My son has studied German for five years, more or less. I speak that language choppily, but I listen to Schlaflos in München and various German news podcasts, along with an occasional German audio book. My oldest daughter lives in the German House at BYU. But my son wants to increase his exposure to languages other than English and German.

In addition to German, the high school offers Spanish, French, and Japanese. Hmm. Not really what he was thinking.

Perhaps a language class at BYU? BYU has lots of options. The top options on his list, in the order we searched for them: Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), and Arabic. We are still sorting this out, but he is thinking that Arabic would be fun.

Going through this exercise almost makes me want to sign up for a course in the Center for Language Studies next summer. But which language?  After serving a Church mission in Austria, I enrolled in a Russian class at BYU, but I was forced to drop it when it came into conflict with a course for my major. I have always thought Russian would be fun to learn, if I could get to the point of reading Dostoevsky.

I took a course in French during my clerkship in Louisiana, but I didn't retain much. Being in love with cheese and the Tour de France, French would be a logical language for me to study. Then again, Spanish seems more useful in this part of the world. My mother spoke a few Norwegian phrases to me as I was growing up, and it would be fun to learn the "mother tongue" (haha), though my wife speaks Swedish, so we already have a Scandinavian in the family.

All things considered, I think my choice would be Mandarin or Arabic. If you had the time to study a new language, which would you choose?

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For months following her birth, silent acid reflux (or, as my husband insists, "heartburn") made it difficult to get Baby Cara to sleep. It turned out, however, that a reading of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown would magically lull my little one to sleep. I hadn't grown up with Goodnight Moon and, for those of you unfamiliar with it, an unseen narrator tells us about objects in the “great green room”: a telephone, a red balloon, a picture of the cow jumping over the moon. Then we say goodnight to many of the same things.

There are wonderful images: the moon rises, the light dims, the clock moves forward as the bunny says his (her?) litany of goodnights. The pictures alternate between black and white and color. A soothing symmetry to the "goodnights" lulls both baby and tired momma off to sleep.

And yet, by chance, two of the pages were stuck together the first 30 odd times I read the book. One night, I blearily unstuck them, to reveal lines that I hadn't seen before: "Goodnight nobody, goodnight mush."

Goodnight NOBODY?!?! Margaret hadn't told us nobody was in the room before! WAS nobody in the room before? Where did nobody come from? In fact, the last bit of the poem says goodnight to things we haven't been introduced to: stars, air, noises everywhere. Forgotten and unmentioned are the telephone and the red balloon. To sleep-deprived, exhausted me, this was profoundly unsettling, and I made up a blogpost about it even before the good folks at the Conglomerate asked me back.

It's a good thing my maternity leave only lasted three months and then I was back safe at my job, where overthinking isn't a big danger.

Goodnight Glom. Thanks for having me.

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A couple of car-related items:

First, about hybrid cars . . . . 

Christine and Gordon's recent hybrid car postings (Highlander for Christine; Prius for Gordon) got me thinking. You see, my family lives in a Prius-rich environment.  Literally about a third of our friends have at least one Prius in the family, and one family has two--and they are Prius proselytizers as well.  We, on other hand, drive a couple of relatively old, relatively guzzly cars.  The efficient one is a 12-year-old Volvo, which gets about 15 mpg in city driving.  The other is a 10-year-old Lexus SUV (the big one), which gets about 10 mpg (with a tailwind).  When I get self-conscious about our old guzzlers, my defense mechanisms cause me to speculate about whether buying a new hybrid is as green as generally believed.  Specifically, the manufacture of a new car--even a really fuel-efficient one--must leave a pretty big carbon footprint, right?  All that steel and shipping!  Is it possible we'd be better off just keeping our old cars forever and repairing them as needed, as they do in Cuba?   

Turns out, building a new Prius requires 113 million BTUs of energy.  So compared to an existing car, in carbon footprint terms, a new Prius has already consumed 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it rolls off the showroom floor!  Instead of a new Prius, buy:

i. a 1998 Toyota Tercel, which gets about 35 mpg.  You'd have to drive the Prius 100,000 miles before you broke even with the old Tercel.

or

ii. a 1994 Geo Metro XFi, which gets the same 46 mpg as the new Prius, but without the carbon overhead.  In terms of carbon footprint, the Prius will never catch up.

