In the Dead of the Night There are many things you can call 4am. If you are staying up late to party or for one reason or another, it is the wee hours of the night. When you wake up in the middle of the night as I often seem to do these days, it is right on the cusp at this time of year of being early enough to go back to sleep but…
Duck, Duck, Goose It’s not completely random, but working with different lawyers on expert witness cases can be pretty hit or miss. As a hired gun, I am not in charge of anything in these cases expect the specific opinion that I am asked to render to support my team in the case. Like any lawyer considering accepting a case, I am asked to accept a case based on a minimal amount of research and…
Black Friday I am not sure where Black Friday gets its name since the adjective “black” usually denotes a calamity of some sort. What I do know is that the commercial world wants us to start our Christmas shopping as early as possible. We in America have tacitly agreed to allow Christmas shopping to begin no earlier than Thanksgiving. That logically makes the Friday after Thanksgiving a big retailer day. The retail trade, both brick…
Corruption There are certain themes that dredge up lots of memories and sentiments. The sad state of affairs in life in general is that the word corruption is one such theme. Corruption is most often used to describe fraudulent or dishonest conduct and is most often associated with that act being undertaken by someone in a powerful or otherwise trusted position. I have always considered myself a trusting person. I like to think that I…
The Failure of Power I had a real epiphany this morning and this story is the output from that. I awoke at 6am after a decent night’s sleep and as I went into our shared closet I flipped on the light as I always do, only to find that all but one of the track lights failed and did not go on. I did the usual of flicking the switch back and forth (as though…
Uber Chapter Two Tonight in my ethics course I happen to be doing the session I call “Truth & Lies” and it is meant to focus on issues like whether “Fake It Till You Make It” is ever an acceptable strategy in business. We use the Theranos case study with Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani as the poster children of the issue. It’s an interesting case for many reasons, not the least of which is…
The Plot Thickens I am going to tell a tall tale here that is, unfortunately, all too true, or as Madeline Kahn said in Blazing Saddles, “It’s Twue, it’s Twue!” As I take on my Fireside Theater/Nick Danger/Dashiell Hammett/Sam Spade persona, I can’t help but think of Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery when he tells his wife (Diane Keaton) that if she doesn’t follow his orders to not go snooping in the neighbor’s apartment, he…
Margin Call In my ethics course, I have stopped using the movie The Big Short because as entertaining as it is, it simply is not a particularly realistic version of whaat really goes on when the shit hits the fan on Wall Street. Don’t get me wrong, Adam McKay, made a very good movie and there are many many truths imbedded in the story McKay tells about the first six months of 2007. No one…
Lightning Strikes Bilbao Our Turkish tour guide Kaz, a well-educated and very enlightened man of the world sent us an article from The Guardian today on the subject of the twentieth anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. Given the enlightened journalistic presence of The Guardian, that message reminds me that Kaz is a first rate guru to follow, not only in his native land of Turkey (where we last saw him), but almost anywhere…
Camera Obscura Cameras have been around for a long time. In their most basic form of image projection, it is said that they may have existed as long ago as 500 BC with the first one taking the form of pinholes in tents where light came through and was cast on another tarp or tent surface. Some go so far as to say there may have been similar Stone Age versions that gave rise to…