More on book collecting

If the conclusions of this research on film selection carry over to books, a long book queue may lead to the accumulation of unread, pretentious titles. (h/t)

Shelfish Passion

On reading, book reviews, and David Mitchell: (BugMeNot)

Every reader had a first love, most likely in childhood: a book that we could not get enough of, and guarded selfishly for fear that someone else might come to think of it as their own; a book with which we identified completely; a book to which we probably would not want to return as adults for fear that it might not live up to our memories. Perhaps we were serial monogamists, who exhausted the entire work of one author only to move on to another the next month or year. Perhaps we were polygamists, who could not be satisfied by one book at a time, but had to have many all at once, from different genres and different time periods. But whatever our inclinations, over the years our capacity to love books becomes dulled by repeated frustration. Every time we pick up a book, we expect to fall in love; but after a certain number of disappointments, our expectation turns to mere hope; and eventually we give up even that.

Back again, back again

Thanks to everyone who offered exercise tips, cheese recommendations, and birthday wishes. I'm back in Clerksville and am about to curl up with either a shelfworthy book or Ghost Dog The Libertine.

Collecting unread books is dishonest?

PG brought this comment on promiscuous book acquisition to my attention:

People . . . where there is much social capital to be gained from being or seeming well-read, seem to covet the physical book more than the stuff in it (at least, this is my impression from reading lj's where people talk about acquiring books all the time (squee!), but almost never about their content). It just seems like a chic way to spend disposable income and to cultivate an undeservedly erudite reputation.

As someone who believes that the shelf reflects the self, I find this sort of indiscriminate book gathering deeply problematic. I, like some, like to keep close those books which have attained the status of old friends, but I am fundamentally introverted and dislike sharing my home with strangers, much less strangers who may reflect poorly upon me. And how to know the character of a book without reading it? Absent this knowledge, you are aware only of the physicality of the volumes, and this is the very opposite of erudition.

While in certain circumstances, people may be too busy or too isolated to borrow books before reading them, to keep a mediocre book one has bought indicates a certain acceptance of mediocrity. Similarly, one might purchase a book with the intention of reading it later, but at a certain point the timeline of future reading stretches out so far as to make it clear that some of these books will never be read and one becomes an Imelda Marcos of books, compulsively collecting (whether it be for the undeservedly erudite reputation that Rita notes or for the vanishingly tiny benefit of additional reading options).

We have all scoped out the shelves of a friend or date in some attempt to discern the character of the books' owner. But a shelf full of books that are unread and probably never will be read is a deceptive front. The party is hopping to all appearances, but the house is full of strangers; friends who should have pride of place and personal attention are lost in the throng. One's true nature is concealed, masked behind an explosion of aspiration and artifice. I'll keep my carefully chosen volumes any day.

Cheese I like

I recommend is Bleu des Causses, available from the Cowgirl Creamery. I usually don't like blues, but this is sweet, salty, and flavorful without being overwhelming. Mmm!

The New York Times is pathetic.

I have been getting hits from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/. Unfortunately, I am not a TimesSelect subscriber and thus cannot see what the cloistered blog linked to.

Unrelatedly, I am going to Japan in September. I am also on a diet, with the goal of losing 15 pounds total and at least 10 before my trip. I would like to be able to buy clothes in Japan without having shopkeepers giggle at the giant white girl. Hints for making exercise tolerable, purchasing elliptical machines, or finding cool places to go in Japan are appreciated.

Is the baby as fake as Tom's being straight?

First there was the speculation about Tom Cruise's potential genetic disorder. Then there was the "birth" of Suri Cruise, complete with suspicious birth certificate. Apparently the only non-Scientologist to have seen the baby says she's "funny looking."

More raging internet gossip here: "Why does everyone assume Tom Cruise is gay?"

To sleep, perchance

Sleep is the new sex, some say. But others eagerly await the creation of drugs that will make several daily hours of sleep unnecessary and allow us to be more productive. I love sleeping (mostly because I enjoy dreaming immensely). If the pharmaceutical companies do develop mainstream medications to reduce the need for daily sleep, will sleepers be the new drug addicts, shunned and scorned for their selfishly wasted potential? At least one book addresses something like this division between the sleepless and the sleepers, but making sleep optional rather than inborn would produce different results than the author postulated.

More on Supreme Court clerks

Tom Smith on the Supreme Court clerk gender gap and interview process:

I would call the selection process for Supreme Court clerks a little, ah, imperfect. At a minimum, an IQ test, it ain't. I finally decided to apply for a Sup Ct clerkship a year late; it turned out Justice White had an opening. I think he had eaten a clerk and so had a place to fill. I went in to interview, and it went something like this. JW: "I see a lot of philosophy on your resume. You don't really like philosophy, do you?" At this point, the intelligent thing to have said would have been, "oh no, I hate philosophy; what I really like is [football? rodeo? fly fishing? cow punching? in any event, some manly activity]" But the little demon that has accompanied me through my sometimes mildly disappointing but all things considered fabulous life whispered in my ear words to the effect of "tell the old coot to go f@#$ himself," and so I said something like, "yes I like philosophy, as you can see from my resume." I grant, this was an intelligence test of sorts, and one that I failed, and I have often regretted not repudiating my main intellectual passion at that stage of my life, the whole business of being true to yourself being rather overrated. But, if it was an IQ test, it was hardly an objective, scientific sort of test. It was just a test to see if I might really be a philistine and so qualified. In fact, I was not, and I would have been a medi[o]cre clerk, though I have heard those are hardly uncommon on the Court. So perhaps the question should be, how many of the smart Supreme Court clerks are men, and how many women? For all we know, the dumber clerks are all men.

Is part of the gap due to a bias against eggheads in favor of macho schmoozers?

Buffy like you've never seen her before?

Want to see the unaired Buffy pilot? It's got Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day as Principal Flutie and Chubby!Willow.

In defense of the love match

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

How to be happy

I like how the second tip is "don't go to law school."

How to apply for a Supreme Court clerkship

One of my commenters noted that the application process for Supreme Court clerkships is remarkably opaque and that if you don't have someone to explain it to you it puts you at a disadvantage (does this disadvantage women who have less access to existing old-boy networks?). HLS helpfully outlines this process, but it puts the information behind password protection. Information, however, wants to be free, so I'm summarizing it for you below. Enjoy!

(If any of this information is out of date, please let me know and I will correct it.)

Applications for October Term N should be sent in March - June of N-1. Thomas hires much further in advance, so take this into account.

Apply to all nine justices even if you don't think you'd like to clerk for some of them.

Your package should include

• a short cover letter containing the names of your recommenders, the contents of your packet, and the term you are applying for
• a resume
• a transcript
• a writing sample consisting of a scholarly note, comment, or article
• recommendations from professors, judges, or very famous practitioners

Send updates to your materials as needed.

