DEC 17 2008

First Recorded Reference to Occupational Injuries

Miscellaneous

See page 57 of Ancient Egyptian Medicine by John Nunn (Seehttp://books.google.com/books?id=WHfEnVU6z8IC&pg=PT1&dq=scholar:+Ancient+Egyptian+Medicine+Nunn#PPA57,M1 ). On this page, there is a drawing of a relief in the Deir el Medina tomb of a Dynasty XX (11th or 12th century BCE) man (necropolis worker) named Ipwy. The scene shows a group of workers building a catafalque (a platform to…

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DEC 07 2008

Labor Code Section 4850 and Perverse Incentives

Miscellaneous

California Labor Code Section 4850 requires that police officers and firefighters must be paid 100 percent of their pre-injury wage for up to one year while temporarily disabled (most other workers are limited to two-thirds of their salaries up to a maximum limit). This benefit is tax free such that temporarily disabled public safety officers…

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DEC 03 2008

Age Discrimination in the Workplace

Miscellaneous

Someone asked, “We have a public employee who’s nearly 90 that continues to work, but is slow, occassionally incontinent, and, in management’s opinion, ready to be let go. What do I do?” I answered, “Your municipality is lucky to have a nonagenarian that is willing and able to work. An employee’s decision about when to…

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NOV 19 2008

U.S. Crime Rates 1960-2006

Miscellaneous

The graphic above summarizes U.S. crime rates from 1960 through 2006, inclusive. The columns are defined as follows from left to right: year, overall crime rate, violent crime rate, property crime rate, murder rate, rape rate, robbery rate, assault rate, burglary rate, larceny rate, and vehicle theft rate. Overall, this shows that property crime rates…

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NOV 18 2008

Personal Radiation Detectors and Law Enforcement

Miscellaneous

Personal Radiation Detectors (PRDs) should not be used as a standalone law enforcement mechanism. Common items–bananas, spinach, peanuts, brazil nuts, pottery, kitty litter, patients with recent radiation treatment for cancer–emit gamma radiation that will cause false positives in PRDs. As an example, the Port of Long Beach has over 250 false positives per day. PRDs…

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NOV 05 2008

Presidential Election Results

Miscellaneous

Barack Obama won the popular vote with 62,605,967 votes at 52.33% and John McCain lost the election with 55,512,629 votes at 46.38%. Obama won the Electoral vote with 338 votes to John McCain’s 163 votes. The Fair regression method of estimating the U.S. presidential winner accurately predicted the outcome. This supports the hypothesis that economic…

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NOV 02 2008

Predicting the New President

Miscellaneous

Using the regression methodology of Ray Fair (“The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1978), I estimate a 46.42% +/- 2.54 McCain share in the Obama-McCain race. This method doesn’t address social acceptability bias or attempt to estimate the changes in the distribution of voters. I…

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OCT 30 2008

Jury Research, Lawsuits, Settlements, and Pleas

Miscellaneous

For civil suits, a major point of jury research is leveraging settlements; for prosecutions (and, infrequently, major civil suits, especially class actions), jury selection. Civil trial attorneys have tremendous interest in jury behavior, not for reasons of influencing juries, but in order to encourage settlements and minimize resultant settlement severities. About 100 million criminal and…

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