Of course, odds are that you won't be getting that new-car smell.  As one analyst concludes, "You might feel better driving a hybrid, but you won't necessarily be greener."

Second, about road rage. . . .

Did you hear that bumper stickers cause road rage?  This study's been out for a few weeks now, and actually that's not what it said.  Apparently, bumper stickers signal the driver's territoriality.  Bumper stickers personalize the car, marking the driver's territory.  These drivers are quicker to perceive a threat to their territory by the actions of other drivers, and they are correspondingly more lively at defending against these perceived incursions.  And this is independent of any substantive message on the bumper sticker:

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love -- "Visualize World Peace," "My Kid Is an Honor Student" -- or angry and in your face -- "Don't Mess With Texas," "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."

So watch out for those bumper stickers!

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Dear Rupert,

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about 2 months ago about the changes you’ve been making to the paper. It left me feeling frustrated, and I’d like to end our relationship. Unfortunately, because I had a baby girl about 9 months ago, I am frequently unable to compose letters to owners of major newspapers in a timely fashion. That May morning I got as far as crafting little snippets of an incisive, pointed critique of your new editorial policies, and then gave it up to finish breakfast, restore the kitchen to a semblance of order, and return to grading exams. What stuck with me is that you’ve urged more “newsy,” shorter articles, that end on page one. Editors have scornfully poo-poohed articles with the gestation period of a llama (almost a year, for those not up on llama reproductive cycles).

First, the obligatory introductions, bona fides, and disclaimers. I have been a loyal reader for 8 years. I’ve seen the move to color print, the welcome additions of the Personal Journal, Weekend section, and the Saturday/Sunday edition. I suggest the WSJ to all my students, and require it for my seminar. And I’m just a simple corporate law professor. You make more money in a week than I do all year. That said, for what it’s worth, here’s my take:

Huh?

1. More newsy: I have lots of avenues for news in my life. CNN, Fox News, NPR, the Newshour, countless websites. Where’s your comparative advantage here? As far as straight news goes, your paper starts to stale the minute it goes to press. You’re selling yesterday’s news on today’s doorstep.

2. More newsy II: People who buy papers are increasingly people who love papers. See #1—there’s plenty of other sources for those who want “just the news, ma’am.” Papers’ advantage over TV comes from their reader-directedness. I get to read what I want—I construct my own news experience. I, personally, skip the articles where the headline basically says it all: e.g. “Corn Harvest to Be Larger Than Thought,” from yesterday’s paper. Yup, got it, I don’t need to read more. But then there are the articles that teach me—these are the ones I linger over, savor. There was an article on voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology your paper printed 5 years ago. A teasing few columns on the front page, and a whole, glorious full spread in the inside jump pages about the technology, the industry, the regulatory risks and concerns. When a month later my firm represented an investor in Vonage, I pointed the partner I worked with straight to the piece, and basked in its reflected glory. Were llamas born during the making of that article? I don’t know and I don’t care. I wouldn’t have read it anywhere else. Your series on the fall of Bear Stearns last month—that’s what I’m talking about. Teach me, make me look smart, that’s why I love you.

3. The website issue: here’s your real competition for news, and here you have reader-directedness par excellence, with the bonus of no newsprint to wash off your fingers. You can’t beat these guys in the news race, it’s a losing proposition. Your comparative advantage is credibility, it seems to me. And the pleasure of the printed word digested (a verb chosen deliberately, because I often read the WSJ over breakfast or lunch).

4. You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right. I’ll keep coming back, eternally hopeful. You’re not losing me yet, you’re not even close to losing me yet. And maybe you’ll get younger, more hip readers with your new strategy, and still keep stringing me along. I get it. But if you keep this up, maybe, someday, I’ll finally listen to my husband and start reading the Economist. I don’t want to. They’re less gossipy, less American, less fun. Still, they do have that wry sense of humor, and it’s kind of cute how they spell civilization with an “s.” I’m still yours, Rupert. But for how long?

