Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

This Week’s Best Headline?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Suspicious bagel.

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.

That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C.on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

…

When confronted by the US Airways crew about his “suspicious package,” Milatovic got on his cell phone. The crew asked him to hang it up and sit down. When he refused, he was cuffed.

Milatovic was also charged with interfering with the operation of an aircraft.

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath | Comments Off on This Week’s Best Headline?

Alleged Left Brain/Right Brain Test

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

left-right-brain-gifAccording to the Australian newspaper article where I got this picture, it is a “Right Brain vs Left Brain test,”

do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction

I’m a little dubious, because it doesn’t explain the mechanism, and I think most people who know me would say I’m very thoroughly left-brained. But I saw the figure turning clockwise.

Focusing didn’t change that. Shaking my head up and down like a raving loony got me to a point where the dancer seemed to be flipping back and forth and then briefly counter-clockwise, before reverting to clockwise.

[Original draft 1/19/2009.  In preparation for my blog redesign, I found draft blog posts that somehow never made it to publication. This is one of them.]

2011: Still see it going clockwise.

Posted in Science/Medicine, Zombie Posts | 18 Comments

Client-Driven Racial Quotas

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Orin Kerr points us to an article at law.com:

In a pact brokered by the New York County Lawyers’ Association, more than 60 law firms have agreed to tell their corporate clients the composition of assigned legal teams by race, gender, ethnicity and sexual preference.

For several years, clients have asked law firms to sign statements in support of diversifying the legal profession. But with the formal agreement, firms have volunteered to put hard numbers behind their noble aspirations. According to the pact, “law firms should not object to requests by their corporate clients [to] report the number of hours devoted to the clients’ matters by minority lawyers.”

It’s nice that clients don’t want to employ either bigots or those who, even by lack of effort, have failed to overcome a legacy of discrimination.

But immediate consequences are clear, said Robert L. Haig, a partner at Kelley, Drye & Warren, one of the first large Manhattan firms to sign the agreement.

“When that number is put on the table and it’s a small number, then the great enthusiasm for diversity is a little suspect. The client might say, ‘We can’t hire you for the following year,’” Haig said in an interview. “Right then, that law firm is going to change. They’re going to do what they have to do in order to be retained again and again.”

He added, “This is economically driven, and that’s what makes it powerful.”

Haig, a former president of County Lawyers, the nation’s first bar association to admit minority attorneys, was one of about 30 attorneys who formed a County Lawyers task force on diversity. The effort was launched in 2000 and headed by Juanita Bing Newton, administrative judge of New York City Criminal Court and deputy chief administrative judge for Justice Initiatives at the Office of Court Administration.

But suppose the shoe were on the other foot? What if the clients wanted low numbers of minorities? Then we’d all be revolted. The parallel is far from perfect: excluding minorities is illegal and immoral; demanding their inclusion is legal and praiseworthy. But is the mechanism appropriate?  In general I’m in favor of people voting with their buying dollar to support suppliers whose values they share, and to avoid sellers with bad values even when they have good things to sell.

But I’m also instinctively uncomfortable with anything that smacks of racial quotas. Yet it is undeniable that law firms, especially big corporate firms, have not done everything they could to diversify. Some of the older troglodytes even seem to believe that the clients may harbor suspicions of minority lawyers.  So it’s nice to see pushback from the clients.

And yet.

[Original draft 5/13/2005.  As part of my blog redesign, I’ve been going through draft blog posts that somehow never made it to publication. This is one of them.]

2011: Subsequent research by one of my colleagues suggests strongly that big clients, at least, really couldn’t care less about diversity among their lawyers; big firm clients may talk a great deal in public about demanding it, but it doesn’t even show up on their general counsels’ list of important factors determining law firm choice when speaking in private.

Posted in Law: Ethics, Zombie Posts | Comments Off on Client-Driven Racial Quotas

Our Hero

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

George Bush issued a secret order authorizing Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad whom the US unilaterally decided were Terrorists.

