Legal Commentary
Infamy or Praise 
Features law-related commentary in addition to sarcasm and schadenfreude.
Post Frequency: 0.9/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 11:00:00 Recent Entries: 304
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TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (245)
Posted on November 20, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of KRGV (from Tuesday, November 17; link good at time of posting):Anthony Carrazco, 19, practically arrested himself after he was going door-to-door attempting to sell weed, but he knocked on the wrong door...
A Round Tuit (9)
Posted on November 18, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
But enough about us, Mr. Rosenberg.... What do you think of us?
Posted on November 16, 2009We legal bloggers love to talk about ourselves, but on occasion Blawg Review permits us to take a break from our incessant navel-gazing to allow a non-lawyer, non-student, non-academic to gaze at our navels instead. This time last month, Scott Greenfield profiled a gentleman who's become a regular commenter at Greenfield's Simple Justice blog, a formidable blogger at the WindyPundit and The Twin Cities Carry Journal blogs, and a welcome presence in many legal folks' Twitter streams:Jdog is the name he uses most often when commenting here, though regulars know him to be Joel Rosenberg...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (244)
Posted on November 13, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, November 9; link good at time of posting):A British man on the run from police sent a picture of himself to his local paper because he disliked the mugshot they had printed of him as part of a public appeal to track him down...
If there's no Blawg Review in Disneyland, can it really be the Happiest Place on Earth?
Posted on November 11, 2009One of the pleasures of living in California is the state's sensible tax policy that one can go to Disneyland about as frequently as one wishes and one's pocketbook permits. Fortunately, last week was one of those wondrous times when the two came together and I found myself with the family in the Happiest Place on Earth...
A Round Tuit (8)
Posted on November 11, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (243)
Posted on October 30, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Hit & Run blog (from Wednesday, October 28; link good at time of posting):From the office of Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.):Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona?s Sixth District, today released the following statement regarding his vote against H...
A Round Tuit (7)
Posted on October 28, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
I'm an optimist. I'm looking forward to the Great Elation and the Great Progression.
Posted on October 27, 2009Stephen Seckler hosts Blawg Review #235 this week at his Counsel to Counsel site. Published this past Monday, the 80th anniversary of the stock market crash in 1929 which precipitated the Great Depression, one might expect that Seckler's post would not be a heartwarming, uplifting experience...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (242)
Posted on October 23, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Thursday, October 22; link good at time of posting):A Sicilian builder transferred from prison to house arrest tried to get himself locked up again to escape arguments with his wife at home, Italian media reported Thursday...
A Round Tuit (6)
Posted on October 21, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
A Blawg Review Sherpa gives us a [200-year] present.
Posted on October 19, 2009Blawg Review Sherpa Victoria Pynchon hosts Blawg Review #234 at her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog site. She writes about the concept of a "200-year present" wherein we are affected by and affect the lives of the various generations which coexist with us...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (241)
Posted on October 16, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the ABA Journal (from Tuesday, October 13; link good at time of posting):A Georgia federal judge has fined California lawyer Orly Taitz $20,000 for her litigation tactics in a suit questioning whether Barack Obama is a U...
A Round Tuit (5)
Posted on October 14, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
Perhaps it's time to crown an Emperor Norton II.
Posted on October 13, 2009Many years ago, I heard of the colorful 19th Century character known as "Emperor Norton" and his decree abolishing Congress for thwarting the will of the people. When I moved to the (greater) San Francisco Bay Area, I heard his name mentioned here and there, usually as evidence of the City's abiding love for the avant garde...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (240)
Posted on October 09, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle (via Popehat) (from Thursday, October 8; link good at time of posting):A San Francisco murder suspect's attorney sought assurances Wednesday that he would not be arrested for arranging what prosecutors called a "blatant act of witness intimidation" involving eight suspected gang members who stood up during a witness' testimony...
A Round Tuit (4)
Posted on October 07, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
If you can blawg this, thank a teacher.
Posted on October 05, 2009In honor of World Teacher's Day, Susan Cartier Liebel hosts Blawg Review #232 at Solo Practice University. In this educational edition of the carnival of legal blogging, we learn how to move past the billable hour (or not), how to find one's niche in the law and blawging, and how the courthouse has influenced the schoolhouse...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (239)
Posted on October 02, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of WABC (from Thursday, October 1; link good at time of posting):Authorities continue to search for a robbery suspect who strolled out of a Manhattan courthouse after he was mistaken for a lawyer...
A Round Tuit (3)
Posted on September 30, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
Vegas, Baby, Vegas!
Posted on September 29, 2009The ads say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but word was bound to get out about this week's Blawg Review #231, hosted at the Legally UnBound blog. Kael Garvey, the blog's pseudonymous Vegas-resident proprietor (none of us use our real names when we go to Vegas) takes us on a tour of Sin City and the best legal blogging of the past week...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (238)
Posted on September 25, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Hit & Run (from Thursday, September 24; link good at time of posting):New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a salty tooth. According to The New York Times, Bloomberg liberally salts his pizza, throws so much salt on his morning bagel that "it's like a pretzel," and "likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others' lips...
War! What is it good for? Absolutely... well, quite a lot, actually.
Posted on September 20, 2009Mike Semple Piggot and I host Blawg Review #230 at our joint Unsilent Partners blawg. It is a respectful tribute to tomorrow's United Nations International Day of Peace:Officially of course, we?re against war, as it?s undeniably destructive to humans and their works...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (237)
Posted on September 18, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of CNN (via Boing Boing) (from day, September ; link good at time of posting):Embedded video from CNN Video[Previous TGIS]
Harvard's not the douchiest, but still douchy enough for Blawg Review.
Posted on September 16, 2009Harvard alum Barry Barnett hosts this week's Blawg Review #229 at his Blawgletter site on the anniversary of John Harvard's death. Right off the bat, we learn a few things about Harvard, including that he had no involvement with the founding of the university which bears his name and that he spelled his name with only two a's, unlike Haaavaaad University does today...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (236)
Posted on September 11, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of BBC News (from Thursday, September 10; link good at time of posting):Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon...
A Round Tuit (2)
Posted on September 09, 2009When it comes to legal blogging, there seems to be no shortage of writing worth reading once one gets around to it.What's that? You have no round tuit? My friend, you are fortunate indeed, for never before in human history have round tuits been so readily available...
Nothing is certain except death in Texas.
Posted on September 08, 2009Law is Cool founder Omar Ha-Redeye hosts Blawg Review #228 this week. Highlights of this edition include a bitter interview of an asshole from a douchy law school, networking in good times and bad, and debating the role of the government from Obamacare death panels to Texas' death penalty...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (235)
Posted on September 04, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Legal Blog Watch (from Tuesday, September 1; link good at time of posting):If experience is the best teacher, then Denver immigration lawyer Ravi Kanwal certainly knew his stuff when it came to representing illegal aliens...
A Round Tuit
Posted on September 02, 2009My grandfather was an industrious sort. He used to say that he'd get some task or chore done when he "got around to it"; he'd then reach into his pocket to produce a wooden disk the size of a half dollar with the word "Tuit" written on it and excitedly bustle us off to do whatever it was that needed doing...
Simple is the New Complex
Posted on August 31, 2009The theme of this week's Blawg Review #227 is themelessness. I know that it's all very meta, but Sheryl Sisk Schelin does us proud with this effort, hosted at her The Inspired Solo site. As the "next guy [who went] all Dante on you" referenced in the third paragraph, let me just say that I for one am appreciative that Shelin's arrested (at least temporarily) our Blawg Review theme arms race...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (234)
Posted on August 28, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Inquisitr (from Tuesday, August 25; link good at time of posting):Stand-Up Comic, Sunda Croonquist, is being sued by her mother-in-law for defamation because she doesn?t find that being the butt of mother-in-law jokes is funny...
Tale of the Tape
Posted on August 26, 2009Family law barrister Lucy Reed hosts Blawg Review #226 this week at her Pink Tape blog. She focuses on the traditional British summer — meaning in this case the quaint family vacation, rather than the not-so-quaint mass murderer holiday program...
1,000 Joyful and/or Miserable Posts
Posted on August 21, 2009According to Blogger, that last post was the 1,000th here at Infamy or Praise.It seems appropriate that this milestone would be achieved with one of my weekly Schadenfreude posts. Joy in the misfortune of others has been a regular and popular Friday feature here nearly since the inception of the blog...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schedenfreude! (233)
Posted on August 21, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, August 19; link good at time of posting):Authorities said a 23-year-old woman was arrested after a scuffle with a 13-year-old boy in a wheelchair at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children...
TGIS: Thank God for Schadenfreude! (232)
Posted on August 14, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, August 13; link good at time of posting):A 34-year-old man is in custody after authorities say he gave a teller his account number and showed her his picture ID before robbing an Anchorage bank...
Our Baby's All Groweds-Up!
Posted on August 13, 2009If you've not yet taken some time to read Tim Kevan's entertaining Blawg Review #224, hosted at the BabyBarista blog on TimesOnline, what the heck are you waiting for? Go now and do it, and when you've done with that, go read Kevan's BabyBarista novel, BabyBarista and The Art of War, which I reviewed favorably here last week...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (231) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on August 07, 2009This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Inquisitr (from Tuesday, August 4; link good at time of posting):An unidentified man found himself on the business end of four angry, jilted women in a motel room and ended up with a superglued penis...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (231)
Posted on August 07, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Saturday, August 1; link good at time of posting):Police officers contemplating cheating on promotion exams met their match this week in northwestern China - 18 serious-faced fifth-graders walking the beat...
Review: BabyBarista and The Art of War
Posted on August 03, 2009I'm often frustrated by book reviews for the simple reason that most tend to avoid answering the question "Is this book worth reading?" I'll not make that mistake in writing about Tim Kevan's BabyBarista and The Art of War. This is a book worth reading; it's entertaining and insightful, building upon the best aspects of the much-praised BabyBarista blog and providing greater depth and color (or should that be colour?) to its characters and stories...
It takes a village to raise a Blawg Review...
Posted on August 03, 2009When it appeared that Blawg Review's lengthy streak of weekly posts might come to an end this week, the anonymous editor put out a distress call to the one legal blogger who might've seemed the least likely to respond.Respond he did, though, and a bifurcated Blawg Review #223 was produced in record time, with one part hosted by noted Blawg Review curmudgeon Scott Greenfield at his Simple Justice blog and the other hosted by the Editor at the Blawg Review site...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (230)
Posted on July 31, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Tuesday, July 28; link good at time of posting):Two Swedes expecting the golden beaches of the Italian island of Capri got a shock when tourist officials told them they were 650 km (400 miles) off course in the northern town of Carpi, after mistyping the name in their GPS...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (229)
Posted on July 24, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Telegraph (from Monday, July 20; link good at time of posting):Bosses at Knowsley Safari Park are warning motorists to beware of the baboons, after the animals learned how to open rooftop luggage and began stealing items such as underwear after helping themselves to the contents...
