Begging the Question

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2010-04-30T01:40:00.001-04:00

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ThunderCats!

2010-03-18T21:30:00.001-04:00

What defines a "cougar"? This discussion came up at work. We (a mixed-gender group of varying ages) came up with something of a formula that defines the cougar parameters.

One person suggested if a woman is 10 years or more older than the guy, she is a per se cougar. (pedophiles excluded)

Another proposed that as both parties get older, the age difference can be somewhat greater without it being cougar-y anymore. So, if the lady is 65 and dating a guy who's 54, it's not real cougar-y. Basically, you can "age out" of cougar-ism.

Someone else said that the bigger the age difference, the higher the cougar factor goes up. So there might be some leeway for a 38 and 28 year old couple, but 42 and 28 was definitely cougar country. The old "I know it when I see it" standard.

Finally, there was a general agreement that a cougar must be 35 years or older. Basically, you can't be a cougar if you're not yet 35, even if the guy is 10 years younger.

Okay, so maybe this discussion didn't just arise out of a normal conversation. Basically, I was told today that I am of cougar age. !!! I wasn't as shocked by the implication that I was not even completely divorced and people thought that I was already stalking much younger men (which isn't the case at all) as I was that I was now "old" and basically a per se cougar. : / I had a hard time processing this, so I took it to the office floor for general discussion and debate.

My conclusion was that, to be on the safe side, I should just always date someone slightly older or slightly younger than me. Or declare myself a spinster. I've already got two cats, just gotta add a few dozen more. I guess I could become a nun, but I'm not so great at singing or wearing long dresses or anything else nun-ish. Guess I'm just going to have to live with being feline (a cougar) or with multiple felines (crazy cat lady).

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Under Construction

2010-02-17T01:43:00.002-05:00

It appears that the Haloscan deadline is upon us, with Blogger's FTP execution coming up soon as well. I'm in the process of trying to figure something out. But the comments may disappear for a bit. I'm still very open to any offers of technical support/redesign help. I'm working on it, but I'm afraid it's not my area of expertise. Anyway, thanks for hanging in there and checking back in. If you don't see anything here, try here or here. I'll try to post something somewhere keeping you informed, until I can figure out a way to continue publishing at this address. Thanks for your patience.

The real question: Why am I reading this?

2010-02-16T00:57:00.002-05:00

I stumbled across this list of "50 Questions For Men We Want Answered ASAP." For about half a second, I thought about making a post out of answering them. But then I realized how dumb they were, and how most, if not all, of them could be boiled down into two categories:

1. Why are you so disgusting/lazy?
2. Please re-assure me that I'm the most important thing in your life.

And then I got to thinking, What are 50 questions I (or men generally) could ask women? But I decided we'd be lucky to come up with five things we really need to know. If anyone else wants to take a crack at either list, be my guest. If anyone thinks any of the original list are legitimately answer-worthy, I'll try to take a crack at them.

If I had my way, I would tear this whole building down

2010-02-04T01:22:00.003-05:00

I feel like the End Times are upon us. First Haloscan sends me a "Your money or your comments" ultimatum email. Apparently, they've decided to get out of the comments game, and are forcing me to switch platforms and/or lose all the old comments. I know nothing about other commenting platforms except that they tend to be havens for spam.

And now, Blogger tells me that it is ending its FTP thingy, which I don't totally understand, but is the reason this site is published through the Blogger interface but ends up at my own url instead of a "blogspot.com" one. I mean, what's next -- they're going to start making us pay for Hulu and the New York Times website? What's that? Uh-oh.

Well, I have been meaning for a long time to do a serious redesign here at BTQ. And when I say "a long time," check out how many defunct blogs are still listed on the sidebar here to get an idea of how neglectful I've been of the design/behind-the-scenes aspects of this place. I'm not knocking former co-blogger Fitz-Hume, who handled much of that gruntwork, but it's like when your roommate moves out, and there's a couple of boxes of miscellaneous junk left around that neither one of you can remember bringing in.

