ExposureBlog

A couple of months ago our local COMPUSA closed.  During the closing, the company offered a number of products at a reduced rate.  One of them was a gadget called a MIO Digiwalker 310–a hand-held GPS device.  After noting a sign near the gadget warning NO RETURNS ALL SALES FINAL! I bought it.  An hour later I found I could have paid a lot less on the Internet.  Two days later the battery began to fail.  So, I went to the website and found that the Mio was made in Taiwan and had no obvious numbers for U.S. repair sites.  I clicked on “repair” and discovered that I had to have the product registered first.  So I then went through the process.  Here’s where it got interesting.  Mio wanted a lot of information. . .date of birth, gender, highest degree awarded, marital status, and yearly income.  And you couldn’t opt out.  If you DIDN’T enter the info you simply couldn’t register their product.  So, I did what I always do in situations like this.  I entered information that was incorrect, but trackable.  In other words, if I ever get spammed by outfits that seem to know my incorrect birth date, etc. I’ll know it came from Mio.

Unfortunately, people who rely on gadgets like this are in a bind.  In order to get the bad ones repaired we have to go through the process of spilling our personal information.  So to combat this kind of intrusive behavior, I recommend a list of fake information that can be spam-tracked.  If you happen to learn that the company you provided the information used it against you, then you may want to consider your legal options.                

Today I received a call from an environmental investigator who needed one simple thing: a time-lapse video of a site.  Which, of course, meant that he will need a device for taking time-lapse videos.  I told him, no prob, I’ll find one and get back to you.  Well, as it turns out, that chipper little sign-off was WAY premature.  Turns out time-lapse ain’t that easy.  After a bit of digging I found that there’s a lot of experts out there ready to tell you HOW to take time-lapse vids. . .just find (intermittant recording) on the menu and you’re good to go.  Okay. Except none (and I mean NONE) of the Google-found sites list videocameras that include that little thing.  I’ve gone thru a passel of videocameras over the years and NONE of the few I have left incorporate anything remotely resembling   So, after some more searching I discover that Sony made a vid camera that incorporates .  I checked the stats via Google and it’s a great camera.  Then I saw the DATES of the reviews: 2004. In the tech world, three years is like a century.  Sure enough, when I went to the Sony site, the330 was no longer being made.  Can’t buy it.  And no one was selling one on ebay.  Maybe the 330 fell apart not long after purchase.  Regardless, you can’t get there via Sony. 

So, then I went to a site that produced a software that would let you use your Canon EON camera to take time-lapse vids.  Didn’t cost much—about $49.00 USD—and the site offered some pretty good examples.  The upside was enormous take the snaps with your digital SLR, then convert the 350 or so megabytes to a vid.  Nice. 

Then the disclaimer:  The software mfgrs kindly pointed out that the EOS cameras (like the Rebel XT) have a shutter life of only 50,000 shots. . .and a couple of days time with this software and eight or nine hours of timelapse video could exceed that by many, many shots.  Great time-lapse vids, but at a great cost: your camera’s expensive shutter. So, back to the Sony site. . .where they wanted me to “register” before they would tell me anything about their cameras.  I checked my logbook and found that I already had 593 accounts–each with it’s individual password.  So, no.  Time lapse is down for the count.  Tomorrow I’ll call my friend and tell him that I’m not gonna be able to offer much advice on this, and of course, he’ll think I never bothered to even check it out.

As someone who has explained my opinions to lots of juries, I know that juries are probably the most important part of any case.  A few years ago I was one of the designated expert witnesses (for the Plaintiff) in a case where the evidence was stacked so high that everyone—even the bailiff and probably the judge thought the Plaintiff would win.  Day after day the evidence piled up, and the Defense seemed unable to respond or refute it.   For two weeks it looked like the perfect storm for the Defendant, a chemical company that, according to testimony required some of its employees to sniff vials containing a toxic chemical. 

You read that right. 

