The Telegraph in England is reporting on a school in Wales that has banned kids from using goggles during their swimming lessons on the grounds that they are unsafe.
As a swimming teacher -- in fact, one who doesn't actually like her students to use goggles -- I feel competent, and confident, in saying this school is insane.
On June 1, quite a few years ago, President Monroe asked Congress to declare war on England. "CharonQC" reminds us of this fact in this week's Blawg Review, along with many other facts surrounding this date in history.
In all seriousness, I find the history of US-UK relations to be a source of tremendous optimism about the world, showing how two enemies can eventually come to be close friends -- as governments, and as peoples. And people. This week's Blawg Review collects posts from lawyers on both shores (including my "Sticks and Stones" one).
Of course, given the state of UK politics -- with the predilection of its governing officials to underwrite, with the public fisc, their extensions of their homes to house their servants, the constructions of islands in their lakes to house their ducks, and the maintenance of their houses' moats -- it's probably just as well that the US went its separate way all those years ago...
Brian Cuban has been in the news a lot lately for spearheading a campaign to get FaceBook to ban groups of Holocaust deniers. I fear I may have inadvertently picked a fight with him on Twitter however when I recently tweeted:
"Can't support (@bcuban's efforts to force FBook to purge Holocaust deniers. Suppressing those who were X in '30s enabled what happened in 40s."
Of course, as I also tweeted later, "Nothing like tweeting about the Holocaust 140 characters at a time..." While I know what I meant by my tweet, so compressed my meaning might not be clear to others. So I'll elaborate here.
One of the most interesting courses I took in law school was on comparative constitutional law, which I took during my semester in Germany. I think as Americans we tend to take for granted our federal constitution: that it exists, and how it exists. No matter what the school of thought behind how it should be interpreted, there's a reverence towards it that percolates through all of them. We therefore tend to expect that other modern democracies have their own constitutional equivalents -- an expectation that in reality is rarely met. Many democracies have no constitutions at all, or when they do, they don't necessarily map to our own.
Of course, we needn't look abroad to see these other examples of constitutions. Within our own borders each state bears its own constitution, which may greatly differ in form and substance from the one tying our nation together. Case in point: California.
It's Blawg Review, and once again I've been organized enough to contribute to it. Kevin Thompson at Cyberlaw Central is hosting and has composed his Blawg Review in honor of Towel Day, a day of tribute to Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That guide is known for its helpful travel tips, including that one must always be sure to have their towel.
Speaking of travel, my post about going to INTA is linked to this Blawg Review, but without the picture my friend took of me there holding a Travelodge towel due to some concern on my part that given the angle, lighting, and wardrobe choices (or lack thereof) I ended up looking too much like an artichoke in said picture. So instead I sent in a different one, one where there's no danger of me being confused for being a vegetable of any kind. (At least none known in this part of the galaxy.)
I suppose I have Jeremy Phillips, aka @ipkat, to blame. One of the legal folks I met in England earlier this year, it was he who first suggested I attend the annual INTA conference this year. INTA is an international trademark organization, and thus I might not have thought to attend given that I've typically focused more on copyright than trademark in my cyberlaw work. But cyberlaw is rife with trademark issues, and, like, copyright, trademark law deals with regulating expression -- which is what fascinates me about these areas of law generally. So perhaps it would be worth attending?
Of course, once I realized how many people from around the world I knew who would be there, there was no question.
The Inside Washington show today was talking about the popularity and potency of the Obama administration. Even people who don't like his policies seem to like him, which, they point out, poses a huge problem for his political opposition.
Count me among those people who like him, but are not quite behind all his policies. Make no mistake: there is no one else I'd want to have be president right now. His intellect, poise, thoughtfulness, meticulousness, etc., mean that although there's a slew of things going wrong in the world I can bear the news of them with so much less anxiety because I trust that someone capable is in charge of getting us through it. As I've said before, it's not policies I care about, per se, but the methodology by which they are developed. And his methodology I'm inclined to trust a lot.
And yet, on several big ticket issues I care about, I find many of his current policies coming up short in troubling ways. Stocking the DOJ with representatives of the content cartels and backing their litigation efforts against users, supporting the government's efforts to spy on citizens' communications with even greater zeal than even Bush had, taking a rather milquetoasty approach to the Bush administration's torture program, these policies all run completely contrary to everything I've endeavored to fight against in my personal and professional life. Moreover, they also run completely counter to the liberal ethos he espoused in his campaign, and, indeed, the values I suspect he truly believes in.
So I comfort myself with the thought that he is just getting started. It is a new administration, only slightly more than 100 days into his multi-year marathon, with an enormous list of crises and tasks to deal with. That he has already handled so many with the deftness someone with much more experience in his role could only hope to have is to his credit and inspires tremendous confidence. Thus I feel it's only a matter of time before he realizes the folly of some of his administration's positions, including how they may prove counterproductive to his larger policy goals. There are already some good and talented people in his midst ready willing and able to point this reality out to him, and others like me on the outside who will continue to advocate for these polices' reversal.
I still believe he's the kind of president who will hear us.
My earlier-professed interest in English law is under fire from the rather horrific state of English law. Every day it seems I read about some new ghastly encroachment of civil liberties in the UK that even Orwell himself couldn't dream up on his most cynical day.
Fortunately there is "Geeklawyer," a UK technology and civil liberties lawyer, to fight the good fight, however drunkenly and/or pseudonymously. This week he is the host of Blawg Review #203, a Bacchanalian tribute to the latest in law blawgs. Including mine, despite my recent lack of prolificacy. He was kind enough to include a vaguely recent post, the one on contract lawyering, whose relevance increases with each passing week as more and more Big Law firms lay off even more of their lawyers. The legal business model is very broken, and I'm increasingly convinced that contingent arrangements are the key to the future.
