Miscellaneous

Yikes! This was a mistake. I'll

Posted on January 06, 2010
Yikes! This was a mistake. I'll have to tweak more when I have time. Damn, where'd the Funnies go?

Haloscan, which provided the comments

Posted on January 06, 2010
Haloscan, which provided the comments here, has moved on. I'll get comments back shortly.

Online legal research is a peculiar

Posted on January 05, 2010
Online legal research is a peculiar proposition. Westlaw and Lexis are expensive, but reliable. Nothing I've seen that's free has impressed me as being reliable enough to depend on, but that may be changing. Via Matthew S. Lerner's always useful New York Civil Law I've learned that Google Scholar includes a legal research tool...

It would be interesting to teach

Posted on December 31, 2009
It would be interesting to teach a class like this, if only to see what undergrads make of Bob Dylan. Among the things I learned from teaching "Lawyers in Movies" this year was that there is a surprising extent to which my students did not connect with the material because we did not share a number of cultural references, or because a some cultural references seemed to them to be so commonplace that they did not bear mentioning...

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The other night I drifted off to

Posted on December 30, 2009
The other night I drifted off to sleep thinking about the business structures of super hero groups, an area that seems ripe for academic exposition. The Avengers is what started this reverie-- the group, founded by The Wasp, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk, operates under a charter which limits its membership, and appears to receive its principal funding from the Maria Stark Foundation...

I've never appeared before Cattaraugus

Posted on December 29, 2009
I've never appeared before Cattaraugus County Judge Larry M. Himelein, although I've had occasion to appear in Catt County. Judge Himelein is in the news today because he has accepted censure for trying to organize other judges into a boycott of cases involving the law firms of state legislators who have denied New York's judiciary a pay raise...

When I was in 9th Grade my social

Posted on December 28, 2009
When I was in 9th Grade my social studies course was something called Asian African History. It was taught by Mr. Butler, who was also, I think, the coach of the freshman football team. I remember thinking that I didn't want to take a class about Asia and Africa, and I remember that within a month it was my favorite subject...

Best-of-the-Decade lists are a

Posted on December 24, 2009
Best-of-the-Decade lists are a problem for me, and this past ten especially. Still, the Dean and I agree on enough for me to believe that I'm still listening- not just the Dylan, but Rilo Kiley, and Drive By Truckers, and SMiLE....

At some point everyone is going

Posted on December 21, 2009
At some point everyone is going to realize that football in Western New York has stopped being about the Bills, and is now about UB. We are edging closer to that moment with the announcement that Jeff Quinn, Cincinnati's interim coach will be the new Bulls coach following the departure of Turner Gill...

Two of the NYTimes music critics

Posted on December 20, 2009
Two of the NYTimes music critics pick the Vijay Iyer Trio's "Historicity" as one of their top ten albums of the year. Thanks to Bruce Eaton I can say, Oh, Vijay Iyer? I've been listening to him for years."

Over the time that we have been

Posted on December 15, 2009
Over the time that we have been practicing together my law partner and I have had a tradition of going out and buying a stack of Christmas albums every year. We split them up, and make copies, and swap them, and this keeps our holiday music rotation comparatively fresh...

Posted on December 15, 2009

I was in an upstate city to argue

Posted on December 14, 2009
I was in an upstate city to argue a motion Friday. Neither my adversary nor I are from this city, and in fact both of us traveled just about the same distance to get there, from different directions. It was a discovery motion. I'd set up an IME, the plaintiff's attorney had an objection, they blew off the exam, and I moved...

Michael Getnick is the present

Posted on December 13, 2009
Michael Getnick is the present shah of the New York State Bar Association. He has written an intelligent article on tort reform in, of all places, the Daily News. Some of his points: * The "lawsuit explosion" is a myth. In fact, the opposite is true...

Robert Christgau on Thelonious

Posted on December 13, 2009
Robert Christgau on Thelonious Monk. Not surprisingly, I agree with the Dean's assessments of Monks' sides. The two Blue Note Genius of Modern Music sets showcase Monk's playing beautifully; 2) Thelonious Monk Trio may be the set I play the most frequently; and although I love his work with Traine and with Rollins, the Charlie Rouse stuff is just wonderful...

To The Fantastic Mr. Fox yesterday,

Posted on December 12, 2009
To The Fantastic Mr. Fox yesterday, a movie I'd been looking forward to. Gentle reader, it was so good that I'd have gone again tonight. Wes Anderson has only made one movie that I've disliked ("The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"-- what the hell was that?), and although "Bottle Rocket" is not something I feel an immediate need to see again any time soon, "Rushmore" and (especially) "The Royal Tenenbaums" are movies that have rewarded my repeated screenings...

