Saturday, June 26, 2010

interview 229.int.0 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Of course, Wright and Kroese’s guidelines sound reasonable, but the devil is in the details. How transparent is transparent? What is an ‘appropriate’ level of support? Would not a company who interprets these guidelines at a low level have – at least initially – an appreciable cost advantage? I noted with concern per the New York Times:

Navigenics said its tests are ordered by a physician because a doctor on contract to the company reviews customer orders before the specimens are passed to the testing laboratory.

(Pollack, 2008). That is, the industry’s business practice standards might be very low.

In reading over Harrisburg University’s “Ethical Decision Making” competency, my concluding concern is that my intrinsic standards are too high with the result that if I maintain these standards of integrity and honesty, I might deprive myself of income even as my society would implicitly want me to lower my standards and provide such services. As such, it seems to me that clear written and on-line explanations of the methods used to produce results would be a minimum required business practice.

As to the overall search experience, I was delighted to find quality articles in each of (i) the New York Times, (ii) on-line, and (iii) in our Library’s database. The search, per se, was much easier than I anticipated in that, for example, it more often seems that peer-reviewed scientific-oriented journal articles concern themselves with minutiae – as an example, the results of obtuse chemical reactions -- and not with the developments of emerging businesses/consumer services. On the otherhand, I was very disappointed that employees of a “public policy institute” were not available for a short interview by a student.
Works Cited

Ng, P.C., Murray, S.S., Levy, S., Venter, J.C. (2009). An agenda for personalized medicine. Nature, 461, 724 – 726.

Pollack. A. (2008, June 26). Gene Testing Questioned by Regulators. New York Times.
Retrieved http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/business/26gene.html

Wright, C.F., & Kroese, M. (2010). Evaluation of genetic tests for susceptibility to common complex diseases: why, when and how? Human Genetics, 127, 125-134.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Lee 883.lee.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Peggy Lee's contributions to American music - not only as a singer but also as a lyricist, composer and musical innovator - exemplify popular music at its best through the eras of jazz, blues, swing, Latin and rock. Her star has never diminished and through the years Miss Lee's music has touched the soul of millions throughout the world.

Friday, May 14, 2010

wounds 332.wou.03 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

On December 2, 1988 Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islamic State. In the preceding decade of political struggle, Ms. Bhutto was arrested on numerous occasions; in all she spent nearly 6 years either in prison or under detention for her dedicated leadership of the then opposition Pakistan Peoples Party. Throughout the years in opposition, she pledged to transform Pakistani society by focusing attention on programs for health, social welfare and education for the underprivileged. Since assuming the office of Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto has emphasized the need to heal past wounds and to put an end to the divisions in Pakistani society - including reducing discrimination between men and women. Ms. Bhutto has launched a nationwide program of health and education reform. Benazir Bhutto was born in Karachi in 1953. After completing her early education in Pakistan, she attended Radcliffe College and Oxford University. As well as obtaining a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, she also completed a course in International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford. Ms. Bhutto is the author of "Foreign Policy in Perspective" (1978) and her autobiography, "Daughter of Destiny" (1989). She received the Bruno Kreisky Award for Human Rights in 1988 and the Honorary Phi Beta Kappa Award from Radcliffe in 1989. Benazir Bhutto is a woman of courage and conviction and we are proud to acknowledge her with the International Leadership Award.

Monday, May 10, 2010

exercises 554.exe.003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

We had plans, and there were exercises on how to act if the Egyptians crossed the Canal, but these plans always began from our that our reserve army would be deployed before the war broke out. In fact, there were reactions to Egyptian or Syrian attacks to which we could reply with the regular army. What happened on the battlefield of the southern command was that, according to the exercises, our strongholds, surrounded by the Egyptian army which had crossed, called for help, and only a few tank platoons came to their rescue. The situation was good for small operations on the part of the Egyptians, but not for a real attack. Most of the tank platoons managed to reach the Canal, but they didn't know what they were supposed to do there; they did not arrive in a concentrated force, but piecemeal, to different areas. They shot a bit, they evacuated the casualties, and then came back again. That's how they arrived: two, three tanks at a time. They began just sinking to the ground... and it became dark, and the Egyptians continued to cross. So that the strategy was a wrong strategy. Instead of evacuating the strongholds and retreat, the tanks ran forward, trying to prevent the crossing, but they acted in very small numbers, while the Egyptians had tens of thousands of soldiers.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

downstairs 433.dow.003003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Davis, born July 9, 1964, was 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, with brown hair, hazel eyes, a scruffy mustache and cleft turtle chin. He had bulging prison muscles and a collection of bad jailhouse tattoos on his wrist, ankle, buttocks, chest and back.

In prison and just after, he wore his hair in an outdated mullet style — short bangs and a cascade of hair down his back. (He later cut it off.)

He was so obviously an ex-con that he might as well have had his prison I.D. number stamped on his forehead.

But he considered himself a player, and he apparently hit on nearly every woman he met.

His downstairs neighbor, Carol Boydston, told reporters that he was a tireless seducer.

"He tried to get me up there, but I never wanted to get involved with him," she told KMBC-TV in Kansas City. "I thought he was just a big flirt."

"He seemed like a real nice guy," she told the Independence Examiner, although "he did have a strange side."

