Legal Commentary

NCAA Division II and Division III College Football Championship Playoffs plus the NAIA Football Championship Series - Status as of Nov. 23, 2008

Posted on November 23, 2008
We offer some news and comments here on the NCAA Division II and Division III College Football Championship Playoffs plus the NAIA Football Championship Series.In Division III, last year's foes in the championship game, top-ranked Mount Union of Alliance, Ohio, and the 4th- viz...

EQLS : Second European Quality of Life Survey ? First Findings viz. Deuxième enquête européenne sur la qualité de vie - Premiers résultats

Posted on November 20, 2008
Via EUobserver.com we have learned of the 2nd EQLS (European Quality of Life Survey) by Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions).The EQLS Survey will be published in full only in the year 2009, but as of November 18, 2008 we do now already have the first results of that survey in an English-language ...

THE YPPSYS DIVISION I-A FCS COLLEGE FOOTBALL RATINGS for the 2008 SEASON : After the 12th WEEK of Play

Posted on November 20, 2008
THE YPPSYS DIVISION I-A FCS COLLEGE FOOTBALL RATINGS for the 2008 SEASON(after the 12th week of play)THE YPPSYS DIVISION I-A FCS COLLEGE FOOTBALL RATINGS(This is after the 12th week of play. NAYPPA (net average yards per play advantage) is calculated according to CFBSTATS...

Photo Blog of the World

Posted on November 19, 2008
We have started a new photo blog at Photo Blog of the World.

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Brackets NCAA Football Championship Playoffs 2008 : Division II - D2 and Division III - D3

Posted on November 19, 2008
Playoff brackets for NCAA Football Playoffs in 2008 for Division II (D2) and Division III (D3) are found at the following links:Division II - D2Division III - D3

What Do Europeans Really Care About? Google Searches as Measured in the Individual Member Countries by the EU Observer Monthly Top 10

Posted on November 18, 2008
EU Observer has a new feature by which they produce a monthly EU Observer list via Google Zeitgeist of the Top 10 percentage spikes in Google searches in the EU, which, as the EU Observer writes, "allows small countries such as Finland and Austria to figure in the results, if an event prompted a sudden surge in interest...

Take the ABA Journal Survey on the Impact of the Financial Recession on the Job Market in the Legal Profession in the USA

Posted on November 18, 2008
The ABA Journal has asked us to post a note about their current survey of lawyers concerning the impact of the present and future state of the economy on the job market in the legal profession.The survey link is:ABA Journal Job Market SurveyStephanie Francis Ward writes that "[s]urvey results will be published in the January ABA Journal...

YPPSYS College Football Game Predictions and Results - 2008 Season - Week 13 - Week and Weekend of Saturday, November 22, 2008

Posted on November 18, 2008
There is no way that Alabama should be ranked Number 1 this year. The pollsters are favoring a weak SEC whose Tennessee lost to Wyoming and whose LSU trailed Troy State 31-3 in the 3rd quarter. According to the Massey Ratings, the Crimson Tide has played only the 51st hardest schedule in Division I-A FBS football and according to Sagarin the 72nd hardest schedule...

Transformative Use as Fair Use : Harry Potter Lexicon by RDR Books Enjoined from Publication because of Excessive Amount and Substantiality of Use

Posted on November 14, 2008
In Warner Bros. Entm?t Inc. v. RDR Books, 2008 WL 4126736 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 8, 2008), the court after a bench trial enjoined publication of the RDR's The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Material, finding in general that reference guides to fictional works can be transformative in nature and entitled to raise the fair use exception to copyright protection, but not in the instant case, where the amount and substantiality of the original Harry Potter material used in the RDR Lexicon was simply more than required for reference purposes, as the court wrote: "verbatim copying and close paraphrasing of language from the Harry Potter works"...

German Limited : A New Entrepeneurial Company "Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt)" or "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)" as of 1 November

Posted on November 12, 2008
Andreas Lindner at Faegre & Benson alerts us toSignificant Changes for German Law on Limited Liability Companieswriting"A new law bringing significant changes for limited liability companies incorporated in Germany takes effect on November 1, 2008...

