Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Marijuana and statistics.
February 5, 1914. Arming Villa.
What could possibly go wrong?
Interesting effort at prohibiting divorce after remarriage as well. In an era when shacking up was generally illegal, that would have had real implications.
Seems harsh to most, I suppose (although I'm not sure that I don't agree with the proposal, which of course went nowhere, and would go nowhere now).
Prince Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, son of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, met with Herbert Kitchener, British Governor General of Egypt and the Sudan, in Cairo. While the Great War had not yet arrived, the topic was potential British support against the Turks in response to their moves against Hejaz, which was independent at the time, but which was unfortunately absorbed by Saudi Arabia after World War One.
The British were no committal, but communications were kept open.
Alistair MacKay and three other members of the shipwrecked Canadian Arctic Expedition left their camp with a full stocked sled of supplies in an effort to find land. They were spotted three days later by Karluk ship steward Ernest Chafe and the Inuit members of the party who were on a return mission from Herald Island. They had been checking on a four-man scouting team. Thereafter, they were never seen alive again.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Bob Dylan on a Super Bowl Ad?
Not that it was bad. Indeed, it was sort of cool. And it was Chrysler, and I like Dodges.
But still.
Best ad that I saw (and I didn't see them all) was the Chevrolet advertisement hauling the bull to the cows.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Passing by the National Passtime
It's not that I'm opposed to football, although I am a bit concerned about the developing consensus that concussions associated with it can have a lifetime impact. No, as I blogged here earlier, I just can't get into it for some reason.
I've tried. If you don't follow football you are the odd man out on some conversations. And people regard ti as strange, or just flat out don't believe it. Twice in the last several months I've been in conversations with groups of lawyers from all over the country when football came up, and I literally knew absolutely nothing about what people were talking about.
In those conversations, if you live here, it invariably is stated; "so you must be rooting for the Broncos, huh?" No, I'm not. I don't care who wins. Indeed, even though last weekend or whenever it was I knew who both teams were, I had to be reminded on Friday that the Seahawks were the other team. My interest level is so low, I can't even remember who the other team is. And I'm not rooting for them either.
I do find it a bit odd that everyone assumes that Wyomingites are automatically Broncos fans. Why would that be true? I guess its because it's the closest professional team. But, while things have changed over time, it used to be common here that people would make sure to note that Wyoming isn't Colorado, and that a lot of things associated with Colorado, particular a large metropolitan area, we do not want associated with us. As I've stated, things have changed and that's no longer as common as it once was, but even back then it seemed most Wyomingites were Broncos fans.
I'm fine with that, I'm just not one. Or a Packers fan. Or a Steelers fan. Or whatever.
I wish I was. I've tried to follow football so that I could at least participate in these conversations, but it's impossible. I can't do it. At least this year I was in one of these group conversations where another lawyer, who had grown up overseas of American parents, stated he couldn't follow it either, passing that off to not growing up here. I've given up trying.
I'll see the game, as my wife is a football fan and makes sure we always watch it. Some years we'll travel to a party to watch it. I'm glad that we are invited, but I've actually had the experience of sitting through an entire party that way and not knowing who won.
Sooner or later, I'm sure, some pharmaceutical company will offer a remedy for this condition, with all sorts of risky side affects.
Today is a poor day for Outdoor Fitness
Saturday, February 1, 2014
The Big Speech: The War Poetry of Alan Seeger
I have a Rendezvous with Death
I have a rendezvous with DeathAt some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Friday, January 31, 2014
A glimpse at the judicial system in other nations
ROME—Italy's highest criminal court on Tuesday overturned Amanda Knox's acquittal in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial, prolonging a case that has become a cause celebre in the United States.
Knox called the decision "painful" but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.
Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial, and her lawyer said she had no plans to do so. The appellate court hearing the new case could declare her in contempt of court but that carries no additional penalties.
Postscript
Once again, I haven't really been following this case, but yesterday the verdict in the second Knox case was rendered, and she was convicted again.