Unsilent Partners (3)
Posted on July 23, 2009This week at Unsilent Partners, Mike Semple Piggot and I will address topics involving the Supreme Court of the United States and the brand-spanking-new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. My essay, focusing on the SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process, is available now...
Let's Get Complex
Posted on July 23, 2009Life is complex; litigation is complex; this week at least, Blawg Review is complex. If you've not yet taken a look at Blawg Review #221, hosted this week by H. Scott Leviant at The Complex Litigator blog. Leviant is generous in his praise for the carnival's recent hosts and his effort acquits him quite well, measuring up to those hosts' high standards...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (228)
Posted on July 17, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, July 16; link good at time of posting):Lincoln [Nebraska] police arrested a man who they said made up a story about being robbed to explain why he was walking around a city park naked...
Unsilent Partners (2)
Posted on July 15, 2009Mike Semple Piggot has the lead essay at this week's Unsilent Partners; my response will be posted tomorrow morning. This time around, our topic is assisted suicide, prompted by Lord Falconer's recent proposal to amend the UK's suicide laws to prevent prosecution of those who accompany friends and relatives who've chosen to end their lives abroad...
There's No School Like Old School
Posted on July 14, 2009Walter Olson's decade-old Overlawyered blog is, by most accounts, the original legal blog and is thus the forebear of not just Blawg Review but each and every blog collected in its weekly posts. It's fitting, then, to have Olson host Blawg Review #220 this week, marking his second go-around with hosting duties...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (227)
Posted on July 10, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Yahoo! Rivals.com (from Wednesday, July 8; link good at time of posting):It was assumed he was called "King James" because he reigns on the basketball court. But maybe LeBron James earned that nickname due to his tyrannical ways (in dealing with embarrassment)...
Gmail Finally Walks Down the Aisle
Posted on July 08, 2009Back in April 2005, I wrote a post called "Always a Beta, Never a Bride" which described the semi-permanent "beta" labels Google associates with many of its products. Gmail was a notable example, having been in beta at that point for a year (since April 2004)...
Unsilent Partners
Posted on July 07, 2009I'm pleased that Mike Semple Piggot, of Charon QC and Insite Law Magazine fame, has agreed to work together with me on a new project, Unsilent Partners. At Unsilent Partners, he and I will discuss legal, current, and other topics of interest to US and UK audiences, usually focusing on one topic per week...
Everything Old Is News Again
Posted on July 06, 2009From the beginning, Blawg Review has encouraged its hosts to showcase their own professional and personal interests, to give some color and flavor to their posts. Some of the more notable and memorable posts in Blawg Review's long (by blogging standards) history have been idiosyncratic ones, personal in the most charming sense...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (226)
Posted on July 03, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, July 1; link good at time of posting):The sheriff of Oregon's most populous county has flunked his police certification course.A passing score is an average of 75 on three written tests; Multnomah County Sheriff Bob Skipper got a 66, said Eriks Gabliks, deputy director of the state agency that certifies police officers...
I've been waiting a long time for "Patience" to get bumped from a list of virtues.
Posted on June 29, 2009When Peter Black hosted the Twitter-centric Blawg Review #178 in September 2008, the microblogging service was something of a novelty, and particularly so in the legal community. Since then, Twitter's user base has grown at an astonishing rate, 1,382% between 2008 and 2009 according to Nielsen Online...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (225) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on June 26, 2009This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, June 24; link good at time of posting):A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to journalists at a news conference on Wednesday.Banda softly shouted: "You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket," and paused as he looked up to see the animal playing in a tree just above his chair...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (225)
Posted on June 26, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (via Venkat Balsubramani) (from Sunday, June 21; links good at time of posting):A man who allegedly wanted to buy some marijuana was arrested after he mistakenly sent a text message to a Salem police officer, authorities said yesterday...
The Right Sort of Daddy Issues
Posted on June 22, 2009Fathers' Day has always been more about quiet appreciation than applause and attention. If there's any defining characteristic of the American Fathers' Day, it's been relaxation. Dads are expected and encouraged to take it easy and enjoy a well-deserved day off...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (224)
Posted on June 19, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, June 16; link good at time of posting):After being told by her daughter that a man in their home was an armed intruder, a 77-year-old woman pulled a gun on him and sent him running, according to court documents...
A Blawg Review Host Deserving of the Royal "We".
Posted on June 15, 2009I'll confess that I know little about the Magna Carta apart from the fact that it was a larger-caliber version of the original Carta, with improved penetration and stopping power. It seems that John Bolch knows a bit more about it than I do, which is fortunate since he's the one who's hosting the Magna Carta-themed Blawg Review #216 this week at the Family Lore blog...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (223)
Posted on June 12, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Deadspin (from Wednesday, June 10; link good at time of posting):Reebok belatedly discovers that they gave a shoe contract to [Marcin Gortat,] a white guy with an "Air Jordan" tattoo on his leg...
Enjoy some pun in the sun down by the seashore.
Posted on June 10, 2009If nautical nonsense be something you wish, forego Spongebob this week and check out Blawg Review. Commemorating World Oceans Day, Carolyn Elefant hosts a pun-filled Blawg Review #215 at her My Shingle blog. Yes, I know that World Oceans Day was on Monday; I would've done something then, like perhaps write an introductory post for Blawg Review #215, but I was a bit underwater with professional and personal commitments...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (222)
Posted on June 05, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Jerusalem Post via Joel Rosenberg (from day, June ; link good at time of posting):A six-year-old girl helped put a knife-brandishing robber under arrest Tuesday night after the man had already successfully stolen money from two grown men...
Smoke Yourself Fit with Blawg Review
Posted on June 02, 2009The inimitable Charon QC hosts Blawg Review #214 this week. The occasion is the anniversary of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain. Not the first war, the American Revolution in the 1770s and 1780s, and not the most recent one, when Geeklawyer hosted Blawg Review #203 back in March...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (221)
Posted on May 29, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Inquisitr (from Wednesday, May 27; link good at time of posting):Residents in Conisbrough, England have changed the name of their street after deciding that Butt Hole Road no longer appealed to them...
Blawg Review Throws in the Towel
Posted on May 25, 2009Blessed are the geek: for they shall inherit the earth.--Matthew 5:5 (Revised Internet Edition)Memorial Day coincides this year with Towel Day. As Blawg Review #213 host Kevin Thompson points out, "Towel Day is also a memorial, but a geeky one," which arose after the untimely death -- er, "permanent existence failure" -- in 2001...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (220)
Posted on May 22, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Canadian Press (from Monday, May 18; link good at time of posting):The Belgian bodybuilding championship had to be cancelled after anti-doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled...
What kind of Blawg Review do you usually have here?
Posted on May 18, 2009Elwood Blues: What kind of music do you usually have here?Claire: Oh, we got both kinds. We got country and western.The Blues Brothers (1980)If someone had suggested before this morning that the best legal blogging produced in an entire week could be reduced to a country and western song, it might have seemed unlikely...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (219)
Posted on May 15, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Beautiful Game blog (from Friday, May 8; link good at time of posting):[Previous TGIS]
Universal health coverage? Heated debate. HealthBlawg's Blawg Review? Unanimous acclaim.
Posted on May 11, 2009I confess to a healthy amount of skepticism about both the Obama Administration's first hundred days in office and its next fourteen hundred or so days. Notwithstanding, I'm a great believer in David Harlow's ability to sum up the President's first hundred days in the White House while gathering the best legal blogging of the last seven...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (218)
Posted on May 08, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Times Online (from Monday, May 4; link good at time of posting):From a distance the large ship on the horizon looked like the perfect target, ripe for a successful spot of piracy.But as the Somali pirates sped toward the vessel sailing near the Seychelles, they were horrified to see two boats and a helicopter set off from their target and launch their own counter-attack...
This Blawg Review might just start a movement of its own.
Posted on May 04, 2009Dan Harris has come to accept that despite his varied and considerable talents his previous efforts to bring about world peace via Blawg Review hosting have come to naught. Undaunted, he returns today with Blawg Review #210, which he promises will be sarcastic, mean-spirited, petty, and low-brow but not snarky...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (217)
Posted on May 01, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Asbury Park Press (from Thursday, April 30; link good at time of posting):A Florida man faces misdemeanor charges for possession of drug paraphernalia after he placed his keys and other belongings, including a pot pipe, in a tray at a courthouse security checkpoint...
I'm the damn paterfamilias!
Posted on April 30, 2009If you've not taken some time to read through this week's Blawg Review #209, hosted by John Hochfelder at his New York Injury Cases Blog, don't hesitate a moment longer. Many editions of the carnival of legal blogging have been excellent, memorable ones; until this week, though, none of them prompted me to call my father just to chat...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (216)
Posted on April 24, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Inquisitr (from Monday, April 20; link good at time of posting):Ever heard of the Washington Natinals? Neither had anyone else until Friday when Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn fronted a game at Nationals Park sporting jerseys with the name ?Natinals? printed on them...
Earth Day: Celebrating My Second-Favorite Planet After Gallifrey
Posted on April 22, 2009When I was young, the only people I can recall discussing "Earth Day" were pushing zero population growth and/or anti-immigration policies. Or they were named "Ed Begley, jr." Needless to day, a broader environmental consciousness seems to have taken root in America these days and Earth Day is now closer to being a national day of observation than are actual holidays like Columbus Day or Labor Day...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (215)
Posted on April 17, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, April 13; link good at time of posting):A Polish politician has criticized his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not procreate, local media reported Friday...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (214)
Posted on April 10, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, April 8; link good at time of posting):One Colorado woman's love for tofu has been judged X-rated by state officials.Kelly Coffman-Lee wanted to tell the world about her fondness for bean curd by picking certain letters for her SUV's license plate...
If it's not Scottish, it's not Blawg Review.
Posted on April 06, 2009Stuart Rankin (Mike Myers): Welcome to All Things Scottish. If it's not Scottish, it's crap! Can I help ye? Customer (Phil Hartman): Uh, yeah. A friend of mine's Scottish and he's getting married, so I gotta buy a kilt. Rankin: Well, you've come to the right store...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (213)... The Sequel!
Posted on April 03, 2009This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Times (Trenton, New Jersey) (from Thursday, April 2; link good at time of posting):A man who tried to rob a liquor store Monday night sat down and cried when he encountered resistance from the senior citizen behind the counter, police said...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (213)
Posted on April 03, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, March 31; link good at time of posting):An Internal Revenue Service agent who audits taxpayers in California has agreed to plead guilty to cheating on his own taxes...
I'd like to begin Blawg Review, but first... the Holst!
