DICTA

November 4, 2011 § Leave a comment

DICTA

September 30, 2011 § Leave a comment

  • The Dead Sea Scrolls, at least some of them, are now online, thanks to a collaboration between the Israel Museum and Google.
  • So you’re one of the dinosaurs (like I) steadfastly resisting the seemingly inevitable transition from WordPerfect to MS Word. Legal Office Guru is a blog where you can find tutorials, tips and instructions.
  • Lawyerist makes a case for pro bono work as a “win-win” for lawyers.
  • In this rugged economy, have you considered door-to-door practice?
  • Ever wonder why the public looks askance at the legal profession? A good recent starting point is this class-action lawsuit against Proctor & Gamble claiming that the company makes it impossible for consumers to squeeze the last 20% of toothpaste from the tube, and so are entitled to damages. True story.
  • Using Google Places to market your law practice — free!
  • A picture that is worth a thousand Euros, or dollars, or yuan. National Geographic’s interactive map showing world distribution of wealth.
  • Are you Spotify-ed yet? Download and use it to make playlists of popular and even the most obscure music. There’s a free version and a premium without the occasional ads. I’ve used my Spotify to make playlists of blues, folk music, jazz and classical that I can listen as I do computer chores like updating this blog.

The villanous dentifrice

DICTA

August 12, 2011 § Leave a comment

  • A very tongue-in-cheek take on Twelve things you should never say to your child.
  • Politics from the grave … partisan epitaphs.
  • Ants have transparent abdomens, which makes for some fascinating photographs when they are dining on brightly colored candy.
  • All of Kemper County is in a desert. And so are parts of Meridian. A Food Desert, that is. Or so says the USDA, which has taken upon itself the task of designating areas of the USA where poor people do not have near access to a supermarket as “Food Deserts,” which you can pinpoint on their locator. Their thinking is that lack of nearby supermarkets means that the denizens eat only fattening food at convenience stores and fast food outlets.
  • Which dietary supplements are proven to work and which are not? This graphic shows the evidence. Good: folic acid, green tea, probiotics. Not so good: akai, beta carotene, flaxseed oil.
  • If you yearn for the “good old days,” remember that a huge chunk of that imaginary era did not include air conditioning, as this article in Slate on the history of air conditioning will tell you.

DICTA

July 15, 2011 § 2 Comments

  • Starbucks and bankruptcy were made for each other. Coffee drinkers need their fix(es) each and every day, and Starbucks offers a pretty dang good coffee product that makes you want more and more and more. At about $4 a cup, though, it doesn’t take too long to make a sizeable dent in your bank account. SquawkFox has a recipe for a frappuccino it claims is every bit as good as Starbucks, and every bit as fattening, and all the ingredients together cost only $.32. The recipe also discloses the secret ingredient that will make your home-made cup identical to the store-bought. Making it at home will save you about $3.40 a cup over usual Starbucks prices. At one frap a day for a 30-day month, that’s a savings of $102 a month. You can use that money to pay in part for time at the gym.
  • I keep saying I am going to try this sticky balsamic rib recipe, but I never seem to get around it. So maybe one of you could do it and let us all know how it turned out. Looks delicious.
  • Should there be a code of ethics for bloggers?
  • Curvy, Louisiana? That’s what Baton Rouge would be renamed if you made an atlas of the US and renamed US communites according to the adjectives most used by users of dating web sites to describe themselves. Check out my home town of Tissue, LA.
  • “This is a private matter,” said the victim in a California case in which his estranged wife poisoned his food, tied him to a bed, severed his — uh — “private matter,” and threw it into a garbage disposal before calling the police. This development should spice up their pending divorce considerably.
  • Picklefreak.com is the creation of Monroe County native Katy Tackett, who is to pickles what Carl Sagan was to the cosmos.

    The well-attired pickle freak at Mardi Gras

DICTA

July 8, 2011 § Leave a comment

  • We’ve talked before about the increasingly negative ROI for law school grads, and just when the picture looks its bleakest comes the news that some law schools are considering the “private funding model.” That’s fancy academic-ese for “We are going to increase the tuition out of sight because the state has underfunded us for the nth year in a row.” Using this approach, the school eschews state money and generates its own budget. The University of Minnesota Law School is considering it.
  • Who profited from the Fed’s quantitative easing, and who lost?   
  • New Orleans ephemera: some haunting images of Lost Big Easy.
  • NPR reports that there is much movement by both sides in the federal debt ceiling debate that must be resolved before July 22. 
  • Preservation in Mississippi (MissPres) has a fascinating piece on the the second battleship U.S.S. Mississippi, the figurehead of which rests on the grounds of the State Capitol in Jackson. In the course of uncovering its history, the blog discovers a mystery. If you’re a history geek like I am, you owe it to yourself to check out MissPres.
  • Hardworking Americans who make between about $40,000 and $120,000 a year currently are paying the freight for operation of the federal government. Everyone else gets a more-or-less free ride. It hasn’t always been that way, as this historical graph of the tax burden shows. 