I'll confess that this time, while I'm not questioning the Italian justice system, I'm baffled about the procedure. The original trial seemed to feature some sloppy prosecution to me, but then Knox's evolving versions of events, including implicating an innocent man, were questionable too. But the overall procedure is really baffling.
The original trail was held at Perugia, followed by an appeal to a court in Perugia. The first appellate court overturned the murder conviction (she was also convicted of slander). That would have ended the matter, had this been an American, English, Canadian, Australian, etc. court. But there was a second level of appeal in Italy, and that appeal went to the Italian Supreme Court.
The Italian Supreme Court apparently vacated the Perugia appellate ruling, which is not the way I'd originally understood that holding, and sent it back to the lower appellate court for a second hearing, but this time at Florence. Somehow, new evidence was taken in at the appellate level, by order of the Italian Supreme Court. That's a complete impossibility under the Common Law system we use. Apparently the Italian intermediate appellate court can act, in at least some circumstances, act as an intermediate trier of fact as well as an appellate court. It's apparently even the case that the prosecutor in the second intermediate appellate proceeding, used a different motive as his theory of the case. Anyhow, that court not only reinstated Knox's conviction, but it increased her sentence from 26 years to 28.5.
A very large part of this process would be rampagingly Unconstitutional in the US. The first appellate decision would have ended the whole case. To subject a criminal defendant to a second fact finding proceeding would be double jeopardy. To those familiar with Common Law courts, this is extremely alien. I'm frankly quite glad that we do not use this system.
Which isn't to say that its inherently unfair. Code Napoleon trials are more in the nature of factual inquiries than they are adversarial proceedings, and the court acts as a fact finder. Still, it seems rather protracted and messy.
Postscript II
Worth noting here in addition, there is a person serving time in Italy for this crime, Ray Guede. He's apparently admitted to being in the house at the time of the murder, and he's implicated Knox as being in the house, but apparently hasn't blamed her or anyone else for the killing, although he continues to deny that he committed the murder.
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History In The Making: Janaury 30, 2014. ...
Pete Seeger passes and a lesson on presumptions of inevitability.
By that I'm not trying to dump on Seeger. Seeger was pretty open about his views and never hid his past. And it'd be downright silly to criticize the musical quality of his work based on politics at any one point in time. And frankly it's also not really fair to judge a man on his early politics either. You have to take the sum total of a man's life in order to consider it. Maybe you have to take the last part of it really. Plenty of mighty sinners become saints. And plenty of people with early questionable views change them or they evolve into something else. Take, for example, the recent example of Nelson Mandela, whom some people were supporting due to the ANC's early traveling with Communist. Well, Mandela's later life certainly counters any suggestion that he retained any Marxists lessons and his record as a free world leader is where he should be judged. Or, to take an early example, consider W. E. B. Dubois, the great American civil rights leader. At one time he sympathized with Communism. Asked about that later, he gave one of the great all time responses to such a question, that being "Only a fool never changes his mind." Du Bois himself remained a species of Socialist his whole life, openly, which certainly does not diminish his greatness in any fashion.
Now, 40,000 people isn't really a lot, but for a start up party it is, and they were a serious group. Who were they?
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Or, maybe that's just me. A music can have merit, and the better music by Seeger certainly does, without everyone liking it.
Seeger's appearance in front of the committees sort of shows its interesting evolution. Early witnesses in front of the committee, in the 1940s, were really called there as the government had acquired a fair amount of information on Communist operatives in the US, and the FBI and NSA was feeding that information to the committee, even if the committee didn't really know that. The NSA in particular couldn't reveal that it had tapped into Soviet cables without blowing its cover, and it didn't reveal it until the 1990s. At any rate, the early witnesses were individuals like Whitaker Chamber and Alger Hiss, and others, who were actually involved in espionage. By the time Seeger was a witness, however, the committee had expanded its inquiries to be so broad as to include the entertainment industry. At the time that probably seemed legitimate to it, and the thesis was likely that it was looking for Communist influence there. If there was any Communist influence there, it wasn't very successful as it'd be hard to find a really pro Communist film on anything up to that point which had been produced clandestinely. It was about this time that the committee began to loose legitimacy in the eyes of the public, although not only due to this. In part, however, the calling up of entertainers in the 1950s who had been Communist in the 30s or 40s, or perhaps just left wing in that period, looked rather odd to an increasing number of people.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
The Technological Cart Driving the Horse
This topic is one of those ones that bridges that topic and modern times, related to both. It occurred to me the other day the extent to which we often don't adopt technology so much as have it forced upon us, at least in the business context. Or rather, we both adopt and are required to adopt.
