Heidi Bond is a Michigan law student who is blogging her way through finals. In the middle of all of this, she engages in "Shameless Begging" for a link so that she can move from Slithering Reptile to Flappy Bird in the Ecosystem. Well, there you are Heidi, a link from another Slithering Reptile. (Not only that, but I just added you to my blogroll.) If I don't join you soon, remember where you came from! And good luck on your finals!

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The new entries are up at samablog. (Careful, as samablog has decided to make the Carnival R-rated.) This thing is really gaining in popularity, so there is a lot to choose from. I will have to sort through them tomorrow ...

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Women shout, men dance
"Saddam's a rat, a coward!"
No more terror man

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If you are bored and wondering how to spend your day, take some time to work through the Year in Ideas over at the New York Times Magazine {ID=venturpreneur; password=blawg}. My favorites:

* Airborne Humans: the story of Skyrays, which allow skydivers to fly.

* Biblical Taxation: how University of Alabama law professor Susan Pace Hamill ruffled feathers in Alabama by suggesting that its tax system was un-Biblical.

* Coincidence Theory: describes a theory for how the human brain may "subtly alter the physical world."

* The Jules Verne Project: a project to explore the earth's core.

* Junk Food is Good For You: I wish!

* Mind over Matter: not the coincidence theory, but direct tapping of brain activity to help quadriplegics.

* Offloading Your Memories: are you sensing a pattern here?

* PowerPoint Makes You Dumb: a cautionary tale about the use of PowerPoint from NASA.

* Projection Keyboard: totally cool technology ... and useful, too.

* The See-Through Coat: like the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter!

* Young Success Means Early Death: fortunately, I am still rising at age 41!

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In some circumstances, scientific advances are simply too costly. Medical experiments in Nazi Germany are the usual examples here. Recently, some people, including Ralph Nader, have been saying that "neuromarketing" research belongs in the same boat. Nader's group, Commercial Alert describes this field as a "controversial new field of marketing which uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- a medical technology -- not to heal, but to sell products." Commerical Alert has asked Emory University to stop its research in the field or face the potential loss of millions of federal research dollars. What arrogance!

The idea that animates this research is that marketing can be made more scientific. As far as I can tell, no credible scientist is arguing that research on the brain's response to marketing is per se objectionable. What is objectionable is the sale of information generated in Emory's labs. Apparently, Emory is closely connected to the BrightHouse Neurostrategies Institute, which is self-described as "a novel form of consumer consultancy that leverages scientific knowledge about how the human brain motivates consumer behavior to deliver strategic insights that are intended to enhance the relationship between the consumer and the product, brand and company."

Admittedly, selling data to BrightHouse would be ethically objectionable, but Commercial Alert took its objections to another level. In an outlandish denial of the need for personal responsibility, Commercial Alert argues:

The real risk of neuromarketing research is to the people -- including children -- who are the real targets of this research. Already, marketing is deeply implicated in a host of pathologies. The nation is in the midst of an epidemic of marketing-related diseases. Our children are suffering from extraordinary levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes, anorexia, bulimia, and pathological gambling, while millions will eventually die from the marketing of tobacco. Such illnesses affect also the population at large, as does chronic debt that people incur to support the consumption that the marketing industry encourages.

Millions have died from the "marketing of tobacco"? Sheesh, that Joe Camel is worse than I thought. I had always assumed that you actually need to smoke the tobacco! But it's nice to know that I can blame my weight on corporations who market pastries and ice cream rather than on my own failure to exercise.

Seriously, Commercial Alert makes a classic mistake so often made by so-called "public interest" groups: it overplayed its hand in an attempt to gin up publicity. While it may be successful in grabbing headlines, these antics tend to sour people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the more modest claim of an ethical lapse. Including me.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution for the pointer on this story.

UPDATE: I just noticed this while reading Jack Bog Blog. Hmm. Commercial Alert grabs headlines with a letter to Emory on the same day that Nader appears on Larry King Live. Coincidence? You tell me.

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On the trip to Kansas City, I joined two colleagues for a steak dinner at Plaza III, reputed to be the best steakhouse in the city. It was, indeed, good steak, but when one of our company refrained from the excellent potatoes, dinner conversation turned to the South Beach Diet. If you know me, you know that I am not a fan of fad diets, and this one -- along with the Atkins' Diet -- seems like one we will be laughing about a few years down the road.

