Miscellaneous

Missouri was a slave state, but

Posted on April 10, 2010
Missouri was a slave state, but not a member of the Confederacy-- in fact, after Southern states began trying to secede in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession which voted to remain in the Union. The state legislature subsiquently enacted a secession ordinance, but since the convention had been voted sole authority on the issue this was not recognized as being legitimate...

I doubt that I'll read it, but

Posted on April 09, 2010
I doubt that I'll read it, but I'm enjoying the reviews of Norris Church Mailer's memoir. She sounds like she knows how to put a story together, for one thing. Having a fling with Bill Clinton is interesting, for example, but knowing how to tell about it is another:"Years later in New York, after all the scandals broke, a man I knew socially who was in politics said, 'I guess he slept with every woman in Arkansas except you, Norris...

One of my first college classes

Posted on April 09, 2010
One of my first college classes was Professor Edward Janosik's Introduction to American Politics, and on the first test he gave us there was a section where he listed names and we had to identify them. One of the names on the list was John Paul Stevens, who'd just been nominated for the Supreme Court Seat which Justice Douglas had vacated...

Malcolm McLaren has died. For some

Posted on April 08, 2010
Malcolm McLaren has died. For some of us he'll be remembered as an important figure in late 20th Century culture, although all he really did was recognize and promote artists who actually embodied and shaped that culture. Lately I've been listening to Andrew Loog Oldham's show on satellite radio-- he's a similar figure from a generation earlier...

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To a workshop on teaching at the

Posted on April 08, 2010
To a workshop on teaching at the law school last night, presented by four winners of the Faculty Award, an honor bestowed each year by the graduating class for excellence in teaching. The story I tell about my Discovery class is that it had its genesis one evening as I drove home from an unusually contentious deposition in Syracuse...

If it weren't for the fact that

Posted on April 06, 2010
If it weren't for the fact that I just drove to the middle of the country I'd be of a mind to go catch a crew meet this weekend. CLA reports that life is good on a varsity sport-- on rugby the women drove their own cars to games, and more or less self-funded meals and whatnot, but on rowboating there's a team bus, and meal allowances, and for all I know under the table sneaker contracts...

My law partner's emigration left

Posted on April 05, 2010
My law partner's emigration left me custodian of her goldfish. The original plan was that when the weather got warm I'd set them free in Hoyt Lake, but I'm beginning to grow fond of them. "Personality" might be too strong a word, but they display distinct behaviors when I feed them every morning...

The best bar in Terre Haute is

Posted on April 03, 2010
The best bar in Terre Haute is a TGI Fridays. Even though that sounds pretty grim, the reality is that when a TGI Fridays has 32 taps and features mostly local brews, including several worthy IPAs that's a bar that can hold it's head up with pride. For some reason Indiana has quite a few good microbreweries, and all of them seem to produce good pale ales, and excellent IPAs...

We are taking EGA to Missouri tomorrow;

Posted on March 30, 2010
We are taking EGA to Missouri tomorrow; it figures to be a two day trip. Plotting it out, we reckoned that Terre Haute would be a reasonable place to stop over, so I went to the Terre Haute TribStar website to see if I could scout out an interesting place to eat...

To the Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards

Posted on March 29, 2010
To the Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio at the Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz yesterday. Rosenwinkel is a fluid guitarist who has a distinct, clear sound. When he gets rolling his tone is almost like a horn, and he seemed to be improvising pretty freely...

Remind me to look up Diamond and

Posted on March 25, 2010
Remind me to look up Diamond and Vidmar, Jury Ruminations on Forbidden Topics, 87 Va. L. Rev. 1857 (2001). Chances are that the forbidden topics are not as interesting as the title makes it sound, but you never know.

Winning is the same in every endeavor,

Posted on March 22, 2010
Winning is the same in every endeavor, in all fields. You're never as good as you look when you are winning and you're never as bad as you look when you are losing. Health care reform has passed, but it was a near thing. A week ago people thought that Obama might be a one term president, now he is a world beater...

With some artists its when you

Posted on March 20, 2010
With some artists its when you find your way in. Christgau had been saying for years that Alex Chilton was putting out sides that were worth picking up, but I couldn't find "Like Flies on Sherbet" or "Feudalist Tarts"-- and I didn't know about Big Star...

Lawyers enter into the discussion

Posted on March 20, 2010
Lawyers enter into the discussion only glancingly in this Metafilter post about obsolete professions, but there is absolutely a sense in which our glamor profession deserves a place at the table. In the 16 years that we've had our practice we saw entire areas of law that we concentrated on eliminated with the stroke of a pen...