To prep for an interview, read the justice's opinions, especially those from the recent term. Do not contact current clerks even if you know them.

Idiosyncracies of the justices:

• Roberts: 2 recommendations (may have changed)
• Stevens: short writing sample is optional. At least 2 recommendations from professors, at least 3 total.
• Scalia: 3 recommendations. Note names of professors on your transcript.
• Kennedy: two writing samples and 3-5 recommendations required.
• Souter: 3-5 recommendations, including one from your circuit judge. Academic writing samples a must!
• Thomas: at least 2 recommendations.
• Ginsburg: at least 3 recommendations. Short writing sample plus a reprint of any academic publication you have.
• Breyer: 3 recommendations, including one from your circuit judge. Short writing sample.
• Alito: unknown!

And from the bad boyfriend files . . .

Guy and Girl are carjacked. Guy runs away with keys, leaving Girl with angry carjackers. Should Girl dump Guy?

How is this even a question?

JMPP is a good girlfriend.

She takes a Harvard economics professor to task for his allegedly uninformed criticisms of her boyfriend's career. I have no opinion on the merits, but I appreciate the dynamic.

Again, not mine.

This week's best PostSecret is all in the presentation.

Speaking of clerks

Since Judge Kozinski doesn't follow the federal law clerk hiring plan, he may have already hired a clerk or two. Who will be clerking for this esteemed feeder judge? Are any of the new clerks female?

Weekend Cat Blog

Snape likes suitcases.


Snape does not like Kermit the Frog.

Idle query

Why don't we burn people in effigy any more? Would it be considered a threat to the individual whose likeness was burned? Do modern law codes prohibit such impromptu blazes in public spaces? As the flag-burning controversy highlights, nothing makes a statement like fire.

A question for Catholics

So this discussion of whether Catholic hospitals should be required to provide emergency contraception to rape victims is basically a giant trainwreck, but I am actually curious about what the theological objection is here. Plan B, the emergency contraceptive at issue, prevents ovulation and has not been shown to interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg.

I am under the impression that the Catholic objection to contraception centered around the view that sex is appropriate only in the context of a marital relationship and should combine both love and openness to procreation. How does this work in a rape scenario? What objective is fulfilled by keeping a rape victim open to the possibility of procreation in the wake of a nonconsensual sex act?

I am not trying to be snarky. I actually want to know how the doctrine justifies this.

BONG BONG BONG DINK PTOOEY

I had an MRI today. It reminded me of the PeopleMover at Disney World, except evil.

Why so few female Supreme Court clerks?

Last week the Feminist Law Professors blog posted about the continuing decrease of female Supreme Court clerks. My data for next term show that only seven, or 20%, of the confirmed 2006-07 Elect are women. Why is this so? Some empirical observations and blue-sky theorizing:

• There are fewer women at top schools. While the majority of law students nationwide are female, the schools most Supreme Court clerks come from are still mostly male.
• There may be fewer women with top grades. At Harvard, the percentage of women who graduated magna cum laude was lower than the percentage of women in the class. Some might say this jibes with the results of I.Q. tests, which show more men in the tails of the distribution and women clustering toward the center.
• Women may be less likely to be on law review. Again, at Harvard this was so (and the cause of perennial calls for affirmative action). Perhaps it is not so elsewhere, but a brief perusal of a couple of mastheads indicates that it may hold for other schools as well. Most Supreme Court clerks were law review members. And for schools that have students grade onto law reviews, the previous point may affect this one.
• Women may be less likely to clerk. My judge reports that the percentage of female applicants for clerkships in his chambers varies between 33 and 20 percent. A well-regarded liberal judge on the same circuit reported nearly identical percentages. Since a circuit court clerkship is essentially required for a Supreme Court clerkship, if fewer women clerk at lower levels, then the pool for Supreme Court clerkships will be smaller. (As a side note, I do find it interesting that comparatively few women clerk. Is this because they want to cash in at the firm for as many pre-baby years as possible? Are women less likely to expect a spouse or lover to follow them to clerkships in remote parts of the United States than men are?)

Are any of these points empirically false? If they are, what do you think explains the gap? If they are substantiated by your experience, can you let me know? While the government collects data on clerkship hiring, for example, the experiences of clerks who are involved in the hiring process might shed more light (for instance, a judge might make offers to many women who take clerkships elsewhere, which would not show up in hiring stats).

UPDATE: A commenter at the Volokh Conspiracy tabulated the Justices' clerk hiring by gender for OT '00 through '06:

• Justice Breyer: 13 men, 15 women
• Justice Stevens: 16 men, 12 women
• Justice Thomas: 16 men, 12 women
• Justice Ginsburg: 16 men, 12 women
• Justice O'Connor: 14 men, 10 women
• Justice Souter: 18 men, 10 women
• Chief Justice Rehnquist: 13 men, 5 women
• Justice Kennedy: 25 men, 3 women
• Justice Scalia: 26 men, 2 women

The Kennedy and Scalia disparities are huge. If Justice Thomas can find conservative women to hire, why can't Scalia?

UPDATE II: Upon perusing this list of all the Supreme Court clerks ever, it looks like the Scalia/Kennedy gap is a function of school-based hiring practices; Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor were more likely to hire clerks from schools outside the top six. The documented paucity of MCL/law review women at such elite institutions may explain the gender gap in the Scalia and Kennedy chambers.

From the files of the Dep't. of Dropped Jaws

Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield on women's ability to refuse sexual advances:

The moral authority of women is a heavy counterweight to the physical superiority of men. With that authority, women have a right to say no to any proposal or proposition from a (generally stronger) man that does not suit them, and be obeyed. But men's willingness to obey depends on women's being held to a higher standard of morality, especially sexual morality, than men. If a woman cannot say, “How dare you!” to a man, her defenses are sapped because without a moral objection she has only her whim to rely on. In response, a man will think and will say, “Why not? We are equal and so my desire is equal to yours.”

Apparently a woman's sovereignty over her own body is not a moral claim.

Teen Drinking

The drinking age in other countries is typically lower than it is in the U.S. Does this mean we're smarter? Or does the artificially high drinking age lead to more drunkenness and less moderate consumption by teens?

Holiday Bake Con't: Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup + 1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp softened unsalted butter
2 large eggs
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (I used full-fat; try lowfat)
2 cups blueberries
Combine dry ingredients (less 1/4 cup sugar & 1 tbsp flour) in a medium bowl. Mix butter and the other 1/4 cup sugar 3-5 minutes on medium-high until fluffy. Add eggs, beating well after each, and lemon juice and vanilla. Turn mixer to low and alternate adding 1/2 cups of yogurt and 1/3 of dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Dust berries with tbsp of flour and fold into batter. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

This recipe is from The Best Light Recipe. It would have been lighter if I'd had lowfat plain yogurt. You can also add the zest of one lemon for more lemony flavor, but I was too lazy to grate the lemon peel. If you have a real muffin pan, this makes 12 large muffins. I had cupcake cups, so my muffins are small and oddly shaped.

