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I'm a tenured law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School.
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It put me in Level 6 (high) although I also scored high for Level 1.
We dote on internet quizzes
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory! Here is how you matched up against all the levels: LevelScore Purgatory (Repending Believers) Very High Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Low Level 2 (Lustful) High Level 3 (Gluttonous) High Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) V...
Frank Robinson wrote an understated but pretty good novel called "Waiting" in 1999 that was ripped off into a pretty mediocre NBC show "Prey" (most notable for launching Debra Messing's career, I guess). It's about a related species of humans, but not homo sapiens, who co-exist among us, but that homo sapiens don't know about (because they resemble us physically).
Jeff Carlson's "Interrupt" is a less successful techno-thriller about some kind of global EMP pulse that brings out latent Neanderthal personas among affected humans.
The Four Races of Man: The Science Fiction Possibilities of Latest DNA Research
There's an interesting article in today's NY Times on new findings about human evolution: In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years. The...
I don't say so explicitly, but I do exactly the same thing you do, for the same reasons.
What is your policy on Linkedin, etc?
Current students sometimes send me invitations to connect via Linkedin. I view networking as an important component of lawyering. The policy I communicate to students is, "I will accept any Linkedin invitation from a current or former student; don't feel you need to send me a Linkedin invite; I ...
Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" series has a male assistant pig-keeper named Taran as the primary character.
Also:
Emily Rodda's "Rowan of Rin" series
Jacqueline Jules' "Freddie Ramos" series
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the sequel, Charlie and the Glass Elevator
Male Protagonists in Youth Fiction
At a youth writing conference recently, a number of participants were bemoaning the lack of teen novels with male protagonists. It seems that in the wake of Twilight and Hunger Games, the focus has been on female heroines. Writers and parents noted that while girls will read books with both ma...
Hmm, but is it accurate to say that Medicare taxes me "enough"? Considering the massive unfunded liability in Medicare, it seems that Medicare does not come close to taxing enough to pay for what it's promising.
The American Right to Health
I’m just back from a terrific symposium on the right to health care at Boston University School of Law that was sponsored by the American Journal of Law & Medicine and chaired by Abby Moncrieff. Presentations by constitutional, health care and tax law scholars brought a very nice range of pers...
"[T]he federal government could give everyone a voucher that would be worth the full cost of the lowest-priced health care plan on the market. People could purchase more expensive plans, but they would have to pay the difference in cost between their plans and the low-cost plan."
I understand the point that programs have more popular support when they have a broad base of beneficiaries, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be more efficient to tax me enough to provide benefits for the poor *and* for the voucher for me, and then give me the voucher back. I mean, I suppose there could be some efficiencies of scale, but more likely the extra transactions costs and government bureaucracy would eat away at those efficiencies and more.
The American Right to Health
I’m just back from a terrific symposium on the right to health care at Boston University School of Law that was sponsored by the American Journal of Law & Medicine and chaired by Abby Moncrieff. Presentations by constitutional, health care and tax law scholars brought a very nice range of pers...
Isn't the better analogy that you are *forced* to play a game in which you throw a 100-sided (or whatever arbitrarily large number you like) die, and if it comes up 1, you will have to pay $10000; and any other number, you pay nothing. You cannot avoid playing the game, except by paying $105 (or whatever). Your expected value is certainly better to play the game than to pay, but, as Mike Rappaport notes, it would still be rational, given risk aversion, to pay to avoid the game.
Cognitive MistakesMike Rappaport
This website is for poker, but it lists 23 cognitive mistakes that people are prone to making in all areas of life. I haven't found any more useful lists of cognitive mistakes, so I am posting it here.
As an Angels fan, all I can say is, "Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!"
Granted, Pujols has been an incredible player the past decade, possibly the best overall given his remarkable consistency. That said, locking him up for 10 years when he's already 32 (a baby by law faculty standards, but middle-aged by pro baseball standards), is a really horrible decision. You only have to look at Alex Rodriguez's declining production to see what an albatross of a massive long-term contract looks like.
Oh well, I should casting about for a back-up team to root for. Perhaps the Tampa Bay Rays?
Cardinal Nation: A Time to Mourn
Story here. Call me naive, but I did not see this coming.
This reinforces my speciesm in favor of mammals. Some mammals are clearly cuter (lion cubs) than others (hyenas). But there really aren't any horrifyingly ugly mammals.
Nature's Horror Show: World's Ugliest Creatures | Fox News
From the terrifying coconut crab to the shocking giant isopod to the merely ugly (like Miss Ellie), nature's creatures aren't all beauties. Here are the animals you'll wish you hadn't seen. via www.foxnews.com
I thought about "M*A*S*H," although I personally thought the early years with Trapper John and Colonel Blake weren't quite as good as the years with BJ Hunnicut *and* Frank Burns (i.e., seasons 4-5, I think). But then Burns left, and as you note, the show got preachy and experimental.
I don't really watch sitcoms anymore, so can't comment on your observations there. I do think "The Simpsons" was kind of lame at first and then got good, but I haven't watched it in . . . what, a dozen years? (Man, that show is OLD!) "Malcolm in the Middle" seemed to hold up all the way through; that's the last sitcom I watched regularly.
TV shows that started out strong and got bad, or the reverse
Over at the TiVo Community board, there are a couple of threads about TV shows that sucked, and then were great, and TV shows that were great and then sucked. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is a popular choice for the first category, and "The X-Files" is a popular choice for the second categor...
