Undernews For October 11, 2009

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October 11, 2009

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WORD

They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made out of cane. . . They would make fine servants. . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." - Christopher Columbus writing in his log book of what would be later called the Bahamas.

10/11/2009 | Comments

GORDON BROWN PROMISES REFERENDUM ON INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING

Fair Vote - British prime minister Gordon Brown in his closing speech to the Labor Party annual conference last month made a full-fledged commitment to a national referendum on instant runoff voting (called "the alternative vote" in the United Kingdom) for future elections to the House of Commons.

Brown told journalists after his speech that he would campaign "passionately" for the change, saying: "The one thing this political crisis has shown is that if an MP has more than 50 per cent of the voters, the majority of voters supporting him or her, then I think that is a better position to be in. And the alternative vote system allows a member to be elected with the votes of second preferences allowing that person to have more than 50 per cent of the vote. That is something, you could see from the reaction in the Labor party, that most people are prepared to support." Most Labor Party leaders have publicly backed IRV this year.

With several British parties contesting elections, the plurality voting system today often results in non-majority winners. Such results are in a sharp contrast to Australia's house of representatives elections with IRV in 2007, where an average of seven candidates contested seats (with no fewer than four in any seat), but every election was won with a majority of 50% plus one of votes.

Despite Brown's general unpopularity, voters overwhelmingly liked his proposal of a referendum by a three-to-one margin, according to a YouGov opinion poll for Sky News taken after his speech. Of those with an opinion on IRV compared to plurality, 61% supported IRV. Overall, only 26% were sure they wanted to stick with plurality voting.

Instant runoff voting already is used for major elections in countries like Ireland (presidential elections), Australia (electing the house of representatives), Canada (choosing party leaders), New Zealand (electing the mayor of its capital city Wellington) and the United Kingdom (electing the mayor of London.

10/11/2009 | Comments

NW PACIFIC OCEAN DEAD ZONE MAY BE PERMANENT

LA Times - An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and will probably appear there each summer as a result of climate change, an Oregon State University researcher said. The huge area is one of 400 dead zones around the world, most of them caused by fertilizer and sewage dumped into the oceans in river runoff.

But the dead zone off the Northwest is one of the few in the world -- and possibly the only one in North America -- that could be impossible to reverse. That is because evolving wind conditions likely brought on by a changing climate, rather than pollution, are responsible, said Jack Barth, professor of physical oceanography at OSU.

[The] briefing coincided with the release of a National Science Foundation multimedia report that said the number of dead zones worldwide was doubling every decade.

10/11/2009 | Comments

INTERNET SIGHTINGS

Overheard in Portland Oregon by Rich: "I've been to Denmark. That's basically the same as IKEA."

10/11/2009 | Comments

WHEN AMERICANS ARE HAPPIEST

Gallup - A new analysis shows that happiness is highest among Americans who are in their early adulthood. Happiness drops among Americans in their 30s and 40s, and -- in particular -- among those in their 50s; it is higher among Americans in their 60s, drops among Americans in their late 70s and 80s, and then rises again among those older than 90. Men and women in most age groups have broadly equal happiness scores, with women scoring slightly higher than men in the middle-aged years, and notably higher after age 80.

On an absolute basis, a majority of all Americans of all ages are happy. Happiness reaches its very lowest point -- 69% -- among Americans 86 to 90, meaning that even among this relatively less positive group, over two-thirds said they experienced happiness and enjoyment, and smiled or laughed a lot the day before they were interviewed. The happiest adult Americans are those aged 18-20, with a score of 79%.

10/11/2009 | Comments

WATCHING THE ARCTIC MELT

Newsweek - Skimming over the top of the world feels a bit like being on a different planet, according Rick Steiner, a marine conservation researcher at the University of Alaska. For the past two years, Steiner has led research missions flying low over thousands of miles of Arctic seas for a handful of polar climate scientists, some of whom work for the federal government. He times the daylong voyage to coincide with the time of year when sea ice is at a minimum, the exact end of summer melting in mid-September, before the autumn cool begins to refreeze some of the water. Having lived in Alaska for 30 years, Steiner can tell you in personal detail how the minimum has shrunk from year to year. He calls the voyage his annual "bearing witness to the Arctic crisis" trip.

