I have a Google alert set up to let me know when my name appears in the news or on someone's blog. It doesn't go off all that often (I'm not that newsworthy), but it can be helpful to let me know when someone has linked to my blog.
Occasionally though I get alerts for the wrong Catherine Gellis. It's not a particularly common name, but it's not unique either. Vanity googling earlier revealed that there's another in Virginia, and one in New England. Or at least there was. Today's Google alerts were for news that the latter has just died of cancer, and at just 33 (I'm 34).
So I write in part to stave off any confusion by any other googlers. We had the same name, had relatives with the same names, used to live in the same area and were close to the same age. I've been confused with the other Catherine Gellis before, and could easily again be with this one.
I also wish to express my condolences for her untimely death. She wasn't someone I knew, and I don't think we were related, but somehow by virtue of sharing the name I still felt somehow connected to her. Few people get to go through life with the privilege of being named Catherine Gellis, but she was one of them. From all accounts she seemed like a decent person and loved by many, as all Catherine Gellises should be.
Last week I was in New Jersey fulfilling a few more of its unconstitutional CLE requirements. I've objected before to how onerous these requirements are for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they require attorneys to physically be in the state to fulfill them. This requirement poses an undue burden on out-of-state residents, who must travel great and expensive distances to get to those classes, and thus runs afoul of the US Constitution, which prohibits such discrimination against them.
I had not realized until a few weeks ago though that it is apparently possible to schedule an appointment to watch video replays of the CLE lectures on dates other than when they are formally presented. They still cost twice as much to view than the live lectures (again discriminating against out-of-state residents who are necessarily unable to fly in and out for the more affordable yet randomly-scheduled in-person versions) and are still not given on all dates, but it's something, I suppose.
So on this occasion I watched two videos to satisfy the third year requirements. (Inconveniently I must still do the second year's sometime in the next six months lest I become ineligible to practice anyway, but I was unable to schedule their viewing during the date I could be in New Jersey.) The courses were "Municipal Courts" and "Landlord/Tenant Law."
A few weeks ago on our houseboat we had another "Family Night." I made pancakes in deference to the one's vegetarianism, inadvertently forgetting about another one's gluten intolerance. Oops. I remember another gluten-intolerant friend once telling me that he recognized his intolerance one night after he'd eaten a huge bowl of pasta and ended up in a homicidal mood for no good reason. Brilliant. Just the kind of mood you want to risk putting your roommates in...
Yesterday we celebrated America's birthday, today we celebrate Huey Lewis's. But even Huey himself was on hand to celebrate America's yesterday when he and the News performed in DC at "A Capitol Fourth," the annual shindig on the lawn of the Capitol.
As a fan it's nice to see HLN get the kind of exposure and respect such an invitation affords, and it was also nice as a fan to have the performance so helpfully beamed to me by PBS. But having previously endured these DC affairs before, I'm acutely aware how awful they are to attend.
For one thing, it is at best bitterly ironic (to say nothing of unconstitutional) that people must surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to attend these celebrations of "freedom." When I attended in 2004 I was appalled to discover I was not able to enter this public event in a public park without "voluntarily" submitting to invasive searches of my person and possessions. On that occasion, while I waited in the entrance line like a lamb to slaughter, I heard Clay Aiken belt out how proud he was to be an American, "Where at least I know I'm free." I suppose he was able to maintain that illusion because as a performer he likely wasn't forced to undergo these invasions of his privacy. But as one of the teeming masses, I was much less sure.
The other problem with these events is that they're really designed for the television audience -- a completely banal, milquetoasty television audience. Consequently they suffer as a live event, which is a shame for a band like HLN, which is such a consummate live band (even Jimmy Smits in his corny introduction acknowledged them as such). It also always drives me up the wall as someone so familiar and appreciative of their work that they are so often regarded as a banal, milquetoasty band. But maybe that's changing...
