Inside Baseball

"Oh my God, did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"My gunner asked me out."
"What do you mean your gunner?"
"From our fantasy draft."
"In your elective?"
"Yeah. You get one point every time they talk, with bonus points if they bring in outside information, the professor cuts them off, stuff like that."
"Awesome."
"Not awesome! He can't ask me out! He's my gunner!"
"I meant about the league. But doesn't this raise some conflicts of interest?"
"Well obviously I can't go out with him."
"If you could say, 'You always say such insightful things in class' to make him talk more, that would ruin the league."
"Exactly."
"Plus, he's your gunner."
"I feel like I should get bonus points though."
"Because he's a gunner outside the classroom too?"
"Yeah. It carries over to the rest of his life."
"How'd he ask you out?"
"E-mail."
"Definitely bonus points."

Law And Economics

Over at Passionate Discourse, Q reports how Legal Research professors use peer pressure to motivate students as they work on their latest assignment. By second semester everyone has figured out that the marginal benefit of work in a pass/fail class is pretty close to zero, so it takes something special to get us motivated. That law and econ stuff is really biting them in the ass. So they make eceryone work in pairs, and get the students to stress each other out. Q admits to falling for it.

I have an appelate brief due Tuesday that uses the same system, but I've experienced a different dynamic. Instead of spurring each other on, my partner and I are engaged in a game of slacker chicken, with each of us procrastinating for as long as possible and hoping the other will take the initiative. We each know that the first person to blink will wind up doing more work. It's a classic collective action problem.

And it may be even more complicated than that. Maybe we're both putting off studying to show what cool people we are. Maybe we're countersignaling.

When The Boogie Man Goes To Sleep, He Checks His Closet For Jack Bauer

Fans of those great Chuck Norris jokes or 24 will enjoy this list of Jack Bauer sayings. But it leaves out a few of my favorites, which I will reproduce below.

For fans of the latest season:

The only reason you are still conscious is because Jack Bauer doesn't want to have to carry you.

For viewers concerned about the romanticization of interrogation:

One time Jack Bauer lost his keys, so he tied himself to a chair and tortured himself for half an hour until he told himself where they were.

For everyone, but especially those jerkoffs at Division:

If everyone listened to Jack Bauer, the show would be called 12.

This Post is Dedicated to David Hennes

That dude is scary good at remembering names.

Between Parody rehearsals and classes picking up as the semester goes on, I've been out of the firm reception game for a while. But I made it out last night, and it was definitely worth setting aside time for. The event was at Finale, a speciality dessert shop down in the square that makes, I have learned, one hell of a cheesecake. A smaller venue, but still not too crowded. It was refreshing to be at one of these things without the usual crushing mob of students - I don't know if we missed them because it was Tuesday or because February is relatively late in the cycle. And the lawyers were friendlier than average too, especially for people from New York and DC offices. One partner I talked to tried to explain how their attitude was tied to a "modified-lockstep partnership model," but it was a little too intricate to grasp. Something about growing pies. Maybe on trees. Because that would be pretty sweet. Pie trees.

I hear there's another event there on Thursday. Should be a lot more crowded, but I bet the cake will still be good.

Boston Bluegrass

I just learned that the Cantab in Central square brings in bluegrass bands on Tuesday nights. Last night a band called The String Dusters rocked the house. It was amazing. I just sat there with a big stupid grin on my face for the whole show.

Summers to Retire

I never had any beef with the guy, but it looks like he may be on the way out.

[Update] A message in my inbox from Summers confirms it. He links to a letter to the community.

Iraq: A Koan

Q. Why are we in Iraq?
A. To prevent the failure of the occupation of Iraq. If we pull out now the occupation will be a failure!
Q. Would it have been easier to have never occupied it in the first place?
A. Ah, but if we never occupied Iraq, then the occupation certainly would have been a failure, now wouldn’t it?
Q. [meditates for many years]
Q. Now I am enlightened.

Part of an extended Q&A at Fafblog.

A Few Bad Apples

Malcolm Gladwell has an amazing article in the New Yorker about how social policy is complicated when the distribution of problems follows a power law instead of a bell curve. Effective solutions to problems like homelessness and police abuse can be deeply counter-intuitive. Come to think of it, the social costs of terrorism all but certainly follow a power law distribution.

Link from Matthew Yglesias, who is always excellent.

Really Tied the Piece Together

When they first told me that my part in the Parody would include two dance numbers, my reaction was somewhere between "oh shit" and "okay, but it's your funeral." So I was amazed when one song really came together last night in rehearsal. Not that we looked like professional dancers, but the standard is a bit lower when your musical is a big piece of tasteless abortion humor. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

We've only worked on this thing twice, and it actually looked pretty good. It made me a lot more optimistic about our compressed rehearsal schedule.

