J Larsen

Quite frankly, I feel like I'm getting a lesson in doublespeak with the talk of the church's position on homosexuality.

My potato chip is crying.

That's like me saying that "most" Christians butt their way into my (and everyone else's) business, with anti-gay and anti-abortion nonsense rooted in an arbitrary belief system to which I do not subscribe. That statement is no more ridiculous than your own. I agree with the respect commanding respect bit, though.

It's about damned time!

I waited three weeks for a package from Queens once. I get my weekly magazines on different days every week, and sometimes get this week's issue before last weeks. Also, my postman refuses to ring my doorbell to hand me even the smallest packages (like BMG orders). If it looks like it *might* not fit in the (large) mailbox, it gets left at the station and I get a package slip, which in turn requires waiting in a long, slow-moving line during the local PO's inconvenient (for me) hours of operation. So I'm no big fan of the local postal service.

Strange, their site works fine for me. http://www.girardgibbs.com/firm.html BTW, here's their page for the PayPal case. http://www.girardgibbs.com/paypal.html

Here's a recent news story about the case, though it is scant in the particulars of the offense. There may be more components to this case that what I outlined above. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/...paying-up_x.htm

This is legit, and has been in the news (as well as Paypal's own website, if you bother to check the links above). Basically Paypal never bothered to mention to their customers that if you leave your account inactive for 180 days, they take your money out of it and will only refund it if you write them a letter requesting the specific amount that they took. For this scam (which is the accurate term, IMO), the court has ruled that all PayPal customers are entitled to three cents ($.03, no misprint) whether they were affected by the scam or not. Customers who were affected have one of two options: to go through a short paperwork process to collect a fixed payment of $50, or to go through a lengthy paperwork process to collect the full amount of money lost. It seems as though they will audit both classes of claims fairly thoroughly. In short: if you lost money from your PayPal account because you left it inactive for 6 months, it's worth your while. Otherwise it's not.

I said Paul because it figures the biggest jerk would be the last to go.

I've been digging the Avengers Complete Emma Peel "Mega Set" since I got it a few days ago. One of the best shows ever, IMO.

Martha Stewart is quite clearly guilty of the crime of which she was convicted and deserves what she got. As for women in business, I realize it's a tougher road for them, and coming from a welfare-class background, I believe I can empathize with their struggle towards the top. About half the execs in my company are women, and I feel no less respect for them than their male couterparts. OTOH, having to struggle to reach the top does not justify abhorent behavior, criminal or otherwise. I follow the law and treat other people with respect. Marth doesn't, and now she's going to pay for it. That's all I care to say on this matter.

I'm at work, so I don't have time to go into this in detail, but I wanted to see if I was alone on this one or not. I thought last nights episode was very cliched, predictable, silly, poorly executed (David had at least two clear opportunities to escape), and, most importantly, I feel like they're missing a lot of very obvious plot points that are ripe for developing. I've already been in one argurment over this, so I want to see what other people think.

Just finished The Sound and the Fury and just starting Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

...but I don't know if I was ever young enough to relate to this: (BTW, if you want to see some really sick and disturbing pictures of this new trend in body modification, you can go to www.suspension.org - but it's even grosser to look at than you'd guess.) Meat hook dangling craze mystifies police MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- Law enforcement officials in the Florida Keys are mystified by a bizarre new pastime -- young people dangling themselves from meat hooks on a popular sandbar. A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said on Sunday that the Monroe County sheriff's office and Coast Guard were called on July 12 to the sandbar off Whale Harbor in Islamorada where locals say wild behavior is becoming a tradition. They found that five young people had erected a bamboo tripod and hung meat hooks from it. A young woman, her feet brushing the surface of the shallow water, dangled from the frame, hooks embedded firmly in her shoulders. According to a Coast Guard video, she did not seem to mind the hooks. Lt. Tom Brazil of the Coast Guard told the Key West Citizen newspaper that a young man, who also had hooks embedded in his heavily pierced and tattooed skin, assured him the group was "just enjoying the afternoon." A Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami said the group had clearly done this before and intended to post photos of themselves on a Web site dedicated to "body modification" -- the ritualistic piercing of the body. "It looked like a daily routine for them," she said, adding that the hooks had been inserted in the skin in a professional manner and had drawn very little blood." "As long as they weren't creating any kind of ruckus or riot within a crowd they really weren't breaking any laws." The Coast Guard passed the video on to federal justice authorities but no further action will be taken.

Psst... Berkeley only has one season.