The crisis has been mapped out in precise detail in slide shows and research papers, with startling statistics. The past three summers have seen the lowest ice volume ever recorded, according to data released annually by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The sea-ice minimum in 2007 (1.6 million square miles) was the single lowest year, with nearly 40 percent less ice than the seasonal average recorded over the past three decades. And the problem is only expected to worsen. As the ice melts, it releases highly concentrated carbon and methane that is locked in the permafrost, creating an accelerating warming loop. An additional compounding factor is that dark oceans absorb more of the sun's energy than light-colored ice, which reflects a large portion of it. That means that the more ice melts over the summer, the more open ocean there is, which leads to more absorbed energy and warmer oceans, which means that less ice forms the following winter, which leads to even more open ocean the following year. Early this past summer, researchers thought 2009 would be even worse than 2007 in terms of melting, until a late-arriving wind from the equator brought cool air that prevented even more melting. NSIDC director Mark Serreze calls it a "small blip" on a downward-sloping line.

"When you're actually looking out the window and seeing mile after mile of warm ocean water where there used to be sea ice that you once walked around on, it gives you the certainty that something major is going on there," says James Overland, a marine environmental researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the handful of researchers on the flight.

10/11/2009 | Comments

INDICATORS

Pew Research Center - On a typical day, a third of the adults in the United States take a nap. More men than women report that they caught a little snooze in the past 24 hours -- 38% vs. 31%. This gender gap occurs almost entirely among older adults. More than four-in-ten ( 41%) men ages 50 and older say they napped in the past day, compared with just 28% of women of the same age. Below the age of 50, men and women are about equally likely to say they napped in the past day (35% vs. 34%). There are distinctive racial patterns to napping. Half of the black adults in our survey say they napped in the past 24 hours, compared with just a third of whites and Hispanics.

Napping is quite common at the lower end of the income scale; some 42% of adults with an annual income below $30,000 report they napped in the past day. As income rises, napping declines. However, at the upper end of the scale (adults whose annual income is $100,000 or above) the tendency to nap revives and reverts to the mean.

Napping spikes among the old -- but only among the very old. More than half of adults ages 80 and older say they napped in the past day. Among every other age group in the survey -- including both the young (ages 18 to 29) and the old (ages 70 to 79) -- about a third say they napped in the past 24 hours.

Reuters - The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll. It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index. "What's really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009," said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year. Canada took the biggest hit in the latest survey, falling to seventh from fourth place, while China climbed several spots to 22nd, which Anholt believes in due in part to the successful staging of the Olympics. . . At the opposite end of the survey Colombia and Kenya tied for 47th place. Angola was number 49 and Iran came in last at number 50.

10/11/2009 | Comments

PEACE IS NOT RHETORIC

Gary Ruskin, Green Change - Did Obama bring peace to Iraq? No. He continues to station 124,000 U.S. troops there, with tens of thousands deployed perhaps indefinitely.

Did he bring peace to Afghanistan? No. He has escalated the war there, and is part responsible for the scores of civilian deaths that have occurred there. He has done this despite that most Americans now believe the Afghan war is "not worth fighting."

Has Obama done anything singular to stop the worldwide crisis of climate change? No. He has spent little or no political capital on the climate crisis, and still refuses to publicly commit the U.S. to strong actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. . .

Did he beat the swords of the giant U.S. defense budget into plowshares of peace? No. In fact, he will soon approve the largest defense bill in our nation's history.

Has he brought home the troops scattered across the world stationed to maintain our empire? No.

Has he stopped our nation's scandalous weapons trade? No. The U.S. has expanded its weapons trade. We now supply 2/3rds of the world's foreign armaments.

Did Obama sign the cluster munitions treaty to ban cluster bombs, because 98% of cluster bomb casualties are children? No. The U.S. has not signed the cluster munitions treaty.

Has Obama brought home the army of mercenaries we have stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan? No. He has expanded the ranks of these mercenaries to 250,000.

Howard Zinn, Truthout - I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel Peace Prizes. The Nobel Committee is famous for its superficial estimates and for its susceptibility to rhetoric and empty gestures, while ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations - that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he also bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War - surely, among stupid and deadly wars, at the top of the list.

