Yet Another Thing

I'm keeping a list of things to do when I become King, and I have another item to join the list (see my main page):  

Ban battery powered kid size toy vehicles.  I'm not talking about little remote control toys, but the ones designed for a kid to sit in and drive ("battery powered ride on cars").   Such toys are certainly not advisable given the volume of news we're seeing on obesity in children.   Even the kids that aren't technically obese aren't outside exercising (playing) enough.   In addition, the energy these toys consume is completely wasted; more power plant generated electricity that isn't lighting a home or refrigerating food. The 6 or 7 year old kid I just saw driving around the park on the bike/hike path would have been better off on a bike.  

Why do parents spend anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to nearly a thousand dollars on these things?   No wonder the United States consumes more energy than any other nation on earth and is so addicted to oil.

Good News From The Big City

It probably doesn't matter much which big city you live near.  The bulk of the news coming from "the city" sometimes seems to be mostly some sort of body count.   At the beginning of each week, the newspapers often (usually) have articles counting how many gunshot incidents occurred over the week-end, how many people were injured, and how many were killed.   In Chicago, all too often, the victims of all this violence are young people.  It gets very depressing, and I don't even actually live in the city.   I can hardly imagine how this kind of carnage affects residents of the areas with all the violence.

That said, sometimes there is a glimmer of hope, a spot of sunshine in an otherwise dismal day of news.   There was such a glimmer in the news here the other day about a graduating class at Urban Prep High School (a link to the article is below.)  This school was created as a charter school in Chicago with lofty goals:

Urban Prep would be a charter high school. It would bring together some 150 boys from some of the poorest, gang-ravaged neighborhoods and try to set them on a new track.   They'd have strict rules: A longer school day -- by two hours. Two classes of English daily.  A uniform with jackets and ties.  And Urban Prep had a goal -- one that seemed audacious, given that just 4 percent of the Class of 2010 was reading at or above grade level when they arrived at the school in 2006.

In four years, they were told, they'd be heading to college.

So, here we are four years later.   Of the 150 teens who started at Urban Prep in 2006, 95 completed the entire four years and another 12 students transferred in to graduate with the class of 2010.   All 107 students have received at least one, and generally several, acceptance letters from colleges across the country.   I was struck by the fact that the article doesn't paint a "Pollyanna" picture, it discusses the trials and difficulties that these students encountered over the four years, including actually quitting, returning to a "public" high school, and discovering that they wanted, indeed needed, to return to Urban Prep.  The dedication and support provided by the staff at the high school is nothing short of amazing (60% of the faculty are black men).  The mentoring and modeling by the adults was clearly critical to the success of these students.   Both the students and faculty at Urban Prep deserve a long, hearty round of applause.

You should read the AP article in the Daily Herald.   The story is amazing and uplifting.  It's very good news from the city.

A Glut of Lawyers

 According to recent news articles, the attorney profession has been going through some very tough employment times in recent years.   According to a story on Marketplace.org, the horrid economy forced much of the class of 2009 to delay starting at a desired law firm or had to start at much lower salaries than expected.   Now that the class of 2010 is hitting the job market, the hiring situation is still pretty dicey.   Why do so many people continue to attend law school?   My unscientific reason is that some attorneys still make obscene salaries, thereby encouraging more young people to seek their place on the gravy train.

One of the sources of some of the "obscene salaries" are class action lawsuits.   It seems to me (a non-attorney) that many of these lawsuits are cooked up by law firms to basically extort money from corporations or groups of corporations.   Now, I'm no apologist for corporate America, but many of these lawsuits seem to be just blatant efforts to line the pockets of law firms.   One recent example is a case in Northern California that accused several technology firms of essentially colluding to inflate the cost of random access memory (RAM) in computers.  According to an announcement by Rust Consulting, a settlement has been reached with Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba Corporations, which totals $27,850,000,  

If you directly purchased DRAM in the United States during the period of April 1, 1999 through June 30, 2002 from any of these defendants, you may be a member of the Settlement Class.

