The devastation of the recorded music industry

It's getting harder and harder to sell recorded music, though live concerts are still viable, according to this article by the London Times. What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools…

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The Temptation of Living Multiple Simultaneous Lives

“If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.”  Mario Andretti

Like most people I know, I try to keep quite a few balls in the air.   Those balls represent things such as prosecuting lawsuits against large unscrupulous businesses.  

Today, for instance, the two lawyers who constitute my firm’s consumer class action practice area (I’m one of the two) sued a large corporate dairy that has been distributing “organic milk” to large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target.  The problem is that the milk was not organic.  A federal investigation recently determined that the dairy engaged in willful violations of organic dairy farm standards.  Our plaintiffs are asking that the customers who paid big premiums for the “organic” milk should be refunded their money, at least the difference in cost between the price of the organic milk and the plain milk.  The plaintiffs in our suit are both mothers of small children.  They both reached deep to pay the extra money so that their children would not be exposed to the hormones and antibiotics of conventional cow milk.  One of the women is a chemist and the other is a biologist.  They had detailed reasons for paying the extra money for the organic milk.  Another reason is that they didn’t want cows to be mistreated in order to provide milk.  These women (and the thousands or millions of other customers in this potential class) were cheated out of substantial sums of money.  Just add up the cost of several gallons of …

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Child Drummer

I have a seven year old daughter. It would be fun to watch her play the drums as well as this seven year old guy, but that will never happen. Not that I'm at all disappointed! This is a truly extraordinary exhibition. This video left both of us shaking our…

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Feminism, Aliens, and James Tiptree jr.

One of the things that sends me straight up a wall to paw helplessly and violently at ceilings comprised of crushed glass, old nails, and asbestos fibers is when I hear a young woman blithely claim that she isn’t a Feminist and, in fact, “wouldn’t want to be one.” They…

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