Unsilent Partners (2)
UPDATE: My response is now posted, appended to Mike's earlier essay. Comment away!
Labels: Current Events, Unsilent Partners
Labels: Current Events, Unsilent Partners
Labels: Blawg Review, Law
It was assumed he was called "King James" because he reigns on the basketball court. But maybe LeBron James earned that nickname due to his tyrannical ways (in dealing with embarrassment).
On Monday, Jordan Crawford, a sophomore at Xavier (by way of Indiana), reportedly dunked on LeBron during a pick-up game at the LeBron James Skills Academy. Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com wrote that one high school player said, "it was bad" . . . .
LeBron must have agreed, because he had Nike officials confiscate the two videos that were taken of the dunk. (Parrish blames Nike, but reading between the lines it seems like the censorship was orchestrated by LeBron himself.)
. . . .
The Crawford dunk would have been a temporary embarrassment for LeBron. Let's say the video was put on YouTube. It blows up for a bit, dominates blogs for 36 hours, everyone has a good chuckle and then it's forgotten about.
But by censoring the tape, LeBron turns the dunk into a legend. On video, it's just a dunk. Without video, the jam can reach mythic proportions. Because nobody can see it, the story of the dunk will grow in stature with each telling. Today, it was a simple two-handed slam. In a few days, it will be a 360-degree windmill. By the time Crawford makes his Xavier debut in October, he will have jumped off LeBron's shoulders, flipped in the air, slammed the ball home with his left pinkie and then handed LeBron $3.99 for his dry cleaning.
Labels: Schadenfreude, Sports
Labels: Technology
It might be best to start this response with a few numbers. Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff is a spry seventy-one years young. He has just been sentenced to 150 years in a federal prison. Although our federal prisons do not offer parole as such, Señor Swindle is eligible for a sentence reduction of fifteen percent if he behaves himself. Essentially, if he doesn't riot, shiv anyone, or mix colors and whites in the prison laundry, he'll save himself twenty-three years in the funhouse. Thus, if he's patient, he'll be a free man sometime around his 198th birthday.
Will he make it out in time to celebrate his bicentennial? According to the CIA's World Factbook, the average life expectancy for an adult American man is approximately 75.65 years. Many pessimists have seized on this tidbit of information and concluded that Madoff's sentence means that he will never live to be released from prison. It's not like the CIA has ever been wrong about anything before, right? It should be noted, however, that these life expectancy statistics are for an average man and, as Judge Denny Chin noted in his sentencing remarks, Madoff is an extraordinary person. Let's dig a bit deeper and consider survival probability statistics as well. According to these numbers, it seems that as an American man aged seventy-one years, Madoff has a 46.7% chance of seeing his eightieth birthday and a 16.0% chance of making it to ninety. Most importantly, though, he has a 1.5% chance of living beyond 100 years old. Scoff if you will, but I think a 1.5% chance of making it to one's 198th birthday is nothing to sneeze at.
Assuming for purposes of our discussion that Judge Chin does not share my optimistic nature and expects that Madoff will not survive his sentence, what might have prompted his decision?
Labels: Unsilent Partners
Labels: Blawg Review, Law
The sheriff of Oregon's most populous county has flunked his police certification course.
A passing score is an average of 75 on three written tests; Multnomah County Sheriff Bob Skipper got a 66, said Eriks Gabliks, deputy director of the state agency that certifies police officers.
Skipper, 70, will get another shot at the course in late August. If he fails a second time, he'll have to go through a 16-week cadet training program he had been trying to avoid.
. . . .
Skipper tried to get a waiver allowing him to take shorter refresher courses. When that failed, it appeared Skipper would have to head to the Salem academy to become perhaps the oldest police cadet in state history.
But the state Legislature rescued him last month, with an amendment narrowly tailored to Skipper's qualifications. The amendment allows the certification of a sheriff who has served at least 25 years as a police officer in Oregon, retired from law enforcement under honorable conditions, held state executive-level certification, served as elected sheriff for at least four years and is elected in a county where the sheriff's chief role is as an administrator.
But that waiver only applies if Skipper passes the written tests. Skipper said Wednesday he did not adequately prepare. "It's just a matter of me dropping the ball," he told The Oregonian.
Gabliks said about 40 people take the course each year, and Skipper is one of only a handful of people he can remember failing.
