After a semi-truck driver took his eyes off the highway for more than 30 seconds to search for snacks he dropped on the floor, he plowed into the back of an F-350 and pancaked it into the back of another semi in front of him. The F-350 driver died.
I write weekly case studies for High Impact’s weekly email newsletter, highlighting major wins we’ve helped our attorney clients attain. Read the entire case study on High Impact’s website.
When a group of Kentucky cardiologists conspired to perform hundreds of unnecessary heart surgeries on patients for the purpose of boosting profits, attorney Hans Poppe of the Poppe Law Firm needed to prove that it was fueled by a ring of corruption that incentivised malpractice on a massive scale.
Representing more than 170 people who underwent similar surgeries, Poppe asked High Impact to build him an arsenal of exhibits that could be applied and easily modified for each case. His most recent case, working with Tom Rhodes of the Tom Rhodes Law Firm, concluded with a $21.2M jury verdict for a patient who was implanted with an unnecessary pacemaker.
Our visual objectives:
We equipped Poppe with an arsenal of medical animations, information graphics, Color Diagnostics, and digital interactive exhibits. We also built a custom 3D interactive heart on a touchscreen that was so realistic, two defendant cardiologists were awed into admitting that the exhibit was “fair and accurate” in front of the judge – as their attorneys were in the process of objecting against its admissibility (See Final Exhibit Below).
As Poppe continues representing the victims of unnecessary surgeries and fraud, he’s using the following exhibits to expose a monopoly of medical malpractice in Kentucky.
Click here to the entire case study, and see the visuals we produced on High Impact’s website.
Neil deGrasse Tyson – inarguably the most renowned American astrophysicists in the United States – went on the Joe Rogan Experience to talk about science, NASA and the universe.
I mixed his audio from the podcast into a funky rap over Wax Tailor’s “Time to Go,” and animated a rap cartoon in which “Neil deGrasse Tyson Funks the Universe.”
I want to continue making more of these as a series under the name, “The Funky Space Blimp.”
It was shaping up to be a normal day of shredding that funky pow pow at A Basin. But suddenly, Grant decided to shoulder plow the mountain and dislocate his shoulder.
I produced this video for the U.S. Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology, as part of its annual study about strategy and air power in the future.
CSAT will use the video in its presentation about the accelerating progression of technology toward the singularity. The singularity is the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human superintelligene through the combination of biology and technology – artificial intelligence.
Update: My video is now featured in the Huffington Post, along with Rep. Stephen Webber’s response.
Missouri politicians went nuts this week protesting the idea of Missouri issuing Jayhawk license plates.
A bipartisan team of Missouri lawmakers passed legislation aimed at blocking the measure, which will go to Governor Jay Nixon next Wednesday.
But that didn’t stop them from embarrassing themselves first. And nothing entertains Jayhawk fans more than a bunch of uneducated Mizzou fans tripping over their lack of evidence for why Missouri isn’t a waste of America’s oxygen.
Rep. Stephen Webber delivered the best performance of the week with a belligerent rant about how much he secretly loves KU and wishes he could support a team that wins actual championships.
“Like generations of Missourians before us, we face an incursion from the west,” Webber shouted with the confident voice of a wasted frat bro who left his keys at a strip club. “It will be repulsed. This is the effort to affix the dreaded, disgusting Jayhawks symbol to our Missouri license plates.”
Instead of going through the process of breaking down the stupidity of his directionless monologue, I decided to let Napoleon Dynamite demonstrate what Mizzou fans really sound like to Jayhawk Nation. Below is what happens when you elect a Mizzou fan to humiliate your society.
Correction: When I originally produced this video, I thought Webber was a Senator because that’s what the 610 dudes called him on the radio. By the time I realized this mistake, I already had so many views that I didn’t want to take it down and start my viewership over. So my empty, selfish greed for views outweighed my journalistic integrity. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter because he shouldn’t be either one.
Correction 2: Yahoo! Sports reported this weekend that Webber isn’t even a Missouri graduate – he went to Saint Louis University – which actually makes sense because even Missouri fans do not wish to go to Missouri.
I produced this video for Jon Loomer, a marketing expert who specializes in helping organizations leverage Facebook to drive their business goals.
The idea was to animate a fast-moving timeline that built up into a tower in a way that illustrates how rapidly Facebook is constantly evolving. I chose the music because I thought it reflected sort of a Tetris vibe.
Check out Jon Loomer’s Facebook page for more information about how he can help your business leverage Facebook.
My birthday is coming up in a few days and I designed this image for the Facebook event page. I thought it looked cool enough to showcase on my blog, so check it out. I PhotoShopped my best friends who are coming to visit from Kansas on to the faces of the characters of the Ocean’s 12 movie poster.
PhotoShop Version
Original Version
Stoney’s is Allen Fieldhouse West. You will never find a better KU bar in Colorado than this magical parallel universe of Jayhawk energy vibrations.
I don’t normally write reviews, but every experience I’ve had at Stoney’s has been so perfect, they deserve to be recognized by Jayhawk Nation as the standard for how all KU alumnae bars should operate.