Toward the end of the trial, the defense lawyer had a glazed look on his face.  Then the jury went into their little room to decide.  As I said, everyone thought the Plaintiff would win.

But it didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen because two jurors thought differently, and managed to convince the rest of the jury that the defendant should prevail.  And apparently the reasons didn’t have anything to do with evidence or how each side presented the case.

It’s no wonder then that attorneys pay serious attention to the local culture forming the background of the jury pool.  Criminal defense lawyers sometimes visit a community weeks or months before the trial, shopping at the stores and barbershops, even getting to know some locals by name.  Others might pay a jury consultant to analyze the area—evaluating such things as socio-economics, education, ethnicity , culture regions, politics or even the predominant religion.

As a former sociologist, I believe it’s useful to understand a community.  But I’m not sure that an in-depth cultural analysis is always worth the effort and expense. In the chemical exposure case, I was told that the juror convinced the others because he thought if the company lost the case, it would close and put everyone out of work.   Attitudes like that usually don’t show up on a map. 

In this world there are consultants who tell their clients (often lawyers) what the cultural territory is like.  Politically, is the jury pool red or blue?  Wealthy, mid-level or poor?  Do they owe a lot of money?  Do they shop at Target, K-Mart, or. . .well, whatever place the really wealthy shop for Target-quality stuff?  I’ve had the opportunity to read some of the reports these guys churn out and some of it is impressive.  But I’ve also noticed that there is a wide variation in the number of references and end-notes.  I recall one of them obviously read New York Times columnist David Brooks, and probably even read his book, Bobos in Paradise, in which he compared local versions of red vs blue America. 

Apparently a lot of people think he’s a very smart guy and that his book approaches academic quality for the insights it offers.  His books and columns are fun to read and one comes away thinking that they’ve learned a deep truth about American culture.  Except. . .

Some of that stuff was, well, made up.

It seems Philadelphia reporter Sasha Issenberg did a little cookie-jar level fact checking on some of the claims Brooks made and found that the stuff was wrong.  Certainly nothing anyone would want to rely on for, say, jury selection.  When she confronted Brooks about it over the phone, he hemmed, hawed and parsed—even calling Issenberg’s skills as a reporter into question and darkly suggesting (it seemed to me anyway) that confronting David Brooks was not the way to get ahead in the news business. To judge for yourself, read the article here.

While Brooks is a good writer and probably a fun person to hang around with, his work may not be the thing you’d want to rely on either as a consultant studying cultural patterns nor as a lawyer interested in jury selection. 

Since many cases are won or lost on the testimony of eyewitnesses, a recent study cited here should raise some eyebrows.  It concerns the psychological phenomenon known as inattentional blindness, or the inability of some normal individuals  to recognize something when their attention is directed elsewhere.  The phenomenon is well-known in psychology. Visual expert Marc Green has a good article on inattentional blindness and human error,  and there is a book on the subject by Australian researchers Arien Mack and Irvin Rock.

I have read depositions in which the deponent is asked over and over whether he or she saw something take place.  If the response is in the negative the assumption is that the event did not, in fact, occur—or that those who say that it did are not telling the truth.  Well, not so fast.

In the study, conducted by Dr. Seema L. Clifasefi of the University of Washington at Seattle, 47 participants were asked to watch a basketball game and count the number of times a basketball was passed back and forth between teams.  Some were given an alcoholic beverage and others were given an alcohol-free beverage.  During the game, a woman in a gorilla suit appeared on the screen, stood amidst the players, beat her chest and walked away.  When questioned later whether they had seen the gorilla, fully a third of the participants had NOT noticed the gorilla.  Of those not consuming alcohol, only 46% recalled seeing the gorilla.  Of those consuming alcohol, only 18% recalled the gorilla.

It would seem, then that if an eyewitness was engaged in behavior that required his full attention, the odds of noticing details of a specific incident may be less than 50 percent. 