Labels: Schadenfreude
Labels: Blawg Review, Law
A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to journalists at a news conference on Wednesday.[Previous TGIS]
Banda softly shouted: "You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket," and paused as he looked up to see the animal playing in a tree just above his chair.
"Perhaps these are blessings," he said continuing his address amid laughter from the audience of journalists and diplomats at the State House presidential offices.
Labels: Schadenfreude
A man who allegedly wanted to buy some marijuana was arrested after he mistakenly sent a text message to a Salem police officer, authorities said yesterday.[Previous TGIS]
Cpl. Christopher Pew was off-duty when he received the message on his personal cell phone last week. Since he didn't know the person who had sent the text or whether it was a serious request, Pew agreed to meet the texter at a shopping center, and the person described what vehicle he would be driving.
That led to the arrests of John Milligan, 22, and Kelly Reilly, 20 . . . .
Labels: Crime, Schadenfreude
Labels: Blawg Review, Current Events, Law
After being told by her daughter that a man in their home was an armed intruder, a 77-year-old woman pulled a gun on him and sent him running, according to court documents. The Bangor Daily News reported that family members have been referring to Doris Gatchell of Princeton as "Annie Oakley" after she confronted the man Friday.[Previous TGIS]
Suspect Dean T. Moore made his first appearance Monday in Washington County Superior Court.
The newspaper reported that he faces up to 30 years in jail and fines of up to $50,000 on each of the two most serious charges of burglary with a firearm and robbery.
Labels: Crime, Schadenfreude
Labels: Blawg Review, Law
Reebok belatedly discovers that they gave a shoe contract to [Marcin Gortat,] a white guy with an "Air Jordan" tattoo on his leg.
Labels: Schadenfreude, Sports

Labels: Blawg Review, Law
A six-year-old girl helped put a knife-brandishing robber under arrest Tuesday night after the man had already successfully stolen money from two grown men.[Previous TGIS]
The Dan District Police Station registered two complaints on Tuesday by apartment owners in Ramat Gan, saying a man threatened them with a knife and took money from them.
The 51-year-old robber, also a Ramat Gan resident, then moved on to a third apartment. After he knocked on the door, a little girl opened it. When he demanded she leave the house, she refused and said she would call the police. He then threatened her with a knife, but the child got hold of a broom and hit him with it.
The man fled the scene, but after the girl described his appearance to the police, he was caught and arrested while still in possession of the knife he had used in the robberies.
Labels: Crime, Schadenfreude
Labels: Blawg Review, Law
Residents in Conisbrough, England have changed the name of their street after deciding that Butt Hole Road no longer appealed to them.[Previous TGIS]
The name, despite its modern meaning, was given to the street hundred of years ago, and is named after a communal water butt.
Resident Peter Sutton told The Daily Mail that “he originally thought the street’s name would be fun - but admits he soon got tired of the jokes.” The paper also noted that the street had become a tourist attraction, particularly popular with Americans.
The street formerly known as Butt Hole Road is now known as the far less interesting Archers Lane.
Labels: Schadenfreude
Blessed are the geek: for they shall inherit the earth.Memorial Day coincides this year with Towel Day. As Blawg Review #213 host Kevin Thompson points out, "Towel Day is also a memorial, but a geeky one," which arose after the untimely death -- er, "permanent existence failure" -- of Douglas Adams in 2001. Thompson helps the legal blogosphere get its geek on by explaining the universal significance of towels, drawing together the best legal blogging of the past week, and drawing a number of prominent former Blawg Review hosts out to pose with their towels. Highlights include grousing about lawyers' courtroom attire and grousing about that grousing, determining when legal ethics should prevent blogging a Supreme Court case, and realizing when not to ask a legal blogger to take down your photo from an unflattering post. Charon QC will host a return engagement next week. Until then, don't panic.
--Matthew 5:5 (Revised Internet Edition)

Labels: Blawg Review, Current Events, Law
The Belgian bodybuilding championship had to be cancelled after anti-doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.[Previous TGIS]
"I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," said anti-doping official Hans Cooman. He said some bodybuilders just grabbed all their gear and ran off when he came into the room. Twenty bodybuilders were entered in the weekend competition.
"The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn't do its reputation any good," Cooman said.
Belgium's bodybuilding federation did not dispute the facts but said it could not explain why the competitors had suddenly rushed off.
Labels: Schadenfreude, Sports