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June 27, 2006
On California Soil
We arrived in California last week. It felt like I was returning to my ancestral homeland--which is ironic because I was actually born in Wisconsin (a little-known fact). My new contact information:
Eric Goldman
Santa Clara University School of Law
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053
(408) 551-3000 x6135
egoldman@gmail.com (still waiting for my SCU address)
I'll send out an email with my complete contact information soon.
Posted by Eric at 06:09 PM | General
June 16, 2006
Ethical Issues in Contract Drafting
Last month, I gave a presentation entitled Ethical Issues in Contract Drafting to a group of lawyers. My slides.
An interesting anecdote about this presentation--I had a former Vice President of the United States in my audience. At this point in my career, I've given a lot of presentations in front of a lot of important people, so I don't normally get "star struck" any more. However, I must confess it was rather unsettling to have a VPOTUS listening intently to my talk. I was too nervous to approach him after the talk. What would you say to someone who was one heartbeat away from having his finger on The Button?
Posted by Eric at 06:01 PM | Legal Industry
June 10, 2006
Slinky Manufacturing Article
I don't know how I missed this article when it first came out in 2002. The article describes the Slinky manufacturing, distribution and retailing process, beginning with the processing of scrap metal at a junked car lot in Florida and ending at a KB Toys retail outlet in Gaithersburg, MD (with stops in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New Jersey along the way).
The slinky manufacturers are notoriously secretive about their manufacturing process (hence, no slinky factory tours), but this article gives some flavor for the process:
Just a few hours later, the wire was hooked up to the Slinky machines, which flattened, coiled and cut it. Workers crimped the ends of the still-hot Slinkys and placed them on a conveyor belt, which carried them to the machine that boxes them -- each Slinky walking toward its own box.
First a Slinky hit a bar, flopped over and went down a step. A mechanical arm pulled a box from a stack, opened it and placed the box next to the Slinky, which was then automatically pushed inside.
The process isn't mere theatrics; it's a system of quality control that Slinky inventor Richard James devised in 1945. A Slinky wound too tightly or too loosely won't walk down into the box correctly.