A Tale of Two Talibans

Tribal Southwestern Afghanistan - A young couple is shot to death for attempting to elope. Condemned by conservative clerics for "acts of immorality," they are shot by high powered rifles in an area of the country unprotected by Western forces. A crowd watched and cheered.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, a doctor who provides a legal service is shot on a Sunday, in church. Conservative clerics had condemned him and demanded he be "brought to justice." A crowd watched and cheered.

His (alleged) killer is a tax protester, an affiliate of the Montana Freemen, a convicted bomb-maker and, surprise surprise surprise, an active member of Operation Rescue. He once urged OR members, to "attend" the doctor's church en masse on a Sunday morning to confront the preacher and the deacons.

Terrorism has many faces.

An FTC investigation I'd really like to see

"KFC's claim that its fried offerings have 'that taste you'll just love to eat' is in direct violation of federal regulations," acting FCC chairman Michael Copps said. "The word 'eat' is legally permissible only in reference to substances appropriate for human consumption. Any implication that a consumer could or should 'enjoy' a KFC Crispy Strip fails to meet these standards, and presents an unlawful deception to consumers."

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes fiction is truer than truth.

Atul Gawande on soaring health care costs

An interesting piece from Atul Gawande (a doctor who writes articles also) about one un-remarked-upon contributor to high health care costs - doctors who think of themselves like a business and not like health care providers. Noting that some places like McAllen, Texas have really high costs while other places don't. Fascinating read.

iTunes Word Cloud

Have you seen the very cool word cloud generator at Wordle? You paste in text or a URL and a Java app spits back a word cloud that gives greater prominence to words that occur more frequently. You can also customize fonts, colors, layout, etc.

I'm a bit of a music nut, so I thought this would be an interesting way to view my collection. I exported my iTunes library into Excel, edited the file leaving only the artist data (artist names repeat based on the number of songs by that artist), and then pasted the text (more than 20000 lines) into Worldle. This is the result (showing the top 250 of probably 2600 artists)....

End of discussion

Glenn Greenwald pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of the argument against Judge Sotomayor based on her "empathy."

Turns out Justice Alito said pretty much the same thing during his confirmation hearing.


Justice Alito, you see, sees his grandparents in every immigration case. His children in every case involving children. His family in every discrimination case (because they were discriminated against because of ethnicity).

Justice Alito. Aggressive liberal activist?

This whole argument is ridiculous. It is folly to think that the people on the bench in the black robes are anything other than people, with all the beliefs, quirks, prejudices and neuroses that go along with membership in the human race.

Search your underpants for signs of a recovery

No, not the kind of recovery you're thinking of, and not the kind that would explain where the Canes went for the last couple of weeks.

OH SNAP!

(Hey, it's not my headline!)

Sonia Sotomayor - the kind of pedigree that leads to success

Princeton, then Yale. Second in her class. Hmm... I've heard this pedigree before...

Memorial Day 2009

Thank you.

Quit

That's what the Hurricanes just did.

And it cost me $160 to see it.

John 20:29

Apparently a conservative radio host named Erich "Mancow" Muller decided to have himself waterboarded to prove it's not torture.

Except that after he was finished, he said it definitely was.

Nice to have you on board, eventually.

The three-wolves-howling-at-the-moon shirt

Read the reviews.

Here's more. Really, you have to read them. There are like 1000 reviews, and most of them are hysterical.

Here's a paragraph from the first one:

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

The "aroused asthmatic breathing" made me spit coffee.

Judge rules Giuliani's suit against Duke not up to par

After Rudy Giuliani's son was kicked off the Duke golf team, he sued. He lost. The link is to the judgment by Judge Wallace Dixon, which is all kinds of awesome.

"Plaintiff contends that all elements for a breach of contract claim were properly alleged. His analysis, however, slices far from the fairway."

"Plaintiff needs a sand wedge to get out of the hazard."

"Plaintiff attempts to take a mulligan with this argument; however, this shot also lands in the drink."

