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2 hours ago
January 9, 2011
January 8, 2011
We don't know
18 people shot; six dead... including a child.
Pundits taking sides.
Rightists are covering butt by pointing to the shooter's list of favorite books, which includes The Communist Manifesto. They conveniently ignore that Mein Kamph is on the same list (I recognize that many on the right claim Hitler was a leftist.) The Wizard of Oz and Fahrenheit 451 are on that list as well, so hard to judge from any of this.
Leftists are pointing to some of the shooter's Internet posts (including various You Tube videos) that indicate he may have been influenced by rightist political rhetoric; specifically the rhetoric of Sarah Palin. Palin fanned these flames by quickly taking down those controversial "gunsight maps" that were posted on her site when she was targeting certain Democrats for election defeat. Her "reload" tweet is still there.
I'd like to blame this sort of thing on something as well, but at this time there appears to be insufficient evidence for anyone to make any judgement regarding if the shooter is a leftist lunatic or a rightist lunatic. There seems to be little doubt, however, that the guy is a lunatic of some sort.
Pundits should hold fire until we actually know something. There is plenty of time for recrimination later.
The target of this assassination attempt, while a Democrat, is one of the most centrist politicians in Congress. She is an example of the kind of politician this country needs if we ever want to solve our problems and get back on track. Even when attacked, Gabby takes the high road.
UPDATE: Now some idiot pundits are blaming the pot smoking... using this tragic circumstance as lever to promote a badly flawed prohibition on drugs.
The target of this assassination attempt, while a Democrat, is one of the most centrist politicians in Congress. She is an example of the kind of politician this country needs if we ever want to solve our problems and get back on track. Even when attacked, Gabby takes the high road.
UPDATE: Now some idiot pundits are blaming the pot smoking... using this tragic circumstance as lever to promote a badly flawed prohibition on drugs.
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January 7, 2011
Verbatim
Corporate Counsel Online
Judge Orders New Trial in Wake of Cisco Counsel's Allegedly Anti-Semitic Remarks
David Bario
The American Lawyer
January 06, 2011
Would federal court jurors in Marshall, Tx., have awarded Commil USA more than $3.7 million in patent infringement damages if it hadn't been for allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by defense counsel for Cisco Systems? We may find out, now that Judge Charles Everingham IV, who presided over the case, has granted Commil's motion for a new trial.
As we've reported, the brouhaha began during the May 2010 trial, when Cisco local counsel, Otis Carroll of Ireland, Carroll & Kelley, was questioning Commil's owner, Jonathan David, who is Jewish and lives in Israel. After David testified that he had dined with one of the patent inventors at a Marshall barbecue joint, Carroll responded, "I bet not pork."
That comment led Judge Everingham to admonish Carroll in front of the jury. Carroll admitted the pork reference was irrelevant and later apologized to David, the jury, and Commil's lawyers at Sayles Werbner.
At the end of the weeklong trial the jury found that Cisco had directly infringed Commil's patent, but awarded only $3.7 million in damages--a fraction of the $57 million Commil originally sought. Sayles Werbner promptly filed a motion for a new trial on the issues of indirect infringement and damges, citing not only Carroll's pork comment, but also a portion of the Cisco lawyer's closing argument, in which Carroll invoked the trial of Jesus Christ and asked jurors to "remember the most important trial in history, which we all read about as kids, in the Bible."
In Cisco's motion opposing Commil's request for a new trial, the company's lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (who also represented Cisco at trial) argued that Carroll's comment was simply an "off-the-cuff remark" that Commil was leveraging to create "the illusion of some kind of anti-Jewish conspiracy by Cisco."
Judge Everingham disagreed. In his four-page Dec. 29 opinion and order granting Commil's motion for a new trial, the judge cited both Carroll's pork remark and his closing argument reference to Jesus's trial at the hands of Pontius Pilate. "This argument, when read in context with Cisco's counsel's comment regarding Mr. David and [patent co-inventor] Mr. Arazi's religious heritage, impliedly aligns Cisco's counsel's religious preference with that of the jurors and employs an 'us v. them' mentality--i.e., 'we are Christian and they are Jewish,'" the judge ruled.
