Discourse.net/Etc

Imagine What He Could Have Done as a Lawyer

Via Feminist Law Profs, a piece of Digitized History (mislabeled “digital history,” which to me would be a history of online activities).

As FLP says, “Wow.”

The European Soccer Championship: Guide

Now that the Boston Celtics have won the “world” championship, eyes are firmly set on the Euro soccer championship. The tournament has already moved to the quarter finals. It is hard to understate the impact of this event on life in most of Europe (and many other parts of the world).
Even if you are not interested in the game itself, perhaps you might enjoy my general observations on the meaning of the euro soccer championship:

• Law of supply and demand: International soccer championships are a special occasion. The European championship occurs only every 4 years. The World championship also takes place every four years. This means that there is always one year of “nothingness” in between each tournament. Artificial scarcity of supply => increase in demand.

• Global warming. Streets are empty during most games. Al Gore loves soccer championships (except victories for Turkey, see below).

• Numbers don’t add up:
o Some small countries (Croatia, Holland) perform really well on a consistent basis even though they have a small population. Most likely explanation: something in the faucet water.
o The distortion of money: one of the very richest soccer leagues in the world, England, has the best teams (see Champions league results) but underperforms on the world stage. One explanation: the money allows them to import foreign players, lowering the amount of national players in crucial positions in the league (beware MLS).

• Soccer & Steroptypes: Germany: it is not always pretty, but the outcome is always efficient. Gary Lineker famously described soccer as a game ” for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins.”. The German soccer team always manages to beat some of the most stylish, talented teams and advance to the final stages. This years seems no different. In the first quarter final Germany beat an immensely talented Portuguese squad (3-2). The bookmakers (who are also very efficient) favor Germany as the final winner (1/4) of the tournament.

]]> • Flags & Cars: Every Turkish victory (even in first round games) = (equal) “drive by celebrations” in cities across Europe.

• Exams and soccer. June is exam month for students. Also the start of real summer weather. Exam results = studying minus soccer watching minus hot weather.. Resits for exams are in August, a much more quiet time. ;) Same equation applies to grading by professors.

• Nationalism and soccer. Often problematic (see Holland-Germany game in 1988). But sometimes its just plain cheerful (and ridiculous looking). Proof: Holland being covered in Orange colors during soccer championships.

Chocolate Considered Dangerous

Women More Likely Than Men To Surrender Security For Chocolate:

Women are four times more likely than men to surrender their computer passwords for chocolate, according to a survey of 576 office workers conducted outside Liverpool Street Station in London by Infosecurity Europe.

According to the survey, 45% of women revealed their passwords to strangers posing as market researchers for a chocolate bar, compared to 10% of men.
Apparently the overall percentage of password-yielding respondents this year (21%) represents an improvement over 2007, when 64% of respondents traded their security for a few moments of chocolaty goodness.
Infosecurity Europe made no mention of whether inducements tailored to men, such as sports tickets, free beer, or explicit pictures, were offered to test the possibility that the noted gender disparity might be reversed under different circumstances.

(via PogoWasRight.org)

Grading Puzzle

Here’s a nice grading puzzle, smaller versions of which sometimes come up in law school exams: How should you deal with students who make mistakes about basic facts that are not directly relevant to the question:

Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk: “If only we had forgiven Iraq for 9/11”,

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11.

The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

Serious Commuting

I have an easy commute. Were it not for the need to get the kids handed off to school, my morning transit to work would consist of a short walk.

Some of my students have it tough: they drive from pretty far away — and have to fight some pretty nasty traffic unless they leave earlier than anyone would want to.

But that’s nothing compared to what these kids do to get to school.

What is Your Nightmare Job?

What would be the most unattractive job in the regular economy? I’m not talking about the objectively least-well paid or statistically most dangerous, or most unpopular (car salesman?). I mean, what job would you least like to have. No fair saying subsistence farmer in Darfur either — I mean in the US (or other developed economy).

For me, I think the worst job I see around me easily has to be toll booth attendant: Breath fumes all day. No real human contact. Uncomfortable reaching. Half in and half out so your body is a mix of too hot and too cold depending where and when. Much worse than the worst job I ever had (for a week) of (attempted) selling books by phone.

What’s your worst nightmare of a job?

Air Rage, Flight Attendant Dept.

A woman refused a flight attendant’s demand that she drug her toddler to stop him saying “Bye, bye plane” over and over again. So the Continental Express attendant kicked them off the flight.

I’ll bet many travelers have fantasized about making a noisy kid near by disappear, not to mention the ones who kick your seat. But few would want it carried out in practice. And to demand the parent injure the child’s health? That’s appalling.

NJ Gov. Jon Corzine's Poweful Seatbelt Commercial

YouTube - NJ Gov. Jon Corzine’s Seatbelt PSA

[I’m in Italy until late Wednesday, so I queued up a few posts to cover while I’m away. This is one of them.]

Higher Education--Dream and Reality

St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell decided to leave journalism and go teach at a historically black college in order to “give back.” The results are sobering: Part One, Part Two, with Part Three due on May 27th.

Spotted via South of the Suwannee.

My Lucky Day

David Post has one for the annals of improbabiity,

You Think You've Got Bad Luck?: Some of you may recall the weird story of a few years ago, when one of the giant balloons at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York (the 60-foot tall "Cat in the Hat," in fact) came loose, crashed into a streetlamp, and fractured the skull of one of the onlookers below. And most of you surely recall that last October a small plane co-piloted by Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle slammed into an apartment in a building on New York's Upper East Side. What you may not know (and what I didn't know until recently) is that these accidents both happened to the same woman. (I was pretty sure this must be one of those silly urban legends that make the rounds from time to time, but according to the NY Daily News, MSNBC, and others, it is in fact true). It truly boggles the mind -- making the front page of the New York Times twice for falling victim to two of the most freakish, random, and improbable events one can imagine. The likelihood of this happening to the same person? Obviously, not zero (since it happened), but surely about as close to zero as one gets; what odds would you have given someone in 1998 if someone had been willing to bet on its occurrence?

At least she wasn't on my flight home today from Sao Paulo.