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Academic

The Yin Blog

Random thoughts on law, politics, game theory, sports, books, television shows, and movies. - From Tung Yin, Associate Professor of Law at Iowa. \r\n

Post Frequency: 0.9/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 17:08:59

I won't complain (too much) about gray drizzly days in late March/early April

Posted on March 31, 2011
Here in Portland we've broken two weather records, apparently -- the most days in a row with some rain (29 and counting, I think), and the latest date in the year for the temperature to hit 60 degrees (still waiting,...

On learning Chinese

Posted on March 28, 2011
Although most academic subjects in school were fairly straightforward for me (until I got to Caltech, that is), foreign languages have been my Achilles' heel. If I were ever to get a PhD, it would've been in a field where...

Taking part in a mostly auto-pick fantasy baseball draft

Posted on March 21, 2011
On a whim, I signed up last week for an ESPN public fantasy baseball league. It was quite a strange experience, because only one other manager showed up for the live draft. The other eight elected for auto-pick. I had...

That radiation plume headed our way from Japan . . . .

Posted on March 17, 2011
Supposedly it'll be so diluted that it won't pose any danger, but this graphic doesn't really offer much comfort. Any chance we can line up US Navy ships along the West Coast and have them turn on giant fans to...

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Farewell, ABC's "V"?

Posted on March 16, 2011
I'm not exactly proud of having stuck with ABC's "V" remake to what looks like the bitter end, but the combination of a serialized sci-fi drama and pleasant memories of the cheesy 1980s mini-series (x2) and TV show made it...

Bribing enemy soldiers

Posted on March 14, 2011
Yale law prof Ian Ayres blogs about bribing Libyan troops to defect: [T]he officer?s story reminded me of an alternative, more economic, incentive deployed in Iraq, where the U.S. offered defecting officers cash to lay down their arms. * *...

Newsweek magazine -- it's still around?

Posted on March 14, 2011
I grew up reading Newsweek rather than Time or U.S. News & World Report, and when I was an adult on my own, it was one of my numerous magazine subscriptions. But after the revamp a couple of years ago,...

Is the body mass index calculator relentlessly harsh?

Posted on March 14, 2011
Throughout adolescence and early adulthood, I was perpetually underweight. I ate a lot, but between a fast metabolism, cross-country (one season), tennis (two seasons), and Ultimate (throughout journalism school and law school), I was never more than 150 pounds at...

Medicare cuts and the future of healthcare following ObamaCare?

Posted on March 10, 2011
Over at the Faculty Lounge, Sharona Hoffman reflects on how her elderly relative died of a cancer that her doctor failed to detect despite the fact that the tumor was egg-sized and visible to the naked eye: However, when listening...

My former student quits Big Law, decides to walk across the country

Posted on March 07, 2011
It's always interesting to see former students make the news. Here's a pretty unique former student story: And sometimes you get? this, which was sent to everyone at Sidley Austin yesterday by an associate leaving the Chicago office: Today is...

Books by authors braver than I am

Posted on March 07, 2011
A couple of recent books spring to mind where I was left thinking, how seriously brave/crazy did the author have to be to do the research to write this book? First, there's Megan Stack, Every Man in This Village is...

What Baseball Team Should I Root For?

Posted on March 07, 2011
Via Professor Bainbridge, I checked out the "What Baseball Team Should I Root For?" flowchart and with only a little bit of looking ahead, I managed to get to a final choice where the outcomes were the California Angels (I...

Law practice: agree freely to extensions, or play tit-for-tat?

Posted on March 02, 2011
Jay Shepherd has an interesting post about how practicing lawyers should respond to requests to extensions of time to reply to motions (or discovery, I suppose). This, sadly, is an area with which I had a lot of experience in...

Portland's Human Rights Commission on the JTTF

Posted on March 01, 2011
Portland's Human Rights Commission is recommending that the city not rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force. It's hard to tell what they were thinking from the Oregonian's story, as this was the only bit of reasoning offered: "There's plenty of...

Snow . . . in late February? Seriously?

Posted on February 26, 2011
Some people like the look of fresh snow on the ground. From my seven years in Iowa, I got a lifetime's worth of looking at the stuff. But in any event, snow in Portland in late February? Seriously? Mind you,...

