August 18 roundup

  • Tiananmen Square events echo today in acrimonious defamation suit against filmmakers [Boston Globe]
  • Andrew Ferguson disrespectful toward David Kessler’s nanniferous book on obesity policy [Weekly Standard]
  • “Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions” [TechDirt]
  • The big difference race makes in medical school admissions [Discriminations, Mark Perry/Carpe Diem]
  • Texting, workplace flirtation and sexual harassment law [Forbes/MSNBC]
  • After real estate firm grabs and uses online pic, photographer finds satisfaction through small claims court [West Seattle Blog h/t @VBalasubramani]
  • Virginia: latest case seeking to open emotional-distress damages for death of pets gets help from former White House counsel Lanny Davis [WaPo, earlier]
  • Brazil police allege that host of true-crime TV series ordered killings to ensure good footage for the show [AP]

4 Comments

  • Theoretically the small claims court in the photograph copyright dispute did not have jurisdiction to hear the case since the US District courts have exclusive original jurisdiction in such matters. That notwithstanding, the dispute was ended fairly and expeditiously without lawyers and without making a federal case out of it. $1000 was the fair market value of the photo rather than up to $100K statutory damages for copyright infringment.

  • For the race based admissions, the statistics are pulled from a corner of the chart with very few applicants.
    The overall rate of acceptance for academically lousy students with a GPA below a B average is dismal. It is the rare student who can nail the MCAT test and yet be academically dismal.
    That said, blacks do well pretty much anywhere you go on that chart, just not as dramatically. It could be that as a group blacks have better personal stories to explain their crappy academics than whites so that examining an extreme corner of the data may not be all that revealing.

  • Ah, yes, the evil food industry, making things we like to eat. Instead they should be making everything out of Brillo, which will not only cause us to lose weight, but also act as roughage.

    I am a fat person, but I look upon it as a public service. Fat people like me don’t live to be 110, requiring cataract surgery, hip replacements, massive numbers of nurses and aides to help us deal with senile dementia. Instead we keel over at the age of 60, saving all those expenses, not to mention the large chunk of money to help pay all those pensions of skinny people. But do they ever thank us and the food industry? Do they even go so far as to offer us a slice of cheesecake in recompense for all we do for them? No. I’m tempted, at times, to lose weight and make them pay where it really hurts: in the wallet.

    Bob

  • David Kessler is just another empty-life liberal who over compensates by trying to control the lives of others. Strangely many liberals appreciate this tack because it relieves them of personal responsibility. We would all be better if he just bought a cat and devoted the rest of his life to teaching it tricks.