Monthly Archives: January 2007


The 2006 Stella Awards

Inpired by Stella Liebeck here are the:

The 2006 True Stella Awards

Issued 31 January 2007

(Click here to
confirm these are legitimate.
)

#5: Marcy Meckler. While shopping at
a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was “attacked” by a squirrel that
lived among the trees and bushes. And “while frantically attempting
to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, [Meckler]
fell and suffered severe injuries,” her resulting lawsuit says.
That’s the mall’s fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess of
$50,000, based on the mall’s “failure to warn” her that squirrels
live outside.

#4: Ron and Kristie Simmons. The
couple’s 4-year-old son, Justin, was killed in a tragic lawnmower
accident in a licensed daycare facility, and the death was clearly
the result of negligence by the daycare providers. The providers were
clearly deserving of being sued, yet when the Simmons’s discovered
the daycare only had $100,000 in insurance, they dropped the case
against them and instead sued the manufacturer of the 16-year-old
lawn mower because the mower didn’t have a safety device that 1) had
not been invented at the time of the mower’s manufacture, and 2) no
safety agency had even suggested needed to be invented. A sympathetic
jury still awarded the family $2 million.

#3: Robert Clymer. An FBI agent
working a high-profile case in Las Vegas, Clymer allegedly created a
disturbance, lost the magazine from his pistol, then crashed his
pickup truck in a drunken stupor — his blood-alcohol level was 0.306
percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Nevada.
He pled guilty to drunk driving because, his lawyer explained, “With
public officials, we expect them to own up to their mistakes and
correct them.” Yet Clymer had the gall to sue the manufacturer of his
pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it from, because he “somehow
lost consciousness” and the truck “somehow produced a heavy smoke
that filled the passenger cab.” Yep: the drunk-driving accident
wasn’t his fault, but the truck’s fault. Just the kind of guy you
want carrying a gun in the name of the law.

#2: #2: KinderStart.com. The
specialty search engine says Google should be forced to include the
KinderStart site in its listings, reveal how its “Page Rank” system
works, and pay them lots of money because they’re a competitor. They
claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow
infringing KinderStart’s Constitutional right to free speech. Even if
by some stretch they were a competitor of Google, why in the world
would they think it’s Google’s responsibility to help them succeed?
And if Google’s “review” of their site is negative, wouldn’t a
government court order forcing them to change it infringe on Google’s
Constitutional right to free speech?

And the winner of the 2006 True Stella
Award:
Allen Ray Heckard. Even though Heckard is 3 inches
shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years older than former basketball
star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot
like Jordan, and is often confused for him — and thus he deserves
$52 million “for defamation and permanent injury” — plus $364
million in “punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering”, plus
the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total
of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike’s lawyers chatted
with him, where they presumably explained how they’d counter-sue if
he pressed on.

©2007 by Randy Cassingham,
StellaAwards.com. Reprinted with permission.


Good Idea of the Day #1

From Radly Balko:

Congress needs to stop delegating so much lawmaking power to regulatory agencies. In fact, I don’t think it would be such a bad idea to force Congress to vote on every measly federal regulation it expects the rest of us to abide by.

Yes, anything to reduce the growth of the federal legislative and administrative rules library!


Listen to the river sing sweet songs…

Greybeards and newbies alike will appreciate the music on Saturday, February 3, when David Gans hosts the annual KPFA Grateful Dead Marathon from 10 am to 1 am Pacific time:

KPFA webcasts all the time, and so does our simulcast station KFCF. For the Marathon, we’ll also be carried by nugs.net for maximum global bandwidth.
Live music by The Waybacks (at around 4pm pst); other surprise guests may appear.
Music will include some classic unreleased live Grateful Dead (natch!); an April 1986 performance by Kingfish with Bob Weir; Bob Weir and Ratdog from the fall of 2006 (which we’ll be offering as a premium for those who contribute to the station); musical highlights and interviews from the American Beauty Project, a tribute concert that took place in New York January 20 and 21; and various other rarities, interviews, etc.
We’ll have a chat room, hosted by Marc Evans.
Many parties have contributed gifts for those who pledge support for KPFA, the nation’s first listener-sponsored radio station. Featured premium will be Grateful Dead Live at the Cow Palace, New Year’s Eve 1976, just released by Rhino Records.

For those who want even more: archives of Gans’ weekly Dead to the World radio show are now available.


Friday Ark #123

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

Birds

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

Didn’t Make It

  • x

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

  • x

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 148th edition, 1/21, is up at Enrevanche. The 149th edition will be hosted by Mind of Mog on 1/28. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 1/27-28 by Kate in the Kitchen . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 41st edition is up and hosted by Snail’s Eye View. The 42nd edition will be hosted on 2/2 by Neurophilosophy.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 16th edition is up at The force that through…. The 16th edition will be hosted at the end of January by The Voltage Gate.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.