So, if anyone reading this is interested in helping me re-work this site (and probably move to WordPress or some other host that will allow me to continue using this url) and figure out what to do about the comments, I would love your help. Given the relatively short deadlines I've gotten from Haloscan and Blogger, I would need to do this pronto, as in within the next couple of weeks. I'm willing to pay a moderate amount for the technical help (ideally, cleaning up code and getting me to a point where I can run things once you take the training wheels off) and some aesthetic redesign help.

Any advice, pointers, contacts, etc., much appreciated.

The source for this post's title: The Grateful Dead tune "Samson & Delilah."

Good enough for government work

2010-01-21T01:42:00.002-05:00

Here's all you need to know about federal habeas corpus review of state-court decisions. It comes from the transcript of the Supreme Court's oral argument in Berghuis v. Smith (available here at SCOTUSBlog).

Under the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), federal courts reviewing state-court rulings for constitutional error are supposed to grant deference to the state courts' decisions, and not throw out those holdings unless they are -- not just wrong -- an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Courts have spent about fifteen years trying to parse out the intricacies and nuances of this language. Chief Justice John Roberts hit upon a very succinct and pithy distillation in the Berghuis argument.

The case involved the proper standard a court should apply to determine whether members of a particular minority group are systematically under-represented in jury pools for criminal trials. (Here is a nice overview from SCOTUSwiki.) A fair amount of the argument revolved around various statistics, and percentages, and methods of analyzing group representation, and whether the state supreme court used the correct test for assessing the prisoner's jury claim. Justice Stephen Breyer, in sort of a roundabout way, asked the state's lawyer a question about the absolute numerical difference versus the expected sample size (or something), and basically said he didn't want to get the math wrong and "write something, like, saying 2 and 2 is 6."

Chief Justice Roberts tied this circumlocution back to the governing statute:

[I]t's not that you are going to say: 2 plus 2 is 6. I suppose, under AEDPA, all you have to do is say: 2 plus 2 is somewhere between 3 and 5, right?

And that's the bottom line in federal habeas. The state court, in ruling on someone's federal constitutional rights, can say, in essence, that "2 plus 2 is somewhere between 3 and 5," and a federal court cannot (or at least should not) overturn that decision, even when it acknowledges that 2 plus 2 is clearly 4 and the state court's didn't get that right. Now, you can debate the wisdom -- and even the constitutionality -- of that policy, and you can certainly debate how well the federal courts abide by that dictate, and you can debate whether the state court in the Berghuis case even managed to get in the right ballpark. But you'll never see a more cogent summation of the rule.

The Me Decade (for the right price)

2010-01-10T22:50:00.002-05:00

I don't really understand all the consternation over what to call the last decade. I agree that there doesn't seem to be much consensus on the right name, but I fail to see why this is much of a problem. Whether you say "the zeros" or "the aughts" or some other name, people pretty much know what you're talking about.

For the record, I think we'll eventually call the decade "the oh's," because we're likely to refer to the years in that decade as "twenty-oh-eight" rather than "two thousand and five" or whatever. My hunch is based on the fact that we refer to every other year by saying the first two digits as if they were one number, like "nineteen-oh-six" and "eighteen-oh-four." "Twenty-oh-X" seems easier to me, hence the number of people who catch themselves saying "twenty-oh-ten" for this year.

Still, we could do away with all the confusion by just giving the naming rights for each decade to the highest bidder. I'm not sure how the payment system would work -- maybe they could make donations to the U.S. Treasury -- but it's not like it wouldn't be worth a lot to the bidders.

In this spirit, I propose naming the decade that just ended "the googles." It works well because those "o's" in "google" look like the zeros in the years. And, of course, the provenance of the company name is a math term with a lot of zeros in it. Plus, it's hard to dispute that this wasn't Google's decade. We could even give the decade's naming rights to Google for a reduced fee, both in gratitude for how much easier it's made things, and also because the decade is over.