YPPSYS College Football Game Predictions and Results - 2008 Season - Week 12 - Week and Weekend of Saturday, November 15, 2008

Posted on November 11, 2008
YPPSYS (tm)College Football Game Predictions and Results - 2008 Season - Week 12 - Week and Weekend of Saturday, November 15, 2008. Odds are taken from the College Football Prediction Tracker from Tuesday, November 11. We do this all in good fun and disclaim any and all liability for any reliance of any kind on our prognostications...

Enough BCS ? Obama For College Football Playoffs at the NCAA Division I-A FBS Level

Posted on November 11, 2008
President-Elect Barack Obama has this to say about the current BCS computer ranking system as opposed to the greatly discussed FBS Division I-A college football playoffsTo show the deep problems which are present in the currently flawed BCS system, the following could happen this year in a worst case scenario for the BCS...

Do Law School Graduates Make the Best Football Coaches? They May if Your Name is Derek Dooley of Louisiana Tech

Posted on November 09, 2008
Derek Dooley is a Georgia Law School graduate who decided to go into football coaching after several years of practicing law at an Atlanta law firm. He is in his second year as head coach at Louisiana Tech (3-10 in 2006 under the previous coach and 5-7 last year in Dooley's first year as the head coach of the Bulldogs)...

The Key Secrets of Good Coaching & Leadership : Winning can be Taught & Learned : Personnel : Recruiting : Mentoring : Preparedness

Posted on November 08, 2008
Coaching and good leadership go hand in hand, whether in sports, law or business. Winning can be taught AND learned. You just have to know what you are doing.The LawPundit discovered by chance some years ago that he had a natural talent for coaching as he co-coached an amateur European youth football (soccer) team in Germany...

Barack Obama and the German American Connection : States having a Plurality of German Ancestry and Higher Median Family Income gave Obama the Vote

Posted on November 07, 2008
President-Elect Barack Obama's election as US President is based strongly on winning most of the States having a plurality of German American inhabitants, who, as the following maps show, helped to put Obama into the White House come Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009...

The Presidential Transition 2008-2009 & A Blueprint for Change : Newsroom, Agenda and Website : Change.gov : Website of President-Elect Barack Obama

Posted on November 07, 2008
There are those who have voiced doubt about what Obama plans to do as the 44th President of the United States. In fact, his "Blueprint for Change" is quite clear.Change.govis the website of the "Office of the President-Elect"where President-Elect Barack Obama writes:"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today...

Errors in Nebraska Cornhusker Playcalling : College Football Stats at cfbstats.com permit Playcall Analysis showing Husker Coaching to be Faulty

Posted on November 06, 2008
As an alumnus of the University of Nebraska and of Stanford University, we continue to be great fans of the Stanford football resurgence under head coach Jim Harbaugh and we remain very strong critics of Husker offensive playcalling which we regard to be one of the keys to the mediocrity of the current Cornhusker season...

Barack Obama's Victory Speech Analyzed by the Gender Genie

Posted on November 05, 2008
We analyzed Barack Obama's Victory Speech via the Gender Genie and came up with the following result:Words: 2082Female Score: 3038Male Score: 3307That is a good balance for a President.

The New World Under US President-Elect Barack Obama May Be a World of Change, but Lawyers and the Rule of Law still - and inescapably - Run that World

Posted on November 05, 2008
One of the reasons that the LawPundit studied law was because it became clear to him in high school - when a pre-law program was selected as a course of study - that lawyers run the world, so it is no surprise to see that lawyers and Harvard Law School graduates dominate Barack Obama's transition team...

Asheville, North Carolina, City Hall

Posted on November 05, 2008
The Asheville, North Carolina, City Building shows unique, unforgettable architecture which is an eclectic Art Deco masterpiece by Douglas D. Ellington, as our photograph clearly reflects:As written at Asheville City Hall:"The unusual octagonal roof is covered with bands of elongated triangular terra cotta red tiles...

The Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa, Asheville, North Carolina

Posted on November 05, 2008
One of the truly unique hotels in the world is The Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa, Asheville, North Carolina. Here is a LawPundit photograph taken this June, 2008:The hotel has amazing views out the backbut it is very pricey.This photo gives a good idea of the raw megalithic dimensions of the main inner hall:It is well worth a visit if you are in the Asheville area of North Carolina...