In the meantime, diets are exceedingly good business. Dr. Phil has his own. So does Jared, the Subway guy. All of which set my entrepreneurial mind to thinking: perhaps I should come up with my own diet? After all, I am a doctor (a Juris Doctor). The only problem is that if you are into losing weight, my diet stinks. If it had a label, it would say, "Proven ineffective against weight loss." The last sentence of my official law school bio reads: "If you want to get on his good side, Milka chocolate, Culver's custard, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or Henry Weinhard's root beer will usually do the job."

Then again, this could be a new angle. After all, a few years ago who would have thought that we would see people trying to lose weight by ordering hamburgers without a bun? When I used to play a little basketball, my wife gave me the name "Air Gordon" (a reference to my six inch vertical jump), so perhaps we could call this the "Air Gordon Diet." We could make Krispy Kreme doughnuts a central feature of the diet because they are mostly air. I could be like Jared, only for Krispy Kreme!

OK, this is getting exciting! Do I hear any volunteers to write the business plan?

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I made a proposed Top 10 list of law and economics articles below. Some readers commented on the list, and Kaimi Wenger found a nice syllabus from Professor Avery Wiener Katz at Columbia. From the comments below and the Katz list, there are a few articles that I would like to add to the Top 10, if I can find the room.

Here they are (again in chronological order):

* George Stigler, The Economics of Information, 64 J. Pol. Econ. 213 (1961)

* George Akerlof, The Market for Lemons: Qualitative Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism, 84 Q. J. Econ. 488 (1970)

* Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, 47 Econometrica 263 (1979)

* Robert Mnookin & Lewis Kornhauser, Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce, 88 Yale L.J. 950 (1979)

* Robert Cooter, Unity in Tort, Contract and Property: The Model of Precaution, 73 Cal. L. Rev. 1 (1985)

Here is my original Top 10:

* Ronald Coase, The Nature of the Firm, 4 Economica (n.s.) 386 (1937)

* Ronald Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, 3 Journal of Law and Economics 1 (1960)

* Henry G. Manne, Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control, 73 J. Pol. Econ. 110 (1965)

* Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 Harvard Law Review 1089 (1972)

* Richard A. Posner, A Theory of Negligence, 1 J. Legal Stud. 29 (1972)

* Richard A. Posner, An Economic Approach to Legal Procedure and Judicial Administration, 2 J. Leg. Stud. 399 (1973)

* Richard A. Epstein, A Theory of Strict Liability, 2 J. Legal Stud. 151 (1973)

* Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure, 3 J. Fin. Econ. 305 (1976).

* Jules Coleman, Efficiency, Auction and Exchange: Philosophic Aspects of the Economic Approach to Law, 68 California Law Review 221 (1980)

* George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, The Selection of Disputes for Litigation, 13 J. Legal Stud. 1 (1984)

Anyone want to take a stab at picking the Top 10 from these 15 articles?

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I don't have a category for oppression, so I put this under "Miscellany." I enjoyed reading David Hornik's ode to Cravath, Swaine & Moore over on VentureBlog. Perhaps I liked it so much because it was such a different experience from my own at Skadden.

Hornik writes:

Most of us didn't go to Cravath as young attorneys intending to make partner -- simple math made clear that wasn't likely (only a handful made partner out of any entering class of 70 or more). We went to Cravath because it was a great place to learn and a great place to leave. And that was the culture. At Cravath you practiced the best law with the best people and when you left, you took with you the training and those connections.

Unlike most businesses, attrition is part of the plan at Cravath. The Cravath model doesn't work unless dozens of attorneys leave the firm each year. So leaving is part of the culture. But what makes Cravath successful is its ability to promote attrition while maintaining strong relations with those who leave the firm.

One of my co-authors is a Cravath alum, and she has wonderful memories, too. Most of the people I knew at Skadden, by contrast, left without many fond feelings for the place. Like Hornik, I didn't go to Skadden with the intention of becoming a partner. I went because I didn't know what else to do with myself, and it seemed like an exciting place. Plus I really liked Delaware.

I suspect that part of the reason for my ambivalence about Skadden is the fact that I was there in the early 1990s, too late for the go-go 80's and too early for the internet boom in the mid- to late-1990's. When I arrived, associates were being fired, my salary was frozen for a year, and I spent most of my time looking for work from senior associates (who were hoarding it for themselves). Unlike later in my career -- when business started to pick up again -- the stress at the beginning came from the feeling that I might be next on the chopping block. After all, I didn't know how to do anything and I wasn't billing hours, so why would they pay me that outrageous salary?!

