Legal Commentary

Windfall Millions : The Dark Side of Capitalism Raises its Head : What Does the Subprime Mortgage Debacle Tell Us?

Posted on January 24, 2008
Money, money, money. Just how much is enough?And how much should a man be allowed to earn if he has in fact harmed the community?Is there something fundamentally wrong with our financial rewards system?In a world based on money and capitalism, there are going to be abuses of the capitalist system, and Robert J...

Blue Monday Strikes Financial Markets as Stocks Plummet on January 21, 2008

Posted on January 22, 2008
Blue Monday in January has hit again as world stock markets have fallen sharply.Relax and take it easy. Do not be too concerned. The established news media are having a field day as they love nothing more than catastrophes, but Blue Monday happens every year, in a development which shows that mankind is human, but which also shows that the mass of men are not eagles but sheep...

Blogs for Schools and Colleges offered by Edublogs

Posted on January 22, 2008
As we have cross-posted to our education blog edu.edu, Edublogs has launched "Edublogs Campus", a blog service for schools and colleges. It looks good.Edublogs writes:"Edublogs Campus is the enterprise version of the free edublogs site.As an Edublogs Campus customer you get your own installation of the edublogs software, at your own domain...

Wikia Search Launched

Posted on January 21, 2008
Wikia Search launched on January 7, 2008 but it still has a long way to go.LOTS of criticism, e.g. by Seth Finkelstein.and TechCrunch (Michael Arrington).But there are also some positive voices, for example Skrentablog (Rich Skrenta). Take a look.Our own opinion is that the rankings feature is thus far a disaster and that Wikia Search should concentrate more on delivering information rather than on evaluating it by quantities...

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

The LawPundit Personality acc. to Myers-Briggs : ENTJ "The Chief"

Posted on January 21, 2008
These personality tests are interesting. Here are the results for LawPundit.The LawPundit Personality : ENTJ "The Chief" - detailsTemperament: NT (Intellectual)Primary Function: Extraverted Thinking Population: 3% (4.5% male, 1.5% female)

StickK Launches Contract Commitment Site : Achieve Your Personal Goals : Lose Weight : Quit Smoking : Save Money : Exercise Regularly : Hey, Why Not?

Posted on January 21, 2008
Here's a legal twist.StickK has launched the ultimate contract commitment site - a place to make improvement contracts with yourself.On Target Image linked from StickK - Copyright by StickKAchieve Your Personal Goals : Lose Weight : Stop Smoking : Save Money : Exercise RegularlyStickK writes:"stickK is designed to promote a healthier lifestyle for you by allowing you to create ?Commitment Contracts...

Project Vote Smart : The Voter's Speakeasy Blog : Voter's Self-Defense System Bus Tour

Posted on January 21, 2008
Project Vote Smart has a blog for voters on the Presidential Election (and others elections too) titled The Voter's Speakeasy. The Project is also conducting a nationwide bus tour to defend voters from campaign rhetoric and misinformation. The tour thus far is shown below by a map linked from the Project Vote Smart website:As Project Vote Smart writes on their website:"After 16 years of work by 6000 volunteers, at the cost of twelve million dollars, the Voter?s Self-Defense System is finally complete, and ready to be presented to American voters from across the nation...

GPS Coordinate Systems : Google Earth : WGS84 : Ordnance Survey : GEOTRANS : UTM : ED50 : Problems and Conversions

Posted on January 21, 2008
The prime meridian of GPS and Google Earth, which uses WGS84 (1984), runs 102.5 meters east of the Prime Meridian of 1884 at Greenwich. This is not an "error". Read at the Flamsteed Astronomy Society why that is so.Determining just where we are or where a given place is located is not as simple as it may initially seem to anyone who uses GPS for navigation of their car...

German Princes after Luther, the Bible and Protestantism : Are the New Princes Google and Intel?