And my favorite: "Plaintiff's promissory estoppel claim, which was not argued in his brief, brings to mind Carl Spackler's analysis from the movie Caddyshack: He's on his final hole. He's about 455 yards away, he's gonna hit about a 2 iron, I think."

Ed. Note (DFL) - I worked with Magistrate Judge Dixon when I clerked. I know he enjoyed writing this, and probably rubbed his hands in glee when the motion got assigned to him.

Career suicide, and why I will never hire Quinn Emanuel

Check out the email exchange in the link. Quinn Emanuel represents the Washington Redskins in the trademark litigation brought by Native Americans. They won on appeal. The winning lawyer sent a firm-wide email. So far so normal. Then some first-year replied all saying that maybe the win was nice, but maybe QE should also spare a thought for the Native Americans who think that the word "Redskins" is racist and maybe not be all happy that those people get to keep feeling discriminated against.

Oops.

Reply tornado begins. First-year associate sticks to his guns (boo-yah!). Also sticks to his guns about refusing to use capital letters, which makes him a bit of an annoying twit, but to call out the firm REPEATEDLY in the teeth of the worst recession in a generation, that takes stones. He's going to get fired for this, but more power to him.

And for the part about why I'll never hire QE: After the first reply-all, some partner replied-all to him. The reply contained this gem: "Bob and I represent clients, not causes. We like Native Americans. If Native Americans had hired Bob, the Redskins would have lost the case. But they didn't. They hired someone else. So it was incumbent on Bob to kick their ass in court. It is really that simple." (My underlining)

Yeah, um, I was a litigator once. Actually for 9 years. The number of times that a losing case was won because of the attorney? Can count them on one hand, maybe, if I had a logging accident. Any law firm that thinks it can convert losing files into winners just off the strength of its lawyers alone? They get none of my money.

UPDATE: Turns out the associate did get fired, but for failing the CA Bar twice (http://abovethelaw.com/2009/05/quinn_emanuel_associate_fired.php). So a guy who's idiot enough to commit career suicide by multiple emails and who's such a twit he doesn't use capital letters also can't pass the Bar on multiple tries? Yeah, I'm surprised too.

Again, I bring you the news you need

Going to the movies? Know you or your spouse or your kids have a small bladder? Want to make sure you don't miss anything?

Runpee.com is for you.

It tells you the breaks in the movie when nothing important will happen, and even gives you the time you've got before something happens and a scrambled description of what happened while you were out. I checked the listing for Star Trek and it's bang-on.

And now if you'll excuse me I have to take a leak before reading Joaquin's comments on this post.

The voice of reason

Orrin Pilkey lowers the rhetorical boom on the NC Senate on the vote to allow hardened "erosion control" structures on the NC Coast. Dr. Pilkey has been proven correct on this issue over and over and over again. That the Senate chose to ignore his advice and the long history of success of his recommended approach to beach management is ridiculous.

Barrier islands move. That's what they do. Expecting them to stop moving because you built a house, or a fast food restaurant, or a luxury hotel, is hubris. Establishing public policy based on that hubris is gross negligence in the management of a public resource. The beach is not there to shield fancy houses from the waves. It is there because that is the point at which a complicated series of interactions between natural forces ends up putting it. Those forces don't care if your house is in the way.

The future of the North Carolina coast, according to the North Carolina Senate:



versus what 30 years of following Dr. Pilkey's advice has given us:




Now which is preferable to you? And which would you think an enlightened government woiuld prefer to encourage? Oops. Wrong.

Welcome The Stimulist to the blogroll

My colleague Sean Braswell writes for The Stimulist, a great new multi-author site started by Carlos Watson. Sean is one of those underachievers in life who, other than playing second base for the University of Texas Longhorns, earning a Rhodes Scholarship, obtaining a Doctorate in Social Policy from Oxford and a J.D. from Harvard, has really never accomplished anything in his life. [/sarcasm]

Sean's post today is a good one, and gets right to the nub of why the drivel escaping from the bloated head of FORMER Vice President Cheney sounds so familiar.