    U.S.S. Mississippi, 1905-1914

DICTA

June 24, 2011 § 3 Comments

  • The Legal Ethics Forum has a thought-provoking post about a study in Minneapolis in which lawyers were called upon to define professionalism by identifying lawyers they considered exemplars, and by identifying the traits they displayed.  ” … [T]hese exemplars talked about a way of being, of acquiring habits of reflection and soul searching, of questioning their personal assumptions about how to be an effective lawyer, or how to lead other lawyers.”  It’s an interesting addition to the concept of professionalism.
  • Do lawyers have a First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment-due process right to wear baseball caps and jeans when appearing in court?  So far, the answer is no, as the First Amendment Center explains.
  • The increasingly negative cost-benefit ratio of a law degree has been the subject of much reporting over the past couple of years. Law grads entering the work force with massive student-loan debt have not been successful in finding jobs adequate to retire their debt.  Now, the WSJ Law Blog reports that some law schools are shrinking their enrollment in recognition of the fact that lawyer supply exceeds demand. Is it a trend or a bump in the road?
  • Ever wonder what the real numbers are behind all the budget debates in Jackson, in your county, your school systems, and in your city? See the Spending documented here. You will have to enter some info to “sign up.”
  • 380 free movies online here.
  • It will take you a couple of hours to read, but these 1980’s interviews and manuscripts of Sam Bowers, Jr., predating his conviction for the murder of Vernon Dahmer, will give you some insight into the mind of a murderous Klan leader and racist.
  • If you’re old enough to remember when music came on LP’s and cassettes (or 8-track), long before mp3 and iTunes, and even before CD’s, you will enjoy this article about how Columbia House made billions by giving you 10-12 tapes in return for your membership and commitment to buy some music.

    Such a deal

DICTA

May 13, 2011 § Leave a comment

  • The Web’s First Japanese Pizza Page is guaranteed to whet your appetite with the likes of shrimp, squid, tuna and mayonnaise pizza, or the squid ink pizza, which uses squid ink in lieu of tomato sauce. Yum!
  • And while we’re on epicurian subjects, this article introduces us to the wonders of fermented fish sauce, a cooking staple in southeast Asia.
  • “Take my opinions with a grain assault.”  That’s the first line of the fascinating Holiness Snake Handlers Official Web Site, complete with photos and even videos of this mainly Appalachian religious phenomenon. [NOTE: I fixed this link, which was incorrectly sending you to the wrong site]. If you’d like a deeper look at this sect, Dennis Covington’s 1995 book, Salvation on Sand Mountain, is an engrossing journey inside snake-handling congregations, where the faithful handle deadly poisonous snakes and drink strycchnine and other poisons in a display of their faith.
  • Professor Saul Cornell of Fordham University and Scholar in Residence at Yale Law School has written an interesting piece entitled “New Originalism: A Constitutional Scam,” that is worth a read no matter what your position on this issue of Constitutional interpretation.
  • It takes you 46 minutes each work day to work off your income tax burden, and two hours total each day to pay the whole tax bite.  2011’s Tax Bite in the Eight-Hour Day is here.
  • An article in the New Yorker explores legal issues in the killing of Osama bin Laden.
  • And good news for Scrabble geeks (like me):  The official Scrabble dictionary has approved two new Q words that don’t require a U.

DICTA

April 29, 2011 § Leave a comment

DICTA

April 22, 2011 § 1 Comment

  • It’s not very good poetry, but this sonnet does reflect a particular point of view of the insurance defense lawyer.
  • Who’s bugging you?  Here’s a piece on how to tell if your car, home or phone is bugged.
  • BP says that the spill is stopped and everything is hunky-dory in the gulf. So we can relax, right?  Not so fast, my friend.  This article from the Scientific American paints a not-so-rosy picture.
  • What makes a judge popular among lawyers?  Philip Thomas says it’s effort.
  • James K. Vardaman is notorious as one of the most rabid racists ever to inhabit the office of governor in Mississippi, and later the office of U.S. Senator.  Referred to by his followers as “The Great White Chief,” he was known for quotes such as, “If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”  Less well-known is his populism, which you can read about online at Vardaman’s Weekly, an archive of his 1919-1923 publication of the same name.  Reading these probably won’t change your opinion of the man, but they do offer a glimpse into the politics of the era.
  • It was the original proof of the theorem that size isn’t everything, but today it’s six inches longer, a little over three inches wider and half an inch lower than its predecessor, and the flower vase has given way to a more masculine persona.  The latest incarnation of VW’s New 2012 Beetle looks mighty familiar.
  • Words are inadequate to describe this jaw-droppingly beautiful video, time lapse photography by Terje Sørgjerd on El Teide, Spain’s highest peak located in the Canary Islands.
  • Interactive 3-D solar system and night sky.
  • What do Max Bodenheim, Sterling Plumpp, Bobby DeLaughter, and Oprah Winfrey all have in common?  You can find out here.

“V” is for …

VW

Vardaman

DICTA

April 15, 2011 § Leave a comment

Hunter S. Thompson

Keith Richards

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