This lawsuit has been flopping around in the Federal courts for several years already, and I became aware of it because someone believed I was a purchaser of DRAM and sent me an email.   That, presumably, is based on someone's sales records.  To pursue a claim under these settlements, an individual has to file a claim, and what set off alarm bells for me is that part of that claim form includes a listing of how much you spent on DRAM from each of the companies involved.   While you don't have to submit any documentation at this time, the form does ask you to certify you have documentation and can submit it later "if requested."
 

Now I don't know about you, but I have difficulty remembering what I had for dinner two days ago, least of all remembering who I may have bought DRAM from between 8 and 11 years ago and how much I spent.   I question whether any significant number of individuals will have documentation of such purchases so long ago.  

What's the point?   The point may be that hardly any of this $27 million settlement will find its way into the pockets of consumers; I suspect that the vast majority of it will simply be collected by the consultants and law firms pursuing the class action complaint.  If I am not willing to certify under penalty of perjury that I can document how much I spent on DRAM from one or more of these three corporations, I'm essentially out of luck sharing part of that $27 million.  I suppose that a corporate entity (a computer manufacturer or parts reseller?) would have plenty of documents regarding purchases over an extended period of time, but I'm not comfortable with a court accepting a class that includes corporations and individuals equally.  And I'm just speculating that such a mix is involved in this case. 

This is only one of the class action "settlements" I've read about recently.   Evidence that class action lawsuits are a burgeoning industry, is that there are "consultants" who specialize in "class action notification and settlement administration."  The lure of riches like this is enough to fill more than a few seats in the next class at law school.

   

The Other >#$% Meat

Mark this one down as goofy story of the month.   There is a web site called "ThinkGeek.com" which sells a variety of well, geeky stuff like Star Wars Blueprints and a cool "Pirates on Toast Jolly Roger Toast Stamp."  Recently, they received a "cease and desist" order from the National Pork Board because ThinkGeek had posted an April Fools advertisement for Canned Unicorn Meat.   Unfortunately for ThinkGeek.com, they described the imaginary food item as "The Other White Meat" a trademark held by the NPB.  Suffice it to say, the NPB employed a full suite of lawyers to craft a 12 page letter demanding ThinkGeek "cease and desist" from infringing upon the NPB's trademark and confusing consumers as to which "white meat" was "the other white meat."

You can read the entire sordid tale here including the offending advertisement.   The entire story would be quite funny if it weren't for the fact that there apparently is at least one staff of lawyers who have no sense of humor and don't know that unicorns are imaginary.   Not to mention missing the class in law school on protected use as parody under copyright and trademark law.

BP's Final Option?

A friend sent this to me and I thought it was pretty funny. It'd be funnier if the actual situation wasn't such a horrendous disaster.

I'd be happy to credit whoever created the image if I knew who it was.

College Grads and Wall Street

I recently commented on a story on Marketplace (NPR) about recent college graduates taking jobs on Wall Street.   My comments should be aired today on the NPR program.   The story is here. 

My comment:This story reminds me of the folly of youth. What these graduates seem to be blissfully unaware of is how life unfolds and the grip a high paying job puts on people. They also seem to think that as new employees they'll have some sort of influence on how their Wall Street firm will behave. New "meat" has no influence on a company and they exist solely to make profits. After being in such a job for a few years, I doubt that many of these young people will suddenly decide to forgo the fortune and leave the high flying Street. Life styles beget lifestyles. I don't know who told one graduate a "significant number" of Wall Street tycoons go off to work for non-profits. On what planet does that happen?

One More Thing

I'm keeping a list of things to do when I become King, and I have another item to join the list (see my main page):  

Ban those 50 foot long retractable dog leashes that people use to allow their dogs to wander far off and across the bike/hike path while they yak on the phone, thereby blocking the entire walkway to bikers and pedestrians.   They then act startled that someone has to come to a complete stop while waiting for them to reel in their dog.