See, the other bit of Huey Lewis news is that they have a new song, released this week on MySpace, the first studio effort since 2001. Seth Rogan asked them to do the title song to his new movie, Pineapple Express. I'd worried about what the lyrics would be like given that constraint, but it turns out they're eminently serviceable and much better than I feared (on par with "Back in Time," itself a title song from 1985's Back to the Future, which still has legs today). The real story though is the music, and for those who've not heard HLN for a while I recommend it as a snapshot of their current sound. It's the same energy-driven musical layering they've been doing since well before the Sports era, but now with a built-in horn section and increased R&B flavor. I can say nothing about the movie, but I can definitely vouch for the song.
Of course, I'm obviously biased, but you don't need to take my word for it -- even the Wall Street Journal thinks so.
In fact, listening to it closely now I think it's more the pity they didn't do this song last night in Washington. But then, that's the kind of rebel I am...
A few months ago I saw Jonathan Zittrain give a talk about his now-released new book, The Future of the Internet -- and How to Stop It. One of the premises of his talk was that the Internet is becoming exceptionally balkanized, with little corporate fiefdoms springing up to intermediate the Internet user's experience. He drew analogies to the heady days of the mid-1990s, when personal computer networking was just starting to become mainstream. In those days, people would subscribe to services like CompuServe or AOL (now the same entity, but separate back then) and their entire online existences would take place within those company-defined worlds.
I remember a joke I heard back then (which unfortunately I don't know whom to attribute it to) that went, "The people who think America Online is the Internet are the same people who think Taco Bell is fine Mexican cuisine." The point of the joke was that there were all these people who interacted online within the narrow spaces provided by their services, thinking they were accessing the entire world, when in reality they were experiencing just a tiny sliver of the online universe.
I had high hopes for last night. Some friends of mine had met at a Giants Singles Night in a previous season, and since I've decided that it's time to think about settling down with someone in whose confidence I can be assured evidentiary privilege, I thought it would be a good idea to go.
I was wrong. It was an enormous waste of time and money. Except for an increasingly exasperated DJ there was no organization, no sense of place or occasion for these scattered and sparse mingling singles -- just a limply cordoned area and a coupon for a free drink out on the centerfield plaza. Men were in short supply, as was maturity generally. It immediately became apparent that any man who might actually be my type had demonstrated it by wisely not attending.
I haven't yet written about the current presidential race, which is both good and bad. I'm always wary of writing posts on common topics, fearing my own addition will amount to little more than, "Me, too." But at the same time it's still worth the exercise to distill some sort of insight from all the noise, and it might have been nice to have had a record of my opinions as they developed over time. Particularly how they changed and evolved with respect to the candidacies of Clinton and Obama.
Kevin Underhill has a great blog, Lowering the Bar, that chronicles in a particularly witty fashion some of the absurdities that abound the legal world. I first thought of him and his blog when I encountered the headline on England's The Guardian website, "Banger to rights: sausage exonerates woman."
Because what could be sillier than a sausage?
Sorry for the extended pause. That busy-ness I earlier referred to has not yet abated (soon, though, I hope... I miss having enough mental cycles to write).
But I do now have a new post, only it's over at the old Great Change blog. I realize that I still have a few things to add to that story, things which I don't really want to mix up with what I'm trying to create over here. (Well, when I can get to it...)
I'm not saying we should attack Myanmar. I'm really not in favor of attacking any countries at all. But I'm trying to figure out how the justifications made for the invasion of Iraq do not also justify -- or, indeed, *demand* -- that we similarly undertake a military effort to overthrow the ruling Myanmar government.
After all, much of the public justification for the Iraq invasion was based on the country being ruled by a tyrannical autocracy that ruthlessly turned on its people. Certainly the same situation is present in Myanmar, and possibly on an even greater scale. The ruling junta's indifference to the health and well-being of its entire population seems to put even Saddam Hussein on his worst day to shame.
Of course, in the case of Iraq it was also argued that America's own interests were at stake. Hussein might have been harboring terrorists, or building a nuclear arsenal. As far as I know, no such similar allegations have been asserted against the Myanmar government. But even if there were it wouldn't affect this analysis, seeing how in the case of Iraq none of those allegations turned out to be true themselves. No doubt Saddam Hussein harbored a great deal of antipathy and suspicion towards the United States, but hateful feelings do not an imminent danger make. In terms of posing an *actual threat* to American security he was obviously lacking. On the contrary, his rule in some ways even *assured* the security of the U.S. For example, under his government Al Qaeda, a mutual enemy of both him and the United States, was not free to operate. Whereas after his overthrow Iraq suddenly became the Al Qaeda breeding ground it hadn't been before.