(Side note: Reynolds foil cupcake cups are the best deal around. Not only do the foil cups peel more easily from the muffin for less waste, they are separated in the packaging by "paper liners" which you are told to discard. These are just paper cupcake cups and can be used in a conventional cupcake pan.)

Holiday Bake: Red Velvet Cake

This is a Cake Man Raven red velvet cake with raspberry and blueberry accents: tasty and patriotic.

They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot

I miss my dad at this time of year. One of our only traditions was buying fireworks from a toothless, sweating man in one of the ubiquitous roadside stands, taking them to open fields near my house (which have been subsequently turned into parking for a strip mall and McMansions), and blowing things up.

I also miss D.C. It's the first time since 2002 that I won't see the fireworks from the Mall.

Happy Fourth. Blow something up for me.

Born Agains Give You Cancer?

I've been following the blogosphere discussion on the HPV vaccine. Some parents don't want to shell out $360 for a vaccine because they are totally certain that their daughters will abstain. Setting aside the whole "raped? have some cancer with that!" problem this situation poses and the fact that even proponents of abstinence education admit that the programs are less effective at reducing sexual activity by boys (making good Christian lads a possible vector even if they got the same lectures as your little Grace): what about converts?

I'll venture to say that a lot of the religious people who object to the vaccinations are also evangelical, or at least belong to denominations that are welcoming of converts. So are wild boys who have some fun but then see the light and get born again eligible to wed the young women in their church? And if they are, and the women, virginal on their wedding nights, are infected with a cancer-causing strain of HPV, who's to blame?

Move over, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.

This woman has the lawyerly equivalent of a porn star name. (h/t)

$27 Mistake

I never feel like I exfoliate enough and my aesthetician recommended this stuff from Clarins. Unfortunately, it makes me break out like a tenth grader. Any recs for a replacement? I currently scrub with a rough washcloth and Cetaphil, but that doesn't deep clean or remove dead skin cells.

Wank!

I haven't been following fandom in a big way since 2001, but I still spent about an hour poring over this trainwreck of an article about sockpuppetry and Harry Potter. I explained what I had been reading to Steve on the way to dinner. His response:

"So what did she get out of all of this?"
"She got to be Cassie Claire's roommate at Nimbus 2003."
" . . . so what did she get out of all of this?"

Relatedly, MIT media studies scholar Henry Jenkins has a blog. Here's his theory on why Firefly should have gone direct to video instead of to the big screen.

In other news, I am rewatching Buffy. I also rented the first couple of discs of The Wire, but I am not thrilled with the first episode.

Superman Go Home

We saw the first thirty minutes of Superman Returns, but then the bulb in the projector died and we left. I wasn't too broken up about it. Has the world learned nothing from Star Trek? How can you name a technology "Genesis" and expect things to go well? Brandon Routh was wooden and Bosworth's Lois was a Darwin Award contestant. Bleh.

I hate Forrest Gump.

Hilarious summaries of so-called inspirational movies. (h/t) I especially agree with this one:

"Dead Poet's Society," 1989. No. There are many things wrong with the movie and I'll skip them for now....But, we have one kid who blows his brains out because he couldn't live with his father's disapproval. And we're supposed be sympathetic with the teacher who forced this confrontation? This is an evil, evil movie.

Rants and raves

Rant: Why is Spider-Man 3 not coming out until 2007? The previous two movies were released two years apart; this means we are due for another installment this summer. Instead we have Superman Returns. Blech.

Rave: Larabars = crazy delicious. They are also very filling; for once, I didn't count down the minutes until lunch.

Rant: Snape may die. No, not my Snape. This Snape.

Rave: Harry may die. Whinging little prat needs to bite it, says I.

Vacay

So I am thinking of going on vacation for two weeks or so before I start my post-clerkship job. My current plan is 7ish days in Switzerland, a day or two in Salzburg, Austria, and then 6ish days in Croatia. For most or all of that time I will be by myself.

However, I am open to other ideas. This may be my last opportunity for a while to take a long trip. Should I go to Japan instead? Extend my trip a few days and go to Australia (it will be early spring there)?

Caffeine Free and Hating It

I really, really, really want a Diet Coke right now.

Book Review: Fatal Purity

I rarely read nonfiction, but this New Yorker article discussing the French Revolution and "the rise of the mass-murdering nerd" piqued my interest, so I picked up Fatal Purity at the Clerksville library.

First things first: you don't need to know a lot about the revolution to enjoy this book. All I was working from were some vaguely remembered high school history lectures and a bunch of paintings by David. Scurr does a good job of summarizing the action and the shifting factions so even if you didn't know your Hebertists from your Girondists before, you can keep tabs on what's going on.

There were three things that bugged me about what is otherwise an excellent and informative biography of a relatively neglected historical personage. First, Scurr uses many large block quotes from Robespierre's speeches. These get repetitive, not least because all of them make essentially the same argument (France has secret internal enemies and I know who they are! The state must crush them!).

Second, Robespierre had a fiancée! This was big news to me, and could have been a great window into the man if explored in depth. Unfortunately, there's more in Wikipedia about the so-called "Widow Robespierre" than there is in this book. Maybe he got engaged to someone he didn't care that much about. Maybe there aren't enough source materials to shed light on the relationship. But after telling the reader all about how other people's wives and families followed them to the guillotine, to not even mention her fate was odd.

Finally, and this is not Scurr's fault: Robespierre is kind of a boring guy. He twitched, he made speeches, he schemed, and he condemned people to die. But there's no there there. Most mass murderers have more personality.

Nevertheless, this is a decent book if you're interested in the French Revolution, politics, or why basing the legal system off of books* you read as a teenager is a bad idea.

* The works of Rousseau

Live in the 21st century

So now that Warren Buffett has pledged a billion or so to his deceased ex-wife's charitable foundation, do you think it will be able to afford a decent webpage?

Columbia Business School Rocks

For all the aspiring Fed chairmen out there. (h/t)

Have I mentioned how much I love bad cover songs?

Explanation: the Dean of CBS was allegedly considered for the chairman slot but the position went to Bernanke. The student playing the dean in the video bears a remarkable resemblance to him.

Beats the tar out of the HLS parody, let me tell you.

Drivin' my life away

After an airline mishap ruined my weekend plans, I ended up spending my Saturday making a four hour road trip (don't ask). I like driving, and I got to go to a Dairy Queen for the first time in about fifteen years, which was bad for my cholesterol but good for my ambition. There's nothing like being timewarped back to the socioeconomic status of the past to rev up your passion for billing.

More Dubious Relationship Advice

Don't: Call him or ask him out.

Do: Bite him.

I endorse neither of these strategies.

Zap Me

I want this machine NOW. (h/t)

No rape charges?