Check it out.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

It's trailers like these that make me wish I went to Cannes in the spring and not the fall. How is there not a bidding war for this movie? It's superior to Snakes on a Plane in every way. Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas.

The relative sports success of various cities

The Toronto Star has a ranking of the cities whose sports teams have been the winningest (is that a word?) Seems that I've picked good cities in which to live:

• Vancouver - 3rd
• Montreal - 6th
• Seattle - 17th

Don't see Raleigh anywhere. Must be an oversight.

In light of the upcoming series

... it's time to resurrect a classic.

Bloody Pengu Throw.

Poor bear

Boo hoo.

Ho Hum. Another Game Seven

I have finally used enough Scope to get the taste of Game Six out of my mouth, and I can talk about hockey again. Anton Babchuk has evaded my wrath and looks to be sitting in the press box tonight, replaced by Frank Kaberle. That I think that is a good thing is testament to the disaster that was Anton Babchuk's game on Monday. The fact that, even as badly as he played, he was only marginally worse in the defensive end than Joe Corvo and Joni Pitkanen should tell you all you need to know about the defensive breakdowns that I got to see for two of the three periods of action on Monday.

Sometimes being in Section 110 (Canes shoot once) is painful.

Now, on to Boston. Another series, another Game Seven. These Canes don't do anything easy.

Despite the defensive woes last game, the second and third periods were actually encouraging. Spotting a team like Boston a 2-0 lead is essentially losing the game. But the Canes did score 2 goals and managed to pepper Tim Thomas with over 32 shots. Let's hope they keep that kind of pressure up and Joni Pitkanen remembers to turn toward the puck-handler, rather than away from him. It would also help if they kept the puck in at the point occasionally.

3-2 Canes in double OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOvertime.

GO CANES.

Judge Posner on the decline of conservative intellectuals

Judge Posner has a long post about the decline of intellectual conservatism. As a guy who used to be able to be a conservative but has no party left in this country, it caught my attention.

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell

Seriously, do I have to do all the work here while you slackers enjoy your still-playing hockey teams?

Go read the 3-part series between ESPN's Bill Simmons and Blink/Outliers/Tipping Point's Malcolm Gladwell. From Gladwell:

Let's set the record straight on Jennifer Aniston. She was not hitting on me. I think she was bored because her friends hadn't arrived yet. She just wanted to make conversation. And what was my excuse? I don't really have one. I was trying to work, and I wasn't wearing my glasses, and who on earth thinks Jennifer Aniston is going to sit down next to them in some random cafe in Miami and start chatting away? So I gave her that don't-bother-me glare, and then about five minutes passed and I thought to myself, "You know, she was really cute." And another five minutes passed and I thought, "You know, she looks really familiar." And another five minutes passed and I thought, "You idiot." And by then it was too late, of course. The window of opportunity for a woman like that is 45 seconds, max. By the time I got the check, I think she'd already started dating John Mayer. Sigh.

Off to the airport soon

Have been in NY the last couple of days - had to get back early for my Game 7 Canucks tickets which are now worthless... Grr... maybe I'll react like this idiot at the airport. (Ignore the horrible spelling in the subtitles)

World's best passenger complaint letter

Don't know how I missed this the first time, but check the link for an outstanding complaint letter to Virgin Airways about... well... I'll let the author speak for himself:

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].

Scott Walker does not like Aaron Ward

First things first. The Carolina Hurricanes embarrassed themselves, their franchise and this city last night. Not for the fights, but for rolling over like a Deadwood saloon girl and letting Boston have its way last night. No skating. No effort. No evident passion until the third period, when it was far too late.

Second thing second - Zdeno Chara is a diving goon. Jussi Jokinen tapped him on the hard plastic skate boot. You'd have thought Chara was trying out for D.C. United the way he rolled around and begged for the stretcher. You're a 6'9" hockey player who delivers more hits to the head than Dominos delivers pizza. Man up and take your karma.

