PlingTalk

Love is grand; divorce is at least a hundred grand.

Time may be a great healer, but it’s also a lousy beautician.

Remember: amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

An optimist thinks that this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears that this is true.
This civil right to counsel is known as “Civil Gideon”, after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, which affirmed the right of an indigent person to have the assistance of counsel in a criminal trial. (Retired mediator and attorney David Giacalone introduced me and other readers of the blog shlep to this movement.)

Acceptance for the notion of a civil right to counsel will come about only through cultural change in the halls of justice and among the players there, according to one of its proponents, Russell Engler, a Professor at New England School of Law. In his 2006 article, “Shaping a Context-Based Civil Gideon from the Dynamics of Social Change” (downloadable in PDF from SSRN), Professor Engler describes the actions of those standing in the way of progress thus:

In the courtroom, court personnel, including the judges, will likely encourage the unrepresented litigant to settle the case. That, in turn, may require the litigant to go to the hallway to negotiate with the lawyer, or to resort to some form of court-based mediation. The hallway negotiations are rife with instances of overreaching and unethical behavior by lawyers, unmonitored and unpunished by a legal system that depends on a high settlement rate. Where the litigants resist settlement, strong words from the judges, mediators or lawyers eventually induce litigants to settle. Few civil cases are tried, and most settlements involving the unrepresented poor occur with a minimum of judicial involvement. [Id. at 2.]

Even acknowledging variations in behavior and changes over time, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which judges, court-connected mediators, clerks, court administrators, and the bar’s rank and file are hindering the expansion of a right to counsel in transacting their daily business. While many in those ranks are focused on the “problem” of unrepresented litigants, it would be a mistake to assume that those players are natural allies in Civil Gideon initiatives. [Id. at 3.]
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just stand there.

My inferiority complex is not as good as yours is.

I am having an out of money experience.

It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

You’re getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.

Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.

Start your engines for the INDY 500
Its time to your engines, for this year 91st running of the Indianapolis 500 or as its simply called the Indy 500 but in the early days of what has now become one of the biggest sporting events in the world, race track officials had a hard time choosing the name of its race.
The first race was advertised as the “International 500 mile sweepstakes “from 1911 -1916. In 1919, then the race was referred to as the “Liberty Sweepstakes” then after the following of WWI.
From 1920-1980, the race was revered to as the “International Sweepstakes “after slight variations of names over the time, in 1981 race track officials adopted “the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race” name.
The Indianapolis 500 is now annually held over the Memorial Day weekend, however the first 500 was held on Memorial Day on May 30th, 1911, in that first race Ray Harroun was piloting his yellow Firestone-shod #32 Marmon “Wasp” which was outfitted with his invention the rear view mirror to victory. Rather than riding the mechanic specified in the rules, which created controversy, but it was ultimately allowed in the end.
Ray went on to win the race, with an average speed of 74miles per hour, in which created another controversy; to this day, some say a scoring error cheated Ralph Mulford of his rightful victory, Ray, who came out of retirement to race in the first Indy 500 and as it turn out that was his last race.
The attendance at the Indianapolis 500 has never been a problem since it started the race, the first race in 1911, drew eighty thousands and two hundred people, who had paid one dollar to see the race. Since then the attendance at the Indy 500 has double into the two hundred thousand ranges and the prices of the tickets now ranges from 25 dollars all the way up to one thousand dollars.
In the end, this is one of those sporting events that have become a major part of our American culture, on this weekend we also take time out to remember and say thank you to those who have served and are serving in the United States armed forces.
Enjoy this great race, on such a great holiday weekend and thank you again to all that have served and are serving this great country of ours the land the of the free.

IAEA Chief reveals that the truth of a situation will never be addressed for fear of someone doing something about it. Do we really want to trust our security to the likes of he and the UN?

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2 comments

On June 02, Bald Headed Geek said…
Great blog! I’ve added you to my blogroll, and hope that you’ll stop by mine one day!

