Discourse.net

Salvete!

I, for one, salute our new South Florida blog overlords.

Gary Farber Is Hurting

Gary Farber writes, Health Care Reform Won't Save Me. In a saga that I bet will end up something like the famous Mathews case (where the local guys keep rejecting the disability application and it takes multiple appeals to get it reinstated), Gary has had his social security disability claim rejected.

The consequences are very serious, and he may be evicted.

Telling Tails

Brad DeLong has renamed his blog to J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with a Prehensile Tail. (It used to be “J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with Both Hands.”) I am not making this up. I have known Brad since grade school and I can testify that if he has a prehensile tail, it is either a recent growth or he hid it very well.

Incidentally, the page I linked to above includes the following line, which I quote out of context since it is funnier that way:

But when I look at Senators Conrad and Gregg, I don't recognize fellow members of my species.

Perhaps they lack a tail?

I Went to a Party

Here's what I did this afternoon:

More details at Soul of Miami and Sex and the Beach.

It was a good party - met Mustang Bobby and saw the Miami Beach 411 crowd — always the life of the party. Plus I met the Genius of Despair (but not, alas, Gimleteye, with whom it seems I may have a few things in common.

There was a loud band, which I would enjoyed more under other circumstances. The folks at Graziano's were pouring lethal rum-and-cokes; I haven't seen ratios like that since college. One glass and it was canapes for me, trying to soak up the booze. And they were good canapes too, especially the beef. I've only ever been to the Graziano's on Bird Road, which I recall for excellent, if pricey meat. Judging from the samples, the excellence is repeated at the Brickell location.

And then I came home to watch the taped second half of the UM game. But the DVR stopped taping with only a few minutes left in the game. I saw the bad call(s) that deflated Duke. I saw Berry run and and run and run to score. And I saw Hankerson pull it in. But apparently I missed a great interception and scoring run by Sharpton. At least it was on the ESPN highlight reel.

Marcy Wheeler Makes the World Better

Firedoglake's March Wheeler is one of the bloggers who does work connecting the dots that the rest of the media only sometimes catches up to. (She's also scary smart.)

Now the good folks at Firedoglake are running a campaign to raise $150K “to support Marcy, another investigative blogger to work with her, and a researcher to help them.”

A good cause: Go Organic — No Artificial Blogging. Support Marcy Wheeler!

Yup.

From the techPresident RSS feed,

We're aware that our RSS feed (which you really should be subscribed to, if you aren't already) has taken to posting the body of each post twice. It's being worked on. Sorry for the trouble.

We're aware that our RSS feed (which you really should be subscribed to, if you aren't already) has taken to posting the body of each post twice. It's being worked on. Sorry for the trouble.

Glad to hear it.

Making the Rounds

This quote, which I saw at Opinio Juris, The Greatest Quote Ever, and half a dozen other blogs, is certainly making the rounds:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: “The Lord of the Rings” and “Atlas Shrugged.” One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Original source: Kung Fu Monkey.

This Will Not Seem as Funny After the Singularity

net.wars: The untweetable Xeroxness of being is Wendy Grossman's account of a twitter fest with a copy of a Xerox machine.

So the other week I was chatting on Twitter across time and space with a Xerox machine from 1961…

Of course there are DMCA issues.

Bloggers Behaving Badly

It well could be a tempest in a teapot, but details as to what this is about can be found at Random Pixels and Loose Talk from Miami Beach, It's our birthday … so time to lawyer up!, but basically these comments, produced a threat — so far, just a threat — of a lawsuit by one local blogger against another.

It may not have been wise, and certainly wasn't polite, for Random Pixels to say

The reality is that Babalu is really nothing more than a fringe group of bomb-throwing, anthrax-mailing, loud-mouth fanatics gone high tech.

Impolitic, but I think and hope that were anyone foolish enough to bring suit a jury would have very little trouble finding this wasn't an assertion of fact as to past acts, but rather a hyperbolic analogy. That's certainly how I read it and how I think anyone reasonable would read it.

I hardly ever read Babalu as I have very little patience for monotonous bullies of any stripe. (I suppose I should admit that I read Random Pixels only a little more often, mostly via SFDB links.) But having one blogger sue another over hyperbole would be very silly. Let's hope sanity prevails.

Lost Cause Dept.

A noble effort by Paul Ohm at Freedom to Tinker, Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL):

With this post, I'm launching a new, (very) occasional series I'm calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).

Funnily enough, that's how I got my start as an Internet lawyer. Back in the early '90s there were a lot of software engineers writing a great deal of nonsense about the US Constitution on USENET. When they used these mistaken priors to (mis)explain the law relating to the Clipper Chip, I decided to write a short 10-12 page article on the regulation of cryptography, just to set the record straight.

One hundred and sixty pages (and one case of carpal tunnel) later, I had an article.

Good luck, Paul, you'll need it!

New Law Blog: 'Overruled'

Say hello to Overruled, which looks to be a feisty progressive law blog.

Strossing Out A Little

Crooked Timber, the only group blog I have ever imagined I might enjoy being a part of (not that they asked), is having a bunch of online luminaries do a very fun discussion of Charles Stross's writings; see Charles Stross book event for details.

Recommended, although I should note that while I read Stross, I'm not a Strossian myself.

It's Catching On

I'm delighted to see that the “Great Grimmelmann” moniker that I launched some time ago is now catching on.

I doubt it will do as well as the “the Great Firewall of China” — which I believe I may have been the first to use — but there's plenty of time, he's so young.

We Lost a Good One: 'Tanta' Succumbs to Cancer

Good Thing I Wasn't Expecting a Government Job

NYT, For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All, reports on the very detailed questionnaire being required of applicants for jobs in the Obama admin. This is one group that will be vetted thoroughly! (Even so, given the numbers, odds are something on someone will slip through the cracks, and by the strange logic of politics, the fact that Team Obama took responsibility for vetting will mean that the press will treat the failure as more significant than if they hadn't tried so hard. Go figure.)

The NYT article has this arresting graphic, which suggests that bloggers just might have a little trouble getting a policy (as opposed to blogger outreach) job:

New National Security Law Blog

Say hello to Security Law Brief.

Hosted by the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law.

Welcome 'Hunter of Justice'

We get a lot of great visiting professors at the University of Miami law school — something about being the law school in Paradise, I guess. How well I get to know them has a lot to do with where their offices happen to be; it helps if they're on my floor, and especially if they are right next door.

When she visited here a while ago, Nan Hunter landed right next door, so I had a chance to get to know her a bit, and I can say that she's lots of fun to talk to (her partner is also delightful company).

And now Nan has a blog, so we all get to talk with her. Please welcome hunter of justice to the blogosphere. I'm sure it will be great. Here's how Nan introduced it:

So now, in the mid-summer heat when it seems sane for even mad dogs and law professors to take a turn at the blogging bat, I'm in.

Why? My goal is to provide commentary on sexuality and gender issues, mostly but not exclusively focusing on law. Since I interpret “law” broadly to include a variety of disciplinary and regulatory discourses, you can expect the contents to range pretty widely. I'm looking forward to publishing my own journal of justice seeking, flavored by humor. OK, maybe sarcasm too.

Perspective

Is it just coincidence that Glenn Greenwald, one of our most clear-eyed observers of the political scene, lives and posts from very far outside the Beltway?

Brazil, in fact.

John Flood's Blog Tease

Talk about teasing the reader! John Flood's Random Academic Thoughts (RATs): From Budapest: 38th World Congress of IIS (edit: Santana):

At another time I will explain why Santana was actually one of the most formative experiences that convinced me law was a subject worth studying. I was in Morocco when I had this conversion.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh Frabjous Day! Fafblog IS BACK!

Fafblog! is back!

It's time for another edition of BARACK OBAMA: THE FINAL THROES! Last week Giblets revealed the dangerous levels of pussification inherent in Obama's bowling skills and orange juice consumption while exploring the damage done by persistent rumors that the senator is secretly black. But this latest scandal has doomed the Obama campaign more than any dooming doom that has doomed it before, because this time Obama has Insulted America by saying that poor people in impoverished rural areas are somehow “bitter” about being poor and impoverished. For shame!

…

These people aren't “bitter.” Far from it! America's impoverished working class are a chipper and cheerful lot, prancing and scampering about their foreclosed homes and crumbling industrial sectors with a spirit of adorable pluckiness, smiling and laughing through their unemployment and their black lung disease like a pack of hardscrabble leprechauns!

…

That's why Giblets is so certain this final crippling blow to the Obama candidacy will be the finalest and most crippling of them all! By implying that the economic immiseration of America's rural underclass has made them somehow unhappy, Obama has alienated America's heartland!

(thanks to SH for the tip!)

…Have they really been gone since July 12, 2006? We needed them.

'Catblogging' Phenomenon Explained

I've always been slightly puzzled by the popularity of 'catblogging' — the custom of running cat pictures on otherwise serious blogs (especially on Fridays). Cute filler, thought I.

• Blogging makes you feel better
• Cats Help Shield Owners From Heart Attack

OK — It's therapy!

Second Life Claims Another Vicitm

After a very engaging start to his/her blogging career, Lucky Jim, J.D. wrote on Dec. 15, 2007 that s/he'd started to explore Second Life,

I’ve recently begun to explore Second Life. My cover story is that I’m engaged in fieldwork for socio-legal research on law and informal regulation in virtual communities. There’s more than a grain of truth in that. I am in fact interested in that topic, am in fact working on research in that vein, and do in fact believe there’s plenty of interest along those lines in Second Life. There’s even a Second Life Bar Association and a Second Life Law School.

But, the pathetic truth is that I’ve also found my initial forays to be surprisingly enjoyable.

And the blog hasn't been updated since.

Best Blog Post Title of the Day

Mark Halperin Doesn't “Cover” the Freak Show. Mark Halperin Is the Head Freak

Yes, it's early, but I'm sure it's the winner anyway.

Say Hello to SFLA Daily Blog

From the ashes of Stuck on the Palmetto rises South Florida Daily Blog run by Rick, who was half of the team on that much-missed local blog casualty.

The mission statement:

My primary focus with SFDB will be to do a daily review of most of South Florida's independent blogs and comment on some of the more interesting, unique, controversial or informative posts that are written during the course of any day. There is so much going on in the SoFla blogoshere, but at times it seems like everyone is scattered and doing their own things. With SFDB, I'd like to create a place where bloggers and blog readers can visit and get linked up to posts that are especially significant or noteworthy. At the same time, I'm hoping that people will find SFDB an enjoyable place to hang out, discuss the important issues of the day and interact with others who are just as interested as they are with what's going on in South Florida.

About Blogging For Money

Prof. James Grimmelmann has an interesting post on Lawyers, Blogs, and Money, in which he asks — gently — whether those law professor bloggers who blog for money, be it sponsorship or advertising, run subtle risks of various forms of intellectual corruption.

Grimmelmann admits that in some cases these issues are unavoidable, especially for blogs that have such high traffic that their hosting costs become otherwise unmanageable. But the clear import of the essay is that in most, maybe all, other cases, law professors ought to think many times before taking that shilling.

And it's not because the shilling leads to straight shilling, although in theory it might. The dangers Grimmelmann points to are more insidious: caring too much about hit counts which can shape content; inflicting ads on the readers; truncating the RSS feed to drive traffic to the ads; not using a Creative Commons license in order to better monetize content; combing logs that ought better to be anonymous for data; seeing oneself as a competitor with other bloggers rather than participants in a shared enterprise.

This here is a non-commercial enterprise, but I don't claim any special virtue for it: no one, after all, has yet offered me a sufficiently tempting price. The readership here being comfortably 'B' list in size (but A+ in quality!), I don't have the sort of traffic which creates financial pressure. I don't take ads both because ads are ugly and because the likely revenue seems outweighed by the insurance consequences. (Yes, people do actually threaten to sue me from time to time.)

There's no point in Grimmelmann's essay that is self-evidently wrong, indeed most of the points represent the application of standard ideas of conflict of interest to law-professor blogging, but I think nonetheless he's more or less barking up the wrong tree with this one because almost all of these problems (other than the aesthetic and attention costs of the ads themselves) can and do exist with purely non-commercial blogs also.

Academic and Legal egos being what they are, I think there are a considerable number of people worrying about their hit counts in private. The egoistic desire to increase hit counts can affect content, the RSS feed, licensing and even motivate lack of linking (I speak as one very occasionally plagiarized…). Human nature.

Indeed, when I started blogging I marveled at the growing hit counts. Some weeks I had 3000 or more per day. On very good days, when I wrote something particularly original, I could get over 20,000 visitors to that post. Then I decided to stop worrying, and found myself happier.

Sitemetered traffic nowadays hovers above 1200 or so per day, plus the 1000+ one guesstimates read the RSS feed. And this is still a fun hobby. Which is the main reason why I'd say non-profit blogging is better for academics. Unless you have very high traffic, you won't make much money off it anyway, and it's one less thing to worry about.

[On the other hand, I completely agree with this post of Grimmelmann's.]

The Suddenly Vanishing Palmetto

As a result of some rustication with a local journalist who threatened to out one of the authors, Stuck on the Palmetto, one of the very best, perhaps the best, of the local blogs is gone. It's not just closing shop, it seems to have taken its archive with it.

I'll miss it. Please guys, can't you at least leave the archive up? Local historians will want this some day.

(And if you ever want to guest post anonymously or otherwise, let me know…)

It's Gary Farber Pledge Period

Say what you like about sometime discourse.net commenter Gary Farber, but even when he's having medical issues and hard times, he's not doing the hard sell for his pledge drive:

Amygdala: IT'S GARY FARBER PLEDGE DRIVE WEEK!

I've been understandably asked at times why someone should help me. And, truth be told, I can't think of any particularly good reason. So I certainly don't expect help from anyone: if you've done it before, you've arguably done your part. If you've not, there's no good reason you should start, and not help someone more deserving instead.

Gary is applying for SSI, because he hasn't worked enough to be eligible for Social Security disability.

Why's he asking?

I, in panic-stricken fashion, semi-coherently explained my situation of lifelong recurring clinical depression, as well as other health issues, and that I'd finally decided to apply for Social Security disability, having rightly or wrongly put off that option for decades.

I, with utter shame, loathing, guilt, self-hatred, and a feast of other negative self-directed emotions — as is my wont — asked for people's help, and an amazing number of people did help, in many ways, including the most important way to help, which was with hard cash. At the time, I said I was afraid I'd need to ask for help again within three months.

Now it's almost a year later, and I've just paid the December rent of $500 and the phone bill ($35), and I'm now down to a total of $241.00 in my bank account, and $22 in my pocket.

…

(The horrible fear that has loomed larger every day and night in my consciousness, and in the pit it creates in my stomach, in the past year is that you won't, in sufficient numbers, again. My fear is that one can't go back to the well again. That I'll wind up with only a few donations, and a few links, and just a bit of response, and have no idea what to do to survive with my disabilities and inabilities and problems until such time as my disability claim is approved. Terror over this has been the dominant theme in my life in recent months, and all I can say is that I'm hoping you'll help it go away, at least for a while.)