That was my first thought also. There is a federal statute dealing with sexual assault in prisons, but the conduct here may not fall neatly within its purview.

Shouldn't we expand statutory rape to include prison guard/prisoner sex? It seems like a situation that is even less likely to involve meaningful consent than relationships between adults and minors. It appears that some states have laws like this. Why isn't there an analogue for federal prisons?

The telegram says you have gone away.

I am always shocked by who turns up on Metafilter. One person asked if Sylvia Plath wrote any villanelles besides Mad Girl's Love Song. The screenwriter for the Plath biopic Sylvia turned up and produced an answer.

Are you afraid?

This post reminded me of living in Cambridge. When I was deciding where to go to law school, many people pointed out that the University of Chicago is in a high crime area. Nobody ever mentioned this about Cambridge. I looked up some maps showing reported crimes, though, and was surprised to find that crime in the immediate area of the campus was about the same for both schools.

Of course, once I moved to Cambridge people were better informed. They couldn't help but be; every week or two, a new crime report email would pop into our box, informing us of a mugging, burglary, or assault. Since I am female and very small, many well-meaning people told me I shouldn't walk alone at night, and that I especially should not take the relatively untrafficked shortcut through the divinity school to get back to my house. They were right to point out that very few people walked there at night and that it was less well-lit than the straight main street to the south that led directly to my home. But taking the latter route added 5-10 minutes to my trip, increasing the time I spent alone, and more crimes were reported in the area the law school than east of it, making my route safer.

So did I choose my route home out of fear? I still don't know.

Jackie O Suit?

I know some of you don't like the fashion posts but suck it, Trebek, I need a consult.

Should I buy this suit?

Pros:

• The pink is so Jackie O.
• The blue (click through the alternate views) is pretty too.
• I need nice suits for the law firm.
• If I buy it on Amazon I can use my gift certificates and get $50 off.
  

Cons:

• It's kind of Jackie O on the day of the Kennedy assassination.
• Pink is more of a secretary color, and if it's the wrong shade it will make me look washed out or too young.
  
• I could get the black-on-black version but I can't decide if it's chic or boring.

Thoughts, fellow fashionista lawyers?

Parisian Food

Karl asks, "How was the food in Paris?"

I had two decadent dining experiences in Paris: lunch at Taillevent and lunch at Jacques Cagna.

Taillevent was amazing but intimidating. We arrived ten minutes early and were seated in a holding area and served some kind of delicious cheese puffs and the best Gewürztraminer I've ever had. Unfortunately we only got one glass of it, as it was not sold by the bottle. We were then led into the dining room and proffered a amuse-bouche of gazpacho that had an odd dollop of something in it; it walked the line between intriguing and gross. We were then showered with seven courses of delicious French food: foie gras creme brulee, arugula ravioli, a fish course, a rather disturbing cross section of a lamb which reminded me of high school biology class, some fresh goat cheese that was a bit too heavy on the dill, a delightful strawberry gelatin and meringue dessert, and a chocolate dessert that made me curse my constitution. I ate everything, with the exception of what appeared to be a orange cherry tomato with a candy shell. There was an ancient man sitting next to us who ate alone, in total silence, and appeared to be a regular. He must be very rich and very lonely.

Jacques Cagna was much more informal (and I don't just say that because we were briefly greeted tableside by a friendly whippet) but also pleasant. Although they were very strict about requiring us to confirm the reservation, we had the entire place to ourselves. I had the foie gras ravioli with mushrooms, the smoked and roasted quail, which may be the finest bird I've ever tasted, and the Bourbon vanilla millefeuille. There was a very tasty blue with a easily remembered name on the cheese plate, but when we tasted it again the next day without the benefit of an entire bottle of wine, it was less exciting.

I don't know that I would go to either one again, but as a pair of special treats the restaurants were worthwhile.

Wifework: Not Just For Wives Anymore

There's an interesting post here on the emotional work women put into relationships and how even nice guys can end up in deeply unegalitarian pairings by buying into certain socially constructed expectations about this work. As someone who has struggled in past relationships to not be considered high-maintenance or needy, I can testify that being labelled a nag is something that most women will swallow a lot of resentment to avoid. Thoughts? (h/t)

Austin is a city in Texas.

If I have to read one more comment on the internet in which someone misspells Jane Austen's name, there will be blood. If you are literate enough to read her novels, you should be able to spell her damned name.

All the Supreme Court Clerks Ever

Wikipedia is a great thing.

Arms or Kids?

John has a question that's become more topical since the kerfuffle at Volokh over Emily Yoffe: "You have a choice. You can either (a) go the rest of your life without any arms; or (b) rear, along with your husband, 5 children. You decide."

Well, he said rear, not gestate, so the choice is easier than it would otherwise be. (Although being bionic would be sort of cool, and for the price of five years' worth of nannies and sixty years of boarding school tuition, you could get some sweet prosthetic arms, I'm sure. And are we talking amputation at the shoulder or at the elbow? But I digress.) Surely there are some foreign boarding schools that are relatively cheap? Since it sounds like these kids are adopted, how old are they when received? That plays into my expected cost. Even if my entire income for eighteen years goes to paying for the kids, at the end I am free, still have arms, and have been able to survive for that time thanks to a second income. I guess you've got me, John: I'll keep my limbs.

More Q&A

Mike asks, "what things did you learn during your year of clerking? Was it worth it?"

Things I learned:

• Seniority-based pay means that not all clerks are created equal.
• The feds give you free online OED access.
• Clerking for a senior judge means you get to travel to a wider variety of places but you get to travel less often.
• A good catsitter is hard to find.
• The sentencing guidelines are even tougher than you think.
  
• Presented with a choice between using flexible, usable software or outdated, buggy crap, the government will pick the latter every time.
  

Clerking was worth it. I recommend it to anyone. The hardest part was the relocation. Some people are good at making friends in new places; I am not. If you're an introvert too and will be leaving all your friends and loved ones behind to clerk, be aware of how disruptive this can be and try to figure out how you'll deal. I got cats. Your mileage may vary.

Book Review: Anonymous Lawyer

I finished reading Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer and here is my opinion:

Meh.

I never found the Anonymous Lawyer blog, which purported to be from the point of view of a hiring partner at a big Los Angeles firm, very interesting or funny. The book is about as amusing as the blog; I laughed occasionally, but usually at some one-off joke like a funny name Anonymous Lawyer gave his colleague, not because I thought any of the insights about living la vida law firm were funny. The thinly veiled stand-in for Blachman himself was obvious and intrusive, especially when he attempted to justify his decision to become a musician after law school. I've already said what I think of that.

