Lowering the Bar

"Da Vinci Code" Judge Encodes Message in Ruling

About a month ago, British High Court Justice Peter Smith ruled that Dan Brown had not plagiarized an earlier work ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail") when writing his best-seller (you may have heard of it), "The Da Vinci Code."  It turns out that the judge's opinion contains an odd pattern of italicized letters, sometimes just one in the middle of a word, and the first ten of these letters spell out "SMITHY CODE."  The next 30 are a jumble, and experts around the world immediately started feverish efforts to crack the Smithy Code.

Actually, nobody noticed for about three weeks, which may tell you how closely people read judicial opinions.  Eventually, Dan Tench, a partner at a London law firm, noticed it and mentioned something to a legal-affairs reporter, whose paper published a small item about it.  In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, Justice Smith refused to confirm or deny anything about a code, saying "I can't discuss the judgment until after I retire."

But then he did.  A lot.  Clearly disappointed that nobody had noticed his handiwork, he then emailed back with a series of cryptic comments.  He first admitted there was a code, and then that he had plagarized -- I mean, borrowed -- the idea from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," to which potential code-breakers might want to look.  Then he emailed back to say "Think mathematics," a reference to a method used by characters in Brown's book.  Then he said people might want to look at his own reference in "Who's Who," which, it turns out, mentions the judge's lifelong interest in Jackie Fisher, who, as you are aware, was a British admiral who came up with the idea for the dreadnought battleship.

You know, this started out as an intriguing mystery, sort of.

Finally, the judge  said "Start with 's' and keep looking up to Page 18 approximately where the fonts stop."  (Oh, just tell us what it is already.)  Well, the decoded message, which took less than 24 hours to decode with the judge's clues, turns out to be "Jackie Fisher, who are you?  Dreadnought," and frankly is kind of a letdown.  Shouldn't it be some revelation about Jesus killing a guy with his bare hands for no reason or something like that?  Hm.  The judge insisted that his coded message "reveals a significant but now overlooked event [the invention of the dreadnought, I guess] that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial."  Fair enough.

Link: New York Times
Link: My Way News

Lawmakers Demonstrate Commitment to Conservation

With gas prices getting higher all the time, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been quick to show concern, and many have been jumping on the alternative-fuel bandwagon.  That includes top House Republicans, who held a press conference yesterday at a BP gas station to show their commitment to energy-efficient vehicles.  House Speaker Dennis Hastert and others rode to the media event in hydrogen-powered cars, and drove away in them, even.

Well, actually, they drove about a block, then got out of them and got back into their SUVs (or, as the Post described them, their "pre-positioned gas-guzzling armored SUVs") for the drive back to the Capitol.  Unsporting photographers were lying in wait and got pictures of the switch:

Speaker Hastert before and after the press conference.

Hastert's spokesman (of course the Speaker has a spokesman) said that Hastert had wanted to ride in the hydrogen car, but his security detail "demanded that he ride in the much more secure armored SUV."  South-east DC is a bit dangerous, yes, but it ain't Baghdad.  Some wondered if the security detail was having Hindenburg flashbacks.

To be fair, lawmakers from both parties have been hypocritical about this.  As the Post itself pointed out, the GOP event "followed one by Senate Democrats on Wednesday, who rode in their gas guzzlers to an Exxon station a block from their offices to blame Republicans for high fuel prices."

Link: Washington Post (free registration required)

German Court Holds Streakers Liable to Stadium Owners

A judge in Rostock, Germany, has ruled that soccer-stadium operators may recover damages from people who run naked onto the soccer field during matches.  This is evidently a problem plaguing the world of European soccer, and foreign streakers have been infiltrating the US as well, as shown by a British man who stripped just after halftime of the Super Bowl two years ago.

You would think it would be difficult to measure damages caused by streaking, but in this case the soccer club in question was fined 20,000 Euros by the German soccer federation for an incident during a match in 2003, and the court ruled that the club could seek compensation for the fine from the streakers.

In a nice touch, the three men involved apparently argued that it was the club's fault for not providing sufficient security -- a "stop-me-before-I-streak-again" defense, I guess -- but the judge had no trouble rejecting that.  "If you are caught stealing, you can't argue that the shop owner should have better protected his goods," he said.

The club's lawyer said his client hoped the ruling would deter others from displaying their own goods in future sports matches, especially the World Cup this summer.

