First Looks category archive

You can’t make this stuff up:

The Siemens (institutionalized corporate-level international bribery–ed.) case, which was announced in December 2008, resulted in the largest corporate fine ever paid, $1.6 billion to authorities in the U.S and Germany. The investigation struck terror in the hearts of business executives in the U.S and Europe who came to realize that they faced both the prospect of huge criminal and civil fines and that they might also go to jail if it could be shown their employees or agents engaged in overseas bribery.

Yet, as traumatic as such cases are for private companies, defending against them have become enormous profit centers for lawyers and accountants.

The legal fees for the Siemens defense alone, handled by Debevoise & Plimpton L.L.P., based in New York, were in the hundreds of millions.

Why can’t the stuff they sell in American grocery stores taste like the real thing?

Via Susie:

Q. What’s the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A. Rudy Giuliani never learned to milk a cow.

One of the finest persons I have been privileged to know and to work with.

More here.

My weekend has fluwn away.

Addendum:

72 hours of feeling like a truck ran over me.

Not.

I have spent the day in the La-Z-Boy hoping that my chills would turn into a fever, because fever’s break and chills don’t.

So, rather than look forward with the hope that 2010 will be better, I decided to look back, to awaken childhood New Year’s terrors from days gone by.

Click to go below the fold. If you dare.

Read more »

Go here, watch the vid, and guess what those hands will be doing.

A glimpse of stocking could be something shocking.

Or not.

I wrote up my neatest Christmas gift in years at Geekazine:

Part I.

Part II.

Click or double-click or right-click each picture for a larger image, depending on your browser.

Looking west towards the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. The near bridge to the right of the picture crosses the Intracoastal Waterway; the far bridge to the left of the picture, known as the “High-Level Bridge,” crosses the North Channel of the Chesapeake Bay.

Read more »

I am certain the student was driving. 15 mph all the way out of the neighborhood.

McClatchy:

. . . some public-safety officials say those efforts are now being thwarted by technology, with drivers now using text messaging, Twitter and other tools to keep each other informed about the location of sobriety checkpoints.

There’s eveb an iPhone application specifically designed to identify checkpoints, according to Sgt. Dave Gibeault, head of the Fresno Police Department’s traffic unit.

. . . on cellphone etiquette, in a newspaper column about cellphones on airplanes.

Flourtown resident Linda Phelps proposed: “I have decided I am going to listen to every phone conversation I hear and make a comment about it – not about the person speaking on the phone, but a comment in the context of the conversation. It might be in the form of a question or a suggestion – just something that allows the talker to know that I know his/her business. . . .”

An Android.

Sometimes, the answer is, “No.”

Snow breaks Delaware’s snow-removal budget:

The state has $3.2 million in its snow removal account. But it costs between $3.5 million and $4 million for every 8 inches of snow that falls, Delaware Department of Transportation Secretary Carolann Wicks said.

$3.2 mil per eight inches. And Delaware is a small state.

My brother sent me a picture showing almost twice eight inches in his yard.

Addendum:

Here’s the picture I sent him in return, taken from the door to the deck. The temperature was about 31 Fahrenheits at the time.

I haven’t heard from him since.

Read more »