Another relationship poll/open thread

How can you get to the age of 25 or 30 and still be fundamentally out of touch with the concept of passionate, romantic love? How can you never have fallen in love?* Do you just never talk to people, meet people, interact? The world is full of people you could fall in love with, all of them irreplaceable and unique, and forgoing each could inspire a different regret.

* One of my friends is running into people like this repeatedly in her dating life, and I'm starting to wonder if I am closer to the emo end of the spectrum than to the Vulcan mindset I aspire to. I have been with men who "didn't know what love means, anyway," but just as often or more frequently I dated guys who seemed to have listened to a little too much Boyz II Men or were proclaiming their adoration before the first bouquet of flowers had wilted.

Random Roundup

A-cup A-listers defy the pressure to augment their assets.

Law schools make firms pay to do OCI? Unless every student is well-employed upon graduation, this strikes me as a betrayal by the school.

Birth is traumatic? I'm inclined to disagree with Jessica; lots of things that have been going on for thousands of years (death in early childhood, maiming and crippling from epidemic disease) are traumatic now because our society is comparatively safe.

Poll of Relationship Disclosure Norms

Websites like dontdatehimgirl.com can perform a useful function. People love to write online diaries about their personal lives. Your interactions with other people constitute part of their daily experiences. To censor them from writing about you would be to tell them that they could not write about themselves. With that in mind, what information do you expect to remain offline?

- The real name of a former date? Other identifying information?
- The fact that you dated someone at all?
- The length or character or your relationship?
- Why you got together or why you broke up?
- Documentation of personal sexual history (ranging from "good kisser" to "check out these photos")?
- Anecdotes about incidents (good or bad) in your relationship?

If you believe it is generally improper to post any of the above online, are there circumstances in which you would find it warranted? How unusual or creepy would a person have to be for you to feel like a "don't date him, y'all" was justified?

The hero that Gotham needs right now?

This NYT profile of trolls has caught attention from some of my favorite bloggers. (I have been mulling over a long and detailed response to them, but in the meantime here is something dashed off and flippant.) The article examines a dark internet subculture that delights in hacking websites to induce seizures in epileptics, harassing women, and deceiving readers of personal ads into providing titillating information and then distributing the information far and wide, as well as more conventional criminal activity. The internet has made it possible for sociopaths to find like-minded compatriots and act in concert.

Belle notes that this is a conflict between competing norms and asks how to counter the new, evil norms. Megan McArdle has one answer:

The internet has allowed the deviants to find each other, to construct a community with shared norms that tolerate, even celebrate, the pain of others. And it cloaks them in sufficient anonymity to get by in the outside world. If people knew what they had done, I doubt they'd survive two weeks--no one would sell them food, rent them shelter, or for that matter, permit them to merge into the exit lane.* But no one knows.

I doubt that the solution is, as the author suggests, just to learn to live with it. Rather, I'd expect that countertrolls will emerge--hackers who put as much energy into harassing these people as they put into harassing us. Evolutionary biologists call people like that "altruistic punishers", and they serve an invaluable purpose in any society.

Which mode of conduct will survive online is in part determined by the numerosity and energy of the adherents of each norm. Witness any moderately controversial Wikipedia article: unless it's frozen by mods (the long arm of the coercive state, in our model), the content will reflect not the most accurate conception but that of the most single-minded proponent with the most free time. One of the reasons that the AutoAdmit boards were so toxic is that law students and aspiring law students have a lot of spare time and often have very aggressive personalities (at least the wannabe litigators).

So how to counter trollish behavior by individuals with no other hobbies or interests? You really need a few obsessive anti-troll crusaders: people with the skills to become evil, but who use their strengths for good instead. Note that one of the women in the NYT article prevails upon one powerful troll for rescue from the predations of another band. This is like asking the godfather for justice when you are wronged by another criminal. What she really needed was a Batsignal.

* If someone posted Jason Fortuny's whereabouts online, how long would he last? Is this on Intrade?

Shiny!

I want one of these so bad, but there is no way to charge it in our building's garage. This sort of infrastructure problem is going to make it difficult for people living in dense housing to get more efficient vehicles. I should go be the crank at our next condo board meeting and nag about this.

Who shoots a dog as it runs away?

I wonder if these cops also shoot fleeing suspects in the back. (via)

Smackdown!

Melissa Lafsky versus Kerry Howley: not even a contest.

Fame!

I am extensively quoted in an article about the Attorney General of West Virginia.

AutoAdmit Trolls: Unmasked But Not (Yet) Undone

There is an article in Wired about the current status of the Autoadmit litigation: basically, it's completely FUBAR'd. Dan Solove is cited as an proponent of the new wave of anti-free-speech legal theory pressed in this type of litigation. Like my review of his book, the Wired article notes that a similar scheme has been tried with copyright, and the widespread abuses of DMCA takedown notices don't bode well for the future of online speech if Solove's positions take hold.(via)

Run home!

This is pretty awesome. I kinda hope she doesn't mace him in the face next time, though, since (as my friends were surprised to hear Monday night) mace is illegal in D.C. For those who choose to flout the Man's restrictions or live in more self-defense-friendly environs, this pepper-spray keychain is PTN-commenter approved.

Art, Status

Random theory, not particularly well-considered: there is a bell curve of artistic success. True starving artists are grateful for patrons. The marginal value of each patron is very high. Once a certain subsistence level is attained, grubbing about in the marketplace is seen as tacky and the artist may intentionally flout capitalist norms by refusing to charge a market clearing price or indeed any price at all. Artists who care too much about money once they have reached subsistence level or who attempt to capture more consumer surplus are looked down upon as sell-outs. At a certain point, though, the artist breaks through to the big time. Suddenly auctioning works of art is respectable, even if it means high or stratospheric prices. People don't sneer at Christie's the way they do at Ebay (or do they?). Is it a difference of kind instead of degree? Why is it okay for Picassos to be auctioned off for millions but not okay for small-time artists and crafters to capture more of the value of their work?