Posted on March 30, 2009Sure, that video's somewhat tacky and slightly dated, which George Wallace's elegant and up-to-date Blawg Review #205 is not. It also lacks the universal appeal of Wallace's Gustav Holst-themed post, but I haven't time to find anything better right now...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (212)... The Sequel!
Posted on March 27, 2009This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Friday, March 27; link good at time of posting):A would-be suicide bomber accidentally blew himself up on Thursday, killing six other militants as he was bidding them farewell to leave for his intended target, the Interior Ministry said...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (212)
Posted on March 27, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Bloomberg (from Sunday, March 22; link good at time of posting):About 20 protesters, along with a press corps of national and international media who outnumbered them, yesterday rode to the Fairfield County, Connecticut, homes of two AIG executives who received portions of $165 million in extra compensation...
Is "Punctuality" a Sacred Cow?
Posted on March 26, 2009I'll plead that I had a couple of days off earlier this week and then a great deal of catching-up to do at work, but the fact is that I'm just unforgivably late in linking to this week's Blawg Review #204, hosted by the fine folks at the Above the Law blog...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (211)
Posted on March 20, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the I'm Not Actually a Geek blog (from Tuesday, March 17; link good at time of posting):A lucky job applicant tweeted the following:Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work...
Random Thought (17)
Posted on March 18, 2009If you want to walk a mile in my shoes, I'd appreciate it if you'd also pick up a sandwich for me while you're out.[Previous Thought]
Assholes Welcome
Posted on March 17, 2009Former Blawg Review Sherpa Diane Levin has suggested that a "No Assholes Rule" might be warranted for Blawg Review, in light of GeekLawyer's #203 published yesterday. As I commented at her blog, I respectfully disagree:I tend to disagree with you (and with GeekLawyer, it seems)...
What Happens in Blawg Review Stays in Blawg Review
Posted on March 16, 2009"I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy . . . I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and I want to piss on his ashes!"--Al Capone, "The Untouchables" (1987)--Blawg Review Editor, 16 March 2009It's not as if we weren't warned, by Charon QC, Dan Hull, and many others...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (210)
Posted on March 13, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of BBC News (from Wednesday, March 11; link good at time of posting):A West Midlands sandwich bar worker who was prosecuted after footage of him stuffing lettuce up his nose appeared on YouTube has avoided a jail term...
It's a big world out there, but getting smaller all the time.
Posted on March 09, 2009Carl Gardner hosts Blawg Review #202 at his Head of Legal blog. Not to Troy McClure him, but you may know Gardner from such Charon QC podcasts as No. 101, No. 103, and No. 109 (all available at lawcasts.net). In those conversations, Gardner demonstrated his command of current civil liberties issues in Britain; his Blawg Review this week covers that ground and ventures far afield, both topically and geographically, touching on international criminal law in Sudan, civil rights in Germany, and Constitutional law in America, amongst other matters...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (209)
Posted on March 06, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, March 4; link good at time of posting):A Mexican national who told airport immigration he was visiting Britain to see a friend was swiftly deported after a search unearthed a good-luck card in his luggage wishing him well for his "new life in the UK...
Happy anniversary, Blawg Review; you don't look a post over 199!
Posted on February 23, 2009The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.--Mark TwainIt should be noted that although the carnival of legal blogging reaches a milestone with this week's Blawg Review #200, it shows no signs of slowing down. If at some point in the distant future the carnival does finally fold its tents, I have no doubt that Blawg Review would be remembered fondly by the many who've hosted, read, and been linked in its already lengthy existence...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (207)
Posted on February 20, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Saturday, February 14; link good at time of posting):Patrick Rosario had a clever way of making sure a pair of burglars didn't get away with his three flat-screen TVs: He stole their van...
Wow. Just Wow.
Posted on February 17, 2009When it comes to Blawg Reviewin', never let it be said that Houston defense attorney Mark Bennett is all hat and no cattle. His Blawg Review #199, hosted this week at the Defending People blog, finishes out the first two hundred reviews in high style and sets the standard for the next two hundred...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (206)
Posted on February 13, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Huliq.com (from Thursday, February 12; link good at time of posting):[A]n elementary school in Hattiesburg, MS is canceling Cotton Picking Day in celebration of Black History Month.A father became angered when his stepson came home from school with a request to purchase a slave costume so they could reenact cotton picking...
An undigested bit of beef...
Posted on February 11, 2009I dreamed last night that the renewal of my bar membership was being held until I completed a new required continuing education seminar -- Music Appreciation -- for which I would have to write a lengthy research paper on a notable band. Although it seemed odd, I dutifully headed off to bar headquarters to attend...
Deadly Sins Are Always A Capital Idea
Posted on February 10, 2009Jeremy Richey, who hosted Blawg Review when he was a law student back in 2005, has returned to the fold and hosts this week's edition of the carnival of legal blogging at The East Central Illinois Criminal Law & DUI Weblog. He builds Blawg Review #198 around the Seven Deadly Sins...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (205)
Posted on February 06, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, February 2; link good at time of posting):A hapless thief drilled his way into a French bank at the weekend, but missed the safe and instead found himself in a lavatory where he was promptly arrested, a French newspaper reported on Sunday...
The Blawg That Never Sleeps
Posted on February 03, 2009...not this week, anyhow. Legal Blog Watch is amongst the legal blogging elite at the Legal Tech New York conference this week. They managed to kick the week and the conference off right with an excellent Blawg Review #197, highlighting famous ukulele performers of the mid-20th Century...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (204)
Posted on January 30, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, January 29; link good at time of posting):Everett [Washington] police said a 24-year-old man picked the wrong place to try to deal drugs - a stall in the police station restroom...
The Voice of Unreason
Posted on January 28, 2009Charon QC's coverage of the American legal scene didn't end with his excellent Abbot of Unreason Blawg Review earlier this month. Today, Charon's posted an interview with Judge John Kane concerning the failure of the War on Drugs and our antiquated Rules of Civil Procedure...
Perhaps it's still Monday in Australia?
Posted on January 28, 2009I generally post my Blawg Review introductions on Mondays, when the reviews are are posted by their hosts. Obviously, I didn't manage to do that this week. It's not because Peter Black's Australia Day-themed Blawg Review #196 is a poor effort, or because I was busy celebrating Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day instead of Australia Day, or because the recent Australia movie starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman dishonored the entire nation...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (203)
Posted on January 23, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Monday, January 19; link good at time of posting):Police went to the home of 22-year-old woman on Friday to serve warrants for assault, harassing phone calls and violation probation carrying a concealed weapon without a permit...
A Blawg Review not judged by the colors of its template but by the content of its posts...
Posted on January 19, 2009Yolanda Young hosts Blawg Review #195 at her On being A Black Lawyer blog. The Martin Luther King Day holiday has prompted some wonderful posts, including Blawg Review #143 posted by Gideon last year, and Young's post is a worthy addition. She advises us that discussion at her site is casual but true; her post today is also heartfelt and rewarding for those who take a few minutes on this day off to read and consider it...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (202) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on January 16, 2009This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of WKYT Television (via Omar Ha-Redeye) (from Tuesday, January 13; links good at time of posting):Nicholasville [Kentucky] police say a man walked into the South Elkhorn Water District building Tuesday afternoon armed with a gun...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (202)
Posted on January 16, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Saturday, January 10; link good at time of posting):Five of the pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a $3 million ransom, a relative said Saturday, the day after the bundle of cash was apparently dropped by parachute onto the deck of the ship...
A post for those who prefer their legal blogging and their birds well-done.
Posted on January 13, 2009I'm not certain why the following didn't get posted on Sunday evening, but no matter... Susan Cartier Liebel's Blawg Review is just as good two days later:Not since I attended the Seattle Mariners' spring training in Phoenix, Arizona in 2001, the year they set a major league record with 116 wins, have I enjoyed a "Phoenix" this much! The Phoenix is the theme of Susan Cartier Liebel's Blawg Review #194 and celebrates innovation in the practice of law, something which will be the salvation for firms which hope to survive in the present economic climate...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (201)
Posted on January 09, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Daily Mail (via Unprofessional Foul) (from Tuesday, January 6; link good at time of posting):Shola Ameobi has scored an own goal after telling police his home had been burgled, then realising it was just a tip...
It's named after a bull, so perhaps it's suited to these bullsh-- commutes?
Posted on January 05, 2009I'm not sure who I feel more sorry for after a nearly two-hours-long commute this morning in stop-and-go post-holiday traffic -- myself or the guy beside me the whole way in a Lamborghini Gallardo. At least my car was built for this at one-seventh the cost of his...
Misrule and Unreason Make for One Hell of a Blawg Review
Posted on January 04, 2009The inimitable Charon QC has posted Blawg Review #193, the first -- and first great -- Blawg Review of the new year.Coming on the eve of the Twelfth Night holiday, this week's review celebrates the annual reign of the "Lord of Misrule," or the "Abbot of Unreason," a master of ceremonies for the holiday...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (200)
Posted on January 02, 2009This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Little Green Footballs (from Tuesday, December 30; link good at time of posting):[Previous TGIS]
100 Things I Didn't Know Last Year
Posted on January 01, 2009At the start of last year, I came across a very interesting article from BBC News Magazine Monitor. Each week the site's writers compiled a list of ten things which they did not know the previous week; their list published on January 1, 2008 pulled together one hundred of the more notable items from those weekly lists...
Blawg Review Nominations
Posted on December 30, 2008In response to the anonymous Editor's call for nominations, the following posts are, in my humble opinion, the best of the best in what was an outstanding year of Blawg Reviews. As I did last year, I've limited myself to just five posts more-or-less arbitrarily; there were certainly many other Blawg Reviews which deserve serious consideration as "Blawg Review of the Year...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (199)
Posted on December 26, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of CityNews (from Wednesday, December 24; link good at time of posting):You can hire someone to clean [snow] off for you. Or you can wait for it all to melt in the spring. But under no circumstances should you do what a man in New Bedford, Massachusetts thought was a good idea...
Brilliant in Every Sense
Posted on December 22, 2008Ron Coleman hosts a href="http://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/?p=1745"Blawg Review #191/a at his span style="font-style:italic;"Likelihood of Confusion/span blog. Today is the start of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, and Coleman's Review takes its theme from this celebration...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (198)
Posted on December 19, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Star (Malaysia) (Via Legal Juice) (from Saturday, December 13; link good at time of posting):A burglar entered a house-turned-grocery shop, thinking he was in for a killing. He nearly got himself killed instead...
It's the one bill we never mind paying for time and again.
Posted on December 15, 2008Marc Randazza and the Satyriconistas at The Legal Satyricon commemorate Bill of Rights Day in high style with Blawg Review #190. This is a particularly impressive Blawg Review for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they managed to find a Third Amendment-related post to round out their tour of all ten amendments...