OK, maybe not quite the soft sell.

Every year I'm torn — give to people or give to causes? Mostly I do causes on the theory that systemic changes will in the end help more people. But the people need help now.

Behold the Blogging Magistrate

I know we have at least one blogging ex-judge in the US. There's the judge who collects legal humor. And, of course, there's Judge Posner, something of a law unto himself, who give his views online (mostly with his law & economics professor hat on), but do we have any serving judges with a full-time blog who discuss matters at all close to their service on the bench?

England (allegedly) does. See the (pseudonymous) The Magistrate's Blog. [In fact, I've just realized as I was editing this post, there's more than one, as the View From The Bench plausibly claims to “Being the thoughts, rants, speculations and anecdotes of a magistrate on a northern bench.”]

An English magistrate is a judge of limited jurisdiction, mostly petty offenses punishable by up to six months in gaol. Interestingly, many magistrates are not trained lawyers, although they do have legal advisers. (See the Wikipedia entry for more comprehensive, and perhaps even accurate, information.)

Whoever “Bystander” is, real magistrate or not, The Magistrate's Blog is an erudite and interesting blog. Yet there are some obvious ethical issues raised by a judge commenting on things that touch on past cases; these concerns are perhaps lessened by the magistrate's historical role as something of a representative of community values, or (traditionally) at least of the values of the better and rather more upper-crust elements of the community.

The magistrate, if that s/he be, deals with these with this self-description and disclaimer:

Musings and Snippets from an English Magistrate This blog is anonymous, and Bystander's views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

And perhaps that is enough.

Even so, I don't think that a sitting US judge would dare do anything like this. We've seen a prosecutor get in trouble for blogging. And of course there was the defendant who blogged about his own case pseudonymously — and lost the case when opposing counsel figured out who he was.

There are also a host of juror-bloggers. There's nothing wrong with a (petit) juror blogging after the trial is over, but it's obviously a ground for major concern if it happens during the trial as it provides a conduit for juror to lawyer/party communications which (a) might give one side an unfair advantage if only one side is learning what arguments are working ; (b) facilitate jury tampering; (c) provides fertile grounds for appeals. (More on blogging jurors here and here and no doubt elsewhere.)

Don't get me wrong, as a reader, I'm a fan. And I'm prepared to agree that the world is better off with the Magistrate's Blog than without it — so long as it's being true to its promise to change enough facts “to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source”. But that is very difficult to do consistently over a long period of time. How, I wonder, was it done in this post, for example? (In the comments, Bystander even states that counsel read a particular case to the court!) If indeed the blog is by an actual Magistrate, the danger of slipping, or even of discovery over time without any slipping, is all too real.

Would discovery be that bad? In principle there's no difference between a judge writing an academic article about law reform and a magistrate blogging about legal issues that come up in and around the court s/he serves on. Were I a judge, however, I don't think I'd blog, and I certainly wouldn't do it pseudonymously if only because people would be sure to see that — however unfairly — as a sign of a guilty conscience. More importantly, print usually has editors and always takes time, which gives one opportunities for reflection. Blogging is quick and usually unedited. Risky….

But meanwhile, I'm going to be reading what “Bystander” writes.

Why rc3.org is a Good Read

Perhaps because I run a somewhat quirky blog (it's a “personal blog” - says so right in the margin), I like blogs with interesting and not-totally predictable content.

Here's two recent examples from rc3.org, which is often full of interesting things social, legal, and technical:

Today I learned about a robust industry trading in consumer debt that has been discharged by bankruptcy courts. Business Week explains how firms collect on debts that the debtors have no obligation to pay:

In the 1990s, businesses adept at tracking and trading consumer debt expanded their reach to dabble in accounts enmeshed in bankruptcy. That dabbling has grown into a robust market. Some of the trade in so-called bankruptcy paper involves debts that remain collectible. What’s troubling is that the market now also includes billions in discharged debts, which ought to have no dollar value. Owners of canceled liabilities can revive their value in two main ways: by directly pressuring consumers to cough up cash or by gaming the credit system, as allegedly happened in the Rathavongsa case.

How does this work? The creditors simply refuse to update the credit file of the consumers who filed for bankruptcy, so that it looks like a debt that has been legally discharged is still in collections. If the consumer wants to get a new loan, they have to pay up. In other words, it’s extortion.

Second, How software warps your brain, which meditates on how it can be that the same person can love the open-endedness of Wikipedia and still get hives when managing an office software app in which almost everyone gets admin privileges.

Progressive Blogs in Florida

Wow — there are a lot of Florida Progressive Blogs. (Even if we are all doing a lousy job).

The Blog Host that Makes No Compromises

Looking for a blog host that makes no compromises with quality? Have I got a host for you: No Uptime Hosting - Guaranteed server downtime!

Everybody's Doing It

Bill Clinton has a blog.

Blog Gets Eight Innings of Results

This is a cool example of a blog getting results. Follow the link if your care about either blogs or baseball.

(spotted via rc3.org)

A Fool for a Client

The mind boggles.

Blogger unmasked, court case upended: As Ivy League-educated pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman sat on the stand in Suffolk Superior Court this month, defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of a 12-year-old patient, the opposing counsel startled him with a question.

Was Lindeman Flea?

Flea, jurors in the case didn't know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day.

In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff's case and the plaintiff's lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

With the jury looking on in puzzlement, Lindeman admitted that he was, in fact, Flea.

So, here's a little tip for anyone who finds themselves involved in a lawsuit: don't blog about the case (or, at least, have every posting approved by your lawyer). And if you do have a blog, maybe you should mention this fact to your lawyer…

P.S. I'm sure someone in the blogosphere will try to spin this case as some sort of attack on bloggers' inherent right to anonymity. It isn't.

(Thanks to DF for the link.)

W. David Stephenson Is Back

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al. is back after months of darkness. He's got a new feed address too.

Unfortunately, the very useful archives (lots of info on disaster preparedness and on the ways in which citizen-based preparedness might be better than current centralized top-heavy models) have yet to emerge from what sounds like a painful transition from Userland to Wordpress.

Fear of transitioning from my very customized MT 2.x to Wordpress has kept me from making the move, although WP would I think be easier to use (and would standardize me with most of the other blogs I run).

Insiders' Gossip About Wolfowitz

Amazingly, there's a blog at which World Bank insiders discuss the Wolfowitz scandal and share juicy gossip about possibly forged emails and the like. It's currently called World Bank President - Scrutinising Paul Wolfowitz, outgoing World Bank president.

Founded in January 2005, when former World Bank president James Wolfensohn announced he would be retiring, the original mission of the blog was to “shine a light on the medieval process for choosing the head of this very powerful institution.” In particular, the author(s) were unhappy about the ability of the US government to pick the Bank's President. Then they were unhappy with what they got. Then they went on hiatus.

Now they're back, with a new name.

Best Blog Post Title of the Week

Ann Bartow, An Important Copyright Case About Photos of Naked Women, As Discussed By Men

Stuff You Find Online

Ex MI6 agent and continuing thorn in the side of the UK spy establishment Richard Tomlinson has a blog entitled MI6 v Tomlinson.

Brian Leiter Cares About Rankings

E-mail from Brian Leiter:

I am writing to ask if you would be willing to use your blog to help establish my law school ranking site as a result for those searching my name; oddly it is not at present. You can simply cut and paste from the post here:

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/04/law_school_rank.html

Thanks so much, and sorry for the bother.

So, dear reader with a blog, please post a link to Brian Leiter with the hyper-link to www.leiterrankings.com, for the benefit of all those souls in Cyberspace in search of my law school ranking site. 

Which all reminds me: Over a year ago, I stopped promoting this blog by sending out emails when I thought I had something worthy of attention. Traffic and links soon sagged — I lost maybe a third of it. But I'm much happier.

Eric Muller Gets a Medal

A while back I posted a link to Eric Muller's research into the historical trail of his great-uncle who was murdered by the Nazis.

The story now has a surprise ending.

The Stumblng Tumblr

One of my readers has started a new blog: The Stumblng Tumblr, described as “An Australian lawyer's tumblelog about things (some legal, some not) you might otherwise have missed”. It looks about as disorganized as Discourse.net, so Australian readers, and others too, might wish to take a peek.

The author has an interesting personal history but has decided to run the blog anonymously.

Here is a nice random bit of data I learned from The Stumblng Tumblr today:

Click for larger version.

Herald Does Blogs in Teaching

The Miami Herald has a short article on blogs in teaching in today's education supplement, Blogs taking place of teachers' lounge chats, which includes some quotes from yours truly — although what I said is entirely about teacher-student communication and thus has little to do with their headline.

Eric Muller on the Trail

Eric Muller is in Germany, on the historical trail of his great-uncle who was murdered by the Nazis.

Amazing posts at Is That Legal? at “And How Was The Weather In Łodź” and especially Uncle Leo's Medals.

Rumpole on the Rampage

The Justice Building Blog, a gossipy yet serious attempt to talk about what happens in the local courts, is on a bit of a roll recently: I recommend both Diary of a Mad Jurist and Traffic.Parking (about how to improve conditions in traffic court). Having been through it recently, I especially like the idea of moving traffic ticket soundings (in which the magistrate offers most offenders a plea — usually, so many dollars, no points) online. But I wonder if the proposed rule about never allowing continuances isn't a bit harsh. Even the feds allow them for illness, for example.

On the other hand, I do think that last week's post about the TV exposé of local cops is a bit late (unless maybe the local station is doing reruns?). I wrote about it a year ago.

Nancy Pelosi's Office Has a Blog

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office has a new blog, called appropriately enough, The Gavel. Today there are lots of videos (via C-Span via YouTube) of house members giving speeches about the war.

Due to staffing constraints, we regret that we are not capable of monitoring, moderating, and responding to comments at all times. Instead, we will open up comments on selected posts when we, or our guest-posters, have adequate time to give your input the time and respect it deserves. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and we will be sure to give advance notice when the comments are open. Always feel free to contact us via e-mail with any concerns or input you might have.

Can Workers Be Fired for Off-Duty Blogging?

For most jobs — maybe not mine — you can probably be fired for blogging during working hours unless the boss approved it as a work-related activity. But what about off-duty blogging? On controversial topics? This interesting article from today's New York Law Journal looks at the rights of bloggers (especially bloggers in New York) relating to their jobs.

In New York, an employer may not discharge, discriminate against, or refuse to hire employees because of their participation in “legal recreational activities” off the employer's premises during nonworking hours unless the activity “creates a material conflict of interest related to the employer's trade secrets, proprietary information or other proprietary or business interest.” N.Y. Lab. Law §201d(2)(a)©, (3)(a). The statute defines “recreational activities” as including “any lawful, leisure activity, for which the employee receives no compensation and which is generally engaged in for recreational purposes, including but not limited to sports, games, hobbies, exercise, reading and the viewing of television, movies and similar material.” Although very few courts have interpreted this statute (and none have applied it to blogging), courts that have analyzed the statute have declined to give “recreational activities” an expansive interpretation. See, e.g., McCavit v. Swiss Reinsurance America Co., 237 F3d 166 (2d Cir. 2001) (holding that dating is not a “recreational activity” protected by the New York legal recreational activities statute).

Employees can be expected to argue that blogs that may be offensive or embarrassing to the employer are lawful recreational activities under the law. Employers, however, can be expected to press for a narrow interpretation of the law that recognizes the employer's right to manage its business and protect its reputation and confidential information.

There's lots more where that came from.

Update: Ack! It's behind a paywall. I try never to link to stuff like that if I can avoid it, but now that I've posted this, I don't think I can very well take down this item.

China Matters

If you are looking for an interesting blog on an important topic, you might want to look at ChinaRedux, a blog about “China’s Ascent In The Age Of American Hegemony.”

Amygdala In Trouble

Gary Farber of Amygdala (and sometime contributor to the comments here) is having some serious troubles. He's put out a plea for help (as in $$$) -- or for work he can do remotely as an editor, proofreader, or researcher.

Just think -- if we had a decent health care policy in this country, this wouldn't be an issue.

Blog News

Michael Bérubé announces that he's giving up blogging. I'll miss reading him almost every day, and especially miss reading about Jamie.

Meanwhile, Bitch Ph.D has outed herself, an action foretold. I just hope this works out ok for her.

Elizabeth Edwards On Blogging and Commenting

Micah Sifry writes about Elizabeth Edwards, Online and For Real at Personal Democracy Forum. In it she discusses her blogging and her commenting on other people's online postings.

Like everything else I've ever read about her, it makes Elizabeth Edwards look good.

And no, this is not going to turn into the Edwards-for-President blog, at least not yet. He's certainly one of my top two or three candidates at present, but the season is young, and the candidates have not yet staked out positions on some key issues I'd need to hear about before being able to commit. Especially Iraq.

For Atrios Junkies

Eschaton has been bloggered, so if you want your Atrios fix you will need to visit the temporary Eschaton site until this gets sorted out.

It's sort of interesting how "I've been Bloggered" is the '00s version of the early 90s "I've been Continentaled". It can't be good when your brand is commonly associated with screw-ups.

Update: It's fixed.

"X-Judge" H. Lee Sarokin Starts His Blog With a Bang

H. Lee Sarokin was a judge on the Third Circuit until he retired and became an arbitrator. Now he's a blogger too, and his first post starts things off with a bang:

This is my first entry in to the world of blog, because I am astonished by the lack of outrage over the case of Jose Padilla---an American citizen who has been held in solitary confinement for 31/2 years, been deprived of the right to counsel for 21 months, all as a result of the unfettered discretion of the President in designating Mr Padilla as an "enemy combatant".

...

The alleged dirty bomb plot is nowhere mentioned in the indictment against him. Mr. Padilla may be guilty of something, but the administration is guilty of far worse.
The administration has justifed (and to large extent the public has accepted) wiretapping, these detentions, and possibly even torture, on the basis that these methods fight terrorism and confine terrorists. But what if they are not terrorists? Hundreds have been released after extended confinement without charges. They are all someone's husband, son, brother or father. For many such persons, the government has now suspended habeus corpus ("the best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom" Justice Chase, 1868), thus denying the means and opportunity for those detained to establish their innocence of any wrongdoing.

American soldiers are dying to win freedom for the people of Iraq, while we are losing freedom for the people of America.

I just hope current sitting judges are equally outraged.

[Update: How long before Mr. Sarokin gets a cease-and-desist letter from Marvel Comics or 20th Century Fox?]

A Scholarship for Bloggers?

A $5,000/year scholarship for bloggers? Apparently so: Announcing The Blogging Scholarship from the Daniel Kovach Foundation.

It seems grad students can apply -- so why not law students too? They want a 3.0 GPA, a lively blog, and an application by Oct. 30, which is just a few days away.

I confess to being a little puzzled as to why blogging seems worth so much more than other things, but there you have it.

They will pick ten finalists and then, uh-oh, have a "public vote" to choose the single winner. I wonder how they plan to prevent ballot-stuffing.