Still, the book made me laugh out loud a few times and I kept reading. This was my mistake. After cruising along for a while on anecdotes and over-the-top shock humor about workplace suicides and murderous plots to eliminate in-firm rivals, Blachman decides he needs to resolve the plot. Up until this point, that plot basically consists of the Anonymous Lawyer really wanting to beat his rival, The Jerk, in the competition to become chairman of the firm. Why he would want this is anyone's guess. One of the book's targets is the idea of pursuing prestige for its own sake, but this doesn't work when the prestigious position is fantastical and absurd.

Here is where the whole things goes off the rails as all of the characters suddenly begin to act in inexplicable ways that do not flow from anything we've been told before but do have the coincidental effect of moving the plot along to a hurried and artificial conclusion. (Spoilers below, for those of you who care.)
AL gets passed over and vows to take down The Jerk. An associate at his firm who has read his blog and discerned his identity contacts him and says she has evidence that The Jerk has been skimming money. She claims to feel threatened by how The Jerk is shaking up things at the firm and eventually agrees to help AL in exchange for being made partner upon his ascendance to the chairmanship (I found it completely unbelievable that he would have been able to do this, which made her trust illogical). She needs more proof, but coincidentally is a femme fatale and has a preexisting romantic relationship with the one person who can provide them with this evidence.

This person, who we can assume from his professional position is both savvy and intelligent, takes the unimaginably stupid action of writing down how he helped The Jerk steal money; he does this because a hot woman asked him to. When the plan fails and AL is not made Chairman, the femme fatale rats him out, for no reason that I can discern other than the fact that it allowed the firm to find out about both the attempted coup and AL's blog. The only thing I can compare this to is the last few chapters of The Firm, where we are suddenly hit with a whole bunch of nonsensical crap about stealing money and then the characters escape to the Caribbean.

Blachman is not entirely unfunny, but he fails to make his characters act in a rational or even believable way. The plot just plain doesn't work, and we don't really care at the end because all the characters, even AL, are cardboard cutouts who crack jokes or are the butt of them.

A substantive criticism: As at least one other person has noted, the satirized view of firms in this book doesn't really work because it's fundamentally tone-deaf and lacks actual knowledge of how firms operate. It hits the easy targets: Firms are nice to you while you're a summer associate and then make you work a lot! Lawyers are less charismatic than businessmen! Firms play bait-and-switch with people who think they're going to make partner! But on some counts, and at least one of them is reused relentlessly throughout the book, it's just dead wrong, and therefore not funny or pointed. That would be the relationship between lawyers and support staff.

Of all the people I've met in the last few years who have worked in law firms, only one had ever heard of an attorney throwing something at another person. Good legal secretaries are valued, and in some cases are more valued than associates. In a world where support staff can sue for the unbearable fact that they must to listen to a partner swear at third parties on the phone, Blachman's characterizations are jarringly off the mark and don't constitute effective satire.

Amazon Grocery Sucks

Amazon sells groceries. Unfortunately, they do not provide the nutritional information for the products they sell, only the ingredient lists. This means I and other health-conscious shoppers are unlikely to use their service. Boo, Amazon.

Question Time: Consensual Cannibalism

MT asks:

Consensual cannibalism between adults: Should it be legal?

My gut answer: Yes, assuming the parties are competent to consent. Some would argue that anyone who wants to eat someone else is crazy and therefore incompetent. I think the question is more pressing in terms of the status of the eaten than the eater, though. The standard for whether someone is competent to consent to be killed by another should be searching, but this concern is equally important in issues like euthanasia and can be dealt with by requiring disinterested physicians to sign off on the killing. (I think choosing the time when your life ends is a valid exercise of free will, which informs my position here.)

For lesser acts of cannibalism, the inquiry need not be as rigorous. Some people want to remove their limbs; whether they wish to give their unwanted body parts to a cannibal seems almost irrelevant. Eating the dead as a funerary rite also appears at first glance unobjectionable, since the individual is deceased (I would feel comfortable with this if the method of disposal were consented to by the person before death, but I recognize that this is slightly irrational.) The disposition of a piece of human flesh that is no longer part of a living person does not call for draconian regulation.

The main concerns with regard to cannibalism are public health (prion diseases analogous to Mad Cow can be spread via cannibalism) and the social effects of people seeing other people as food sources. Since it seems unlikely that cannibalism will appeal to most people, the issue is whether, for the niche population that would be cannibals if it were legal, the legalization of consensual cannibalism would result in an increase in nonconsensual cannibalism or whether gratifying the urge in a consensual way would satisfy the compulsion before an aspiring cannibal took violent steps to gratify his urge. At the very least, legalization of cannibalism might encourage people with this odd desire to speak about it in a serious and open way, which might lead them to seek help before they secretly, shamefully killed and attempted to eat someone.

This sounds to me a lot like the debates about artificial child pornography; if no children are harmed; should it be legal? Surely taking pictures of someone, no matter how degrading, is less offensive than murdering and eating them? If we believe that cannibals, like child molestors, would be spurred to new crimes by satisfaction of their deviant desire, then perhaps regulation is the prudent course.

Any thoughts?

Ask Amber

ashok says:

Remember a while ago, when you asked us readers to ask you questions, and you would pick interesting ones (for you) and blog about them? That was a fun game.

That was fun. Let's play it again, Sam.

P.S. I should have a review of Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer later this week.

Why I love AskMe.

Questions like"Why won't my dog drink my blood?"

Ooh, shiny.

Good jewelry.

Bad jewelry.

PVD is a disease

Besides being ill, I had a rather nasty experience in the Providence airport yesterday. Here is what I did:

- Stood in check-in line for Continental. Noticed that line is not moving and that both counter employees are chatting and not helping anyone. Asked guy ahead of me if they are waiting to check in. Was told no, that this is something for luggage (note: BAD sign).

- Moved to first-class check-in line and walked to counter. Gave information to sullen counterwoman; was told that this was a Northwest codeshare and shooed away.

- Stood in NWA line (am I the only one who finds their abbreviation risible?) after trying to check in at self-service kiosk and being rejected. Was finally checked in by a man who did not speak to me.

- Because "Providence is not a drop-and-go airport," I then stood in line at the X-ray machine waiting for the four incompetent operators to scan the checked luggage. (Did I mention that they had one X-ray machine running for the entire airport?) Once our bag entered the machine (which was on continuously; isn't that putting out more radiation than necessary?), we were detained at the foot of the machine until our bag came out the other end. The bag was then tossed behind the counter and we were freed to go stand in the individual security line.

- After clearing security and making my way to the gate, I was faced with a very creepy poster which proclaimed that "Despite what you may have been told, you've landed in Warwick, R.I." I don't appreciate being taken to cities other than the one I thought I was going to, and I dislike being smugly informed of the stealth hijack by the mayor of Warwick even more.

I'm never flying into Providence Warwick again!

Ugh.

Is there anything less fun than being sick in an airport?

Chair Love

I am in Boston for the weekend. Unfortunately, it has decided to rain constantly, making my wardrobe choices (cute summery dresses) tickets to chills and misery.