Commil lawyer Richard Sayles told us he was "obviously pleased" with the judge's ruling. He called the comments cited by the judge "very regrettable," though he defended Carroll as an excellent lawyer. We asked Sayles if he's worried the next jury might award Commil even less than $3.7 million, or possibly nothing at all. "There's always that risk, but I think we'll get a better result next time around," he said.
Simpson Thacher's Jeffrey Ostrow, who authored Cisco's motion opposing a newtrial, declined to comment on Judge Everingham's ruling. Carroll didn't respond to a message seeking comment.
This story originally appeared in The Am Law Litigation Daily, a Corporate Counsel sibling publication.
Judge Orders New Trial in Wake of Cisco Counsel's Allegedly Anti-Semitic Remarks
David Bario
The American Lawyer
January 06, 2011
Would federal court jurors in Marshall, Tx., have awarded Commil USA more than $3.7 million in patent infringement damages if it hadn't been for allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by defense counsel for Cisco Systems? We may find out, now that Judge Charles Everingham IV, who presided over the case, has granted Commil's motion for a new trial.
As we've reported, the brouhaha began during the May 2010 trial, when Cisco local counsel, Otis Carroll of Ireland, Carroll & Kelley, was questioning Commil's owner, Jonathan David, who is Jewish and lives in Israel. After David testified that he had dined with one of the patent inventors at a Marshall barbecue joint, Carroll responded, "I bet not pork."
That comment led Judge Everingham to admonish Carroll in front of the jury. Carroll admitted the pork reference was irrelevant and later apologized to David, the jury, and Commil's lawyers at Sayles Werbner.
At the end of the weeklong trial the jury found that Cisco had directly infringed Commil's patent, but awarded only $3.7 million in damages--a fraction of the $57 million Commil originally sought. Sayles Werbner promptly filed a motion for a new trial on the issues of indirect infringement and damges, citing not only Carroll's pork comment, but also a portion of the Cisco lawyer's closing argument, in which Carroll invoked the trial of Jesus Christ and asked jurors to "remember the most important trial in history, which we all read about as kids, in the Bible."
In Cisco's motion opposing Commil's request for a new trial, the company's lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (who also represented Cisco at trial) argued that Carroll's comment was simply an "off-the-cuff remark" that Commil was leveraging to create "the illusion of some kind of anti-Jewish conspiracy by Cisco."
Judge Everingham disagreed. In his four-page Dec. 29 opinion and order granting Commil's motion for a new trial, the judge cited both Carroll's pork remark and his closing argument reference to Jesus's trial at the hands of Pontius Pilate. "This argument, when read in context with Cisco's counsel's comment regarding Mr. David and [patent co-inventor] Mr. Arazi's religious heritage, impliedly aligns Cisco's counsel's religious preference with that of the jurors and employs an 'us v. them' mentality--i.e., 'we are Christian and they are Jewish,'" the judge ruled.
Commil lawyer Richard Sayles told us he was "obviously pleased" with the judge's ruling. He called the comments cited by the judge "very regrettable," though he defended Carroll as an excellent lawyer. We asked Sayles if he's worried the next jury might award Commil even less than $3.7 million, or possibly nothing at all. "There's always that risk, but I think we'll get a better result next time around," he said.
Simpson Thacher's Jeffrey Ostrow, who authored Cisco's motion opposing a newtrial, declined to comment on Judge Everingham's ruling. Carroll didn't respond to a message seeking comment.
This story originally appeared in The Am Law Litigation Daily, a Corporate Counsel sibling publication.