Clever

Doug Berman and Paul Caron are starting the Law School Innovation Blog.

Just Sayin'

I miss Fafblog.

Say Hello to the "Watchdog Blog"

Say hello to the new Nieman Foundation Watchdog Blog:

it seems to us that it could be important, even vital, to have sympathetic, knowledgeable, respected writers offer a little guidance and commentary and, every now and then, show us how our work is supposed to be done.

We took NiemanWatchdog.org online in May 2004 with a focus on having experts from Harvard and elsewhere pose questions the press should ask. Since then we’ve had more than 130 contributors and 440 or so items. We are of course continuing that.

Today we launch the Watchdog Blog, to supplement those efforts.

OBDisclosure: My brother is the deputy editor of Niemanwatchdog.org.

National Security Blog

Keep an eye on National Security Advisors, featuring UM Law's own Steve Vladeck with Bobby Chesney (Wake Forest), and Tung Yin (Iowa).

James Grimmelmann Lifts the Cone of Silence

James Grimmelmann is blogging regularly again now that his clerkship is over. This is a good thing. Example: How to Annoy Friends and Alienate People.

And he'll be a Resident Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School. They're lucky to have him.

Hugmeat

A new word is born before our very eyes: Majikthise coins hugmeat.

The Ultimate Blogging Poster

Brad DeLong brings us the ultimate blogging poster:

Grant McCracken on How to Have a Good Holiday

I didn't really have the greatest summer ever. It sounds as if Grant McCraken, on the other hand, did.

This Blog Sits at the: Your next vacation: I have an idea for your next vacation.

Phone Saida at Saros Research in London and set up ethnographic interviews with 10 people in London.

It sounds strange, I'm sure. Who wants to play anthropologist on their holidays?

Well, if the object is to penetrate the barrier that stands between every tourist and country/culture, ethnographic interviews are really very usful.

Russell Davies and I (with the help of people attending Russell's Account Planning School of the Web) were recently wrestling with the idea of cruise ships, those suburbs of the sea, and it occured to me that almost all touristic experience has the quality of cruise ship containment. We may get off the ship from time to time, but the closest we are getting to the host country is a shop filled with touristic chakahs that play out stereotypes and help extinquish the possibility of cross culture contact.

I do these interviews for a living. But I am suggesting that you do them for the sheer fun of it. On a recent trip, I found Londoners fascinating on several topics, including how dinner parties are changing in London, the difference between lager andstout, what is the deal with Manchester United, anyway, when and how to use one's best "telephone voice," gardening the Tony Blair way, and how English audiences received The Da Vinci Code (in some cases, with audible and enthusiastic scorn, apparently).

You will have to pay these people about 100 pounds each to sit for the interview. But it's bargain, I'm telling you.

This is Beautiful

slacktivist: How I learned that song.

Academic Secrets

Some people are really going to love this one: academicsecret blog (spotted via Feminist Law Profs -- who incidentally, have a male guest blogger at present...)

"The Blog that Ate a Presidency"

No, not that Presidency -- a University Presidency. Inside Higher Ed has a story about a blog that helped bring down Uma G. Gupta, until recently the president of the State University of New York College of Technology at Alfred.

Personally, I'm not sure how significant or surprising it is to learn that an anonymous blog served as a major rallying point in taking down a highly unpopular and perhaps incompetent university administrator. But it's interesting that some of the commentators over at Inside Higher Ed think it's an awfully big deal.

Andrew Chin Is/Is Not "Voiceless"

University of North Carolina School of Law Prof. Andrew Chin has a new blog, ironically entitled voiceless. Prof. Chin modestly suggests he is "blogging from the long tail" although in fact he's writing about "the legal and technological structures that keep almost all of us voiceless".

"Blogging from long tail" almost reminds me of the "On fringes of the public sphere", so that has to be good. Although I should note that someone one asked me, fairly enough, how a sphere could have a fringe, and I'm still working on a good answer.

Bob Glushko Has a Blog

Bob Glushko is an original and deep thinker about structured information flows (think XML and its bigger relatives). And he's smart. But he has a blog anyway. It's called "Doc or Die" and shared with Tim McGrath.

Rats

I was going to suggest that this is today's best blog posting anywhere--but it seems that the part about the bearded lady and the talking seal was made up.

But most of the rest about the clowns appears to be true.

Remembering Endo

Eric Muller is publishing a mini-symposium commemorating the life of Mitsuye Endo (of "Ex parte Endo" fame), who passed away last month.

Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, I will post commemorations of Mitsuye Endo and her quiet legal heroism written by three leading experts on her case and its history and significance.

The first to appear--later today--will be by Greg Robinson, a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal and author of, among many other things, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press 2001).

Tomorrow I will post the commemorative thoughts of Patrick Gudridge, Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and the author of, among many other things, the important article "Remember Endo?", which appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 2003.

On Wednesday, I will post the thoughts of Professor Jerry Kang of the UCLA School of Law, whose work includes some of the most careful and probing analysis of Endo, Korematsu, and Hirabayashi...

Another Good Blog

I'm getting to the point where I fear more blogs to read. And Info/Law looks good, so it's especially scary.

It's about law and information (good stuff!), and it's by Minnesota law-prof-to-be William McGeveran and Wayne State law-prof-to-be Derek Bambauer.

"Mixed" Blogging Considered Dangerous?

One last bit of fallout/navel-gazing from the law profs' blogathon. During my talk I made a point of noting that I don't really consider most of what I do here as part of my scholarly activities. Mostly it's my hobby. I do consider my classroom blogs part of my teaching, and ICANNWatch is the sort of informed activism that professors list under "service" when accounting for themselves to Deans. I do post some serious stuff here -- but mostly about topics outside my main areas of specialty.

Larry Solum is skeptical:

Academics should be free, just as free as anyone else, to blog recreationally. Of course. But academics should also be free to pursue blogging as a form of scholarship. This leads to an interesting question: can free form blogging be combined with scholarly blogging? My off-the-cuff reaction to this question is "no." Or at least, "probably not." One reason for this answer is simply practical. Academic blogging mixed with free form blogging is hard to differentiate from blogging that does not aspire to the standards of scholarship--that is, to rigor and an intentional focus on truth. A related point is that it will very difficult for academic administrators to decide how to reward mixed blogging. And if blogging isn't rewarded, then it will tend to fade away, because academics will tend to gravitate towards those scholarly activities that do receive extrinsic rewards. This is especially likely to be true for those who don't yet have blogs and who face large start up costs before their blogs can attract significant numbers of readers.

Now comes Larry Ribstein to suggest that Solum has underestimated the danger of "hobby blogs":

My concern is that there will be pressure from two directions to, in effect, professionally legitimize these blogs by giving their authors credit in retention, promotion and compensation.

First, entertaining blogs get more downloads, recognition, higher USNWR rankings, etc. Might we be heading for the day when the dean tells the faculty, don't bother with with the law reviews; work on your movie reviews?

Second, scholarship, as Randy Barnett pointed out at the conference, is hard work. So is a lot of blogging (e.g., Larry Solum's). But hobby-blogging is fun. Though at the end of the day, we get a lot of satisfaction out of good scholarship, we might be tempted, before the end of the day, to substitute hobby-blogging for scholarship, particularly if our schools reward us for doing that.

I'm concerned, therefore, not about hobby-blogging itself, but that blurring the line between hobby and work may have negative consequences for our work as scholars. After all, incentives matter.

Eric Muller, responding to Solum's earlier post, mostly disagrees. He starts by admitting one real problem: "mixed" blogs confuse some people. Lots of people. And Eric's wonderful blog is a great example -- I can't for the life of me figure out why I usually get included among lists of law blogs yet he often does not. His blog, after all, even has "legal" in the title!

Anyone who has been around lawyers knows that they love to pigeonhole ideas and speakers almost as much as diagnostic physicians like to classify symptoms into known diseases. But that's the risk we take. That doesn't mean we have to pre-screen ourselves.

Indeed, as Eric notes, sometimes mixed blogging works very very well, at least judging by the market metric of hit counts (a metric I personally find increasingly suspect). Eric's final point is interesting also: he suggests that the "mixed" lawprof blogs which best succeed in the market for eyeballs form a pattern: The most highly successful "mixed" lawprof bloggers, he notes, "all blog from, and to a readership primarily on, the political right," although, as Eric admits, why that should be is a bit of a mystery.

Is There a Text In This Blog?

Stanley Fish has a blog behind the New York Times paywall.

Tung Yin is Safe

Fortunately Tung Yin and his family are unharmed by the tornado that ripped through Iowa City.

I don't know which is worse--hurricane warnings days in advance, most of which are false alarms, or tornado warnings, which happen when the twister is already near your house.

Most of my students and I headed to Dairy Queen to celebrate our victory.  Little did I know that four hours later, my wife and baby and I would be down in our basement, listening to the radio report about a tornado touching down in southwest Iowa City, heading east (i.e., toward us). . . .

Apparently, much of downtown Iowa City is a mess right now, exacerbated by people who are inexplicably driving out to take a look at how much damage there is!

UPDATE: Oh my gosh, that Dairy Queen has been destroyed!!!

Then again, hurricanes sometimes spawn mini-tornadoes. And we don't have basements.

Kaimipono Wenger Says I'm Nuts

Kaimipono Wenger starts the DSM for bloggers.

Given the number of people who have written to my ICANNWatch persona and been amazed to get an answer from the guy who writes Discourse.net, I guess at least one of the shoes fits...

The Ultimate Meta-Thread

The ultimate meta-comment thread is at Unqualified Offerings.

I hope Jim Henley will forgive me for quoting the entire post. It consists of one word:

Blog

Hilarity ensues. Yes, really.

Experimental Philosophy Blog

There's late to the party, and then there's learning about something more than a month after Slate runs an article on it, but shameful as it may be I have only just stumbled upon the Experimental Philosophy Blog. Among its virtues are an announcement of the first annual Online Philosophy Conference, and a (rather small?) section devoted to Philosophy of Law.

Incidentally, the blog denizens are not very happy with the Slate article. (Further discussion chez Leiter)

Vote Early, Vote Often

FrontPage.com, the website run by the Person Who Shall Not Be Designated By His First Initial and a Drastic Truncation of His Surname, is conducting an online poll to determine the very worst professor in America.  You may recall that I was outraged, outraged that He Who Shall Not Be Designated had not ranked his “101 or 100 or 102 Most Dangerous Professors” in the order of the danger they pose to the Republic; but now, friends, you and I have a unique opportunity to redress a grave wrong.  Please vote for me as America’s Worst Professor, if you have the time and inclination.  Right now I’m leading Eve Sedgwick by the slimmest of margins, and as you know, I have no Diebold apparatus to fall back upon.  But don’t worry about ballot-stuffing!  This is FrontPage.com, people—a website whose unofficial (and yet universally acknowledged) motto is “Sloppiness R Us.” There are no limits, no limits at all, on the number of votes you can cast from one IP address.  So stop by FrontPage today, and vote for me as America’s Worst Professor.  I thank you, and all that is good and holy thanks you.

Feminist Law Profs Blog

Ann Bartow has set up a blog for Feminist Law Professors which sports an impressive list of participants. One more for the blogroll & newsreader

Update: A link in case you are looking for the Feminist Law Proffessors Blog News Feed.

It Makes You Think

David Friedman's Ideas blog will strike some as law, economics and libertarianism run wild, but I think he's doing what academics are supposed to do: thinking, and making us think too.

Note also this piece of self-description,

I am an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field.

In Praise of Wonkery

Angry Bear, that most excellent economist, sums up a bloggish debate that apparently broke out while I wasn't looking. Seems that there's otherwise sensible people out there who argue that there's little if any point in bloggish wonkery at this moment in US history because no one in power cares about facts anyway.

A better argument for the "no facts please, we're American" point of view might have commented on the need to break through the right-wing financial and ideological dominance of mass media (and I don't just mean Fox, I mean a New York Times that thinks it is 1944 and FDR is President).

But even the strongest form of that argument is wrong. Angry Bear goes to the trouble of working up wordy justifications for, well, justifications, and does the usual nice job. But I'm afraid my view on this is quite simple, some may even say simplistic:

The truth may not always set you free, but there is no real freedom without truth.

Academics, wonky bloggers, muckrakers, we all play our small parts in the Experiment that is democracy.

So, how's the experiment going this year?

Note to Self: Stuff to Read

From CultureCat | Rhetoric and Feminism:

3. What are some of the best female-written blogs in your opinion? The best liberal blogger? The best conservative blogger? The best in keeping everyone guessing?

Best female-written blogs:
One Good Thing: http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/
Girl Genius: http://girlgenius.typepad.com/girlgeniuscom/
Badgerings: http://badbadbadger.blogspot.com/

Best liberal bloggers:
Pharyngula: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog
Bitch Ph.D.: http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
Body and Soul: http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/
Norbizness: http://norbizness.com/
Feministe: http://feministe.us/blog/
blackfeminism.org: http://blackfeminism.org/
Hullaballoo (Digby): http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
John & Belle: http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/

Also creative endeavors like:
The Rude Pundit: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Wealth Bondage: http://thehappytutor.com/ (“fetish action figures”)

Best conservative bloggers:
Ann Althouse: http://althouse.blogspot.com
Ilyka Damen (now defunct): http://ilyka.mu.nu
(and though they’re more libertarian/fiscal conservative)
Crescat Sententia: http://www.crescatsententia.org/
Marginal Revolution: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Yes, We're Begging

The Robert of Robert's Stochastic thoughts and I are just about exactly the same age. And like him, I find the use of the phrase "begs the question" to mean anything far from "avoiding grappling with the issue" to clang horribly. (Robert would have it be something like making a lousy argument, thus leaving the question un-answered, which works for me too).

Just mentioning.

Things Change

Al Brophy, guesting at Concurring Opinions has a great post contrasting 1950s and 2000s Conservatism, with special reference to feminism.

A Guest Blogger to Watch

In what can only be understood as a sign of their fabulous good taste, the clever folks at Prawsblog have persuaded my collegue Steve Vladeck to guest blog for them "for the next few weeks".

See, for example, his first post for them, What if the war on terrorism never ends?.

'Legal Debate' Blog for HS Debaters

Modestly downplaying her own considerable legal acumen, UM Law Lecturer Lindsay Harrison has started a blog called Legal Debate with this mission statement:

This blog intends to provide a forum for high school debaters debating this year's Civil Liberties topic to engage in discussions with law professors about the topic. Many of the arguments that reoccur year after year in the debate community are areas where law professors have special expertise: federalism, presidential powers, separation of powers, the hollow hope, critical legal studies, etc.

My hope is that this forum functions as a site for clarification of debaters' questions about the law, as well as a site for argument innovation.

Initially, I plan to solicit topic-related questions from high school debaters (and coaches). I will locate a law professor with some expertise on the question and will post his or her response on this site. From time to time, I may post my own thoughts on the topic as well.

