Miscellaneous

The way it works with Netflix in

Posted on September 16, 2008
The way it works with Netflix in our household is that I'll see a reference to a movie that looks like it might be interesting and add it to the queue. Then A. will think to herself, "It has been several months since we have seen X," and she will add something...

What did yesterday's primary tell

Posted on September 10, 2008
What did yesterday's primary tell us? Well, starting with the 144th Assembly District, maybe people are telling the truth when they say that they don't care about the sex lives of their elected officials. When Barbara Kavanagh announced that she was running against Sam Hoyt I was puzzled...

There's been more than a little

Posted on September 09, 2008
There's been more than a little bit of snark in the air about the new Burchfield-Penny Art Center. Actually, people have been complaining about it for a few years. A lot of the bitching has to do with the fact that the museum presents a blank wall towards Elmwood Avenue...

A and I were 18 and 19 at our polling

Posted on September 09, 2008
A and I were 18 and 19 at our polling place this morning at about 8:15. That's kinda low in our district, particularly with heated contests for Assembly and District Attorney.

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A. was in Chicago for a DRI meeting

Posted on September 08, 2008
A. was in Chicago for a DRI meeting last week. She had a positive experience, but noted that the other lawyers from Buffalo-- one of whom she used to practice with-- were distinctly chilly in their demeanor. This is something I've noticed too, and it seems unusual...

Joe Biden proves his worth. This

Posted on September 07, 2008
Joe Biden proves his worth. This campaign is smart, I'm telling you. Obama stays the course, he keeps it classy, and they stay on message. I'm no kind of Biden fan-- I think he is Exhibit A in how the Senate can turn a right thinking cat into a glad-handing pile of fluff...

Shawn Matlock's observation about

Posted on September 05, 2008
Shawn Matlock's observation about the effectiveness of billboard advertising is spot on. Mr. Matlock, a Fort Worth criminal defense attorney comments that the billboards in his area that say ?Drink. Drive. Go to jail? are not really intended to be informational-- in fact, the information which they convey is incorrect...

On our sojourn into the heart of

Posted on September 04, 2008
On our sojourn into the heart of Red State America last week included attending a performance of "The Day Boy and the Night Girl" a musical based on a story I'd never heard of by George MacDonald, a Scottish writer from the nineteenth century who I am mostly unfamiliar with...

About a year ago we settled an

Posted on September 02, 2008
About a year ago we settled an infant's case. It wasn't a lot of money; it wasn't much of a case. When you settle a case brought on behalf of a minor the court has to approve it, and the money has to be put in a trust until the child turns 18. The ordinary practice is to have the money deposited in a savings account with the bank and a parent as co-trustees, but when we can we like to purchase an annuity for the kid...

I get a 73 out of Omnivore's Hundred;

Posted on August 30, 2008
I get a 73 out of Omnivore's Hundred; some I've never heard of, and there are a few that I can't eat for one reason or another. It doesn't impress me as all that challenging a list, actually. Many of these things are staple items in our menu rotation, and quite a few are regular treats...

Governor Palin is only slightly

Posted on August 29, 2008
Governor Palin is only slightly more qualified to be President of the United States than my mom. TCA is a restless soul, and when she and my father retired to the Tarheel State she got the itch and went into politics. She was a town council member and then mayor of a town more or less the size of Wasilla, and there was talk at one point of a run for Congress...

I'd been wondering about "vintage"

Posted on August 29, 2008
I'd been wondering about "vintage" e-mail addresses lately, and now the Observer kindly elucidates the topic for us. I have a Yahoo! account that I use for blogging correspondence, and a gmail account that I use for freelance writing assignments. I have a Yahoo! account that mostly gets spam, but also gets mail from people I need to communicate with...

Law schools game the rankings?

Posted on August 28, 2008
Law schools game the rankings? Who knew?

man, ol' Bill Clinton can rally

Posted on August 27, 2008
man, ol' Bill Clinton can rally bring it, can't he? I'd forgotten how much I enjoy watching him turn it on.

The Worst Colleges in America.

Posted on August 27, 2008
The Worst Colleges in America.

To Geneseo over the weekend to

Posted on August 26, 2008
To Geneseo over the weekend to drop off CLA, her many, many possessions and her porcupine. I was impressed with the system they had devised for this process: historically drop-off day at most colleges somewhat resembles a reverse re-enactment of Dunkirk performed with station wagons, but this was pretty orderly...