Sure, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace between Japan and Russia. But he was a lover of war, who participated in the US conquest of Cuba, pretending to liberate it from Spain while fastening US chains around that tiny island. And as president he presided over the bloody war to subjugate the Filipinos, even congratulating a US general who had just massacred 600 helpless villagers in the Phillipines. The Committee did not give the Nobel Prize to Mark Twain, who denounced Roosevelt and criticized the war, nor to William James, leader of the anti-imperialist league.

Oh yes, the Committee saw fit to give a peace prize to Henry Kissinger, because he signed the final agreement ending the war in Vietnam, of which he had been one of the architects. Kissinger, who obsequiously went along with Nixon's expansion of the war with the bombing of peasant villages in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Kissinger, who matches the definition of a war criminal very accurately, was given a peace prize. . .

The Nobel Peace Committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history.

Mairead Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in l976: I am very disappointed to hear that the Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama. They say this is for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples, and yet he continues the policy of militarism and occupation of Afghanistan, instead of dialogue and negotiations with all parties to the conflict. . . Furthermore, I believe the Nobel Committee has not met the conditions of Alfred Nobel's will where he stipulates it is to be awarded to those who work for an end to militarism and war, and for disarmament. This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Committee in Oslo has ignored the will of Alfred Nobel and acted against the spirit of what the Nobel Peace Prize is all about. Giving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country's aggression and domination.

10/10/2009 | Comments

THE DANGERS OF POSITIVE THINKING

Alternet - When Barbara Ehrenreich went to be treated for breast cancer, she was exhorted to think positively; and when she expressed feelings of fear and anger, she was chided for being negative. Ehrenreich, the author of 16 books, including Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, which examine the blue- and white-collar job markets, took on what she sees as an epidemic of positive thinking in her new book: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Positive thinking is different, she says, from being cheerful or good-natured -- it's believing that the world is shaped by our wants and desires and that by focusing on the good, the bad ceases to exist.

Ehrenreich believes this has permeated our culture and that the refusal to acknowledge that bad things could happen is in some way responsible for the current financial crisis.

In her new book, Ehrenreich examines how the positive-thinking movement was started by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and an amateur metaphysician named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in response to Calvinism; how being positive became mandatory in corporate culture; and how she thinks prosperity preachers, such as Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston encouraged a culture of debt by telling their congregations that God wants them to have a big house and a nice car.

Emily Wilson: At the beginning of the book, you talk about going to be treated for breast cancer and being told to think positively. Was that what started you thinking about this?

Barbara Ehrenreich: That was my first exposure to positive thinking as an ideology. I was just astounded and dismayed by it. Here I was in a real crisis in my life, and people were trying to market pink ribbon teddy bears to me, and where I thought I would find sort of sisterly support on the Internet, I found instead the constant exhortations to be cheerful and to embrace my disease.

EW: What is the difference between being told to try and stay upbeat and to have a good attitude and positive thinking?

BE: I think it's a slippery slope. Once you start on how you have to face your problem with a good attitude, they start looking for justifications for that, and it became you actually get better only if you are upbeat, only if you visualize your recovery and so on. . .

EW: You write a lot about how positive thinking is in all aspects of life. Do you think this is the most insidious about it -- this idea of a disease being your fault?. . .

BE: The second big place where I encountered all this was in the kind of motivational services that are offered to laid-off white-collar workers, where every networking event or seminar you get the same message about how it's really your attitude that is going to determine if you're going to get a job and probably has something to do with why you lost that last one.

You take people who have been really victimized, and I use that word advisedly, with cancer and with lay-offs from unaccountable corporations. And then you tell them, "Well, you just have to change the way you think." And that's very clever. . . MORE

10/10/2009 | Comments

LOOKING UNDER THE TARP ISN'T PRETTY

Reuters - Thirty-three TARP recipients missed a scheduled dividend payment to taxpayers last month, according to the Treasury Department, including 18 banks that missed a payment for the first time. It's a powerful indication that the U.S. banking system remains troubled. And it throws cold water on talk that taxpayers are "making money" on the bailout. . .

