Academic

Happy Moon Day

Posted on July 20, 2009
Image source: NASA Today marks the 40thAnniversary of the Apollo 11 mission lunar landing on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took ?one small step.? With help from NASA, Wired Science, and The John F. Kennedy Presidential...

Should Law Professors Expect Loan Forgiveness?

Posted on July 20, 2009
A caveat--this post is to incite dialogue, not to make grand pronouncements about the essential nature of Grad v. Law, or who suffers more in bearing loans. I would just like to know if loan debt is an issue for...

RIP HUP Display Room

Posted on July 20, 2009
My friend (and co-editor) Sally Hadden gave me a report from the ground last week that Harvard University Press has closed its display room. Amidst all the dire news in publishing this is perhaps not shocking -- though I did...

One Small Step For Man

Posted on July 20, 2009
On this day in history -- July 20, 1969 -- two major events happened in my life. First, I celebrated my tenth birthday. (By my calculations, then, today I'm turning ... no ... it can't be ... please say it...

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Are All UC Schools Created Equal?

Posted on July 20, 2009
Not according to this letter signed by 21 UC San Diego department heads. Press coverage here: The professors argue that the world's finest public university should preserve its elite, world-class research campuses ? namely UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC...

Henry Louis Gates Arrested Trying To Break Into His Home

Posted on July 20, 2009
Harvard profesor Henry Louis Gates Jr., described by AP as "the nation's pre-eminent black scholar" was arrested Thursday as he attempted to force open the front door of his house. Apparently, a woman reported to the police that she'd seen...

The Aeronaut in the Garden: A New (Old) Case on Foreseeability

Posted on July 20, 2009
Well, this is, so far as I can tell, the anniversary of my oldest memory. I recall running up the stairs in our house to call mom to come down and watch the television--a little black and white set--because we...

You mean Moon Day celebrates a real event?

Posted on July 20, 2009
Looks like Kim beat me to the punch with her Moon Day post. In the interest of journalistic "balance," I initially considered a reply post proving, irrefutably of course, that Apollo 11 never made it to the moon, that the...

How to Prepare for a College Interview

Posted on July 19, 2009
I've been meaning to talk about how to prepare for a college interview for some time. And this morning's New York Times has an article on this topic--or at least how the affluent prepare for them (by hiring extremely high...

California IOU Update

Posted on July 18, 2009
Click play above to watch interview with SecondMarket's Jeremy Smith on the secondary market in California IOUs. (If video is slow to load, the outlink is here). A while back, I blogged about the emerging secondary market in California IOUs....

Return Of The Fern Bar? Starbucks Tiptoes Towards Beer And Wine.

Posted on July 18, 2009
Can the return of Henry Africa be far behind? Starbucks, in an effort to find more ways to make money off of potables, is dipping its toe into the wine and beer market. According to Thursday's reports, the chain is...

When Lenny Dykstra Talks, People Bleep Out All The Expletives

Posted on July 18, 2009
And when Jim Cramer talks, someone has to give Jon Stewart a Valium. The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cLenny Dykstra's Financial Careerwww.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorJoke of the Day (HT: Calculated Risk)

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Posted on July 18, 2009
As was mentioned in yesterday?s ?Baseball Trivia? post, Joe DiMaggio?s 56-game hitting streak came to an end on July 17, 1941. (The other baseball story that caught the nation?s attention that same season was Ted Williams and his successful pursuit...

Around the Blogosphere

Posted on July 17, 2009
Will law school get shorter, longer, or disappear altogether? Some of these on-going discussions about the future of law schools have transpired over the course of the last few weeks, meaning many readers will have seen at least some of...

Just About Every American Has A Credit Card . . . And Some Of Them Owe $23 Quadrillion

Posted on July 17, 2009
Via Freakonomics, and following up on Mark's credit card post from yesterday: An unidentified computer glitch has led Visa to overcharge several of its cardholders for routine purchases at drug stores, gas stations, and restaurants, to the tune of $23,148,855,308,184,500...

Books v. Cigarettes: Why Read When You Can Smoke?