Semi-relatedly: Is ideology really driven by your desire to see certain groups attain high social status? I want the status of people who fob off novellas in novels' clothing to plummet. I like one commenter's suggestion that the Kindle will undermine incentives for publishers to demand books of a certain length. If only we could be sure that the prices for what amount to longish magazine articles (looking at you, Gladwell!) would be lower than those charged for books that truly warrant hundreds of pages. Perhaps I have no credibility, being a constant consumer of doorstop-sized SF/F novels, though.

Confidential to the dudes at pub trivia

Getting into law school? Not so deserving of praise that it warrants a nickname (creatively, "Law School") or shouting of said nickname in celebration of that group member's occasional correct answers. Practically any doofus can get into a law school.

Also, my already negative estimation of the Air Force Academy? Not buoyed by your obnoxious whoops and shaky grasp on career prestige.

Open Thread

In the spirit of the last post: what do you want to see on PTN?

Sugar and Shopping Diary

slynnro is going to track her sugar and shopping habits and post them for her readers.Good idea? Bad idea? Any interest here?

Why do cats eat toilet paper?

Lily does this also. Never with her claws: always by chewing. Why???

Ho boy.

This cannot end well. I hope P.Z. and his family stay safe.

Urban DINKs FTW!

Tyler Cowen notes that price changes over the last few years effectively provide "a net subsidy to toy-loving, camera-loving nerds and a tax on commuting parents with large families." To this I say: ha-HA!

Why economics should be mandatory in all schools.

You have a small business. Your product is so amazingly popular that every new batch you post on your website sells out in minutes and crashes your server. If you accepted all the requests for custom orders, the wait would be over a year long. Your product is so sought-after that people wait in line to subscribe to book-of-the-month-style clubs that force them to pay for products that they don't even want just so they have a guarantee of getting something. Do you:

A) Raise your prices on your site, potentially angering your customer base but making a bundle?

B) Post your product on Ebay, confident that your increased profits will more than cover the extra couple of dollars in fees and that the price increase will be seen as a product of demand and not your arbitrary decision?

C) Keep your price the same as comparable product that has nowhere near the same demand, discontinue notifications for all new product postings, and just rely on customers' ability to check your website at the right time to allocate your product?

The whole idea that it's somehow better for the customer if prices remain low is paternalistic and offensive. First, it isn't best for the people who want to buy your product and cannot because your sales logistics suck. It's rationing by time and not by money. I guess if you want to reward people with whose time is extremely low in value and who can thus spend hours monitoring availability of your product, fine, but I believe in all that rot about the Protestant work ethic and think that if someone wants your stuff you should encourage them to work and save for it rather than to sit on their butts hitting refresh.

If someone wants to run something as a vanity project, that's fine, but then I don't want to hear any moaning about the wintry economic climate or the travails of running a small business. Businesses exist to make money. You are not "selling out" by charging people what they are willing to pay for your product. You are acknowledging the value of your own labor.

Hold on for one more day.

My five-year-old laptop is making loud rattly noises. Where can I go to get the fan checked on my Thinkpad? It might last for another year or so if I can get someone to pry out what is probably a hamster-sized lint ball from the intake vent.

Talk to me like I'm a five-year-old.

Can someone please explain why A Canticle for Leibowitz is supposed to be good? I read it a couple of years ago but it just seemed mediocre: no particularly striking ideas (regurgitated Santayana and "church versus state"? not original, not originally done), no good characters (especially female characters; women apparently sink into chattel status after the apocalypse and their experience tells us nothing of interest), no unique insights into the human condition, the prose is unexciting and the plotting only serviceable . . . . I hate to say it, but I prefer Starship Troopers.

DC's Finest

Not only can you walk away from an attempted burglary in the District, you can also apparently hit a pedestrian with your car, flee the scene, and get off with a citation for failure to yield. The only reason the driver didn't get completely away was that a law firm partner né DOJ attorney on a bicycle blocked the car in and called 911.

Considering that the MPD, under its "zero tolerance" policy, camps out in front of bars and restaurants and arrests any driver who blows .01 on a Breathalyzer, when said drivers haven't hurt anyone, how can they justify writing a $50 ticket to someone who put a guy in the hospital because he couldn't wait for pedestrians to cross?

Nothing like a useless pelvic exam to add to your existing trauma.

You know that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? That's apparently where all the rape kits go.

Dark Knight Discussion [SPOILERS]

Steve and I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, although waiting for the IMAX experience ended up being a dubious decision, what with the no trailers and the group of yoots who tried to jump us for taking two of the five seats they were attempting to save (their friends arrived 30 minutes into the movie, and it was a sold-out show; they were clearly tripping to think that they could take up a huge chunk in the dead center of the theater) and did I mention the total lack of a Watchmen trailer? Grrr.

Overall, I was pleased with the movie, although the Harvey Dent transformation was psychologically and physiologically unbelievable and the Batman voice effects were a tad distracting. Ledger is almost as good as the hype would have it, and Maggie Gyllenhaal does more with a small role than Kate "Oftom" Holmes could manage. Some quibbles and questions:

- At the end, Dent is lying motionless on the ground. Is he dead, or is his another faked death? In the penthouse at the end, does Bruce say that Harvey can never know or could never know? If Dent is already dead, that's a pretty weak criminal career for a prominent Batman adversary.

- Why are we repeatedly shown Gordon's son and his fascination with Batman when it's Gordon's daughter who grows up to be Batgirl? Gratuitous sexism?

- If they needed a fall guy for the people Dent killed, why not just blame the Joker or one of his minions?

- What's up with the lame Scarecrow scene at the beginning? I don't remember what happened to him at the end of Batman Begins, but if he was caught, how did he escape? If he wasn't caught, why is he conducting small-time operations in a parking garage?

- Watchmen foreshadowing: Note the emergence of Batman-impersonating masked vigilantes. We see that they are fundamentally sad sacks when one of them is captured by the Joker. Batman's tagged deposit of Lau is also an interesting parallel to Rorschach's more deadly deliveries.

Knockoff Knits

Because the audience here is mostly lawyers, I thought the views here might be interesting.