I don't care that much about the

Posted on December 06, 2009
I don't care that much about the Tiger Woods flap: Tiger is interesting to me as an athlete, not as a cultural phenomenon, or as some sort of personal paragon. However, I think it is worth passing on this, from Charley Pierce: "Listening to Tiger explain how he'd managed to hit two stationary objects within thirty yards of his driveway ? and how his plucky wife pulled him from his non-burning vehicle by smashing the back window with a golf club ? was like listening to Peter Lorre telling Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, "I certainly wish you would have invented a more reasonable story...

It is hard for me to say whether

Posted on December 06, 2009
It is hard for me to say whether Jonathan Lethem's ""The Fortress of Solitude"" resonated with me for any reason apart from this: Lethem's Brooklyn and Letham's pop culture references overlap so nearly perfectly with my own that this magical-realism bildungsroman seems very nearly like a book I might have imagined...

An interesting piece on the economics

Posted on December 05, 2009
An interesting piece on the economics of the pop music business. Steve Albini's definitive article on the subject is here. When you think about the history of recorded popular music one of the first things that comes to mind is the exploitation of the artists...

Some Roman Catholic churchmen,

Posted on December 05, 2009
Some Roman Catholic churchmen, meanwhile, have said that the words ?hokey pokey? derive from ?hocus pocus? ? the Oxford English Dictionary concurs ? and that the song was written by 18th-century Puritans to mock the language of the Latin Mass. Last year the Catholic Church in Scotland, concerned that some soccer fans were using the song as a taunt, raised the possibility that singing it should be prosecuted as a hate crime.

I'd like to know how the hell UB

Posted on December 04, 2009
I'd like to know how the hell UB is ranked below both Binghamton and Stony Brook on the US News list of top public universities. I don't really put much store in US News, or its lists, but that seems peculiar to me.

The Salvation Army has always given

Posted on December 04, 2009
The Salvation Army has always given me a pain, so I'm not surprised that it is checking the immigration status of children before giving them Christmas toys. I suppose it is no different in its hypocrisy than any other religious organization but it is still troubling...

CLA is moving from rugby to crew

Posted on December 03, 2009
CLA is moving from rugby to crew this spring, an interesting transition. Apparently fall crew races are three mile affairs, and the spring races are 2000 meter sprints. I wonder why that is? Wouldn't it make more sense for there to be different distances at each competition? Are all crew competitions regattas?

Looks like everyone agrees that

Posted on December 02, 2009
Looks like everyone agrees that Afghanistan is "Obama's War" now. Fair enough. What troubles me is that the same people seem anxious to see him fail at this war, as though the people who opposed Bush's adventurism in Iraq were rooting for the US to fail at that...

When I wake up to find that the

Posted on December 01, 2009
When I wake up to find that the first of December is covered with snow my mind naturally reminds me that I have ten miles behind me, and ten thousand more to go. There is a manic melancholy to this time of year. There is everything you usually need to do to get done, and all of the things that you have been putting off until now on top of it...

I was never a huge fan of "At the

Posted on November 30, 2009
I was never a huge fan of "At the Movies", but I'm not really a fan of much television. Come to think of it, I'm no movie buff either. In a good year I'll have seen one or two of the films nominated for Best Picture, and maybe something with a super hero in it, but for the most part my movie viewing is done at home, and largely consists of what most people would consider "old stuff"...

In the earlier incarnation of Outside

Posted on November 28, 2009
In the earlier incarnation of Outside Counsel I had a recipe page, but now I don't. This Caramel French Toast was one of the things that I had there; I found it on Backup Brain back before I had a weblog at all. We're having it tomorrow.

Here's the thing about news media:

Posted on November 25, 2009
Here's the thing about news media: it is important for it to operate locally and on a larger scale, but being local is difficult because of the economies of scale. It is important, for example for a city of Buffalo to have a newspaper with someone who writes about Congress and about the school board elections in West Seneca...

Here's an amusingly specialized

Posted on November 24, 2009
Here's an amusingly specialized blog: NYCOURTS-NEW YORK COURT CORRUPTION. "The information on this blog about the corruption in the New York Unified Court System will disgust and frighten you and propel you into a world of racketeering, greed, larceny, malicious prosecution, and outrageous disdain for due process, the Rule of Law, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Professional Responsibility Standards, Rules and Statutes...

"Klute" showed up in the mailbox

Posted on November 23, 2009
"Klute" showed up in the mailbox the other day. It is very much a product of its time, I think, a sort of Second Wave feminist thriller. What works about it are the performances: Donald Sutherland generally rewards close watching, and Jane Fonda shows off the things we recall about her when we recall that she can really act...

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