tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-113904442025-05-16T02:01:42.306-10:00The occasional (and hopefully semi-coherent) meanderings of a budding legal scholar and internationally-recognized potential late bloomer. TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.comBlogger279125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-66558491920141028682020-05-30T17:20:00.000-10:002020-05-30T17:20:15.069-10:00

This is going to be a quick and dirty post; I'll try to clean it up later. Some ground rules: I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This post is intended to provide you with basic information so that you can make informed decisions, including whether to hire a lawyer. This post is NOT legal advice. If you want legal advice you should hire a lawyer. ===== This is 2020 and it feels like we're

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-56829743905649102512020-02-15T01:56:00.001-10:002020-02-15T01:56:52.102-10:00

There are two places to eat in Russell Square: Caffè Tropea inside the gardens, and the Cabmen's Shelter on the Northwest corner. Caffè Tropea is a lovely cafe, but the Cabmen's shelter is by far the most fun. If you're not a cab driver, you can't go in - so you wait for your food at the window, while the drivers chat and laugh with each other and whoever is doing the cooking. (So

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-85046834362371303672020-02-03T01:42:00.003-10:002020-02-03T01:43:10.389-10:00

If you read this, it will probably be because you followed a link in a Tweet that was originally sent from an account with about as elegant a presence as this blog currently has. I'll be putting a banner on that profile sometime later this week, so maybe next week, and getting a profile pic up and all that good stuff. But I'm not going to waste time doing much here, because I'm moving. Question

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-15951519787455283182020-01-31T00:08:00.001-10:002020-01-31T00:08:34.087-10:00

This one hasn't had enough of them lately. I really haven't abandoned this. It's more of a slight downturn in posting frequency, due to other obligations. I was going to get something out there today, but Brexit has literally interfered with that. There's a thing as work that shouldn't need to happen until next week, but out of an abundance of caution needs to happen today instead. Just goes to

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-50452227495263016372019-08-19T04:48:00.001-10:002019-09-15T03:41:16.870-10:00

I'm going to be mocked for this, and I don't care. I've been spending way too much time on Twitter, and - to be honest - Twitter's not the best place for someone as longwinded as I am. The maximum length of a Tweet is 280 characters, and that doesn't work well for me. I'm not Seth Abramson - I can usually get a simple concept across in less than 280 Tweets - but I'm usually closer to 280 words

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-73346986718091385722019-01-02T09:40:00.000-10:002019-01-02T09:40:08.277-10:00

Good question, that. Three months ago, when I started, I would have given you an answer. Right now...it's kind of in flux. This is something I've been assured is a natural part of the process. I write an outline, my supervisors read the outline, critique takes place, I repeat the process.  I know the problem I want to address. Copyright law, especially when applied in the area of what's

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-21041823043343440402019-01-01T00:30:00.000-10:002019-01-01T00:31:10.378-10:00

Because every damn time I publish one of those, I turn around and immediately fail to blog for many months thereafter. So this isn't a reboot post. It's a reset post. Because that's different, right? Anyway... I'm now one academic term into my PhD, or I would be if academic terms were an actual thing for PhD student. As it turns out, they really aren't. Doing a PhD means you just work,

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-1225398794754387302018-09-24T11:19:00.000-10:002018-09-24T11:19:36.944-10:00

Today, I'm in limbo. And in London. I'm sitting in a tiny room that's not particularly cheap, not particularly cheerful, but is precisely (according to the Google Maps tool) 4,977.87 miles from the front door of my home in Texas. I'm here right now because I've just enrolled for a PhD. I'm excited to start, but I'm also homesick for my wife, my children, at least 2/3 of my pets,

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-26566421682242660362018-08-20T03:14:00.000-10:002018-08-20T03:14:44.189-10:00

It's the dawn of a new academic year. What does that mean for the perpetual student? That's right!! It's the dawn of a new degree program. In a little less than a month, I'll be flying out to London to start a PhD in Law at Queen Mary University of London. And we all know that the "P" in PhD stands for "Procrastination" - which makes this the ideal time to dust off this blog and get back up and

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-91695691096074211152017-04-19T02:25:00.001-10:002017-04-19T14:47:44.714-10:00

Let's talk bulls.  Specifically, let's talk about why the creator of a sculpture of a bull that may be better known for having it's big bronze balls rubbed than for its artistic merit may have a very strong copyright infringement case against the investment firm that commissioned another, more recent sculpture of dubious artistic merit, and possibly against the City of New York as well.

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-11856232915589591942017-03-13T01:16:00.002-10:002017-03-13T01:16:53.519-10:00

This is a post about a failure that will be announced to the world early next week.  A group of individuals launched a legal challenge to the 2016 presidential election before the inauguration. I'm calling it a legal challenge and not a "lawsuit" for reasons that I'll get to in a bit. For now, let's just say that the case was legally hopeless from the very start - and that was before the

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-45304882914037773022017-01-01T10:51:00.001-10:002017-01-01T10:51:11.419-10:00

It's a new year, and I'm going to start something I've been thinking about for years: a "guess who" puzzle. I've taken lots of pictures over the years. Lots of them have been of statutes, because statues don't screw up your shot by moving suddenly. I'm going to post a picture of (part of) a statue. Take a guess and try to identify the featured person, and, for extra credit, where in the world

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-44247324576672124892016-12-23T00:31:00.000-10:002016-12-23T00:31:25.535-10:00