There is, as you might imagine, serious DRAMA in online knitting communities about people publishing patterns that are inspired by or based on other designs, particularly designs that some other person is trying to get people to pay for. I am not an expert in this area, but my understanding was roughly that:

• You can't copyright a clothing design, although you can copyright the expression of a design. This is why knockoffs are legal.
• Logos and "distinctive embellishments" are protected.
• Many stitch patterns are in the public domain.
• You can't assert copyright over a procedure, method, or process. This is why recipes are copyrightable insofar as the directions are concerned, but not "2 cups flour" part

So, legal readership: what do you think of patterns for the following (assume that in all cases the written instructions are not copied directly, although things like chart and abbreviations are in some instances, necessarily, identical):

1. Someone reverse-engineers a sock based on a photo of Jane's design without ever seeing the pattern. The sock is constructed just like Jane's.
   
2. Same as above, but the sock is constructed in an entirely different way or uses a different technique, making the directions substantially dissimilar. The end product looks just like Jane's sock.
3. Someone studies a copy of Jane's pattern and figures out how to do the same things using a different technique or construction method. The end product looks just like Jane's.
   
4. Someone takes Jane's sock pattern and changes the lace or cable on the top to a different type, but otherwise keeps everything the same.
   
5. Someone takes the toe construction from Jane's sock pattern, the heel from Susan's, changes all the stitch counts to make it work with a thinner yarn, and adds in a public-domain cable pattern from a book compiled by Edith.
   

I think of patterns as being similar to recipes, especially since you often have to make substantial changes based on the particular yarn and needles you are using and sizing it to fit. This is why I will never publish patterns (I am currently musing on how to make a v-neck sweater with a Greek key motif--should the key strips go vertically over the sides of the bust, horizontally across just under the bust, or around the bottom and sleeve hems? I have been looking at other patterns for inspiration, but heaven help me if I actually succeeded and wrote up a pattern now, because "zomg copyright infringement!").

Linkage

Paul Gowder has a posse blog.

My ticket in the litigation lottery

I should hire this attorney and sue Paris Hilton.

Incest, Writing

Oh my. I just want to shake this kid so hard . . . . His letter is a prime example of the kind of overstuffed pretension that a seventeen-year-old would think was "literary." A brief visit to New York has already revealed him as an obsequious puppy, precociously able to drop old companions for the next cool thing to come along. His ambitions, though, are both enormous and sadly limited:

I just really like [Gessen's] ideas, just the way he portrays the sort of meandering young New Yorker. It’s kind of what I aspire to be, so it’s kind of really poignant.

The proper follow-up to an allegation of incestuousness is not adopting into the clan and promptly bedding all your new brothers and sisters. Honestly, these people are much less off-putting.

"I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be."

This makes sense, which means it will be ignored in favor of more shoe removal and giant concrete barricades.

50 Book Challenge #44: Freedom & Necessity

(To Say Nothing of the Dog + The Prestige) - half a century + Marxism. Recommended for fans of epistolary novels and lefty fantasy.

It's my birthday and I'll drink if I want to.

Resolved: change my birthday to Amber's Birthday (Observed) so it always falls as to ensure a three day weekend.

Not-So-Random Roundup

Here's a collection of recent posts from Bookninja, my new favorite literary blog:

• What are the most controversial SF novels? It depends on whether we're talking in-group or out-group. Anything involving Harlan Ellison wins the former, but the latter would probably have to be something like The Satanic Verses (which I'll take others' word for as being genre; I couldn't get more than a few dozen pages in, it being, in the words of one reviewer, like "chewing sisal.")
• Books that put you to sleep. My Corporations book was always good for this.
  
• Google book recommendations?

On the random front: hot baths make guys (temporarily) sterile. My first thought was that this can't help the already-low Japanese birth rate. If I were a paranoid NBA player, I might want to invest in a Jacuzzi, or at least a heating pad.

What will people think my name is?

Incredibly lame Slate article links to curiously addictive photo rating site.

Been saying this for ages.

Privacy is dead. The only issue now is how to maximize transparency in government.

"Please put on your turban."

I am really curious on how the family courts come out on this one: it has a wacky, unemployed, occasional-pot smoker mom versus a dad in a religious sect that marries off girls to strangers at seventeen, provides heavily censored education, and has rabbis examine your underwear. Note the part on the last page where they call for a religious consultation on whether men can listen to a four-year-old sing. It is interesting how modesty rules can simultaneously assume the existence and the impossibility of sexual self-control. Religion makes people do strange things.

There is an amusing anecdote in the Jezebel comments about a very religious doctor who wouldn't shake hands with a female patient or look her in the eye, but would conduct a proctological exam.

Weekend Bake: Cherry Pie

I highly recommend this pie. Unfortunately, I got really sick after making it so almost the whole thing is left. Looks like my colleagues are getting some pie.

Pet Peeve - No Linkage

One of the most annoying aspects of internet discourse is when someone enters a discussion and attempts to engage substantively with an ongoing debate, but is derided or ignored because s/he hasn't posted prolifically in the forum before. It doesn't matter if you've been lurking for years; it doesn't matter if you're right: you're not part of the group, and therefore not worth listening to.

If you are genuinely interested in examining an issue, not just in shooting the breeze with your friends, it shouldn't matter what the motives of the new entrant are. It shouldn't matter if you think that s/he might have just surfed over for the purpose of participating in a particular thread, or is actually in substantive disagreement with you on a variety of other issues, or is (heaven for-freaking-bid) not posting under his/her own name. If s/he makes a logical point that you would take seriously were it coming out of a regular's mouth, it behooves you to can the territorial, exclusionary insults and address the substance of the person's position.

If you're not willing to do that, just make your clubhouse atmosphere explicit so the rest of the world will know not to bother attempting to engage with you.

UPDATE: So this doesn't turn into a Carly-Simonesque repeat of my cryptic post on internet romances from a few years ago: the impetus for this post was something from a literary blog, but if you're asking "was it [some other type of blog]?" because of what you've seen there, there's probably a good reason for that. It happens in a lot of places, and I am sick of it. It's especially galling coming from people who claim to be interested in ideas.

The Rules of Attraction

"There is a groupie for every male endeavor."

Anyone can say "I'm somebody's fetish."

Are both valid? Either? Discuss.