Start the outrage machine.

Oh. Wait. That wasn’t G.W. Bush. It was B.H. Obama who is authorizing murder without trial of US citizens abroad — and not on some battlefield either.

That’s different, right?

Right?

[Original draft 1/27/10.  In preparation for my blog redesign, I found draft blog posts that somehow never made it to publication. This is one of them.]

2010: Since I first wrote the above, the Obama administration successfully fought off a court challenge to its citizen assassination policy, on the grounds that the suit could not be brought by the future victim’s father, but rather required the targeted American to file it himself–an action that would inevitably put him at severe risk of capture and at least Padilla-like confinement if not death.  Happy New Year.

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 3 Comments

RISKS of Xmas Lights

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Risk Assessment and Failure Analysis in Multiple Small Illumination Sources During Winter Conditions by Robert M. Slade, version 1.0, 20031217

via The Risks Digest Volume 26: Issue 26.

Abstract:

In the author’s immediate socio-cultural environment, the unpacking, testing, placement, and maintenance of Christmas lights has been mandated to be “man’s work.” (Women will, reluctantly, direct the placement of lights, since it is an observed fact that a man has all the artistic sensitivity of a Volkswagen. The car, not the automotive designers.) Therefore, despite the complete lack of any evidence of competence in domestic “handiness,” or knowledge of electrical appliances, the author has found himself making an extensive, multi- year study of failure modes in different forms of lighting involving multiple small light sources.

This paper examines the various failure modes that have been designed as part of different formats of such lighting, and, being a confirmed pessimist, the author conjectures about possible future design failures.

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on RISKS of Xmas Lights

A Contracts Problem

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Mars Hill professor resigns after student undresses in class

Mars Hill College has accepted the resignation of a longtime professor after he challenged students to disrobe in exchange for an A in his sociology class and one of them took him up on the offer.

College President Dan Lunsford said the professor didn’t expect the student would actually take off his clothes during the class last Thursday evening. The instructor’s offer was intended to illustrate cultural differences and that public nudity is unacceptable in American society, he said.

“He did not expect it to happen,” Lunsford said. “The professor realized that this had gone much beyond what he ever anticipated, and he was shocked and dismayed.”

Lunsford said he would not release the name of the professor or student because of privacy concerns. The student will not be punished, he said.

The incident has been the talk of the campus at this Madison County school affiliated with the Baptist Church. Senior Kat Marotta said it disturbed her.

“I feel a lot of the responsibility is on the professor in how he handles his classroom,” she said. “I’m very disappointed.

“People were very upset about it. It’s probably the juiciest thing that’s ever come out of this campus.”

But students such as senior Josh Dye do not believe it was that serious.

“As part of the classroom setting, I don’t think it should have been done, but it really didn’t affect me,” he said.

Lunsford said the professor, who has been with the college for more than 25 years, acted professionally by resigning. He has tenure and is eligible for retirement benefits.

“The professor has requested to activate his retirement, and it has been accepted with my expression of appreciation of his service to the college in the past,” he said. “I am concerned about the negative perception it may generate, and the professor was equally concerned in his conversation with me. However, it was a mistake.”

The professor apologized in an e-mail to students in the class. Lunsford said the student will not be punished because the incident would not have occurred if the teacher hadn’t issued the challenge. However, the student will not receive an A for accepting the offer, he said.

“In my view, in American society and in an academic environment, public nudity is not acceptable to illustrate a point,” he said.

Offer and acceptance?

[Original draft 2/21/2004. In preparation for my blog redesign, I found draft blog posts that somehow never made it to publication. This is one of them.]

2010: Link-rot has struck. Here’s the archive.org version. I imagine I didn’t run this because it seemed a little risqué somehow for around here and I felt sorry for the guy. And I suppose the contract is void on public policy grounds?

Posted in Etc, Zombie Posts | 2 Comments