Subject: Daily Dose - 050215 - telescope, True Stella Awards, ex, DDL, Rotten News

The USSR Prime Secretary ordered the soviet scientists to build a telescope he could use to watch the Americans. So they built and it was beautiful. When Brejnev came to test it, he looked thru it and saw a big city with lots of skyscrapers.

He said, "Is this the New York? Where's that building they call Empire State?"

The scientists pushed some buttons and the Empire State building came to be seen.

"What are those large photos on that building?" asked Brejnev.

The scientists pushed more buttons, and the large photos that came into focus turned out to be those of Marx, Engels and Lenin; the grandfathers of communism.

"Hey, what happened to the Americans? Are they crazy, showing large photos of our Communist Fathers on their streets? Show me what the text below says."

More buttons pushed revealed the text below the photos: "Don't grow beards like these! Use Gillette!"

_______________________

True Stella Awards....  (frivilous American lawsuits)

A Sharp SLAPP in the Face
by Randy Cassingham

San Francisco-based Sharper Image was founded in 1977 and is a successful catalog merchant and mall retailer. Consumers Union was founded in 1936 and is a non-profit product testing organization dedicated to getting objective product information out to consumers via its magazine, Consumer Reports.

To perform its product tests, CU buys example products in retail stores (rather than accepting carefully selected samples from manufacturers) and puts them through exhaustive tests to answer the questions: do the products do what they're advertised to do? Do they do it well? And how well do they work compared to competing products?

For an early 2002 review of home air filters, CU bought 16 air filtering units from a number of sources, including an "Ionic Breeze" air purifier system from Sharper Image. The Ionic Breeze is the company's best-selling product; analysts say it may account for half of Sharper Image's sales, accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars of their income. Five different models sell in the range of $200-500.

To test the 16 different air filters, CU put each unit in a sealed room and measured how much smoke and dust they could remove from the air over a 30-minute test period. Of the 16 units CU tested, the Ionic Breeze "Quadra" model came in dead last since it managed "no measurable reduction in airborne particles."

Sharper Image was upset at the test results. "They said the Ionic Breeze needed to run longer," a CU spokesman said. "So Consumer Reports went back and tested again, this time seeing how much cigarette smoke could be removed over 19 hours. It couldn't even clean the smoke from one-eighth of a cigarette" in that time.

In late 2003 Consumer Reports again testing air filters, and the Quadra again ranked last in the rankings.

Not surprisingly, Sharper Image was once again upset. "They told Consumers Union again that the test was unfair," the spokesman says. "So Consumers Union asked what test they'd like [us] to run. They have never, to this day, recommended a test for Consumers Union to do."

Sharper Image did, however, have a plan of action: it sued CU in U.S. District Court, alleging the articles in CU's magazine were based on "bad test procedures" and constituted "negligent product disparagement."

But wait a minute: aren't reviews part of what's covered by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Shouldn't a testing organization be allowed to publish its opinion as to what it thinks about a product, even if the manufacturer doesn't like what they say, based on that explicit right?

Of course, the First Amendment does apply. So might the lawsuit by Sharper Image be considered a way to shut up a critic on an issue that affects the public?

"Sharper Image could have just let it go without drawing more attention to Consumer Report's articles, but they didn't," says attorney Steven Williams, who represented CU. "I think they wanted to have a chilling effect on the media." And surely if Sharper Image prevailed, other reviewer would be "chilled" -- they'd have to think long and hard about publishing a negative review, no matter how objective it was, when they might have to pay out millions of dollars in damages. "When you strike at the core of the First Amendment and sue someone to protect marketing," Williams says, "that's not really a proper use of the courts."

Indeed, there's a name for such a speech-chilling case: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, and it's a powerful tool large corporations can use against smaller foes to shut them up, even when their speech is protected by the Constitution -- and even when it's in the public interest for their opinion to be heard. The SLAPP is so powerful and so unfair, in fact, that many states have specifically made SLAPP suits illegal -- including California, where Sharper Image filed its suit.

Williams filed a motion to dismiss Sharper Image's lawsuit on the basis that it was prohibited under California's anti-SLAPP law. U.S. District Corut Judge Maxine Chesney agreed that the suit was an attempt at squelching CU's First Amendment rights of free speech -- the very definition of a SLAPP. She not only dismissed the suit, she awarded CU $400,000 in legal fees that it spent to fight off Sharper Image's action.

"The court finds Sharper Image has not provided sufficient evidence to support a finding that, under any of [their argued] theories, whether alone or in combination, it has a reasonable probability of establishing that any of the challenged statements are false," Chesney wrote in her decision.

Sharper Image's lawyer said the retailer was "very disappointed in this result" and threatened to appeal the ruling.

"Hopefully, going forward, companies will think twice about filing these types of suits," CU attorney Williams said afterward. "It's not in their interest to be attacking free speech." Nor, indeed, is it in the public's interest.

Consumers Union has been sued 15 times over the reviews it has published in Consumer Reports, but it has never had to issue a retraction or pay any legal judgments.