Is there a better illustration

Posted on March 17, 2010
Is there a better illustration of the Overton Window than Justice John Paul Stevens? Appointed by Gerald Ford, who doesn't think of him as a liberal? Probably even he does at this point.

I guess I'd always assumed that

Posted on March 16, 2010
I guess I'd always assumed that Gotham City was in the Midwest. Makes sense that Green Lantern is on the west Coast though.

Watched "The Hurt Locker" last

Posted on March 15, 2010
Watched "The Hurt Locker" last night, a movie so well made that I was tempted to run through it again immediately just to see how the pieces were put together. Part of what made it work so well was that the first scenes had a documentary feel to them...

Sarah Harmer's Lodestar popped

Posted on March 14, 2010
Sarah Harmer's Lodestar popped up on my iPod, and since I happened to be at my computer I looked her up. I'm not sure where I came across the song, but I've loved it from the first time I heard it. It's from her 2000 album, "You Were Here", and Wikipedia reports that "You Were Here" is number 40 Bob Mersereau's list of the top 100 Canadian albums...

I'm surprised that Kissinger leaves

Posted on March 13, 2010
I'm surprised that Kissinger leaves the US, although I guess South Korea and Israel are probably safe havens for him. Bet he's damn careful to take direct flights. It would be interesting to see what the list of places he can go to without fear of arrest and extradition looks like...

I'd have thought that among lawyers

Posted on March 09, 2010
I'd have thought that among lawyers condemnation of Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's equating the lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees with their clients would have been instantaneous and universal. Dahlia Lithwick got it right: "When the "al-Qaida Seven" and their two DoJ colleagues fought to defend alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, they weren't fighting to protect jihadist murderers...

A few weeks back there was an on-line

Posted on March 05, 2010
A few weeks back there was an on-line discussion among the UB law adjuncts about students using laptops in class. Some people were dead set against it, mostly on the grounds that laptops are a distraction and disrespectful, but I think the majority position was that they can be a useful tool, and that distractions are an inevitable part of the classroom setting...

I can't spot him here, but my brother

Posted on March 02, 2010
I can't spot him here, but my brother participated in Spencer Tunick's Sydney installation over the weekend.

To the Cedar Walton Quartet at

Posted on March 01, 2010
To the Cedar Walton Quartet at the (deep breath) Hunt Real Estate-David Kennedy Art of Jazz at the Albright-Knox yesterday. I've been hoping Bruce Eaton would book Walton since I realized that the series was an ongoing affair, and I think Bruce has had him on his list for a long time too...

This is more of a note to myself

Posted on February 27, 2010
This is more of a note to myself than anything else. The course feedback forms for my Discovery class (the first I've ever gotten) suggest that there are several things that the students would like to see. Some are beyond my control-- I can't make it a semester-long offering, and making it a two credit class would be a bigger lift than I feel like I could handle...

As I understand it at yesterday's

Posted on February 26, 2010
As I understand it at yesterday's health care summit Lamar! Alexander laid out the Republican's position as follows: start from scratch, and do not propose a bill that does not have substantial Republican support. In essence what he is saying is that the Republicans in Congress demand to be the ones who control the ultimate outcome...

I'm sorry to hear that Ted Pietrzak

Posted on February 25, 2010
I'm sorry to hear that Ted Pietrzak is leaving the Burchfield Penney Art Center-- his leadership brought about a significant local improvement that has been insufficiently heralded. People complain that it is impossible to get anything done in this town, but Ted very quietly managed to raise a big pile of dough and turn a gallery that was amounted to a nice collection of stuff in Buff State's attic into a major cultural attraction...

I've seen studies that nibble around

Posted on February 24, 2010
I've seen studies that nibble around the edges, but I've never read a comprehensive narrative about the economics of recorded popular music-- from the early days, when labels were created to make records so that the furniture stores that sold Victrolas would have software to today, when the ubiquity of downloadable files has made touring essential in a way it hadn't been for probably the last 75 years...

Some of it has to be expectation,

Posted on February 21, 2010
Some of it has to be expectation, after all. When you figure on liking something, your choices are to really like it or to be disappointed, and who wants the let down? Still, as I continue my march through A New Literary History of America what I'm finding is that I'm having more and more fun...

It is incredible to me that Abbey

Posted on February 19, 2010
It is incredible to me that Abbey Road Studios is endangered. Just about the most moving experience I have ever had as a tourist came when I visited Sun Studio in Memphis-- Abbey Road is one of the very few places that would inspire similar awe. (I'd like to see Electric Lady Studios too...

Once again I find I'm working the

Posted on February 18, 2010
Once again I find I'm working the comp side of the street. Doing what I do of course the comp universe is always on the periphery. It's like walking along the beach. The ocean laps along the shore and on one side there's the forest, full of trees and deer and moss and bears...

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