The real bidding war can start with the current decade. Why do we have to call it "the teens"? Ugh -- moody, awkward teenagers are not the kind of brand association we want with our calendars. Someone else should step up. What about "the AT&T's"? As in, "Will Sarah Palin run in AT&Twelve?" I'm sure that a certain Japanese car company would be all over the following decade, "the toyotas." Future history books will talk about how "in twenty-toyota-five, a Chinese rocket landed on the moon." Oh, I'm sorry, I meant "a Chinese rocket landed on the big M&M in the sky."

I know what you're saying: How are we going to write these numbers? I'm way ahead of you. Part of the naming-rights deal would include a license to use the company's logo as part of the year name. So the "1" in "2012" would be replaced by the little blue AT&T globe icon. And the second "2" in "2025" would be replaced by Toyota's circle-t thing logo.

I think this is a win-win for everybody, and I want to see it happen. I just hope I live until "the Gatoradeys." I think 20G4 (that's "twenty-gatoradey-four") will be a pretty good year.

Cautiously Optimistic About 2010

2010-01-04T00:48:00.003-05:00

Happy new year from an old friend of the blog. She's nicer than she appears.

50 Book Challenge

2009-12-28T07:57:00.002-05:00

I've decided to take the 50-book challenge again in 2010. I have tried this a few times before and come up short. I'm sure I made it well past 50 in my youth, when I had more free time, and although I always seem to lose count nowadays, I think the best I've done in recent years is probably in the 35-40 range. Anyway, this post will eventually collect all the reviews; for now it's a placeholder.

Any suggestions for good books to read in the new year?

Read something I wrote somewhere else!

2009-12-02T02:53:00.002-05:00

I'm a big fan of the blog and podcast from the Stuck in the '80s guys. I follow it pretty closely, and I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when the blog didn't mention the death of actor Edward Woodward. Woodward was most famous for the work he did in the 1980s, especially the tv series The Equalizer. Well, I emailed Steve Spears, the proprietor of the blog, to ask what was up, and he offered me a chance to write an obituary for Edward Woodward. I did, and he ran it. You can check it out here on their website. (Click here to find a great podcast about "Red Scare" movies of the '80s, including the one that inspired my name!)

After you check out the Edward Woodward obit, or maybe even while you're reading it, please enjoy the totally awesome theme song from The Equalizer.

Minority Rule?

2009-11-23T21:57:00.004-05:00

I write not about politics. I'm talking about a much more important subject. Light.

Background. I work in a relatively small company. My group occupies a section of the 3rd and top floor of your average office park building. There are 20 people on our floor. With the onset of fall, it is not unusual to get to work before the sun has fully cleared the tree line. We have a set of people on the floor who like to get to work early and leave early. I am often in the middle of the pack, with about 10 people already there when I get to work.

Those 10 people that get to work early, and myself, will leave the hallway lights off. But then, someone will walk in (usually the same one or two someones each time) and turn on the lights. They know that several people are already there. They obviously know that the several people already there prefer the lights to be off. But yet for some reason this one person's preference to have the lights on overrides the preferences of literally 10 times more people.

The hallway we work on is a big U shape, with doors and light switches on each end. One day a group of us were at one door when Light-Turner-Onner came in the other door and turned the lights on. One of the guys in the group waited a second, then reached over and turned the lights back off. In about 15 seconds Light-Turner-Onner went back to the other door and turned them on again. The guy waits a few seconds again and turns the lights back off. Sure enough, seconds later, the lights come back on. Even when the preference of the majority was attempted to be actively enforced, those who like the light believed their wish had priority.

For some reason this always reminds me of a line from Bill Cosby (I can't find a good link). He was talking about how someone only had to be 1/8th black to be able legally claim that they were African-American. Cosby: "That means if I'm at a party with 7 white guys, they have to play my music."