He prayeth well, who loveth well/ Both man and site and tweet.
Posted on December 12, 2008Thank you to the many who publicized Blawg Review #189 online and on Twitter:3 Geeks and a Law Blog (Greg Lambert);Above the Law (Elie Mystal);Antitrust Review (David Fischer);Blawg Review (Ed.);Build A Solo Practice (Susan Cartier Liebel);Charon QC;Chicago IP Litigation Blog (R...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (197)
Posted on December 12, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, Decmber 9; link good at time of posting):Police said a woman was arrested after asking a state trooper whether she could smoke - and then trying to light up a marijuana joint...
Tweet of the Ancient Mariner
Posted on December 09, 2008Toward the end of Blawg Review #189, I mentioned a list of practicing lawyers, legal academics, legal professionals, and law students who microblog on Twitter. That list, maintained by Adrian Lurssen, is available here.Interestingly enough, each and every one of the attorneys whose posts were linked in the section on legal communications ("The Tale") are on Twitter, as are the Blawg Review Editor and both of his Sherpas...
Blawg Review #189
Posted on December 08, 2008For my first three Blawg Reviews, I've let Dante lead me through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Inconsiderately enough, however, Il Maestro never completed a fourth cantica for his Divine Comedy, leaving me stuck for a theme this time around. Finding that theme was an albatross around my neck until a friend made a timely and much-appreciated suggestion -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (196) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on December 05, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The New York Times (via Diane Levin) (from Wednesday, December 3; link good at time of posting):In the annals of great crime getaways, the two men who beat and robbed a 70-year-old woman at a housing project in the Bronx on Wednesday afternoon are unlikely to earn a mention...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (196)
Posted on December 05, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of New Zealand's 3 News (via Boing Boing) (from Monday, December 1; link good at time of posting):A thief who stole thousands of dollars worth of electrical gear may want to go into hiding after his picture appeared on billboards around Auckland...
Forget about takeaway; you'll want to stay awhile at this restaurant.
Posted on November 30, 2008Eric Turkewitz has become known in the legal blogosphere for his excellent New York Personal Injury Law Blog and particularly for last year's Blawg Review of the Year runner-up, Blawg Review #134. This year he returns, describing a Thanksgiving holiday with Arlo Guthrie in Blawg Review #188...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (195) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on November 28, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Bendigo Advertiser (via Techdirt) (from Friday, November 21; links good at time of posting):TIMOTHY McCORMACK produced four excellent character references to persuade a judge to give him a lighter sentence for faking his engineering credentials to work on Qantas aircraft...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (195)
Posted on November 28, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, November 24; link good at time of posting):A panda at a zoo in southern China attacked a student who snuck into its pen hoping for a cuddle with the endangered bear, state media said Saturday...
Thanksgiving is special.
Posted on November 27, 2008What other day of the year do I look forward to seeing the Detroit Lions play? What other day of the year does the wife look forward to getting up early to watch people walk with balloons down a street in New York? Ah, Thanksgiving.In this, the calm before the culinary storm to come, consider a more noble purpose for this day...
Random Thought (16)
Posted on November 25, 2008I'm not entirely certain whether I've ever spoken of the pompatus of love.[Previous Thought]
Only the fittest legal blogging survives.
Posted on November 24, 2008Well, not really, as the continuing existence of this blog attests. There isn't a natural selection principle at work in this week's Blawg Review; instead, Joshua Fruchter of the LawyerCasting blog has been hard at work selecting the best legal blogging of the past week for inclusion in Blawg Review #187...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (194)
Posted on November 21, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Weekly Standard (from Tuesday, November 18; link good at time of posting):Hugo Chavez Faces Political Challenge From Ex-WifeShe divorced him, got custody of their daughter, married a tennis instructor, and so as to prevent a descent into divorce cliches, she thought outside the box and worked to defeat constitutional reforms he proposed in 2007, which would have made him president for life...
Blogging and Other Social Media
Posted on November 19, 2008Blogging and Other Social Media has been published and is available from both Amazon US and Amazon UK. The book was written by Alex Newson and Deryck Houghton, who established the IMPACT legal blog at Freeth Cartwright (Alex is now at Shoosmiths), and by Justin Patten, a mediator who blogs at Human Law and who hosted Blawg Review #78...
Take a break from the War, put your feet up, and enjoy Blawg Review.
Posted on November 18, 2008While the "Twitter War" in the legal blogosphere was gleefully reported by some, enthusiastically participated in by others, and studiously ignored by many, Benson Varghese of the Res Ipsa blog probably got things right - his Blawg Review #186 covers it along with the rest of the best from the past week in legal blogging...
West London Man Returns
Posted on November 16, 2008Charon QC's always entertaining West London Man series returns today with an episode which spans the big pond. West London Man (23) finds George in desperate straits as he attempts to forestall a planned visit by his distant American cousin, with whom we're all familiar but with whom George is eager to deny any connection...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (193)
Posted on November 14, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of TimesOnline (from Thursday, November 13; link good at time of posting):Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty?s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles...
Veteran's Day Need Never End
Posted on November 12, 2008Sure, the calendar shows Veteran's Day as occurring only yesterday, on November 11, but our military personnel continue to sacrifice for us the year round. Major Chuck Ziegenfuss advises this morning that Project Valour-IT, an effort I've proudly championed in the past (see here, here, and here), is in dire financial need; consequently, an urgent fundraising effort is underway and will continue for the next couple of weeks...
Random Thought (15)
Posted on November 12, 2008Was Water the Pete Best of Earth, Wind & Fire?[Previous Thought]
Around the World
Posted on November 10, 2008It famously took Phileas Fogg eighty days to go around the world; Australian IP strategist and IP Think Tank blogger Duncan Bucknell does it in a much more expeditious two dozen links or so. His Blawg Review #185, after a brief recognition of Hollywood beauty and wireless spectrum pioneer Hedy Lamarr, covers global IP strategy from political, economic, and legal standpoints and is worth a read...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (192)
Posted on November 07, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (from Tuesday, November 4; link good at time of posting):A visiting St. Olaf instructor who wrote an online essay about stealing John McCain lawn signs -- "like a ninja under the cover of [a] cloudy Minnesota night" -- has resigned, the Northfield college announced...
There's an election of some sort tomorrow...
Posted on November 03, 2008...but today, there's Blawg Review! I for one know which I prefer. For those who can't get enough election coverage, Dan Filler and his colleagues at The Faculty Lounge offer some that's actually interesting in Blawg Review #184. Highlights include a tolerant view of Governor Palin's misunderstanding of the First Amendment, a not-so-tolerant view of Senator McCain's accusations of socialism, and a few thoughts about the whether an Obama presidency would have an adverse effect on domestic law-and-order...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (191)
Posted on October 31, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, October 27; link good at time of posting):An Austrian man, charged with drink driving, drove to a police station to complain about the charge whilst drunk, officials said on Monday...
Random Thought (14)
Posted on October 30, 2008I've been mishearing the lyrics to "Me & You & A Dog Named Boo" all these years. The animal in question is clearly just a contingency plan should these itinerant hippies' vehicle break down somewhere where they cannot "live off the land" as "free men...
IP and Transactional Skills -- Two Great Tastes Which Taste Great Together
Posted on October 29, 2008In passing this morning, I mentioned a post from Shubha Ghosh, who's guest-blogging over at The Conglomerate. Ghosh writes concerning the overlap between intellectual property and transactional skills:There are five areas where intellectual property and transactional legal skills overlap: (1) formation of a business, (2) licensing, (3) employment, (4) identifying sources of transactional value, and (5) securities disclosure and due diligence...
California, Here I come
Posted on October 27, 2008We have great weather, In-n-Out Burger, and Disneyland. As Kimberly Kralowec points out in Blawg Review #183, California also offers an abundance of great legal blogging.I had the pleasure of meeting Kimberly at one of Professor Eric Goldman's periodic meetups of Bay Area legal bloggers; she does a commendable job of gathering the stars of those meetups as well as others from around the Golden State in this California-centric edition of the carnival of legal blogging...
Abandon hope, all ye who podcast here
Posted on October 24, 2008My love of Dante has been well-documented (see here, here, and here) and rewarded (see here, here, and here). For those of you who've yearned for a more scholarly treatment of the first canticle of Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, the most recent episode of Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 program, In Our Time, covers the topic and is available online.
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (190)
Posted on October 24, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, October 23; link good at time of posting):A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday...
How do you say "congratulations" in Hindi?
Posted on October 22, 2008I've no clue, so I'll just say it in English: Congratulations, India, on your successful first moon launch.This historic occasion also causes me to reminisce about the time, several years ago now, when Reason magazine's Hit & Run blog called one of my Fark headlines the "Headline of the Year"...
A man walks into a bar exam with a duck on his head...
Posted on October 20, 2008OK, confession time here. Back in 1995, I took the Oregon bar exam at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. To my relief and others' dismay, I passed the first time around; nevertheless, it was a solid year before I could drive past that building without my stomach tightening...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (189)
Posted on October 17, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, October 14; link good at time of posting):Adolfo Paz Gracia, 35, Javier Carreno Cruz, 29, and Jose Diaz Valenzuela, 29, were booked into Fourth Avenue Jail in Phoenix on three counts of forgery and one count of fraud schemes each...
Feeling conflicted? Today's your lucky day.
Posted on October 13, 2008Soon-to-be Blawg Review Sherpa Emeritus Diane Levin hosts this week's Blawg Review #181 at her Mediation Channel blog. As Diane explains, today is International Conflict Resolution Day, co-sponsored by the Association for Conflict Resolution and the World Mediation Forum to promote awareness of conflict resolution resources...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (188) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on October 10, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk (from Tuesday, October 7; link good at time of posting):Richard Fuld, the disgraced head of Lehman Brothers, was punched in the face in the office gym amid the bank's collapse...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (188)
Posted on October 10, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (via Deadspin) (from Sunday, October 5; link good at time of posting):O.J. Simpson was so confident that he was going to beat the rap again that he had an acquittal party planned, it was learned...
Enjoy the best along with the wurst.
Posted on October 07, 2008Germany-based Andis Kaulins hosts Blawg Review #180 at the LawPundit blog this week. Posted yesterday on German-American Day here in the United States, this edition celebrates all things German-American. Kaulins notes that German is the most prevalent ethnic background for those of us in melting-pot America, which might explain the ubiquity of and enthusiasm for Oktoberfest in the States...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (187)
Posted on October 03, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of ESPN Soccernet (from Tuesday, September 30; link good at time of posting):TThe debacle at Newcastle United shows no sign of coming to an end as Joe Kinnear found an empty training ground on his first official day as interim manager...
