The Ropa-Dope Going back to the time between 1977 and 1990, I was a daily commuter into Manhattan from Long Island. I realize that it sounds totally crazy (something I failed to comprehend at the time), but I would get up at 4am every weekday morning and catch the 5:14am train from Rockville Centre into Penn Station. I would then share a cab (always with the same two other guys who I know only from…
The Comfort of Analysis In the expert witness business there are four basic functions that one must be able to handle. The first involves reading large quantities of evidence, testimony and reports. I have never been a particularly fast reader. I didn’t get glasses until I was in fourth grade. For some reason, my mother didn’t notice my vision deficiency until it was quite debilitating in school. I just could not see what was on…
The McRib Mystery I first met McDonalds in 1961 in Madison, Wisconsin, where they had been present since 1957. There were only 150 McDonalds outlets then and they were mostly in the Midwest given Ray Kroc’s home in the suburbs of Chicago. Of course, as most of us know, the franchise actual began in San Bernardino, California where the McDonald brothers first set up shop. I distinctly remember going to McDonalds with my mother and…
Time Travel I have never been a fan of movies that deal with the issue of time travel. The old standard of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine was OK and I must admit I enjoyed the Back to the Future series, but by the time The Terminator came around, I found it was all getting too hard to suspend disbelief. The one that really pushed me over the edge was The Curious Case of Benjamin…
Doomsday I ran a global private banking business for six years and one of the big specialties was the whole trust and estates practice. In those days we were one of the three big trust banks in the U.S. and we had partnered with the prestigious “white shoe” law firm of White & Case for all of our trust and estates work like the drafting of wills and all the more complex elements of putting…
Claiming Casualty I recently wrote about the ethical dilemma I face with regard to my new television, which got somehow gouged on its main 85” screen in two small spots. I suppose I could go forward and just not worry about the damage since it doesn’t completely disrupt my viewing pleasure, but it is an expensive new TV and I would rather it be put right, so I am going down the path to try…
The Ripple In The Pond This morning I was watching CBS Sunday Morning, which we believe is the best of the Sunday morning news magazine shows. They are interviewing Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, the guy who had to fill the very big shoes of Steve Jobs a dozen years ago. He has presided over a 9X growth of Apple to being a $3 Trillion company, the largest company in the world. That means…
The Comfort of Analysis In the expert witness business there are four basic functions that one must be able to handle. The first involves reading large quantities of evidence, testimony and reports. I have never been a particularly fast reader. I didn’t get glasses until I was in fourth grade. For some reason, my mother didn’t notice my vision deficiency until it was quite debilitating in school. I just could not see what was on…
Everyday Ethics For the first time in several years, I am not teaching ethics this semester. In fact, I’m not teaching at all and may have hung up my teaching spurs for life at this point. What I remind myself is that teaching ethics was much harder than I ever thought it would be. That is much like the degree of difficulty we all face each and every day with ethical dilemmas that present themselves…
Ignoring Reality Last night I watched the third Republican Debate. The issues in any of these debates revolve around a combination of social policies, global defense policies and economic policies. Everyone in politics is pretty clear that social and defense policies can stir people up, but nothing gets them more riled up than economic policies. It is fair to say that Republicans have always (at lest since WWII, which is the timeframe I can at…