The ever informative Dwight Silverman informs us that the new Apple Store is opening this weekend in The Woodlands. Given the spirit of the typical Mac user, Dwight points out that you may want to allow the initial stampede to recede before venturing over to do some serious shopping.
By the way, speaking of Apple, you can rest assured that Ken Leebow will not be one of the shoppers at an Apple Store anytime soon!
In the Stros romp over the Phillies last night, Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman hit back-to-back home runs twice, once in the first inning and then again in the third. By the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Stros are 52-47, in 2nd place in the NL Central 10 1/2 games back of St. Louis, only 3 games behind in the Wild Card race, and have won 8 out of their last 10 games.
Bidg and Berkman are — along with injured teammate, Jeff Bagwell — among a small group of Stros players who are legitimate candidates for Baseball’s Hall of Fame. The rare feat of homering back-to-back twice in one game gives me an opportunity to pass along the following career and recent season statistics for both Bidg and Berkman:
In the ongoing wrongful death civil trial against Merck involving its pain reliever drug Vioxx, the mainstream media tends to focus on seemingly important expert testimony such as that described in this article.
Being more a student of the courtroom, however, I tend to focus in such trials on jury dynamics, such as those described in this Fortune Magazine article:
Speaking in state court in Angleton, Texas, without notes and in gloriously plain English, and accompanying nearly every point with imaginative, easily understood (if often hokey) slides and overhead projections, (plaintiff’s lawyer Mark) Lanier, a part-time Baptist preacher, took on Merck and its former CEO Ray Gilmartin with merciless, spellbinding savagery . . .
But in contrast to Lanier . . . (Merck defense lawyer David Kiernan) seemed to read much of his presentation and illustrated it only with stodgy, corporate headshots of Merck officials or hard-to-read excerpts from documents whose meaning was shrouded in medical jargon . . .
The trial offers jurors a stark choice between accepting Lanier’s invitation to believe simple, alluring and emotionally cathartic stories versus Merck’s appeals to colorless, heavy-going, soporific Reason.
H’mm. On one hand, an interesting story told through a lively presentation given without notes using colorful images. On the other hand, a bland recitation of prepared remarks given with boring images of hard-to-read text in documents.
Translated: This is not looking good for Merck.
This outstanding Washington Post article (first in a series of three) on Medicare nails the key problem with reliance on third party payor health care finance systems:
In Medicare’s upside-down reimbursement system, hospitals and doctors who order unnecessary tests, provide poor care or even injure patients often receive higher payments than those who provide efficient, high-quality medicine. . .
Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, who have been studying Medicare’s performance for three decades, estimate that as much as $1 of every $3 is wasted on unnecessary or inappropriate care. Other analysts put the figure as high as 40 percent.
Medicare has difficulty controlling waste because of deficiencies in the way it monitors and enforces quality standards. Its oversight system is fragmented, underfunded and marred by conflicts of interest, records and interviews show . . .
Read the entire article, including the sidebar containing related articles and graphs and the subsequent articles here and here. It’s a first rate series.
A couple of former City of Houston aides have had a rough spot lately, but frankly our corruption is blase’ compared to what’s going on at City Hall in San Diego recently.
First, the San Diego mayor resigned a couple of weeks ago amidst a pension fund scandal. Then, after about 60 hours on the job, the mayor’s interim successor — along with another member of the San Diego City Council — was convicted of conspiracy, extortion, and fraud in connection with a scheme to receive money for changing a city law to benefit strip club owners. With a new interim mayor and another mayor to be elected in a special election, that makes four mayors by my count in the space of just a few months. All of which prompted economist and San Diego resident James Hamilton to observe:
Forgive me if this sounds paranoid, but isn’t this the same crowd to whom the Supreme Court gave the power to kick me out of my home in order to hand it to some developer? Not that any City Council members would ever let how much money they got from that developer influence their decision on something like that.
Orin Kerr over at the Volokh Conspiracy refers us to this recent D.C. Circuit decision in which U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. wrote a lively dissent and, in so doing, provides a glimpse of why he was one of my favorites for nomination to the Supreme Court.
The decision involves a search and seizure case. The defendant was driving a car with the license plate light out. After police stopped him, it turned out that he did not have a driver’s license on him, that his license had been suspended, and that the car had stolen tags. During the stop, the police could find not find anything that indicated that the car was properly registered. Thus, the police arrested the defendant and then they searched the car’s trunk, where they found a gun. Wallah! The defendant was charged with a gun possession crime and we now have a search and seizure case.