Posts filed under 'Reviews'
My friends Joe and Dinah have a new blog! It’s called Bibulo.us, and it’s about cocktails–recipes, history, photos of old books, articles about bars, and the like. I had dinner and drinks with them at Range last night, which was a pleasure as always. We sat at the bar and and chatted with several of the bartenders, including Jeff, as we ate. Dinah gave him the recipe for the classic Aviation, which came out very tasty indeed.
The tagline ("We Plead The 21st") is also quite clever, but then again, that’s exactly what one would expect from these two. Check it out!
June 14th, 2008
I’ve always liked seeing media depictions of things I’m involved with, partly because I find it interesting to see how others view groups I know from the inside and partly because of plain narcissism. Since I’ve started law school, I’ve been viewing legal fiction in a new light. From Phoenix Wright to Atticus Finch, it’s fascinating to see how the profession I’m learning shows up in the media.
With Halloween around the corner, I think it’s just the time to link to Supernatural Law, featuring Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre. The author, Batton Lash, was inspired by the old buildings on Court Street in his native Brooklyn, and decided to start doing a strip about a small law firm that helped clients with supernatural problems: monsters, ghosts, that sort of thing. After runs in the Brooklyn Paper and the National Law Journal, it’s now appearing in comic books and online.
The art has a classic, mid-20th century feel to it, which meshes well with the storytelling and occasional pun. Check it out; I’ve been quite pleased.
October 30th, 2007
I’ve been watching The Show recently, and it’s been very good, but today’s edition is nothing short of classic. It’s a bit of a departure from his other stuff–it’s usually quite joyous and a bit silly, but today he absolutely nails it in his response to the recent attempted terrorist attacks. Definitely worth watching.
August 10th, 2006
Look Around You. Look Around You. Just Look Around You.
Those who grew up geeky in the 1980s will love this. It’s a sort of a double treat for me, because I read a lot of Usborne’s science books as a kid, which meant that I learned a lot of British English. Good times.
Some episodes are available on YouTube, like “Water.” “Le petit déjeuner est prêt.”
August 4th, 2006
Even if you know hardly anything about art, I can practically gurantee you that you’ve seen Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Some enterprising folks in Beloit decided to duplicate the setting on the Rock River. The results are amazing!
I thought I’d start making soap posts last week, but the people who run my apartment building called me and said they’d like me to move soon (I’m staying in this building but moving to a slightly bigger place), so that’s been taking up all my free time. Rest assured, my special brand of soapy fun will soon grace these pages. Or something.
July 11th, 2006
You! Yes, you! With the computer! Go download Google SketchUp right now!
I did about fifteen minutes ago, after the MAKE blog informed me it had been released for the Mac. I’d seen cool stuff done in SketchUp before, but I’d never used it as I didn’t have access to a Windows PC that was powerful enough. I just went through the tutorials, and I am remarkably impressed. It feels a little bit like a 3D version of Visio, but optimized for drawing things instead of diagrams. Much easier than the other CAD programs I’ve used, although I haven’t explored the area very thoroughly. Have a look!
June 12th, 2006
I have learned a horrible thing, as explained this paper by Michigan State’s Brian Kalt: “there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one can commit felonies with impunity.”
Here’s the deal, in lay terms. (This explanaiton depends heavily on Professor Kalt’s paper; all quotations and citations to “Kalt” are to it unless otherwise noted. Speaking of citations, I don’t have my Bluebook with me, so keep in mind that I’m faking it.) To begin with the geography of the problem, Yellowstone National Park is mostly in the state of Wyoming, but some bits of it stick into Montana and Idaho. Kalt at 4. Interestingly, these bits are in the states of Montana and Idaho, but the entire park is in the judicial District of Wyoming. Id. at 5, Wikipedia. This incongruity is what will cause problems.
So, let’s hypothetically say you go to the Idaho portion of Yellowstone and run feloniously amok, as hypothetical felons tend to do. The wheels of justice start to grind, but your defense attorney points out that before they get to you, they must satisfy the requirements of the Sixth Amendment. In particular, your attorney points out the requirement of “vicinage,” that is, the requirement that the jury come from “the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . .” (Emphasis added.)
And your crimes were committed in a very unusual place, as it was in the state of Idaho, but the district of Wyoming, and so your jurors must be drawn from that state and that district–from the Idaho portion of Yellowstone. However, nobody lives in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone. Kalt at 6.
With no population there can be no jury, with no jury there can be no trial, with no trial there can be no judgment, and with no judgment there can be no punishment. “Assuming that you do not feel like consenting to trial in Cheyenne [where trial would be held if you were in Wyoming], you should go free.” Id. at 7.
It’s highly unlikely that this would ever happen, but it’s remarkably clever.
June 7th, 2006
A fellow I know just started a website called Molecule of the Day. It’s a blog with a little article on a different molecule every day, and a fun addition to your RSS feed.
In unrelated news, I’ve got an article about Maker Faire on Metroblogging San Francisco. Read!
April 29th, 2006
If you are studying US Federal Civil Procedure, and you do not have a copy of Glannon’s Examples and Explanations, purchase one at your next opportunity. I bought my copy this morning on the recommendation of someone I met in the elevator last night, and I now understand Erie much more thoroughly. Granted, I still regard supplemental jurisdiction as a malconcieved scion of quantum physics and the occult, but then again, I haven’t read that chapter yet.
tags: civ pro
December 15th, 2005
While Penny Arcade isn’t really my thing (I’m not a gamer), I find it reliably funny and occasionally sidesplitting. A couple of items in today’s news post really caught my eye, though.
First, Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney for the Nintendo DS. Wright is "the rookie defense lawyer new to the scene with the wildest cross-examination skills in town!", per Capcom’s web site. (He also has a bad case of Final Fantasy hair, but that’s a different issue.) Gamespot’s review seems to give a pretty complete look at what it’s like. For my part, I think I’d find the legal inaccuracies too distracting, but I can see the appeal, and would definitely rent a copy if I owned a DS.
Also in the news post, well-documented annoyance Jack Thompson has apparently offered to donate $10,000 if someone makes a video game based on his premise of a vengance-crazed rampage against the video game industry. According to Wikipedia, an extant GTA: San Andreas mod comes surprisingly close to the mark. As for Thompson, Gabe criticized him on the grounds that the Penny Arcade-affiliated charity Child’s Play has donated well over thirty times Thompson’s proposed contribution, all through the efforts of gamers. Gabe described Thompson’s response as “scream[ing],” which doesn’t do much for Thompson’s image as a voice of reason–not that that was too well-established to begin with.
October 12th, 2005
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