87-year-old woman loses to Trump in civil case

CHICAGO (AP) ? An 87-year-old grandmother took on billionaire Donald Trump. And on Thursday ? she lost.

Jurors sided with the real estate mogul-turned-TV showman in a weeklong civil trial focused on Jacqueline Goldberg's claim that Trump cheated her in a condo bait-and-switch scheme.

The federal jury in Chicago returned with a finding in Trump's favor. Goldberg, of Evanston, had sought various damages totaling around $6 million.

Goldberg herself showed little emotion but her attorney, Shelly Kulwin, slumped over and buried his head on a courtroom table. Trump's attorney Stephen Novack smiled and nodded his head in gratitude at the jury.

The case pitted the suburban Chicago woman against a New Yorker who revels in his image as a big talker with big ideas. Many know him best for his catchphrase on his "Apprentice" TV show: "You're fired!"

In sarcasm-filled closings, Kulwin described Trump in stark, extreme terms ? as villainous and greedy. Trump wasn't in court, but Kulwin displayed a giant photograph of Trump.

"The thought of my grandma being in the same room with that guy. Yuck!" Kulwin boomed.

The dispute centered on the glitzy Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, one of several showcase towers Trump has named after himself elsewhere, including New York, Las Vegas and Hawaii.

Goldberg accused Trump of wooing her into buying two condos at $1 million apiece in the mid-2000s by dangling a promise of share in building profits ? then reneging on the promise after she committed to buying.

At trial, Novack grappled with the portrayal of Goldberg as a former waitress and hat-check girl who learned her values living through the Depression and working her way through college.

He told jurors in his closing he also loved grandmothers, saying, "I happen to be married to one."

But, he added, Goldberg was also a sophisticated, detail-oriented investor who signed a contract stipulating Trump could do what he did: cancel the profit-sharing plan anytime he saw fit.

An often-scowling Trump spent two days testifying himself, bragging about the quality of his developments, verbally sparring with an opposing attorney and drawing rebukes from the judge.

On the stand, Trump denied he ever cheated anyone. Off it, he blasted the woman who brought him there, telling reporters he was the victim, not her. He declared, "She's trying to rip me off."

Goldberg isn't the first to complain about a Trump development.

Dozens of investors in the Las Vegas' five-year-old Trump International Hotel & Tower sued Trump, alleging he manufactured "a purchasing frenzy" to get them to buy in before the property market collapsed.

An arbiter, though, sided with Trump in 2011, and U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro in Las Vegas later refused the disgruntled investors' request to nullify the arbitration finding.

When Goldberg took the stand herself after Trump, she told jurors she initially had qualms about suing such an influential figure. But she added, "Somebody had to stand up to him."

Goldberg told jurors it was Trump's very star power that initially drew her toward investing with him. But it was the profit-sharing proposal that, for her, sealed the deal, she said.

During his testimony, Trump kept talking over Kulwin while Kulwin kept rolling his eyes at Trump's answers, prompting Judge Amy St. Eve to order both men to "stop boxing each other" and behave.

Trump's testimony offered a rare inside look at the business style of the 66-year-old who scrutinizes the competence of contestants carrying out management tasks on his TV show.

He told jurors that he signed every business check in his organization. He also said he couldn't remember when key business decisions were made because he and his top executives aren't in the habit of taking notes.

City pride also intervened at one point in closings when Kulwin made an unfavorable reference to executives in New York.

"Judge, he's mocking New York," Trump's attorney said, standing to object.

"I can't mock New York?" Kulwin shot back. "I thought it was every Chicagoans right to do that."

___

Follow Michael Tarm at http://www.twitter.com/mtarm .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/87-old-woman-loses-trump-civil-case-192753413.html

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Footwear's (carbon) footprint: Bulk of shoes' carbon footprint comes from manufacturing processes

May 22, 2013 ? A typical pair of running shoes generates 30 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to keeping a 100-watt light bulb on for one week, according to a new MIT-led lifecycle assessment.

But what's surprising to researchers isn't the size of a shoe's carbon footprint, but where the majority of that footprint comes from.