Reconciling Google's Un-General Releases With Traditional Software Betas
Posted on October 01, 2008Several years ago, I wrote about Google's curious practice of widely releasing developed (but still developing) products while officially designating these products as "beta" for extended periods -- often years -- without any discernible plan to remove that designation...
Blawg Review #179 is the greatest thing since Blawg Review #178
Posted on September 29, 2008Blawg Review celebrates inventiveness on a regular basis, not just by covering the best intellectual property-related legal blogging but also by showcasing the creativity of its hosts. Blawg Review #179, hosted by the proprietors of the Securing Innovation blog, manages to achieve both in high style...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (186)
Posted on September 26, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Monday, September 22; link good at time of posting):The first ever British spy to purposely appear as such on TV had his false moustache fall off during filming, it has been revealed...
Random Thought (13)
Posted on September 23, 2008I missed yesterday's "OneWebDay." I was on another web at the time and didn't get the message until this morning.[Previous Thought]
I'm mostly there already -- I just need the "ter".
Posted on September 22, 2008It always seems to me that Peter Black of the Freedom to Differ blog is a bit ahead of the curve. I like to think that it has something to do with the fact that he's located in Australia, where his day begins eighteen or so hours ahead of mine; sure that's a stretch, but it allows me to continue dismissing the mounting evidence that I'm just a little dim compared to him...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (185)
Posted on September 19, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, September 18; link good at time of posting):It wasn't the preferred way to enter the Knoxville Museum of Art, but Richard Anthony Smith told police he was on a mission...
Givin' Us the Business
Posted on September 18, 2008When noted business blogger Anita Campbell is scheduled to host Blawg Review, it's something I look forward to and (unlike a few things in life) that anticipation never ends in disappointment. So it is with Blawg Review #177 this week -- it's straightforward, no-nonsense, and highly informative...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (184) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on September 12, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Thursday, September 11; link good at time of posting):An Oz state government minister was yesterday obliged to resign after it was revealed he'd thrown a few shapes to techno music in "very brief" underwear during a drunken late night party in his in his Parliament House office, the Guardian reports...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (184)
Posted on September 12, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Beautiful Game (from Tuesday, September 9; link good at time of posting):Stupid injuries are the best. Gotta love rich athletes absolutely humiliating themselves.Enter Fabian Espindola...
A Literacy Day Event to Write Home About
Posted on September 08, 2008When it comes to legal literacy, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner has literally written the book. It's fitting, then, that she hosts Blawg Review #176 at her Legal Literacy blog on International Literacy Day. She notes:Today, September 8th, is International Literacy Day...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (183)
Posted on September 05, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Thursday, September 4; link good at time of posting):The lapsed website of the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit has been snapped up by an opportunistic German marketeer.Up until recently nhtcu...
5 Blogs & 5 Blawgers
Posted on September 02, 2008Today is the anniversary of King's lesser-known "I have a meme" speech.Well, actually it's not. It is, however, the day the Blawg Review Editor chose to honor the recently-passed Blog Day with a meme: "The idea is to post links to five great blogs (other than law blogs) on your blawg and tag five of your favorite blawgers to do the same under the post title '5 Blogs & 5 Blawgers'...
If they meant him to take the day off, they should've called it "No Labor Day"
Posted on September 01, 2008While many of us were in full kick-back-and-relax mode, Jaime Spencer was hard at work preparing Blawg Review #175, which is now available at his Austin DWI Lawyer blog. Spencer posts the best of last week's legal bogging, including a few thoughts on paying for the privilege of being a new associate, how to wrangle a gubernatorial pardon in Texas, and the FBI's contributions to jail overcrowding by arresting a blogger who jumped the gun by streaming tracks from a long-overdue Guns N' Roses album...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (182)
Posted on August 29, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Time's Real Clear Politics blog (from Tuesday, August 26; link good at time of posting):Former Texas Rep. Charlie Wilson . . . was speaking at an anti-war rally when he, um, flubbed a line:"We should be led by Osama bin Laden," he said, then quickly corrected himself...
The "Redeem Team" is so last week; the "No-Theme Team" is the new hotness.
Posted on August 28, 2008D. Todd Smith hosts this week's Blawg Review #174 at his Texas Appellate Law Blog. Smith's review is a throwback of sorts to the early days of Blawg Review when hosts simply collected the best legal blogging of the previous week without packaging it (or, as in the cases of my own Blawg Reviews, overpackaging it) in a themed presentation...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (181) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on August 22, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Boston Globe Olympics Blog (from Wednesday, August 20; link good at time of posting):After the USA men's basketball team blew out Spain recently, the majority of the Spaniards wanted nothing to do with the American media...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (181)
Posted on August 22, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, August 19; link good at time of posting):A Kentucky sheriff drove 4,100 miles to California to pick up a fugitive, then realized when he got back he had the wrong guy...
Note to self: stop calling, texting, e-mailing, and IMing anyone in Britain.
Posted on August 19, 2008Might as well quit accessing any British websites as well. From The Register:The government is pressing ahead with plans to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a massive central silo for all UK communications data, The Register has learned.Home Office civil servants are working on plans for the database under the banner of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP)...
Let's all drink to NIMBYism.
Posted on August 19, 2008Reason's Hit & Run blog praises the "Amethyst Initiative", a petition by dozens of college presidents to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. The initiative signatories suggest that "twenty-one is not working":A culture of dangerous, clandestine ?binge-drinking??often conducted off-campus?has developed...
Unfortunately, there's more than one albatross for these mariners to contend with.
Posted on August 18, 2008Let's see here. It's mid-August, the Mariners are 30½ games back in the American League West, and the authoritative U.S.S. Mariner has called the franchise "The Worst Run Organization in Baseball". I'm starting to think that perhaps that late-season run at the pennant is just not going to materialize this season after all...
Thankfully, he skipped the painful post-swim interview with Andrea Kremer.
Posted on August 18, 2008R. David Donaghue (as opposed to your David Donaghue) hosts this week's Blawg Review #173 at his Chicago IP Litigation blog.Like much of the world's, Donaghue's attention last week was focused on Michael Phelps and his unprecedented eight gold medals in a single Olympics...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (180) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on August 15, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Gizmodo blog (from Tuesday, August 12; link good at time of posting):An inflatable catastrophe second only to the Hindenburg disaster has occurred in Bern Switzerland at the Paul Klee Center art museum...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (180)
Posted on August 15, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the With Leather blog (from Monday, August 11; link good at time of posting):Michael Phelps kept his hopes for eight gold medals alive, as the underdog Americans scored a seemingly impossible come-from-behind win in the 4x100 free relay...
West London Man... Home and Dry.
Posted on August 14, 2008Charon QC has gathered together all of his brilliant "West London Man" posts/podcasts (thus far) on a single page at his Insitelaw Magazine site. Now that George and his family have found a comfortable home on the web, don't miss this opportunity to avail yourself of one of the best characters in British social satire (this side of Jeeves at least).
Random Thought (12)
Posted on August 14, 2008If I ever win an Olympic gold medal, I'll have it bronzed so that I can keep it forever.[Previous Thought]
How to host Blawg Review without getting torched.
Posted on August 14, 2008The Beijing Olympics are not yet even a week completed, but Jonathan Hyman is all over it, hosting an Olympics-themed Blawg Review #172 at his Ohio Employer's Law Blog. Highlights include an amazing opening ceremony, an historic finish in men's relay swimming, and...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (179)
Posted on August 08, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, August 4; link good at time of posting):Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologized after accidentally recommending a potentially deadly plant in organic salads...
The Virgin Queen
Posted on August 07, 2008Victoria Pynchon hosts Blawg Review #171 this week at The IP ADR Blog. She's made much of this effort being her first time hosting the carnival of legal blogging and to emphasize her point, she's styled this review as all about virginity:If intellectual property had a theme song it would have to be "Like a Virgin...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (178)
Posted on August 01, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Tuesday, July 29; link good at time of posting):Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said...
Worst Consumer in America
Posted on July 28, 2008Over at the excellent Consumerist blog, after months of exciting bracket-tourney-style action, the blog's readership has finally awarded the "Lucky Golden Shit" award to the "Worst Company in America". In the final, my mortgage company, Countrywide, decisively defeated my cable and internet company, Comcast...
I only made it through ten amendments before I ran out of fingers.
Posted on July 28, 2008Some critics might suggest that blogging requires only an opinion and the ability to type (and perhaps that blawgging only takes those two plus some legal coursework), but Scott Greenfield consistently provides counterexamples at his Simple Justice blog...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (177) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on July 25, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, July 22; link good at time of posting):Three men suspected of stealing from a Goodwill store in Cookeville ran out of gas before making it out of the parking lot, police say...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (177)
Posted on July 25, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, July 23; link good at time of posting):An Australian man's dare went horribly wrong when he tried to play chicken with cars on a freeway wearing only his underwear...
Sometimes a whisper is a shout.
Posted on July 21, 2008Whisper, a branding strategy blog, hosts Blawg Review #169 this week. If branding strategy seems to you like a counterintuitive theme for a collection of the best legal blogging of the past week, Whisper sets you straight straightaway:Lawyers, and law firms, have always been brands...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (176) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on July 18, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Friday, July 18; link good at time of posting):An Indian man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said Friday...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (176)
Posted on July 18, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Wednesday, July 16; link good at time of posting):A New Yorker was jailed for 30 months on Tuesday after being convicted for spamming 1.2 million AOL members with junk mail...
In the meantime, will someone please buy Mr. Heller a revolver?
Posted on July 17, 2008Dick Heller, a resident of the District of Columbia, was denied a permit to possess a handgun for self-defense. He sued the District, seeking to invalidate, or at least to limit, the District's categorical ban on personal ownership of handguns. He was ultimately successful; the United States Supreme Court recently found in his favor...
Gonna make a jailbreak...
Posted on July 14, 2008AC/DC had their '74 Jailbreak, released after singer Bon Scott's death, and it's still a great record. Steve McQueen made a Great Escape a decade or so before then and it inspires whenever it comes on. Only an Eighteenth Century French prison break gets its own national holiday, however...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (175)
Posted on July 11, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Huntsville Times (via QuizLaw) (from Wednesday, July 9; links good at time of posting):According to police, Garry Michael Wilson drove a stolen BMW Z3 just two blocks Saturday night before the car's manual transmission apparently couldn't take any more grinding punishment...
Random Thought (11)
Posted on July 09, 2008It would be irresponsible for me to suggest that the weather today is as hot as Hades. I've not been to Hades since that legal ethics seminar a few years back, so I have no current information concerning its climate.[Previous Thought]
Surreality Programming
Posted on July 08, 2008I'm a regular listener and great fan of Mike Semple Piggot's various podcasting productions, including the daily news program at the Insitelaw Magazine site, his ongoing Charon podcast series, and his "West London Man" satiric commentaries. I highly recommend them all...