Wistfully,
Usha Rodrigues

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My august employer self-insures, so all employees must take a driver’s education test if they plan to use vehicles on the company dime. It was an accordingly nostalgic morning for me last week. Accident fatality statistics, ghoulish videos of car wrecks, state Department of Transportation documents (sample advice: “NEVER take your anger out on someone else on the road”), and the sort of recommendations from insurance companies that make you wonder how entrepreneurs like Hank Greenberg and Warren Buffett ever made their acquisition-oriented buccaneering ways to the top of the industry. Do you, for example, turn off the radio and crack the window when traffic gets heavy, so you can hear all and avoid distractions? Do you stay four seconds behind other drivers at all times (up from two seconds when I first got my license)?

It wasn't easy for me to learn how far I am from that level of ultra-responsibilty. But who I really felt bad for were the purchasers of bond insurance.  It's important to drive safely.  But when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars packaged in pretty esoteric ways?  Consider of all the slide shows, re-enactments, and paeans to the power of the certificate of deposit that they must all go through!

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Brayden went car shopping. I am reminded that I made a poor purchase decision in 2005. Crud.

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We are car-keepers.  Our 1993 Camry (aka "the best car ever") stayed with us for 10 years, and we still miss it today.  This week, we were at a crossroads.  Our 1998 MB E320 Wagon (aka "the second best car ever") seemed like it might require some out-of-warranty repairs in the short-to-medium term.  We were also wishing we had a car that all three kids (and their two state-mandated car seats) could fit in comfortably, allowing the older two to buckle themselves.  But what car/SUV/wagon/van?  We are in a difficult car-buying place:  we have three children and live in a state that demands car seats until age 8.  At a minimum, few sedans have the kind of width for three-across, infant seat in middle, plus booster for daily driving.  So, that leaves cars out of the picture.  Our other car is a Pilot, which would seem like a good choice, with a third seat, but the third seat is impossible for a child to get in and out of without adult help and almost impossible if the second-row seat you have to collapse to get in the third seat has a car seat in it.  So, we need something with three rows of seats, but with the third row easy to access.  That seems to leave minivans.  And yes, we are just Texan enough still to resist the minivan to some extent.

So, we looked at every other crossover we could think of that allows easy access to the third seat.  One was pricey and oddly hearse-looking (the MB R-series) and the other did not have good word-of-mouth reviews regarding reliability (the Chrysler Pacifica).  Then we looked at the Toyota Highlander with the "center stow" option that lets kids hop through to the back row of seats.  That seemed like a good option, and did I mention we still missed our Camry (aka "the best car ever")? 

But something nagged at me -- have you seen gas prices lately?  Wouldn't getting good gas mileage be a good idea?  Some of the cars we looked at were literally in the single digits in the city.  Yikes!  Bracketing aside the monthly fuel cost (Champaign-Urbana is not known for its lengthy commutes), could I really thumb my nose at environmental conservation?

So, our crunchy con compromise was a Highlander Hybrid.  We are on Day 3, and we are very happy.  It has many gadgets, many that I don't need, and many more that I will never discover.  It gets reasonable gas mileage and it gets us all where we need to go, without pinched fingers and vaulting over the second row seats.

When contemplating the hybrid premium, I seemed to remember talk a year or so ago of tax incentives for people who buy hybrids.  This could be the answer!  Except, no.  According to this IRS release, because Toyota (and Honda and Lexus) make hybrids that people actually want to buy, credits for those popular cars have been phased out.  If I had wanted to buy a hybrid that no one else wanted to buy (presumably because it's not that a great of a car), then the IRS would subsidize that bad choice for me up to $3k.  Dang.

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I have been a bit out of the blogging loop lately, as I have been trying to meeting some writing deadlines. Last night, I fell asleep with my laptop on my lap, and when I reviewed the document today, I found this word: "analyffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffze."

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Further to the interdisciplinary focus on debtors, what is the difference between getting foreclosed and walking away from your house?  See this interesting post at Calculated Risk.

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In connection with my attendance at the Georgetown Law Symposium, I have done some touring of the city with my 12-year-old son, and we have met some very interesting people.

