Ken Lay Goes to Trial

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the masterminds of Enron, are finally going to trial and it starts today. Their company collapsed in December of 2001, wiping out nearly $60 Billion (that's with a capital B) in market capital. That's the amount of money investors would have collected had they sold their stock before the collapse. But at the last shareholder conference call before the collapse, Lay confidently told everyone they were going to hit their numbers. The reality is, had investors tried to collect, it would have been like a run on a bank with no money.

It seems that the people in Houston are still smarting from the demise of Enron. The people of Houston are upset that their solid reputation as an energy state has been besmirched by the scandal. There is serious discussion about moving the trial to a different city in the hopes of providing a "fair" trial. Gosh, I thought they were supposed to have a right of trial by peers, not by complete strangers in another town that are not quite as familiar with Enron. When the questionaires by the potential jurors are examined we find language suggesting that Ken Lay would lie to his mother if that would further his case.

Hmmm. Perhaps this might be the reason we need the corporate culture to subject themselves to another questionaire. You know, the one developed by Bob Hare to identify executives in control of billions of dollars in assets, but can be diagnosed as sub-clinical psychopaths. This could save us a lot of money and grief. I'm sure some lawyer will figure a way out of it. Then the lawyer should take the test, too. How about Bush?

One interesting comment from a Seattle Times article notes that "not one lawyer has been charged", alluding to the advice given by lawyers that helped to setup the complicated network of off-the-books loans between companies in the Enron empire. I guess the lawyers are looking out for their brothers on this one.

But by far the most interesting aspect to this whole case is the timing. The trial is expected to last 4 months. That would put us in May and would leave the trial fresh in the minds of voters when the November elections come around. Due to the complexity of the case, I would expect the jurors to deliberate for weeks, unless...their anger come out blazing for guilty verdicts and prison time.

And here's another interesting nugget. Remember Tom DeLay and his little fracas? The poor guy can't be speaker of the House anymore (thank God!). Well, it gets more interesting. One of the men associated with that scandal also happens to be associated with the Enron collapse. Meet Jack Abramoff. Apparently, some of the expenses incurred by DeLay while traveling abroad were charged on a credit card issued to Abramoff. This man helped to engineer the Republican Majority we have sitting in Congress right now.

There are some who say that it's normal for a ruling party to lose seats in Congress during a mid-term election. Bush is making white noise about how positive things are in his speeches so that Republicans in Congress can have something to defend when they face their constituents back home. Word has it that he plans to be very general without discussing major policy initatives in his State of the Union address. If this trial airs out the dirty laundry the way I think it will, it will push them over the edge - of losing their majority in Congress. And not by a small margin. No wonder they're in such a hurry to appoint justices to the Supreme Court.

Now the press is starting to look at the relationship between Karl Rove and Abramoff. It seems that the vast majority of the phone numbers, addresses and email addresses captured through illegal eavesdropping have lead to dead ends or innocent Americans. Perhaps they weren't looking for terrorists at all. Or worse, perhaps the term "terrorists" includes political opponents.

Check out the Q&A in the last link between reporters and Scott McClellan, the White House spokesperson. When pressed about the connection between Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff, he evades the question like Sugar Ray Leonard evading punches. Notice how he places the burden on the press to provide their own answers. Now just watch the Freedom of Information Act requests fly!

I think now the president is getting closer to ground zero. Not New York ground zero. But the point where he was prior to the day that he sat in an elementary school reading to school children while planes were crashing. Many may remember how the press made fun of his gramatical errors. Some made light of the fact that Congress was slow to pass his legislation if at all. Some even uttered the phrase "lame duck". Funny how few would listen to him before 9/11.

Maybe what the president needs is a good shot of dopamine so that he'll have the idea that he can stop trying to get things done. Who knows, with our luck, he might just spend more time at the ranch having informal meetings with Rove and Abramoff, while taking in the sights of protestors down the road.

Mr. Scott

Comedy is good for the heart

One of my hobbies is standup comedy. So when I saw this article on Science Daily, I was *heartened*. I've been fascinated by comedy since I was a small kid. I can even remember the first joke I ever learned. And I also remember holding an audience of several adults at the school's open house with me and my little puppet.

But my first experience of doing comedy as a public performance came when I played a bit part in a junior high school play. The two central characters of the play were Felicity, who was always happy, and Dolores, who was always sad. They were the princesses of a kingdom and I was the hypnotist brought in to convince Dolores that she was really very happy. It didn't work for Dolores, but I had never seen an entire auditorium erupt in laughter over something I did.

At some point around the same period of my life, I took a class in improvisation. I saw how we could create jokes and stories out of nothing but goofing around. We weren't quite as advanced as "Who's Line Is It, Anyway?", but we had buckets of fun.

Then, my desire to do comedy went into hiding for one reason or another, until recently. It had been mumble-mumble years ago since I had done any perfomance art when I found an ad for a local improvisation class. I put it in my Palm Pilot to call them and each time the reminder came up, I kept putting it off for another week.

And then finally one night, I called. "Hi, my name is Scott and I'd like to learn more about your improvisation class. I have some acting experience from long ago and I'd really like to just have fun. I have no interest in becoming an actor."

"Oh, that's great! We're looking for people like you!", he said. So I went.