When stronger banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and American Express repurchased warrants at modest premiums after paying back TARP, most news reports suggested that taxpayers were profiting from the bailout. But those reports didn’t tell the whole story.

For one, they ignored adverse selection, the propensity for the best borrowers to exit the program first, leaving Treasury holding the poorest performing investments. According to the latest data from Treasury, 42 banks have paid back some or all of the cash they got from TARP’s Capital Purchase Program, $70.7 billion in total. But more than 600 banks remain in the CPP program. Together, they still owe $134 billion.

And this excludes other TARP bailout programs that are likely to cost billions. The automotive industry owes TARP $80 billion. And AIG owes TARP $69.8 billion. Much of that isn’t coming back. . .

The bottom line is that the government still stands behind the banking sector. While the cost of this "no more Lehmans" policy may not be known for years, our experience with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tells us that such implicit guarantees ultimately prove very expensive. The fact that more banks are falling behind on dividend payments reminds us the tab is growing.

10/10/2009 | Comments

CLICHE CHALLENGE UPDATE

How various cliches of our time are faring based on the number of references on Google over a one month period.

TOP 30 CLICHES

Twitter 905 million to top list
Change 440 million
Blog 281 million
Google 194 million
Infrastructure 178 million
Shit 160 million
Absolutely 149 million to top list
I/we/you have a sitution 148 million to top list
As a matter of fact 125 million to top list
Hope 82 million
Sustainable
Embed, embedded 49 million
Tweet 45 million to top list
Amazing 42 million
Marketplace 41 million
Resolve the issue 40 million to top list
Robust 39 million
Prior to 33 million
Awesome 31 million
9/11 26 million
Inappropriate 25 million
Supportive 24 million
Tweak(ed)(s)
Concerns 21 million
Real time 21 million
Enhanced: 19 million
Empire, imperialism or imperial 17 million
In terms of 17 million
Context 17 million
24/7 13 million

10/10/2009 | Comments

HOW TO STOP USING SO MUCH TOILET PAPER

Tree Hugger - People find the idea of going without toilet paper a bit shocking, but lots of people around the world do it, and there are good technologies available now to replace your toilet or add on to it. It is cleaner and healthier, and counter-intuitively, saves a lot of water. . .

A lot of bidet style toilets are expensive, as are may of the toilet seat add-ons. The Blue Bidet is only US$ 69 when I saw it at the local Home Show in Toronto.

Peter Gallos tells me that it can be installed in under half an hour. They make a cold water model that just uses the line that supplies the toilet, and a version that uses hot and cold water but needs a more elaborate installation. I wondered if our 40 degree F water would not be a bit of a jolt to the butt, but he says it is such a short blast that it isn't a problem. TreeHugger Justin tried one earlier and wrote in his post: "After using a bidet, most people find cold water is fine, and not particularly shocking on one's rear. Occasionally, a few sheets of paper are needed to dry oneself. To avoid this, you could get a air-drying bidet that would eliminate toilet paper entirely."

Interestingly, Blue Bidet does not say that they are eliminating toilet paper, just cutting its use by 75% and using the remainder to dry yourself off.

10/10/2009 | Comments

ONLY 39% OF AMERICANS WANT STRICTER GUN LAWS

Rasmussen - Just 39% of Americans now say the United States needs stricter gun control, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to review the constitutionality of state and local anti-gun laws. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% are opposed to stricter gun control laws, and 11% are not sure. Men by 23 points oppose stricter gun control laws. Women are evenly divided. Sixty-five percent (65%) of Democrats favor tighter control of guns, but 69% of Republicans and 62% of adults not affiliated with either party disagree. . .

Only 20% of adults believe city governments have the right to prevent citizens from owning handguns. Sixty-nine percent (69%) disagree and say city governments do not have that right. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Republicans, 52% of Democrats and 72% of unaffiliateds say cities do not have the right to ban handgun ownership.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Americans continue to believe that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. Thirteen percent (13%) do not think gun ownership is a constitutional right. Fifteen percent (15%) aren't sure.