One of the bright spots of a gray day: this chair. Is it not delightful? It is comfortable without being lumpen, bright but not offensively so, and has few of the vertical surfaces my cats find most attractive for claw-sharpening. Turnoffs: the price and the name. The latter is both creepy and inaccurate, since it is impossible to be in the fetal position and use the provided ottoman.

Alito Clerk Hiring

Justice Alito may have filled a second slot for OT 2006 by hiring Chris Paolella, one of his former clerks. This leaves two open slots.

Thomas Clerkship Hiring

Rumor has it that Justice Thomas has one slot open for OT 2007 and is already hiring clerks for OT 2008. My source tells me that among the new Elect are a woman from Rutgers and someone from GW. Any further info, readers?

Ate opponents' brains and invented cocaine.

I am finally about to run out of Richard Sharpe novels. I rented the first installment of the British TV series they made out of the books, but it was kind of lamely plotted and had a very intrusive 1980s score. Sharpe has gotten kind of whiny in the last couple of books. Hopefully he doesn't spend the battle of Waterloo all hangdog about some woman.

Fortunately for Sharpe, he was too young to serve in the American Revolution. If he had, the series would have been much shorter because even a dirty-fighting killer like Sharpe couldn't win against this guy.

Vanity

I find that this is true at this blog as well.

Also: I like doughnuts, but those trays of sliced-up rolls made out of cold cuts and giant tortillas should be banned from all conferences and lunch meetings forevermore.

Death and the Maiden

This story is like a real-world version of this film (which is fabulous, by the way). It even has an additional element of the bizarre, since the tortured woman met her torturer on the other side of the ocean after both of them had fled their pasts.

Tellin' you that I've had it with you and your career

I have finally figured out where I will be working after my clerkship is over. All the friends I have been boring into a stupor with this debate are probably even happier than I am.

Attack of the Cloned Mules

In an encouraging development for reproductive and genetic technology, two cloned mules won races in Nevada. (h/t)

For balance, here is a Slate article about transhumanists that's full of needless snark. It did make me want to see a before picture of Cat Man, though. He should get together with this woman and get the name of her surgeons. Is it really accurate to say that "it is illegal in the United States for a medical professional to alter someone's appearance beyond what society deems normal"? I mean, Michael Jackson, anyone?

Where's Edith Wharton when we need her?

One of the many reasons I hated my three years at HLS: the Northeast is full of people who take the OKOP/NOKOP distinction to heart. Seriously, if anyone made a comment about me because of how I tied my sweater, I'd want to slap them. This desire is, of course, itself NOKOP.

I wasn't aware that the Social Register still existed. It does.

Since its inception, the Social Register has been the only reliable, and the most trusted, arbiter of Society in America. As a service to its members, it offers a publication which lists the Association's membership, as well as contact information, club and college affiliations, and births, debuts, engagements, marriages and deaths as they occur.

That's Society with a capital S, and they don't appear to be joking. I have no words. (via)

Sometimes a nod is just a nod.

When I was in college, the uptick of the head described here was just a form of acknowledgement used by men in general. I picked it up for awhile and the world did not end. Maybe the guys I nodded to would say differently, but I doubt it. While nodding may have originated in a subculture, I think it's expanded in use to encompass more than just out-groups and has become just another way to say "hey." Calling it a manifestation of entitlement or an alternative to a sexualized form of greeting really throws me. What sexualized but inoffensive forms of greeting are in common use? Is a smile necessarily sexualized? Please. Only in America would people be offended because they weren't smiled at.

Anonymous Lawyer Book Review

Ted Frank, who actually practiced law in big firms, isn't impressed by Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer. Read his review.

Social response to adultery

A young man had an affair with a married woman. Her husband discovered the affair and subsequently society turned against the interloper. The plot of a social novel? Nope, just the Chinese internet. Once again, online action has become the new venue for what would formerly have taken place in civil society (which, to be fair, was not terribly civil in this instance).

I'm not inclined to condemn those who called for "every company, every establishment, every office, school, hospital, shopping mall and public street to reject him . . . Don't accept him, don't admit him, don't identify with him until he makes a satisfying and convincing repentance." Freedom of association, baby. At some point, the behavior can cross the line into harassment, but simply refusing to deal with people who commit morally reprehensible acts is not itself reprehensible and can even be admirable. Whether the young man's actions merited this level of response is a separate question. They are having trouble keeping marriages together in China. Someone alert Stanley Kurtz and Maggie Gallagher.

(h/t)

Slate is stupid.

I don't want to horn in on Eugene Volokh's blogging territory, but in the last 24 hours I read two of the stupidest things I've seen in a while, and both of them were from Slate.

First: Emily Yoffe, who replaced Ann Landers's daughter as Prudence, should have stuck to writing about dogs, or at the very least picked up a couple of Miss Manners books before diving into a job for which she is apparently unqualified. Pop quiz, hotshot: if someone writes in and says that she is having problems with rude relatives lecturing her about her family planning choices, do you:

A) Offer a productive suggestion to avoid such awkward discussions,
B) Lecture the writer in an identical manner,
C) Both.

Hint: B and C are wrong. And if the same obnoxious and obvious points didn't convince the writer to reproduce when they came from valued friends and beloved family members, since when will the testimony of Slate's Human Guinea Pig change her mind? I haven't seen advice this terrible since I quit reading Salon's Cary Tennis (who has the virtue of being consistently wrong, so you can at least just ask youself: What Would Cary Do? and then do the opposite).

The other bit is more of a one-off sentence, but it also inspired a facepalm reaction. In a review of "Candy Licker," a new book in the street lit genre, the reviewer says, with apparent seriousness,

[The author] has a real talent for tight pacing and evocative language: The act of stabbing a heroin-filled syringe in one's arm, for example, is described as "skin-popping horse."

He has thoughtfully linked to a website that tells the unfamiliar reader that "horse" is a name for heroin, but to say that use of the term "skin-popping" is a manifestation of literary talent ignores the fact that skin-popping is an established term for a particular method of injecting drugs. If the ability to use common slang terms when discussing street life is a sign of a gifted writer, the bar has been dropped to new lows.

Carnivale

That little ménage à trois in the Season 1 finale of Carnivale was cold. Damn, Sofie!

The end is a serious cliffhanger, although I guess I can just read the recaps to see who died. Alas, Season 2 does not come out on DVD for another couple of months.

PTN Book Club: The Betrothed

Karl: "[T]he aspect of the book that irritated me (at least at first) was Manzoni's failure to give the reader a little more "backstory" of their romance at the outset."

dgm: "It is a bit like one of my friends who, especially after imbibing some spirits, will begin to tell a story but then wander onto a variety of tangentially related topics, touching on each in hideous detail, and often this detail will, surprisingly to the narrator, spawn a new tale--where was I?--but always things would be tied together nicely in the end. Okay, maybe that's what my friends say about me. Maybe that's why I like the book."