'Concurring Opinions' Blog Issues a 'Registration Statement'

Concurring Opinions, a new blog which so far sports lawprofs Daniel Solove and Kaimi Wenger (strange bedfellows? could be interesting...) has announced itself to the world by publishing a Registration Statement, modeled, rather loosely, on the the ones firms issues when they go public.

I like it.

The Things Friends Do

Eric Muller volunteers me for a new gig. Actually, in the unlikely event anyone was listening, it might be fun...

Blogs, Ads, and Insurance

When stuff on this blog doesn't work like it should, I start thinking about maybe taking the blog off a shared server and putting on its own machine. The trouble is, it would cost a lot to have my own machine to host this blog, and while I'm happy to pay a little for what is basically a hobby, I'm not sure if I'm willing to spend what it takes to have my own hosted machine run by professionals. (I could run it at home, but I want it done right, and the upload bandwidth on my home line is rather puny.)

One solution many people adopt to defray the cost of a server is to run ads. I intend to resist that option unless I have no choice. There are two reasons.

First, I don't like ads, so I don't want to foist them on the people kind enough to follow my ramblings.

Second, I am pretty confident that my homeowners insurance policy covers my hobbies: Suppose, for example, someone were someone crazed enough to sue me for something related to one of my postings. Not only would they lose, but there would be someone who'd pay to defend me. (Otherwise I'd have to throw myself on the mercy of the EFF.)

The trouble is, I am not certain how my insurance would treat a hobby that had a revenue-producing component, even if I wasn't making a profit off it. Could it be considered a business, in which case it wouldn't be covered? I could imagine an insurance lawyer making that argument. Heck, if I were the insurance lawyer I'd make that argument. I think the counter-argument is better — it's a hobby that happens to bring a few bucks — but would I count on a judge inevitably seeing it that way? No I would not.

1. I have a more restrictive insurance policy than most other bloggers
2. Other academic bloggers have not thought about this aspect of blogging
3. Other academic bloggers have thought about and are less risk-averse
4. Academic bloggers as a class are judgment-proof¹

Update: Turns out that Eugene Volokh not only had the same thought some time ago, but he actually did some research on the question, which pretty much supports my instincts (although laws do vary by state). And one of the trackbacks to that post, Antinome sounds knowledgeable and recommends David J. Marchitelli, Construction and Application of “Business Pursuits” Exclusion Provision in General Liability Policy,35 A.L.R.5th 375, which I will make it a point to read the next time I have insomnia.

¹ To be judgment-proof is to have little or no property (or income) that a creditor can legally take to collect in the foreseeable future.

Good Reads

Recommended reading:

• Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: The Coming Dollar Crisis?
• Edward Castronova, Terra Nova, From the Mouths of Babes
• Best of BoingBoing
• Jonathan Kozol, Harpers, Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid
• FEMA's web site is a disaster area
• Weird Net Tricks: Call-By-Web

Google Blog Search (Beta)

This looks useful: Google Blog Search (beta).

Harry Potter and the Excellent Parody

This Watley Review posting on Disgruntled Harry Potter Fan Releases “Corrected” Version of Book fooled me completely. It so perfectly captures a certain type of reality that when I first read it, I never even imagined it was a parody.

It is a parody, isn't it? (cf. Ann Bartow's concluding Note to the exceedingly gullible). I mean, this rapid-fan-translation story is supposed to be true….

Caroline Bradley is Guest Blogging at The Conglomerate

Caroline Bradley, who guest blogged here not so long ago, is now guest-blogging at the Conglomerate. See Miscreant Directors Can Give Back to the Community.

And, oh yes, we celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary yesterday.

100+ Law Professor Bloggers And Counting

The tireless folks at PrawfsBlawg have produced a PrawfsBlawg: Law Professor Blogger Census (Beta Version 1.0). It's interesting to see who is doing what, but upon learning there are more than 100 of us already, all of a sudden my mind was playing a Tom Paxton song. (Link to an mp3 most welcome…)

Good links

• Lies, Uncertainty and Job Interviews. Cultures and lying. Cultures of lying.
• Juan Cole asks, Is Bigotry All Right in Politics?; many people will, alas, not agree with his suggestion that we make certain bigots into pariahs.
• Michael Geist Face To Face With The Great Firewall Of China. (I still claim to be the originator of that term, by the way.)
• Is this the world's most expensive airport cab ride?
• David Bernstein writes something I agree with: Constructive Response to British Boycott of Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities. (We don't agree often.)
• Mark Kleiman, Jeb Bush and rapists' rights

Beth Simone Noveck Has A Blog

Rising academic super-star Beth Simone Noveck has a blog. The Cairns Blog is tied to the very interesting-sounding Cairns Project:

The Cairns Project builds civic software to promote problem solving and decisionmaking through the application of participatory, and collaborative solutions. Decisions made by and with the input of those groups affected by the decisions represent a more legitimate way of governing, working and living. This is democracy, not as a form of politics, but as a way of life.

The first goal of the Cairns Project is to build open-source, web-based knowledge management software to promote participatory practices. The Cairns software allows those who work in groups to upload, index and map information about their own projects and to search easily for information about those of others.

It also helps match those “doing democracy” to those studying and documenting participative practices across multiple domains.

The Cairns Project offers a high impact visual interface for users to describe their own work rather than relying on third-parties to do so. The success of the Project therefore depends on as many people contributing to it as possible.

The Cairns Project provides a mechanism for “translating” collaborative and participative practices so that people in civic, governmental, business and other worlds can learn from each other’s experiences.

The Cairns Project is not simply designed to study groups but to promote participatory work. It is both a tool for idea exchange and a place for engagement among members of this community of interest worldwide.

Body Slam

Reading Michael Bérubé this week reminds me of the old French proverb: Cet animal est tres mechant. Quand on l’attaque, il se defend (“This animal is very naughty. When you attack it, it defends itself.”).

Another Round, Please

Whiskey Bar: My Back Pages.

A must-read if you have been a regular at the Whiskey Bar; still very interesting if you've only visited occasionally. Billmon having gone beyond the the Knight of Faith and even the Knight of Resignation, winds up in a virtual gin joint, mainlining social criticism.

We should all be such existentialists.

Real Law Firms Have...Law Firm Blogging Policies

How much more mainstream can you get. Seems that the guys over at Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs are going to try to draft a model “law firm blogging policy”. But this isn't about those crazy associates, not it's going to be part of a marketing strategy:

Legal marketing and business development professionals in leading law firms are chomping at the bit to launch professional marketing blogs for practice groups or particular lawyers. These folks often need some help in getting the firms administration to approve a blog marketing program. One thing that will help is a blog policy.

As far as I can tell, all I get from this blog are nice letters from readers, occasional and very welcome pings from long-lost friends, and pleas for free legal help, some quite heart-rending. But then I'm not a law firm…

Gorilla Hermeneutics

Slacktivist's essay on Gorilla Hermeneutics is another of those essays that would be screamingly funny if it were not so dead-on.

Brad DeLong As an Object of Study

A journalism student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, formerly a reporter in Shanghai, is doing a thesis on why people read politically-oriented weblogs that are written by non-journalists. In other words, he's studying Brad Delong.

Stefan Brands's "Identity Corner"

The Identity Corner is a new blog by Stefan Brands, who is one of the top applied cryptographers in the world, yet also a very fluent writer on the social policy implications of cryptographic systems.

Brands's book, Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates: Building in Privacy remains one of the best works on digital certificates and the policy questions that surround them.

I'm sure this will be interesting for anyone who cares about the technological version of 'identity politics'.

It Was 60 Years Ago Today...

C.E. Petit, he of the luridly designed but very interesting “Scrivener's Error”, notes an important and under-reported anniversary.

Is That Legal?' Turns Two

The relentlessly sensible and often important Is That Legal? blog written by my law school classmate Eric Muller turns two today. Blogroll it today!

Is Class Bloggable? How About Private Chats?

Yale Law Student Will Baud puts the cat among the pigeons: should (can) professors limit what students say about them in blogs? FWIW, my view is that class is bloggable, but that it's bad taste to blog any private conversation, whether with a professor or anyone else, without that person's consent. Smart students will, however, consider that people, yes even professors, may figure out who they are, and modulate their remarks as they would in any other signed communication. Plus, once you post something, it's pretty much up there for ever.

I certainly feel very constrained, maybe the word is “shy”, about posting much personal stuff here. Pretty much anything that mentions my family I clear with my spouse.

A Dean With Opinions

The Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, is a Dean with opinions. That alone is not unusual. He expresses them — that's a bit rarer, as Deans sometimes mute their views so as to avoid offending alumni. But this Dean has a no-holds-barred blog, Velvel on National Affairs. Try out Re: Fooling and Signing Up Reservists and National Guardsmen For Iraq for a taste:

A blog posted here on Monday, December 6th mentioned the widely known fact that some soldiers are claiming that the Executive’s action in forcing them to continue serving in Iraq is unlawful because their contractual terms of enlistment have expired. It was said here that the soldiers will lose in court, because the gutless judiciary will not rule against the Executive during a war. It took the courts less than 48 hours to prove that this rather elementary prediction was correct. On Wednesday, December 8th, Washington, D.C. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth denied a so-called preliminary injunction against sending one of the soldiers back to Iraq. According to a newspaper report, and putting the matter in lay terms rather than in legal gobbledygook, Lamberth said there is no way the plaintiff could prevail. Lamberth, for whom there was some hope a number of years ago, has in recent years shown himself to be just another judicial shill for the Executive, and has now done so again.

Incidentally, I think this comment is unfair to Judge Lamberth, who actually has an independent streak, and would be seen as one of the top judges in the US but for his temper which gets the better of him once in a while. But it gets better:

In this country people sign up for the Reserves or the National Guard because they need extra money to feed their families or for school — it usually ain’t the rich who sign up for this, baby. They are told their service will involve only a small commitment like some weekends and two weeks in the summer, and are told that their commitment runs for only certain periods of time, e.g., for only one year under the so-called Try One program. When joining up, they sign contracts that say things like “I have enlisted for a period of one year, 0 months and 0 days.” Afterwards, having been told by recruiters that their service will be only minimally invasive (to use a medical term and make a bad pun too) and will last only a fixed period, they suddenly find themselves in Iraq, in danger of being killed, and ordered to remain in that situation far beyond what they thought was the fixed end of their term of service. When this happens, most do not raise legal objections because conformity is the military and human norm. Those who do make objections are met with a barrage of legal arguments purporting to show that they knew of and agreed to the possibility of extended service in a killing zone. (Fittingly, barrage is a military term.)

The barrage comes down to this, in plain English. When they signed up, the soldiers (cum victims?) signed a contract. Like lots of government documents — and much on the order of the completely unreadable Internal Revenue Code — the contract contains legal phraseology meaning that the terms of enlistment can be altered if certain events occur on or in connection with this or that section of the federal statutes — so that one has to read the cross referenced federal statutes to find out what the true situation is. The recruit thinks he is signing up for a fixed term, he signs a paper saying this, but in reality he or she may possibly be signing up for something very different — for a couple of years in Iraq, for example.

Maybe this whole process wouldn’t be so obnoxious if recruits had Philadelphia lawyers with them to explain all this to them. But people who can afford Philadelphia lawyers don’t sign up for the volunteer service, and people who sign up for it can’t afford and wouldn’t dream of using any lawyer in connection with this, let alone Philadelphia ones.

And there's more…

The Anonymous Lawyer Shouldn't Write A Book

There are two levels to this one. First, there's the fun marketing angle. You can read about why Evan Schaeffer, author of Notes from the (Legal) Underground thinks that the Anonymous Lawyer should be encouraged to write a book — and that a bunch of bloggers who link to him should help (as if I had any such influence!) . It's an interesting way to try to find someone a publisher.

But let's get to the merits. Should the increasingly cranky Anonymous Lawyer write a book? I don't think so. I think he should get more sleep.

I used to think the Anonymous Lawyer was pretty funny.

• …it was good pie. My mother made it, despite her quickly-approaching dementia. She doesn't understand why I have to work so hard. No matter how many times I explain it, she doesn't understand. So now I just tell her it'll pay for the assisted living facility she's inching closer and closer to each year and she shuts up.
• The one Thanksgiving table I wish I could be at is where a certain one of our first-year associates will be. The bar results came out last week, and she did not pass. Imagine having to explain that to your family. Like all of our peer firms, without a backbone, we give associates a second chance to do what they should have done the first time before we terminate them. I don't think we should. I think if you can't pass the bar on the first try you shouldn't even be allowed to take it again. You should be banned from the profession for life. It is frightening to think that you can spend millions of dollars on legal services and potentially find yourself working with someone who didn't pass the bar on the first try. Pathetic. …
  
  … if you failed the bar, it's not like you aren't going to screw something else up eventually, so the fresh start doesn't last very soon. And, pretty soon, you're working for the government. Where everyone failed the bar.
• It's understood that there are going to be female associates who are prepared to do whatever it takes to make partner, and will find the guys with the vulnerable marriages and make their move. It's part of how the industry works. But to flip it around, it seems more vulgar. He's a very good-looking young man (I think he had his teeth bleached) and can surely have his pick of women, yet he chooses the shrew down the hall.
• We had a little party in my practice area today at lunchtime, to celebrate Thanksgiving. What a waste.
• To the people who sent me resumes via e-mail: Thanks. I'll save them for when we're looking for paralegals.

The blog used to have a lot of hard truth about firm life. It still has some, but it's being drowned out by a tone of bleakness and resentment seasoned with some unnecessary meanness. Schaeffer calls this a “wry” style, but I think the author needs a vacation. Add book-writing to his chores and he'll crack.

Of course if the whole thing is actually fictional, then what the heck. But I don't think 350 pages of near-misogyny and vague self-loathing will sell. Most people won't identify with a well-paid lawyer's self-pity

Progressive Blog Digest Joins the 'Party of Sleaze' Bandwagon

PBD - Progressive Blog Digest leads today with 'The Party of Sleaze'.

Quick Query

Why can't I get to www.talkingpointsmemo.com or www.talkleft.com? They have been timing out for more than an hour…. DOS attack? Shared server?

(Hey, I can wifi on the plane!)

Catholic LawProfs Debate Catholic Voting Ethics

Over at Mirror of Justice the participants are having a fascinating and largely civil debate over what a Catholc conscience does or doesn't demand when casting a ballot. One of the things I like best about the Internet is being allowed to share in foreign (as in 'very different from my' not as in 'from other countries' although that's very good too) viewpoints — so I love this stuff.

Worth 1000 Votes

First Draft has been running a series of Kerry pictures. I was especially struck by this one:


If you object to the picture, please click on it.

Bruce Schneier Has A Blog

Bruce Scheneier, author of “Applied Cryptography” and other wonderful books, has a blog called Schneier on Security. I'm sure it will be very good.

Goerge Soros Has a Blog

GeorgeSoros has a blog, featuring “Thoughts on the Iraq war and the current administration.”

