The Age reports that an Austrian trade union has claimed that Xmas music constitutes "psycho-terrorism" for salespeople!

"The Union of Private Employees is appealing to department store owners to use moderation and play Christmas music for only a few hours each day.

"From morning to night, for weeks before Christmas, there was the same Christmas music in department stores over and over again, said Gottfried Rieser of the Union of Private Employees.

"'Many staff in the retail sector suffer psychologically from it,'" Mr Rieser said. "'They get aggressive. On Christmas Eve with their families, they can't stand Silent Night or Jingle Bells any more.'"

Earlier this year, a New York state jury awarded Elizabeth and John Reden $112 million in a medical-malpractice case filed on behalf of their brain-damaged daughter.

But the Redens didn't get $112 million. They got $6 million...

...Many plaintiffs settle for less than a jury's verdict, to eliminate delays and the uncertainty of appeal. Sometimes, even before a jury rules, a plaintiff has signed an agreement that limits how much money actually changes hands...

In 2000, Pennsylvania reported three of the largest medical-malpractice verdicts in its history, all of them rendered in Philadelphia: one for $100 million, another for $55 million and a third for $49.6 million...

But each of the three biggest Philadelphia verdicts was settled for much smaller sums, according to plaintiffs lawyers and court records. The $55 million case settled for $7.5 million, according to the lawyer for the plaintiff. The $49.6 million case settled for $8.4 million, according to court documents. And the $100 million case settled for an undisclosed sum. Andrew J. Stern, the lawyer representing the plaintiff in that case, says the amount of the settlement was significantly less than $100 million...

Last month, the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Health Care, a Washington-based group that advocates for tort reform on behalf of hospitals, doctors and others, cited in a news release a $269 million verdict in Texas.

Although the release didn't say so, the case involved Rachael Martin...she was allegedly given 10 times the recommended dose of the sedative propofol. Her muscle cells began disintegrating, and the content of those cells was secreted through her kidneys. Her urine changed color and eventually turned black. A short while later, Rachael went into cardiac arrest and died...

In 2000, a jury awarded the Martins nearly $269 million...

The Martins got a fraction of that amount. The jury assigned 25% of the liability in the case -- or $67 million -- to the doctors. But before the trial had even begun the doctors and their professional group had agreed with the Martins to settle the case for just $3 million, says Charla Aldous, the Martins' attorney. That sum was just under the total policy limits of the three physicians involved and their practice group, each of which was insured for $1 million.

Why are cats so cute?

If there were evidence that increasing affluence made people happier, there might be occasion to rejoice. Even though GDP per capita has tripled since World II, and houses have grown bigger, cars more luxurious, clothing and food easier to afford, we seem to be working mindlessly to acquire more. In fact, there is ample evidence, both anecdotal and scientific, that once people attain a reasonably good standard of living, making more money and buying more has no appreciable positive effect and in some cases has negative effects.

The biggest cost I see is intergenerational. Materialism is taking a drastic toll at home. There is considerable strain involved in generating the money needed to acquire so much. Many of the parents who come to my office describe living on the earn-and-spend, earn-and-spend treadmill that Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes. Parents are exhausted. Children are neglected. Marriages get put on hold. One professional woman reported to me that she felt so overwhelmed that she came home one evening and started breaking plates on the floor in front of her three little kids. Stories like this make me realize we are allowing ourselves to be robbed of what is most precious and counts the most: free time...

I am seeing a new level of competitiveness, not just on the athletic fields and in the classroom but increasingly over possessions. I think of it as the Keds-to-Nike transformation. One status-conscious teenage girl (whose parents checked out my diplomas before they even sat down) said she couldn't understand why she had trouble making and keeping friends. This girl had learned much more about domination than cooperation, and she formed alliances to get what she wanted rather than making real friends.

The scientific literature supports my office observations. A comprehensive review of more than 150 studies on happiness and wealth by psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman showed that there has been no appreciable rise in life satisfaction over the past decades, despite our increased material wealth.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation issued a report that is sure to give ambitious and acquisitive parents pause. It found an inverse relationship between self-reported child happiness and parental income. Blue-collar and middle-class kids identified themselves as happier than wealthy ones. Kids need their parents on site -- in the foreground when they are young, and in the background as they get older. That's simply not possible in many of today's go-getter households.

So here we are: a generation of fashionistas and Samurai shoppers with full closets and empty hearts. Instead of listening to our souls, we have fallen for a new field of retail anthropology that advises businesses on how to get people in the mood to buy, buy, buy. I saw a catchy phrase that headlined an article in this newspaper's business section several months ago: Appliance Lust. It referred to hunger for eight-burner Viking ranges, built-in woks and Sub-Zero refrigerators with custom wood paneling and door alarms. Those of us who lived through the '60s seem to have forgotten the warning that everything you buy owns you.

