Miscellaneous

All my life I've wondered about

Posted on March 29, 2011
All my life I've wondered about this boid, who appears on bumper stickers, on Nigel Tufnel's guitar and as a tattoo on Nick Cage in "Raising Arizona". I knew that it was some sort of gearhead thing, but what? Was this "Thrush" related to the THRUSH in "The Man From U...

Leonard Weinglass has died, an

Posted on March 25, 2011
Leonard Weinglass has died, an occasion which makes me reflect on what we do, why we do it, and why it is important. Among the things we do is to tilt at windmills. We do this because we also fight City Hall, and sometimes the windmills look as thought they might be City Hall...

The best thing about being a member

Posted on March 24, 2011
The best thing about being a member of the New York Bar Association's CPLR Committee is that I get to watch a lot of really smart people make really intelligent arguments. Sometimes the things we discuss are so arcane that only members of the CPLR Committee care enough to argue about them, but nearly all the time these are topics that everyone should care about...

Bob Dylan and the Law. Perhaps

Posted on March 23, 2011
Bob Dylan and the Law. Perhaps this sort of quality conference programing is why Fordham was ranked ahead of UB in the most recent US News survey. Just for fun I went to the UB Law website to see what we have coming up in the next couple of months. The Environmental Law Program and Baldy Center hosts the conference "Hydrofracking: Exploring the Legal Issues in the Context of Politics, Science and the Economy"...

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Thirty years in the business but

Posted on March 23, 2011
Thirty years in the business but there is always something new to see. Today I saw a staged accident, first time ever for me. I'm not sure I've ever handled a case, on either side, as fake as this. Took the bus into work today. I was running behind, so I was noticing every stop, and how inefficiently people were handling their fares...

"Pinetop said it: 'You know the

Posted on March 22, 2011
"Pinetop said it: 'You know the blues got soul'"."Originally a guitarist, Mr. Perkins concentrated exclusively on the piano after an incident, in 1943, in which a dancer at a juke joint attacked him with a knife, severing the tendons in his left arm...

To the Robert Glasper Trio at Bruce

Posted on March 21, 2011
To the Robert Glasper Trio at Bruce Eaton's Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz yesterday, the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles of local arts programing, only good. Glasper has a light, lyrical sound, playing on top of the muscular bass of Derrick Hodge and Mark Colenburg's drums, but he used all of the piano, rapping on the case or muting a string to add persuasion effects, and rolling a strong left hand when called for...

I have said for years that Buffalo

Posted on March 20, 2011
I have said for years that Buffalo is the most segregated city I've ever lived in. Turns out it is one of the top ten most segregated urban areas in the country, weighing in at number six. Of course we are dealing with a somewhat loaded category here: "urban area" is different from "city" after all...

I wonder if the Sabres 1975 Stanley

Posted on March 19, 2011
I wonder if the Sabres 1975 Stanley Cup loss might be the most traumatic loss in Buffalo sports history. On the national (or even international) stage the Wide Right Super Bowl loss was probably the most memorable, and of course for many the run of Super Bowl losses considered cumulatively may be what defines Buffalo sports, but my sense of it is that bottom line Buffalo is a hockey town...

The US News rankings are arbitrary

Posted on March 18, 2011
The US News rankings are arbitrary and despicable, but like other things which are arbitrary and despicable they are also pervasive and persistent. I only care about my law school, which is ranked 84th. The New York schools that appear ahead of UB are #4 Columbia, #6 NYU, #13 Cornell, #30 Fordham (wha?), # 50 Yeshiva University (Cardozo) (wait a minute! How is that possible?), and #67 Brooklyn (you can't be serious)...

"If you pay close attention, you'll

Posted on March 18, 2011
"If you pay close attention, you'll notice that the New York Times is more or less a newspaper about getting your kids into an Ivy League school."Since posting a link to a discussion of "Harvards of the South" the other day I have been chortling to myself about the pretension of it all, now this spot-on observation from the Village Voice has driven it home...

Using the highly sophisticated

Posted on March 18, 2011
Using the highly sophisticated "Who do I know that went there or goes there" system I am getting killed, and perhaps that means a change is in order. Naturally daughters should not attend schools that are located in Confederate states. They should not go to Catholic colleges either...

I should mention that over the

Posted on March 17, 2011
I should mention that over the last weekend LCA and the rest of the City Honors thespians mounted their production of "South Pacific". Overall the show was pretty good, and LCA was remarkably good. As her father I could be expected to say that, but it was also true-- she approached professional quality I think, particularly in her singing and dancing, but also very nearly with her acting as well...