Not long ago, the Department of Defense announced that they would detonate a 700-ton cache of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil at Area 16 of the Nevada Test Site.  Dubbed Divine Strake, the test was to “determine the potential for future non-nuclear concepts.”  The shot, expected to produce a dust cloud 10,000 feet tall, was scheduled for June of this year. 

In May, after questions regarding their environmental impact statement came up, the feds decided to postpone the Divine Strake test indefinitely.  Now, it seems “indefinitely” means “until September or thereabouts.”  Apparently the Department of Defense believes it can come up with a proper EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) that addresses all the concerns (including mine, discussed earlier in this web log).  

Now, while the mainstream press has remained characteristically quiet regarding the revival of the test, the activists are angry.  In a Tom Dispatch letter, author Chip Ward pointed out that visitors to the nuclear test site are restricted from taking home chunks of NTS rock and that the same material that will likely be entrained into the air when Strake is detonated.

As part of their earlier sampling protocol the Defense Department took what are essentially radiation measurements somewhere near the Strake blast site.  In an affadavit filed with the court, I and several other environmental professionals argued that it would be necessary to sample area to identify the specific radioisotopes in the soil that produced the radiation. Here is why:

1. The soil at Area 16 has been contaminated by debris from prior nuclear tests, such as shots Gailieo, Kepler , Coulomb B, Shasta, Smoky, and Turk.  Some of these tests, such as Kepler, Galileo and Turk produced the long-lived alpha-emitter americium-241; while shot Galileo produced high quantities of the long-lived radioisotopes cobalt-60 and cesium-137.
2. The same radiation (i.e. gamma, beta, alpha particles, x-rays, etc) can be produced by chemically-different radioisotopes.
3. The way a radioisotope behaves in the body is determined by the chemistry of the radioisotope rather than the radiation it produces.

So, in order to do a proper environmental impact assessment, the Department of Defense must identify the specfic radioisotopes in the soil–both quantitatively and quantitatively. In other words, they should determine not only what radioisotopes are in the soil at Area 16, but how much of each radioisotopes are there.

But that is only half of the assessment.  Since these materials will be entrained in a 10,000-ft tall dust cloud—and since what goes up must come down, the feds must acknowledge that this material will potentially affect any site downwind–all the way to the Eastern seaboard.  Nuclear debris clouds certainly made it to the East Coast in the 1950s, and the Strake cloud will make it that far as well.

Recently I heard rumors that the DOD scientists were planning to counter that the Strake fallout would not be detectable above background (ambient levels of radiation.)  Of course, that brings up the second half of the EIS:  the impact of the fallout on the target site (mostly, the rest of the United States.)  Again, just assessing radiation levels won’t fulfill the requirments of a proper Environmental Impact Statement: they must identify the radiation-producing radioisotopes at the downwind sites as well.  While there are some wonderful books on the subject (ahem), for accuracy and precision nothing beats actually taking samples in the potentially-affected areas.  This would mean core samples taken at such sites where radioisotopes from earlier testing may have accumulated–namely soil at the bottom of lakes and ponds.  Soil sampling for radioisotopes is an accepted protocol that has been used for years by government scientists.

Only until soil sampling in the downwind areas is completed and the samples analyzed, will we be able to properly assess the potential impact of the Strake shot on the rest of the United States. 

But potential impact is only part of the story.  Once the device is detonated, once the cloud is airborne and heading north and east, the DOD still has one additional requirement: monitoring of the path of the Strake dust cloud.  Given the current state of the EPA radiation monitoring system, this may be a problem.  The EPA monitoring apparatus consists of only 59 air radiation monitoring sites —a little more than half of what was available in the U.S. in the 1950s–located primarily in the northeastern U.S.  Unfortunately, there are no monitoring stations in Wyoming, Montana or Nebraska—states that could be affected by higher amounts of radioactive debris.   Two years ago, I had the opportunity to speak with some EPA technicians familiar with the system.  They told me that the sites were staffed by volunteers who recorded the raw radiation data and then mailed the samples to the main EPA Laboratory in Montgomery, Alabama.  Hopefully, that situation has changed since then.

