Law Jokes

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

Q. What do you call an attorney with a 60 IQ?
A. Your Honor.

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, “Where am I, Cathy?”
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

HK tycoon's mother paid US$77m ransom for him: report

HONG KONG – THE mother of one of Hong Kong’s richest tycoons paid nearly 77 million US dollars (S$103.7 million) for his release after he was kidnapped by a notorious gangster, a report said on Wednesday.

Ms Kwong Siu-hing, the 79-year-old chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties, met gangster Cheung Tze-keung, known as ‘Big Spender’, days after he kidnapped her eldest son Walter Kwok in September 1997, The Standard reported.

Accompanied by one of her younger sons and Mr Kwok’s wife, Ms Kwong offered Cheung 600 million dollars to get her eldest son back.

The ransom in 1,000 dollar notes was packed inside 20 large carrier bags and driven in two Mercedes saloon cars to a quiet lane in Central district, the report said, quoting a source close to the family.

Cheung and his accomplice drove the two cars away with the cash.

The report said the family did a global search of previous ransoms paid and decided to make the offer to Cheung by tripling the amount of the biggest ransom ever paid after the gangster kept changing his demands.

Mr Kwok was later found alive by his family in a wooden container box in a village house, according to the report.

For years rumours had circulated that Walter’s two younger brothers, Thomas and Raymond, were reluctant to pay the ransom.

The report on details of the kidnapping emerged during an ongoing family row over control of Sun Hung Kai Properties, the city’s largest property firm.

Walter Kwok was ousted from the chairmanship in May and his mother, the widow of the company’s former chairman Kwok Tak-seng, has since taken over the reins.

The ouster came the day after Mr Kwok, who had been on leave from the company since February, failed in a last-ditch legal bid to try and prevent a board meeting where the company’s directors were to vote on removing him.

Mr Kwok has accused his brothers, both vice-chairmen and managing directors of the firm, of falsely asserting that he had a mental disorder, court documents showed.

The rift was reportedly caused by Walter’s involvement with a female friend whom it was alleged had become increasingly influential on the married tycoon and his firm.

Gangster Cheung was tried and executed in mainland China in 1998. — AFP

The Nagasaki Spirit

On the calm clear night of 19 Sep 1992, the 100,000 ton crude carrier Nagasaki Spirit collided with the 27,000 ton container vessel Ocean Blessing. The collision occurred just before midnight at the northern entrance to the Malacca Straits. It was a classic T-Bone collision in which the Ocean Blessing is believed to have been making 21 knots based on the engine room log repeater found in the aftermath, and the V-shaped ripping in the side of the Nagasaki Spirit. A massive fire ensued and at least 12,000 tonnes of crude oil spilled out into the Straits. 44 sailors did not survive to tell the tale of what happened before the collision. The final message of the captain of the Nagasaki Spirit however leaves little doubt…

Have been fired upon and now have fire in Nos 5 and 6 and central tanks. Abandoning vessel immediately and into two 16 man life rafts and will activate EPIRB in lat 04.33N, long 98.43E at 1623 GMT Sep 19. No time to report further as abandoning vessel.

No lifeboats were ever found, onboard the Ocean Blessing investigators found only small piles of ashes — the remnants of human remains, and no remains were found on board the Nagasaki Spirit.

Speculation has it that the Nagasaki Spirit was taken by pirates, and the Ocean Blessing had also been pirated, or was trying to avoid the same, as she was observed by another ship “to move in an erratic manner — changing speeds from 10 to 20 knots, from side to side, as though the deck watch officer was trying to employ evasive maneuevers to avoid being boarded by pirates”.

Ben Graham

“There are two requirements for success in Wall Street. One, you have to think correctly; and secondly, you have to think independently.”

~ Ben Graham

Optimism bias

Optimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. People tend to see the future through “rose-colored glasses,” as the saying goes. Optimism bias applies to professionals and laypeople alike. Optimism bias arises in relation to estimates of costs and benefits and duration of tasks. It must be accounted for explicitly in appraisals, if these are to be realistic. Optimism bias typically results in cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and delays, when plans are implemented.

In a study in search of the brain regions responsible for optimism, researchers noted that “humans expect positive events in the future even when there is no evidence to support such expectations. For example, people expect to live longer and be healthier than average, they underestimate their likelihood of getting a divorce, and overestimate their prospects for success on the job market.”

In a debate in Harvard Business Review, between Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Bent Flyvbjerg, Flyvbjerg (2003) – while acknowledging the existence of optimism bias – pointed out that what appears to be optimism bias may on closer examination be strategic misrepresentation. Planners may deliberately underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in order to get their projects approved, especially when projects are large and when organizational and political pressures are high. Kahneman and Lovallo (2003) maintained that optimism bias is the main problem.

Lakshmi

Lakshmi or Mahalakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity.

Lakshmi in Sanskrit is derived from its elemental form “lakS” meaning to “perceive”, to “observe”. This is synonymous with “lakSya” meaning “aim” or “objective”. Lakshmi is thus goddess of the means to achieving objectives including prosperity in the life of mankind.

She is the consort of Vishnu and married Rama (in her incarnation as Sita) and Krishna (as Rukmini and Radha).

Lakshmi is the embodiment of Love, from which devotion to God or Bhakti flows from. It is through Love/Bhakti or Lakshmi that the atma or soul is able to reach God or Vishnu. She is also the personification of the Spiritual energy within us and universe called Kundalini. Also, She embodies the Spiritual World or Vaikunta; the abode of Lakshmi-Narayana or Vishnu, or what would be considered Heaven in Hinduism. She is also the Divine qualities of God and the soul. Lakshmi is the embodiment of God’s superior spiritual feminine energy or the Param Prakriti, which purifies, empowers and uplifts the individual. Hence, She is called the Goddess of Fortune.

The experience of a lifetime

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is of ultimate importance, the most important pursuit. The name derives from the Greek word for “delight”

The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that is good for a person. This is often used as a justification for evaluating actions in terms of how much pleasure and how little pain (i.e. suffering) they produce. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximise this total pleasure (pleasure minus pain).

John Stuart Mill believed that there can be different levels of pleasure – higher quality pleasure is better than lower quality pleasure. Mill also argues that simpler beings (he often references pigs) have an easier access to the simpler pleasures; since they do not see other aspects of life, they can simply indulge in their pleasures. The more elaborate beings tend to spend more thought on other matters and hence lessen the time for simple pleasure. It is therefore more difficult for them to indulge in such “simple pleasures” in the same manner.

Ayn Rand, one of the biggest modern proponents of Egoism, rejected hedonism in a literal sense as a comprehensive ethical system:

To take “whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition. . . . This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism–in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. “Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that “the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that “the proper value is whatever you happen to value”–which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.