The Wall Street Journal had an

Posted on March 16, 2011
The Wall Street Journal had an amusing toy called "Blindfold Brackets" which assigned code names and colors to the teams in this year's Men's Tournament, then described the strengths and weaknesses of each team. The idea is to eliminate the bias that might otherwise color one's picks, although even a casual fan like me could pick out some of the teams based on the descriptions...

Todd Rundgren is coming to the

Posted on March 15, 2011
Todd Rundgren is coming to the Tralf this July, and I'm thinking I may finally be ready to take in a Todd show again, after something like a 30 year hiatus. If only I could be sure that he won't play Singring and the Glass Guitar.

Today is Pi Day!

Posted on March 14, 2011
Today is Pi Day!

"Antonin Scalia, approaching his

Posted on March 11, 2011
"Antonin Scalia, approaching his 25th anniversary as a Supreme Court justice, has cast a long shadow but has accomplished surprisingly little. Nearly every time he has come close to achieving one of his jurisprudential goals, his colleagues have either hung back at the last minute or, feeling buyer?s remorse, retreated at the next opportunity...

To an Ethics CLE last night. In

Posted on March 10, 2011
To an Ethics CLE last night. In New York we are obliged to attend 24 hours of CLE every two years, and four hours of that has to be in Ethics. Non-lawyers think legal ethics must be fascinating stuff, and imagine that it's all "Law & Order" moral quandaries...

Holy crow, the guy who argued Erie

Posted on March 09, 2011
Holy crow, the guy who argued Erie Railroad v. Tompkins just died. And he wasn't a billion years old-- Samuel Hazard Gillespie Jr., former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the first summer associate at Davis Polk, and a guy who sounds like he had a pretty interesting life generally, was 100.

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, a very

Posted on March 07, 2011
At Lawyers, Guns and Money, a very interesting series on how to respond to suspected academic dishonesty. Professor Charli Carpenter, who teaches in the Political Science department at UMass Amherst, received an email from a student at another institution, which appeared to actually be the student's homework assignment...

I doubt that I will ever use Twitter

Posted on March 03, 2011
I doubt that I will ever use Twitter all that regularly, but I am past complaining that I don't get it. Twitter is to blogging as poetry is to essays: a concise medium that uses its concision as a means to deeper expression, and sometimes even wit.It took following the right Twitter feed for a while for me to get it...

Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in

Posted on March 02, 2011
Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in the Sunday NYTimes magazine was useless: usually wrong, and right for the wrong reasons when it managed to be right. The recipe columns have been dreadful, especially the "Cooking With Dexter" feature. I'll exempt Amanda Hesser's old recipe/new recipe pieces, I guess...

Jane Russell has died. Among the

Posted on March 01, 2011
Jane Russell has died. Among the many things to love about this clip is that the courtroom staff are clapping in time, which suggests that the courtroom also has a cowbell. Well, why not? More cowbell makes everything better, even breasts. It is regrettable that people my age probably first became aware of her because of those awful Playtex bra ads-- later we'd figure out what the fuss was about.

My Oscar Wrap for Spree is her

Posted on February 28, 2011
My Oscar Wrap for Spree is here.

Suze Rotolo has died. I liked her

Posted on February 28, 2011
Suze Rotolo has died. I liked her book, and I respect her for writing something that was honest and not exploitative.

Here's a guy who is charged with

Posted on February 25, 2011
Here's a guy who is charged with jury tampering because he hands out pamphlets advocating jury nullification in front of the Federal courthouse in Foley Square.He is obviously a Grade A crank, but this prosecution is, to use a technical legal term, bullshit...

You look around at the way the

Posted on February 24, 2011
You look around at the way the world works and you wonder sometimes, how did it get like this? One of the ways is that, for good or for ill, lawyers made it like this. One of the cats that invented the modern corporate marketplace has just died: Joe Flom, the last name in Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom...

"While virtually every cyclist

Posted on February 23, 2011
"While virtually every cyclist in America is also a driver, relatively few drivers are also cyclists. 'People either don't know how to handle you,' says Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, 'or they don't want to handle you.'" I tend to think of Buffalo as particularly hostile to cyclists, but it is probably just typical.

To mark the signing of Carmelo

Posted on February 23, 2011
To mark the signing of Carmelo Anthony by the Knicks the Carnegie Deli has introduced the 'Melo', a $21.95 sandwich that consists of pastrami, corned beef, salami, bacon, lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing on rye. A. says that it should be held together by a toothpick with a figure of St...

To the Chilly Challenge yesterday,

Posted on February 21, 2011
To the Chilly Challenge yesterday, in perfect conditions for a February race. The roads were clear and dry, the sun was out, there was no wind, and I was wearing just the right combination of gear to be comfortable. Damn shame I'm so slow, but that'll change once I get more thoroughly on track...

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