So when we take a look at the arguments underpinning the Iraq invasion and compare them to the ones that would support an invasion of Myanmar, we see there's little difference. In fact we might be left with even *more* justification to invade Myanmar, given the scale of the junta's longstanding track record of humanitarian crimes and scope of imminent harm its current behavior is likely to cause.
Meanwhile, remember also that Myanmar has oil, which has often proven to be an important factor in choosing whom the U.S. should invade. Myanmar's wealth of natural resources has always made it a complicating factor in Southeast Asian geopolitical relations, and it's a wealth it might behoove the U.S. to have some control over. Personally I find this kind of rationale wholly unqualified to justify the violent incursion of a sovereign nation, but the point here is that because the current U.S. government has relied upon such reasons before, it's hard to see why it would not be willing to rely upon them now too.
At the core of the neoconservative thinking behind the Iraq invasion was the idea that pre-emptive self-defense could provide a justification for an otherwise forbidden act, in this case an act of war. Necessity and justification are concepts that do exist in law to exonerate bad acts that are necessary to prevent even worse results that would occur but for the intervention of these other bad acts. It's the idea that shooting a gunman could ever be ok. If it could reasonably be believed that the gunman posed a threat, shooting him first can be justified, whether to protect oneself or to prevent harm to other innocents. Defense of others -- if you reasonably thought the gunman would kill other people -- can provide just as legitimate grounds for shooting him as would have defense of oneself.
But these bad acts must still be reasonably grounded and proportionate to the actual risk threatened, and consequently, in the case of Iraq, these defenses come up short in justifying the violent action taken by the U.S. However, when we look at Myanmar, where we see that hundreds of thousands are already dead or missing and the survivors are without access to food, shelter, or clean water, and where the ruling junta is going out of its way to prevent them from receiving those necessary items of survival, they may come closer to measuring up. Right now the world can reasonably and unavoidably see the grave and lethal risk to millions the Myanmar government currently poses. If, then, it is ever right to intervene when such a grievous threat is posed by a government, surely such a time is now. Especially if it was ever Iraq's time before.
I apologize: I've been terrible at posting updates lately. My excuse naturally is that's it's been a hectic and jumbled bunch of weeks. For instance there's been some travel, lots of work stuff, and I've also been teaching swimming lessons again on the weekends. I do love the teaching -- I can hardly believe this is my 20th year doing it! -- but this spring I'm doing it at TWO pools, which means that every week both my Saturdays and Sundays and most of the writing and/or recovery time they'd otherwise afford me get consumed.
One of the pool's classes will wrap up in about two weeks though (the other's will in June) so hopefully by then I'll have more time for posting, which will be opportune since on May 20th I'll be attending the third Bay Area Blawgers event. This time it'll be held at Berkeley, co-sponsored by the Santa Clara High Tech Law Institute and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
Details as posted on organizer Eric Goldman's website:
When: May 20, 6-8 pm
Where: Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley Law School. Directions and parking.
Who: Everyone is welcome, but this event principally will cater to active legal bloggers. Bloggers and friends who have said they plan to attend include: Tsan Abrahamson, Jerry Bame, Robert Barr, Larry Downes, Eli Edwards, Bob Eisenbach, Cathy Gellis, Eric Goldman, Beth Grimm, Greg Haverkamp, Cathy Kirkman, Kimberly A. Kralowec, Ethan Leib, Cathy Moran, Joe Mullin, Deborah Neville, David Newdorf, Dana Nguyen, Aaron Perzanowski, Elizabeth Pianca, Mark Radcliffe, Colin Samuels, Jason Schultz, Tim Stanley, Stacy Stern, John Steele, Kevin Underhill, Fred von Lohmann, J. Craig Williams and Cicely Wilson. (This list will be updated as new blawgers and friends RSVP).
As in the past, the first hour will be a structured round-table discussion and the second will be for shmoozing. I really enjoyed the previous events, and if you are in the Bay Area and either like reading legal blogs (you're reading this one, right?) or writing them you probably will too... RSVP to Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com) if you're interested in attending.
