Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 to get Russian owner - MarketWatch
The Russians owning Pabst?
What is the world coming to?
Friday, September 19, 2014
Wyoming Brand Lard
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A lard can, depicting lard that was packed at my family's packing house in Casper Wyoming, before we owned it.
This must have been a brand name that the prior owner used, probably in the 1930s, maybe in the 1920s.
Interesting to see this. I don't even think of lard being packed by a local company, and of course they sold regionally so it wasn't really local, but still, interesting glimpse into history, both regional and personal.
A lard can, depicting lard that was packed at my family's packing house in Casper Wyoming, before we owned it.
This must have been a brand name that the prior owner used, probably in the 1930s, maybe in the 1920s.
Interesting to see this. I don't even think of lard being packed by a local company, and of course they sold regionally so it wasn't really local, but still, interesting glimpse into history, both regional and personal.
Scotland votes No.
The United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will continue to be. As was really self evident, a "Yes" vote for independence would have meant the end of the United Kingdom, leaving it effectively the country of England with two much smaller nationalities appended to it.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Computerization, Transportation, Globalization, and the loss of the local
Some time ago I posted here on the Uniform Bar Exam, a development, in my view, which is wholly negative. One of the selling points of the UBE, for its proponents, is that it makes bar admission "transportable".
African American lawyer in the early 1940s. Contrary to general supposition, law has long traditionally been an introductory occupation filled in part by members of minority groups and classes. While this is contrary to the "rich lawyer" image many people erroneously hold of the law, it makes sense as the profession is traditionally one that has low start up costs in terms of everything but the education, and minority classes often have legal needs by the fact that they are minorities. Indeed certain stereotypes and former stereotypes, such as "Irish Lawyer" or "Jewish Lawyer" are explained by this phenomenon. A layer like this certainly didn't have a transportable career, and was part of his community.
It does, but is that a good thing? And what does that mean?
"Transportability" is not a new phenomenon, but it is an accelerating one. And its one of those little thought out byproducts of technology that have massive unintended impacts. It might serve to look at it a bit, as while "transportability" is simply inevitable in some things, it isn't in everything, and its not necessarily that good of thing in some circumstances.
Transportability really means the ability to rapidly relocate from one place to another, as the immigrants qualifications will be equally valid in any location, or at least in multiple locations. But, and what is often missed when transportability is discussed, is that actual relocation is not necessary in this day and age. Rather, a person can "transport" themselves and out of a location by telephone and Internet. Indeed most current litigation attorneys already do this to some extent. I do. In addition to Wyoming, I practice in Colorado's Federal Courts, which I can do electronically for the most part.
Now, the advantages of this are fairly obvious, but right now the brake on "transportation," if you will, is that for lawyers you must be admitted by the other state's bar in some fashion, or at least you must be admitted in front of the other state's particular court you seek to practice in. This is not new, and the UBE, discussed below, does not propose to change that.
What is proposed to be changed, however, is how a person does that.
Right now, a person must pass a bar exam for that state, so you still have to pass some bar exam recognized by the state. But what the UBE does is to allow you to take it in one state, and simply pay a fee to be admitted in other states that will recognize the UBE without requiring more. Wyoming still requires more, but what that more is, is to sit through a day long CLE class, which any person could do without any real effort other than sitting there and enduring it. So, suddenly, the license becomes transportable.
So what's wrong with that?
Well, here it is.
I'm a type of lawyer whose practice is statewide, and my practice even laps a little into neighboring states, as noted, but I am of this state, and very familiar with it. I was born here, grew up here, my wife is from here. I went to the same high school, in different years, as my wife, father in law, mother in law, aunts and uncles, and father. I have pretty deep connections here.
Which is not to say that there isn't movement in and out of here. When there's an oil boom going on, as there is now, there are a lot of new people here. Some stay, some leave. Some people from here move out as soon as they can (with that being a seemingly common desire of young people, who starting about 30 years after that become hopelessly nostalgic for what they left). But moving in and out, is not the same as turning on your computer and "being there" in the form of a stream of electrons.
