Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Hot Stock Tip

Posted on August 16, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

One of my favorite UM staff people has a new blog, and she offers a hot stock tip:

pssst…hey you…wanna hear a great stock tip?

Peanut butter.

Yeah, that’s what I said. Peanut butter.

Why?

Well it’s not insider information, that’s for sure. It’s common sense.

I paid $10 this morning to put 3.76 gallons of regular unleaded into my car so I could get to work. $10 used to be just below the full line. Now it’s barely to 1/2 a tank. So I used to have more money to spend on eating out at lunchtime. No big fancy restaurant or anything, just away from work and the work crowd. I would do that once a pay period, sometimes twice. So, that was $20 or $30 a month I spent to keep the economy rolling.

Now I put that $20 or $30 into my gas tank to keep OPEC and George W. Bush’s oil pals well fed while I eat in the building.

As I said, peanut butter is the coming thing. The stock in peanut butter should be going through the roof soon because I am not the only one who is cutting back on lunch expences. Right now I am still able to afford lunchmeat, but as transportation costs and energy costs rise I will be looking for alternate foods that don’t cost an arm and a leg to refrigerate and transport. Lunch meat is perishible. Peanut butter is not.

So, if I wanted to make a killing in the stock market equal to the killing the oil barons are making I have to do it soon. Investing in peanut better may be the wave of the future. Get in now on the ground floor before the prices of it go up too and you’re priced right out of the market

Investors (and politicians), take note.

Posted in Econ & Money | 4 Comments

Wow, Law Students are Mean Out West

Posted on August 16, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

According to PrawfsBlawg: Things to ask (or not to ask) your new prawfs, someone actually asked newly minted Prof. Leib,

“Professor Leib, many of us are concerned that you’ve never taught a day in your life. What do you have to say about that?”

It’s a really dumb question. First, because it’s too late to do anything about it. Second, because new teachers are sometimes at their best — fresh with new ideas from practice or the academy, full of energy, innocent of the mind-numbing horrors of faculty meetings.

Then, again, some of us improve. I think (hope) I probably teach better now than when I started (and I had a tiny amount of pre-law school teaching experience), in part because I have a slightly more realistic sense of how much (little) can be accomplished in a semester. Perhaps it’s all reversion towards the mean.

Posted in Law School | 2 Comments

TSA Wants to Opt-Out of All Oversight for ‘Secure Flight’

Posted on August 15, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Bruce Schneier has a good analysis of the latest horrible idea to emerge from the TSA.

Schneier on Security: Secure Flight News

According to Wired News, the DHS is looking for someone in Congress to sponsor a bill that eliminates congressional oversight over the Secure Flight program.

The bill would allow them to go ahead with the program regardless of GAO’s assessment. (Current law requires them to meet ten criteria set by Congress; the most recent GAO report said that they did not meet nine of them.) The bill would allow them to use commercial data even though they have not demonstrated its effectiveness. (The DHS funding bill passed by both the House and the Senate prohibits them from using commercial data during passenger screening, because there has been absolutely no test results showing that it is effective.)

In this new bill, all that would be required to go ahead with Secure Flight would be for Secretary Chertoff to say so.

There’s lots more.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 1 Comment

Pictures of Camp Casey

Posted on August 14, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Cryptome carries photos of Cindy Sheehan’s Bush Ranch Protest. Her campaign is getting lots of coverage in the press and a lot of national support. Digby has the best theory I’ve seen yet as to why so many people support Cindy Sheehan, and why, as he puts it, “she’s driving the Republicans crazy” (example).

Posted in Iraq | 3 Comments

Random Notes from the Florida Supreme Committee on Privacy and Court Records

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

I am in Orlando today, attending yet another we-hope final meeting of the Florida Supreme Court's Committee on Privacy and Court Records, being held in the beautiful Orange County courthouse. It's nice to see a building buck the trend towards cheap and ugly public buildings, a trend most visible in the ghastly prison-like high schools dotting the landscape.

The court building, or at least the conference room, has a wireless network, but outsiders are firewalled out from it. I found a plug and jacked into it. Internet access! But even there, there's a “Websense” proxy or firewall. Why would the court want to prevent its employees from using gmail?

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

The Price of Water

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Bottle of Dasani (glorified tap water) in Orlando Marriott hotel room: $3.

Slightly smaller bottle of Dasani in hotel vending machine down the hall: $1.

Glass of water from tap, or ice water from hotel bar: $0

Posted in Econ & Money | 2 Comments