Wonkette Warns Bloggers Against Hubris

The excellent Washington Note summarizes what sounds like a rollicking session at the APSA meeting:

The Wonkette herself, Ana Marie Cox, stole the show by being the anti-blogger's blogger. She said that there is too much “blogger triumphalism” in the blogosphere and lamented Andrew Sullivan's absence because he was her favorite blogger triumphalist.

According to Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan says that “the revolution will be blogged.” Her dry response, “to have a revolution, you have to leave the house.” She also said that the blogging medium owes the most to AOL sex chat rooms since “both involve staying at home, pleasuring one's self.”

There were also some serious and worthy papers presented…

Power Blogging

You know it's a power blog when the author gets A Letter From the Editor—of the Economist no less.

Even though the Economist is going through a bad patch — predictable leaders, a US columnist who uncritically recites GOP spin points, and less coverage of out-of-the-way places like Albania than it used to have — that's still quite something.

The Pink Bunny of Battle Sees Red

The Pink Bunny of Battle sees red over The War on Academic Freedom. We see an echo of this war here in Florida, where Betty Castor the leading Democratic candidate for our open Senate seat, is being castigated for not having fired a tenured professor accused of aiding terrorists when she was a university president. (In fact, if Castor can be accused of anything, it was over-reacting to flimsy charges and suspending the man for two years on the basis of what was then quite little evidence.)

One thing I don't agree with the Bunny about, though, is the claim that legislatures have an obligation to support good science. I want them to, and I demand they support academic freedom — but I can't say that this includes any sort of duty to go beyond contractual committments. The state has no duty to provide research grants unless it's spelled out in a contract of employment. And if the legislature thinks it has better ways to spend the money, or even if it disagrees with the research on ideological grounds (think stem cells), it has a right to withhold funds. Think of it as a right to be wrong, if you disagree with the decision.

Brad DeLong is Sleuthing for Fafblog's Secret Identity

You knows things are not right when college perfessors are takin' time off from important duties like showin' that entire sections of the White House have trouble with little things like addition and substraction and instead put on their deerstalkers and attempt to discern Who Is Fafblog?:

Fafblog is clearly (i) somebody who knows about the Byzantine Empire, the Knights Templar, and the Crusades, and (ii) somebody who knows more about early and Medieval Christian Theology (the suppressed last articles of the Nicaean Creed! Hah!) then is healthy. This implies somebody who was either (a) a medieval history major, or (b) went to a Jesuit high school.

Silly perfessor. Fafblog identity is not secret. Fafnir and Giblets are well known to both of their friends, and to the Medium Lobster, who himself is welcomed in all of the finest establishments in six spiral clusters and seven dimentions.

The Medium Lobster signals that he has never attended a Catholic School, or indeed needed to study in any institution of learning; a knowledge of Romania is only a small part of what one learns in higher dimensions.

“You will never be able to comprehend the Medium Lobster,” adds Fafnir. “He bein' a higher bein' an all,” agrees Giblets. “You is just cross because we have not told you nothing. NYAAAHHH!”

Suddenly Giblets is concerned. He an Fafnir have not been agreeing so much latterly, and now they are in agreement. This is intolerable! Quick, put the next Swift Boat ad on teevee! That's it! We iz miserable again.

Best Guest Blogger of All Time?

Larry Lessig has Judge Richard Posner guest blogging for him next week.

New Student Blogger

UM has another student blogger, Jason Wolf, who writes the ominously-named random acts of meanness.

And, indeed, I have a bone to pick with this new UM 1L already. In one of his first posts he disses Scotty's Landing, calling it the “worst restaurant on earth”. I'm sorry, it's not even close. Indeed, the food is perfectly OK, certainly no worse than lots of other places, and the view of the ocean and the Miami skyline is spectactular. Try it again some time when the weather is nicer.

Update: Consider, for example, Denny's, “Always open, always awful.”

Eric Muller's Souvenir of Vienna

Eric Muller shares a picture of his souvenir of Vienna. Even in reproduction it is, as he says, “so damn sad to look at.”

As it happens, I read Eric's post shortly after seeing this one. The connection is left as an exercise for the reader.

Slacktivist Brainstorm

Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, has had a brilliant idea:

Eventually, someone from the Cartoon Network will realize that Fafnir and Giblets really ought to be made part of the lineup on Adult Swim.

This would entail getting a team of animators to create the Fafnir and Giblets animated characters, as well as, of course, animated versions of the Medium Lobster and Christopher Robin. At the very least, they could become regular guests on, say, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Two quibbles. First, given that the Medium Lobster is a Higher Being, I'm not sure that he lends himself well to animation. Second, I worry this next bit might be taking it just a bit far…

If the show became a hit, I could see them branching out to create animated versions of other blogs. Maybe a show called “Why oh why are we ruled by these idiots?” featuring a squiggle-vision version of Brad DeLong.

Now If We Can Just Train the AI to Respond When They Say, "Get Me Rewrite!"

The Campaign Desk's Thomas Lang interviews veteran Pittsburgh newsman Dennis B. Roddy, and unearths an interesting view of the effect of blogs on newspaper journalism: it's brought back one form of old-time reporting.

TL: I noticed a few days ago you did a real-time online story for the Post-Gazette website after Kerry's VP announcements. Large papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post now have small operations dedicated to online coverage. How have the pressures of online journalism affected political coverage at the Post-Gazette? What are you doing to keep up?

DBR: It's important to note first off that a lot of the story was AP copy, as was acknowledged. I'm used to this [type of reporting]. You've got to remember that a quarter of the staff here is from the old Pittsburgh Press which was an afternoon newspaper. Not only was it an afternoon paper but also it was too cheap to buy laptops and cell phones. A lot of us were very accustomed to running out in the morning and grabbing a pay phone, a neighbor's phone, or even stealing a cell phone from a competing reporter and simply dictating a story from the location. The stuff you saw at the top of the story was simply me dictating it right from the rally. It's not a big change for me. For some of the others it would be.

I'm seeing some reporters come in and I'm amazed that they take hours to write a deadline story. They are very much trained in the art of perfectionism. We're not writing for posterity. We're writing for Thursday.

The short answer on how the web has changed things is that it has given us an afternoon edition without the expenses. People are going to have to relearn the lost craft of shouting a half-written story into the phone and counting on someone over here [hearing] everything right.

In other words, the web has brought back one of the oldest forms of journalism — afternoon deadlines.

Sounds plausible.

Adventures in PR

Here's a new one on me: press releases sent out to blogs, with the choices probably scraped off the TLB Ecosystem. This one is about the labor practices of official suppliers to the Olympic Games. Since it's the first I've ever gotten, and the cause isn't repugnant, I figured I'd reprint it, just as I got it. But I doubt that I'll make a practice of this.

I need your help exposing a shocking hypocrisy about the upcoming summer Olympic Games.

Ironically, “Celebrate Humanity” is the lofty promotional theme of this August’s Olympic Games, yet the labor practices of Fila and the other official suppliers of the Games (sportswear giants like Umbro, Puma, Asics, Lotto, Kappa and Mizuno) violate accepted international labor standards! 

The workers, mostly women, who are responsible for the gear and clothing the athletes will wear in August have few rights and work in terrible conditions – forced overtime, fines for mistakes, and threats of being fired for joining unions.

Not exactly a “celebration of humanity.”

That’s why Oxfam America created PlayByTheRules.org, a new U.S.-focused campaign that’s part of a global effort to use the power of consumer pressure to convince Fila and the other Olympics suppliers to put an end to the appalling working conditions in their supply factories. 

At PlayByTheRules.org people can send a letter to Fila CEO Steve Wynne asking him to end the hypocrisy and give his workers the rights and respect they deserve by guaranteeing that every worker in Fila’s supply chain is paid a living wage, has free access to trade unions, and enjoys safe working conditions.

 We really need help spreading the word about the PlayByTheRules.org campaign.  That’s why we’re asking popular blogs like yours to join the fight.  Anything you can do - a posting, an article, or even just a link to the campaign homepage (http://www.playbytherules.org) would be a big help and much appreciated.

I’ve pasted a short sample message below but would be happy to provide more info if you’re interested.  Feel free to call me at 202.xxx.xxxx or email me at ldavis@mrss.com with any questions, concerns, ideas, etc.  I will follow up with a phone call in a day or two.

Thanks so much,

Lisa Davis

Online Outreach Coordinator

www.PlayByTheRules.org

*PlayByTheRules.org is a part of a larger global campaigning effort by Global Unions, Clean Clothes Campaign and Oxfam to shed light on labor abuses.  If you’d like to learn more about the global efforts, please visit www.FairOlympics.org.

————————Sample article or email message—————————-

Exploitative Labor Makes Mockery of Upcoming Olympics

Fila and other sportswear giants refuse to play by the rules

There’s a shocking hypocrisy in the upcoming Olympic Games.  The official promotional theme of this August’s Games is “Celebrate Humanity,” yet, ironically, the labor practices of Fila and the other official suppliers of the Games (sportswear giants like Umbro, Puma, Asics, Lotto, Kappa and Mizuno) violate accepted international labor standards! 

Please visit http://www.PlayByTheRules.org to ask Fila’s CEO Steve Wynne to end this hypocrisy and truly “celebrate humanity” by guaranteeing that every worker in Fila’s supply chain is paid a living wage, has free access to trade unions, and enjoys safe working conditions.

The workers, mostly women, responsible for producing the gear the athletes will wear this August work in terrible conditions with few rights – they endure forced overtime, fines for mistakes, and threats of being fired for joining unions. Hardly a “celebration of humanity”…

That’s why Oxfam America launched PlayByTheRules.org, a new U.S.-focused campaign that’s part of a larger global effort to use the power of consumer pressure to convince Fila and the other Olympics suppliers to the appalling working conditions in their supply factories. 

Help put an end to exploitative labor in the Olympic Games by clicking below to send an email to the CEO of Fila now:  http://www.PlayByTheRules.org

Then help spread the word by asking your friends to join you in speaking out.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

*PlayByTheRules.org is a part of a larger global campaigning effort by Global Unions, Clean Clothes Campaign and Oxfam to shed light on labor abuses.  If you’d like to learn more about the international effort, please visit www.FairOlympics.org.

Snark Shortage a Myth: Official

Billmon reports that not only is he back to snark hunting full time, but that there is plenty of snark to go around. (And if there isn't we can always throw money at the problem.)

Link to great epic poem

Link to snarky software

Link to academic write-up of snark hunting

Link to Hi-test snark

Snark dating??? Must be a joke…

Molly Ivins Can't Say I Said That, Can She?

I've been a fan of Molly Ivins for many years, but in yesterday's column she subtly misquotes me and gets the name of my employer wrong. Should I care? And, living in a blogger's glass house, dare I care?

Here's what happened. Salon.com recently ran an item by Geraldine Sealey in its “War Room” which said, in part,

On his excellent blog, University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin analyzes the Pentagon torture memo, or at least the redacted version published on Wall Street Journal Online. His reaction: “If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, 'I was just following orders' is NOT (and should not be) a defense.”

And, in my item on the Bybee Memo I wrote,

the lawyers who wrote this memo were guilty of a lack of moral sense, and extreme tunnel vision fueled by a national panic. The people who asked them to write it, who read it, and especially any who may have acted on it — they’re people who really have the most to answer for.

Somehow, by the time Ms. Ivins was done with it, this became,

As Professor Michael Froomkin, of Miami University, told Salon magazine: “The lawyers who wrote it are guilty. The people who asked them to write it, who read it and who may have acted on it, they're the people who really have to answer for it.”

So there are three mistakes packed in there:

1. I didn't “tell” Salon anything, the War Room just very kindly quoted from my blog.
2. I don't teach at Miami University in Ohio—they don't even have a law school. I teach at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida.
3. Most seriously, the transformation of “the lawyers who wrote this memo were guilty of a lack of moral sense, and extreme tunnel vision fueled by a national panic” to “The lawyers who wrote it are guilty” subtly changed the meaning of the first sentence. And the second has been re-written too. Why?

OK, none of these is that big a deal, although the journalists I know best would (I think) set themselves a higher standard of accuracy. Nor, I suppose, would this sort of transformation be unheard of in the blog world, although we have hyperlinks to keep us more faithful to sources.

But in the academic legal publishing world we footnote everything and try real, real hard to get it just right (and even there, being human, fail sometimes). We do, however, have the luxury of time, and often the additional luxury of various forms of smart and somewhat-trained student research assistants and editors. The absence of time for detailed checking and reflection (not to mention the absence of smart assistance) is one reason why it's hard sometimes to feel comfortable about blogging about current legal events except the narrowest subset of things I know best—it's writing without the safety net of time and reflection. Timeliness has a value, but to the academic in me that hurrying sometimes feels dangerous and wrong. And it means the odds are much greater (approaching certainty?) that I will be wrong sometimes when blogging in ways I would never be in academic writing.

Glass house indeed.

Round Up of Good Stuff

I'm back in Miami, but very very tired. The conference was great fun, and I learned (and ate!) a lot, but the journey home was long. Got up early this morning (before the hotel was serving breakfast), drove from beautiful Santa Fe to Albuquerque, changed planes in Dallas, then finally got home around dinner time.

So here are short links to some blog stuff that hit my feed reader. Several deserve more reaction or praise, but I haven't the energy.

• Talkleft, CEO Paid To Go To Prison. You are a financial services provider. Your CEO is going to jail for 18 months and is fined $2 million. Let's pay him $4,611/day plus a $2 million bonus to make up the fine, plus more bonus to be announced.

• Kevin Drum points to Gadflyer's Amy Sullivan, pointing to the US's leading political analyist noting that the CIA really is in trouble:

“the CIA's credibility has never been lower. Crazy people no longer believe the CIA is implanting a chip in their heads to listen to their dreams. They just don't think they can pull it off. It's a sad day for America when even our paranoid schizophrenics realize they don't need to wear the alumnimum foil hats anymore.”

• Anti-mega gets a farewell t-shirt from his old job.

• My Scholarati standing is no great shakes.

• Kevin Werbach teams up with other wireless pioneers to lauch the Wireless Unleashed Blog.

• Stirling Newbury has a great graph and explainer that plausibly tells Why Bush Seemed Popular.

The Houston journal wants a final draft of the paper in two weeks, so I think I'll do fixing and tidying before posting anything. If anyone is really keen to have it now and will promise comments in exchange for an e-copy now, drop me a note.

Good Thing He's Joking

This Chun fellow could be very dangerous if we didn't all know that academic blurbs are written by university administrations and forced on unwilling shy and retiring academics.

That said, I genuinely believe that some of my colleagues really are the leading authorities on certain things. But better not to name names.

Great Design

I love the look of the blogbook, evoking as it does that Book which is the bane of every law students' first year, and of every law journal editor's third year, albeit the guarantor of employment for legions of research assistants. That said, the project itself—finding a standard way for legal authors to cite blogs—produces decidedly mixed emotions of 'makes sense' and 'neutered already?'.

Idea Shop: Law & Econ With Pizzaz

A proof by example that economics need not always be the dismal science: The Idea Shop.