Posted on January 17, 2008
OK, if you shot a very long arrow from the State of Maine toward the Northeast, where would you wind up? Would you believe, Prince Edward Island, location of one of the best blogs in the Internet?Robert Paterson has a blog looking underneath the surface of things, also Organizations and Culture, where he posted recently about "The New Reformation - The Importance of the Princes":"But we also have to remember the importance of the German Princes who protected Luther from the Pope and the Emperor and why they did this...

Blogvertising : Blogging for Wine : Stormhoek Wine : The Real Thing or A Tempest in a Wineglass? : Orbital Wines Goes Into Administration in the UK

Posted on January 17, 2008
Stormhoek Wine? Ever heard of it?Hugh MacLeod at the Gaping Void wrote in September, 2005:"The Stormhoek project is getting more and more interesting, at least to me. In the Stormhoek brochure I posed the question,Will the idea-virus spread far enough that suddenly, instead of one or two people knowing about the wine, suddenly tens of thousands of smart, connected people in the UK know about it, and are talking about it?Is that enough to launch a national brand?Although it's still too early to answer that question definitively, my gut tells me, the blogvertising model works...

The Volek Story - Will the San Diego Chargers Beat the New England Patriots and Win the Super Bowl?

Posted on January 15, 2008
Take a look at the Volek Story.We predicted in August 2007 at the beginning of this football season that the San Diego Chargers would be the Super Bowl Champions in 2008.The Patriots are favored to win the game by 14 and this is surely understandable for a team that went undefeated in the regular season, but one can not forget that San Diego is working on an 8-game winning streak of its own...

Final College Football Rankings 2007/2008 - Top 250 by the SPRS System

Posted on January 15, 2008
Final College Football Rankings 2007/2008 by the SPRS System - Top 250 Teams(all hand calculations - please let us know if you find an error)1. Please see this SPRS link for an explanation of the new and unique SPRS System, which is based on the analysis of football teams' yards per play on offense and defense, schedule strength, and win/loss record - margin of victory is excluded - and yet this statistical system for ranking/rating football teams provides extremely useful results which compare to those of Massey Ratings (MRk) and Sagarin Ratings (SRk) - indeed, we use the strength of schedule ranking from Massey Ratings, but evaluate that rank differently, giving what we think are more accurate ranking results using our NAYPPA method)2...

College Football Team Performance in the 2007/2008 Season Bowl Games

Posted on January 15, 2008
College Football Bowl Game Wins 2007/2008 Analyzedby the SportPundit Football Ranking System (SPRS System")As a general rule, if we compare two teams in terms of their total net yards average per play, a 1-point net advantage (NAYPPA) by one team is equal to about 9 points on the scoreboard...

The New and Unique SportPundit Football Rating/Ranking System (SPRS System)

Posted on January 15, 2008
INTRODUCINGthe SportPundit Football Ranking System (SPRS System)The SportPundit Football Ranking System (SPRS System) is based on a power value calculated to rate the relative DOMINANCE of a team as determined primarily bythe net average yards per play advantage (NAYPPA) of offense over defense...

KSR Update Webinar by World Research Group at Noon (EST) on January 24, 2008

Posted on January 15, 2008
Philip Brooks at Patent Infringement Updates alerts us to a webinar by World Research Group to take place online from noon to 1:15 P.M. (Eastern Standard Time) on January 24, 2008 regarding the implications of the Supreme Court's landmark patent law decision in the KSR case (see also Leapfrog), which set a new standard for determining obviousness...

2007 College Football Season Conference Total Offense and Total Defense Statistics by Yards Per Play and Rankings (regular season)

Posted on January 13, 2008
Stats too often neglected in the analysis of college football teams are the total offense and total defense statistics. Using stats found at cfbstats.com for the 2007 regular college football season we have calculated the following conference rankings for College Football Conference Total Offense and Total Defense Statistics and also their Net Difference by Yards per Play (regular season) :2007 Total Defense Rankings by Yards per Play by Conference2007 Total Offense Rankings by Yards per Play by Conference2007 Rankings of the Net Difference between Total Offense by Yards per Play vs...