It wasn't the first time, and - disturbingly - it probably won't be the last, but Donald Trump used his Twitter account to cause sharp and unexpected after-market stock price moves for two different companies yesterday. (Did those swings benefit Donald or his family? Probably not, but we know so little about his finances that it's impossible to be sure.) Yesterday, it stock prices for uranium

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-63984729889391957072016-12-14T14:47:00.000-10:002016-12-14T14:47:39.529-10:00

Our intelligence services are saying, "with high confidence," that Russia engaged in successful hacking of a number of people and institutions connected with the Clinton campaign, and was responsible for leaking the information they received to the public with the intention of interfering in our elections, and possibly with the specific intent of helping the Trump campaign. (I doubt that it will

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-58824575593506553562016-12-12T05:47:00.003-10:002016-12-12T05:47:57.707-10:00

The title on this one should be self-explanatory, really.  Russia intervening in our elections is very, very bad. The fact that the United States Senate Majority Leader was too concerned with partisan advantage to agree to a unified approach to an external threat is even worse.  But he did not commit treason. This is immediately clear to anyone who reads the Constitution, and even more

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-62803738306721527532016-12-12T00:57:00.001-10:002016-12-12T00:57:46.041-10:00

Right. I apparently greatly underestimated how much effort Facebook has put into monetizing the Pages thing. If I want to keep my longer political commentary separate from my personal page, yet still be reasonably confident that posts will show up on friends' timelines, I need to pay for the privilege. Not planning on doing that. So back to Blogger it is. These messages will show as links on

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-50021707603397836622016-08-01T23:46:00.001-10:002016-08-01T23:46:15.665-10:00

I've always had a fondness for trains. This announcement should surprise no one who knows me, because if you know me at all, you know that I'm a geek - someone the Brits might call (with classic understatement) a bit of an Anorak.  And I'm a dilettante of an anorak at that - I rarely delve too deeply into any one geekish pursuit; instead, I skim the surface of many. But my love of rail is

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-27650048446595191372016-06-24T02:07:00.000-10:002016-06-24T02:07:05.421-10:00

Britain is out. And now I find that I've got quite a few #leave friends who are suddenly anxious to make sure that I know that they aren't racists. That they did not vote leave because Nigel Farage made them afraid of mass rapes by migrants. That they voted leave for other reasons, such as the impact of undemocratically adopted Brussels regulations on the UK, or EU overreach into national

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-24450409381563407332016-05-25T07:09:00.001-10:002016-05-25T07:09:23.156-10:00

The title of this post seem a bit click-baity, but it's not an exaggeration. The case that I'm going to discuss has a direct effect on Australia's public health efforts to require plain-packaging for tobacco products, will have a similar effect on other such efforts in other countries, and will have downstream effects on regulatory efforts on public health, environmental, and human rights issues

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-74757710685248672352015-12-10T07:47:00.001-10:002015-12-10T07:47:42.226-10:00

"Should your client actually be elected Commander-in-Chief, will you be the one writing the cease and desist letters to Vladimir Putin, or will that be handled by outside counsel?" - Counsel for Republican PAC to Counsel for Donald Trump Law can be fun sometimes, especially if you're willing to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude. And when the schadenfreude is at the expense of one of Donald

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-7377693668904424602015-12-09T08:31:00.001-10:002015-12-09T09:13:22.425-10:00

Apparently, there is nothing Donald Trump can say that is so outrageous that you will not find a right-wing apologist willing to defend it. Case in point: his call for a ban on allowing Muslims to enter the United States.  The idea itself is abhorrent to me, and goes against everything we stand for and believe in as Americans. And when that's what Dick freaking Chaney is saying about your

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-19807070122633362182015-12-08T23:07:00.000-10:002015-12-08T23:07:57.865-10:00

It's been a long time, baby. But it turns out that I actually miss blogging - even if I'm my only reader.  I clearly haven't updated this thing for nearly a decade. I bailed from here to ScienceBlogs, from ScienceBlogs to Scientopia, and then wandered away from blogging altogether for a few years. But I still like to rant, still like to try to explain things, and still like to do both

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0Andover, Andover, Hampshire, UK51.2111975 -1.491923300000053151.171409499999996 -1.5726043000000531 51.2509855 -1.4112423000000531tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-26270819543427173722008-08-22T04:25:00.000-10:002018-08-21T04:25:21.282-10:00

Next week I’ll be in London for Nature Network’s Science Blogging Conference. It’s entirely possible that I’m looking forward to the trip as much as GrrlScientist is, and not just because I’ll be hanging out in the UK for a week afterward. Both ScienceBlogs and the Nature Network host groups of bloggers who are interested in and write about science, but there are also quite a few

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-59077122377712816012008-08-13T04:13:00.000-10:002018-08-21T04:14:00.866-10:00

I used to have a hard time explaining the anger, resentment, and hostility that many scientists feel toward the big academic publishing houses. It’s been getting easier, though. Recent events have, unfortunately, provided people with an experience that makes it easier to relate to what the academic community has been going through. Gas prices are going up. You’ve been combining trips, cutting

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11390444.post-52380019900784169522008-08-12T04:06:00.000-10:002018-08-21T04:15:34.560-10:00

Update: 13 Aug. I’ve added a new post that I think provides a clearer explanation for the reason that this sort of behavior is such an irritant when it comes from a company like Elsevier. Like most bloggers, I have an ego. I’m not mentioning that by way of apology, but as an explanation for why I was browsing through my sitemeter statistics last Friday. Every now and then, I head over

TQAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01510784510555073197noreply@blogger.com0