This has happened a couple of times to me, and it's beginning, maybe, to happen again, which is what caused me to think of it.
The other day, I knew I was going to get a pdf document sent to me by email, and I also intended to be out at a remote location. I thought this no problem, as my Iphone can pick up email.
As it happened, the location was very remote and I was there much longer than I had anticipated, which was fine. When I had a chance to check my email on my Iphone, it turned out that the attachment was much larger than I had anticipated. Some 30 or so pages. An Iphone is pretty small, so it wasn't really possible to digest a document of that size on my phone. So I did it at home.
Some time ago a person offered me their slightly used Ipad. I declined, but started rethinking it. It has a bigger screen. Wouldn't that be nice, I thought, for occasions like this.
But I've resisted owning an Ipad so far. I'm already heavily computerized and even though I've had my wife download a book for me on her Kindle, I'm still a fan of the old fashioned physical book. So I've seen no need.
Which is sort of the process I went through with my Iphone.
Cell phone wise, my father bought what was called a "bag phone" about 20 years ago for use in the truck. It surprised me when he did it, but I kept it for quite a few years and would use it when out in the remote sticks. I really kept it beyond the period of time most people did, as I didn't want a hand held cell phone, they seemed so irritating. Ultimately, I concluded I didn't need that either and cancelled it. Right after that, I got horribly stuck way out in the sticks and my wife reconsidered the topic of cell phones for me, as I had to walk some seven miles to they highway, to hitch a ride some 30 miles to a rural gas station where I could call her.
That rapidly lead to me having one of her old cell phones, which worked fine for me for a long time. I never carried it anywhere I didn't have to. Something happened to it, and I took over another one of hers, which had a camera. I only used it out of town, but I did like the little camera, which I found to take surprisingly good photographs.
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 28, 2014 ...
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Brrrrr. . . .it's cold outside! And maybe that's not that unusual.
Oh goody. . . another Iglitch
As of last night, none of my podcasts and some of my music (maybe a lot?) is no longer functioning.
Not that this is novel. It's happened before, last time when they did a major update to their system. That one was so destructive I had to take all the pocasts off and reload them.
Apple has a good product. But they can't seem to help themselves. Their "updates" seem to lack a little testing, and they seem to serve no apparent purpose. If I could readily dump the system and keep all my tunes on Itunes (and perhaps I can?) I'd do so in a second.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
The increasing irrelevance of the American Bar Association
For example, in almost all professional organizations, including the American Bar Association and eight leading national professional organizations, the ratio of actual members to potential members ("penetration rate") has declined steadily since the mid 1960s. Active participation has declined even more sharply than membership. By all measures, overall active involvement in associations has declined by half since about 1965
Thursday, January 23, 2014
The Aerodrome: Osa's Ark - A strange Plane
Osa's Ark - A strange Plane
Osa's Ark |
I was looking through pictures I took to find an interesting picture to start off the blog. I think this fits nicely.
This is a Sikorsky S-38. A quote gleamed from it's Wikipedia Page explains it nicely.
"The Sikorsky S-38
was an American twin-engined 8-seat amphibious aircraft. It was
sometimes called 'The Explorer's Air Yacht' and was Sikorsky's first
widely produced amphibious flying boat which in addition to serving
successfully for Pan American Airways and the U.S. Army, also had
numerous private owners who received notoriety for their exploits."
This particular aircraft (this might actually be a replica, not sure) is
the "Osa's Ark", which belonged to Martin an Osa Johnson, two American
explorers. There is a whole gallery of original photographs of this
plane here.
Interesting indeed.