No gag order on Holder, but something of a judicial spanking

Posted on February 24, 2011
Not surprisingly, the district judge in the Mohamud case denied a defense motion to have a gag order issued against Attorney General Eric Holder. I did some quick research on this when the motion was first filed, and I didn't...

How to gain . . . and lose sympathy when mistreated by the police

Posted on February 21, 2011
This story about a police drug raid gone wrong involves a Hastings law professor: In his search warrant, Officer Scott Biggs of the SFPD's narcotics unit says that prior to the raid, he spent two days and two nights casing...

Law (or its absence), ethics, and donations of teflon-coated cookware and other potentially hazardous items

Posted on February 17, 2011
Here's an ethical issue that my wife and I have been pondering. We've been increasingly vigilant about trying to detoxify our house, and not just in terms of organic food, but trying to buy solid wood furniture rather than stuff...

Round up of links on the Portland City Council's JTTF hearing

Posted on February 16, 2011
Lots of links on the Portland City Council's hearing yesterday regarding the JTTF: Gov?t pleads with city to rejoin terrorism task force (KATU) Experts weigh in as council takes hard look at terrorism task force (Portland Tribune) Portland's JTTF debate...

My op-ed on Portland's upcoming decision of whether to rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force

Posted on February 15, 2011
The Oregonian published my guest editorial on Portland's upcoming decision of whether to rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The headline ("Why Portland should rejoin the terror task force") is the editorial page's, not mine, and in fact, I didn't...

Shh, don't give the aliens advice about how to conquer us!

Posted on February 14, 2011
A funny account of six things movie aliens do wrong.

"Is that fiction or non-fiction?"

Posted on February 13, 2011
So asked my wife upon seeing me with a copy of Jessica Stern's The Ultimate Terrorists. This is a totally reasonable question, since these days, it seems like most of the books that I've been reading are about terrorism, fiction...

One downside of wearing a suit to teach . . . coming back to a flat tire

Posted on February 12, 2011
I like to wear a suit and tie when I teach classes, for a number of reasons. On days that I don't teach class (MWF this semester), I dress for comfort -- which these days would be a long-sleeve T-shirt,...

A plan for the Oregon Zoo's elephants that I approve of!

Posted on February 11, 2011
From the Portland Tribune: If Metro?s plans continue as they have for the past two years, an Asian elephant reserve could be developed in the Sandy area. * * * The overall goal is to establish what zoo officials call...

On that Larry Tribe column . . . .

Posted on February 09, 2011
Harvard law prof Laurence Tribe says: But the predictions of a partisan 5-4 split rest on a misunderstanding of the court and the Constitution. The constitutionality of the health care law is not one of those novel, one-off issues, like...

Interesting column on Islam and naming kids Mohammed

Posted on February 09, 2011
Richard Francaviglia has a column in the Salem Statesman-Journal on Muslim names: A few years ago, when an Arab terrorist named Mohammed was apprehended, a Jewish friend asked, in exasperation, "If Islam is such a peaceful religion, why are so...

Powells' layoffs

Posted on February 09, 2011
One of the best things about Portland has been Powell's Books, which is pretty much the best brick-and-mortar bookstore in the country. It's got new and used books shelved together in a building that takes up an entire city block...

Applying SOX (or something like it) to law schools

Posted on February 07, 2011
A comment that I saw on Steve Bainbridge's blog sounds like an interesting way to respond to the claim that law schools all too commonly mislead students about the schools' employment data: [A]pply Sarbanes-Oxley to college admissions, bursar, and career...

Wow, what the "McBain" movie on "The Simpsons" looks like if you piece it all together

Posted on February 03, 2011
I stopped watching "The Simpsons" years ago, but I do recall the Arnold Schwarzeneggar-based "McBain" character, who periodically showed up in movie clips here and there. It turns out that all those clips actually make their own little mini-movie! Someone...

Arguing Angela Onwuachi-Willig's merits to the right audience

Posted on February 03, 2011
My friend and former colleague Angela Onwuachi-Willig is one of the nine finalists for three spots on the Iowa Supreme Court. Over at Concurring Opinions, Kaimipono Wenger provides "[a] few reasons) why [she] should be appointed to the Iowa Supreme...

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