I don't have a point or a conclusion, just a curiosity as to what makes people think their desire trumps others? I know this is not an isolated phenomenon because I have seen this play out at other places where I've worked. If any of you loyal, or not so loyal readers are the Light-Turner-Onner at your office, I would very much like to know what goes through your mind.

We put your diploma at the end of this obstacle course

2009-11-22T22:28:00.002-05:00

Via Deadspin, I found this story about a college in Pennsylvania, Lincoln University, with an interesting graduation requirement: students with a body mass index over 30 have to take a physical education class. They don't have to actually lose weight or body mass, but they have to take the course, which consists of "walking, aerobics, weight training and other physical activities, as well as information on nutrition, stress and sleep."

Some students object to this rule. One, Tiana Y. Lawson, wrote an opinion piece in the school paper titled "Too Fat to Graduate." With a headline like that, you know it has to be a thoughtful, well-reasoned discussion of the issue, right?

Lawson starts out by acknowledging that the school has had the policy since 2006, but that "it seems as though Lincoln is more adamant about students taking the course this year." So the first class of student to whom the rule applies are being pressured to fulfill a graduation requirement they've had three years to meet? Well, that makes no sense! Tell me more!

Lawson goes on to say, "I feel as though the administration is now telling me that not being a size two may hinder me from graduating from Lincoln." Now, I don't know much about women's sizes, but I do know that there's a lot of range between a size two and a BMI of 30. Even if BMI is a flawed or incomplete metric, this isn't a situation where the school is using Kate Moss as a model for their graduation robes. It would be just a hyperbolic of me to assert that this rule will only apply to the fat twins on motorcycles from the Guinness book. But regardless of what Lawson "feels," this policy isn't a putsch against everyone who isn't waifish.

Lawson makes a point, somewhat obliquely, by noting that if the aim of the phys. ed requirement is to "make everyone healthy" (as a friend put it), then everyone should be required to go. After all, skinny people can be unhealthy, too -- ask Keith Richards. And maybe some people with a BMI over 30 are perfectly healthy, too. (You know, if they're seven feet tall.) So maybe the college should require the course for everyone. But short of that, why not try to do some good without being terribly overinclusive?

I can see some cause for consternation if Lincoln had sprung this policy on its students with no warning. But, as noted, the rule has been in place since 2006, and students have had plenty of time to (a) not attend Lincoln, (b) transfer, (c) lobby the administration to change the policy, or (d) take the course. Weeks before one's final semester isn't the time to start griping. And hey -- at least they don't go to VMI. That school requires a phys. ed course every semester except the first one, when being a "rat" is exertion enough. Oh, and finally, who complains about taking what sounds like a fairly easy course during their last semester in college? Isn't that the best time to try some of that experimentation I mentioned in the last post?!

The robes probably smell like mothballs, too

2009-11-21T23:16:00.003-05:00

A little sports story in Mississippi has turned into quite the hullabaloo. The University of Mississippi (or "Ole Miss") band had been playing a song during football games called "From Dixie With Love." At the end of the song, a contingent of students and fans recently started chanting "The South will rise again!" Anyway, long story short, the school administration banned the song, hoping to quell the chant. Many Rebel fans were upset, but I'm not writing to get into the merits of that call.

The controversy of the banning of the "Dixie" song led to some yokels in the Ku Klux Klan to announce they would show up at this Saturday's game in protest. I believe the quote was that they wanted to prevent Ole Miss from turning into "another liberal sodomite college." (Hey, doesn't everybody do a little experimenting in college?)

Well, the Kluxers showed up all right -- about a half-dozen of them. Not exactly a terrorizing turnout for observers. And while the small number of idiots (and the high number of counter-protesters) is a good sign, my favorite image from the "rally" is their flag. In the picture above, which I first saw at Dr. Saturday, notice how perfectly creased the Confederate battle flag is. That thing's spent a whole lot of time folded up in storage. You know those guys haven't done much night-riding and marching and whatnot if they haven't even bothered to iron the creases out of their flag. Or maybe they leave that to the KKK Ladies' Auxiliary. In any event, a pretty sorry demonstration.