• At the symposium, we encountered lots of bloggers, including Larry Ribstein, Bill Henderson, and Dave Lat.
• We had two dinners with Mike O'Neill, and we were able to do a bit of reminiscing about Wisconsin and BYU.
• When Conrad and I were sitting in the reception area of Senator Hatch's office, waiting for our tour of the Capital, Boone Pickens showed up. We had a brief conversation about corporate law, and he was still animated about Unocal. As we parted, he asked Conrad where he planned to go to college. Of course, Conrad told him "BYU," to which Boone responded: "If you you decide not to go to BYU, you should go to Oklahoma State!"
• Dave Moore, one of the new additions to the BYU law faculty, gave us a tour of the Supreme Court, which included a wonderful conversation with Justice Alito.
• Pope Benedict. We didn't meet him, but as we walked over an overpass near Georgetown Law Center, his police escort passed beneath us, and we caught a close-up of the Popemobile ... the first time I had seen it live since my days as a Mormon missionary in Vienna, when I attended a speech by Pope John Paul II.

Despite all of this, I suspect that Conrad's favorite memory from the trip will be Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum. If you have never done this with a 12-year-old, find one and go!

UPDATE: I don't know how I forgot to include Ron Paul in my initial post. He was speaking at the foot of the Capitol when we arrived in DC. As we approached the rally (50-100 people), he was talking about petitioning the government for redress of grievances. Then he delivered this line: "You don't have to believe me ... you can find this in the law reviews!"

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Earlier this week, I stepped into a Barnes & Noble in Salt Lake City, and the first book I saw on the shelves was Valerie Bertinelli's Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time. Though I watched my share of One Day at a Time in the mid-1970s -- give me a break ... we had two channels on our rabbit-eared TV, and I lived in Osseo, Wisconsin for crying out loud! -- I can't imagine reading this book. Still, I was a little curious about that weight loss angle ...

So I opened to the Preface and saw this sentence: "Since going on Jenny Craig in March 2007, I've surpassed my original goal of 30 pounds and set new targets for myself."

Good for you, Valerie! I happened to be in that bookstore on March 31, and I had set my own goal of getting below 200 pounds by that date. I didn't quite make it (200.2 according to my digital scale), but today, for the first time in at least a decade, I saw the number "1" at the beginning of the weight on the scale. If you are keeping track, that's 40 pounds down since last August.

I am not planning to write a book about this experience, but if I did, it would go something like this (with an acknowledgment to Tom Lee for crafting the precise words):

Eat less. Exercise more.

That seems like a sure-fire formula for success.

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This is quite astonishing:

An abridged history of American-centric warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict.

For a breakdown of the actual battles portrayed in the film, visit:
http://www.touristpictures.com/foodfi...

For the official cheat sheet (breakdown of the foodstuffs), visit:
http://www.touristpictures.com/foodfi...

Now, to answer some FAQs...
- The food in this film was consumed either by myself or my dog after shooting. None of the cast went to waste.
- The software used was photoshop and after effects.
- The film took me 3 months to do.
- Although it seems like stop motion, most of it was stop motion created within After effects, using keyframe animation. I am basically moving the food around within the the program, frame by frame, which is the same as traditional stop motion, only it's digital.

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As I was driving (safely) around the Wisconsin backroads this afternoon, I heard an interesting discussion on NPR's Talk of the Nation about the life-cycle of happiness. We have mentioned some possible implications of happiness research for law. The springboard for today's radio discussion was this paper by David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald entitled "Is Well-being U-Shaped over the Life Cycle?" (forthcoming 2008 in the Social Science & Medicine). This is from the abstract:

First, using data on 500,000 randomly sampled Americans and West Europeans, the paper designs a test that can control for cohort effects. Holding other factors constant, we show that a typical individuals happiness reaches its minimum -- on both sides of the Atlantic and for both males and females -- in middle age. Second, evidence is provided for the existence of a similar U-shape through the life-course in East European, Latin American and Asian nations. Third, a U-shape in age is found in separate well-being regression equations in 72 developed and developing nations. Fourth, using measures that are closer to psychiatric scores, we document a comparable well-being curve across the life cycle in two other data sets: (i) in GHQ-N6 mental health levels among a sample of 16,000 Europeans, and (ii) in reported depression and anxiety levels among 1 million U.K. citizens. Fifth, we discuss some apparent exceptions, particularly in developing nations, to the U-shape. Sixth, we note that American male birth-cohorts seem to have become progressively less content with their lives. Our paper’s results are based on regression equations in which other influences, such as demographic variables and income, are held constant.