The researchers found that more than two-thirds of a running shoe's carbon impact can come from manufacturing processes, with a smaller percentage arising from acquiring or extracting raw materials. This breakdown is expected for more complex products such as electronics, where the energy that goes into manufacturing fine, integrated circuits can outweigh the energy expended in processing raw materials. But for "less-advanced" products -- particularly those that don't require electronic components -- the opposite is often the case.

So why does a pair of sneakers, which may seem like a relatively simple product, emit so much more carbon dioxide in its manufacturing phase?

A team led by Randolph Kirchain, principal research scientist in MIT's Materials Systems Laboratory, and research scientist Elsa Olivetti broke down the various steps involved in both materials extraction and manufacturing of one pair of running shoes to identify hotspots of greenhouse-gas emissions. The group found that much of the carbon impact came from powering manufacturing plants: A significant portion of the world's shoe manufacturers are located in China, where coal is the dominant source of electricity. Coal is also typically used to generate steam or run other processes in the plant itself.

A typical pair of running shoes comprises 65 discrete parts requiring more than 360 processing steps to assemble, from sewing and cutting to injection molding, foaming and heating. Olivetti, Kirchain and their colleagues found that for these small, light components such processes are energy-intensive -- and therefore, carbon-intensive -- compared with the energy that goes into making shoe materials, such as polyester and polyurethane.

The group's results, Kirchain says, will help shoe designers identify ways to improve designs and reduce shoes' carbon footprint. He adds that the findings may also help industries assess the carbon impact of similar consumer products more efficiently.

"Understanding environmental footprint is resource intensive. The key is, you need to put your analytical effort into the areas that matter," Kirchain says. "In general, we found that if you have a product that has a relatively high number of parts and process steps, and that is relatively light [weight], then you want to make sure you don't overlook manufacturing."

Kirchain and his colleagues have published their results in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The sum of a shoe's parts

In 2010, nearly 25 billion shoes were purchased around the world, the majority of them manufactured in China and other developing countries. As Kirchain and his co-authors write in their paper, "An industry of that scale and geographic footprint has come under great pressure regarding its social and environmental impact."

In response, companies have started to take account of their products' greenhouse-gas contributions, in part by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide associated with every process throughout a product's lifecycle. One such company, ASICS, an athletic equipment company based in Japan, approached Kirchain to perform a lifecycle assessment for a running shoe manufactured in China.

The team took a "cradle-to-grave" approach, breaking down every possible greenhouse gas-emitting step: from the point at which the shoes' raw materials are extracted to the shoes' demise, whether burned, landfilled or recycled.

The researchers divided the shoes' lifecycle into five major stages: materials, manufacturing, usage, transportation and end-of-life. These last three stages, they found, contributed very little to the product's carbon footprint. For example, running shoes, unlike electronics, require very little energy to use, aside from the energy needed to infrequently wash the shoes.

The bulk of emissions, they found, came from manufacturing. While part of the manufacturing footprint is attributable to a facility's energy source, other emissions came from processes such as foaming and injection molding of parts of a sneaker's sole, which expend large amounts of energy in the manufacture of small, lightweight parts. As Kirchain explains it, "You have a lot of effort going into the molding of the material, but you're only getting a very small part out of that process."

"What stood out was this manufacturing burden being on par with materials, which we hadn't seen in similar products," Olivetti adds. "Part of that is because it's a synthetic product. If we were looking at a leather shoe, it would be much more materials-driven because of the carbon intensity of leather production."

An improved design

In tallying the carbon emissions from every part of a running shoe's lifecycle, the researchers were also able to spot places where reductions might be made. For example, they observed that manufacturing facilities tend to throw out unused material. Instead, Kirchain and his colleagues suggest recycling these scraps, as well as combining certain parts of the shoe to eliminate cutting and welding steps. Printing certain features onto a shoe, instead of affixing them as separate fabrics, would also streamline the assembly process.

Kirchain and Olivetti view their results as a guide for companies looking to evaluate the impact of similar products.