Amber: "A book that can make you laugh out loud dozens of times nearly two hundred years after it was written is a true classic."

Zubon: "If you only read one book in your life translated from the Tuscan dialect, try some Dante, but this is a classic in Italian schools the way To Kill a Mockingbird is in the United States (or at least this part of the US). This is easier reading than La Comedia at any rate."

I think the length of this month's selection discouraged participation, but unless people are still interested, maybe this should be the end of the book club. Thoughts?

PTN Book Club: Amber on The Betrothed

I knew from the first few pages that I would enjoy The Betrothed. It has all of the things I most enjoy in literature: historical substance, direct appeals to the reader by the author, books within books, multitudes of footnotes, digressions into the lives of minor characters, digressions within digressions, "fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles" -- well, almost. There aren't any giants, as I recall, and only human monsters.

The story purports to be about the trials and travails of a pious peasant girl, Lucia, and her more hot-blooded fiance, Renzo. The pair are engaged, but a powerful local lord makes a bet with his cousin that he will bed Lucia and sends some bravoes to intimidate the local priest into not marrying them. Their attempts to get around the lord and wed lead to their separation. Renzo ends up in the middle of a riot and is nearly hanged for treason, Lucia is entrusted to the care of a wealthy nun who sells her out to keep her many sins concealed, and eventually the pair are caught in the middle of a devastating wave of bubonic plague. Will Renzo and Lucia reunite? By the time this question is answered, it's hardly the point; this is a clear case in which the journey is what's important, not the destination.

Bruce Penman's translation is readable and modern without being anachronistic; it compares favorably with Edith Grossman's recent version of Don Quixote. Manzoni himself is a little too heavy on the religion, but despite the rather obvious moralizing and convenient conversions to the one true faith by a couple of characters, the novel is still more engaging than plodding. Manzoni himself highlights the passages that can be skimmed by readers with a low tolerance for digression (a lengthy biography of a famous archbishop, for example), but the descriptions of 17th century Italy are like nothing I'd seen and so I read the whole thing. While Manzoni does set the historical stage and show what large-scale political maneuverings are at work, he concentrates his gaze on the effect of these machinations on the individual characters, and thus brings history to life. Some of the best digressions are authorial discourses on the economic ignorance of 17th century Italians. Having the laws of supply and demand explained as an aside before the author describes a bread shortage was endlessly amusing to this econ major. You can almost hear Manzoni's eyes roll when he documents the wacky beliefs of his forefathers.

This is a fabulous book -- probably the best thing I read since Don Quixote. A book that can make you laugh out loud dozens of times nearly two hundred years after it was written is a true classic. It beats the pants off this beautifully written trifle, for example. Long after most of these are forgotten, Manzoni will continue to inform and delight. Highly recommended.

(The only thing I didn't understand (and this is a reflection of my own ignorance, not a shortcoming of the book) is why Father Cristoforo could not conduct the wedding. I assume this is not a privilege belonging to Capuchin friars. Is this right?)

Moo Mooooooo . . .

I was surprised that this article in the NY Times about Blue Bell ice cream didn't mention the famous singing cow commercials. The author is correct that Buttered Pecan is the best flavor.

Life is pain, highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I finally ended up going to the doctor about my headaches. The good news is I don't have to live a life of pain. The bad news is that the cure appears to resemble conversion to Mormonism.

- No chocolate
- No Diet Coke (caffeine and aspartame are bad)
- No alcohol
- Tithing to your local headache clinic (almost)

The experience of going to the doctor gave me a headache. How sick is that?

UPDATE: I love it when drugs go off-patent. In three years, Glaxo won't be able to charge $10-20 per pill for their flagship migraine drug, so they plan to lump it together with naproxen sodium, an over-the-counter painkiller, and continue to bring in the big bucks.

PTN Book Club Reminder

I'll be posting the book club entries tomorrow, so send me whatever you've got. I know this month's selection was long, but if you haven't finished, just give us your thoughts on the book so far.

Toleration

Brian Leiter is still a jerk, but his most recent paper on religious toleration is an interesting read. (h/t) It reminded me of the better discussions from my Church & State class with Noah Feldman, in which we discussed whether freedom of conscience is a product of bias toward Western religious development, since one can conceive of faiths which did not depend on their being freely chosen for their appeal to the deity.

Robots are the answer.

Every time people start freaking out about some coming labor crisis and cast aspersions on my decision not to reproduce, I just think about Japan. The increasing number of elderly Japanese will be assisted by robots. Of course, any SF fan knows that without proper programming and design, robots will destroy us all, but the Japanese are working on that too. (h/t)

Monday Bake: Chocolate Bundt Cake

This is a modified version of the Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake from The New Best Recipe (modified in that I didn't have any instant coffee so I used extra cocoa instead). Using a bundt pan instead of two round pans essentially doubled the baking time.

Preheat oven to 350 and grease pan with Baker's Joy.

12 tbsp softened unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 large room-temperature eggs

Beat butter for 30 seconds, then gradually add sugar and beat 3-5 minutes. Add 1 egg and beat for 1 minute. Repeat for other egg.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup + 2 tsp cocoa (2 tsp should have been powdered coffee, but I didn't have any.)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

Whisk these together and add 1/3 of the mixture to the batter with your mixer on its lowest setting. Then add 1/3 of a mixture of the following:

1 cup + 2 tbsp milk
2 tsp vanilla

and mix until almost blended. Repeat for other 2/3 of dry and wet ingredients. Mix for 15 seconds or until satiny. Schlop into bundt pan and bake for 50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Dust with powdered sugar.

The only thing I did wrong (at least that I know of before tasting it) was that I failed to push the batter toward the sides of the pan. This meant that it puffed up in the center of the cake instead of reaching the ridges on the sides and inner ring as well as it might have. My next Bavaria cake will be prettier.

Summertime

I have this overwhelming urge to start sewing again. Wouldn't a wrap top (something like one of these, but maybe with no collar) in a jaunty cotton be great for summer?

Book Review: A Conspiracy of Paper

I was reluctant to read any of David Liss's historical novels due to my adverse reaction to Dorothy Dunnett's fifteenth century Dutch series, but an airport bookstore and a too-quickly-finished I Promessi Sposi led me to make a begrudging purchase.

Imagine my delight, then, when A Conspiracy of Paper turned out to be more of a hard-boiled detective novel than a boring saga about a eighteenth century family of stock traders. Ben Weaver, a former prizefighter, became a thief-taker and returner of lost property after an injury forced him from the ring. Estranged from his Jewish family and name, Ben ekes out a respectable living catching robbers and taking other odd jobs. But after his father's death in a horse carriage hit-and-run, a young gentleman appears at his door. The death was no accident, he claims, and neither was the alleged suicide of his own father. The deaths are linked, but only after an investigation that takes him from the theatre to Exchange Alley will Ben determine how. We meet a beautiful lady, a whore without a heart of gold, wealthy businessmen who will stop at nothing to ensure the success of their big deal, and the world's first modern crime lord as we follow Ben's investigation of his father's machinations in that newly minted institution, the stock market.