Glasstone and Dolan, in their book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, that a radioactive debris cloud can be completely scavanged (washed clean) by a rainstorm in about an hour .  An encounter between the Strake debris cloud and even a small thunderstorm could result in a area of concentrated radioactivity on the ground below. 

Any Environmental Impact Assessment should also include information and protocols regarding what should be done if such radioactive rainouts occur.  For example, if a thunderstorm deposited significant amounts of NTS americium-241 on a farmer’s corn field, should he be allowed to bring the corn to market—or be compensated for the economic loss?  If the rainout drops radioactive NTS material squarely onto a small town, should the residents be offered free medical tests and followups?

Tough questions, but ones the Strake EIS should address.

Juan Cole (talking about blogs) offers a concise discussion of distributed vs centralized systems and introduces the term choke point hegemonies–a term that will probably find its way to Wikipedia before the week is out.  As it turns out, his discussion is also useful when analyzing organizational structures, especially when trying to learn why information flow within the organization is blocked at certain points.  Recommended.

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall—in his hilarious response to blog critic Lee Siegel, noted that blogs are a “boon for information and an enemy of thought. In most hands it’s more a medium of exchange than reflection.  The technology can leave us too little time to mull and digest.”  Good points to consider when researching that case.

Suppose you’re a plaintiff lawyer with an injured client.  You suspect the defendant, a large construction company, has some very bad work practices that put employees of subcontractors at risk.  You only have so much time and funds available.  After the eyewitnesses—and of course, the safety guy—who should you depose? 

Some of of my clients on the Plaintiff’s side like to go top down–deposing the CEO or the President of the company first, then work their way down to the managers.  Others prefer to work their way up–foreman to supervisory personnel.

At some point–usually with the mid-level managers they will encounter something like dense fog obscuring all further discovery: the malady known as CCA: Command Chain Amnesia.

While you or I might remember inconsequential meetings with people that took place years ago—and may even remember what was said, there are highly-paid people working as managers who won’t remember talking with anyone.  They will be unable to recall meetings, conferences and even what they took in college.  One president for a VERY large Texas construction company claimed on the record that he didn’t really know anything about electricity (the case involved an electrocution.)  When it was pointed out that he also had an engineering degree, he said he couldn’t recall taking any courses that had to do with “electricity.” 

Amnesia isn’t limited to the corporate world.  A CIA analyst by the name of Tyler Drumheller is writing a book that will no doubt shine a bright light on command chain amnesia in the run-up to the Iraq conflict.  It seems he told both his boss, a man named John E. McLaughlin as well as the Director of the CIA himself that the intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was seriously flawed–well before the information was used in speeches by both the President and by the Secretary of State.  When asked to comment, neither McLaughlin nor Tenet could remember ever talking with Drumheller. 

So, I suppose it’s a waste of time to be angry with the mid-level managers when they fail to remember important details.  It seems to affect the big guys as well.  There are, of course, few things that can be done to make someone remember something, especially when doing so makes them look foolish. For the person asking the questions, this can pose a real problem.

I did hear once about a case in which a feisty trial lawyer (is there any other kind?)–after hearing a deponent repeat “I don’t remember” for about four hours—finally demanded to see the man’s medical and personnel records.  Seems he wanted to find out if they guy was taking drugs that would cause amnesia—or in the alternative, why a company would even hire someone who couldn’t remember anything. 

Thankfully, command chain amnesia doesn’t usually cause problems for the those who have it.  Some, like George Tenet,  go on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the summer sun, the inside temperature of an automobile with the doors closed can rise 19 degrees in ten minutes and 43 degrees in an hour.  Anytime you prepare to lock and leave an automobile, take a few seconds to “sweep” the car or van visually to make sure you haven’t forgotten something–or someone like a baby, toddler or pet.  Left inside a closed automobile, a child’s core temperature can reach the lethal 107 degrees F.