Security is Everyone's Business
Posted on July 08, 2008When I was young, I remember going to my father's office at one of the military bases where we were stationed and seeing a poster which said "Security is Everyone's Business". It was the 70s, so there was probably a "Hang in there, baby" cat poster alongside it, but I don't recall...
Superstar Treatment
Posted on July 08, 2008Jonathan Frieden throws a nation's worth of legal blogging into Blawg Review #167 this week at his E-Commerce Law blog. Frieden surveys every state in the union (including Canada, the 51st) and highlights a legal blogging "star" from each. All are worthy selections...
TGIS: Thanks God It's Schadenfreude! (174)
Posted on July 04, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of KWTX (via Grits for Breakfast) (from Wednesday, July 2; link good at time of posting):A warrant has been issued for former Troy police chief David Seward who failed to show up for a court appearance on June 11 related to a misdemeanor theft charge stemming from the alleged misuse of money seized during an arrest...
Perhaps a nail salon instead?
Posted on July 02, 2008My earlier speculation has thus far yielded no Starbucks. It seems somewhat less likely now.
It's not discrimination if you treat everyone appallingly.
Posted on July 01, 2008As a group, the English are not generally more pleasant than others, but at least when they're unpleasant they tend to be more sporting about it. Thus, presented with GeekLawyer's Blawg Review #166, we can't say we weren't warned.Those of us who've enjoyed GeekLawyer's writing over the years have had ample opportunity to steel ourselves for this edition of the carnival of legal blogging...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (173)
Posted on June 27, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, June 25; link good at time of posting): Norwalk police said they nabbed a burglary suspect after he broke out in tears when the homeowner caught him. Police said Miguel Alvizures-Montaya, 35, of Norwalk, cried, handed over his cell phone and told the homeowner to call police...
A helpful reminder from the Supreme Court that the amendments in the Bill of Rights are not listed in order of importance.
Posted on June 26, 2008Our second amendment rights aren't of secondary importance after all, according to the newly-published decision in Heller. There's already a tremendous amount of worthwhile commentary, both pro and con, on the decision in the legal blogosphere (see here, here, here, and here, just for starters); don't worry, though -- you'll find no such worthwhile commentary here...
As it turns out, this year's Mariners aren't the most hapless baseball team ever.
Posted on June 25, 2008Over at the sports blog Deadspin, Rick Chandler discusses his day with the worst baseball player since Joe Shlabotnik -- the beloved Charlie Brown. Chandler walks us through the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California and highlights the importance of baseball to Charlie Brown and the Peanuts strip:[According to] Stephan Fatsis, co-curator of the exhibit and creator of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine ...
How to Geekify the Women in Your Life: A Primer
Posted on June 25, 2008Megan McArdle, responding to an inquiry from a reader, offers a few tips on helping the wives, girlfriends, daughters, and other important females in sci-fi geeks' lives to enjoy science fiction, if not as much as their geeks do, then at least enough to good-naturedly tolerate the genre...
Blawg Review Gets a French Kiss
Posted on June 25, 2008This week, Nicolas Jondet hosts Blawg Review #165 at his French-Law.net blog and continues the Bloomsday/Ulysses theme started last week by Eoin O'Dell at cearta.ie. He notes that:As it happens, France also has its own version of Ulysses. It is not as famous as the Irish masterpiece, but has had a lasting impact on a generation of children growing up in the 1980s...
Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to... borrow your mobile phone.
Posted on June 20, 2008Sometime during the past few evenings, the pay phones were uninstalled from the lobby of my office building.In the two years I've worked in this particular building, I've neither used nor seen anyone else use those phones. I suppose the fact that I snapped the above picture with the camera built into my BlackBerry just about says it all...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (172)
Posted on June 20, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The New York Post (from Tuesday, June 17; link good at time of posting):Over the weekend, spies said, Paris Hilton was on her way to a photo shoot and "wanted a puppy in the picture with her so it would look cuter...
Bloomsday Blawg Review
Posted on June 18, 2008Dr. Eoin O'Dell hosts Blawg Review #164 at the cearta.ie blog. Celebrating Bloomsday, the anniversary of the day in 1904 during which the events of James Joyce's Ulysses occurred, this edition of the carnival of legal blogging is structured by the chapter headings in Joyce's best-known work...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (171)
Posted on June 13, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, June 10; link good at time of posting):A judge halted a drug conspiracy trial Tuesday after some jurors were found to have been playing the puzzle game Sudoku while evidence was being given...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (170)
Posted on June 06, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The San Francisco Citizen blog (from Tuesday, June 3; link good at time of posting):Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan Campaigning [for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Congressional seat] at the Steps of San Francisco?s City Hall...
Baseball, Bench Thyself
Posted on June 04, 2008Mike Masnick updates the Major League Baseball statistics case, a matter which has been of considerable interest to me for some time (see here, here, here, and here). As Masnick reports, MLB has continued its losing ways in defending an essentially indefensible position -- contending that it owns the statistics produced by its games such that rotisserie or fantasy league players must pay licensing fees...
Truth be told, I learned all the Chinese I know from "Firefly".
Posted on June 04, 2008Now that I've returned home from a brief sojurn away and worked my way through the most pressing of the matters which accumulated during that time, I've had a chance to read through this week's Blawg Review. Frankly, it blows.No, of course it doesn't, but I figured that someone who sees my Blawg Review posts most Mondays (or as soon thereafter as work permits) would think I'm on auto-pilot, praising each week's effort -- some weeks more than others, granted -- and never offering a critical word...
Scribbled on the Back of an Envelope Seven Years Ago Today
Posted on May 30, 2008Some men wish for sons to achieve great things, to build great things, to discover great things, to teach great things. My daughter will accomplish all these and charm her father's heart as well.Hey, I was a bit sleep deprived at the time.Happy seventh birthday, Natalie; your daddy loves you very much.
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (169)
Posted on May 30, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, May 27; link good at time of posting):A skydiver's hope to set a new free-fall record might have come to an end Tuesday when his ride to the sky left without him...
Blawg Review Remembers
Posted on May 26, 2008The annual Memorial Day edition of Blawg Review is one of my favorite traditions around these parts. This year's host is Stephen Albainy-Jenai at the Patent Baristas blog. He does us all proud with Blawg Review #161. This is such a special, heartfelt event each year that I'm inclined to say that this week's highlight is the review itself, but that wouldn't do justice to Albainy-Jenai's worthy effort (and if the carnival of legal blogging isn't concerned with doing justice, who would be?)...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (168)... The Sequel!
Posted on May 23, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Bucks County Courier Times (via QuizLaw) (from Tuesday, May 20; links good at time of posting):Mark C. Baxter, 19, of Columbus, N.J., faces charges after police found child porn on a computer he is accused of stealing from the retail store...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (168)
Posted on May 23, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Tuesday, May 20; link good at time of posting):Wade Churchward, 28, went to a service station on March 22 in the capital, Wellington, where he picked up two packets of M&Ms candy and some potato chips, the Dominion Post newspaper reported...
Hoy, decidía aprender español.
Posted on May 22, 2008I think that post title means "Today, I decided to learn Spanish." I'll find out later, I suppose.Spanish is a very useful language to know these days, particularly so if one lives in California. Frankly, for any number of personal and professional reasons, I should've learned it some time ago...
Woo Who!
Posted on May 20, 2008Doctor Who (shown on the Sci-Fi channel and BBC America) is the best show on television, bar none.The guiding force behind the relaunched series has been Russell T Davies and there's been a considerable amount of angst amongst the show's considerable fan base concerning the future direction of the program when Davies leaves for new challenges...
Portrait of a Lady's Legal Blog Review
Posted on May 20, 2008...or, Self-Submission is the Best SubmissionLike Madonna, Ruthie gets by with just a single name; unlike Madonna, she's answered the anonymous Blawg Review Editor's call. She hosts (well, hostesses) Blawg Review #160 this week at her Ruthie's Law blog...
I'm Hot... You're Hot... He's Hot... She's Hot...
Posted on May 16, 2008Considering the fact that normal human body temperature is approximately 98.6°F, why does a day when the ambient temperature is in the high nineties seem so hot? Is it just because it's somewhat unusual vis-a-vis the average daily temperature (in most places, anyhow)? I have no idea.
Would he have done it if he could have foreseen Laser Floyd?
Posted on May 16, 2008It was this day in 1960 that Dr. Theordore Maiman, a physicist working at Hughes Research Laboratories, created the first laser using a synthesized ruby crystal. Without Dr. Maiman's brilliant efforts, we would have frickin' nothing to attach to the heads of sharks today and the world would be a lesser place for that.
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (167)
Posted on May 16, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] News (from Sunday, May 11; link good at time of posting):England is an irritating and insular country full of overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts, a new guide warns tourists...
NOTICE: Duncan Riley Is the Source of the Following Information
Posted on May 13, 2008At his new Inquisitr blog, Duncan Riley offers a very sensible guideline for something which has vexed many a new (and not-so-new) blogger -- when and how to give attribution to sources of information.
Whistle While You Blawg
Posted on May 13, 2008Blawg Review #158, hosted by The Mommy Blawg was a tribute to mothers; this week, with Blawg Review #159 hosted at the Whistleblower Law Blog, we give whistleblowers their due. Perhaps next year these fine legal bloggers could co-host. Don't scoff -- the concepts have worked well together before:Highlights in this week's edition include burning and building bridges, determining when a pill is poisonous or merely bitter, and deciding whether to appeal or to just accept that you lack appeal...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (166)
Posted on May 09, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Houston Chronicle (from Tuesday, May 6; link good at time of posting):Judge Sherman Ross tried to assemble a jury of peers for a woman accused of possession of a marijuana on trial Tuesday...
Just Blawg, Baby
Posted on May 05, 2008You know, I've been happily involved with the Blawg Review project as a reader, contributor, and sherpa for several years now and I can't recall midwifery every coming up in the carnival of legal blogging. Well, now it has. Boldly going where no man has gone before is The Mommy Blawger, who hosts Blawg Review #158 today on International Midwives' Day...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (165)... The Sequel!
Posted on May 02, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Star-Telegram.com (via QuizLaw) (from Tuesday, April 29; links good at time of posting):An aspiring record label owner is singing the blues after he was arrested last week for allegedly trying to pass a $360 billion check at a Fort Worth bank...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (165)
Posted on May 02, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Times Online (from Tuesday, April 29; link god at time of posting):Ronaldo, the AC Milan forward, was questioned by police yesterday after an altercation with transvestites in a Rio de Janeiro motel...
Friends don't let friends create Jar Jar Binks.
Posted on May 01, 2008Friends don't let friends drive drunk, saith the original Star Wars cantina barflies in this classic public service announcement unearthed (or untatooined, as the case may be) by the io9 blog.io9 has several others also worth a look, including advice from He-Man and She-Ra for the sexually-molested...
