Saturday Morning Confusion. # 1336

O.K. ladies and gentlemen, today we have a rare occurrence. It's two-for-one day at Saturday Morning Confusion!

First, for "Loser of the Day" 31-year-old French stock trader Jerome Kerviel, who put tens of billions of dollars at risk in one of history's biggest frauds.

(Skeptics from his neighbors to France's prime minister have questioned whether a single futures trader could have managed such unfathomable sums, but apparently he did.............. badly!)

Adding mystery to stupidity, the bank says Kerviel may not have made any personal gain from his unauthorized trades for which he ALSO wins the coveted Perspective "Asshole of the Week" award!

Now, down to our main business at hand. I have been told by many friends and associates that I am much too cynical at times and I almost start to believe them until I have a week such as this past seven days!

That's when I realize I was right all along!

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A few days ago, when I went to McDonald's, I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen!

"We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the counter.

"You don't?" I replied.

"We only have six, nine, or twelve," was the reply.

"So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?"

"That's right."

So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets

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I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine.

I picked up one of those "dividers" that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed.

After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the "divider", looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, "Do you know how much this is?"

I said to her "I've changed my mind, I don't think I'll buy that today." She said "OK," and I paid her for the things and left.

She had no clue to what had just happened!

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I went in to work this week, (I work from home....... when I work!) A woman there was putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly.

When I asked what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."

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While I was in the office telling everyone about the lady with the credit card, I heard about an Intern who was none too swift.

One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"

"Just use copier machine paper," the secretary told her.

With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.

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Last Wednesday I saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car.

"Do you need some help?" I asked.

She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?"

"Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.

"No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me.

As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk."

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AND FINALLY! (cheers) Here at "Perspective" we're big believers in the importance of various "safe harbors" that protect online service providers from being responsible for the activities or content of their users.

After all, it seems unfair to blame the telephone company if a telephone is used in a crime. However, some people have trouble with that concept -- and some countries don't have the same sort of clear cut safe harbor provisions written into law that we offer.

For example, it seemed pretty ridiculous that France declared Yahoo (yes, the company) and its then CEO war criminals half a decade ago, just because some users had auctioned Nazi memorabilia.

After realizing how ridiculous this was, French courts later reversed that ruling -- and now perhaps they recognize the importance of these kinds of safe harbors.

Apparently, they even changed the law in 2004 to protect sites from being liable for certain actions of its users -- and that law has been now used to clear Wikipedia of any wrongdoing, after the company behind Wikipedia was sued by three people who were upset about how others had written about them in a Wikipedia article.

The court noted that the allegedly defamatory references had been removed and that Wikipedia shouldn't be responsible for that content anyway: "Web site hosts cannot be liable under civil law because of information stored on them if they do not in fact know of their illicit nature."

Nice to see these kinds of safe harbors getting more widespread acceptance.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Saturday Morning Confusion. #33 1/3

Looking back at the past week we have our usual collection of goofy people, goofy ideas and goofy situations.

About a normal week I would have to say!

Let's jump in with our "Asshole of the Week!"

This dubious distinction, and a loud fart, is split two ways this week for an occurrence that happened in Tennessee!

A man in Cookeville is thinking about suing Wal-Mart because the MP3 video player he gave to his little girl for Christmas turned out to be loaded with explicit tunes and porn videos.

Daryl Hill says the 10-year-old child burst into tears when she saw it. Hill figures the player must have been returned by somebody who had loaded it with sex clips and songs about drugs.

Wal-Mart says it's investigating because returned items that have been opened are not supposed to be resold. In the meantime it's offering Hill a replacement. But he says he's going to hang on to it until he talks to a lawyer.

I couldn't really decide whether to give the trophy to the person who returned the MP3 for not erasing it first or Wal-Mart for reselling it again, especially without checking it first.

After much deliberation I declared "Asshole of the Week" a tie and gave it to both of them!

We also have a split hero of the day this week and for that we have to go down the road a ways to Brownsville, Texas.

First there is Melina Salazar, who over a seven year period did her best to tend to every need of her most loyal and cantankerous customer. She made sure his food was as hot as he wanted and was prepared as quick as possible, she was always right there to refill his coffee cup and then on top of it all she smiled through his demands and curses.

Our co-winner, 89-year-old, Walter "Buck" Swords obviously appreciated it, leaving the waitress $50,000 and a 2000 Buick when he died last week.

Now it's back up the Eastern Seaboard to Vermont where a group in Brattleboro is petitioning to put an item on a town meeting agenda in March that would make Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney subject to arrest and indictment if they visit the southeastern Vermont community.

"This petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence, and it draws on that tradition in claiming a universal jurisdiction when governments fail to do what they're supposed to do," said Kurt Daims, 54, a retired machinist leading the drive.

(As president, Bush has visited every state except Vermont.)The town meeting, an annual exercise in which residents gather to vote on everything from fire department budgets to municipal policy, requires about 1,000 signatures to place a binding item on the agenda.

The measure asks: "Shall the Select board instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against Bush and Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictment for consideration by other municipalities?"

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. The press office did not immediately respond to an e-mail.

And finally, on the tech side, for those who think that pointless and wasteful patent litigation is on the decline, think again. Even in just the last three months, the pace has been accelerating -- perhaps as patent hoarders rush to get cases in before any patent reform makes progress in Congress -- or before the Supreme Court (thankfully) quashes another abuse of the patent system.

Of the lawsuits over the past two years, approximately 50% came from companies who didn't actually make any products themselves. However, in the last 3 months, that number shoots up to 70% from companies that don't make products. And if you limit the list to tech companies, 80% of the lawsuits came from companies that don't make products.

Shouldn't this be ringing some alarm bells?

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

The shape of things to come, boys and girls!