The figure below represents the mean incidence of depression and anxiety by age in the UK Labour Force Survey referenced in the abstract:

If you invert the curve, you get the U-shaped representation of happiness, which places me at the nadir of the happiness life-cycle. I suppose that could be depressing, but I am feeling pretty good about life, and it's all up from here!

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I just finished shredding today's credit card offers. My family receives an average of about three per day, and they all end up in the shredder.

Flyers from grocery stores, dentists, furnace repairmen, etc. go straight into the round file. No shredding necessary.

Now, I recognize that some people find this sort of mail useful, but I don't. And I am wondering why I can't instruct U.S.P.S. to stop delivering it to my house. I resent the time I spend processing it, I regret all of the wasted paper, and I worry about identity theft. Just take me off the list!

Not surprisingly, I am not the first person to think of this, and there are strategies for reducing junk mail. But shouldn't U.S.P.S. provide one-stop service on my mailbox?

The problem, of course, is that U.S.P.S. has no incentive to stop the flow. Since almost all useful correspondence now happens on the internet, the U.S.P.S. needs junk mail to survive. Last year, Colorado legislator Sara Gagliardi introduced a "no junk mail" bill in the Colorado legislature, but it died in committee. The U.S.P.S. opposed the bill, and in a story from that effort, U.S.P.S. spokesman Al DeSarro is quoted: "This is an infringement on commerce and an infringement on free speech."

Such silliness does not merit a reasoned response, but the Colorado experience suggests that changing this crazy system would require more than one impassioned state legislator. That's why I am willing to vote for the presidential candidate who proclaims, "I look forward to nailing the going out of business sign on the front door of the United States Postal Service."

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If you haven't heard, StickK is now live and accepting contracts. StickK founder and Yale economist Dean Karlan suggested that I try a "maintenance contract" to consolidate the progress I have made in losing weight, but I still have at least 30 pounds to go. And I am not feeling the need to take a contract out on myself just yet.

Just this morning, I had one of those experiences that every successful loser cherishes: I broke through a plateau. Weight loss plateaus are a well-known phenomenon -- you change your diet or increase your exercise, lose a few pounds, and then get stuck. If you have been doing things the right way -- i.e., making incremental advances -- chances are that your plateau is simply a new equilibrium. Moving off the plateau is a simple matter of adjusting the critical variables (diet and exercise).

Over the past six months, as I have shed almost 35 pounds, I have hit four or five plateaus. They usually last a couple of weeks, though this last one has kept me in the same place for three weeks. In each instance, it takes me awhile to realize that I am not making progress and awhile longer to calibrate my diet -- less sugar and fat, more fresh veggies -- and expand/intensify my exercise. Eventually, however, I break through.

There is a life lesson in that, I think.

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Speaking of losing weight, about halfway through the past semester, I started running for the first time in my life. My oldest son and I lift weights three times a week, and we decided to go from the weight room directly to the track. Talk about embarrassing! Despite having walked three miles to school every day, I couldn't make one lap around the track without cramping. And when I wasn't cramping, I was stopping to catch my breath. But I swallowed my pride and persevered. Now I am running one mile straight, followed by a quick jaunt up and down the "RB Steps" (100 steps connecting BYU's sports facilities to the upper campus).

I can't credit much of this progress to my iPod, even though I listen to it while I run. My first attempt at running to music was a complete failure. Simon & Garfunkel ... what was I thinking? Elton John was a step in the right direction, but "Rocket Man" isn't as peppy as the title would suggest. So I moved to the Temptations. "The Way You Do The Things You Do," "My Girl," "Get Ready," "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" ... it takes me a long time to run a mile!

The main problem with the Temptations is the lyrics. It's hard to maintain a pace when you are doubling over with laughter. "The Way You Do The Things You Do" is hilarious, with gems like this: "If good looks were minutes, You know you could have been an hour ..." And how about "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep"? This must be the most insulting love song ever written: "A pretty face you may not posses, but what I like about you is your tenderness." And "My friends ask what do I see in you? But it goes deeper than the eye can view; You have a pleasin' personality and that's an ever lovin' rare quality."

Most of the Temptations songs are not great running songs anyway. If I am going to get serious about running, I need to add a new playlist to my iPod. After casting around the internet for suggestions, I am coming to the conclusion that running songs are highly idiosyncratic. For example, "Eye of the Tiger" does not work for me. And I cannot imagine listening to this list. But I can imagine running to my daughter's favorite song ...