Controversy = Page hits

2009-11-11T21:51:00.002-05:00

I'm about to post a thought that occurred to me about the House health care bill, and more specifically the Stupak amendment that secured its passage. I'm not going to weigh in on abortion as a practice. Honestly I doubt it's even in my top 10 issues I care about when it comes to politics, and I think the bill is horrible regardless of how it's dealt with. However, many liberal blogs are unsurprisingly outraged about it. Over at the Tapped blog there are many posts railing about the amendment, and there is a great deal of effort to refer to the issue as "reproductive health". After all, if it's got health in the name, it must have to be included in a health care bill.

But the question I have has to do more with the basic nature of insurance itself, at least as we currently know it. Insurance does not cover elective procedures. If it's not medically necessary, insurance doesn't pay for it. My Lasik surgery payments are proof of that. Abortion, except in obvious exceptions, is essentially an elective procedure. It's right there in the name of the supporters, Pro-CHOICE. In most cases, it's a choice made by the woman or couple based on lifestyle choice, not on medical health. So why should insurance cover this particular elective procedure and not others?

I will see your cheesy prop gag, and raise

2009-10-25T21:57:00.002-04:00

So recently several DNC members bought mops and took them the RNC headquarters in response to Obama's call for healthcare critics to "grab a mop" and help clean up the mess. I'm all for gag gifts. The Democrats have shown a penchant for them recently as well, especially with Hillary's Russian Easy button.

The only proper response from the RNC is to respond with a similar gesture. I suggest they go slightly higher end (and stimulate the economy a little more) and deliver a Dyson vacuum to the DNC headquarters. The rational being that the Democrats will need it to suck all the money out of taxpayers' wallets to pay for their plan.

Man on a Mission

2009-10-24T22:15:00.002-04:00

I was noodling around Wikipedia for strange minor league baseball team names and learned that players for the San Antonio Missions are themselves called "Missions," and not what, to me, would be the obvious name, "Missionaries." Sadly, this deprives fans of hearing discussions about their favorite "Missionary position players."

Not to mention, it makes talking about pitchers and catchers a lot less fun. And how many times are we denied hearing about "the Missionary in the hole"? That's pretty bush league. I could probably keep going forever. A little mood music: Elton John's "Burn Down the Mission":

I'mma let you finish but...

2009-10-18T21:35:00.003-04:00

Can't believe I never thought of this before: Blegging the Question.

Please read my pitiful bleg at my usual place. If you don't want to click over, basically it says someone needs to buy me some See's pumpkin spice lollipops, which are already sold out and I just cannot wait another year to get some.

Kanye brought to you by I'm A Let You Finish

Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt

2009-10-07T00:53:00.002-04:00

This week marks the opening of another Supreme Court Term, and Court-watchers have been eager to see how new Justice Sonia Sotomayor settles into her role. I've read a few of the early transcripts, and have noticed (as have others here and here; links via How Appealing) that Justice Sotomayor had no problem asking plenty of questions during the arguments. That's fine and all, and I'm glad she's willing to be herself and hold her own with some of the more vigorous questioners, even if I don't think every one of her questions was really necessary. However, it's a long Term, and they have life tenure -- this will cease to be remarkable very soon. So on the whole, I didn't draw any major conclusions from it.

Amanda Terkel at Think Progress wasn't so reluctant to find meaning in this. She quotes news articles noting that Justice Sotomayor asked more questions in her first hour on the bench than Justice Clarence Thomas has in years. She appends a photo of a bored-looking Justice Thomas, although he's not wearing a robe, and they don't allow photography at the Court, so it's not necessarily an accurate representation of how he is on the bench. (For the record, I have seen Justices, including Thomas, looking bored during arguments; it's usually because the cases were boring.)