Also during this time, the firm was in a leadership transition as the legendary Joe Flom was in the process of stepping aside. At the time, we felt like the firm's leaders were lying to us on a regular basis. In retrospect, I think they probably were just having trouble adjusting to the post-hostile takeover era.

Perhaps the most painful part of the job was the sense of alienation. We knew the score. Skadden was paying us a lot of money, so much that no demand was too demanding. When I realized that my children (then three, now five) were growing up fatherless, I knew it was time to go.

In the end, my feelings about Skadden are mixed. I still don't understand the near-hazing that some partners inflicted on associates, but I can't say that the firm misrepresented itself. It was always upfront about what it was (THE FIRM) and what I was (NOTHING). Once I realized that I could do the work and keep pace, the luster of working at a big firm wore off.

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Just looking around at some other blogs, and I found a few things worth reading. For example, Chris Shipley has a nice post on "The Human Cost of Tech Transformation." When one is young and full of opportunities, these issues do not seem so important. At least that was my experience. Now, as a tenured professor, I don't have much to fear from technology since I control so much of my environment. Nevertheless, when I look around, I realize that I am the exception, not the rule. My neighbors and friends have fears that never touch me.

Steve Bainbridge is blogging about corporate social responsibility from a conservative's perspective. (I am happy to see that he still writes about business issues, since he started to get so much attention for his takes on politics and wine.) Riffing on a column by John O'Sullivan, Steve endorses "the principle of shaming to square corporate social responsibility and the shareholder wealth maximization approach." He continues, "Corporations held up to public criticism for controversial short-term profit-maximizing actions often find that responding to such criticism is the best [way] to maximize long-term profits." I have no problem with shaming as a strategy for changing corporate behavior, but shaming has built-in limits, namely, community norms. Steve uses the example of Abercrombie & Fitch, which has succombed to pressure from family groups and is discontinuing is "racy" catalogue. The only reason this campaign worked was because the catalogue was extreme. So here is the take-home point: non-market influences only work on the extremes. In my view, the central shortcoming of our current corporate governance system is its inability to resolve problems before they become extreme.

Speaking of social responsibility, Brad DeLong is blogging about outsourcing. After quoting a lengthy excerpt from The Economist, he offers two brief, but useful, correctives on the current debate: (1) "The fact that trade balances--that dollars paid to Indian call-center workers show up as demand for American exports or as funding for investments in America" means that outsourcing is not about "job loss" but "job shift"; and (2) with respect to states that are attempting to combat outsourcing, "The question these state governors should be asking themselves is, 'Are these call-center jobs really the ones we want to keep?'" These points may point to more of The Human Cost of Tech Transformation, but in the end, aren't these costs inherent in the process of "creative destruction"?

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Those of you who frequent these part know that I am headed to India in January. New Year's Day to be exact. Today I went to the travel clinic, where I received five injections (flu, polio, hepatitis, typhoid, and tetanus), two prescriptions (malaria and diarrhea), and one blood test (for mumps). This is my first trip to a developing country and a good reminder of how far India needs to go to catch up to the standard of living in the United States. Truth be told, the whole this spooked me a little.

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My absence yesterday and light posting generally recently can be attributed to a last-second push to prepare a grant application for the Kauffman Foundation. We are competing in this program for some dollars to take entrepreneurship education campus-wide.

I spent last night and this morning in Kansas City as part of the Wisconsin team that was pitching our plan to the Kauffman judges. I have no idea whether we will get the money, but we learned a lot about ourselves and about entrepreneurship during the past few months. Moreover, we now have a plan for building on the success of INSITE. I just wanted to say that I am impressed with the zeal of the Kauffman Foundation in promoting entrepreneurship. For those of you who are on the outside looking in, entrepreneurship people may seem like a strange subculture, but animating their actions is a deep conviction that entrepreneurship can change the world for the better. I enjoy being part of something like that.

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On December 7, 1941, my father was 16 years old. His life would change forever on that day. Shortly after President Roosevelt told the nation about the "day that shall live in infamy," my father entered the Navy. He fought on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, but don't ask him about it. Even 60 years later he cannot tell his stories. He is a great storyteller, unless the stories are about war. The few times I have seen him try, he has broken down in tears. These are the only times I have seen my father cry.

I was born in a Naval hospital in Bremerton, Washington in 1962, and I spent my first six years in San Diego, where my father taught teletype repair at the Naval school. (Nowadays, he works on computers.) My earliest memories often involve events on the Naval Base, where I could visit my father at work.