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It will be quiet around here, and around most places, we expect, over the next couple of days.  Sure, the US must be celebrating its big win in damages over Antigua in the internet gambling case.  But others are celebrating other things.  So best from us to you, &c.

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Today is my birthday, and when I arrived at the office, I was greeted by this colorful door, courtesy of my daughter ...

Hmm ... a puzzle ...

She knows I am trying to lose weight ...

But she baked cookies for me anyway.

Thanks, Laura!

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Someone at Marketplace is way into sustainability, and my favorite podcast is doing a weeklong feature on the consumer economy called Consumed. The motivating question: "Is our consumer society sustainable?"

Let me save you the trouble of listening: No.

They interview a famous geography professor and talk a lot about the "typical American family." But the most interesting segment so far has been the feature on the "Freegans." Never heard of Freegans? Here's an image from a freegan website:

You probably figured this out already, but "freegan" combines two concepts everyone loves: "free" and "vegan." (If you eat free meat, you're a "meagan.")According to Freegan.info:

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

And they go through other people's trash looking for food. Other side benefits: eco-friendly transportation ("we use other methods of transportation including trainhopping, hitchhiking, walking, skating, and biking"), rent-free housing (i.e., squatting), and voluntary joblessness ("by accounting for the basic necessities of food, clothing, housing, furniture, and transportation without spending a dime, freegans are able to greatly reduce or altogether eliminate the need to constantly be employed"). More on Freeganism from Wikipedia.

So we could invoke a noble image of Freegans, like "urban gleaners":

Or perhaps they are just bums with high-minded principles?

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• The D C Circuit still is pretty quiet, but today it turned away a union challenge to a smoking ban in the workplace.  The agency defendant handled the arbitration where the union grieved the smoking ban, but didn't mention said ban in its arbitral decision.  The court concluded that because the agency hadn't treated the ban like an unfair labor practice, the court didn't have jurisdiction to assess whether it was one, which was the only grounds it had for review.  David Tatel dissented from this somewhat odd conclusion - that the agency essentially, can define its own jurisdiction by limiting what it says in its adjudications - with a lengthy post that really gets into the labor law weeds.  The case, Association of Civilian Technicians v. FLRA, is here.

• Richard Lazarus and Orin Kerr are considering what to make of the shrinking size, and increasing quality, of the Supreme Court bar.  Both appear to suppose that the quality of the advocacy before that Court matters, in anything other than an aesthetic sense.  I'll look forward to reading more about why.

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Bob Denard, recidivist overthrower of African governments, was Exhibit A in the case for the fragility of the state structure on that continent - and perhaps a corresponding bit of evidence that governments hadn't yet managed to matter much in the daily lives of Africans.  He got up to no good in Nigeria, the Congo, Chad, Benin, Angola, and staged several coups in the Comoros.  A mercenary, an anti-communist, and, he claimed, a French spy, it is amazing that he lived to be 78 and died in Paris.  Denard also demonstrates that corporate ventures like Executive Outcomes and Blackwater Security are hardly novel and far from extreme versions of the privatization of military functions, the oversight of which continues to trouble us today.

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What would happen if you only wore clothes from International Male?

What is the social life like in DC?

What sort of research gets economists job talks at Princeton (scroll to page 5 - or print it out)?  What do Harvard political scientists think of this?

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We have three vehicles: a Suburban and two small cars. Last week, we registered the vehicles in Utah, got the license plates, and applied for titles.

Titles for the two small cars arrived today, but instead of sending a title for the Suburban, the State of Utah sent us a "Dismantling Permit."

I'm not joking. I have no idea what happened. The state official I spoke with this afternoon couldn't explain it, either. I suspect a rogue employee who despises Suburbans.

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I was intrigued by this post on Slashdot, but the ads Google paired with the post made me laugh (click to enlarge):

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Yesterday, my wife and I each got a Utah driver license. Not "driver's license"? Hmm. For the first time, I noticed that my Wisconsin license says "Driver License." Does anyone say, "I just got my driver license"?

And why not "driving license," like "fishing license" or "hunting license"?