The Walker fight is a different matter. Clearly, Walker deserves to be penalized, and he was. The third man into a fight gets an instigator penalty. Instigation in the last five minutes gets you a 10 minute game misconduct and a one game suspension, unless your name is Sidney Crosby. Since the NHL will not treat a third-line winger for Carolina the way it treats the Golden Child, Walker will be watching tomorrow night's game from the press box. And THAT is why his decision to clock Aaron Ward was a stupid stupid thing to do.

But for Boston fan to scream "sucker punch!! kill kill!" is ridiculous. First, the game began with Chara trying to put Dennis Seidenberg's grill through the glass with a hit from behind, and the useless refs did nothing. All week, Boston players have been taking liberties. Without official control, hockey justice rears its ugly head.

I thought it was a sucker punch at first, too. But look closely. Ward is beating on Cullen, who is medically not allowed to fight. Ward is a great guy and fun to have on your team, but he's a cheap shot artist nonpareil. He elbowed Cullen in the head and was coming at him stick in hand to do more damage. Cullen is not allowed to fight and NEVER does, and Ward knows that. Want to know why? Watch this hit. It took Cullen a full year to be able to skate straight after this.



So Cullen was not going to be fighting. And Walker was protecting him. Still, Walker is the third man in. That's a penalty. And he should have known how much time was on thew clock and saved the justice for Tuesday night. But Ward sees him, throws a gloved punch (stupid idea) and then takes a clean shot to the right cheek. Down goes Ward. Walker then covers him up and does not throw another punch. Ward saw it coming.

Listen to the Boston commentator:



"If you're going to mix it up with Scott Walker, you can't stand there with your hands at your sides."


According to wral.com, Walker got a $2,500 fine and the suspension was lifted. Gotta love the GM talking smack:

“We are satisfied with the league’s ruling,” said Hurricanes President and General Manager Jim Rutherford. “After our team received several punches throughout the series leading up to Game 5, it was a matter of time before one was going to be thrown back.”

“I accept the league’s decision,” said Walker. “Based on what was said on the ice as I was dropping my gloves, it was my understanding that I was engaged in an altercation.”

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

The Onion:

Shirtless Biden Washes Trans-Am in White House Driveway.

Over My Dead Body

N.C. Senate passes jetty bill.

The North Carolina Senate is a sterling example of people in power too long.

JUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIII

The Hurricanes brought it tonight, and so did the crowd. I wasn't there, having given up my tickets to attend my daughter's birthday party. But I've been camped on my couch since 8pm and WOW, what a game.

This is such an entertaining playoff run. ANOTHER overtime game and ANOTHER winner from late-season pickup Jussi Jokinnen.

Tonight, the Canes were the better team, but Boston nearly stole the game off unbelievable play from goalie Tim Thomas and some opportunistic puck-hawking forechecking. Lucic's goal wasjust a hardworking grinder's goal in the crease. And then bang bang. Two goals in 1:09 and the Big ATM was shaking with the roar of 18000Caniacs. Recchi evened it up in the third, but the Canes carried the play for most of the night, significantly outshooting and outskating the Bruins.

If this was the big and talented Bruins at their most motivated, then the Canes are in the driver's seat. But expect the unexpected this season. What a ride.

Expect two things tomorrow:

(1) the national sports media will pretend there is only one series - Washington v. Pittsburgh, and will ignore what is shaping up to be a SERIOUS story here in the Triangle.

(2) Boston's media will claim they played badly. Guess what? You're playing a dangerous hockey team with some serious players.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Tahiti

Just got back from a week in Tahiti on vacation with my lovely wife. A tropical island paradise full of French food. As the guy in the middle of the jungle said to me while serving coq au vin, "Just because we are in the jungle does not mean we have to live like savages." Classic. And I got chased by a dog while snorkeling. No, not a dogfish. Le Weuf.

FAIL Blog

The annual Webby Awards are often a good source for interesting web sites - I always find a few nuggets that I wasn't aware of. And FAIL Blog is worth checking out occasionally. It is a completely self-explanatory and often hilarious porthole into the ship of fools we call the USA. Enjoy.

Gleason v. Lucic - A preview?

Gleason, FTW.