Yet, despite these findings, a plurality of Americans (46%) says it is too easy to buy a gun in America. Only 13% say it's too hard to purchase a firearm. One-out of-three adults (33%) say the level of difficulty is about right.

10/10/2009 | Comments

October 9, 2009

GALLERY: HOME REPAIRS

THERE, I FIXED IT

10/09/2009 | Comments

UN RATES NORWAY THE BEST PLACE TO LIVE

BBC - Norway is the best place in the world to live while Niger is the least desirable, according to an annual report by the United Nations. The 182 countries were ranked according to the quality of life their citizens experienced. Criteria examined included life expectancy, literacy rates, school enrolment and country economies. . . Norway's consistently high rating for desirable living standards, is, in large part, the result of the discovery of offshore oil and gas deposits in the late 1960s. Niger, however, is a drought-prone country which has sometimes struggled to feed its people. Other countries to reach the top spots were Australia and Iceland.

However, living standards in Iceland have changed since the data was collected, as it was one of the countries worst hit by the credit crunch. Best places to live Norway Australia Iceland. . .

Afghanistan was regarded the second least desirable place to live, just below Sierra Leone in third from bottom place. . .

China has become one of the most improved because of rising income levels and life expectancy rates.

The United States is rated as the 13th most desirable place to live, while the UK takes the 21st spot.

10/09/2009 | Comments

FURTHERMORE . . .

Chicago isn't the only city to suffer the loss of a super sports event. Reports the Washington Blade: In an announcement made Tuesday in Cologne, Germany, the International Federation of Gay Games said it picked Cleveland over D.C. to host the quadrennial LGBT sports competition, which is expected to draw as many as 12,000 athletes and 80,000 spectators to the host city. The announcement came during a news conference that was broadcast live online. Among those attending was a delegation of about 15 people from D.C. who helped organize the District's $1 million bid for the games.

Daily Beast - Seven months of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's appointment calendars [show] that the CEOs of Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs appear to have a direct line to his office. During those seven months, he spoke to these men at least 80 times. Sometimes, he spoke to the CEOs several times a day.

Radar - TV doctor Dr. Phil McGraw and Paramount Pictures are being sued by an Irvine, California woman, who is claiming both parties subjected her to imprisonment beyond her will, and more, when she was at his Hollywood, California office for therapeutic purposes two years ago. "Dr. Phil hurt me and many other people," Shirley Dieu, who also claims McGraw misrepresented himself as a licensed doctor, said. "It happened on his show in 2007; I also filed a police report in Los Angeles about a year ago." Dieu said was sleep-deprived, starved, brainwashed and "subjected to edited tapings depicting her as a different personality other than her own." Dieu said that, under their stead, she was not allowed to leave a building in the 6000 block of Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood, California, where she said she was "forced to be in the same room with a naked live man while he exposed his entire naked body, genitals and all."

Wonkette describes Joe Lieberman as "the actual human equivalent of a chain letter forwarded to you by your grandparents."

10/09/2009 | Comments

WHAT'S NEW IN ART

Opening this weekend at the Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong is an exhibition entitled Insert Coin, a selection of the most interesting young artists of Madrid. From the notes:

[] With the urban landscape of the now-in-crisis late capitalism as a backdrop, the artists bring forward their political and social critiques with undefined assertion. . . . The title alludes to money and art market- the coin as a trigger to start the mechanism. . .

[Above by Karmelo Bermejo] Booked. On a working day all the tickets for the 7:00 am coach from Madrid to Bilbao were purchased with public money so that the bus could complete its route empty, 2007 belongs to a series of pieces where public funds are wasted for apparently absurd ends. .

Josechu Davila: Work of a defined conceptual character, deals with the concept of negation. Through different techniques of removal, cancellation or redundancy, the works often questions its own physicality and saleability. . . . Hisae Ikenaga mimics an actual IKEA's furniture guide, modified so that by the use of four specific IKEA chairs, one can build (and own) the artist's piece, the guides are given for free. . . Daniel Silvo: Four ways to bend your money, 2009, plays with the double meaning of 'doblar' (Spanish), which means to fold or to double. He makes origami with bank notes, which in turn raises the value of them. []

10/09/2009 | Comments

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE LAW. . .