What Do These Blogs Have In Common?

A little puzzle for the procrastinator. What do the following blogs/websites have in common? (Hint: It has NOTHING to do with politics.)

• Tapped
• Poynter Online - Romenesko
• Needlenose¹
• Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal
• Wonkette
• Eszter's Blog
• Roger Ailes
• Daily Howler
• Media Matters for America
• Times on the Trail

Answer in a later posting if no one figures it out. (PS. Yes, they're all interesting. That's not it either.)

¹ Stumped? Second hint: Needlenose currently belongs to this list but sometimes doesn't.

Interesting Lives

It seems that Jay Allen, the author of the essential MT-Blacklist anti-spam plugin, lives in Hungary — although he's not Hungarian — and has an interesting life, albeit one he worries about.

Hmm…since when do programmers get to have a life?

Florida Is a Bloghaven?

This is surprising:

=< Halavais: News>=: Where have all the bloggers gone? Well, basically the places you would expect. Lots in Boston, lots in Austin, lots on the coast, and a surprising dispersal in Florida (?)

See the cool map too (albeit only for blogs hosted by Livejournal and Diaryland).

Small World. Good Radio.

How absolutely amazing to find that two of the more interesting people I know from such different parts of my life are almost related. It turns out that Ed Hasbrouk, the Practical Nomad, whom I know virtually and from conference calls, is partnered with the cousin of Eric Muller, a law school classmate and now fellow law prof. The occasion for this discovery is that both of them are participants in a great NPR segment called Making Contact.

The show is not being played on either of the NPR stations I can get on my radio, but Ed notes that it can be heard online “from the National Radio Project. You can listen to streaming Real Audio or download a high or low bandwidth MP3.”

For the very interesting details as to how Ed and Eric met, and what they have in common and what they argue about, see Eric's blog entry and Ed's.

Fafblog Doesn't Waffle On Iraq

High-octane commentary from Giblets at Fafblog! the whole worlds only source for Fafblog.

Now and then I see something intelligent on the internet like this piece of reporting from Iraq from Andrew Sullivan. You know it is true because it comes from a military chaplain (he's from the military and the church - two great flavors that go great together). He explains for all the stupid people why it looks like things are getting worse in Iraq when they are actually getting not-worse:

“This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba’ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. …

“So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. … they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse.”

Damn straight! Giblets for one is sick of these pampered Iraqi welfare moms and their “ohhh feed my family” and their “ohhh rebuild the infrastructure you blew up.” Learn some gratitude, Iraqis! We come halfway around the world and take the time to give weapons to your dictator, start a war with him, crush your economy with sanctions, start another war, blow up your power plants and your cities and disband your police, and we did it all for you, so you could grow up to be as mature and developed a nation as we have become. And this is the thanks we get! Freedom is not free, Iraqis! It has a price. And that price is being invaded crippled and occupied by a foreign military. If you cannot handle freedom we'll just have to hand you over to a “democracy-minded strongman.” And this one might not be the sugar daddy that Saddam was.

Cheer or cry?

Wiki List of 'Scholars Who Blog'

Alexander Halavais has started a wiki list of Scholars Who Blog. So far he has about 400, and invites those missing to add their names.

Rafe Colburn on Iraqi Blogs

Absolutely one of the best things about the Internet is how easy it makes it to get unfiltered perspectives from people unlike (or far away from) the ones you run into every day. And then there are nice people like Rafe Colburn who want to help you find them…

rc3.org | Surveying Iraqi weblogs: I've been reading Iraqi weblogs lately, and I thought I'd give a brief survey of the ones I follow, in case anyone else is interested. They come from varying perspectives, and I find all of them fascinating. Some of them I find more depressing than others. One thing you'll find is that the Iraqis who write these weblogs have mistaken impressions about America. I find them illuminating as well, because the impressions of America that Iraqis have are far more important than the truth in terms of whether or not we have any hope of leaving Iraq better off than we found it.

Evil Lawyer Humor

Probably I'm the last lawyer-blogger in America to notice the Anonymous Lawyer, which I found via the also-anonymous Partner Blog, And What Thanks Do I Get. AWTDIG is sometimes funny, but has a more serious edge. The kind law students probably won't like. Because it has enough truth to hurt.

The Anonymous Lawyer, on the other hand, mostly has the sort of truth that won't hurt as long as you are not involved. It's no doubt a sign of my moral degeneration that I found this post pretty darn funny. I don't suppose everyone will.

Robert Waldman's Blog

Robert Waldman has had a blog for a while, but recently he's upped the pace of his blogging. Read him. Link him (let's raise him from a TLB Crunchy Crustacean).

Here's Robert, making me feel almost sympathetic for Art Buchwald, something I would have thought was impossible,

“A Sorry State of Affairs” indeed

Art Buchwald, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Frist agree

Art Buchwald
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page C04

Washington is in a frenzy and it's all because of Richard Clarke. In testifying before the 9/11 commission, he did the unforgivable, the one thing that no government official ever dared to do. He apologized.

…

When Clarke offered his mea culpa, the White House and Republican senators went ballistic. One leader said: “He had no right to say he was sorry. No one, not even the president, is allowed to apologize for anything that Washington does. It's treason.”

Senator William Frist
reported Friday, March 26, 2004

“In his appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Mr. Clarke's theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right,”

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 2, 2004; Page A25

“Indeed, one has to admire it — the most cynical and brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory: Richard Clarke”

Poor Buchwald. Too much time has passed. His column has such a long lead time that his attempt at satire is totally dated, because, by the time it is published, the op ed page has already printed a more ferocious attack on the crime of apologising than he could imagine. Buchwald has made a brilliant career of exaggerating the hypocricy and nastiness of Washington politics. I'm afraid he has to find a new schtick because is is no longer possible to exagerate the hypocricy and nastiness of Washington politics.

Accounting for Accountability

Dang, but Jim Henley is good sometimes,

UNworkable - Stupid unaccountable bureaucracy! Ineffectual talking shop on the Hudson! It took the UN seven months to fire the staffer the leadership considered most responsible for allowing the August 19 bombing of its Baghdad headquarters to occur. Seven months! You'll note that when the the government of, by and for the people suffered an even bigger atrocity in September 2001 it only took the government - um. Um.

Abusable Technologies Awareness Center

The best thing about referrers is that they lead me to interesting places like the Abusable Technologies Awareness Center. This is a very serious effort run by a list of impressive, distinguished and serious people.

Just one thing: YOU GUYS NEED COMMENT SPAM CONTROL. MT-Blacklist works pretty well. You can find my (long!) list of banned sites at the URL for this blog with the filename blacklist and the suffix of txt after the dot. (Why no link? The file is behind a robot exclusion and I do not want search engines that might follow the link anyway to pick up all those terms and associate it with my blog.)

Who Knew?

It looks as if it's been going a while, since July actually, but I only just discovered Abstract Appeal, which calls itself, undoubtedly correctly, “The First Weblog Devoted to Florida Law & the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals”.

Get Paid To Find Typos & Other Errors

Evan Schaeffer offers cash bounties to readers who spot errors in his blog, Notes from the (Legal) Underground

What will you earn? $20 for each typographical error, $10 for each grammatical error, and $5 for each clever demonstration of how I can omit needless words.

Who is eligible? All readers. While before, I welcomed your e-mails and comments informing me of my stupid mistakes, now I'm going to pay you too.

Why am I doing this? Number one, I hate errors. Number two, I love the way good copy editors can make writing sharper and more focused. Number three, by giving myself a financial motive to improve my own editing skills, I hope I'll accomplish these goals myself, without having to pay you very much.

There are a number of conditions and exceptions, so read the rules before you play.

I would no doubt be broke if I tried this, just on the typos alone. But Mr. Shaeffer blogs less frequently, plus he is a practicing lawyer, so he can probably afford it. Plus, looks to me like he's actually quite careful—and even he's out of pocket $195 since starting this open-source proofreading thing about three weeks ago.

1296 Feeds

This Scobliezer guy says he reads 1296 feeds to cull items for his blog. Although it seems he mostly just looks at headlines. And there I was worrying because my list of feeds is almost four screens long…

Hmmm…I wonder if my headlines are as informative as they could be.

Incidentally, I'm a very happy user of a server-side blog aggregating tool called feed on feeds. It's not pretty, and I have a wishlist of features for the perfect version of it, but it's very very useful if you read blognews from more than one machine.

And no, I didn't add the Scobelizer to my watch list—which is pretty close to the “Voices” in the left column.

Why It's Called "Pandagon"

How blogs get their names tends to be either obvious or interesting. My blog got its name from a paper I wrote about the Internet and Habermas's theory of discourse. Here's how Pandagon got its name.

Textile 2 Released

Brad Choate has released Textile 2. The first edition of Textile was a super plug-in for MT, and this one looks even better. In fact it looks like substantially more than I need. Textile 2 does, however, fix the thing about the first edition that most bugged me: now it's easy to use textile commands for multi-paragraph blockquotes.

If you blog with MT, you really should get this plugin. It's very easy to install, and it does provide all sorts of markup shortcuts for formatting your text.

Thank you Mr. Choate!

Brad DeLong Attempts Open Source Journalism

Brad DeLong is asking people what questions Tim Russert should ask GW Bush. And he's primed the pump with a few zingers of his own. My reactions in order:

1. This is exactly how to harness that famous “power of the Internet”
2. In Britain, they actually do ask Ministers questions like this on Radio 4 and on Newsnight
3. Anyone who asked a President questions like that in this country would be pilloried as “disrespectful”.
4. So it won't work. Even if a journalist had the guts, the shill media would turn on him.
5. This is so very, very sad….
6. Oh, hell, can't hurt to try. If nothing else we can compare the actual to the hypothetical and maybe some day…

New Blog on Catholic Legal Theory

Say hello to the Mirror of Justice, a new blog “dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.”

The impressive (but maybe slightly right-leaning?) list of founder members say they don't always agree on matters of politics and even Church, but are united in that,

We all believe that faith-based discourse is entirely legitimate in the academy and in the public square, and that religious values need not be bracketed in academic or public conversation.

…

This blog will not focus primarily on the classic constitutional questions of Church and State, although some of our members are interested in those questions and may post on them from time to time. We are more interested in tackiling the larger jurisprudential questions and in discussing how Catholic thought and belief should influence the way we think about corporate law, products liability or capital punishment or any other problem in or area of the law.

Sounds like a conversation I'll enjoy eavesdropping on.

Just one request, though: please could you add an RSS feed?

Two Great Online Resources

Two great links snagged from cogdogblog

• Big List of Blog Search Engines — search engines that search blogs, that is.
• MovableType Knowledge Base, a wiki for Movabletype.

Does Blogging Count as Academic Work?

Stephen Bainbridge's somewhat tongue in check suggestion that if his blog is being cited in high-class law journals maybe he should get institutional credit for blogging gets taken somewhat seriously by one law dean.

Boy do I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think a smart Law Dean (or any academic administrator) should encourage blogging by folks who will raise an institution's profile as part of a general strategy of institutional advancement. I proposed just that to our Dean some time ago, but other than generously offering to pay my hosting costs (an offer I declined so that I could also use the host in good conscience for various personal and family projects), and telling the faculty in a memo that if anyone else wants a blog the school would pick up the tab, the idea didn't go far in the law school; fortunately the University will be rolling out blogs for everyone Real Soon Now. While I could see a very enlightened Dean counting blogging as a form of community service, I wouldn't expect that to be very common. That said, there are a few blogs — Larry Solum's extraordinary efforts come immediately to mind even without prompting — that probably should count in other columns too.

On the other hand, while if pressed I would claim that my running ICANNWatch is a form of community service, I wouldn't make that claim for the more self-indulgent, mostly half-baked, musings and agitprop here. Plus, I'd feel odd asking for credit for another one of my hobbies. I already made my hobby my job by becoming an Internet lawyer. Besides, I'm already having too much fun on my job to make this part of it.

Quoting Blogs

Over at En Banc, a nice law-student-run blog, the authors are getting worked up about the idea that someone, perish the thought, might cite to a blog, which is ephemeral, off-the-cuff, and perhaps not quite as carefully thought out as the better student note. I can sort of see where some of this comes from, as I recall that part of law school pathology is the feeling that takes hold that citations are sacred, special, eternal. (The limits to that particular fetish become clearer in academe when you start trying to find stuff other people have cited, and it's not there; when you find that law review editors have mangled your footnotes; and particularly when you find an entire paragraph of your writing, sans attribution, in someone else's published article. But I digress.)

But whatever you may think this reflects about law student views of footnotes, this seems to reflect a very odd view of blogs, at least as compared to other web content. So, to the suggestion that there was something odd, revolutionary or disturbing about citing to a blog in a dead tree law review, I responded,

Those of us who write about high-tech stuff have been citing web pages in dead tree law journals — including both Harvard's and Yale's — for years now.

To me, a blog is just another web page.

That produced this reply:

Prof. Froomkin, I do, however, find it very interesting that you find there to be no difference between a blog and a Web page. Web pages are generally static or — such as in the case of newspapers — reproductions of off-line material. Blogs, on the other hand, are the wholesale creation of new material.

And that made me feel old. Web pages are generally static! Web pages are the reproduction of off-line material! Blogs are not web pages?!?

I'm sorry, but under the hood, it's all HTML to me. A blog is just a style of web page, produced by particular types of front-end tools. [Yes, there is a link rot problem, but that's common to blogs and other web pages.] Back in the day, I used to mutate my homepage all the time. By hand-coding the HTML. On a 386 chip. Over a slow phone line. To an unresponsive server. Barefoot. In the snow. But tell the young people of today that ….. they won't believe you.

Lynn Nofziger Has A Blog

Lyn Nofziger, the bare-knuckle Ronald Reagan pol, has a blog, Musings.

It's a weird combo of first-class tactical political insight (aka “stuff I agree is correct”), generally bad poetry (under the name Joy Skilmer), and stupid and only sometimes funny gags, all spiced with gratuitous, mean, and sometimes vicious hatred and anti-democratic and anti-liberal bigotry.

Until Karl Rove gets a blog, this may be the best insight into the canny Republican political operative's mind we are likely to get, although Nofziger, being an ideologically pure libertarian (on economic issues only; on social issues, especially gay rights, he's pretty much a grumpy troglodyte), is a very unhappy Republican these days.

Here's how Nofziger describes himself on his homepage

I'm Lyn Nofziger and this is my website. If you're looking for a female exhibitionist with a digital camera you've come to the wrong place.

On the other hand, if you want some conservative opinion laced with exasperation, an occasional limerick or other piece of doggerel, or are interested in the books I have written you're in the right place. All you have to do is click on “Musings.”

The odds are you've never heard of me, which is all right because I've probably never heard of you either, so let me tell you a little bit about myself. (If you want to know more you can always go to your favorite book store and order my political memoir—it is not a biography—which is called “NOFZIGER.” If you want to know less, stop now.)