P.S. I watched the movie from the post title recently. It was good, but frustrating, since I know that I never take away from these movies what you are supposed to. Here, it didn't seem like the characters' "excesses of sex and substance abuse [were] emotionally impossible." Universities across the nation are full of solipsistic young people from all socioeconomic strata who consume as many legal and illegal drugs as possible, blunder about oblivious to the feelings of those around them, and make unwise sexual decisions for muddled reasons. I fail to see what is so unique and terrible about this bunch, except that they were able to afford higher quality intoxicants, more stylish clothes, and shinier toys. Their lives would be just as empty were they driving to drug deals in Hondas and being rejected by people clad in Old Navy.

Why Bad Fiction Works, In A Way

The unique appeal and strength of bad fiction:

I have this thesis, well completely underdeveloped intuition, that the ways "bad" or "mediocre" prose interacts with its readers' imaginations is misunderstood and understudied. By lacking clarity & precision, "bad style" leaves space for readers to engage and participate with the text on their own terms.

There is a sweet spot for bad fiction. Too muddy a style will just confuse the reader, bouncing her out of the story so she can figure out who is talking, or why the tone changes for no reason, or why someone's eyes are blue in one chapter and violet in another. Authors with limited prose skills sometimes err too far on the other side, overburdening the reader with useless, repetitive descriptions and a shotgun approach to adverbs (see Jordan, Robert; Rowling, J.K.).

Sometimes you wish the prose were muddier, just to obscure your view of the trainwreck (Touched By Venom, represent!).

Inadvertent Hilarity

How influential is Amber MacArthur? She "co-hosts the fifth most-downloaded podcast amongst Canadians."

She's a lot better known than I am, so I don't mean to bash, but the phrasing was just priceless.

Deferred Gratification

I would really like to have watched Hellboy II and bought a new iPhone in the next twelve hours, but alas, I will not.

Unrelatedly, a British couple is facing six years for sex on a beach. Yet another reason not to go to Dubai.

Take away the tax exemption for churches while you're at it.

I don't find this especially objectionable; it's possible that people (like me) who would donate to charities for animals will now direct our money toward those that help people if we know that the A.S.P.C.A., for example, now has enough money to fund operations for decades. Anyway, it's much more offensive that people get a charitable giving subsidy for donating to horribly bigoted religious charities. Maybe we should just do away with the subsidy entirely.

Ew, Texans!

Jared asked about my "worst experience of anti-Southern/anti-Texas bias." This had to be during the 2000 New Hampshire primary. As part of CMC's Washington semester program, we all had to go up to New Hampshire for the primary and work for a candidate. Being burnt out and apathetic, and out of perverse contrarian reaction to my then-boyfriend's McCain fetish, I worked on the Bush campaign. (Shut up! He hadn't done much of anything then! We didn't know! I had to pick one--who should I have gone with, Forbes? Bradley? Zzz. Anyway, I helped him lose.)

In just in less than an hour of holding a sign near a mall I had at least half a dozen people cruise by intentionally so they could harshly declare that we "didn't need any more Texans in the White House," with "Texans" pronounced such that I was in real fear that they would spit on me.

I actually lost my accent after going to a summer writing program at Simon's Rock College and having all the other teenage emo writer-wannabes ask me to say "fixin' to" over and over again.

Why I Intentionally Lost My Accent

Sounding southern makes you poorer:

[B]lacks who “sound black” earn almost 10 percent less, even after taking into account other factors that could influence earnings. One piece of interesting good news is that blacks who do not “sound black” earn essentially the same as whites.

(It turns out you don’t want to sound southern, either. Although pretty imprecisely estimated, it is almost as bad for your wages to sound southern as it is to sound black, even controlling for whether you live in the south.)

Nice to be back in D.C.

Actual line heard over the weekend in Texas (iirc):

How hard can your job be? All you have to do is make coffee for the partner!

I had forgotten, however, how incredibly fun it is to blow things up. All hail jurisdictions with basically no fireworks regulations.

Best Passage from a Supreme Court Case I Read Today

You would hope that this is something we could all agree on:

Our duty, like that of the court below, is fairly to construe the powers of Congress, and to ascertain whether or not the enactment falls within them, uninfluenced by predilection for or against the policy disclosed in the legislation. The fact that the compulsory scheme is novel is, of course, no evidence of unconstitutionality. Even should we consider the Act unwise and prejudicial to both public and private interest, if it be fairly within delegated power our obligation is to sustain it. On the other hand, though we should think the measure embodies a valuable social plan and be in entire sympathy with its purpose and intended results, if the provisions go beyond the boundaries of constitutional power we must so declare.

Technological Job

I feel like I am being tested by the gods of modern electronic devices. I have failed. I renounce thee, technology.

Literacy Tests and Gun Ownership, cont.

I emailed an aspiring law prof friend on whether conditioning gun ownership on a written test (effectively a literacy test) should be unconstitutional, potentially through some unholy blend of the pre-Slaughterhouse Cases understanding of the 14th Amendment's Privileges & Immunities Clause, Carolene Products footnote 4, and an understanding of the historical disarmament of African Americans in the South and how current prejudice against African Americans might contribute to imposition of anti-gun laws in urban areas disproportionately populated by them. At least one reader was skeptical. My friend's response:

I've always thought that the 13th Amendment's legislative history was important, because getting rid of the "badges and incidents of slavery," while ill-defined, has great power w/r/t literacy tests, the VRA, etc, and I imagine the same for gun laws, especially with your historical discrimination and disarmament argument. ... Footnote 4 is most interesting: substantive due process will carry the day here. There is nothing in the constitution about permissible abrogations of the right to bear arms, and so now that it is recognized as a constitutional right under the 2nd, the key, as you intuit, will be the 14th jurisprudence about substantive due process.

The key will be 14.1: "1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." and 14.5: "5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

I would back up your argument that this, in conjunction with Footnote 4, as applied to the newly interpreted 2nd amendment (and toss in the 13th) that onerous literacy tests create an undue burden on the P&I of historically discriminated minorities to bear arms. Congress should have the power to enforce the substantive due process claim by appropriate legislation, against state literacy tests. ... Again, think of the 13th, "badges and incidents of slavery," which is much broader than "former slaves."

I'm curious about whether one could push this even further and argue that the test violate a constitutional right even absent congressional action. Maybe not. Thoughts?

Sorites Paradox?

