Law Humor

New Year’s Resolutions for 2013

Posted on January 10, 2013
Last year’s resolution went pretty well. I’m going to keep it on top and add two or three more: Live an integral life. Don’t live in a pig sty. Act on a more timely basis. Write more here and less elsewhere. Anything else? I’ll keep thinking on it.

This year’s resolution

Posted on October 08, 2012
Fortunately, it had nothing to do with timeliness. I have one resolution this year and one only: To live an integral life. I haven’t done badly so far with this. We’ll see how it goes.

This year’s resolutions. I gave these a month’s thought…

Posted on February 01, 2011
I ended up with a dozen which aren’t in any particular order other than the one in which I wrote them down. Twelve resolutions is a lot. We’ll see which, if any, of these survive the next eleven months. Increase my charitable giving to five percent by the end of the year...

Sunday’s Sermon: Public Education and Unitarian Universalist Values

Posted on January 30, 2011
Here’s the prepared text for last Sunday’s sermon. It varies considerable from the sermon as given: Public Education and Unitarian Universalist Values So I was originally going to talk about that most Unitarian Universalist day in January, January 6, Four Freedoms Day, the day in 1941 that FDR declared these four freedoms should be universal: Freedom [...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

“Dietrich could not be bothered to argue whether or not God exists”

Posted on January 07, 2011
When I read that, I stopped to post this link. I’d been saying recently that if I wrote the book I had in my mind the first sentence would be, “This is not a book about whether or not there is a god.” Here’s one core paragraph to convince you: What they don’t know is that there’s [...

Resolution

Posted on January 03, 2011
So I’m still making my list of resolutions, on paper, but I liked the way “Resolution” looked up there. Resolution is not one of the more noted or popular virtues but is a virtue nonetheless, and worth practicing.

Notes from tonight’s meeting

Posted on October 27, 2010
There was a meeting tonight called by CAR to discuss their visibility action tomorrow to demand the resignation of a Midland school board member who made anti-gay slurs on this Facebook page. I attended (but can’t, sadly, go to the vigil tomorrow) and these are my notes: Randy Romo speaking about: the necessity of demonstrating...

Guess The Author, or, Does Class Exist?

Posted on October 26, 2010
Here’s the lead sentence from an AP blurb about an author’s upcoming appearance at UA-Fayetteville: Differences in literacy rates among different racial and ethnic groups in this country will be a topic on Tuesday at Fayetteville. Now, can you guess the author? Surprise! It’s Jonathan Kozol...

Propaganda Lessons from the Religious Right

Posted on September 15, 2010
This is wonderful in its description of the horrible: So often we seem to be in a battle with something we can’t see. The other side makes a claim that is provably false — like that Obama has raised taxes or quadrupled the deficit — and rather than ask for examples or evidence, large numbers of people just [...

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

Posted on September 15, 2010
My favorite from this list: 31. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people?s names in it. via Randal Schwartz

A Quote, from Michael Warner

Posted on September 12, 2010
Habermas does not set out to invent or celebrate a putatively lost ideal of the public (though he has sometimes been read this way); he wishes to show that bourgeois society has always been structured by a set of ideals that were contradicted by its own organization and compromised by its own ideology...

A Quote, from Dorothy Allison

Posted on September 04, 2010
I wear my skin only as thin as I have to, armor myself only as much as seems absolutely necessary. I try to live naked in the world, unashamed even under attack, unafraid even though I know how much there is to fear.

Algebra as a Civil Right (pt. 2)

Posted on August 25, 2010
Here’s our last installment, and here’s today’s, in two parts: But for math the ACCUPLACER says ?you cannot go to college until you learn multiplication tables? ? period. It is no wonder that many 19-year olds walk out and say ?f*ck that!? and give up on college...

?We never have been at war with Wall Street?

Posted on July 17, 2010
Jonathan Zasloff asks a good question.

Why I hate the “open source is free like a puppy” argument

Posted on July 15, 2010
It’s very simple: The assumes I don’t know that every application, whether open source or proprietary, requires upkeep. I find that patronizing on a good day and insulting on a bad one.

What I got from PrivacyCamp

Posted on May 08, 2010
First off, I had one really neat idea, for which I’d like to get a simple implementation done quickly. I’m not sure doing so is within one person’s spare time efforts, but still, it was a neat idea. Other things: The language used around data portability is confused and incoherent...