I am a Californian, a World War II army veteran, a former newspaperman, a politician and the author of four—going on five—Western novels. I make an occasional political speech, write an occasional political column or op ed piece and complain a lot. If you visit this page from time to time you will be able to see what I complain about.

In more detail, I spent 16 years as a newspaperman, including eight as a Washington Correspondent for the Copley Newspapers of California and Illinois.

I served in Ronald Reagan's governor's office and White House and in Richard Nixon's White House. I have run and participated in numerous political campaigns, including five for president, and have won some and lost some. Once I even worked at the Republican National Committee.

I am a Republican because I believe that freedom is more important than government-provided security. Sometimes I wish I were a Democrat because Democrats seem to have more fun. At other times I wish I were a Libertarian because Republicans are too much like Democrats.

What I actually am is a right-wing independent who is registered Republican because there isn't any place else to go. In the future I expect to be critical of both parties and their leadership and a lot of other people and things, too.

Example of good political analysis:

• The unique thing about Dean and his campaign is that he and it are not at all unique. He started out as a little known governor from a small state. So did Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He started out well behind in national polls and in the polls in states with early caucuses and primaries. So did Carter, Mike Dukakis, George McGovern and Clinton, but like them, he kept plugging away and somehow, where others failed, connected with the actvists who vote in primaries.

  Like them he has successfully utilized new—and proven—campaign and money raising techniques. And, like them, he has worked and campaigned unstingly.

  And all of this has made a major difference.

  Perhaps, more than anything else, however, he has presented to Democrat activists a new face, a fresh, vigorous, seemingly forthright qpproach and a willingness to “tell it like it is” even at the risk of turning some people off.

  Look at his opponents. They are either tired, old faces who bring nothing new to the table or they are so far out on the fringe they make the ordinary Democratic left-winger seem moderate. What bleeding liberal in his right mind would vote for Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley Braun or Dennis Kucinish. Well, Kucinich has Willie Nelson but one vote just can’t hack it.

  Among the others the only fresh faces are retired general Wesley Clark and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Clark got in the race too late with too little and is widely perceived as the tool the Clinton/Democratic establishment is using to try—vainly—to block Dean. The other day Clark told the world he’d like to be vice president by announcing, unasked, that he would not take that nomination under any circumstances. Don’t bet on it.

  Edwards, with more ego than political smarts, got in the race early but didn’t know what to do after he got in. He started out well behind and has faded from there.

  The other candidates have been around a long time and are a pretty wilted bunch—Lieberman, Rep. Dick Gephardt, Sen. John Kerry. None of the three offers any excitement or brings anything new to the table.



• -The nation’s chief adviser on matters of terror, Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, has upped the danger signal a notch from code yellow to code orange.

  At the same time Ridge has urged Americans to relax, don’t worry, enjoy the Chirstmas season.

  Well, why not? What else can you and I do?

  Meantime, security details in airports and other possible danger spots are being told to be ever more alert. But, jimminy crickets, aren’t they already supposed to be one hundred percent alert? If there is a need to tell them to be alerter, it means that somebody hasn’t been doing his job. Could it be Tom Ridge?

  What will they do in the airports now? Make everyone take off their shoes?

  There is talk of terrorists seizing planes again to use as missiles. Apparently everyone hasn’t strengthened their cockpit doors.

  But the odds say that if planes are used they probably won’t be loaded passenger planes because you can bet passengers won’t sit idly by this time; they’ll start throwing things. Look for terrorists to use cargo planes or perhaps some different means, of which there are many, of inflicting damage.

  I suspect the main reason Ridge had for changing the color code to orange is that he in particular and the administration in general are guarding their backsides. Just in case there is a terrorist attack during the Christmas season, neither Ridge nor the adminstration wants to be accused of not having been prepared.

  When you come right down to it there probably is nothing much they can do to stop some sort of terrorist attack, but at least, responding to sure criticism from Democrats if there is one, they’ll be able to say, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

• “Liberal Democrats are beginning to breathe easier. It’s been more than a week now and Hillary Clinton still shows no signs of mad cow disease.”
  
• “Even smart liberals (if that’s not a contradiction in terms)” [even weirder…the “liberal” is…David Broder!]

Bloggers as Opinion-Leaders

The Blogging of the President: 2004 brings us The New AP: Atrios versus Instapundit, Part One. I think he's on to something. Certain blogs, like Atrios now serve an agenda setting function that is filtered through the traditional media to the public.

The article also has some interesting things to say about the contrast between Atrios and Instapundit, described as a leading agenda-setter on the right (which I hope is not right, as it would be sad for the right).

That said, the guys who really matter are the ones who come up with the facts, folks like Brad DeLong or Josh Marshall.

The [Ed] Survives

Will Baude reports that the [Ed] is Here To Stay. I'll be happy to take full credit even if not deserved.

Vote to Save the Editor

Will Baude over at Crescat Sentenia is suffering from a challenge by a fellow blogger:

Imminent Death of the Editor?
Unlearned Hand writes:

I only have one wish this Christmas and that is that you never ever use an [editor] aside again. Please?

In exchange, I promise I won't have comments when my solo blog re-opens.

(For more on this particular affectation, you can read Daniel Drezner's explanation in this interview with himself.)

The tic is most famously used by Mickey Kaus, but apparently it makes some people cringe. I've always found it one of the most useful ways to mock myself (and lord knows, I need it, what with Assprat Pretentia having fallen by the wayside). But I'm in no particular mood to make my readers cringe, after all. So out of pure curiosity, I'd like to know whether you hate the “ed.” persona. Vote below. (And remember: “It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting”). [In other words, he listens only when he likes what he hears. -ed.]

Anyway, I like the [ed] so long as it is not over-used [You better like it-ed.]. If you agree, vote to retain it on Baude's posts. When I checked the vote was only narrowly in favor, so a few votes could make a difference.

MaxSpeak Moves to MT

MaxSpeak, an economist worth your time and attention, has NEW DIGS, and he's using Movable Type.

How Many Kings Have Their Own Blogs? Cambodia's Does!

The Guardian has pretty good web coverage, and they carry a pointer to the web site of King Norodom Sihanouk

Each day, His Royal Highness King Norodom Sihanouk scribbles a few pages of French in his notebook, which is then scanned and posted on the internet (Norodomsihanouk.info) in what is thought to be the first sovereign's weblog.

The royal blog has proved popular in Cambodia - as popular as any website can in a country where more than a third of the 12 million population live on less than a dollar a day. In part, this must be down to the king's decision to handwrite - as opposed to typing - his feelings, which affords a rare opportunity to read the royal state of mind. On difficult days, the king's memoranda are fissured with furious underlinings, scrawled with frantic disregard for page rules, along with bubbles of emphasis added in the margin. He also has a charming habit of separating his sections with three little Xs.

Brad DeLong Seeks Interesting Math Problems (for Kids)

Brad DeLong's Request for help

My two children get what the payoff to reading well is immediately and completely. My two children get what the payoff to writing well is as well: they understand that it is fun now and it will be important later on if they want to have options to be able to write quickly, clearly, and coherently.

But math. Math textbooks are remarkably dry. How can I persuade them that math can be fun, that they will be able to learn and calculate interesting things if math is their friend, and that their options later on will be much, much greater if only they apply themselves to math now?

So far, I only have twenty-three problems that I regard as interesting and amusing enough to hand them in an attempt to propagandize for math. But I want more: I want to have one hundred…

Have a look at Brad DeLong's Collaborative Website: OneHundredInterestingMathCalculations.

Blogshares: Not Dead, Only Sleeping?

Back from the dead? BlogShares :: Coming BACK Soon. “BlogShares should be back sometime today — DNS propogation will delay this a couple days for some users.”

The Bad News

The BlogShares database was corrupted and it's taking a few days to get things back together.

The Good News

A solid agreement has been reached between BlogShares founder Seyed Razavi and technologist Jay Campbell — the site is coming back!

Blogshares Is Dead

I never did quite get around to figuring out the rules, but it was interesting to see who linked to me and watch my “valuation” gyrate (but generally rise) for no discernable reason. Now it's dead. BlogShares - Closed Down. I think I had a 'market share' of something just over .0065% towards the end there…

Dear BlogShares players,

I am sorry to announce that BlogShares will not be reopening after the current technical difficulties are resolved. Currently, the database server is dead and looks to be for the next few days.

The latest system crash has highlighted to me that deliverying a fun, useful service for the BlogShares community requires an active operator and developer. As most of you are no doubt aware I've been neither for the past couple of months. That has led to a decline of quality service, new features and ultimately income for the site and it looked likely that there wouldn't be enough to pay for next month's hosting.

…

My goal with the project was always to embrace the power law and to provide a new way of highlighting blogs with a little bit of fun. I've been pleasantly surprised of how well it did and stupefied it did it for so long. Now, however, it is time to move on to other things. I'm sure you'll be hearing from me in the not so distant future. You can also find me at my perpetual home: monkeyx.com.

All the best,

Seyed Razavi

Is "Is the Blogosphere Sexist?" The Right Question?

David Pollard (who has a wonderful, wonderful Blog called How To Save the World asks, Is the Blogosphere Sexist?. I think it's a fine essay, but I wonder if it's the right question.

First, I'd like to know, 'Compared to What'? I teach on a faculty that has far fewer women then men, so I'm prepared to believe there is a fair amount of sexism remaining in society. (On the other hand, we have had three female Deans in our fairly short history, including one whose ghost all but still walks the halls, so it's not all bad news here.) So the question may not be “are blogs sexist” but rather “to what extent to do blogs replicate or transcend existing patterns of behavior”.

Obviously, it would be great if we could show the flowering of public discourse to be a Habermasian public sphere operating without coercion or prejudice. But that is not very likely. I'd settle gladly for the news that the online exchanges are relatively less sexist and relatively less irrational.

No one in his right mind thinks that blogging, or the Internet in general, is free of strategic behavior (like, for example, frivolous threats of lawsuits). It stands to reason that when we “go online” (actually write stuff for public consumption), we are more or less ourselves. But it's also conceivable that, as group norms evolve online, and as communities of discourse form and re-form and cross-pollinate, we can grow and change, and collectively become more than what we were.

Here's hoping.

The Joy of Filtering

It seems I am not the only one to have modified their link to the Volokh Conspiracy to eliminate the high volume of posts from the most voluable and least interesting conspirator. As of yesterday, the link in the left margin leads you to a Cori-free version. Not to censor, but because that's how I decided I liked to read it.

A Little Bit About Libel Law (Inspired by the Atrios affair)

I'm a regular reader of Eschaton, but I had a busy day, so it was something of a shock to discover this evening that he's gotten a cease-and-desist letter from some poor deluded soul who claims he's being libeled both by Atrios and by commentators on the Eschaton blog, and that half the blogs in the world have weighed in on it.

Plenty has been said about the merits, and I won't add to it. (See here for one roundup of links.)

But it might be useful to summarize some of the relevant cyber-law principles, which differ slightly from ordinary libel law. In what follows I treat the cyber-law aspects (only) of three issues: (1) Libel by a blogger; (2) libel by a commentator to a blog; (3) whether a lawsuit can force an ISP to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger.

Please note the disclaimer: I'm not your lawyer. This isn't legal advice, it's an academic essay regarding general principles. If you are threatened with a lawsuit, you need a lawyer who will consider the law in your jurisdiction, recent developments and, especially, specific facts pertaining to your situation — facts that might change everything.

As regards any libels he authors, a blogger is in the same position as any other author.

As regards anything said by the commentators, a blogger is in a strong legal position, although how cheaply and surely he can beat off a lawsuit may depend on where he lives. [Please note that regardless of what follows, I think that in any circuit, once a blogger has an actual libel brought to his attention, both prudence and especially good taste would counsel removing it.]

The key text is 47 U.S.C. §. 230(c ), (c ) Protection for ''Good Samaritan'' blocking and screening of offensive material

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

An “information content provider” is defined as “any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational systems.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(2).

In Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018 (2003), the 9th Circuit held that § 230 protects the moderators of a discussion group. The moderators were thus immune from liability for defamatory messages posted to their groups by others—and the sole person liable for that defamation is the author of the message. According to the 9th circuit, this is true whether or not the moderator exercises editorial judgement as to which messages to post; under any plausible reading of § 230 if this is true for discussion group moderators then it should also be true for bloggers, especially if the blog just automatically posts reader-generated content. A similar rule applies in the Third, Fourth, Tenth, three other circuits, and is often called the Zeran rule after the Fourth Circuit case that first enunciated it. See Green v. America Online, Inc., 318 F.3d 465 (3d Cir.2003); Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir.1997); Ben Ezra, Weinstein & Co. v. America Online, Inc., 206 F.3d 980 (10th Cir.2000).

It's true that just recently a California state court of appeals adopted a narrower view of § 230, emphasizing that the statute shouldn't be read to protect those with guilty knowledge of the libelous content. Barrett v. Rosenthal, —- Cal.Rptr.3d ——, 2003 WL 22346578 (“We agree with appellants that the statute cannot be deemed to abrogate the common law principle that one who republishes defamatory matter originated by a third person is subject to liability if he or she knows or has reason to know of its defamatory character.”). That doesn't apply to the automatic posting of comments, so it's probably not relevant here, although it might suggest liability for leaving something online once you have reason to know it's defamatory.

It's also true that Judge Easterbrook on the influential Seventh Circuit offered some contrary dicta the other day in Doe v. GTE Corp., —- F.3d ——, 2003 WL 22389811, suggesting that the Zeran case provides too much immunity to Internet service providers, and that it should not be read to apply “when some rule of state law does require ISPs to protect third parties who may be injured by material posted on their services.”

While I think the Zeran decision is right, and would likely apply to the automated posting that applies to blogs in any circuit, the amount that a blogger would have to expend to vindicate this position, and the certainty of victory, obviously depends on where he lives.

And in the case of Atrios, we don't know where he lives, because “Atrios” is pseudonym.

Which brings me to the next issue: can a plaintiff force an ISP to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger?

The short answer is that it depends. Here is what I wrote about this last January, and I have no reason to believe anything significant has changed since then,

The ordinary legal means for a party aggrieved by an unknown but potentially knowable party to achieve redress is to file a “John Doe” lawsuit against the unknown party. In so doing the plaintiff not only avoids any statute of limitations, but secures access to judicial process to help secure the information necessary to identify the person who should be named in the lawsuit. See generally Roger M. Rosen & Charles B. Rosenberg, Suing Anonymous Defendants for Internet Defamation, 19 No.2 Comp. & Internet L. 9 (2002). In most cases implicating anonymous internet speech, that means a subpoena directed against the ISP or bulletin board operator or a related discovery request aimed at one presumed to know the speaker's identity. Sometimes the recipient of the subpoena notifies its customer, who then can move to quash the subpoena, or files for a protective order. The outcome of these quashing actions have varied. The earlier cases tended to uphold the subpoenas, leading to cries of outrage about the chilling effect on First Amendment activities. More recent cases have tended to be more solicitous of the speakers' rights, See Anderson v. Hale, 2001 WL 503045 (N.D. Ill.) (holding that disclosing information about publicly known members of a white supremacist organization would not chill their First Amendment rights to freedom of association because it is not directed at the heart of the organization’s protected activities, but disclosure that aims to reveal the identity of the organization’s anonymous members directly chills associational rights.), but it remains to be seen how the higher courts will balance “the right of the plaintiff to protect its proprietary interests and reputation through the assertion of recognizable claims based on the actionable conduct of the anonymous, fictitiously-named defendants,” Dendrite International, Inc. v. John Doe, No. 3, 775 A.2d 756, 760 (N.J. Super. 2001), against the First Amendment rights of speakers.