When does a blog stop being personal and start being real (corporate)? When you take on numerous guest bloggers? When you and the guest bloggers use the site in large part for promotion of your professional endeavors? When your readership rivals that of some magazines and journals of opinion? When you hire employees to help you run your blog? When it constitutes your primary source of income? When you set up an LLC to handle the legal aspects of your blog?

As someone who has conducted very personal relationships publicly on a blog, I have been tempted to delete references to previous associates wholesale, if only so I could peruse my own archives without a twinge of pain and embarrassment, but I haven't, because I own my past. Any changes in my opinions of particular individuals bear on who I am going forward, not who I was.

50 Book Challenge #43: Inferno

No, not the Dante one. There is a story in here about bees that will not leave my mind. Recommended for people who don't mind being creeped out.

50 Book Challenge #42: Duma Key

Why am I the only reviewer who noticed that the title is a pun? A bad pun, at that. This is like a mashup of On Writing (horrible debilitating accident nearly destroys middle-aged man) with Rose Madder (oooh, magical paintings). Standard-issue King, meaning it's like a diner meal: heavy and not especially good for you, but tasty. Solid entertainment executed in workmanlike fashion.

50 Book Challenge #41: Wolfblade

If I am going to read fantasy this trashy, I expect more sex and death. Moderately interesting, but ultimately derivative.

50 Book Challenge # 40: Splinter

Interesting post-apocalyptic SF, although the number of characters seems too low for a reasonable breeding population. Gets all surreal and topiary at the end. Verdict: meh.

Darwin Award Playoffs Begin

Idiots make pilgrimage to site of other idiot's death; are likely to die idiotically.

50 Book Challenge #35-39: Tales of the Otori

I liked this better when it was called The Once and Future King.

50 Book Challenge #33 & 34: The Museum of Dr. Moses & 20th Century Ghosts

Two books of unsettling short stories. One is a little more polished, the other more lively. If both collections are much like what we've seen before by the author or a member of the author's family, it doesn't detract much from the pleasure of reading them. Recommended for short story fans.

50 Book Challenge #32: The Ministry of Special Cases

This was a good book, and might have been a better book had the disappeared kid not been such an annoying twerp. Good for people who like Death & the Maiden but don't want to support dirty old Roman Polanski.

None of this is as bad as scratching through your skull.

American men hate vasectomies. Doctors do it without needles or scalpels now, but some men still won't go for it. You know what's painful, guys? Three to five centimeter episiotomy incisions. Perineal lacerations from 4.9 to 1.9 cm in length. Blood clots and strokes.

Going through a brief period of moderate discomfort with a stiff upper lip, especially if it spares your partner much more severe agonies: isn't that really macho?

Movie Review: A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar

Warning: vague spoilers.

A colleague recommended A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar, a documentary about the California bar exam, and I convinced Steve to watch it with me this week. It brought back lots of memories, especially since our humble protagonists took the test at the Ontario site (which they complained altogether too much about; there's an In-n-Out within walking distance, which is all you need).

It is a little silly, but the test-takers are mostly sympathetic. The main exception, who is insufferably princessy and looks disturbingly like one of my least favorite people, fails, so you get a nice dose of schadenfreude with your entertainment. I'm not sure why the head of one exam prep company agreed to be in the film; the test results don't exactly reflect well on his product. We spent a few minutes after the movie ended trying to figure out the fates of the test-takers; one was working as a contract attorney and one was at a small firm; one other passed the bar but there's no evidence that s/he's in practice. Recommended for J.D.s and wannabes.

Random Roundup

This project could have been a lot more interesting than it actually is. (via)

"did you just street harass me using a SALT-N-PEPA SONG?!?!?"

"How can a country that's not that old look so bad?"

Law Career Advice Bleg

Any career advice for my 1L friend?

• He wants to become an AUSA after 2-4 years at a firm. "Political" firms are okay.
  
• He is interested in white collar defense and government investigations.
• He is a "a bleeding heart lefty albeit a somewhat moderate one."
• He doesn't want to work in NYC.
  

Which firms in D.C. would you recommend to my friend for 2L employment? What long-term path would be best for him to follow?

Sorry, your score only qualifies you for a slingshot.

Something I hadn't given much thought to until it was mentioned in passing in this DCist post on the Heller ruling: if it's unconstitutional to require literacy tests for voting, should it be unconstitutional to require a written test for gun ownership?

Police Files

Cops (at least in D.C.) have been known to kick prone, submissive suspects in the groin. Police in other jurisdictions steal, extort, and arrange gladiator games by forcing gangs to fight each other.

Unrelatedly: two concepts I hadn't heard of before: circumstantial innocence and optical intercourse. The former appears most vulnerable to the criticism that wanting to think about something and wanting to actually do that thing are extremely different; the latter also conflates desire with action.

Fame: SO edition

Steve is in the NYT today!

The article highlights how dumb the plaintiffs were:

Brenda Stanhouse, who bought the game for her son, 15 years old at the time, said in a deposition that she did not know that a player in the game could “stomp to death innocent pedestrians.”

She also did not know that the game included prostitutes, that players could kill policemen or that “a player in the game can kill innocent pedestrians and steal money from them.”

“I’m aware that there is killing in the game,” Ms. Stanhouse said in the deposition. “I wasn’t aware of the stealing.”

The game is called Grand Theft Auto. * facepalm *

That the plaintiffs claim not to have been aware of the other sexual elements of the game partially undermines the article's premise that this is somehow motivated by parents' concern about sex and not violence.

Most Overrated Books?

These are the kind of books that I utterly loathe.

I importuned a bunch of writers and hacks about books they had read that now, when mentioned, make the red mist descend. Books that made them angry just thinking about them; that were once clotted with extravagant critical praise, like the butter surrounding the tiny crustaceans in the potted shrimp at White’s club, or that sort of sprang from the collective consciousness of the metropolitan elite of the time and that everybody felt they had to read. And that, from either category, we now realise are close to worthless.

This is another reason I am reluctant to read contemporary fiction. There's been no shaking out of the genuine masterpieces from the empty, trendy also-rans.

Help Blind Russians

This organization supports blind students and professionals in Russia. For only $30, you could buy a cane for a needy blind person.