New York Injury Cases Blog - Terrorists attacked New York City's World Trade Center buildings twice - once on 2/26/93 exploding a bomb in the underground parking garage of the north tower; then on 9/11/01 flying planes into both towers. Most people safely evacuated in 1993 (six died and hundreds were injured):

The lawsuits that followed the 1993 bombing are still ongoing and we write here about the case of Charla Mitchell who was working in the south tower that day on the 100th floor who claims the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (the buildings' owner) was responsible for her injuries (along with the terrorists). . .

Charla Mitchell's case finally came to trial in Manhattan in December 2008 and she won pain and suffering damages for her trimalleolar ankle fracture injuries in the sum of $500,000 ($20,000 past - 16 years, $480,000 future - 24 years). The trial judge, though, ruled on a post-trial motion that the verdict should be set aside and a new trial held. The judge found that the the jury's verdict was irreconcilably inconsistent and, in view of the sharply contested issue of proximate cause, an impermissible compromise. This week, the judge's decision was affirmed on appeal.

The big issue in this case was causation: Mitchell's ankle fracture didn't happen until 3/8/93 - 10 days after the bombing - when she was going to the mailbox outside her home.

Mitchell said her right knee was injured and weakened in the exhausting evacuation and that 10 days later it buckled or gave out and caused her to fall upon which her ankle fractured.

The defense argued that Mitchell did not sustain any knee injury during the evacuation and that she fell 10 days later simply because she slipped on grass. Mitchell sought no medical treatment at all during those 10 days; in fact, she performed in an opera the day after the bombing and for the five days before she fell, and on that very same day, she walked a mile each way to and from work.

Mitchell countered with (a) her own testimony that her knees hurt a great deal during those 10 days and (b) the testimony of her doctors that the evacuation resulted in knee injuries.

The jury found for Mitchell and answered "yes" to the question "Was plaintiff's descent down 100 floors of stairs on 2/26/93 a substantial factor in causing plaintiff's accident on 3/8/03?"

The jury then addressed damages and its odd inconsistency between $20,000 for 16 years of past pain and suffering and $480,000 for 24 years of future pain and suffering is what led the courts to order a new trial on all issues. They invoked the well settled principle that in a case where liability is sharply disputed, there should be a retrial on all issues if there is a strong likelihood that a jury verdict represents a compromise on damages.

The impermissible compromise principle is applied when juries have rendered inexplicably low verdict awards on damages as in Sheffield v. New York City Housing Authority (1994) (nothing for future pain and suffering and an inadequately low sum for past pain and suffering in a case where defendant stipulated to serious and permanent injuries).

In Mitchell, by contrast, the $500,000 pain and suffering damages verdict was not unreasonably low for a trimalleolar fracture case (in which the plaintiff had surgery, wore an air cast for 10 years and claimed permanent difficulties walking) and was within the range of reasonable compensation as determined by the courts (as we recently discussed, here). It was just the unusual apportionment of the $500,000 between past and future damages that led the court to conclude that the verdict was an impermissible compromise.

The court in Mitchell should have addressed the damages issue either by (a) affirming the $500,000 award because that total was within the range of reasonableness for the injuries involved or (b) exercising its power to conditionally modify the past pain and suffering award upward and/or the future pain and suffering award downward.

10/09/2009 | Comments

ENTROPY UPDATE: RICH RUSSIAN TO BUY NJ NETS

Jamie Johnson, Vanity Fair - When I heard the news that Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov had arranged a deal to purchase the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise and a portion of their proposed new stadium complex in Brooklyn, New York, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What took him so long?" Prokhorov, an avid basketball aficionado and the possessor of the title Russia's Richest Man, will be the first foreign owner of an NBA team. Unlike many European nations, especially England, the United States has relied largely on money from the pockets of American billionaires to support its professional sports organizations. But the infusion of cash from a prominent oligarch to a desperate NBA outfit may officially signal a turning of the tide. . . With the American mega-rich failing to finance traditionally domestic projects, the door is swinging wide open for anyone who is willing to pay. Challenges to America's ruling class from abroad have been virtually nonexistent for more than a century, yet anticipation of Prokhorov's arrival in Brooklyn suggests that times are ripe for change.

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