BHG
On June 01, a.k.a. Blandly Urbane said…
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T GRAB IT! I HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY LOCKED OUT (UP TO 48 HOURS) OF MY BLOG BY BLOGGER.

I WAS LOCKED OUT BECAUSE IT THOUGHT MY USE OF TIME MAGAZINES QUOTE OF THE DAY WAS A SPAM BLOG.

ENJOY THE QUOTE, BUT DON’T USE THE TIME MAG WIDGET!!!!

I’ve Come to the Conclusion that I’m a Wuss…
On my way home from work today I twisted my ankle and completely bit it into a patch of loose asphalt near my house. I was wearing shorts so my right knee got shredded and I was bleeding everywhere. My thought as I met the asphalt was how much is this going to cost me?

I had screamed out in pain (pretty proud of myself that a stream of expletives didn’t come out of my mouth as is usual for me in these instances), and five people came completely out of the woodwork to my assistance. Only in Hawaii! People are definitely cool here.

I was a little embarrassed about crying out, although I think that’s actually a survival thing - you instinctively cry out for assistance from your fellow mammals and when it comes you don’t feel like crying (as much) anymore. I was able to put weight on the ankle and hobbled the rest of the way home.

I went into the kitchen, bleeding a trail on the floor (yes, I did clean it up), and when I looked at in the light I saw it was more than just a scrape. I thought the skin had flapped. I was really grossed out and couldn’t bring myself clean it out thoroughly for fear of seeing bone. I had the suspicion I would need stitches, which I had never had. Either that or a tube of superglue, which is now being used as a quick fix for wounds.

I think everyone had tons of fun and after the parade you could see people were still in a high mood…groups of obviously straight people were wandering around with a ‘pink flag of the UK’ and a British guy who was with his girlfriend and another straight couple even fooled around saying which guy he fancied…haha…it was truly a fantastic night!!

I hid my suspicions, which was probably wise. Bob March and Wu Su-hua, authors of The Chinese Negotiator, argue that Chinese people believe karma (”yuan fen” in anglicized Chinese) binds themselves to anyone from anywhere who might share a fate. Fate, the Chinese figure, means any common path into the future. In business, the authors say, it means a contract or a joint venture by which both sides get something they want. Outside business, from what I can glean after seven years of relations with friends, students, co-workers and news sources, karma means that both sides — who in history might be enemies or at least take mutually unknown paths — have invested something valuable such as time or money in a common future.
For the clergywoman, karma probably just meant that she happened to be on site when a foreign journalist showed up wanting a bit of information that she had. For other people who invoked the karma clause on me, it just meant we had voluntarily decided to cooperate, despite racial differences. As a teacher, I committed four-month time blocks to make sure people learned something they could use, and as students they agreed to learn it. I could have walked off the job. They could have cut all my classes (and a few did). As news sources, they risked their reputations to speak with me on sensitive topics. As a reporter, I scrapped the worst quotes and used statements that gave them dignity but made their point. They could have fled. I could have called them dangerous subversives in an article.

“Sarawak Body Butter”…was passing a Body Shop store and saw the ad promoting theri newest collection ‘Sarawak’ on display, and of course lah being the patriotic Malaysian that i am, i went into the shop to see what it was (i seldom go into body shop btw) and the staff said the name indeed came from the rainforest of Sarawak…so i bought it….its body cream…i’m getting lazy nowadays to use it…i can never maintain these beauty products…remember the handcream and nail polisher i bought last yr? Well it didn’t even last one month before i stopped using them cos i was too lazy…BUT i am going to endeavour to use this given how expensive it is!!

Cheap land equals cheaper property which, as we all know in the property world, creates investment. A good example can be seen in Spain, one of Europe’s fastest growing countries. The rest of the story follows a familiar path in the sense that was what a sleepy hideaway to many Spaniards, has no become a place for Europeans buying investment property in the area, fuelling land and property prices. With so much new business at stake, local councils are keen to share in the new found wealth of the region.