Wait, not Curly?

Blog Voted "Most Fun," Claims Lawyer - Lowering the Bar

The editors of the ABA Journal have again chosen Lowering the Bar, written by Kevin Underhill of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, as one of the top 100 legal blogs in America. The blog made the list for the second year in a row, again being named in the “For Fun” category, there really being no other suitable place to stick it.…

“Granted,” Underhill said, “declaring this to be the ‘Most Fun Legal Blog’ is a little like saying that Moe is the smartest Stooge…

No kidding

The Incredibles | Law and the Multiverse

In today’s mailbag we have a question that several people have asked about, most recently Thomas, who wrote: “In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible is sued for foiling a suicide attempt. Would a superhero be liable for something like that? Aren’t suicide attempts illegal?”

This blog, Law and the Multiverse [h/t Lowering the Bar], is absolutely going on the work avoidance list.

Noted

Phrase of the month: stealth recall | Odd Man Out

Reading the story, I wondered about government oversight of pharmaceutical giants — I wondered when it ended, that is. And how could any government that actually works for the public good fail to bring charges against the big chiefs at corporations involved in the production and distribution of tainted drugs? I’ll bet there are heroin dealers who have more scruples.

All about those jobs

Graph Gallery: Employment Graphs

Black

Technolog - Will Google, Facebook, others 'nuke' Internet over SOPA?

If Wikipedia Jimmy Wales' threat to turn off the crowd-sourced encyclopedia to protest the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) sent you into a cold sweat, you won't welcome this news.…

Semi-good

Glacial Progress on Jobs

As the New York Times keeps reporting in its fine “Working for Less” series, some jobs are coming back but the wages are down by as much as half.

And much, much more

2012 Predictions | Features & Columns

The Supreme Ccourt will declare Obamacare illegal—in fact, the court, in a 5-4 decision, will opine that all health care is illegal and an affront to natural law. "You don't see the word 'doctor' in the Constitution, now do you?" Chief Justice Roberts will say.

It'll probably work just as well

Grandpa the 'psychic' monkey's toughest challenge yet will be to predict GOP winner in New Hampshire primary - NY Daily News

On Monday, the day before the showdown in the Granite State, The News will have Grandpa pick a banana from a bunch. Each banana will have written on it the name of a GOP candidate — and pity all who are not the chosen banana.

Who needs a weather forecast, anyway?

A woman says to me, "This weather is confusing the trees."

I say, "Confusing me too."

At Weather Underground there are two maps that show the 30-day forecast for temperature and precipitation for here. On both maps, we are marked EC. EC means we have an equal chance for above normal, normal, or below normal readings. Apparently, this weather confuses even them.

I like it.

Ahh, the good old days: When your "jobs czar" was just a czarling

Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle | iWatch News

For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn't stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.…

And who would know The Mittens better?

CNN Political Ticker

(CNN) — Five days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, The Boston Globe gave its nod to Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, saying he offers the Republican Party an opportunity to “renew itself.”...

January afternoon

No more fooling around in Fargo

Local police stockpile high-tech, combat-ready gear | America's War Within

If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.

In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. Until that day, however, the menacing truck is mostly used for training runs and appearances at the annual Fargo picnic, where it’s been displayed near a children’s bounce house.…

OK, well, maybe just a little bit. But not much.

 

And you thought they were just a bunch of loons

Fox News blames ‘left-wing blog Politico’ for weak GOP field | The Raw Story

Fox News revealed on Wednesday what they believe could be a conspiracy between the “liberal-leaning press” and the “left-wing blog Politico” to make Republican presidential candidates appear weak.

 

Another one you thought you'd won

UPDATE 1-Militias may drag Libya into civil war-NTC chief - The Washington Post

RIPOLI, Libya — Libya risks sliding into civil war unless it cracks down on the rival militias that filled the vacuum left by Moammar Gaddafi’s downfall, the head of the interim administration said after an outbreak of violence in the capital.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the Transitional National Council, issued the stark warning in response to a gun battle between militias in one of Tripoli’s busiest streets Tuesday that killed four fighters.