That's unfortunate for you. I can only hope that Oregon takes heed of this -- and everything else dumb that California does.
Brown screws Bainbridge and 20K other Californians
Regular readers will notice a minor design change: All Amazon-related links and ads have been deleted. I'm a longtime Amazon Associate. I never made big bucks at it; in some years, I didn't make enough to even get a 1099 form. It did pay my TypePad fees though. Unfortunately, in a moronic attemp...
I guess I'm not entirely sure what I mean by "accurate" -- just a general sense that counting my weight as the low weight of the day is starting to feel like cheating.
On a more psychological point, I might put it like this: my goal has been to get down to 150 lbs (which is what I weighed in law school, when I was probably at my fittest). If I go by my low point of the day, I'm just 2 pounds away, which seems pretty close. However, at other times of the day, I can be as much as 155 pounds, and I start fretting. So I think if I envision myself as 150 pounds, it's really a question of what's my weight range throughout the day, and that could be 150-53 or it could be 147-50 or something in between. I'm leaning toward thinking that 147-50 is the range that I'd like to be at.
What is the most accurate time of day to weigh yourself?
Since the beginning of the year, I've lost about 15 pounds, mostly through consistent and extensive exercise (with increasing frequency and duration as I've gotten fitter). I haven't had too many burgers during that time, but I'm taking in 1800-2400 calories a day -- averaging about 2000 -- so i...
I don't dispute any of what you say about the causes of health care costs. I do think that it is fair to view with skepticism ObamaCare's brute force cut in Medicare rates with no meaningful addressing of the underlying causes of skyrocketing costs.
Medicare cuts and the future of healthcare following ObamaCare?
Over at the Faculty Lounge, Sharona Hoffman reflects on how her elderly relative died of a cancer that her doctor failed to detect despite the fact that the tumor was egg-sized and visible to the naked eye: However, when listening to her heart, her doctor never paid enough attention to see the ...
Note that Justices O'Connor and Thomas voted to limit the Commerce Clause in Lopez, Morrison, and Raich, and there are numerous other people who are skeptical of the health care mandate who also favored allowing the States to trump the federal government's controlled substances law.
"You cannot be serious!"
Ann Althouse has been poking fun at Josh Marshall (and Nancy Pelosi) for what she calls "constitutional argument by laughter," the idea being that Marshall's disdain for constitutional arguments against healthcare reform's mandate could not have been serious. Of course, a federal district judge...
Matthew, I could've mentioned that it's been upheld by two judges (both Democratic appointees), but I don't think it has relevance to the question of whether it was inconceivable (yes, Princess Bride reference) that a judge would strike down the mandate. I'm not saying that Judge Hudson was right, just that a McEnroe-like reaction to the ruling would be . . . strange(?).
On why the Commerce Clause has been a blank check for so long, see U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000), where the Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and parts of the Violence Against Women Act as beyond the Commerce Clause. I do not think that viewing the individual mandate as beyond the Commerce Clause would invalidate a lot of legislation. It could, depending on how one reads it, but it need not.
"You cannot be serious!"
Ann Althouse has been poking fun at Josh Marshall (and Nancy Pelosi) for what she calls "constitutional argument by laughter," the idea being that Marshall's disdain for constitutional arguments against healthcare reform's mandate could not have been serious. Of course, a federal district judge...
Yes, that is true. I am looking forward to my opportunity in 2012 to vote against Mayor Sam Adams.
Laughing at Seattle?
I gather there's some kind of Portland-Seattle rivalry, so it shouldn't be surprising that our local CBS affiliate's 11 pm newscast has just spent the last few minutes showing us scenes of cars attempting . . . and failing . . . to drive in hilly, snowy conditions. In Seattle. There were videos...
There are some issues with the outer boundaries of the AUMF, such as whether people who knowingly donate to al Qaeda fall within its terms. But I don't think there's any question that Ghailani would fit within the "core" of al Qaeda and therefore within the "enemy" as defined by Congress.
I agree that the Obama Administration would simply continue to detain him even if he were to win his appeal. But doesn't that seem like a pretty bad outcome? It'll look like the trial was just a sham if it wouldn't affect Ghailani's ultimate disposition.
Why the Ghailani trial doesn't look like a convincing win for the government
There's been a lot of back-and-forth on whether the result of the trial of Ahmed Ghailani (one conviction for conspiracy; acquittal on the other nearly 300 counts) was a victory for the U.S. One dimension of the debate has been whether the result either proves that federal courts can handle pro...
Well, I'm not really endorsing Trump. But do you really think it's even close between him and Palin?
Should I be ashamed to admit that I'd vote for the Donald?
Donald Trump is thinking of getting into the Presidential race in 2012. Or something. I have to admit that I would definitely vote for him over Sarah Palin if it comes to that. Well, first, I'd have to change my party registration from "independent" (not "Independent Party") to "Republican" to...
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Mar 15, 2010
Regarding the re-amendment of the habeas statute, it should be interesting to see the debates about whether this represents Congress's original intent of the DTA, or revisionist history. It does seem to me that if this bill passes by largely the same vote as the DTA, it would be something of validation of Justice Scalia's dissent.
Overview of the Military Commissions Act of 2006
Here’s a quick-and-dirty overview of the MCA bill, for those who have no time for a closer read. § 1 – Title § 2 – Findings § 3 – Authorization for Military Commissions: this section gives the President authority to constitute military commissions in keeping with the parameters set forth below ...
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