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January 4, 2011
Ignorance makes the best mind control
The British computer news and tech site TechEye.net is reporting on a recent move by the Saudis to clamp down on publishers of Internet news sites, weblogs, forums, and even personal websites originating from within the country. Site publishers are required, among other things, to be of good conduct and behavior and hold an appropriate license. The Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, of course, would issue the license.
TechEye previously reported that China
Keeping the flock in the dark has always been a popular authoritarian tool utilized to maintain order. Where once they burned books, censors around the world have now focused attention on the Internet. Free access to the truth tends to make controlling the flock sometimes very difficult .
Citizens of other countries are not always so fortunate.
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January 3, 2011
Verbatim
FROM Religion Today
Vikram Jaswal answers.
One of young children’s most adorable qualities is their credulity. They really seem to believe most of what they are told—from the incredible (Santa Claus exists!) to the counterintuitive (the Earth is round even though it looks flat) to the normally unobservable (people have lungs). But when you stop to think about it, children’s willingness to believe even more mundane facts conveyed through language is pretty remarkable. Why should they take your word for it that they live in a place called “Virginia,” or that the four-legged animal licking their face is called a “dog?”
In some recent research, my students and I showed that 3-year-olds are much more likely to trust what they are told than the same information conveyed to them through another means. Some kids heard an adult claim that a sticker was in one cup when it was actually in another; other kids saw the adult place an arrow on the empty cup. On the very first trial, all children in both situations looked in the cup indicated by the adult. This probably reflects a generic (and appropriate) expectation that adults are normally helpful in these situations. In later trials, children who saw the adult use an arrow to mark the empty cup quickly switched to searching in the opposite one. But those who heard her claim it was in the empty cup continued to look there. Some children did so eight times in a row! We argued that in addition to whatever general trust 3-year-olds have that others will behave in helpful (or at least benign) ways, they have developed a specific bias to trust what they are told.
And this is actually a good thing. Most of the time, adults do their best to tell children the truth (or what they believe to be true), and so a default bias of this type is adaptive: If children can just believe what they are told, they don’t have to go through the time-consuming and sometimes impossible task of evaluating the veracity of everything they are told. A number of thinkers have pointed out that without such a bias to believe at least initially, communication would break down for adults, too. We would never be able to learn about things outside our own experience, for example. And some clever research by Dan Gilbert of Harvard University and his colleagues suggests that adults do initially accept as true information they are presented (in those studies, through text), though they can later go back to “unaccept” that information.
So, when do children develop skepticism, or the ability to “unaccept” what they are told? The short story is that it’s complicated. If you’re just interested in when they would no longer be fooled in the sticker game, we have data (as do others) that, as a group, 4-year-olds have little difficulty ignoring or doing the opposite of what they are told in that situation. But of course, there is enormous variability in how credulous children (and adults) are. A few 3-year-olds in our study stopped believing what the adult told them after being misled once (though most continued to be misled). In fact, using other techniques, Melissa Koenig of the University of Minnesota and Cathy Echols of The University of Texas at Austin have identified what might be considered skepticism in some infants as young as 16 months. In that work, an adult referred to a dog as a “ball,” for example, and some infants objected in various ways (e.g., shaking their heads, looking quizzically at their mothers, saying “no”).
Our research now centers on understanding why some kids are more skeptical than others of the same age. What kinds of experiences are necessary to foster critical thinking? What other cognitive skills are related to skepticism? As a preview, we have some preliminary data suggesting that 3-year-olds who are higher in what is called “inhibitory control” tend to be more skeptical. For example, those children who can make a response different from the one they would normally make (think of the game “Simon Says”) tend to be more wary of misinformation provided by an adult. This fits in well with the possibility that children have a default bias to believe, which must be inhibited to respond skeptically. Will training inhibitory control strategies (as one innovative preschool curriculum, Tools of the Mind, attempts explicitly to do) have an effect on critical thinking? Stay tuned!
Vikram Jaswal is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia.
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January 2, 2011
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