"When people are trying for streamlined approaches to [lifecycle assessments], often they put emphasis on the materials impact, which makes a lot of sense," Olivetti says. "But we tried to identify a set of characteristics that would point you to making sure you were also looking at the manufacturing side -- when it matters."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/TYIM0605Efg/130522123147.htm

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BWCC News: Lyals Battle New Position with MBDA Business Center

Lyals Battle, a member of the BWCC GovCon Council, has recently begun a new position as a business consultant with the MBDA Business Center in Washington, DC.? The MBDA Business Center is a business development consulting group managed by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) that provides services in facilitating access to capital; providing access to markets; enhancing business efficiencies, etc.?

The MBDA Business Center of Washington, DC has developed a stellar record in providing consulting services to minority businesses since its inception in 2004..? The Center has helped its clients to secure more than $1.6 billion in financing and over $380 million in contract awards, and has assisting in creating over 1,450 new jobs.? The Center has also served over 850 minority businesses.? It?s clients range in annual revenues from $1 million to more than $100 million and represent a variety of industries, including construction, customer service, event planning, information technology, janitorial, logistical services, management consulting, office products, etc.

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Source: http://blog.bwcc.org/2013/05/lyals-battle-new-position-with-mbda.html

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More tornadoes from global warming? Nobody knows

An American flag blows in the wind at sunrise atop the rubble of a destroyed home a day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

An American flag blows in the wind at sunrise atop the rubble of a destroyed home a day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

A member of a security team helps guard an area of rubble from a destroyed residential neighborhood, one day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The huge tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against the winds. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

A deadly tornado hit suburban Oklahoma City on Monday. A quick look at some basic facts:

Q. Is global warming to blame?

A. You can't blame a single weather event on global warming. In any case, scientists just don't know whether there will be more or fewer twisters as global warming increases. Tornadoes arise from very local conditions, and so they're not as influenced by climate change as much as larger weather systems like hurricanes and nor'easters. They're not easy to incorporate in the large computer simulations scientists use to gauge the impact of global warming.

And when scientists ponder the key weather ingredients that lead to twisters, there's still no clear answer about whether to expect more or fewer twisters. Some scientists theorize that the jet stream is changing because sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking. And the jet stream pattern drives weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

Q. How does this tornado season stack up against previous ones?

A. The season got off to a quiet start this year. Typically, there are more during spring, and the numbers dwindle in the worst heat of the summer. An unusually cool spring kept the funnel clouds at bay until mid-May this year. The last two seasons illustrate the extremes in tornado activity. In 2011, the United States saw its second-deadliest tornado season. Last year, it was busy in April but there were few twisters after that.

Q. What happened in Oklahoma?

A. The tornado destroyed an elementary school and flattened neighborhoods with winds up to 200 miles an hour. The National Weather Service made a preliminary ranking of the twister as an EF4, the second-most-powerful classification.

Q. How did it form?

A. Like the most destructive and deadly tornadoes, this one came from a rotating thunderstorm. The thunderstorm developed in an area where warm moist air rose into cooler air. Winds in the area caused the storm to rotate, and that rotation promoted the development of a tornado.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-05-21-US-Oklahoma-Tornado-QandA/id-11e914b42c394d47a29cf7bf99a376f5

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Kerry vows better security at US diplomatic posts

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry is vowing that the Obama administration will spare no expense or effort to protect U.S. diplomats serving overseas.

Speaking to State Department trainees on Monday, Kerry said he was fully committed to implementing and expanding on the recommendations of an independent review board that investigated the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. He said the risks to American officials abroad are not new and noted that most of the 244 diplomats who have been honored for having been killed in the line of duty died long before Benghazi.

Kerry said the risks can never be eliminated, but they can and will be mitigated because America's national security interests demand diplomatic outreach even in the most dangerous places.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-vows-better-security-us-diplomatic-posts-151527259.html

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Why Brushing Your Teeth Makes Orange Juice Taste Like Death

If you're going to have a glass of orange juice and brush your teeth (a good idea), there's only one order in which to do them. It makes sense that your minty toothpaste-mouth would make OJ taste weird, but why so down-right heinous?

As Bytesize Science explains, it's because your tongue gets coated with a particularly troublesome foamy oral detergent. It's about as tasty as it sounds. But whatever the reason, it's not the worst thing in the world; you should be brushing your teeth after breakfast anyway, you freak. [Bytesize Science]

Update: Looks like Bytesize Science went and pulled this video for some reason. We're looking into getting it back. Sorry folks.