Juliet Eliperin notes:

When the House Republican Conference decided on Nov. 17 to make sure that a possible indictment by Texas prosecutors would not cost House Majority Leader Tom DeLay his leadership post, Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee had the temerity to ask if the voice vote could be recorded so that the public could learn how many of his GOP colleagues were invested in protecting the controversial leader.
Wamp's motion was rejected by a resounding chorus of "No's."

Nora Jacobson describes her post-2000 election move to Canada, urging Americans not to expatriate. The full article is worth reading:

Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends here, I've found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating and even painful in ways that have surprised me. As attractive as living here may be in theory, the reality's something else. For me, it's been one of almost daily confrontation with a powerful anti-Americanism that pervades many aspects of life. When I've mentioned this phenomenon to Canadian friends, they've furrowed their brows sympathetically and said, "Yes, Canadian anti-Americanism can be very subtle." My response is, there's nothing subtle about it.

A veteran Food and Drug Administration safety officer said yesterday at a Senate hearing on the abrupt recall of the arthritis drug Vioxx that five other widely used drugs should either be withdrawn or more sharply restricted because they have dangerous side effects.

Describing the agency he works for as incapable of stopping dangerous drugs from entering and staying on the market, David J. Graham, associate director of the Office of Drug Safety, told the senators that the FDA's role in reviewing and approving new drugs sometimes conflicts with its duty to address safety issues.

Asked by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) to identify the five drugs, Graham hesitated and then named them to the startled listeners: the popular cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor, the weight-loss drug Meridia, the painkiller Bextra, the acne medication Accutane and the asthma medication Serevent.

Each poses different issues, Graham said in response to senators' questions, but all require more aggressive FDA action.

Tune in!

Here is the show's website:

The average American family today carries eight credit cards. Credit card debt and personal bankruptcies are now at an all time high. With no legal limit on the amount of interest or fees that can be charged, credit cards have become the most profitable sector of the American banking industry: more than $30 billion in profits last year alone. FRONTLINE and The New York Times examine how the credit card industry became so pervasive, so lucrative, and so politically powerful.

The survivors said the shooting was entirely unexpected. Hunters on private property had told Chai Soua Vang that he was trespassing and needed to leave the deer stand, where he had taken a position on Sunday morning with his SKS assault rifle.

Vang climbed down and walked about 40 yards. He took the scope off his rifle, turned and opened fire, Sawyer County Sheriff James Meier said Monday. One of the wounded men radioed for help. Others headed to the rescue, but Meier said Vang also opened fire on them, leaving five dead and three seriously wounded.

A May investigative report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that some military-intelligence and other government interrogators "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." Cpl. Graner, according to his lawyer, "is not a ringleader."

...The prison's population ballooned to nearly 7,000. From outside, insurgents pummeled it with mortars. Abu Ghraib had a hellish reputation under the Hussein regime as a place of torture and execution. To the Americans it was a different kind of hell: cold, cramped and full of detainees prone to riot. Some soldiers felt like prisoners themselves.

Those assigned to Tier 1A worked in a particular dank place, rotten with the smell of feces and body odor. Yet in some ways they were more fortunate, working in a strong building and handling only about 50 detainees. Those on the night shift operated with little oversight....

In 1973, a psychology professor at Stanford University conducted a famous academic exercise in which students played the role of either prison guard or inmate. The professor, Philip Zimbardo, says that once the "guards" grew acclimated to their work, those with the most aggressive personalities began behaving sadistically -- and then "guards" with more passive personalities followed. Soon, "guards" began abusing "prisoners," and even students who didn't condone the abuse made no effort to stop it.

Sgt. Davis, asked by investigators why he didn't refuse to go along with the abusive conduct at Abu Ghraib and report it, answered with a comment that could have been lifted from the Stanford experiment: "I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something." Sgt. Davis faces a military trial next year. His lawyer plans to argue that his client was following orders from the highest levels of government...
.
..One night, Sgt. Frederick told the military court, he saw a detainee standing on a box in the shower, with wires dangling nearby. He testified that Cpl. Graner said intelligence officers "wanted him stressed out."

Sgt. Frederick said he wrapped a wire around one of the detainee's fingers, while Sgt. Davis attached a wire to the Iraqi's hand, Spc. Harman attached one to his toe, and someone attached a wire to the detainee's penis. While the naked and hooded prisoner waited, anticipating a jolt, Sgt. Frederick and Spc. Harman snapped pictures with a digital camera. An attorney for Sgt. Davis says that his client denies attaching wires and that other soldiers have given sworn statements clearing his client.

The Taguba report listed more misbehavior, most of it over just a few days in early November 2003: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick; and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threat of attack, and in once instance actually biting" one.

Abu Ghraib detainees questioned by the Army described most MPs by their appearance or uniform, but some knew Cpl. Graner by name. They described him as being at the center of the action, while others stood by taking pictures.