Posted on July 17, 2009
Visual Economics has an interesting, though slightly disturbing, pie chart that shows how the average American consumer spends his or her money. If there's a punchline there, it's that the average person spends 2.75 times more money on tobacco than...

Fall Submission Season Looming

Posted on July 17, 2009
I know it's only July, but I guess it's time to start planning for the fall submission season. A colleague helpfully pointed me to a document on SSRN by Profs Allen Rostron and Nancy Levit from UMKC that provides updated...

Baseball Trivia

Posted on July 17, 2009
Normally I've posted a baseball trivia question on the weekend, but I'll post this one today for reasons obvious from the clues. Also, mindful that one faithful reader thought last week's question was "too easy," I've tried to increase the...

Is "He Brings Home The Bacon" A Legitimate Sentence Mitigator For Corrupt Legislators?

Posted on July 16, 2009
Two days ago, Pennsylvania State Senator Vince Fumo (from Philadelphia) was sentenced on 137 fraud (and fraud-related) counts. Among other things, he was convicted of defrauding the PA Senate and a non-profit for his own personal benefit. He also obstructed...

Ranking The Postmodernists? The Best Postmodern Fiction Ever!

Posted on July 16, 2009
The LA Times, in what can only be called a sophisticated form of humor, has just published its Best of Postmodernist Literature list. It doesn't quite call it that, of course. But the paper's list of 61 essential works of...

John Yoo and Warrantless Wiretaps

Posted on July 16, 2009
Cal-Berkeley law professor, and former Justice Department official, John Yoo (pictured) has an editorial in today's WSJ: Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps. You can read the editorial (and numerous comments!) here.

Just about every American has a credit card...

Posted on July 16, 2009
So begins, ominously, a complaint filed by the State of Minnesota against the National Arbitration Forum, the major provider of consumer debt collection arbitration services. Some of the complaint's allegations are a bit silly. (The NAF works "to convince creditors"...

Law Career Services Advice Of The Day

Posted on July 16, 2009
This headline from Bloomberg: Harvard Law Tells Students: Don?t Panic Over Jobs, Try Richmond. I can only imagine the comparable headline out of New Haven: Yale Law Tells Students: Don't Panic Over Jobs, Try Northwestern.

Blog Traffic Rankings, July 2009 Edition

Posted on July 16, 2009
Paul Caron is up to more of his blog service work, posting his quarterly blog traffic rankings. These rankings list the top 35 law professor blogs in terms of visitors and page views. (A few aren't included on the list,...

Safe To Visit China Again!

Posted on July 16, 2009
From The Telegraph: China has outlawed the use of electric shock therapy to treat internet addiction, after a scandal at a hospital in the Northern province of Shandong. Internet addiction has become a growing problem in China, where officials believe...

Kenneth M. Stampp, 1912-2009

Posted on July 15, 2009
This morning's New York Timesbrings the sad news that Kenneth M. Stampp, a towering figure in American history, has passed away. Stampp was best known for his 1956 book The Peculiar Institution. Though published more than fifty years ago, the...

Number Crunching The List of Visitorships

Posted on July 15, 2009
Having wrapped up my two summer courses earlier in the week (the UCC never takes a vacation!), I looked around for another challenge (perhaps something just a bit less daunting than inventory financing, yet just as riveting as the topic...

Famine, genocide and AIDS

Posted on July 15, 2009
I suspect these things come to mind when most Americans think of Africa. But the continent is much more diverse, and far more magnificent, than that. There?s a side to life here that?s alive, and vibrant, and on the move....

?Michael Jackson Wanted to Buy Octomom?s Babies?

Posted on July 15, 2009
Via Starpulse Entertainment News. I kept waiting for this story to make its way into a mainstream media source so that I could blog about it. It never did. But I decided that if Dan is going to blog about...

Supreme Court Nominee Louis Brandeis

Posted on July 14, 2009
The Wall Street Journal has posted some of its archives on the 1916 nomination of Louis Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court. See here, here, here, and here. (Photo source: here.)

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