New Digital Signs Target Shoulder-Surfing Stalkers

Posted on May 07, 2010
Using technology from top Silicon Valley companies, advertisers are creating a new breed of digital signs that can be customized depending on a viewer’s age and gender, and on the age, gender, and intent of the person standing next to the viewer, standing behind the viewer, or looking furtively over the viewer’s shoulder...

“I’m tired of letting other people’s possible opinions dictate what goes into my art”

Posted on May 02, 2010
The author of one of my favorite webcomics said something really great today. I’ve deliberately quoted it and not linked to it. You can find it and the piece it references with little effort.

Dear Thomas Friedman: One Out Of Three Ain’t Good

Posted on May 01, 2010
I’ve had a grudge against Thomas Friedman ever since he slandered the countryside between the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport and Bentonville as “Dogpatch”. The man doesn’t recognize working farmland and unfarmable hill country, which is bad enough, and doesn’t recognize his own failure to understand what he sees, which is much worse...

A Self-Contradictory Bumper Sticker

Posted on April 30, 2010
Yesterday, on an SUV with a Tim Griffin bumpersticker, I saw this bumper sticker below it: ECONOMIC QUESTIONS SHOULD NEVER HAVE POLITICAL ANSWERS which is itself a political answer to an economic question.

“The desire to return to somewhere completely new but familiar…”

Posted on April 30, 2010
Two quotes from this short article: But where Bloch differed from other Marxists was in his insistence that it was not possible to simply dismiss religion as “the sigh of the oppressed creature in a hostile world” without recognising that the sigh contained the pre-illumination of a different and better world...

I Sometimes Use Class To Avoid Talking About Race

Posted on April 25, 2010
It’s true, and it’s a little embarrassing, but I have sometimes used class to avoid talking about race. It’s the sort of compromise that has always grit my teeth. Why do I sink to it? (Hear that? “sink to it” There’s a moral overtone, tied up with my pride, that I don’t like there...

Ten Books, you say?

Posted on April 24, 2010
Okay, I’ll bite. The ten(nish) books that most influenced me are these, which I read well before I turned twenty-one: Billy Bass, by R. W. Eschmeyer From this book I gained two things in particular: The “fact” that fish don’t feel pain and a visceral revulsion toward pollution...

Funny, but not funny

Posted on April 24, 2010
Shuffling off this digital coil If I knew the author approved of embedding, you’d be seeing it without clicking. (Note: Why did I leave this in draft form for eight months?)

Bands That Don’t Exist Make Records That Do

Posted on April 23, 2010
Isn’t this a great idea? Over the past year, Smith commissioned nearly 100 artists from around the world to create the artwork for 100 45 rpm record jackets that represent more than 60 fictional bands and singers. He enlisted dozens of musicians to help record one song for each record and signed on a [...

Sadness, Despair, and Disagreement

Posted on April 21, 2010
What a sad paragraph! The questions we ask one another are so critically important. If you and I ask each other what we believe, we will get into talking about very heady stuff. We will put forth our beliefs and then support them with evidence and argument...

Go To Hell

Posted on April 08, 2010
We are a people with a purpose: To Go to Hell, and Empty it. So I have friends who wonder what an atheist gets from church, particularly from the old symbols in which I no longer believe. This is what: To go to hell and open a community center of safety...

Tell Me Something Good

Posted on April 04, 2010
A little Easter gift for you: Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock: ?Lamentation? Friday and the Power of Love: Heloise understood compassion as something more than full identification with another’s pain and sorrow and the internalizing of the most abject, abyssal suffering...

Arkansas Punk! compilation from KXUA

Posted on February 09, 2010
This is great! Art Amiss and KXUA 88.3FM have teamed up to bring Fayetteville a snapshot of the thriving Arkansas punk music scene as it is today! The result? A kickin’ compilation of 21 original homegrown Arkansas Punk songs from bands you’ll wish you had already known and won’t soon forget! There’s also one of the best [...

Well, hell, it’s her bass, but I wouldn’t do it to mine

Posted on February 06, 2010
On the other hand, it sure sounds good every time I hear it:

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.