Portland is fine for a week long visit. It boasts beautiful parks (Forest park in particular is amazing), good (and inexpensive) restaurants, and close porximity to some of the best vineyards in the country. Living there is a different matter entirely. I started explaining it in this post, but deleted it when I realized how snobbish it was. Suffice to say that I am accustomed to living in a cosmopolitan environment and am uncomfortable living in other types of cities. Honestly, I really just didn't connect with many of the people I met there. Different values, different interests, different priorities. Portland is a very slow town, and I find that people there tend to be content to let life happen to them, which is an acceptable choice, just not one to which I can relate. I also tend to prefer compact, dense cities to overgrown towns with large-ish populations spread out over vast areas, like Portland. I don't know how to explain that one, as SF isn't exactly the most dense city around (in fact, having lived in NYC for several years now, I've come to regard SF as being more on the border of being a town and a city).

That's the one thing Portland really had going for it. Lots of very good to excellent restaurants, and they're generally cheaper for dinner than a good lunch in Manhattan.

Yeah, that was about a half mile south of where I grew up. I'm not too sure how long it's been there - to tell you the truth I had to look up the address just now. Valerie Solanis (the woman who shot Andy Warhol) lived about a block from me, Margaret Cho (the comedian) grew up more or less around the corner from me, and I was within convenient walking distance of the Mitchell Brothers theatre and the city's primary transsexual prostitution strip on O'Farrell street. I was not an innocent child. BTW, when I go back there now I'm really shocked at how gentrified my old neighborhood has become. It was really gritty back in the day - even by daylight you had to be aware of the people around you. That's pretty much were the drug fiends went to hang out when they were *really* desperate. I have to say, a little gentrification isn't always a bad thing.

I've lived in SF (I grew up in the tenderlion), LA, Portland (went to Reed College for three years), and NYC. In order of preference, I'd rate them as 1) NYC 2) SF (A distant second) 3) LA (such a distant third it really deserves to be more like tenth) 4) Portland (this one rates so low it really doesn't deserve a number) So I guess I prefer big, dense, fast cities over small cities like SF, but I'd prefer a beautiful, slow small city like SF over a gross, ugly, superficial, sprawling city like LA, yet I prefer even LA to Portland. That town and I *really* didn't get along.

I haven't heard anyone say that. However, it is quite possible that she ruined the financial life of one investor. Also, that $50,000 figure is misleading. If you bought right after Martha sold, and sold right after the FDA announcement (which would have been a reasonable thing to do), I believe you would have been out more like $200,000. The stock lost 75% of its value after the announcement, and lost about 90% of its value before it started to rebound in the last quarter of 2002. finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=IMCL&t=5y

Oh come on, Kennie-boy isn't all that bad of a guy. Just kidding. The Martha thing has been blown a little out of proportion, but that's the price of celebrity. If Waksal was the TV show host/magazine editor and Martha was the relatively anon exec, the tables would have been turned on this thing. And as it is, Waksal defrauded traders of about 20 times more money (I think he sold about $4MM worth) and got close to 20 times as much time - he just didn't get the headlines because he didn't put himself in the headlines in the first place. Also, Martha did herself no great favors in terms of making friends and enemies.

No, she didn't - I think that's probably a big reason she didn't get *that* much time. Martha and her buddy Waskal both ripped investors off. Waskal is serving his time, and now it looks like Martha will serve his. BTW, I do mathematical modeling in the financial industry for one of the larger firms, and NO ONE I work with has ever believed Martha. For one thing (of many), every phone call that goes to or comes from a trader or broker is tape recorded. There are no exceptions. This is a malpractice insurance requirement. If Martha had really placed that sell order in advance, her trading firm (I think it was Merrill?) would have been able to produce the tapes.

You're hard-pressed to find many insider trading convictions. You have to prove that the person didn't intend to sell the stock prior to getting the non-public information. As this is practically impossible to prove, persons guilty of insider trading are often convicted of related crimes, if anything at all. In this sense, the Martha case isn't all that unusual. Considering that her Imclone trades ripped a lot of money off of anonymous investors, I think five months is a reasonable to light sentence. I think it is appropriate to give harsher sentences for lying to investigators with regards to an insider trading case, given the fact that the underlying crime is nearly impossible to prove. We have to strike some fear in these hot-shot traders who think they can get away with anything.

I don't know b3, Shaq is on the downside of his career for sure, but he can still dominate almost any center in the East. I mean, it's hard to even name a lot of the centers in the East!

I too would be willing to subscribe to the old site.