The organization itself could use some help, too:

The MN Adamov Memorial Fund was registered as a nonprofit corporation in Massachusetts in 2005. It is not a Federal tax-deductible organization yet. (It will cost almost $1000 for that, and that's not how we want to spend the money--unless you are a lawyer who will help us pro bono.)

It is not an area of the law that I’m familiar with, but maybe publicizing their need will make it more likely that someone knowledgeable will help.

Dos and Don'ts: Police Files Edition

Is it reasonable to repeatedly kick a prone, submissive suspect in the groin? The D.C. Circuit says no.

Striking the groin is the classic example of fighting dirty. From the schoolyard scrapper to the champion prizefighter, no pugilist takes lightly the threat of a hit below the belt. What's more, Bruce supposedly kicked a man while he was down, hard enough to produce bloody urine. Although the constable surely has authority to use physical force in effecting an arrest, there are gradations of appropriate violence. A kick to the groin tends toward the vicious end of that scale. We have no trouble finding that Bruce's repeated kicks to Johnson's groin were a serious intrusion on his Fourth Amendment interests.

Next, we consider the countervailing governmental interests. An officer in Bruce's position has a legitimate and substantial interest in apprehending an armed suspect and protecting himself and the public from possible harm. Although these are weighty interests, it is not clear how kicking Johnson in the groin furthered either of them. (citations omitted)

I have a feeling that this case never would have seen the light of day had the kickee been a regular guy, not an off-duty cop.

Houston: Threat or Menace?

Paul Gowder, on the city of my birth:

Houston? Houston is the worst place in the world, a sprawling, ugly, traffic-laden, polluted, Republican hellmouth.

Unlike most of the country, Houston is doing pretty well right now. It still gets no love, though. Nobody writes poems about Houston.

The smog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over a sea of traffic
on Highway 90
and settles in.

. . . doesn't have that ring.

Goffman, Blogging

On writing, self presentation, and the internet:

Recourse to a backstage area is only one of a number of techniques by means of which performers may make the task of self-presentation more manageable. ...

I think that in fact there are no backstage areas online. On the internet, everything is a front, yet the stress and strain of maintaining a constant and universal front is so great that many performers on the internet make a show of abandoning the standards conventionally associated with a front. On the internet, the audience is with you too often, and sees you from too many angles, for you to pull any wool over their eyes, so the safest way to present yourself is by underselling. No intimacy comes with this deshabille, however. The environment remains dangerous. One skips through no-man's-land in one's pyjamas, as it were. If we live on the internet, as Keith suggested by the title he chose for tonight's event, then we keep ourselves as slovenly there as if we were backstage, yet feel as isolated and as trapped within our shells as if we were in front of the footlights....

Goffman writes that when a performer is publicly discredited, "the members of the audience may discover a fundamental democracy that is usually well hidden." That sounds like a boon, but it may be worth keeping in mind that the most powerful CEOs and politicians in America not only do not blog, they do not even use email. There is accordingly a limit to the internet's revolutionary potential.

I think this underestimates the potential of the net. It's not necessary for Barack Obama or John McCain to blog. If people around them--people who see them "backstage"--blog, then roughly the same thing is accomplished. (It's not as effective, since we don't see everything, and have no access to their unspoken opinions or motivations, but for that reason it may have more of an impact, since they are subject to the bloggers' interpretations and subjective perceptions and thus are at their mercy, unless they provide that inner access--almost blogging by proxy.)

Note to self

Check gauge before knitting entire first sock. Your socks will fit better.

Unrelatedly: I just bought some custom clothes over Ebay. (Like this, but cheaper.) It is sort of depressing to send measurements to Asian tailors.

waist [redacted] inches is your natural waist above belly button right? Many of my customers mistaken the low waist due to wearing low rise pants and skirts, so i have to make sure.. natural waist is smallest part of body above belly button.

Nope, that's just how big it is. This is even worse than shopping in Japan.

Twins?

Snape has a long lost brother!

Off-Label EC?

If mifepristone is the best form of emergency contraception, with fewer side-effects and better efficacy, and it is already FDA-approved for other uses, what is stopping doctors from writing off-label prescriptions for it to be used as EC? (Update: besides the fact that it has to be administered by the doctor?)

"A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity."

This is sort of an insufferable article, but that doesn't mean that the author is wrong about the disadvantages of an elite education. Many of the themes of J.K. Rowling's Harvard commencement address are echoed. (via)

Disney Teaches Men About Hotness

Timothy Sandefur points out that much of what guys need to remember about male hotness can be summed up in a few lyrics from Mary Poppins:

You’d never think of pressing
Your advantage
Forbearance is the hallmark
Of your creed....

You have to be strong enough to have an advantage, but gentlemanly enough to never even seem as if you would press it. To this, add a dollop of casual openness to sensual pleasure and blend.

(Sandefur also muses on how women can be hot with greater ease because we're shooting at more targets. This is the only target I am shooting at.)

Everything we've discussed so far has been about heterosexuals. I'm sure there are some interesting variances on these themes in same-sex relationships, but I'm reluctant to generalize without experience in the area.

50 Book Challenge: A Confession

I have read 50 books.

I just haven't reviewed them. In fact, I am so far behind on my reviews that I have started to forget what I've read. I'm debating embracing some kind of incredibly laconic, word-limited gimmick to allow me to actually review the books in question. Is this cheating? I'm dying here, people.

O zorn!

WHY?

Dear Amber,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

I am on the 6-at-a-time plan. Switching to two 3-at-a-time accounts for Steve and me will net Netflix -$2. Please don't make me do that, guys.

Life is Pain, Highness.

This is horrifying. Guys, there are so many petite ladies out there who would love to be with you. I can almost understand it for the sub-5' male set, but for someone 5'6"? 5'8"? Even in stiletto heels, there are plenty of women shorter than that. (And of course the whole idea that you have to be taller than your lady is sexist nonsense.)

If you want to be crass about it: Research indicates that women will broaden their dating prospects if you have more money--wouldn't $200,000 put a sizable dent in your love handicap? If an extra inch of height is only worth $1,000 per year in additional wages, is it likely that the impact on discrimination in the workplace will make this stuff pay for itself?

N.B. The average height for American men in the Details piece errs on the high side of the actual average. This seems to ring true; the average American man is 5'9" but says he's 5'10".