By the end of that first evening, I was hoarse from laughing so hard, and my cheek muscles were sore from grinning all night. Now that is a ringing endorsement. I was hooked. So for the next couple of years, I would go there every Wednesday night and learn how to think on my feet, stay sincere to the scene and how to set up the other guys on stage so that they could say something funny. Yeah, I learned how to play straight.

And then I hit another turn. Someone in the group announced that they were going to teach standup comedy. The rest of the story is history for another blog.

Mr. Scott

Eye Candy

Something that has always fascinated me is fractals. The concept has a very interesting history and programs that create them are full of surprises. Try doing a search on Google for fractal images. You won't be disappointed.

Fractals are now being used for image compression, image creating and advanced mathematical analysis, too. They have moved far beyond the scientific curiosity they were when they were discovered. Go here to get a start...

See you tomorrow...

Mr. Scott

For Your Own Good

I'm glad to see Google resisting the Justice Department's subpeona for search records. I'm curious why they went through the trouble to get a subpoena when they could have used Google's publicly available Application Programming Interface (API) to program their own custom search for a million random urls from Google's search index. And the search terms they wanted, they could use their imagination to see what they might find. I guess the "Just-us" department wanted to see if Google is "with us or against us".

So now we see the gloves starting to come off. The Bush Administration says that preventing children from accessing pornography on the internet is their aim. But the subtext is that they are really going after people who want to access child-porn. True enough that these child-porn lovers are sick and need a 12-step meeting at a convenient location.

But the Administration has proven itself time and again to favor punishment over help. Here, the cure is worse than the disease. Cast a wide net, catch who we can, and if anyone comes up innocent, we'll pay them off, bury them in prison, and/or bury the story in the metro section of the paper.

Now here is an interesting parallel: what if the administration is using it's so-called "war on terrorism" to identify, locate, undermine and eliminate political opposition? What if the war on terrorism is a pretext for maintaining and consolidating power?

Remember, these are the same guys who engineered 11-hour waits at the polls (in Blue states), the implementation of Diebold voting machines and Arnold (I'll never vote without protection again) Schwartzenegger's election here in California.

For them, it's a religious war, and if God is on their side, then everything is fair game.

Mr. Scott

Welcome

This is the Early Morning Stream. I like to write in the mornings and that is when I'm most mentally active. I read the news, talk with my friends, co-workers and others, and watch the media to see the trends and such. There is so much going on that no single person can track it all. This blog is intended to provide a forum for the free discusion of these events.

A little about me. I'm a technophile. I work with computers a lot, I do a little reading, watch a DVD here and there, see a movie with friends and try to do my life in moderation. I'm seeking spiritual progress rather than perfection. As some of you will no doubt see, I have a sense of humor to go with it all. And I think I have something to add to the stream of consciousness we call the internet.

That is why I call this, the Early Morning Stream (no pun intended). It is my early morning stream of consciousness.

I hope to entertain discussions of technology for the layman, philosophy, law and entertainment. A sort of mix of everything to keep it interesting. I will do my best to put something here everyday. But anyone else, I'm not perfect.

So say hello and bring an issue of the day with you.


Mr. Scott

Until Death Do Us Part

A couple of days ago, I had a friendly discussion of the movie, Brokeback Mountain. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I understand the plot to be about two homosexual men doing their best to have an intimate relationship in an environment that is hostile to such associations.

Associations? Recall that not too long ago, there was a lot of news about courts approving/disapproving gay marriages. Mayors would sometimes take the law into their own hands and preside over gay marriages just to see what the courts would do - and to do the right thing.

Enter the conservative right. Here they say that the institution of marriage is purely a religious institution, and thus, religion should have control over it. Hmmm. Well, then. How do you explain the marriage license? The marriage license is provided by the state. So the enabling law that created the license and the authority to grant a license is sanctioning a purely religious institution? Not under the First Amendment it isn't. If this is a problem of separation of church and state, then perhaps the marriage laws, and all the benefits associated with the institution of marriage are ready for re-examination.

But back to the guys at Brokeback Mountain. They were attempting to exercise a right under the First Amendment, the right to peacefully assemble. This is also known as the right to peacefully associate with one another. In modern times, the discussion on gay marriages should be framed as a discussion of freedom of association. Typically, the Republican Party is the association that speaks out against gay marriages. Since gay marriages haven't been sanctioned by their god, a gay marriage should not have the same rights and privileges as a heterosexual marriage.

So, on the one hand, Congress shall enact no law respecting the establishment of religion. On the other, conservative Christians feel that heterosexual marriages (that's *Christian marriages* to you and me) should get preferential treatment under the law. Seems to me that conservative Christians really *do* want a law respecting the establishment of religion. Um, they meant preference to the Christian religion, didn't they?

If gay people cannot freely associate among themselves, what about the rest of us? If they cannot exercise the right to peacefully assemble, why should the Republicans be able to to do so? Who says that heterosexual marriages should get preferential treatment over other marriages?

People in favor of a law respecting the establishment of religion. I guess they forgot why people came over here on the Mayflower in the first place: to peacefully practice their religion without interference from government. So if Christians want government to create laws that give preferential treatment, they better be ready for the sidelines when Budhists or Muslims get a majority in a legislative body. I'm not saying it will happen, but it could. That might not be a bad thing.

This brings up an interesting question: if the institution of marriage is purely religious, can it be sanctioned by government under the first amendment and state constitutions that express the same position?

Mr. Scott