That's something that is seemingly missed by the advocates of transportability. Not only has our society become more mobile, but it's less attached than ever. Somebody who is located in a big city elsewhere, now, can pretend to be practicing in a completely different state with which they have no real connections.
They may believe that the do, but that's part of the delusion. And once that connection is lost, it's truly lost.
Nearly every lawyer practicing in a state, no matter what he did, took on some projects and clients that were because he lived there. An organization, some local cause, or just people he knew. Now, that won't be true. Will a lawyer in Denver represent youth group for free in Casper, or sit on his Parish Council in Rock Springs? Will a lawyer in Billings take on the cause of a widower in Sheridan.
Will he know what farmers and ranchers in Buffalo worry about, or what somebody whose road is now full of oilfield traffic experiences, or what the economic concerns of a man who has a roustabout company in Glenrock thinks, or will he even really care.
Making professions, professions of any kind, sort of like an Amazon service, remote, electronic and disconnected, is not a good idea. Professions were to be of communities. Indeed, any economic activity or occupation is. By being so remote, we stand the chance of not only being disconnected, but harmful.
Indeed, it will also be highly self defeating, which the backers of transportability never apprecaite. They want their careers transportable, but only theirs.
With professions that can be made highly transportable, like the law, or accounting, there's no reason whatsoever that they can't be transported right out of the country. There's no requirement, and nobody is proposing one, that to practice law anywhere in the US you must be a citizen of the United States. So, if Wyoming's bar can be transported to Colorado or Montana, why not Mumbai? Not only do I think that this can happen, I think it will happen.
Why not? If the practice of law is, as it typically is, the writing and reviewing of documents and materials, why not have that done by a lawyer, admitted in Wyoming, who lives in Delhi? Chances are high that some very highly skilled underemployed lawyers could be found there, who could do a fine product, and who could work in an area of the law where they rarely needed to appear in court. So, for example, the vast droves of Colorado lawyers who claim to be "oil and gas" lawyers in Wyoming, could quite easily be replaced by the same in Delhi, to some extent, where the same lawyer would probably work for $25.00/hour.
Much of this, because of its nature, is something we are going to have to experience and deal with no matter what. But that doesn't make it all good, and technological advances that allow us to live in one city and work in another have their problems. When it comes to professions, that's wholly negative, in my view. We can do something about that, even if we can't do much about a lot of this, and we should.
Friday, September 18, 1914. The Irish government and two acts.
The Government of Ireland Act received royal assent, but was suspended for the duration of the war by the Suspensory Act.
Last edition:
Thursday, September 17, 1914. German New Guinea surrendered to Australia.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Thursday, September 17, 1914. German New Guinea surrendered to Australia.
German New Guinea surrendered to Australia.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 16, 1914. The Siege of Siege of Przemyśl commences.
Mid Week At Work: Enduring investigation.
Caption reads:
Navy's crack speed pilot faces Senate Committee seeking reason for resignation. Lieut. Al Williams, crack Navy speed pilot who recently resigned rather than accept a transfer to sea, appeared before a special Senate Naval l Affairs subcommittee today. The committee is investigating the reason for the resignation of the noted pilot. In the photograph, left to right: Senator Patrick J. Sullivan, Wyoming; Lieut. Williams; Senator Millard E. Tydings, Maryland, chairman; and David S. Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aviation
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...
University of Wyoming Women's Rugby: Wyoming v. U...: ...
After seemingly picking on (but not intending to) American football the past few days, I offer these recent photos I took of women's rugby at the University of Wyoming.
I don't have a clue what the rules are, but rugby is really fun to watch, and I've always liked it. This is the first time, however, I've seen the women's team at UW in action.
It's a fast moving game, which is part of what I like. It shares a common ancestor with American football, but to those of us who are big fans of it, American football seems slow. Rugby is a much faster paced game.
Played without padding or helmets, it's also one which features a lot of injuries, but it doesn't seem to share the same percentage of really severe injuries, perhaps because of the lack of armor in the game.
After seemingly picking on (but not intending to) American football the past few days, I offer these recent photos I took of women's rugby at the University of Wyoming.
I don't have a clue what the rules are, but rugby is really fun to watch, and I've always liked it. This is the first time, however, I've seen the women's team at UW in action.