Perhaps the most poignant memory of my early childhood, however, involves me and my mother standing at a bus stop in Wisconsin, waiting for my father. He had been gone for a very long time on a cruise around the world. When he left, he charged my mother with moving the family from San Diego to wherever she wanted. He was retiring from the Navy with his pension, and they had decided that California was definitely not the place for our family. She didn't know where to go, other than to find his brother, who would offer our family of four children a place to stay. If I recall correctly, we stayed in a camper trailer on my uncle's front lawn and waited for my father. My uncle lived on a farm just outside of Osseo, Wisconsin.

After weeks of this, my father was finally coming home. So were many other servicemen. As each one stepped onto the pavement from the bus, I asked my mother, "Is that him? Is that him?" A few times, I thought that she was mistaken, but I wasn't sure. I really didn't remember what he looked like. When he finally came off the bus, I had tired of asking my mother, and she needed to prompt me. I ran to him and received one of those enormous hugs that only a father can give.

My father was not the stereotypical military father. He was not particularly strict, though he did have a strong sense of discipline. He also knew right from wrong, and made of point of teaching that distinction. As you might imagine, he was fiercely patriotic, and a good deal of that has rubbed off.

Every year on December 7, my parents would remind me of Pearl Harbor Day, in the same way that I will always tell my children about 9/11. I didn't know many of the details -- still don't, as learning about war does not interest me -- but I knew that this day was important to them. It was one of the few truly religious holidays in my home. They told me about listening to President Roosevelt on the radio. They told me about being scared. Of course, they both felt fear more personally after my father entered the service, but there must be something quite indelible about one's first encounter with war.

I am not sure about my parent's being "The Greatest Generation," but there is something about them that I have not been able to replicate in my own character. It's hard to describe with a single word, like honor or dignity, but I connect this feeling about them to December 7. Perhaps this "something" is their sense of satisfaction at having participated in something that changed the world. They are not ambitious. They have lived good lives. Whatever that indefinable something is, I am grateful for parents who have it, and I am grateful for December 7, when I can be reminded of the feeling.

[Cross-posted @ Times & Seasons]

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Those of you who frequent this blog know that I think the Bowl Championship Series is a blight on college football. With Kansas State's manhandling of Oklahoma last night, the system is exposed yet again. Now we have three teams -- Oklahoma, USC, and LSU -- with credible claims to be playing a national championship game. Moreover, several other teams (including Kansas State) are playing well enough that they could win a post-season playoff. The experts are saying that Oklahoma will play for the national championship, regardless of tonight's spanking, a result that strikes this college football fan as extremely unfair. It used to be the conventional wisdom that late losses -- even late losses to good teams -- were worse that early losses. By this sort of reasoning, both USC and LSU should leap ahead of Oklahoma. Apparently, the BCS computers are enamoured enough of Oklahoma to overlook this little problem. Not only that, but the computers do not consider the fact that Oklahoma was completely dominated. Frustrating. Dump the BCS. Get a playoff!

P.S. A playoff might also bring justice to a couple of teams that are outside of the "chosen" conferences, but still excellent football teams. This year's darlings: Miami of Ohio and Boise State, both with only one loss and both having beaten some good teams.

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My last entry started me thinking: what if we wanted to assemble a list of the most important contributions to law and economics over the past five years? Suggestions?

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Not that I have a lot of spare time, but I am thinking about starting a law and economics reading group next semester. We have a few people on the faculty at the law school who enjoy talking about economics. We might even invite students, and if we decide to do that, I am tempted to have a series of sessions on "Classics in Law & Economics." What would be on the list?

Here is a proposed list of the Top 10, in chronological order:

* Ronald Coase, The Nature of the Firm, 4 Economica (n.s.) 386 (1937)

* Ronald Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, 3 Journal of Law and Economics 1 (1960)

* Henry G. Manne, Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control, 73 J. Pol. Econ. 110 (1965)

* Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 Harvard Law Review 1089 (1972)

* Richard A. Posner, A Theory of Negligence, 1 J. Legal Stud. 29 (1972)

* Richard A. Posner, An Economic Approach to Legal Procedure and Judicial Administration, 2 J. Leg. Stud. 399 (1973)

* Richard A. Epstein, A Theory of Strict Liability, 2 J. Legal Stud. 151 (1973)

* Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure, 3 J. Fin. Econ. 305 (1976).

* Jules Coleman, Efficiency, Auction and Exchange: Philosophic Aspects of the Economic Approach to Law, 68 California Law Review 221 (1980)

* George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, The Selection of Disputes for Litigation, 13 J. Legal Stud. 1 (1984)

Comments would be most welcome.

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