Link: Yahoo! News

Burying the Hatchet

Recently quoted in The New Yorker:

[Detroit] Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has named former mayoral challenger and City Councilwoman Sharon Mc Phail, who once accused him of rigging her massage chair to electrocute her, to the newly created position of general counsel for the mayor's office.

Proving that lawyers may be able to take strong positions without anybody taking it personally.

The New Yorker, April 10, 2006, p. 82 (quoting a report in the Detroit News).

David Copperfield Claims to Have Tricked Muggers

Illusionist David Copperfield and two of his assistants were robbed Sunday night by a group of teenagers who drove up as the performers were walking to their tour bus after a show in Palm Beach, Florida.  Two of the teens pointed guns at them and demanded their belongings.  The two assistants handed over a total of about $700, a passport, plane tickets and a cell phone.  Copperfield apparently handed over nothing.  The reason for this is in some dispute, however.

According to the AP report, Copperfield told police that he had refused to empty his pockets, and so apparently the teens just fled with what they had.  But Copperfield later told the Palm Beach Post that (I'm quoting the AP story here) "he turned his pockets inside out to reveal nothing in them, even though he was carrying his passport, wallet and cell phone."  Copperfield was quoted as saying, "Call it reverse pickpocketing."

I don't know -- I may call it "spin."  Maybe Copperfield did use his powers of illusion to bamboozle a gang of armed robbers, but that's not what he told the police.  And shouldn't he have just made them all disappear?  That would have been better for his two lovely assistants, that's for sure (although they did get their stuff back).

Copperfield was able to produce the car's license plate (the number, not the actual plate) for police after the robbers departed.  Police later arrested the four teenagers and they are being held without bond, as they are apparently unable to escape from a locked room.

Link: AP via SFGate.com

Tip of the Day: Spanking, Mocking, Diapering Are All Frowned Upon in the Workplace

In case you were unclear about this, it is not okay to spank employees at work, even as part of a "motivational" program under which underperforming employees are publicly humiliated.  Also not approved: pie-throwing, shouting of lewd comments, and forcing employees to wear diapers and eat baby food.

These were some of the fun team-building exercises engaged in at Alarm One Inc., in Fresno, California, or at least that's what a former saleswoman alleges in her lawsuit, which is about to go to the jury in Fresno County Superior Court.  The company sells alarms (not surprisingly), and also installs, services and monitors them.  But the allegations involve the sales teams, specifically those in the Hayward and Fresno offices.

The plaintiff alleges that the practice developed of pitting sales teams against each other, with the winners "poking fun at the losers."  The losers were thus the recipient of the aforementioned pies, diapers, baby food, and spankings, administered by the winners while "hooting" and shouting comments such as "You've been a bad [girl][boy], [employee name here]."  As an additional touch, the spankings were administered by swatting employees with a competitor's yard sign.  Allegedly, sales people who arrived late for a meeting or talked out of turn were also spanked.

Orlando, a 53-year-old former field supervisor, says that she was so humiliated by her three spankings that she was forced to quit her job in 2003, and she seeks damages.  The company's lawyers, on the other hand, say that the spankings were done "in fun to build camaraderie," that Orlando never complained about being spanked and in fact "had fun" and "uttered foul language" when others were spanked.  They say Orlando quit because she was passed over for promotion, not because of being spanked.  They also reject Orlando's claims of discrimination, because both male and female employees were spanked.

The case was expected to go to the jury this week.  As an additional plus with regard to this case, the opposing sides are represented by "Butch" Wagner and K. "Poncho" Baker, which makes it sound more like an episode of "C.Hi.P.S" than a lawsuit.

UPDATE: the jury awarded the spankee $500,000 in actual damages ($450,000 for emotional distress) on Friday.  They have not even reached the question of punitive damages yet.

Link: FresnoBee.com

Gum-Chewer Charged with Insulting Kemal Ataturk

Veysel Dalci, the leader of a local branch of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, was charged with "insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk" after a military official spotted him chewing gum while laying a wreath at a statue of Ataturk on Sunday.

For those of you not up on your Turkish history, Mustafa Kemal was a hero of the First World War who later founded the modern secular Turkish state.  "Ataturk" means "Father of the Turks."  At least, I'm pretty sure it does.  It might mean, "Turk Who Loathes Gum-Chewers."

Whether Ataturk hated gum or not, the official at the ceremony believed that Dalci was being disrespectful to Ataturk, which is apparently a crime in Turkey.  Dalci admitted the gum was present but claimed he did not realize it at the time.  "I noticed I had a gum in my mouth [only] after laying the wreath," he said.  "I am very sorry"  He also said that if he had realized it at the time, he would not intended to insult Ataturk anyway.  His motive was only to freshen his breath after eating garlic.  Indeed, had he not chewed the gum, he might have approached Ataturk with foul breath, which would have shown far greater disrespect for the country's father and heroic leader.

