Update on Jobs’ health
In case you didn't see this, it's kind of interesting if you follow Apple and our pal Steve Jobs:
"“I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors,” Jobs, who turns 54 in February, said today in a statement. “After further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause -- a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.” (fromBloomberg News)
Read the rest of the article about Steve Jobs Health. It's basically commentary. The key is the paragraph above.
- Link to site: Update on Jobs’ health
Michael Lewis and Harry Markopolos
In an excellent article on The End of The Financial World as We Know It, an even more fascinating story about Harry Markopolos:
In his devastatingly persuasive 17-page letter to the S.E.C., Mr. Markopolos saw two possible scenarios. In the “Unlikely” scenario: Mr. Madoff, who acted as a broker as well as an investor, was “front-running” his brokerage customers. A customer might submit an order to Madoff Securities to buy shares in I.B.M. at a certain price, for example, and Madoff Securities instantly would buy I.B.M. shares for its own portfolio ahead of the customer order. If I.B.M.’s shares rose, Mr. Madoff kept them; if they fell he fobbed them off onto the poor customer.
In the “Highly Likely” scenario, wrote Mr. Markopolos, “Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme.” Which, as we now know, it was.
Wow!
- Link to site: Michael Lewis and Harry Markopolos
Using Google to make community standards transparent and objective
This New York Times article, "What's Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer" is pretty interesting, and makes sense at some level:
"Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?" (from "What's Obcene?")
and then:
"In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought." (from "What's Obcene?)
Read the whole article, it's quite interesting. Do you think this is a reasonable judicial approach?
Originally posted on Jun 25, 2008. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.