It's a fast moving game, which is part of what I like. It shares a common ancestor with American football, but to those of us who are big fans of it, American football seems slow. Rugby is a much faster paced game.
Played without padding or helmets, it's also one which features a lot of injuries, but it doesn't seem to share the same percentage of really severe injuries, perhaps because of the lack of armor in the game.
Rootless
From Harrop's op ed this week questions whether we need a "place called home". It's an excellent piece, questioning the value of rootlessness. Ironically, the local paper today also features a front page article on an English woman who seems fairly rootless, having moved from a small city in England, to Paris, and whom is now studying range management at the University of Wyoming, after having worked on a Big Horn Basis ranch.
Harrop quotes from As You Like It in her article, although she doesn't quote the whole text, which reads:
Rosalind: A traveler. By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your land to see other men's. Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
Jacques: Yes, I have gained my experience.
Rosalind: And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad--and to travel for it too.
Forrop goes on to note who we seemingly envy the traveling, but there's something to be sad about their rootless lives. And she wonders what occurs to these people in their old ages, do they settle in someplace new, where they have no connections, or return to the place they abandoned and pick up their old lives.
Well, by observation, at least some do. My home state, for many years, exported its young population, some of whom remained sort of romantically attached to the state for their careers, and then whom return later. As Americans, with Freedom To Travel written into their organic foundational and mythological law, the Constitution, they have that right.
But Farrop is on to something, although she's hardly unique in noting it. Agrarian poet, educator and novelist Wendell Berry earlier noted it in his essay Becoming Native To This Place. Berry notes that unless a person has real roots in a place, he's lacking a bit in something and by extension, everything suffers form a rootless population.
Indeed, that's the irony of travel. Travelers travel, usually, to see the authentic, unless they travel to one of the Disneyfied locations that Americans so love to visit. Absent that, when the travel to see Hawaii, or Paris, or Ireland or Scotland, they travel to see the real places, not a bunch of people like themselves who have a generic culture and no roots. They sense, really, that those cultures have something deeper, in being attached to the land and knowing it.
Americans have always been somewhat rootless, but in prior days they tended to move within their immediate regions. In the Frontier era, people moved, but often less than ten miles before establishing a new home. Some moves, of course, were huge, but they tended to be a big singular move. Now some people move constantly, and while relocation within a region remain very common, and because they are within a region are not really the type of move we mention here, the phenomenon of some people moving again and again, following a career, or just moving, is not unusual.
Well, it is a big sad. By constantly moving they never become, as Berry would have it, "native" to a place, and they lack something as a result. If our culture becomes more fluid, as it seems to threaten, and as some hope, this will become even more pronounced, and an era may arrive when people have no attachment to their region, don't even know it, have no attachment to their communities, and don't even know them, and have no attachment to each other.
Random Snippets: Trivial questions on the news.
This past weekend the new moderator for Meet The Press did an interesting and in depth interview of a member of President Obama's administration regarding ISIL and our plans to take that on.
At the tail end of it, the moderator suddenly shifted and told the guest that he was sure that the guest had spoken to the President about football player Ray Rice and did the President have a view on the NFL's recent actions regarding Rice, and if something should be done to the commissioner of that organization.
Seriously?
While it would be contrary to what the guest stated, I hope that in serious discussions at the White House the NFL's problems or those of its player, indeed the entire topic of professional sports controversies doesn't come up. Here we're talking about war, and the moderator is asking about the NFL? Rice's actions were inexcusable, but we're talking about the life and death of thousands here in war. That's much more signficant than the NFL.
Wednesday, September 16, 1914. The Siege of Siege of Przemyśl commences.
The Siege of Siege of Przemyśl began in Eastern Galicia where the Imperial Russian Army put an Austro Hungarian force under siege.
Today the city is on the Polish, Belorussian, border.
The Canadian Aviation Corps, which would exist for only a year, was created as a training element for Canadians seeking to enter the RAF. At the height of their operations they had three men and one airplane.
Allen Funt of Candid Camera fame was born in New York.
Last edition:
Tuesday, September 15, 1914. Wilson: Vámonos. Beyers: Ek het opgehou.
Monday, September 15, 2014
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