Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Who ever thunk judges led such interesting lives?  First, we hear about Scalia buddying up with that grizzled outdoorsman, Dick Cheney, at one of those private animal shooting galleries to pot them some ducks.  Probably nothing luxurious about it, just some guys camping out, hiking several miles a day, living by their wits and wresting their meals from nature, so no ethical worries about improperly influencing a member of the judiciary.

Then I read today in the WSJ that:

A lead attorney pressing a legal attack by industry against pending federal air-pollution regulations had social contacts with two federal appellate judges at a guest ranch before they decided the 1999 case. The meetings came as part of a series of expense-paid seminars for judges paid for by donations from industries and conservative foundations.

The case — the American Trucking Association vs. the Environmental Protection Agency — was one of the biggest environmental cases of the 1990s. In it, the appeals court struck down new EPA regulations on soot and smog, claiming that Congress had never delegated the authority to the EPA. The U.S. Supreme Court later rejected the lower court’s decision, upholding EPA’s right to tighten regulations on soot and smog under the Clean Air Act.

While the case was pending, one of the judges that made the decision — U.S. Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg — participated with Ed Warren, who argued the case on behalf of several industry groups. They were both directors of the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment, a group based in Bozeman, Mont., that holds periodic seminars at a resort hotel and a rustic ranch for selected federal judges. The sessions feature plenty of free time for fishing, hiking, cocktails and other forms of socializing.

Man, these guys are rugged!  And you thought they sat indoors all the time reading case law and writing their memoirs.  I for one am glad that they get outdoors and get some physical yang along with their scholarly yin, gain an appreciation for the environment and bring a healthy, balanced attitude to the cases they decide.

Ugh.  I had to demo some software to some mildly disinterested people today, and it was sort of a bummer.  I work with the software a lot as a consultant, installing, implementing, training and tricking it to do the stuff my clients want it to do, but I don’t demo to strangers very often.  I worked a lot of last evening and the wee hours this morning preparing for the demo.  It’s accounting software, and I set up a demo company in the prospect’s name and did some cute and creative little things in response to some rather vague requirements from them.  Once I started the demo, however, it was like wading through peanut butter.  I don’t have great presentation skills, and I rely a lot on at least some level of interaction with my prospects. 

See, most software demos are a form of entertainment - Mr. Excitement stands there and flashes through screens showing all the frothy features, as if the entire accounting process can be reduced to a couple of bar graphs, and at the end you’re still wondering whether the stuff belongs in your business.  I try to avoid a strict script and, with the participation of my audience and some thinking on my feet, show them how I can provide them a solution.  Without that undertow of interest, however, I was left to plod through screens demonstrating hypothetical transcactions and features, and it all seemed a bit blah.

I’ve had my own consulting business for a little over three years, and haven’t had to do a whole lot of this kind of selling.  Mostly I’ve just hooked up with people that I either already know, or whom I’ve obtained from a solid referral, and just walked in and started working.  I should do a few more presentation-type sales efforts, though, just for the practice.  Call me Mr. Excitement.

Okay, raise your hands if you’re starting to get the queasy feeling, like I am, that these guys are gonna skate?  The logic of the defense is that since they stole so openly and frequently without being told not to by the mutant foxes on the henhouse’s board of directors, then it’s not a crime.  Worse, the judge has given clarifying instructions to the jury that may restrict them to that conclusion.

I’m not a lawyer, but I still wonder why the Feds are so languid in their pursuit of these corporate scandal cases - it seems as though, were it not for Eliot Spitzer and the Oklahoma attorney general, we wouldn’t be seeing even this level of prosecution.  We already know whose pocket the Justice Department is in, and the SEC is way too busy gazing at its own navel.

Tell ya what - if Kozlowski and Swartz are acquitted, I’ll put on my apron, grab a rolling pin out of the cupboard, and join a Free Martha march.

We had a terrific sunset here Friday night - see photos by clicking the Sunsets link here or to the left.

We walked west to Phinney Ridge (north Seattle) foraging for dinner, and I had to keep snapping the sunset each time we came to an intersection and could see between houses.  Can’t decide which one I like better, so I posted the three best ones.

Shane has a picture on his site today shot from behind the Space Needle, looking toward downtown Seattle. 

Compare it to this picture I scanned yesterday from a slide I took from the Needle in September, 1974, the year we moved here.

It looks for all the world like a prairie town, with only a few “skyscraper” class buildings, and the Kingdome (just about the center of the picture) doesn’t have it’s roof on yet. 

Also note that the air is clean enough on a sunny day that you can see Mt. Rainier.

Dr. Omed is still Jonesing for sunset pictures.  I’ve been digitizing some slides, and came across a couple from a bicycle trip we took to inaugurate a tandem bicycle we had built for us in 1980.

Scanning slides is an excruciatingly slow, painful and perhaps medieval process.  The whining and clunking of the scanner evokes a kind of torture rack, a cruel process which in the end yields the soul of the miscreant transparency in digital form, flying up to the gates of heaven on my PC.  There, I look into its essence, determine if it needs remediation or merits direct entry to my hard disk, or summary disposition to the Recycle Bin. 

Good thing I have my pre-emptive indulgence granted Dr. Omed last month.

These two pictures are of the same sunset, on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, Washington.  The rainbow formed directly behind me as I faced the declining sun.