Summer Reading

Some people on Unfogged got into a discussion of high school books and I looked up the summer reading lists for my old school district to see what they have kids reading these days.

A lot of the curriculum appears to be the same (A Separate Peace! Bleargh!), but what I find vaguely disquieting is that the summer reading requirements for the same course vary from school to school in a way that correlates rather closely with the composition of the student body.

For example, these books are required summer reading for the AP or pre-AP courses at the district's wealthiest school: Rebecca; Alas, Babylon; Lord of the Flies; 1984; Interpreter of Maladies; Slaughterhouse-Five; Poisonwood Bible; Crime and Punishment.

The same courses at the district's poorest school require: Anthem; Light in the Forest; Black Boy; 10 op-eds from news publications; Poisonwood Bible; Candide; plus two more selections that they didn't bother to announce.

Anyway, this is your opportunity to vent about terrible books you were forced to read (or wonderful books that were ruined for you by being forced to read them) or to bash my suburban school district.

Bloomsday, Trekkies, and Grown Women in Wizard Robes: A Common Thread?

An interesting question on fandoms and how they arise:

Bloomsday is fannish behaviour. It’s the same sort of thing as a Star Trek convention. Most authors don’t attract a fandom. There are exceptions: Conan Doyle and Jane Austen come to mind. But Ulysses? True, it’s a limited fandom — I don’t think anyone’s ever written Ulysses fanfic — but it’s a genuine fandom, and I’d like to know what there is about Joyce or Ulysses that permits it.
...
Re-enactment isn’t necessary for fandom. I don’t think it’s something prompted by detail either. Conan Doyle tells us very little about Sherlock Holmes (and even less about Dr. Watson) but there is a distinct Holmes fandom. On the other hand, you could probably conduct a whale hunt using Moby-Dick as a guide, but I know of no society, “The Shipmates of the Pequod.”

I've never been a big Joyce fan (too attached to plot, and I find wordplay for its own sake wearying). Why does Ulysses capture the imagination so? This is sort of a Henry Jenkins question, but it's been a while since I immersed myself in that particular scholarly pool.

Random Roundup

Bizarre Japanese Wii game.

Cute science tee shirts.

How to tone your thighs.

"When I get bored I smear peanut butter all over the dogs' faces and watch them lick it off each other."

Steve, Speciesist.

Me: Doesn't this cat look like Lily?
Steve: No, not really. That cat is much lighter.
Me: But it has the same markings, blue eyes, cinnamon-colored muzzle and pink nose. It is lighter than she is but they look somewhat alike.
Steve: All cats have markings and noses! That doesn't mean anything. If I put Lily in a pound with 200 other cats you would not be able to find her.
Me: You are just racist against cats. "Blah blah, all cats look alike! They're just a bunch of barfing animals!"

Gender and Acting Hot

The men in the comments are skeptical about whether women would really appreciate their trying to act hot, per the previous post. Paul Gowder contends that one thing keeping men from manifesting hotness is the "looks bar":

I think the looks bar for men being able to get away with that sort of thing is higher. [The Apostate stated that "t]his lawyer, if he hadn't been shortish and cute as a button would have come across as creepy with those lingering gazes and flirty affectations." (Women who aren't actively repulsive can act sexy without punishment.)

I noted that part of men's difficulty with acting hot-but-not-creepy may be a lack of role models. Women can pick up "acting hot" from the plethora of hypersexualized female images in our culture, but men have fewer models to work from and thus are more likely to fall into an uncanny valley of almost-suaveness.

marcus challenged the idea that women would actually be receptive to hot-acting men:

Men are pathetically responsive to any sign of sexual seductiveness and unlikely to pick holes in the performance. Whereas women are as selective in this area as they are in the rest of the mating game, and more likely to deliver a withering critique when there are problems in the execution.

I've heard enough men give withering critiques of women's sexual presentation to think that this is fairly common for both sexes. Women may also be so intrigued to see a rare hot-acting man that they may be less likely to criticize. (The relative lack of models may work to men's advantage here; women have far less well-formed ideas of the various forms of hot-acting men.)

Assume, however, that women do in fact react more negatively to average males' attempts to act hot than men do to average women's. Why is it okay for physically attractive men to work it but not okay for less handsome ones? Can plain women act sexy without negative reactions? Hmm.

An integral part of hotness, per The Apostate's post, is "when a man acknowledges his sex appeal and wears it proudly on his person, in every look and gesture and the way he moves, signaling that at any moment, he’s down for doing the dirty." This makes him someone the viewer would have sex with (henceforth "A-hot").

The reason why unattractive women are not deemed creepy for acting sexy is that sexual advances from ugly women are not threatening. The small but real potential for a sexual advance from an unattractive man to turn into a nonconsensual sexual encounter discomfits the recipient. (By definition, a sexual advance from an A-hot man, if it turned into an encounter, would be consensual and desired.)

If you are not Pierce Brosnan or a button-cute attorney in California, how do you embrace your A-hotness without social opprobrium? The best advice I can think of is to project a non-threatening, humanistic, demeanor. An advance from someone who obviously regards you as an equal, desires enthusiastic consent, and doesn't act entitled or take himself too seriously is much more likely to be taken in good cheer, no matter what the fellow looks like. One can make sexual advances without objectification.

I also don't know if I buy the idea that women can act sexy without punishment; women who flaunt their sexuality are taken less seriously, have their agency undermined (overtures perceived as blanket and irrevocable consent), and are stereotyped as sluts by more puritanical folk. Men can also be a bit more direct in their advances than women can without being perceived as crass or crude. If it's unseemly for women in general to be too direct about their sexual needs, it's even more socially frowned upon for ugly women to do so (the subtext being that if anyone wanted to be with ugly women, he would have come to them; their more forceful approach is just evidence of their pathetic solitude, etc.). Needless to say, this is bad.

* And men who love men, but I'm interested in the gender roles at work here.

Ewan and Colin know.