There's an ape for that

BBC News - Orangutans 'could video chat' between zoos via iPads

Orangutans at a Milwaukee zoo could soon be video-calling their primate friends via tablet computers.

The hairy tech fans have been playing with iPads since they were first introduced to them in May.

Newt gets all pissy about The Mittens

24 Hours of Gingrich's Insults for Romney - Politics - The Atlantic Wire

Newt Gingrich is absolutely furious that Mitt Romney was able to benefit from the negative campaigning tactics Gingrich pioneered in the 1990s without getting his hands dirty thanks to the Supreme Court decision that Gingrich supported! He promised Monday to attack Romney every single day after the Iowa caucuses, and since the votes were tallied, he's kept that promise.…

Our homemaking tip for 2012

The Best Time to Buy Anything in 2012

OK, maybe not homemaking (anyway we had a homemaking tip a couple of years ago, I think, so another one so soon would be overdoing it a little bit), but definitely tip.

OK, so maybe Iowa's good for something after all

Livewire | TPM

Speaking in Iowa, Michele Bachmann announced: “I have decided to step aside”…

We take what we can get.

Mountain Morning

iPhone abstract: Phil Compton

Sometimes having a short attention span is a good thing

Chinese firm makes Steve Jobs action figure | The Raw Story

SAN FRANCISCO — A China-based company plans to begin shipping a realistic-looking Steve Jobs action figure in February.

OK then, can we go out and play now?

Mexican Grand Warlock predicts Obama loss in 2012 | The Raw Story

 

Re-hope

Op-Ed: The NDAA is a threat to the democratic rights of all human beings

With the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law by the US Senate and President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, the oldest democratic right (habeas corpus) of civilized peoples everywhere has effectively been scrapped.

Habeas Corpus requires that before any person is arrested and held in custody the government must first present evidence to a court of law and obtain a court order. This law has its roots in the Middle Ages but was officially codified into law during the course of the English Revolution of the 17th century. It effectively removed the despotic power of arrest and detention without trial from the monarchy and afforded ordinary citizens the right to prove innocence before prosecution.

1%

Presidential candidates outspending 'Super' PACs | iWatch News

Through the end of last September, the campaigns of Democratic President Barack Obama and Republicans Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Fred Karger, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy  Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain combined amounted to $74 million.

That’s according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics.

So we can forget Iowa for another four years now

The Iowa Caucuses - NYTimes.com

The Iowa caucuses, in which a nation awaits the verdict of a handful of some of its least representative citizens, are not going to settle the race for the Republican nomination for president. But they did put on display the choice the Republicans present to voters: right, far right or the far, far right.…

…two-thirds of caucusgoers identified themselves as Tea Party supporters.

Security theater

Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? | Culture | Vanity Fair

To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs.…

Marked down for quick sale

Assorted Stupidity 2011 - Lowering the Bar

In an effort to clear out the stories I flagged but didn't get around to writing up during 2011, here's an end-of-last-year "Assorted Stupidity" that collects some of those, in no particular rank or order. I might or might not return to some of these tales; as you may have noticed, there is no shortage of stupid material, and I don't want to fall too far behind.

I actually did a couple of things today

I don't make resolutions and I don't make plans, but I do make lists. Lots of lists. I like to make lists because I learned a long time ago that once you put something on the list it goes away. Putting something on the list is the surest way I know to forget about it altogether.

 

So last night I sat down and made myself a list of stuff I didn't want to do and then this morning, probably before I was fully awake, I actually did three things on the list.

 

Remind me to be more careful in the future.

All news, all now

If you use an iPhone or iPad, here is a terrific news aggregator called Zite. There are a lot of good news aggregators around, of course, including one called Flipbook, which has been making a lot of waves recently, and one from Google called Google Currents, and one from AOL (for the iPad only). And there are all sorts of newsreaders that aggregate RSS feeds, Google Reader being the granddaddy, and possibly the best of them all.

 

Zite, however, proposes to "learn" what you like to read and collect information accordingly, and appears, at first glance, to do exactly that. So then, worth a try. Plus, it's free.

 

So far, no indication of whether or when it will be available for platforms other than iOS.