In Dendrite International, Inc. v. John Doe, No. 3 a New Jersey state court of appeals ruled that online posters can keep their identities secret in most cases, and crafted rules to protect. Id. Dendrite, a maker of sales-force technology, sued to reveal the identities of several message-board posters, claiming they posted false statements about the company. In affirming the denial of the discovery request, the Dendrite court set guidelines for New Jersey trial courts to follow when companies sued to determine the names of anonymous posters, although it emphasized that each case should be decided individually:

when such an application is made, the trial court should first require the plaintiff to undertake efforts to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena or application for an order of disclosure, and withhold action to afford the fictitiously-named defendants a reasonable opportunity to file and serve opposition to the application. These notification efforts should include posting a message of notification of the identity discovery request to the anonymous user on the ISP's pertinent message board.

The court shall also require the plaintiff to identify and set forth the exact statements purportedly made by each anonymous poster that plaintiff alleges constitutes actionable speech.

The complaint and all information provided to the court should be carefully reviewed to determine whether plaintiff has set forth a prima facie cause of action against the fictitiously-named anonymous defendants. … the plaintiff must produce sufficient evidence supporting each element of its cause of action, on a prima facie basis, prior to a court ordering the disclosure of the identity of the unnamed defendant.

Finally, assuming the court concludes that the plaintiff has presented a prima facie cause of action, the court must balance the defendant's First Amendment right of anonymous free speech against the strength of the prima facie case presented and the necessity for the disclosure of the anonymous defendant's identity to allow the plaintiff to properly proceed. [Id. at 760-761]

The court, however, immediately demonstrated that this is far from an absolute protection for anonymous speakers. The same day that the New Jersey appellate court decided Dendrite, it also decided Immunomedics, Inc. v. Jean Doe, 775 A.2d 773 (N.J. Super. 2001). Here, applying the Dendrite test, the court determined that a biopharmaceutical corporation was entitled to disclosure from Yahoo! regarding the true identity of Jean Doe, an anonymous poster to a Yahoo! message board, because the corporation had presented sufficient evidence that the user was an employee of the corporation who had breached a confidentiality agreement by posting to the message board. Id. The court stated that the employee had “contracted away her right to free speech,” and that by “choos[ing] to … violate an agreement through speech on the Internet [she] cannot hope to shield [her] identity and avoid punishment through invocation of the First Amendment.” Id. at 775, 777-78.

Similarly, in John Doe v. 2TheMart.com Inc., 140 F.Supp.2d 1088 (W.D. Wash. 2001), 2TheMart.com sought a subpoena to force InfoSpace, and ISP, to reveal the identities of 23 posters who used pseudonyms on InfoSpace's invesment-related message boards. 2TheMart.com was defending itself against a class-action lawsuit alleging the company engaged in securities fraud, but the anonymous posters were not parties to the case. In the course of refusing to order InfoSpace to disclose the names the court fashioned a four-pronged test that also sought to balance the interests while giving due but clearly not overwhelming weight to the writers' interest in remaining anonymous,

Whether (1) the subpoena seeking disclosure was brought in good faith; (2) the information sought relates to a core claim or defense; (3) the identifying information is directly and materially relevant to a core claim or defense; and (4) the information sufficient to establish or disprove the claim or defense is unavailable from any other source.

See id. at 1095.

Once again, the balance is considerable solicitude towards the citizen's interest in remaining anonymous, but not to the point that it inevitably trumps competing values.

Readers Shower Joshua Marshall With Donations

Joshua Micah Marshall writes a great political blog complete with actual original ideas and investigative reporting called Talking Points Memo. The other day he posted an item asking for financial support in order to take his blogging on the road to cover the New Hampshire primary. Readers responded so generously, that in less then 24 hours Mr. Marshall was saying “I never thought I’d say this, but: No More Contributions!”. Gentleman that he is, he then started describing how he'd give some of the money above what he actually need back to the later contributors.

Now, we're only talking about $4864.00 here; I don't think this is a sustainable business model for the starving artists of the world (although things like it have been suggested), nor is it the next shot (after open source?) in an ongoing transition towards a gift-exchange model amidst a culture of satisfaction and plenty.

But it's pretty cool whatever it is.

The Practical Nomad Learns to Blog

Ed Hasbrouck, aka the Practical Nomad, has taken his wonderful mailing list on travel and privacy issues and turned it into a blog. A must-read if you fly or if you care about privacy, and a double must if you fit both categories. There's also an online archive of the traffic from his mailing list.

Children Who Blog

Amazingly, Google has no entries as of yet for “children who blog”. There are, however, several items on “kids who blog,” including this Christian Science Monitor item. Most of them seem to be about teenagers, especially girls.

I mention this, because all of a sudden I now have two kids who blog. It was Elder Son (age 10) who suggested he could have one at something.discourse.net. I didn't like the idea of a blog open to the world, so we compromised on one that will be served from a different second-level domain name, and is password-protected so that only family members can read it. Fortunately my hosting plan allows me to serve several domains for the same price, and I had an underused one hanging around. Younger Son (age 7), who perhaps already has a keener sense about the dangers in the world (he has, after all, experience of dealing with Elder Son…), enthusiastically agreed with this idea.

So now the kids have an online newspaper they can update when they like, and we have an easy way to share digital pictures with a far-flung family. And the non-blogging relatives can send messages to the kids by posting comments. Don't know if it will last as an enthusiasm, but if it does it should be fun.

It's When, Where AND How You Say It

Thanks to rc3, I found Danny O'Brien's Oblomovka, and its observations on “registers of conversations”. Which explains why rc3 is a good thing to read — it taps into pools I don't. Except that now I guess I'll be reading Danny O'Brien too…

Incidentally, Danny O'Brien appears to be connected to my old fave NTK, but that's surely an obsurantist taste if there ever was one….

DKos Moves to Scoop

Daily Kos, the lively left-leaning political news and commentary site, is leaving Movable Type and switching to Scoop, which is the sort of community-building software I wrote about in the final section of my Habermas paper.

It's been suggested that blogs shouldn't have comments but that they should instead link to each other to make conversations more visible. The dKos move represents the radical counter to that view.

In the end, users will decide what they like best; in the interim there's plenty of room for both approaches, plus some arbitrage.

Eric Muller Blogs From 'Law, Loyalty, and Treason'

Eric Muller is blogging from a conference I wish I could attend, the UNC Law Review's symposium on Law, Loyalty, and Treason. Instead I'm about to leave for our Retreat.

His second meaty post is about a paper by Marion Crain of UNC Law School and Ken Matheny of the Social Security Administration which shows that worplace disloyalty has often been treated by those in power as subversion and disloyalty akin to treason.

Does this mean that deep in their hearts Big Employers are basically feudal?

The first meaty post is about a paper from George Fletcher of Columbia Law School. Eric says he argues that “the crime of treason has become a dead letter — conceptually incoherent — because it is essentially a feudal crime that requires a specific relationship between the citizen and a “personalized” sovereign.”

So the feudalism argument is truly joined?

Some Musings on Blog Ethics

My law school classmate Eric Muller of IsThatLegal? writes that he agrees with Ed Cone, when Ed Cone says,

Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds are just a couple of guys messing around on the web. They are amateurs writing what pleases them. They have no responsibility to their readers to cover the uncovering of Valerie Plame.

That's all true, and at the same time it is total bullshit. These guys aren't lawyers for nothing.

To skip the CIA story is to declare it unimportant. It's a lie to their audiences. Yet Reynolds is devoting limited energy to the matter, Volokh even less.

A weblog is not a game of Solitaire. You engage your readers. You promise them certain things. Volokh and Insty have created themselves as important commentators on the serious issues of the day.

To ignore this story is to abdicate a role they are only too happy to play in other situations, which in turn devalues their credibility when they want to put the pundit's hat back on.

What they say about PlameOut is their business. If they really do think it's unimportant, then they should explain why it's unimportant.

Of course, as Volokh says, nobody is paying them and they are free to write what they want.

But if they want to be taken seriously as a new kind of journalist , then they have to assume some of the responsibilities of journalists, too. Otherwise, it's just a hobby.

Eric Muller is a very sensible guy, so odds are that what I'll call the Ed-Eric view is worth thinking about, on its own terms and also for whatever impact it should have on my conduct as the proprietor of a blog that truly is at the fringes of the public sphere. (I should disclose that in addition to liking Eric, I also think of Eugene as a friend, and regularly read his blog, but don't know the other participants in this debate. I will use The Volokh Conspiracy as my example here because I don't read the other blog at issue.)

Start here: It's obvious that everyone who puts up a web page on current events doesn't therefore take on a moral obligation to write about all the issues of the day.

Nor does everyone who puts up a me-zine blog.

Nor does everyone who puts up a political blog.

The hinge of the Ed-Eric view must therefore either be something about the responsibilities that come with a large readership, or “new journalism,” or something about the way in which they think the The Volokh Conspiracy and other very popular blogs with lots of political content (note that this is not the only thing they have, Volokh even carries recipes whose ideological tinge escapes me) hold themselves out to the public: “You engage your readers. You promise them certain things.” Well, yeah, if you promise to discuss all the important political issues of the day, and you skip some, you're a lousy promise-keeper. But where was that promise? Ed Cone thinks it is implicit: “Volokh and Insty have created themselves as important commentators on the serious issues of the day.” Thus, “To ignore this story is to abdicate a role they are only too happy to play in other situations, which in turn devalues their credibility when they want to put the pundit's hat back on.” Here's where I get a little lost. Where is this implicit promise? Is it disclaimable? And, legalism aside, why should even large-readership punditish bloggers be expected to weigh in on everything? Why shouldn't we instead respect a decision to only speak about the things where you have something to say? Why do they (or I) have a duty to explain why they (or I) are not writing about this legal/political scandal or that one?

Similarly, I think the claim that “if they want to be taken seriously as a new kind of journalist, then they have to assume some of the responsibilities of journalists” is overwrought. Some blogs are surely engaged in an enterprise like journalism—reporting facts and analysis. Some may even have explicit or implicit claims to comprehensive coverage of a topic or topics. But the political blogs are to my mind a lot more like op-ed columns. Must every newspaper columnist across the land weigh in on each scandal? Or even every syndicated columnist? Talk about pack journalism monoculture!

Before you get too excited, though, there are aspects of this in which I'm in sort of in agreement with the Ed-Eric view. First, I do believe that there are a very small number of issues which touch us all as citizens, and on which we all have a moral duty to bear witness when the opportunity presents itself. I think wars, systematic injustices and deprivations of liberty get on that list for me, but I recognize that other people might have longer, shorter, or different, lists and I am still pondering mine. But those moral duties to speak out are not dependent on one's status as blogger, a pundit, or an any sort of recognized author—although they are neither utterly independent of the chance that one's speaking might have an effect on a listener nor utterly dependent on it either. (And, none of what I'm saying in any way denigrates from Eric's other point, that all web authors ought to think about the consequences of what they post. Where I disagree is with his claim that the two issues are “essentially identical”.) I don't think this scandal du jour makes that list. Bush's lying to the American people about the reasons for war might. Back-alley bare-knuckle political tactics such as outing agents to send a message to future critics and sliming an honorable public servant are reprehensible and well worth criticizing, but that job is being handled pretty well at the moment. Lacking any insight on it, I don't personally feel a duty to pile on, and I don't see how one can fairly impose that duty on others.

That said, I also agree that readers should not only be free, but actually encouraged, to engage their critical faculties and apply it to the silence of authors as well as to their clamor. That someone ordinarily voluble is silent tells us something, although exactly what can be hard to discern. Is it a tactical silence? An embarrassed one? Or perhaps just a modest one?

For the record: I don't promise to discuss all the important issues of the day. Instead, I promise to try to only discuss those issues where I think I have something to say that might be worth your time to read.

Update: It looks as if maybe Eugene and Eric and I have come close to agreement.

My Lawyer Can Beat Up Your Lawyer

Via IPKat, a nice English blog devoted to intellectual property, comes a pointer to a New Scientist article reproducing an unusually agressive online warning against misappropriation of text and images: “My intellectual property attorney is a scary-smart guy. He was the youngest person to ever pass the bar exam in his state. Plus he put himself through law school by working as a professional wrestler. I am not making this up.”

It reminds me of when I was in private practice. I spent most of my relatively short career in the London office of a US firm, serving European clients. After a while, I began to understand why certain ones of them liked taking a US lawyer to meetings. To them, it was a way of signalling to their European counterparts, 'See my legal pitbull. Be nice, or I'll sic him on you.'

Blogging: It's A Sub-Culture

Argh. Blogging is developing into a subculture with its own argot. No, no, no, that is not what I want. This isn't high school. I don't need a clique to make me feel good. I want to take part in thoughtful conversations that leak into the public sphere.

On the other hand, Technorati.com claims to know of 994,254 weblogs (that should hit a million by next week), with 45,043,270 active links. At worst, that's a substantial sub-culture.

But, fun as terms like “Bleg,” “Blogroach,” “Fisk”, “Idiotarian,” or “Instapundit” may be, I don't think I am going to have much use for most blogging jargon. I hope to write as straightforward prose as I can, subject to the occasional need to express complex ideas and nuance, and of course to systemic sleep deprivation.

Marshmallow Farming in Delaware

From time to time I plan to post mini-reviews of blogs I like. I like a number of the ones you see linked to all over the place, but there are also some less well-known, quirky and human ones that appeal to me. One of these, although far from obscure, is called Sneaking Suspicions. I like it for several reasons. The author is a practicing administrative lawyer who lives in a small town, Rehoboth Delaware. I teach federal administrative law, and it's fun to see someone talking in a level-headed way about applying the stuff I teach to practical contexts. That he does state admin law makes little difference to the fundamental principles. Plus, Rehoboth was where we went to the beach when I was a kid. I didn't (and don't) particularly love going to the beach—in some ways Miami is wasted on me—but I it's fun to have a tie to the place being talked about. Perhaps what I like best, though, is the reasonableness of it all; Fritz Schranck, the author, reads the advance sheets (recent court decisions), and makes wry and sensible comments on the foibles of the often somewhat unreasonable litigants.

And then, there's the occasional off-the-wall item. As Washingtonians, our taste of Delaware was limited to the coast. Who knew what delights were hidden inland? For example, my kids were very impressed when I showed them the picture of the Marshmallow Farm.