Cate Edwards leads her father, John Edwards, into the federal courthouse in Greensboro, NC, for his campaign corruption trial, May 2012. Photograph: Bob Leverone/AP Earlier this week, as the trial of Rajat K Gupta for insider trading got underway, Gupta's lawyers began his defense by saying that the former McKinsey & Co head and Goldman Sachs director "doesn't belong in this courtroom".That's pretty much what every malefactor's lawyer is expected to say. But on the same day that the judge in Dharun Ravi's case was saying something similar, and in the final hours of deliberation of John Edward's jury, it seemed suddenly like a more reasonable proposition.Is this a particularly ripe age of show trials? Or just a bad week?The common link between these three ... Continue reading →
Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 800 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the ... Continue reading →
Study is first to probe link between marijuana and collisions: researchers (NEWSER) - Smoking marijuana three hours or less before getting behind the wheel nearly doubles your chance of a major car crash, a study suggests. It's the first study to look at the link between cannabis and crash risk, the Canadian researchers believe. They examined study data for more than 49,000 collision victims, limiting their research to crashes that didn't involve alcohol, CBC reports. "The level of impairment might not be as severe as alcohol intoxication, but it's there and it does require a public health response," says an expert. More» Continue reading →