Cpl. Graner, one inmate told the Army, "cuffed my hands with irons behind my back to the metal of the window, to the point my feet were off the ground and I was hanging there for about 5 hours just because I asked about the time, because I wanted to pray. And then they took all my clothes and he took the female underwear and he put it over my head. After he released me from the window, he tied me to my bed until before dawn ... Graner and the other two soldiers were taking pictures of everything they did to me."

...The pyramid of naked Iraqi detainees was "no big deal," according to Mr. Graner's lawyer: "Cheerleaders all across America form pyramids every day, and it doesn't hurt people," he says. "This was a control technique."

He also contends that guards in civilian prisons routinely put collars on inmates' necks. "This was not the result of soldiers becoming sadistic and brutalizing people," the lawyer says. "It was a matter of the intelligence community being under tremendous pressure to produce and get evidence that could be turned into intelligence. I think everything that was done there was perfectly lawful."

His client, Spc. Graner, suffered no moral crises, Mr. Womack adds. "He wasn't ashamed of it. His psyche was fine. He was following orders."

...The trial, plus interviews from depositions, provides an unusual behind-the-scenes peek into the brutal sport of corporate boardroom politics. In particular, the case shows how Mr. Eisner wielded power during his controversial 20-year run at Disney and clung to that power even as the company's performance sagged.

Time and again, testimony in the Ovitz case -- including Mr. Eisner's own account -- illustrates how he operated with little regard for conventional rules of corporate play. He allowed rivalries to fester until they become irreparable, lied publicly when it was convenient, and once hatched a plot with a director to report details of a private conversation with Mr. Ovitz.

While drug enforcement and white collar crime filings remained essentially unchanged, civil rights and environmental cases were definitely down. These distinctly different trends -- down for civil rights and environment and up for immigration and weapons -- suggest that unannounced policy decisions by the government also may have played a role.

Harrah's [casinos] patrons can apply for a Total Rewards loyalty card and receive points toward anything from a hotel stay to catalog gifts; the more they gamble, the better the perks become. Each cardholder is assigned a "customer value" based on the theoretical revenue they will generate. Customers with higher values get quicker responses from Harrah's phone systems. When a gambler dials Harrah's toll-free reservation line, the computer bounces the number off its database and places the caller in the appropriate service queue.

The operator who picks up the phone is trained not to let on that the caller has been recognized. "That would be too creepy," says Rich Mirman, Harrah's senior vice president in charge of development, and a trained mathematician and economist...

Unlike rivals such as MGM Mirage, Harrah's tries hard to keep less profitable nongambling customers out of its hotels by calculating their customer value and making them pay through the nose. In October, a room at the aging Harrah's Las Vegas was quoted to a caller at a nightly rate of $199, only $14 cheaper than a super-luxury room at Bellagio.

A frequent gambler could be charged anything from nothing to $199 at the Harrah's casino, the company says. The price is based on a complex mathematical formula that takes into account how long the customer typically stays and what games he or she plays, among other details.

In ATMs, Not Votes, We Trust

By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, November 17, 2004; Page A27

When the ATM asks whether I want a receipt, I usually say no. When a Web site wants my credit card number, I usually say yes. When I pay bills online, there is no paper record of the transaction. In my failure to demand physical evidence when money changes hands, I am not very unusual. Most Americans now conduct at least some of their financial transactions without paper, or at least sleep happily knowing that others do. Yet when it comes to voting -- a far simpler and more straightforward activity than electronic bank transfers -- we suddenly become positively 19th century in our need for a physical record.

It is, if you think about it, quite inexplicable.

Daniel E. Troy, the Food and Drug Administration's chief counsel, criticized by a congressman in July for intervening on the side of drugmakers in legal cases, will resign effective Nov. 24, the agency said. Troy, who was named to the post in 2001, planned to stay with the agency just a few years, acting FDA Commissioner Lester M. Crawford said in an interview after speaking at a Senate hearing on flu vaccine.

Why is this good news? Troy is in the pocket of industry. He is one of the big forces behind creating constitutional protections for drug advertising, thus placing it outside of consumer protections that currently exist (such as disclosing adverse side effects and requiring proof of effectiveness). Representative Maurice Hinchey has assembed quite a dossier on Troy:

For the first time in FDA's history the FDA's Chief Counsel is actively soliciting private industrial company lawyers to bring him cases in which the FDA can intervene in support of drug and medical device manufacturers. The cases he is seeking out are private state civil litigation cases. These are cases in which in which drug companies and medical device manufacturers are being sued by people harmed by their products. The court has not asked for FDA involvement in these cases. In other words, FDA is spending taxpayer dollars to defend drug companies who are being sued in state court. Since August 2001, the FDA has expended over 600 hours to file at least six briefs on behalf of these companies in four such cases across the country...