Wow

I was worried that the silly bomb-in-the-body plot in the Grey's Anatomy episodes after the super bowl augured its creative demise, but I was wrong. It is still the best show.

Randall v. Sorrell

I'm in Ames courtroom right now waiting for the start of a moot court argument in Randall v. Sorrell, an upcoming Supreme Court case that pits the ACLU and the Vermont GOP together against that state's campaign finance law. There was one of these at the start of the semester, and I thought it was really cool. They've got James Bopp from the James Madison Center for Free Speech, who will argue the case in front of the Supremes. A bunch of students from my Law of Democracy class are here, and so are Josh and PBB.

Hopefully, more to follow. They say they're bringing a moot on the Texas redistricting case soon.

The OC as IR

How are the US, Britain, and Iraq like Ryan, Sandy, and Marissa? The Yale daily news breaks it down.

Ten Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

Courtesy of BoingBoing.

Dear Harvard

Please do not delete my e-mails just because they are a month old. There are lots of times when I need old e-mails, like when they have information I need to fill out financial aid forms due at midnight. I am very angry about this right now. Very angry.

Trevor

One of my favorite places had up a link to this thread where people are taking old Garfield comic strips and removing all the animals' dialogue, so it's only Jon that talks. They're hysterical. Here is my favorite:

Noblesse Oblige

Two kids from my section promised that if they were made Prom King and Queen, they'd donate the $100 prizes towards a tab at The Kells, where beers are only a dollar on Wednesdays. We saw them elected in a landslide. Everyone sure was happy this morning we don't have class at 8:50 on Thursdays any more.

Hell? See You There

This is downright evil, but it is certainly the greatest blonde joke ever.

Trumped

For everyting I ever thout was funny, Russ and Mike of Barely Legal show how I was not only wrong, but also straight-up retarded. What are you doing here? Read them instead.

Aspirations: Crushed

All this talk about grades and being sad reminds me of this shirt from Dinosaur Comics:



Me, I'm gonna continue my campaign of studied ignorance so I can test this "grades don't matter" theory the profs keep pushing. But if you know someone who's upset that now they can't make law review, show them this. Then hit them in the head for wanting it in the first place. Somebody has to knock some sense into these people.

Grades

Grades are up. I'm not going to look at mine.

Calvin and Hobbes

A friend sent me this comic. It's really sad. Like Puff the Magic Dragon sad.

High Satire

So I was cast in the Parody. I've got two speaking roles, one public figure and one current student. Thankfully, I have no singing or dancing roles. That would have been a bad idea. I'm just looking out for the audience here. I can't tell you more, because everything is very top secret hush-hush. Apparently most people who get parodied think it's a compliment, but sometimes we get sued. I'm pretty sure we win, but I'll have to check.

By the way, this theater business takes up tones of time. But at least now I have a good reason to weasel out of commitments I made last semester. What's that, Journal of Law and Technology? No, I'm sorry I can't help you edit scholarly papers. I'm busy this month. Mocking the very idea of justice.

Temperate Climes

It was ridiculously warm today. I sat outside and read in a t-shirt and sandals. The ice skating rink has finally thawed completely, and is now just an ice skating pool.

You Too Can Have This Fearsome Power

Eugene Volokh extols the dark art of multiplication.

Hostile Takeover

Who would have known that the video game geeks at Penny Arcade would make the best comic about outsourcing I've ever read. It's got it all: a self-referential shift in visual style, betrayal, and senseless violence too.

An Unorthodox Strategy

I just got an e-mail from a 3L who is starting a blog to get a job. He figures it will let him "exhibit[] marketable skills in an untraditional way". I always figured that blogging, especially under one's own name, could cost a law student a fairly significant bit of market value. Maybe I'm wrong. In either case, he seems to be getting class credit for carrying this out as a kind of self-directed research project, which is either a pathbreaking bit of scholarship or an admirable exercise in raw chutzpah. So either way, good on him.

The site is called 3L Epiphany.

I Want to Believe

People are endlessly fascinated by the power supply for my five year old iBook. I got three questions about it just in this class alone. It is shiny:

Identity Politics

"I don't know. They seemed like a really WASPy firm."
"Trevor, you are a WASP."
"W ... A ... S ... Ha! I'm not Protestant!"
"You're Catholic?"
"Nope, pagan. Sun worshipper."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I'm looking to capture some prisoners of war to sacrifice to my heathen idols."
"You realize that Pagan is still a P word."
"Curses."

Dim Chief

Prof CrimLaw:

I actually think this case is pretty clear. Burger was not a very creative man, and any time you see something that looks like a coherent argument in one of his opinions it's usually because one of the litigants gave it to him. He wasn't the brightest bulb in the - however that sentence ends. I once had an e-mail debate with a colleague of mine about who was the dumbest Chief Justice we've ever had - he thought it was Burger but I wasn't so sure. I don't know why I'm telling you all this.