Update 2: BACK IN ACTION

Source: http://gizmodo.com/why-brushing-your-teeth-makes-orange-juice-taste-like-d-508859533

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Conduct Rules and Decision Rules

Introduction

Substantive rules of law (such as the rules of torts, contract, and property) are usually assumed to be addressed to two audiences. As?conduct rules, the substantive law is addressed to everyone (citizens, officials, and noncitizens). Thus, property law tells us who has dominion over which resources. If this land is mine, then the law communicates the message that I can use my land and exclude others from its use. These very same legal rules also serve as?decision rules, they tell courts how to resolve disputes. We usually assume that the content of the conduct rules are the decision rules are identical, but this need not be the case.

Acoustic Separation

Professor Meir Dan-Cohen of U.C. Berkeley proposed a very famous thought experiment. He asked us to imagine?acoustic separation?between ordinary citizens, who would only "hear" the conduct rules, and officials (such as judges), to whom the decision rules would be addressed. You might imagine that courtrooms are isolated by a giant "cone of silence".

Dan-Cohen's thought experiment leads naturally to the following question: should decision rules and conduct rules have the same content or should they differ?? And if they differ, how could the law prevent acoustic leakage, e.g. prevent ordinary citizens from learning about the content of the decision rules?

Example?

Here's a pretty clear example. Suppose that we have a conduct rule that says, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." This might be a good conduct rule, because we want citizens to inform themselves about the content of the law, and we certainly don't want citizens deliberately insulating themselves from knowledge of the law in order to create a defense if they charged with its violation. But at the same time, we might prefer that ignorance of the law would serve as an excuse, at least some of the time, when it comes to actually convicting and punishing defendants. Punishment is expensive and injurious, and sometimes no really good purpose will be served by punishing someone who is reasonably ignorant of the law's content.

The Technology of Acoustice Separation

But how can we excuse ignorance of the law without altering the conduct rule?? One way to accomplish this goal would involve some obfuscation by judges. Opinions might state boldly: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," while simultaneously excusing ignorant defendants on the ground that "knowledge of the legal status of the intentional content is part of the mental state that is an element of the crime." The first formulation is easily accessible to ordinary folks; the second is couched in language that may be opaque except to those trained in the law.

Normative Implications

Even if it is possible to create acoustic separation between conduct rules and decision rules, doing so may be problematic on normative grounds.? For utilitarians or welfarists, the only question is whether acoustic separation will produce good consequences, but for fairness-based (or deontological) approaches, the deception involved in acoustic separation seems problematic.? This intuition is reflected in a variety of legal doctrines (such as the "void for vagueness" doctrine in constitutional law) and in the notion of "publicity" that is usually included in formulations of the ideal of the rule of law.

Using the Distinction?

The distinction between conduct rules and decision rules may not arise frequently--because the conditions for acoustic separation may be rare and because the law usually aims at congruence between the two sorts of rules, but in almost every legal context the distinction could become relevant.? It is almost always worth asking, "Is there any discrepancy between the conduct rules and decision rules in this area of law?"? And if there is such a discrepancy, then further questions are in order: "Is this accidental or does it serve some function?" and "Is this instance of acoustic separation normatively justified?"

References

Meir Dan-Cohen?Decision Rules and Conduct rules: On Acoustic Separation in Criminal Law, 97 Harvard Law Review 625 (1984) (available to subscribers on Jstor?and anthologized in Meir Dan-Cohen,?Harmful Thoughts: Essays on Law, Self, and Morality(Cambridge University Press 2002).

Criminal Law Conversations?(Paul H. Robinson, Stephen Garvey, & Kimberley Kessler Ferzan eds., Oxford University Press 2009). ?This volume contains several essays that comment on Dan-Cohen's idea.

Paul H. Robinson,?Rules of Conduct?and Principles of Adjudication, 57 U. Chi. L. Rev. 729 (1990).

(Last modified on May 19, 2013.)

Source: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2013/05/legal-theory-lexicon-conduct-rules-and-decision-rules.html

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