From start to finish, Stoney’s Bar & Grill, located at 11th and Lincoln, embodies the ultimate Jayhawk bar experience. They orchestrate the “Crimson and the Blue” fight songs, they run contests for people to win front-row seats on couches, their bartenders, bouncers and servers all wear Jayhawk gear, their menus offer Jayhawk drink specials and KU fans from all over Denver congregate to form the ultimate holy sanctuary of Jayhawk pride.
Even the bar itself reeks of pure awesomeness. The walls are decked out in snowboards and skis (and plenty of KU memorabilia). You can play beer pong, bean bag toss and Skee-ball. Their drink specials are always great. And every time you go, you’ll see the new hottest girl you’ve ever seen in your life.
The first day I moved to Denver, I went to Stoney’s for one of those preseason “beat the crap of a no-name team” games. They treated it like it was the Big 12 Championship. When their main projector malfunctioned, they handed out tickets for people to get free food and drinks for the next game.
Choppers, from what I understand, is the competing KU bar. But friends have told me it lost all credibility after a Florida game competed for TV space with a major KU game. Stoney’s understands nothing can ever compete with a KU game – we are college basketball.
If you’re a local Denverite looking for a place to watch a KU game, Stoney’s will make you feel proud to be a Jayhawk.
Below is some footage from Saturday’s storybook-ending victory against Mizzou. The celebration was the reaction to T Rob stuffing that dude to bring KU into overtime, and eventually win the Civil War for the North, once and for all.
And while we’re on the subject, Missouri has still won “NO CHAMPIONSHIPS OF ANY KIND!!!”
Three years ago, a handful of banks facing eminent collapse took $850,000,000,000 from taxpayers, and promised to reform their ways.
One year after the meltdown, the executives who collectively ran the banking system into the ground rewarded themselves nearly $20,000,000,000 in taxpayer-funded bonus money.
Two years after the meltdown, the financial industry was spending more than $35,000,000 every month lobbying against any and all financial reform.
Three years after the meltdown, they lobbied House Republicans to bring our country to the brink of bankruptcy to block any attempt to raise taxes on people making more than $1,000,000,000 annually.
Today, these same financial vampires are vilifying our generation for being upset, and can’t understand why so many people hate them.
When you think about it, it is understandable why these bankers are confused. They’ve been getting away with so much corruption for so long that trying to tell them that the system has to be fixed now is like trying to convince an alcoholic that liquor stores should be outlawed.
To be completely fair, a lot of these investment bankers do not believe their free-for-all “investment” tactics are corrupt in the first place. A lot of them believe that their industry would better serve the economy if the government just eliminated all the rules, and left them to their own devices. A lot of them don’t even believe that what they’re doing is gambling. They think they’re investing money into the economy to create jobs.
But when you take money that customers deposit into your bank, and you use it to bet five times what your worth that poor people will indefinitely be able to pay their mortgages forever – you’re not creating jobs; you’re gambling away people’s savings.
Beyond the corruption of all that nonsense – this industry took $850,000,000,000 from taxpayers because they were about to disintegrate from the earth, and then used that to reward themselves $20,000,000,000 in bonuses. Forget the fact that $20,000,000,000 could finance half of what the federal government spends on higher education, and let’s just focus on the concept of rewarding yourself a bonus when your bank breaks.
Anyone who worked for a bank that was bailed out and accepted a bonus that ended with the suffix “illion” would most definitely eat his own son. And people like that belong in prison.
Which brings us to the third tier of corruption: why were these banks allowed to use taxpayer money to reward themselves huge bonuses? Because people like (D) Senator Chris Dobbs were in charge of including that rule, but forgot to include it because AIG gave him $225,000 in campaign contributions after giving his wife $500,000 every year to serve on various AIG boards.
My parents are always confused about why the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting Wall Street instead of the government. But the concept I think our generation understands more extensively than theirs is how much our government is controlled by Wall Street.
And I don’t mean to say that we’re smarter or anything condescending like that. It’s simply a testament to how much the Internet has revolutionized our ability to find out how governments all over the world really operate. The same realizations are happening across the Middle East, where the Internet has enabled rebels from our generation to bypass state-controlled media and understand how their governments really operate.
I don’t think the Occupy Wall Street movement will end as dramatically as the movements in Egypt, Lybia and soon-to-be Syria – primarily because our citizens aren’t nearly as oppressed. But I do see this movement as our generation’s anti-Vietnam War movement: when people realized on a massive scale how ridiculous it was to continue sending thousands of kids to die overseas for no strategic reason other than “fight the commies forever.”
I like the fact that our generation is occupying Wall Street instead of Washington, D.C., because it shows that we understand that Congress doesn’t write our laws – Wall Street lobbyists write our laws and deliver them to Congress where they come under a vote. The occupation of Wall Street represents the knowledge that we know Wall Street controls our government, and we want that corruption to end.
And that is the reason I support Occupy Wall Street.
The OWS movement will inevitably fade like every other political trend. But if it were to accomplish one demand, I would want Congress to pass a law that ensures “The Separation of Corporation and State” – so that giant companies will no longer be allowed to finance political campaigns, and install politicians that they can control. Because we can’t even begin to fight the corruption until we stop the corruption from writing our laws.
Andy Greenhaw 