The comments at TP jump to the conclusion Terkel refrains from making explicitly: that Justice Thomas is incompetent, and his decision not to ask questions very often during arguments is proof of it. Well, to be fair, I could only stand to read about fifty of the comments, but I feel safe in calling them a representative sample. Lest there be any doubt, the maxim in the subject line of this post refers not to Justice Thomas, but to the commenters.

I'm not going to re-hash my defense of Justice Thomas's practice of keeping his own counsel during arguments. I laid it out here over four years ago. As was the case then, I don't agree with much of Justice Thomas's jurisprudence (the notable exceptions being free speech and sentencing), but I have no problem at all with one fewer questioner on what is probably, on average, the nation's hottest bench.

I have heard many, many lawyers complain that judges asked so many questions raising so many tangents and distractions that they weren't able to make their case during an argument. No one likes a completely cold bench, but they appreciate some opportunity to do the job they came to do. If Justice Thomas asked questions at the rate Justices Sotomayor, Scalia, or Breyer do, the lawyers would barely be able to eek out a "May it please the Court..." and probably couldn't finish a whole sentence interrupted. Hell, sometimes it's that bad now, and that's with only eight of them asking questions!

Read my original post for the longer defense, but I'll mention two things briefly. First, I cited a couple of cases where Justice Thomas did ask a question, and they were the most perceptive, incisive, and important questions in the cases. The second point is related: people who think Justice Thomas is a dummy are themselves dumb, because they pay no attention to the vast evidence to the contrary.

As Steve "Feddie" Dillard has noted a million times, Justice Thomas is the Justice most willing to re-consider Supreme Court precedent, so any litigant would be wise to engage his views on the merits, especially if one wants to overturn a long string of cases (or wants to avoid that result). The opposite approach -- the intellectual laziness displayed in the TP comments -- is at best unwise and at worst flat-out embarrassing. It certainly does no favors to those who find honest disagreement with his views and raise those disagreements head-on before the Court.

As for Justice Sotomayor, I don't think she'll turn out to be "Obama's Souter," but I doubt her penchant for asking questions will save her from obloquy at TP the first time she votes against their preferred outcome.

Eat Mor Ethix

2009-10-02T01:13:00.002-04:00

Recently, I had a craving for some Chick-fil-A. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and as everyone knows, Chick-fil-A is always closed on Sundays. I won't get into the merits of that decision, but it doesn't seem to be hurting the business. But anyway, the whole thing prompted a discussion between me and a friend about whether Chick-fil-A franchise owners can (or do) drop in on the occasional Sunday, turn on the fryer, and enjoy a nice after-church chicken sandwich. My position was that this would be one of the primary perks of being a franchise owner: a set of keys that work on Sundays. My friend was practically aghast at the notion that a manager would violate the sacred bond of franchisor-franchisee just for some waffle fries and some fricassee. All I know is, if it were me, I would not only go in on Sundays and make my own food, but I would sit by the window so passing traffic could see me and get jealous.

So, I put myself upon the country: Am I totally out to lunch here? Would you slip in the back door and have a Sabbath sandwich? Does your answer depend on whether Chick-fil-A headquarters would approve of a manager's Sunday luncheon? Your answer might affect how I use my life savings.

Time for Footbaw!

2009-09-03T00:22:00.000-04:00

For some reason, I'm inordinately excited about the start of college football season this fall. My plan for this weekend is to tailgate at two games and attend at least one.

Feel free to treat this as an open thread, football-related or otherwise.

Statutory Trivia Question: UPDATED with answer

2009-08-31T22:11:00.000-04:00

What federal crime is required to be reported to a judge instead of a law enforcement officer?

I'll update this post with the answer later in the week.

UPDATE: I got the guesses I was expecting, perjury and contempt, which are typically crimes against the judicial process, and so one might expect them to be reported to judges. But in some ways, E. McPan had the closest guess, with barratry. Barratry is an old common-law offense.