For example, Boydston said, Davis made sure she knew every time he had a woman in his apartment. He often tried to give her the details of his sexual conquests, including the ages of female guests — some as young as 18.

"He bragged he still had it," she said.

What he didn't explain is that most of the women who visited his busy bed were meth addicts who were lured there in a sex-for-drugs exchange.

Friday, April 16, 2010

return 662.ret.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

One eye witnesses to the robbery of Serabit el Khadem was a private soldier named Ido Dissentchik. Ido�s father was the editor of Ma�ariv, a prominent Israeli daily newspaper (Dissentchik 1981:12-13, quoted by Slater 1991:284).� By sheer chance, Ido�s unit happened to be in reserve duty in Abu Rudeis in Sinai in July 1969. The unit was ordered to provide protection for defense minister Dayan at Serabit el Khadem (misspelled in Slater 1991:284). Arriving there, they found �Dayan and his friend for archaeological matters [not named] busy on a tour. It was not a regular military tour, but an archaeological one. The pilots... took aboard the helicopter the treasured antiquities that Dayan desired�. They watched in amazement, says Ido, and on the way back one of his unit suddenly said: �We provided security for a crime. Just like in the movies: the robbers inside the bank, the covering men outside. We are accessories to a crime�.� The �simple soldiers� realized the nature of what they saw, whereas the eyes of the generals were blinded by greed. Dissentchnik (1981:12-13) continues to tell how he argued with his father, who refused to publish any of this in his newspaper, saying: �What you tell does not surprise me. No story about Moshe Dayan will surprise me. He�s capable of any bad deed. But we will not write such things about him. Moshe Dayan must be accepted as he is, with the good and the bad in him... because we need him. When D day comes, he is our hope and our savior�. In response to which Ido asked, �regardless of price�? The answer of his father was unequivocal and quite typical of the period, �there is no price for the independence and safety of a nation.�� After the 1973 war, the father admits his mistake, and remarks that he knows many more stories about Dayan, mostly about money, but he would still not publish them, because �after all these years, it will be hypocritical on my part.�

Another direct and credible eyewitness was Uri Yarom, who happened to be the helicopter pilot who carried Dayan�s looted finds. In his autobiography, Yarom (2001:170-173) tells about the �Steiner operation� in 1956- after the German word Stein (stone). Dayan is explicitly mentioned as the one responsible for this �operation�, in which he used the new military vehicle- the helicopter- to haul the heavy antiquities. Yarom landed at Abu Rudeis where, �over a picnic-lunch, the commander of the camp described our next mission: to reach to the ruins of Serabit el Khadem... and carry a load of stones of archaeological-historical value, already marked by Shmaryah Gutman, and to land them at Abu Rudeis. The booty [sic, shalal in Hebrew- R.K.] will be loaded on a Dacota plane [at Abu Rudeis], to be taken to Israel� (Yarom 1971:171).� The looting took place on 27.11.56; Yekutiel Adam and Uzi Narkis, two high-ranking officers of the IDF, were present in the helicopter. They made three rounds at least, taking an inscribed stele, a large obelisk, and �a few more pieces�. Some 20 soldiers helped to transfer the �booty� to a plane going home, in which they themselves hoped to get a lift for a leave. According to Yarom, one stele with Hathor�s face was damaged by a careless driver when loaded on a military truck. Most of the stones, writes Yarom, reached the Hebrew University collection, but at least one �found its way to the private collection of Dayan (Yarom 2001:173). A photo of an obelisk being hauled by the helicopter from the site appears in the book.

Rumors (which I could not verify) explain that when Dayan was handed the query about this in the Knesset in 1971, he did make his homework. He took the stele out of his house shortly before the scheduled date of discussion. Then he testified in the Knesset that he does not have any stele from Serabit el Kahdem in his house at the moment.� This, in his eyes, made him truthful.�

Professor Ze�ev Meshel of Tel Aviv University, in an interview made on 15.1.02, recalls that he saw stelea from Serabit el Khadem in the IDAM stores in Shlomo Hamelekh street in Jerusalem. A former IDAM worker, Shimon Nahmani, showed them wrapped in cloth inside a room closed to the public. He told Meshel that the IDAM never asked for these stelea, and that Dayan brought them suddenly in 1956 without warning. They did not know what to do with them. I have heard similar versions of this same story from other archaeologists, who asked to remain anonymous. According to them, after the peace treaty with Egypt was signed, the IDAM had to work hard in order to persuade the air force to return these very heavy antiquities to Sinai.

The case of Serabit el-Khadem demonstrates the myth cultivated by Dayan, and especially by his daughter Yael, that he never lied and did everything openly, with knowledge and even consent of Israel�s authorities, hence he was not a despised �burglar at night�. Those who advocate this myth seem to confuse two things. The style of bad deeds, that is, whether they are made in broad daylight or under cover of darkness, cannot vindicate the deeds themselves. Many details remain enigmatic. Shmaryah Gutman is well known as a capable archaeologist and excavator of Gamla in the Golan Heights, and perhaps his name was involved by mistake. Yet, many knew and participated in the looting. They also knew that Dayan�s answers in the Knesset were not truthful.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

checked 992.che.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The next day, three depressions 1.5 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter were found where the object had been sighted on the ground. The following night (29 Dec 80) the area was checked for radiation. Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depressions. A nearby tree had moderate (0.05–0.07) readings on the side of the tree toward the depressions.