Good luck with that.
Posted on April 30, 2008From The Register:Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos have declared that they alone have the right to call themselves lesbians, and yesterday launched a legal action against the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (Olke) designed to wrest back control of the word from aficionados of Sapphic luuurv...
If God insists on resting on the seventh day, He's never going to break Ripken's record.
Posted on April 28, 2008The With Leather sports blog offers a bit of insight into the increasingly-strange trademark dust-up between Little League Baseball and the upstart Christian Little League. Confronted by Little League's lawsuit, With Leather reports that the founder of Christian Little League, Jay Kaplanresponded the only way a righteous Christian jackass knows how: by being a righteous Christian jackass...
I hear that the third time's the charm, although the first two were already pretty charming.
Posted on April 28, 2008Professor Eric Goldman is pulling together another gathering of the legal bloggers here in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. I've been fortunate enough to have made it to the first two and I've already calendared this third meet-up. My favorite part of these events is the opportunity to meet people with whom I've corresponded for the last few years; making virtual friends into real ones is one of the treats of our digital age.
Deep Thoughts
Posted on April 28, 2008Michael Fitzgibbon is one of my favorite legal bloggers; his blog, Thoughts from a Management Lawyer is a great, consistently informative, no gimmicks legal site. This week, he's hosting Blawg Review #157. Highlights of this labor and employment law-centric edition include a few dos and don'ts -- micromanaging employee expenditures (do), waterboarding your employees (don't), conducting a proper workplace investigation (do), and bringing your baby to the workplace (don't -- at least in Britain)...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (164)
Posted on April 25, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, April 23; link good at time of posting):Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft...
Random Thought (10)
Posted on April 22, 2008I blog under my real name because I don't want people to know my pseudonym.[Previous Thought]
Why turn a blind eye when you can turn an all-seeing one?
Posted on April 21, 2008It's not difficult to join the crowd in criticizing Microsoft for their product, security, and strategic choices. The company's done a lot right, though, and it's a genuine pleasure to recognize that Microsoft can not just display a leadership mentality from time-to-time, but also bring to bear the resources necessary to lead; I congratulate them for leading on security issues at the ToorCon security conference in Seattle recently...
Kickin' Back, Keepin' It Virtual
Posted on April 21, 2008One of the more focused and interesting legal blogs around is Benjamin Duranske's Virtually Blind. For those of you who've not yet found this ongoing discussion of the legal issues associated with the virtual world (e.g., Second Life, World of Warcraft), this week's Blawg Review #156 offers a great opportunity to get a real education about all things virtual...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (163)
Posted on April 18, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of KITV (via Quizlaw) (from Monday, April 14; link good at time of posting):The Honolulu Police Department asked for the public's help in Monday in tracking down a man who tried to rob a bank...
It's not a bird or a plane... it's a "superhero lawyer-turned-CEO"
Posted on April 16, 2008Andrew Feinberg at the Capitol Valley blog has more of the wonderful response of Blue Jeans Cable's CEO to bullying competitor Monster Cable, which I posted about yesterday. That letter should be required reading in every law school. Tremendous. Thanks to Blawg Review's anonymous Editor for pointing this post out to me.
"Cease and Desist" is Legalese for "Please, Make Me Look Like an Ass"
Posted on April 15, 2008Via Slashdot:[Monster Cable] sent a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable over a supposed patent violation. What the Monster folks couldn't have known was that Blue Jeans president Kurt Denke used to be a lawyer. His response is as humorous as it is thorough...
An Ode to Blawg Review #155
Posted on April 14, 2008Comes now a Blawg Review hostTo whom I'll offer this toast:He's gathered great links,But his poetry stinks.We're waiting for Giacalone's post.Greg May hosts Blawg Review #155 at The California Blog of Appeal. From legal-themed poetry to the stress it causes, May has things ably covered this week...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (162)
Posted on April 11, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Techdirt (from Wednesday, April 9; link good at time of posting):It appears Marilyn Monroe's estate didn't think all the way through its strategy of posthumously moving the famed star to New York...
Mac gives lawyers the best of both Words.
Posted on April 10, 2008Fellow attorney and Mac enthusiast David Sparks has taken a look at the Word for Mac 2008 and found it to be a vast improvement -- with room for further improvement -- over its 2004 predecessor:I have not always been kind to Microsoft Word on the Mac...
A Moment of Panic This Morning
Posted on April 10, 2008The following was a headline on Professor Jack Balkin's Balkinzation blog this morning (and cross-posted on Slate's Convictions blog):Say It Ain't So, ColinBefore I managed to confess all of my misdeeds, I read further and found, much to my relief, that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was the "Colin" in question...
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but this week's Blawg Review will keep him entertained.
Posted on April 08, 2008David Harlow hosts this week's Blawg Review #154 at his HealthBlawg site. Harlow's Blawg Review was posted yesterday in honor of the World Health Organization's annual World Health Day. I don't know about you, but I felt pretty good yesterday, so it must have been a success...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (161)
Posted on April 04, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, April 2; link good at time of posting):When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first.He need not have worried...
Random Thought (9)
Posted on April 01, 2008None of the people I've fired this morning will believe me. I swear, April first is, without a doubt, the worst possible day to execute a headcount reduction.[Previous Thought]
Piracy is not just a software, music, or film industry concern any longer.
Posted on March 31, 2008Pirates come ashore to herald the start of Seafair each year. When I last went to Disneyland, I found that pirates had taken over what used to be Tom Sawyer Island. Now, my beloved Blawg Review has fallen to buccaneers. Fortunately for us all, Blawg Review #153 demonstrates that they know how to produce an entertaining round-up of the best legal blogging from the past week (with just a bit of assistance from George M...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (160) . . . The Sequel!
Posted on March 28, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, March 26; link good at time of posting):Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary's famed acumen and self-confidence briefly deserted him when he failed to back his own horse Hear The Echo to win the Irish Grand National at odds of 33-1...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (160)
Posted on March 28, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the (Eureka, California) Times-Standard (via QuizLaw) (from Monday, March 24; link good at time of posting):A Crescent City woman is heading back to prison and her friend also is facing two years behind bars after a botched attempt at stealing a urine sample from a delivery van...
Blawg Review's e-book cousin comes for a visit.
Posted on March 26, 2008Neil Squillante hosts Blawg Review #152 at his TechnoLawyer blog. Squillante, who publishes the widely-read BlawgWorld e-book, observes that he's in familiar territory as a host:Blawg Review is similar to our BlawgWorld eBook.The former contains links to Posts whereas the latter reprints entire Posts...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (159)
Posted on March 21, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Greenville News, via QuizLaw (from Wednesday, March 19; link good at time of posting):Tauris Maurice Hart was supposed to stand trial on Monday, but authorities say that at the same time he was scheduled to be in court defending himself against a robbery charge, he was out on the streets committing the same crime...
On March 17, everyone is both Irish and a member of a bar association.
Posted on March 17, 2008In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, Irish legal blogger Daithí Mac Sithigh hosts Blawg Review #151 at his Lex Ferenda blog. For those of you struggling today to find your way back to a fully-upright and locked position, #151 offers the best of last week's legal blogging in a single compact post...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (158)
Posted on March 14, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Thursday, March 13; link good at time of posting):You've got to feel a bit sorry for German VoIP phone outfit snom, which has asked customers not to call it following an evidently troublesome office relocation...
TGIS: Thanks God It's Schadenfreude! (157)
Posted on March 07, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Metro.co.uk (from Wednesday, March 5; link good at time of posting):A policeman alerted hundreds of families to the danger-drug Strawberry Meth - despite the fact it does not exist.Pupils and parents at 80 schools in Oxfordshire were warned of the possible risks of the fruit-flavoured drug, also known as Strawberry Quick, by the unwitting officer...
Antitrust But Antiverify
Posted on March 03, 2008David Fischer, Hanno Kaiser, and Manfred Gabriel host this week's Blawg Review #149 at their Antitrust Review blog. The trio ably round-up the best legal blogging of the past week and shine a bit of spotlight on their own antitrust niche of the blawgosphere...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (156)
Posted on February 29, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of CNN (from Thursday, February 28; link good at time of posting):Two masked and machete-wielding men who barged into a club in Sydney, Australia, couldn't have picked a worse night for their robbery -- a monthly meeting of bikers...
He's a Rules Guy
Posted on February 28, 2008One of my favorite legal bloggers, Sun General Counsel Mike Dillon, suggests a number of ways that practicing in-house is different than in a firm. All are worth considering and, for those of us in-house already, internalizing; amongst the many highlights are these points:"You are a business person...
At least he didn't do anything unsavory to Matt Damon
Posted on February 26, 2008Brett Trout continues Iowa's streak of Blawg Review greatness with this week's Blawg Review #148 at his BlawgIT blog (now master of its own domain!). It's a "stop and smell the roses" kind of vibe this week -- Trout notes that "lawyers do not spend as much time aimlessly meandering the web" and thus "most lawyers are woefully detached from the Zeitgeist embodied in the lowly Internet meme...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (155)
Posted on February 22, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of WDSU (via The Consumerist) (from Tuesday, February 19; links good at time of posting):A 37-year-old Mesa man who tried to buy a watch with two counterfeit $100 bills containing a watermark of Abraham Lincoln was arrested on forgery charges, police said...
Over time, we all get a little thicker around the middle
Posted on February 21, 2008For many of us, a Milky Way here and there contributes to midsection growth; it's not often, though, that the Milky Way itself finds its girth doubled in size. Via Slashdot, the University of Sydney reports:Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler led a team that has found that our galaxy - a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across - is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years that had been previously thought...
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
Posted on February 21, 2008Though I was several days late to the starting mark, I'll take this opportunity to recommend Rush Nigut's Blawg Review #147, hosted this week at his Rush on Business blog. Nigut's theme is the [Des Moines, Iowa] Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), an annual seven-day ride across his home state of Iowa...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (154)
Posted on February 15, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Thursday, February 12; link good at time of posting):Police in central England are hunting for a badly scorched would-be copper power cable thief after finding a hacksaw embedded in an 11,000 volt power cable Saturday night...
Happy Valentine's Day!
Posted on February 14, 2008My favorite scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Marilyn Monroe's big musical number, "Expensive and inherently useless courtship gifts presented as tokens of one's ability to acquire and accumulate resources and the willingness to invest said resources in a woman and her children are said girl's best friend"; Dr...
Two Posts Does Not A Regular Feature Make
Posted on February 11, 2008Last week, I swore I wouldn't make Lost a regular topic of discussion around here, but that post generated some great e-mails and, frankly, the show's finally worth discussing again, so I'll take advantage with a second post. Here are a few points concerning "Declared Dead":If Miles is meant to be a true medium, I'm not super-enthusastic about it...
