Category: People & Human Interest

Chrysler Bankruptcy Judge

From the Law Blog, the background of Chrysler bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez:

From 1969 to 1982, he taught math in a New York City elementary school. Then, after getting a law degree from Fordham Law School at night, he was a staff attorney for the Internal Revenue Service in New York and spent three years in private practice.

In 1991, he joined the U.S. Trustee’s office, an arm of the Justice Department that monitors bankruptcy proceedings. He was appointed a federal bankruptcy judge In 1995.

Judge Gonzalez handled the Enron and Worldcom bankruptcies.

What Makes Orszag Run?

Ryan Lizza adds to his profile of Obama’s OMB director, Peter Orszag, telling us how Orszag uses a website to motivate himself. The website is stickK.

StickK has different tools, known as “commitment devices,” to incentivize its users, and Orszag uses one that makes a credit-card donation to an “anti-charity”—some cause that he finds loathsome—if he doesn’t reach his goal. He even recruited a friend as a “verifier” to make sure he couldn’t cheat the system.

Go read the post (it’s brief) to find out what Orszag’s “anti-charity” might be.

I actually think this sounds like a very useful motivational tool. What would your “stick” be?

Stickk’s slogan is “Put a contract out on yourself.”

The Crimson Flash

For the last decade, Simmons has been heralded as U-M’s oldest living former head coach. He became the Wolverines’ first women’s track and field coach in 1976, although his contributions to women’s sports began 16 years earlier when he and his first wife, Betty, started a girls track club in Ann Arbor called the Michigammes.

It was a pioneering program that enabled women to dream as big as men and provided the catalyst to careers in such challenging fields as law, engineering and medicine.

“Back then, people said it wasn’t ladylike to sweat,” Simmons said. “We just said, ‘Let’s give women an opportunity to compete.’

“We thought, when it comes down to it, life isn’t just about what you do. It’s about what you become.”

Ken (Red) Simmons is 99 — and there are photos showing him working out. A great profile from the Detroit Free Press.

From the Archives

Two oldies but goodies, both first posted here four years ago today:

Amy, official niece of NewMexiKen, was in a minor traffic collision yesterday. A gentleman Amy describes as “this ancient, tiny, little, old man” was let into traffic by a good samaritan and, while waving to his benefactor, he ran right into Amy.

As Amy tells it:

The funny thing was there was an ambulance right next to me in the 2nd lane. They saw everything (even though there was no damage, my car was quite jostled at the time – it was apparent that something had happened). So they turned on their lights and pulled over and jumped out to make sure everything was ok. You should have seen everyone’s reaction when I got out of the car and they saw my belly. [Amy’s baby is due in May.] They were all hustling around, “Do you need to sit down? Do you need a drink? Do you want us to call the police? Maybe you should lay down.” I thought the little old man was gonna have a heart attack right there. I was amused. Sometimes the belly comes in handy.

Well since there was no damage we exchanged info and such and I sent [the man] on his way. He was very grateful that I was nice about it but really I guess he caught me in a non-hormonal moment.

A good friend’s mother was prescribed a new painkiller Monday. That night she thought she heard a burglar, then saw a woman sitting on her porch. She called the police. A grandson came over as well to make certain everything was OK.

The second night (Tuesday night/Wednesday morning), the mother heard the morning paper arrive before 5. She went out and the same woman she’d seen on the porch the night before went past her into the house and sat on the couch. Then the stranger went into the bathroom. The friend’s mother called the police. When they arrived the stranger was gone. It was clear to the police my friend’s mother was seeing things.

Turns out that one reported side effect of the new painkiller is hallucinations. The mother stopped taking the pills and no strangers arrived last night. Certain as she was that the stranger was there when she called the police (something she may never have done before in 80+ years), she now recognizes it must have been the pill. She’s fine.

NewMexiKen is thinking however, of getting a presecription to this drug. I figure after three or four nights I might be able to hallucinate someone coming in and cleaning the bathroom.

Racial bias

Project Implicit, a virtual laboratory maintained by Harvard, the University of Washington and the University of Virginia, has administered hundreds of thousands of online tests designed to detect hidden racial biases. In tests taken from 2000 to 2006, they found that three-quarters of whites have an implicit pro-white/anti-black bias. (Blacks showed racial biases, too, but unlike whites, they split about evenly between pro-black and pro-white. And, blacks were the most likely of all races to exhibit no bias at all.) In addition, a 2006 study by Harvard researchers published in the journal Psychological Science used these tests to show how this implicit bias is present in white children as young as 6 years old, and how it stays constant into adulthood.

(You can take the test yourself.)

Charles M. Blow, The New York Times

Love

Nora, official co-daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, lost someone she loved very much when her step-mother Priscilla died from breast cancer at age 62 in 2007. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have ever met Priscilla, but I know Nora, and I now know many of Priscilla’s family. I know she was a truly remarkable and much loved woman.

Long-term readers may remember when Nora’s fund raising effort for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer was mentioned on these pages. That was three years ago. Again this year Nora will be raising funds for breast cancer treatment and research.

Please support me and my loved ones as I take an amazing journey in the fight against breast cancer! The Breast Cancer 3-Day is a 60-mile walk over the course of three days. Net proceeds benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure and National Philanthropic Trust, funding important breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment.

So, on this St. Valentine’s Day, when love is in the air, please click Nora’s Page to learn about — and perhaps support — her fund raising.

And be sure to read Priscilla’s poem, “Air Loss.”

Anything in an exit row?

Andrew Tobias gave us all a little perspective when he posted this three years ago:

I am listening to 1776 on my Nano, and it’s 2 degrees Fahrenheit (in Boston, in 1776) and people are dragging 120 tons of can[n]ons from Ft. Ticonderoga 300 miles to General George Washington in Dorchester, and the suffering of the troops — civilians like you and me, who’ve left their families to fight the British — is astounding. Sentries are literally freezing to death. And all I can think about is how upset we get if we’re assigned a middle seat.

Best line of the day, so far

“Pandas are animals blessed with a great color scheme. Endangered in the wild, they’ve been the subject of a massive, worldwide marketing campaign that emphasizes their cuteness without so much as mentioning their nasty side. In this way, they’re like former First lady Barbara Bush.”

FunctionalAmbivalent

Go read Tom’s whole take on pandas and “Another Case Where Marketing Endangers Lives.”