If you mixed raisins with Cheerios…

…would you get Gorarios? Or would you have to call it Gorac?

Just wondering, is all.

 

Only 354 days left until everybody abruptly stops talking about Mayans

xkcd: 2012

Santorumentum

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/01/santorum-and-the-republicans.html?currentPage=all

Several things are worth noting here. The first is that, in today’s Republican politics, one reliable way to reach beyond the Christian base is by whipping up nationalistic hysteria with language lifted straight from the McCarthy era. If criminalizing all abortions and nullifying all gay marriages are a little too sectarian for you, surely you’d like to try some old-fashioned traitor-hunting.

Sauce for the goose

Undernews: Iowa GOP has one set of election rules for itself; but doesn't want them for the general public

If it seems that all of the items mentioned above [see link] are ones that Republicans --- even Republicans in the Iowa statehouse and the Iowa Secretary of State's office within the past year --- have fought virulently against allowing, for years, for elections in which Democrats will be participating, you would be correct. Nonetheless, when the GOP is able to set any rules they like for their own elections --- including tonight's all-important "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa caucuses --- those are the rules that they've selected.

Just in case you had a question, Bunky

Santorum tells Iowans: ‘I don’t want to make black people’s lives better’ | The Raw Story

Speaking to Republicans in Iowa on Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said his administration would reform welfare to the point that it would offer no welfare at all.

After suggesting that an expansion of Medicare is really just a plot to make voters more “dependent” on Washington, Santorum added: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”

And I'm not going to say this again

Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten list

Just in time

Google Politics & Elections

Here's Google's new Politics & Elections page; there are a lot of election-watching apps floating around too, one of the best of which is from the NYTimes (for iPhone/iPad). Myself, I'm figuring there's plenty of time to worry about elections in, say, October. Or so.

And if I hear somebody say "closing arguments" one more time I'm going to scream.

I lived in Indiana once. For about six weeks.

This Exists: Indiana State Sen. Proposes Bill To Penalize People Who Sing National Anthem Incorrectly | Mediaite

 

Don't go

It's a little cloudy but it's warm again today.

So now you can go ahead and buy that little electric thingamajig

The Pogies Celebrate Better Living Through Gadgetry - State of the Art - NYTimes.com

SOUNDRACER ($32). Imagine plugging a small pod into your car’s cigarette lighter — and turning your boring suburbmobile into a thrilling, far more expensive sports car. Well, at least your car will sound like that thrilling sports car. As you accelerate, slow down, shift, cruise and idle, appropriate sounds emerge from your sound system. All the sonic pleasure of a roaring V8 engine…

Melons? Really?

Iowa Caucus Voters Lack Enthusiasm - NYTimes.com

DES MOINES — After months of inspecting potential presidents like melons, Iowa Republicans spent the weekend settling on their final specimens — and showing how acquainted they were with their bruises as well as their sweet spots.

Imagine how bad it will get by November if we're starting with melons here.

Keyboard less, talk more

Now is the time to figure out if I can learn to dictate after all those years of typing. Now or never. That's the plan. Expect more. Learning to dictate, seeing what voice control can do, is the key to decisions about using mobile devices down the line.  

I say plan, not resolution, because I gave up making resolutions a long time ago. And I'm I pointing that out because now, the first of a new year, is an especially dangerous time for resolutions.

Of course I don't make plans much either, but that's another story.

So close, so close

After an excellent family dinner (smoked salmon) and a movie ("Margin Call": Opaque storyline, fine acting, no kissing) last evening I got caught up for quite a while in the book I'm reading ("REAMDE") and then, growing sleepy, turned in. Just before snapping off the light I glanced at the clock and it said 11:45. I asked myself, do I really care enough to stay awake another 15 minutes and I answered, nawww. So I didn't.

But I woke up this morning and it was next year anyway, and next year had become this year now, today.

It was supposed to be clear and sunny but it was foggy and dark.

I'm not really expecting much from 2012

‘Kosher’ dildos? Sex toys increasingly marketed to religious crowds | The Raw Story

Did you know that you can get kinky while still worshiping the Lord? It’s true, according to a new and somewhat perplexing online trend: religious sex toy shops.