But more on this and other topics later. Although hopefully not too much later, as I'd like to be able to make the next Blawg Review...
I've only had HBO once in my life, and it was about 15 years ago, so I did not see the Sopranos when it was first broadcast. But flipping channels recently I started catching bits of it on A&E. I didn't want to ruin it by starting to watch it in the middle, so it was off to my local independent video store (sadly closing this summer!) to rent the DVDs. It took a few weeks, but I worked my way through the entire series, from pilot to finale.
It really spoke to me. Not because of the mob thing, or even necessarily because it's a highly-regarded show, with great acting, a novel storyline, and intriguing characters. For me, it was all about New Jersey.
About that new year's resolution to blog more... Let's just pretend that February didn't happen, ok?
Because it's obviously time to get back on the blogging wagon, seeing how Eric Goldman's terrific blogging round table is convening again next week. I plan to attend, as usual, and ideally with the credibility of being an actual blogger. Thus it would probably help if I were actually blogging...
Interestingly, the theme for this round table is blogger burnout. Why are some people who blogged prolifically a few years ago now suddenly silent?
My silence, however, has nothing to do with burnout. I'm as committed to blogging as ever. Rather, my silence mostly has been due to life taking some interesting turns lately, and wanting to focus on seeing where they might take me. Still, I know that where I want to go blogging will help me get to, so I hope to return to more prolific posting here shortly.
In the meantime, if you're a Bay Area Blawger, please drop by the event next week at Santa Clara University. Further details can be found at Eric's site.
Toymaker Ty has apparently started marketing dolls named "Sasha" and "Melia." I saw a quote by Ty saying that it was a complete coincidence that those happen to also be the names of President Obama's daughters, but I don't think anyone's buying that story.
On the other hand, I can't get behind the analyses laying out the causes of actions the Obama's could raise in suing to stop the dolls. Even if the dolls portrayed more of a likeness of the girls, the free speech angle still seems too blithely dismissed. As I commented on the PatentlyO site's post, while Ty's marketing of the dolls may be unseemly, we are much better off being a country where this kind of thing is allowed to happen than a country where it is not.
When I was in law school, BU, like many other law schools, started offering students a chance to get professional-looking business cards through the career development office. I thought it was a great idea: business cards are a nice, convenient networking tool that can quickly and concisely convey basic contact information, and, instead of using chintzy, homemade cards, by getting them through the law school we could take advantage of their sophisticated branding. Who wouldn't want to get these?
Well, apparently some people. Former law student Jeremy Blachman, of Anonymous Lawyer fame, once had a blog post questioning the need. Or, rather, the need to be any more pretentious than we already were just by being law students. OK, maybe that's more an issue for students who were at Harvard than for those of us across the river at Boston University... But, really, business cards? For students? Still, networking is networking, and it's always good to have a convenient way to do it that doesn't make you look like a shlump.
Especially because you never know who you're going to need to network with.
I was starting to do so well, living up to a 2009 resolution to write a lot more. Why, right here on this blog I almost got up to a post-a-day average. But then my laptop broke, so here I am, sitting at home in the dark, curled up in a fetal position and shaking from withdrawal...
OK, that's not technically true: I've found intermittent Internet access through other means, and I hope to have my own machine back shortly. But until then, and until I can catch up on writing about all the interesting things that need to be written about, I wanted to thank "CharonQC" (aka Mike Semple Piggot) for interviewing me for his podcast for his blog and Insite Law Magazine.
We talked about English and American law and practice, the economy, the presidency, and, uh, me... And yet somehow managed to avoid any mention of Stephen Fry, which seems odd because we managed to work in references to David Tennant and Edward Fox, yet Mr. Fry has had a greater influence on stoking my interests in UK law than either of the others. Oh well, for a future podcast perhaps...
This weekend I added a link to my Twitters on the sidebar of the blog. I'm still embroiled in a love-hate relationship with Twitter, enthused by some of the potential it offers and frustrated by its limitations of that potential that keep me from using it as I want.
As someone who has pointedly studied innovation diffusion, it is interesting to see Twitter slowly spread around the world and watch social norms rise up to accompany it. While some tout Twitter as a microblogging tool, its capacity to create social networks through the following of other people is where the most interesting behavioral norms are sprouting. What does it mean to have a follower (someone who reads your updates)? What does it mean to follow someone else (so you read their updates)? When do you want to follow? When should others follow you? And when is it ever appropriate to unfollow someone and stop reading their posts?
It wasn't even a month ago that I found myself in the US Air terminal at LaGuardia, waiting endlessly to continue my journey up the East Coast. I was very grumpy about it, too, because it was due to US Air's moronic stand-by policy, which I've complained about before. From an operations standpoint, it doesn't make sense to prevent people from getting to their final destinations as expediently as possible if on the day of travel the passenger is ready and willing and the earlier flights have capacity. Last month I was trying to get from DC to Boston and was worried about approaching bad weather. But because the weather in DC at the time was fine, the agent made me go to LaGuardia to catch my connection. Where I got naturally got delayed by the weather there. I could have paid to change my ticket, but as I noted earlier, I refuse to pay for the privilege of solving their flight operations problems.
But even camped out in LaGuardia I acknowledged that as long as US Air eventually got me where I was going in one piece, I guess that would be ok. And it turns out that they're pretty good at that part.
I write on my blog a lot about air travel, partly because I do a lot of it but also because I love to do a lot of it. I am at my happiest when I can log onto United's website and see a list of upcoming booked itineraries laid out for me. It fills me with glee, not just knowing that soon I'll be somewhere interesting but that I get to ride a plane to get there.
I've always been enamored with flight, and I subscribe to the philosophy of Patrick Smith, a pilot and columnist for Salon regarding air travel: isn't it so cool we can do this?
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