Aside from a few rather gratuitous jabs at the corporation and a couple of villains who get a little monologuey, Liss's first novel is uniformly superb, with plenty of informative historical detail to flesh out the potboiler mystery plot. Ben is a detective in the best Sam Spade mold and his dissolute doctor friend echoes a more decadent version of Watson. I am excited about the book's two sequels.

It's the only thing.

This is not my secret, but I know what it's like to destroy your happiness just so you can beat someone else.

More fashion stupidity

Petite clothing sizes are for women under 5'4". They are the salvation of people like me, who are short but have developed enough roundness through the hip to make buying juniors' sizes a chancy proposition. They are also apparently becoming harder to find.

It's true that petite garments can tend toward the frumpy, but they need not do so. I find it odd that even as trendy retailers like Banana Republic expand their petite offerings, department stores are cutting them. Maybe they just need better buyers in the petite sections of those stores.

I always go to stand-alone retailers, not department stores, for petite clothing (Ann Taylor's petites are nicely proportioned) because even the smaller sizes of petite suits at department stores can often look like they were designed with the ladies who lunch in mind. The last time I broke that rule, I had a very disappointing Nordstrom experience in which the clerk could find exactly one conservative women's business suit that was made of wool. Tacky items bedecked with fabric bling were everywhere, though. It sounds like this is less a failure of demand than a failure of department stores to appeal to style-conscious short women.

Gay Paree

I uploaded a handful of my Paris photos to Flickr. If you want the whole online album, email me.

PTN Book Club Reminder

Don't forget that reviews of The Betrothed are due next Wednesday. I finished it up on the plane back from Paris and have only good things to say about the book. If you've fallen behind, Memorial Day weekend will give you a few days to catch up.

Don't trust anyone under twenty.

I am officially old.

The Brits have been using a high-pitched "mosquito" sound that only teenagers can hear to drive loitering adolescents away from businesses where they're not wanted. (Age-related hearing loss starts at age 20 or so; high-pitched sounds go first.)

The teens have struck back, copying the sound to mp3 format and using it as a ringtone. Now they can get calls and text messages without alerting teachers or other adults.

Can you hear the sound? Two versions of it can be found here and here. I cannot. (h/t)

Lusty boos!

Looks like Sofia Coppola's latest is a dud. Snaggletooth Dunst freaks me out a little but being surrounded by posters for this movie in Paris got me excited about its release. Poor Jason Schwartzman.

Work it out

If the tech companies can make this, why can't they make my most desired fitness-related invention, namely a sensor for treadmills/stairclimbers/exercise bikes that turns off your TV if your activity stops? This is the only way that I'd exercise every day.

HLS Prof Hissyfit

This old e-mail tiff between three HLS professors is hilarious. Disclosure: I had and liked both Warren and Nesson and harbor a grudge against Tree for his e-mail address usage (he never checks the law.harvard.edu one, even though that's the one available to students).

What dead horse?

Know how sometimes you're reading your favorite blog and you see that the blogger is going on about some totally uninteresting thing AGAIN and you just want to shake him and say, "Drop it already! I get it! Nobody cares!" Perhaps fortunately, physical assaults of this sort cannot be transmitted electronically, and so the experience just repeats itself over and over because very few readers have the cojones to tell people that they're boring.

This is your chance to make sure this stops for at least one blog. Tell me in the comments about the one recurring topic you are sick of that I blog about. Whatever subject the most people think is annoying/mind-alteringly dull/unnecessary will never be blogged here again.

(Special bonus points if you guess what inspired this fit of pique.)

C Student Gets College Dropout Admitted to HBS

Former CMCer Blake Gottesman (previously) has been admitted to Harvard Business School despite his lack of a college degree. The Economist and the Harvard Crimson are unimpressed.

During the short time I went to CMC with Blake, I thought he was a nice, intelligent guy, but the job he's had for the last several years does not seem equivalent to three years of education and the business-related work experience that HBS students typically have. This says HBS looks for leaders. I'm not sure what about petsitting and making PBJs indicates leadership. It sounds like followership to me.

An alum's reaction to the news: "Maybe they'll have him take some kind of special Waylon Smithers courses."

Fourth Amendment Doormat

A lot of people could use one of these. (h/t)

Credit Card Hades

(Warning: ranty.)

I've had a Capital One MasterCard for about eight years. I used to use it as my primary card, but last year I got an Amazon Visa that gave gift certificates for dollars spent and now use that for nearly everything. I kept the Capital One card because it is one of the only cards that charges only 1% for currency conversions and I do a fair amount of overseas travel. I've never notified the company before I went overseas before, just went over to Turkey/Spain/Iceland and started spending.

This time I tried to use my card in France and everywhere I went it was either declined because they only accepted Visa or declined for real because Capital One apparently thought the transactions were fraudulent. I returned home to find a phone message from Capital One's fraud department. This would have been nice to get had I actually been home when the charges are occurring, but the charges were for real and thus their call was useless.

I called customer service yesterday and asked them what was up with freezing my card. They said that the fraud detection is now more sensitive and I have to call them before I go anywhere with the card (what are they, my mom?). I rolled my eyes and said fine, but then asked them if I could switch to their 1-2% cash-back rewards Visa since the reason I never use this card is I get nothing for doing so. They then informed me that they couldn't do that, but I could cancel my current account and apply for the other kind of card.

Double-you tee eff? Isn't your credit score partially a function of how long the accounts have been in existence? Why would I want to cancel my oldest account? The funny part is when I checked the mail there was a letter from Capital One informing me that they had changed my card to a points-reward version. However, the points convert to gift certificate at one-fourth the rate of my Amazon card, so no business is coming their way for that. What should I do?

Anonymous Lawyer Book Reviews

Advance copies of Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer book have been sent out. Here's what looks to be the first review. Here's Ann Althouse explaining why she quit 20 pages in. I never found the blog particularly funny, but if people are willing to make this a Book Club selection I will keep an open mind and read it.

UPDATE: Ted Frank's negative review is here.

Orc in a top hat

Europe has an American-Idol type program called Eurovision. We watched the semifinal last week and found out that the final winner was the controversial Finnish band. I'm mad that the Lithuanian group didn't win.

Baa-ack.

What happens to a traveler deferred?

Does she dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or jog to a new gate--
And then run?
Does she find new friends to meet?
Or seethe at crying babies--
And stomp off to buy a sugary sweet?

Maybe she just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does she explode?

This is dedicated to American Airlines and O'Hare Airport.

Do I have to turn this blog around?

I am in Paris. Behave!