Sliced Bread Has Nothing on Blawg Review #146
Posted on February 11, 2008Patent guru Stephen Nipper hosts Blawg Review #146 at The Invent Blog. As Nipper notes, today is National Inventor's Day, designated on this day as it's noted inventor Thomas Edison's birthday. Personally, my favorite inventor is either Tesla or whomever invented pizza, but I digress...
The Most Important Contract of All
Posted on February 08, 2008My acquaintances and regular readers know how much I love contracts and contract law. Notwithstanding my career choice, my first love in the world of contracts was a study of the Social Contract, thanks to lectures during my undergraduate days given by Professor Terrence Cook...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (153)
Posted on February 08, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Valleywag (from Wednesday, February 6; link good at time of posting):Voce, a wireless service for hipsters with scraggly beards and ducktails who could nonetheless afford to buy Prada handsets and spend $118/mo...
Never Say Never
Posted on February 07, 2008A couple of days ago, I posted some wild theories about Lost. Yesterday, I consolidated my geekiness as much as I thought was humanly possible by eating my lunch -- alone, of course, as befits the truly geeky -- whilst simultaneously listening to a Doctor Who podcast and reading a Star Wars novel...
Lost is Found
Posted on February 05, 2008I've no intention of starting a weekly Lost feature here -- there are any number of excellent recap, analysis, and theory blogs, podcasts, and fora already out there -- but I thought that I'd post a few points (in no particular order) from my discussions with a few people in the days since the start of the long-awaited fourth season...
Veni Vidi Blawgi
Posted on February 05, 2008Having spent last week enjoying a well-undeserved vacation and the past couple of days getting back up to speed with work and personal matters, I'm just now finishing the past couple of Blawg Reviews, Kevin Thompson's hobbit-centric Blawg Review #144 at his Cyberlaw Central blog and Dan Hull's Super Bowl-themed Blawg Review #145 at the What About Clients? blog...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (152)
Posted on January 25, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of news.com.au via WorldwideStandard.com (from Thursday, January 24; links good at time of posting):A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say...
Judge this Blawg Review by the character of its content.
Posted on January 24, 2008Gideon hosts the Martin Luther King Day edition of Blawg Review, Blawg Review #143 for those of you scoring at home, at the Public Defender Stuff blog. With a criminal defense focus touching on many of the themes associated with Dr. King, this is an excellent edition of the carnival of legal blogging...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (151)
Posted on January 18, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Smoking Gun (from Tuesday, January 15; link good at time of posting):Disgraced and disbarred, Mike Nifong is now bankrupt. The former North Carolina prosecutor, whose career imploded with his botched handling of the Duke University rape case, today filed for bankruptcy, listing liabilities in excess of $180 million...
Free Trade = Peace (Or Does It?)
Posted on January 16, 2008Marjorie Florestal at the IntLawGrrls blog describes that her desire, as a young Haitian immigrant, was to become "the international Thurgood Marshall". Working at a large law firm, she discovered her "first love" -- International Trade Law -- but now doubts about the power of trade have entered her mind:Free trade brought prosperity, abundance, peace and security to all nations?at least in principle...
Honesty is the best policy.
Posted on January 16, 2008From The Register:Computer giant Dell stunned a Reg reader seeking a processor upgrade when it told him he might want to consider a "Mac".The El Reg reader had emailed the firm's hardware technical support team asking whether it was possible to upgrade his one year old Dimension 9150's processor to a Core2 CPU without having to also replace other components...
Our Compliments to Blawg Review's Editor 'n' Chef
Posted on January 15, 2008Blawg Review, the carnival of legal blogging co-founded by the anonymous editor of Blawg Review, highlights the best legal blogging each week. Issue after issue, hosts from across the legal blogosphere (and occasionally beyond it) are selected by the anonymous editor of Blawg Review to present the carnival in their own voices, sharing their personal and professional experiences and interests with the ever-growing Blawg Review audience...
Grazie!
Posted on January 15, 2008My Paradiso-themed Blawg Review #137 has been recognized as Blawg Review of the Year for 2007. Thank you to all those who voted during the nominations period; it's tremendously gratifying to know that my efforts were appreciated by my fellow Blawg Review hosts and particularly by several whose own work this year was, in my opinion, more deserving of this honor...
Wii are not amused.
Posted on January 15, 2008Engadget reported yesterday that the innovative Nintendo Wii motion-sensitive controller might not be quite as innovative as previously believed:Patrick Goschy, an ex-Midway employee, has a YouTube video of himself demonstrating something astoundingly similar to a Wiimote / Nunchuck...
What's in a Name?
Posted on January 15, 2008Susan Cartier Liebel hosts Blawg Review #142 this week at the Build A Solo Practice, LLC blog. Personally, I would not have wanted to follow Charon QC's marvelously literary review posted last week, but Liebel not only took up the challenge but carried it through with aplomb...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (150)... The Sequel!
Posted on January 11, 2008This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Thursday, January 10; link good at time of posting):A Polish bloke got a bit of a shock when he decided to nip out to a brothel - his missus was among the establishment's employees...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (150)
Posted on January 11, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the BBC (from Monday, January 7; link good at time of posting):TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people's personal details on two computer discs...
It's getting better all the time.
Posted on January 10, 2008Many news sources reported that yesterday India's Tata Motors unveiled the world's least expensive car, the bare bones Tata Nano, costing $2,500.00.While that price alone generated a lot of headlines, Hit & Run puts that number in perspective by comparing the Nano's price with the costs of the Ford Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Yugo, adjusting prices both directions to account for inflation...
Strike Two for GPL v.3
Posted on January 10, 2008Two of the more prominent open source projects around, Google's Android initiative and the ongoing development of the Linux operating system, have officially spurned the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) third-version General Public License(GPL). As mentioned here earlier, Google chose the Apache Software Foundation license over GPL v...
Crimea and Punishment
Posted on January 10, 2008British legal blogger Charon QC, one of my favorites from any part of the globe, hosts Blawg Review #141 this week. He opens with a passage from Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade and notes by way of introduction that he is of "the Charge of the Light Brigade category of blawgers":I'm ...
Cyber Law
Posted on January 07, 2008The various holidays gave me some much-needed time to finish up a number of books I've been reading lately. One of these was Cyber Law, which Brett Trout, the volume's author as well as a practicing patent attorney and Blawg-IT blogger, was kind enough to send me...
It's not "the future" yet.
Posted on January 04, 2008The outstanding new science fiction blog io9 revisits what the Los Angeles Times thought the courtroom of the future might look like twelve years ago. As an in-house counsel, I don't regularly find myself in a courtroom, but I'm guessing that robot bailiffs, virtual reality juror goggles, floating cameras, and computerized judges haven't featured in your recent courtroom experiences either.
Blawg Review Nominations
Posted on January 04, 2008Offered in response to the anonymous Editor's call for nominations, the following five posts are, in my humble opinion, the best of the best in what was an outstanding year of Blawg Reviews:#89 (Blawg Review) and #127 (Deliberations) -- What do these posts have in common? Each, in addition to collecting examples of excellent legal blogging, taught me something about arcane and somewhat quaint traditions -- mummering and voir dire, respectively...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (148)
Posted on January 04, 2008This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Daily Mail (from Monday, December 31; link good at time of posting):It was a moment to make angry wives applaud and two-timing husbands ? and the Chinese government ? squirm.With eight months to go to the Beijing Olympics, Zhang Bin ...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (147)
Posted on December 28, 2007This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, December 24; link good at time of posting):Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton may have shot herself in the foot trying to get Iowa voters to pledge support to her -- she is encouraging them to go caucus on January 14, 11 days too late...
I am anyone!
Posted on December 24, 2007In Slate this morning, Robert Baird asked rhetorically "Why doesn't anyone read Dante's Paradiso?" Perhaps it's because they prefer the abridged version recently published as Blawg Review #137?
This Blawg Review ends with an Epiphany.
Posted on December 24, 2007Jonathan Frieden hosts Blawg Review #140 at his E-Commerce Law blog. Frieden takes us through all twelve days of Christmas with the best of the past week's legal blogging. Highlights include taxing kidney swaps, pondering the future of Zoey 101, and the dubious constitutionality of "good driver" traffic stops...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (146)... The Sequel!
Posted on December 21, 2007This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the New York Law Journal via Law.com (from Friday, December 21; link good at time of posting):A New Jersey man who abandoned a son who later died in the terror attack on the World Trade Center may not collect a share of the son's $2...
The Muller Report
Posted on December 21, 2007As was the case in baseball, questions about the use of performance enhancing drugs are starting to spread within the legal community. Prompted by John Phillips' post, I issued a statement yesterday denying my participation in this sordid affair. Now, this morning, Eric Muller reports that an investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education has found increasing use of "brain-boosting" drugs and "smart" pills amongst university faculty members:The notion raises hackles in some parts of academe...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (146)
Posted on December 21, 2007This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of People magazine (from Tuesday, December 18; link good at time of posting):Lynne Spears's book about raising her famous daughters Britney and Jamie Lynn has been put on hold, the publisher confirms to PEOPLE...
I unequivocally deny that I've ever used legal reasoning enhancing drugs.
Posted on December 20, 2007Although I used "Essence of Cardozo" for a couple of days while recovering from a bout of confusion caused by a poorly-presented CLE seminar, I was concerned about the message that my use might send to younger attorneys and I stopped.John Phillips of The Word on Employment Law sees some cautionary signs in baseball's Mitchell Report for the workplace of the near future:What does the ?steroids era? in professional baseball mean? Maybe more than we want to admit right off the bat (no pun intended)...
Feelings... nothing more than feelings....
Posted on December 20, 2007Ghandi was quoted as saying "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." Others, including Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Pope John Paul II have expressed similar sentiments at one time or another.Notwithstanding, if any of them were around today, they might be inclined to tell the Auckland Regional Council that the line for that concern might best be drawn somewhere above the local worm population...
The gifts which keep on giving...
Posted on December 20, 2007...can be found in this week's Blawg Review #139, hosted by Hanna Hasl-Kelchner at the Legal Literacy blog. It's a good thing, too, since it's taken me this long to get to reading this edition. Highlights include the employment consequences of a weak handshake, building a sphincter-tightening mediation presentation, and blacklisting a Chinese troll...
TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (145)
Posted on December 14, 2007This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, December 12; link good at time of posting:When a robber started taking cash from his register over the weekend, Dunkin' Donuts employee Dustin Hoffmann fought back by clobbering the man with a ceramic mug...
I'm giving everyone I know "The Force" this Christmas (without the bulky packaging).
Posted on December 12, 2007This roundup of Star Wars toys which never made it into production (via Gizmodo) is one of the funnier things I've seen recently. In all fairness, though, I'm a dork; your mileage may vary.
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