I'm not sure I know how I feel

Posted on August 25, 2008
I'm not sure I know how I feel about Buffalo being portrayed as the next Greenpoint. Good, I guess.

What I like about the Biden pick

Posted on August 24, 2008
What I like about the Biden pick is that it says that Obama isn't going to run away from being a liberal Democrat. Michael Moore is right-- if the Democrats are going to win they are going to have to do it as Democrats. There is no reason to vote for any Democrat if they can't understand that...

An interesting thing about McCain

Posted on August 22, 2008
An interesting thing about McCain is that he really does have a terrible temper. Some of the things he has said to his wife have been quoted elsewhere and are remarkably nasty-- I wouldn't be sleeping on the couch in any of my wife's houses if I'd said that kind of stuff...

Interesting piece on the reasons

Posted on August 15, 2008
Interesting piece on the reasons Hillary Clinton's campaign failed. Loss of momentum from Iowa was critical, but you really can't criticize the decision not to start there earlier: she'd have taken a drubbing if she'd made her move there before she locked up her Senate re-election...

Madonna turns 50 this Saturday,

Posted on August 14, 2008
Madonna turns 50 this Saturday, an event that will keep any number of cultural commentators busy. The thing they are all bound to note is that La Ciccone has reinvented herself time and again. It's the thing you say about Madonna, isn't it? The funny thing is, it doesn't seem to be true, at least not as far as her work goes...

FiveThirtyEight is the sort of

Posted on August 13, 2008
FiveThirtyEight is the sort of thing I love: statistical analysis of the polling data for the election. Pundits and talking heads (like the late Tim Russert, or Cokie Roberts) like to talk about polling data, but they seldom delve into what the data means, or how it was derived, or whether what the numbers seem to indicate even makes sense...

Should I feel bad about thinking

Posted on August 11, 2008
Should I feel bad about thinking of John Edwards as the white Jessie Jackson? I suppose I should. For all his grandstanding over the years, the Rev. has a genuine track record. He's walked the walk, and accomplished way more than Edwards, and I say that as someone who completely buys into the notion that plaintiff's lawyers really do fight for victims rights, and work for greater economic justice...

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,

Posted on August 10, 2008
If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats. Pop culture iconography that's right in my wheelhouse, Dean Martin to Tom Verlaine; Lauren Bacall to Jean Seberg. Catherine Deneuve to John Coltrane. Categories: They Were Collaborators...

As Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it,

Posted on August 09, 2008
As Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it, "I hate it when the government makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist." Even so, I will confess that I have long harbored the notion that the anthrax letters were a Bush Administration scheme to provoke a war against Iraq-- and then the planes hit...

It is better for plaintiff's to

Posted on August 08, 2008
It is better for plaintiff's to settle than to go to trial; it is much better for defendants to settle than to go to trial. I'd say that this is pretty consistent with the way most trial lawyers think, for a number of reasons. The economic analysis is interesting-- I'd like to see more studies like that...

Andrew Cuomo's role in the subprime

Posted on August 08, 2008
Andrew Cuomo's role in the subprime crisis. Interesting, and I'd like to hear his response. In a nutshell, while at HUD, Cuomo set housing goals that pushed Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac into the subprime market, then rejected rules which would have imposed more stringent reporting requirements...

The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein?s

Posted on August 07, 2008
The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein?s Juveniles. It seems to me that in some sense most SciFi concerns itself with Dystopias. Most detective fiction is about crime and corruption. Westerns are about societies that are wild and lawless, or have wildness and lawlessness inflicted upon them...

If for no other reason than to

Posted on August 06, 2008
If for no other reason than to be publicly wrong, I'm going to say that my hunch is that Evan Bayh will be standing on a platform next to Barack Obama when the VP announcement is made. He's not necessarily who I'd pick-- as an old Birch Bayh hand I've followed Evan's positions over his career with some disappointment, although I agree with Scott Lemieux that context is important...

Scrolling around the other night

Posted on August 03, 2008
Scrolling around the other night I came upon "The Benny Goodman Story", which I'd never seen. It was late, but I got sucked in by the credits, which promised that a lot of Goodman's cronies would be appearing, and then because John Hammond was a prominent character...

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