The Apostate, on sex appeal:

It’s not uncommon for me to look at a woman and go, “Oh my. She’s hot.” And for me, “hot” means fuck-worthy, not merely good looking (Lance calls it “oomph”). And I rarely see a man like that - and that’s not because there aren’t good looking men around. “Hot” — or “hawt” — is when a man acknowledges his sex appeal and wears it proudly on his person, in every look and gesture and the way he moves, signaling that at any moment, he’s down for doing the dirty. Many women - including me when I’m feeling it, more rarely now that I’m getting old and bitter - do it consciously or unconsciously. Men? Much less common. Very unusual, in fact.

I generally attribute this to the fact that most men don't try to look hot. Projection takes effort! Maybe guys have internalized the idea that male bodies are unattractive and rely on dominance-related methods of establishing themselves as sexual beings. You are sublime, guys! Tap that knowledge, and go forth in hotness.

Bwah!

Judge holds that having attorneys bill 15 hour days during trial “shows commendable industry but is nonetheless unreasonable.” (via)

Northern European Mutt?

What am I supposed to say when asked about my ethnicity? I don't find "American" to be a satisfying response, freighted as it is with nativist connotations, but for those of us who cannot trace our origins to any single immigrant group and who keep few or no traditions associated with a particular "old country" culture, are we supposed to just respond with befuddled silence? That is itself problematic, in that it presumes a white-bread default state. I suppose I am mostly Scotch-Irish, although my stepfather's Japanese background was probably a more obvious influence when I was growing up than anything else.

Go Zittrain!

Tenure!

Precious moments

Crying at work = totally fine. At least if you're the CEO of Microsoft.

Probably my most terrible crying-at-work experience was when I locked myself out of my apartment on my second day of clerking with a sick cat, drove to work listening to a really ominous voicemail from my then-boyfriend, called him from the parking garage at eight-thirty in the morning so he could tell me that he cheated on me, and then cried in my car until I gave myself a nosebleed. Some people cry photogenically, but I swell and turn colors and generally look like a hot mess. To the eternal credit of my judge and fellow clerks, they didn't say anything, then or any of the other times over the next week or two that I had to take a little break to sob uncontrollably in the bathroom.

Unclear on the concept

Blog readers should drive five miles and get the book that proves my sweeping assertions to be correct.

Oh, Slate.

How can anyone write an article about the ground rules of writing about your children without reference to Ayelet Waldman?

Spurned!

The subtle flavors of the Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Ricotta, Bourbon, and Orange Zest and the Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Cake with Glazed Oranges were wasted on the folks at Steve's work picnic, who preferred gooey globs of chocolate and custard or cookies made of cake batter and funfetti.

Killed for the color of their skin

Could an albino from Tanzania obtain asylum? Albinism is not a race, although albinos could be considered a "social group." (via)

Squaring numbers is just like women.

Via Julian Sanchez, a funny little song about math. I was never a big Tom Leherer fan, although Poisoning Pigeons in the Park is cute.

A general denial, with spice

Via Overlawyered, an answer worth reading.

There's only one attorney at the firm with the initials "W.D.": any bets on whether he will be at the firm much longer? I would hope that this was a silly first draft and that the junior associate printed the wrong version and signed for the partner without reading it.

Help me win a dessert contest!

This weekend I will be entering a dessert contest. I leave it to you, the PTN readership, to choose the recipe for my entry. Some possibilities:

Chocolate Stout Ganache Cake

Ingredient-Intensive Chocolate Cake

Red Velvet Cake with Berries (a personal favorite)

Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Cake with Glazed Oranges

Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Ricotta, Bourbon, and Orange Zest

Caramel Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Triple Citrus Bars

Whole Lemon Tart

Note: I am not particularly skilled at cake decoration, so recipes that involve lots of artfully shaped marzipan are probably not a good idea.

Change we can believe in?

Does Barack Obama yearn for stasis?

I believe the technical term is "wacko."

My freshman year of college, I met a woman who claimed to be a virgin and grossed out by sex, but who flirted often with men. It turned out that she had been knocked up, married, and divorced, foisted the baby off on relatives, concealed her past by telling new friends that photos were of her niece, and reinvented herself every year for a new group of people. She also falsely accused a mutual friend of sexual assault and made my rooming situation unlivable by spinning a series of lies about me to new residents after I discovered her true past. Her liver was a born-again virgin too: every fall she claimed to have never been drunk before. (The preceding year's party photos begged to differ.)

This ATL post just jogged my memory. I doubt that any HLR editors have secret children in Spain, though.

UPDATE: She works in AI research now! This is why Skynet will turn on humanity.

Preach it.

I also hate LinkedIn. It is Facebook for people who want to hide all evidence of their personalities. It has all the charm of the Yellow Pages. It is almost completely useless. HATE.

More HLR Shenanigans?

The great-grandson of one of the founders of the Harvard Law Review contends that Phil Telfeyan's Never Again Should a People Starve in a World of Plenty isn't the only dubious Note in the May 2008 issue of the HLR.

If I didn't know how dumb HLS students can be, I would wonder whether the May 2008 HLR was secretly doctored at the printer's by a YLS mole.

UPDATE: I believe it quite likely that the author of the moot court brief and the Note author are the same person. I also don't find it objectionable that sections of the Note were the same as sections found in an adversarial brief. I agree with McKelvey that it would behoove the HLR to make at least some statement regarding the Telfeyan Note.

Relatedly: Someone else has started a blog about HLR called Harvard Clown School. I am not sure whether it is related to the Harvard Parody blog from a few years ago.

Fuligin

The darkest of dark materials.

Random Roundup

- How to determine your worth (mine is $4440)

- A pair of photos

- Something that got me in trouble when I blogged about it a few years ago

- WANT. Also, WANT, for parallel secret life as a socialite in Monaco. (via)

- How to get no-offered by a law firm

Bleg: I need black strappy evening sandals. Suggestions welcome.

I still had to look up "half-and-half," though.

(I am reading a draft brief on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas settlement. There are many website citations. )

Steve: How long do tiny earls last?
Me: What?
Steve: You don't know what tiny earl is? How can you have been on the internet for like thirty years (ed. note: not true) and not know about tiny earl? Tiny earl dot com!
Me: You mean tiny U-R-L dot com?
Steve: Yes!
Me: U-R-L, not "earl." Tiny earl--what is that, like Prince Albert in a can? Earl? Come on!
Steve: * smolders *
Me: * laughing hysterically * John McCain was a pow!
Steve: Shut up.