Obviously, anti-SLAPP laws don't give publications free reign to say anything they want; they don't entitle them lie about a product, for instance. But when they've been objective in testing, or only stated opinion, and are still sued, such laws give them the lever they need to defend themselves and recover their usually significant legal costs.

So the case is a victory for the First Amendment, but don't cheer yet: while "many" states have adopted anti-SLAPP laws, many haven't. SLAPPs are thus still a powerful tool that can still be used to stifle free expression in many parts of the country, and that affects us all.

_________________________

Jill: How bad did things get with you and your ex?  

Mary: Well, for the first few months, when he hadn't come home yet, I'd pray, "Please, God, don't let him be lying on the side of the road somewhere dead."

Jill: Okay, and then?

Mary: Then after about a year of that, I started to pray, "Please, God, let him be lying dead on the side of the road somewhere, and let there be enough insurance money to fix the car and send his body back to his parents."

________________________

DDL

A famous zoologist, Vundrum,
Was posed a perplexing conundrum:
Where to locate what falls,
From an elephant's balls.
And he said, "Vy, it's simple, look undrum."

_________________________

"Remember...a developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods."
--Dennis Miller

[True, true.]  

***  

"In high school, I was the class comedian as opposed to the class clown. The difference is, the class clown is the guy who drops his pants at the football game, the class comedian is the guy who talked him into it."
--Billy Crystal

***  

"I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a "learning experience." Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a "learning experience." It makes me feel less stupid."
--P. J. O'Rourke

***

I realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.
--Marcus Brigstocke

***

A scientist has invented a new type of bra that stops breasts from bobbing up and down, and keeps nipples from sticking out in cold weather.

His workmates have kicked the shit out of him.

________________________

Rotten News...  (true)

December 21, 2004

You are an ethics expert: is it right to use someone else’s credit card to pay for sex?

From Adam Sage in Paris

A PROMINENT French magistrate could face disciplinary action after he allegedly stole a German colleague’s credit card to pay for a prostitute, having earlier delivered an hour-long speech on ethics.

Pierre Hontang, the state prosecutor in Bayonne, southwest France, will be suspended by the French Justice Ministry after suggestions of improper conduct during a conference in Germany this year. M Hontang has declined to comment on the allegations.

M Hontang, one of France’s most eminent jurists, attended the conference in May as a keynote speaker in a debate on Fundamental Principles of Ethics for Prosecutors.

However, a report by French and German investigators, which was sent to the Justice Ministry in Paris last week, accuses the prosecutor of slipping out of the four-day conference on at least two occasions.

Yesterday a Justice Ministry official said M Hontang had gone to “a place of pleasure where ladies hire out their services for between €100 and €300 depending on what they are offering”.

The first time he paid with his own money, according to the report.

The second time he is alleged to have paid with a credit card that he had stolen from a German prosecutor at the conference. “He is being investigated for stealing the means to pay for activities that are a little shameful for a magistrate of this standing,” said a detective.

The affair came to light after M Hontang complained to the owner of the brothel in Celle about the quality of its work.

The owner noticed that he had not paid with his own credit card and alerted German police officers, who launched an inquiry.

*********

Survey: Dutch Children Start Drinking at Age 12

Mon Dec 20,10:42 AM ET

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - More than 80 percent of Dutch children aged between nine and 15 say they have tried alcohol and on average start drinking at the age of 12, according to a survey.

The teen Web site Kaboem (www.kaboem.nl) said Monday a survey of 2,500 young people found nearly 40 percent had their first alcoholic beverage with a parent.

Some 68 percent of Dutch 15-year-olds admitted drinking alcohol often and a third of respondents said that when they drink they have enough to get drunk.

As in many other countries, boys drink more frequently than girls, the survey found. Forty percent of 15-year-old boys said they had been drunk at least once.

The European School Survey project on alcohol and other drugs, published earlier in December, said Dutch youngsters drank more often than their peers across Europe and were among the most likely to binge drink.

*********

Board Game Lets Players Run Marijuana Farm

Mon Dec 20, 8:24 PM ET

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The hot new Christmas gift in Canada this year is a board game that lets players run their own "B.C. Bud" marijuana farm.

Creators of "The Grow-Op Game" say the $39.95 "educational board game" highlights the perils of the marijuana business and cautions would-be growers.

"You get ratted on by neighbors, hydro cuts you off, you get floods, there are tons of stuff that is negative about it," said Vancouver-based creator Ivan Solomon Saturday.

Solomon said the Monopoly-style game is the brainchild of a young, 20-something reformed pot grower, known only as the "Rabbit," to conceal his identity. Solomon said Rabbit came up with the idea for the game while serving time in jail.

Rabbit and Solomon brought the game to market about four weeks ago.

Players roll the dice, move around the board, renting properties, buying lights and equipment, planting and harvesting crops. Moving in an opposite direction on the cylinder shaped board is the "GrowBuster." He lands on the unsuspecting player's property, rips out the plants and sends the player directly to jail.

"Out of six players, one might get lucky," Soloman said.

Cpl. Scott Rintoul, spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Drug Awareness Squad, expressed concern that the game does not illustrate the impact the drug trade can having on the victims of organized crime.

"It's not a game," he said.