And so is the answer to my trivia question, treason. I know that's not intuitive, but there is a federal crime called misprision of treason. "Misprision" is basically the offense of knowing about a crime but not reporting it. Most jurisdictions have done away with the concept that one has a duty to report a crime one simply knows about (mere knowledge being short of assisting, criminalized as aiding and abetting or being an accessory). But some retain the crime of "misprision of felony," which is knowing about a felony but not reporting it. Under the federal code, it's a misdemeanor, codified at 18 U.S.C. sec. 4.

Misprision of treason, then, is what it sounds like: knowing about treason but not reporting it. But the misprision of treason statute, 18 U.S.C. sec. 2382, states as follows:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.

So, if you owe allegiance to the United States (we'll save for another day how broad that category is), and know about treason, you have to report it to a judge or the president or governor. And while the misprision of felony statute allows for reporting to any "person in civil or military authority," which I assume would include an ordinary law enforcement officer, the misprision of treason statute requires that treasons be reported to specific authorities, including judges. I suppose my question might be considered a trick question if you think that the president or a governor are "law enforcement officers," given that they're at the head of the executive branch, and kind of at the top of that chain of command. But that makes the question less fun.

(Wet Your) Whistle While You Work

2009-08-28T21:49:00.002-04:00

Someone asked me to go to a Happy Hour tonight, and I declined because I'm not Happy. But it got me thinking about Happy and his cohorts from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. If I had a bar, I'd have a different theme hour for every day of the week. Happy Hour would be as popular as ever, and Dopey Hour would probably go over well, too. Sneezy Hour could cause problems with the Health Department, but I'm sure Doc Hour would take care of it. I guess no one would hook up during Bashful Hour. If my friend had asked me to come to Grumpy Hour, I probably would have tagged along. But Sleepy Hour -- now there's an idea I can really get behind.

How would you like your meth-tini, sir?

2009-08-25T09:09:00.000-04:00

Shaken or stirred?

The post wherein I ask you to support my point of view, just so I can feel like I'm right

2009-08-19T07:35:00.000-04:00

Let's pretend I do criminal cases. Let's further pretend that a non-lawyer (let's say, a student intern) is personally familiar with a defendant and the victim. As in, he used to hang out with Defendant when he was younger. You know, before Defendant murdered his (the defendant's, not the intern's) dad.

When the case got to us, Pretend Intern wanted to be very involved. I personally thought it was somehow inappropriate, although I suppose anyone could find out the same stuff by attending the trial. I couldn't really articulate a good reason for him not to have any involvement whatsoever and I wasn't the attorney on the case, so I didn't have a lot of pull there.

So we get the stuff in, and when he saw the crime scene photos, he got really upset. Gee, surprising? I tried to convey my concerns about him getting upset beforehand to the attorney handling the case, but he brushed me off. Even after witnessing the Pretend Intern getting upset, he still didn't think that perhaps it wasn't a good idea to let him handle this stuff. I mean, nobody (except maybe necrophiliacs) really likes seeing dead bodies, and I imagine it's even worse when it's someone you know.

I was kind of mad at the attorney for not being more proactive. I felt like he should not have let Pretend Intern look at the stuff, and/or not keep him on the case, and/or at least prepared him for looking at the stuff. I opined at great length with colleagues, and nobody really sided with me. Some thought the intern knew what he was getting into and that he was a grownup and that he chose to look at the file, knowing that it was a murder. Some thought that the attorney didn't have a responsibility to try to shield Pretend Intern.

Maybe I'm just too hard on this attorney because he irritates me on a regular basis. Maybe I'm being hypercritical because I'm not overly fond of this attorney or maybe I have a right to feel like he should have done something. I don't know what, but something. Or maybe I should just mind my own business.

Netbook Thoughts?

2009-08-15T21:50:00.001-04:00

I'm thinking about getting a netbook. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? Also, I don't have wireless at home, so what do I need to know about getting wireless for the netbook? Thanks.