Asheville, North Carolina : Number One Developing City in the USA?

Posted on November 05, 2008
Asheville, North Carolina is consistently ranked as one of the top places to live in the USA.We were in Asheville this summer and have by chance seen that InstaPundit has been blogging from Asheville during the Presidential Election, putting up some photos, also of the Grove Arcade...

OQ - The Obama Quotient : Voting Rank by State in the 2008 Presidential Election : Youth Quotient Variable : Median Family Income Variable

Posted on November 05, 2008
One of the great paradoxes of the Presidential Election outcome of November 4, 2008, is that the resulting electoral map, with few exceptions, meshes with a map of "Median Family Income" in the United States of America, with States having LOWER median family income voting for McCain and States having HIGHER median family income voting for Obama...

President-Elect Barack Obama - Future 44th President of the United States of America - Victory Speech Video : John McCain - Concession Speech Video

Posted on November 05, 2008
The election victory speech of Barack Obama can be viewed in full video at:THE NEW YORK TIMES(with a transcript of the text of the speech)BBC NEWSBarackObama.comThe election concession speech of John McCain can be viewed in full video at:THE NEW YORK TIMES(with a transcript of the text of the speech)THE GUARDIANTHE TELEGRAPH

Obama Will Win - II - Law Pundit Predicts an Obama / Biden Presidential Election Victory Due to the Banking and Financial Crisis of the Past Months

Posted on November 03, 2008
On February 12, 2008 we predicted that Barack Obama would win the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States, and he did.It is political centrists such as ourselves, who often swing back and forth between the candidates, who determine the outcome of these elections, and, although we for a time thought that the McCain / Palin ticket might win for the Republicans, it is now clear, because of the intervening banking and financial crisis of recent months, that Barack Obama with his Vice-Presidential partner Joe Biden will tomorrow garner enough votes to win the U...

The New York Times features the upcoming International Phaistos Disk Conference sponsored by Minerva Magazine at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London

Posted on October 27, 2008
Dear Readers of LawPundit,The New York Times has featured the upcoming International Phaistos Disk Conference in London at which we will be giving the first paper on October 31. John Tierney's TierneyLab at Why Not Test the Phaistos Disc? features an article from which we link the photograph below showing both sides of this enigmatic ancient CD and DVD precursor (info recorded on a disc), and which holds the clue to the origins of writing in Western Europe and thus also the development of our own Western Civilization in subsequent eras...

College Football Game Predictions and Results - 2008 Season - Week 11 - Week and Weekend of Saturday, November 8, 2008

Posted on October 26, 2008
Dear Readers,We were on the road for a scientific conference in London this weekend and unable to timely post our football predictions for last week, but we should note that our stats would have predicted a Texas Tech win over Texas.YPPSYS (tm)College Football Game Predictions and Results - 2008 Season - Week 11 - Week and Weekend of Saturday, November 8, 2008...

New English-language Germany.info Online as the Website of the German Embassy, the German Consulates General and the German Information Center USA

Posted on October 25, 2008
We received the following notice from and about the English-language website Germany.info:"We have officially launched the redesigned, streamlined, modernized, fully integrated website of the German Embassy, the German Consulates General and the German Information Center USA...

The Legal Market : Effect of the Financial Crisis on the Demand for Lawyers and their Services in Large Law Firms

Posted on October 23, 2008
The current financial crisis is marked by six factors "likely to have a significant negative effect on [the] demand for legal services", says Paul Lippe, founder of Legal OnRamp, who lists the following likely legal market trends in the October 22, 2008 edition of the American Lawyer:1...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of US Supreme Court Decisions

Posted on October 23, 2008
A take on the "Worst Supreme Court Decisions" is found at the Los Angeles Times in an article written by David G. Savage, reporting on a survey of law professors which included respondents "Jack Balkin, Yale; Mary L. Dudziak, USC; Jonathan Varat, UCLA; Richard Epstein, University of Chicago; Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Irvine; Goodwin Liu, UC Berkeley; Pamela Karlan, Stanford; Michael C...

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