mondrian’s neon fantod

Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were both found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.

On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.

Skilling was found guilty on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on nine counts of insider trading.

Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud. In a separate bench trial, Judge Sim Lake ruled Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and false statements.

Both Lay and Skilling could face 20 to 30 years in prison, legal experts say.

Lay and Skilling’s day of reckoning

There’s this thing, see. It’s called Newsvine. It’s a site on the internet where people can interact all 21st Century-style with “the news.” You can write your own stories. You can “seed” links to stories at existing websites (mainstream, not-so-mainstream, blogosphere, you name it). You can comment on the stories of others and get comments on your own stuff. Eventually they’re supposed to be implementing an ad program and possibly paying their contributors (a little) via those revenues, even.

So, courtesy of Patita (courtesy of someone else) I wound up with an invite and signed up. I’m experimenting with it but it seems at least a little bit cool. And it’s more what I want out of the “writing for the internet” thing, in general, than blogging. “How so?” you ask. Well, it gives me an outlet that other people are using, too, so it’s not so incumbent upon me to produce daily content to keep people coming back. There’s always new stuff to read over there and I’m not the one who had to make it. It’s perfect for my lazy ways!

Anyway, you should check it out just to see what all the noise is about. And if the concept of it intrigues you, let me know and I’ll drop an invite on you.

Oh, and in case you care to read what I’m writing over there, check the Newsvine Content page of this here blog thing, over there (→) in the sidebar. That page holds a little hunk o’ javascript that Newsvine provides its authors that essentially syndicates their headlines. So do the click thing and see what you can see from me.

I’m not sure what else I can say.

Almost 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes happen within three seconds of some form of driver distraction, according to the report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

The two research groups monitored the behavior of 241 drivers in 100 vehicles for more than a year. During the 2 million miles of the study, the drivers were involved in 82 crashes and 761 near-crashes.

Reaching for a moving object multiplied the risk of a crash or near-crash by nine times, according to the study. Reading, applying makeup, or dialing a handheld device tripled the risk.

“All of these activities are much more dangerous than we thought before,” Dr. Charlie Klauer, a senior research associate at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.

“But also we’re very concerned about the fact that not only are we drinking our coffee and we’re disciplining our children and we’re eating sandwiches in the car, but the proliferation of technologies in the vehicle have just exacerbated the amount of time that drivers are distracted,” she said.

Using cell phones was the most common distraction for drivers, the study found.

And while talking on a cell phone was less risky than dialing, it was a factor in almost as many crashes because it was done far more often, the researchers said.

Read more.

I does the decidinatin’!

Well, now he’s on record for “hearing the voices” at least…

Why is it so hard for “America’s CEO” to listen to the advice of his directors and can the crappy director? It happens in corporations, you know. And if the fascists in the white house are modelled on anything (outside of, say, nazi germany) it’s supposed to be corportaions, isn’t it?

And it’s politics, so I should probably just move on, but I simply cannot pass this up:

DeLay to abandon reelection bid

His decision to leave will put him out of the reach of the House ethics committee, which admonished him three times in 2004 over separate issues. The panel urged him to “temper” his future actions to comply with House rules and standards of conduct.

But surely that’s not why, is it?

“I feel that I could have won the race,” DeLay told Time. “I just felt like I didn’t want to risk the seat and that I can do more on the outside of the House than I can on the inside right now.”

Out of the big house, that is. In any case, it’s a banner day for the State of Texas. Now we just have to go through all of the internal squabbling about whether his seat can have a different fascist candidate or not, since he clearly won the primary and all. Stay tuned, kids. This could be interesting.

And is it bad but not worth killing over? Or is the old man just a bad shot?

What a maroon!

Safernatin’ the country is seeryus binnis. An’ nuthin’ says seerys binnis like knowifyin’ whut yer talkin’ of. No, what you’re talking of. That why we’s a’spyin’.