College Football Bowl Game Conference Standings 2007/2008 for Division I-A (FBS)

Posted on January 07, 2008
College Football Bowl Game Conference Standings 2007/2008 for Division I-A (FBS).NCAA Division I-A (FBS) football conferenceNumber of bowl teams 2007/2008 season Football bowl games won-lost recordSun BeltMountain WestSoutheastern ConferencePac 10 ConferenceBig 12 ConferenceBig East ConferenceBig Ten ConferenceConference USAAtlantic Coast ConferenceWestern Athletic ConferenceIndependents (FBS)Mid-American Conference(1 bowl team)(5 bowl teams)(9 bowl teams)(6 bowl teams)(8 bowl teams)(5 bowl teams)(8 bowl teams)(6 bowl teams)(8 bowl teams)(4 bowl teams)(1 bowl team)(3 bowl teams)1-04-17-24-25-33-23-52-42-61-30-10-3

Christianity in Europe : 500000+ Children as Star Singers (Sternsinger) underway in Europe at Epiphany as Biblical Magi Casper, Melchior & Balthazar

Posted on January 06, 2008
The Sternsinger (star singers) dressed as the three Biblical Magi (kings, wise men) were just at our door this afternoon on a bright sunny Sunday here in Germany and we thus thought that we would tell you something about them, because they represent a seldom seen side of the low-key but still fundamentally deep strength of Christian tradition in Europe...

Keep Up to Date on the 2008 US Presidential Election Candidates and Primaries at The Caucus, the New York Times Politics Blog

Posted on January 05, 2008
Here is our tip for a top political blog to follow in this election year....A great way to keep up on the 2008 US Presidential Election candidates and primaries is (and will be) The Caucus, "The New York Times Politics Blog". Simply superb.Even at blogging, it is tough to beat the real pros in the journalistic profession.

Obama : Clothes Make the Man : Harvard Law School Graduate : The Tiger Woods of Politics?

Posted on January 05, 2008
If this is what Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit - a popular voice of the people - thinks ..."NOW I'M WATCHING OBAMA'S SPEECH, and before he started talking my first thought was "what a great suit." What is it, Canali? Brioni? But the speech is good, too...

The Shared Values of Europe are the Values of the West : Heinrich August Winkler in Die Welt : European Union Urgently Needs to Develop a "We-Feeling"

Posted on January 04, 2008
Surely one of the most perspicacious analysts of the European Union is Heinrich August Winkler (German bio, English bio), until March 2007 Professor of Contemporary History at the Humboldt University of Berlin, who has a superb article in the December 27, 2007 issue of Die Welt (online in German)...

Are the Poeple of Iowa and the State of Iowa Important? You Bet. Huckabee Triumphs Over Romney and Obama Tops Edwards and Clinton in Iowa Caucus.

Posted on January 04, 2008
The very popular Bill Bryson writes in his books that "I come from Des Moines Iowa, someone had to", and he is not alone, for there are many who call Iowa and the Midwest their home. Iowa is a part of the flat, endless midwestern plains of the United States, that recall F...

Open Source Wikia Search is Coming on January 7, 2006 : Real Competition for Google? or Just a Remake of DMOZ?

Posted on January 03, 2008
The open source search engine Wikia Search is to be launched on Monday, January 7, 2008, according to an email sent to the Wikia Search mailing list.How will it fare?According to Garett Rogers at ZDNet, Wikia looking to topple Google, but will fail miserably...

Open Internal European Borders a Reality in 2008 as Schengen Zone Expanded

Posted on January 01, 2008
Edis Bevan writes at his blog MKNE political information:"Back in 1945 my mother swam the Elbe to escape the oncoming Soviet army and find refuge in British held territory. Europe was a place of fear.At midnight today (20 December 2007) the Schengen agreement that allows for free passage ?without need of passports- across national frontiers within most of the European Union is extended to include her native Lithuania (and eight other countries including Latvia and Estonia)...

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