way. Am I being harsh when I say “bum”? Nope . . . I’m being restrained. Geithner should be taking the time to use the mass media to teach common people what went wrong, how we can avoid it happening again, and explaining exactly where our public tax dollars have gone. Because he refuses to do any of this, and he refuses to be an powerful advocate for taxpayers, he should step aside. It is clear that he doesn’t understand who he is supposed to represent.
If I were to speak more bluntly, I would say that Tim Geithner is committing a fraud on the U.S. public. Here are the words of Robert Johnson, former economist at the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Budget Committee
[Geithner] speaks as though they’re doing very comprehensive reform. Unfortunately, in the United States, one of the reasons we had the bubble and the crisis was because we have a broken political system, where campaign money, lobbying influence of the financial sector is enormous, and it created bad regulations, bad laws. I’m going back into the Reagan period, Bush the senior, particularly the Clinton era. We’ve made a mess, and now we come back from a crisis where the population knows darn well what a mess we’ve made. But the problem is, at this point, the people in power, the moneyed interests are still in power. And a large portion of these reforms are either cosmetic or designed by the industry and quite ineffective. . .
Ground Zero, the San Andreas Fault of our financial system, where it blew up last time, was in the intersection between “too big to fail” firms and over-the-counter derivatives and that these derivatives need to be put on exchanges, because they’re too complex, and when they’re combined with the “too big to fail” firms, which have a 95 percent market share in OTC derivatives, five banks, that it can create a situation, like we were talking about moments ago, where Citibank could not be restructured. The spider web of positions in derivatives is so complex and so entangled that it deters policy officials from being able to put them through restructuring, because they’re afraid of what kind of spin-offs and consequences will happen. I spoke about the credit default swap market and the illusion of safety that those credit default swap contracts created when they’re unregulated, because everybody thought AIG was going to be able to pay the bill, but they weren’t, and then the taxpayer got to provide that capital.
It’s also time for Cantwell and her Senate colleagues to quit blaming Treasury for failing to lead the way. Congress has the power to make laws; it should should pass the necessary laws to close the “loopholes” she finds so appalling.
By Erich Vieth on November 02nd, 2009
Thinking through global warming
Greg Craven argues that we should “choose columns” rather than “guess rows” when thinking through global climate change:
This lecture seems to amount to a “Pascal’s Wager” of GCC.