He didn't actually make that last point -- I'm practicing my closing argument in case I get the call to defend the guy.

Link: AP via My Way News

No Seat-Belt Citation for Corpse

A German woman was stopped and arrested recently after police got a tipoff that she was transporting a dead body in her car.  The woman was taking a relative to be buried in her hometown and said she was trying to save the money the mortuary was going to charge her to transport the body.  (Unsurprisingly, it was the mortician that tipped off the police.)

The comedy in this incident, as is often the case, is provided by a police spokesman, who told reporters what the woman had been cited for and what she had not been cited for.  "You're not allowed to transport dead people in your private car," said spokesman Ralf Schomisch, which is why the woman was charged with violating burial laws and with "disturbing a dead person's peace" (that second one, at least, really doesn't sound very fair).  But Schomisch also couldn't stop himself from noting another possible violation: "The corpse was on the back seat without a seat belt," he said, although he quickly was forced to note that "in this case [it] didn't really matter."

There's a definite note of disappointment there, it seems to me.  Another scofflaw gets away on a technicality.  The failure to cite the corpse for not buckling up has deprived the world of a full discussion of some important legal issues, that's for sure.

Link: Reuters via My Way News

The Latest on Your Homeland Security Dollars

The Washington Times reports this week on spending under a loophole in the "Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act," passed last year in the House of Representatives by a vote of 409-10.  The poorly-acronymed FASFFFRA was a real breakthrough, as it requires most first-responder grants to be evaluated and prioritized based on the relative risk of a terror attack.  So, it only took four years to pass legislation linking the money appropriated as a result of a previous terror attack to the relative risk of a future terror attack.  Nice job, Congress.

But wait -- at least one grant program relating to fire departments was exempted from even this legislation, and as the Times reports, at least $25 million has been doled out under that program, without those kinds of priorities.  For example, two local fire departments have received a total of $77,000 to fund "puppet and clown shows," and one in Oregon got $22,000 for an educational robot.  Other departments are using money for nutritional counseling and teaching firefighters "how to become fitness trainers."  And somehow, an organization that provides "breast-cancer screening for low-income Haitian immigrants" got $40,000.  Now, I'm not opposed to such a program, generally speaking; I'm just not sure it quite fits with the particular mission statement.

The director of the Assistance to Firefighters grant program says that Congress does require at least five percent of any such grant to be spent on fire protection funding.  So that's nice.

But, despite that strict requirement, the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste is still not satisfied.  "[I]t's clear a lot of this money could hve been spent more effectively," said Tom Schatz, president of CAGW.  "Puppet and clown shows? . . . People in New York and other major cities will not find this funny at all."  I'm not sure about that last part.

Link: Washington Times

Florida State Senator Promises to Try New Media Strategies

State Senator Gary Siplin was charged on April 10 with grand theft for allegedly misusing taxpayer money.  Since then, he has shown, shall we say, a lack of skill in dealing with the media.

He acknowledged to reporters this week that he should have simply said "no comment" to them last week when they showed up at his office after asking for a statement on the pending charges.  That would have been better, he thinks now, than running out the back door of his office and scaling a chain-link fence to get away.  When you talk to your new media advisor, Gary, he will probably tell you that if you are going to adopt that strategy, you should at least run fast enough to avoid being caught on film actually scaling the fence to get away:

State Sen. Gary Siplin (D-Orlando) departs
an impromptu press conference held last week.

By Tuesday of this week, he had at least learned enough to have his attorney do most of the talking.  Surprisingly, Siplin's attorney said his client admitted wrongdoing and was uncertain about his prospects.

Oh, wait, I read that wrong; apparently he "absolutely denies all wrongdoing associated with his campaign and the subjects named in the [indictment]," and is confident he will be cleared.

Siplin, who is also an attorney, did make a few comments to the media after his own attorney had finished.  Such as, "I love you, brother," which he repeated half a dozen times in response to reporters' questions.  Asked whether he had anything to say to his constituents, he said that he loved them too.  Siplin had answered questions in the same way last July when questions first arose about transfers from his campaign account to a defunct business that he owned.  "I love you," he said in response to about three dozen questions.  "I love you."  Lacking any spirit of romance at all, the reporters seem to have kept digging.

Link: WFTV.com (Orlando)