It's also good for an hour of general CLE credit, which I find particularly exciting, seeing how although this will be my third Bay Area Blawgers event, it will be the first where I've been eligible to earn it...
Remember how a few months ago I indicated some Huey Lewis and the News concerts were coming up, and it remained to be seen which ones I'd decide to go to? Well, dromomaniac that I am, I decided to go see the ones in Japan.
HLN were over there this month, touring with Chicago. They did six dates, including three in the Tokyo/Yokohama area this past weekend, which I just got back from seeing.
Hence the light blogging here, because I was actually doing something resembling blogging over on the HLN fan board, filling other fans in on what it was like to be over there and see the shows. Although it's written largely with that audience in mind, it still reads like my normal travelogues. Have a look (There's about four days' worth of significant posts, so keep scrolling among the comments to see it all).
By the way, I don't mean the Disney "Small World" song -- HLN have an entire album called Small World, which includes this title track. A track, it might interest the jazz fans among you to know, that Stan Getz played on. And if neither HLN nor Stan Getz are your cup of tea, how about the Foo Fighters? Huey recently joined them onstage at their show in Osaka...
An important case recently came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, an en banc panel reconsideration of an earlier appellate ruling that found the website Roommates.com potentially in violation of the Fair Housing Act, the act that generally forbids housing to be denied people based on "race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin."
Some, like Eugene Volokh see this decision as a fairly minor occasion. Others, like Eric Goldman and Susan Crawford, on the other hand, see it as a significant piece of jurisprudence related not to the Fair Housing Act, per se, but to 47 USC 230, a 1996 statute that provides fairly broad immunity for Internet sites for the content others put on it.
It's been announced that a third season of Kingdom, the English show centered around fictional solicitor Peter Kingdom I earlier reported liking so much, has been commissioned for development later this year. However, while I still consider it a thoroughly enjoyable show, after watching the second season I've become aware of some cracks in its veneer, cracks which I hope will be patched before the next season is shot.
What tends to make so much English television, Kingdom included, better than many American shows is its greater reluctance to rely on clichés, instead providing truer settings and letting the drama and characters develop more naturally. American entertainment is often so contrived -- with artificial conflict, stereotypical personalities, stories that play to every public misconception, etc. -- that it's particularly refreshing to watch something from England that avoids such pitfalls.
But if Kingdom showed any weaknesses last season, it was in its weakening fortitude in resisting these predictable tropes. In some instances they snuck in connected to dramatic elements, like with the gratuitous introduction of boorish American military types in Episode 3 (an episode also plagued with cartoonish renderings of its own usually warm and rounded main characters), or the all-too-convenient plot device of a cataclysmic flood in the season finale.
But where I want to particularly focus is on its occasional, yet increasingly frequent, unfortunate and unnecessary over-simplifications of the law, a tendency which does a deep disservice to its characters, stories, and production generally.
The Olympic torch is now passing controversially through cities around the world, leading up to this summer's games to be held in Beijing. As China continues its crackdown on dissidents, appalled voices in other countries are calling for their nations to boycott the games with increasing volume.
It's a reasonable position: China sees its hosting of the games as an enormous boon, so why positively reward a country that's acting in negative ways?
But I find myself disagreeing with the calls for a boycott. For one thing, it would unfairly punish the athletes more than anyone else. It doesn't seem particularly constructive to use them as political pawns, particularly when it's things such as games that help unite peoples when there is so much else trying to divide them. Availing yourself of opportunities to better understand people you don't agree with doesn't mean you're sanctioning their position. On the contrary, by better understanding the context from which it emerges you can instead end up in a better position to persuade against it.
And in this particular instance I think it is of critical importance that people in the west come to better understand China. Though it's been opening up tremendously within recent years, what's known about it is still based on anecdote and supposition. The more people who can meet it up close and personal to get a more accurate measure, the better. In fact it's particularly important in terms of figuring out how our own interests suggest we should choose to deal with it going forward. Because when it comes down to it, I think on further inspection we may be surprised to discover what we *thought* we wanted from China may not quite turn out to be what we actually should.
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