These were my deep thoughts while waiting to have my photo taken.

By the way, Utah requires transfer drivers to take a 25 question, multiple choice test. Open book. Did you know that if your car stalls on railroad tracks that you should get out of the car and run toward the train at an angle away from the tracks? Makes sense. I just never had the occasion to think about that before.

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Nothing used to be more boring than a movie involving computer technology.  Movie stars, or, more likely, their quippy sidekicks, would peer into screens and type, while embarrassing cgi would fill the screen, and I would consider going for another popcorn.  I call this the Tron era of American technological embrace, and it lasted longer than you'd think. 

But I've recently had the pleasure of seeing Live Free or Die Hard and The Bourne Ultimatum, and I'm pleased to report that both films have characters tapping away on keyboards for approximately one quarter of the running time, and both are quite zippy.

They've done it by reimagining our technological embrace as something less like HAL from 2001 - computers are scary and hard to understand! - and more like the Duke Boys from the 1970s - computers are complex machines, that in the right hands, can do anything!  And so, in the view of current popular cinema, our government can hack into anything, from anywhere, in seconds, often via text messaging or ichat.  If true, we have more to fear from FISA than even Marty Lederman believes.

The Economist agrees with me.  I think.  Here is more on the failings of films that try to embrace technology.

All of this is a way of suggesting you consider Matt Damon's jaw droppingly honest interview in Entertainment Weekly about Bourne.  A taste, where he evaluates the merits of a lengthy shooting schedule:

"You have to suspend that Yankee sensibility that this is costing money. When I'm on a movie set, in the back of my head is this ticker rattling off thousands of dollars every second. You have to just turn that off....The great thing is, when Bourne scenes don't work, they really don't work. I did so many awful scenes that never made it into the film."

Really makes you want to drop that 50 state survey and rush to the theater, doesn't it? 

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It's a bit off topic, but Alec Baldwin, incredibly brilliant star of the incredibly brilliant 30 Rock, is exploring what he would do if he was the president.  "The fifth thing that I would do is to prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent," he says.

Perhaps because such prosecutions are unlikely to be forthcoming, Valerie Plame herself tried to bring constitutional tort claims against a number of senior government officials, including the vice president, his former chief of staff, and a political adviser to the president.  She was advised by law professors as illustrious as Erwin Chemerinsky (and represented, full disclosure, by my former boss).

But the court recently dismissed the suit, noting, among other things, that the "remedy requested by plaintiffs-a cause of action implied under the Constitution for the alleged disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's status as a covert CIA operative-raises significant separation-of-powers and justiciability concerns."  (I can't link, but the decision is at 2007 WL 2059094, if you're interested.)

Because of the likely immunity of the named defendants from other sorts of suits (they work in the White House, and it is regularly exempted from information laws), this outcome, while not unpredictable, means that it is very possible that even if Plame's constitutional rights have been violated, she could not possibly get a judicial remedy for it (Linda Tripp, by contrast, got 600 grand plus in settlement of her statutory claim).

This is unfortunate, but dismissal is an extremely common outcome for constitutional tort cases like Plame's, thousands of which are filed every year, and almost none of which ever see damages.  To sue the government any more, it is much easier to go after institutions, not individuals.

BTW, If I were the czar, I'd give Baldwin 30 Emmys for 30 Rock.  So, so funny.

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Hospitals find consent bothersome.

The WTO doesn't make transparency easy.

Everyone is joining us in Berlin these days.

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Fortune Magazine has named my former home, Middleton, Wisconsin, the #1 best place to live in the United States. I know that these rankings are about selling magazines, but Middleton is a fine choice. Two other former homes also made the list: Lake Oswego, Oregon (#32) and Pike Creek, Delaware (#79). My new home (Provo/Orem) is not on the list, which included only one Utah location: Cottonwood Heights (#100).

So I suppose some of you are wondering whether I have seller's remorse. Nah. I woke up on Saturday morning and within an hour I was on a trail hiking to Stewart Falls. So Utah has its compensations. Oh, and we don't have a crazy state legislature threatening to cut off funding to the law school.

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I really will shift away from blogging about my move eventually, but I am curious to get some feedback on an issue that has been troubling me: does every new homeowner learn to dislike the prior owners?

We went through all of the usual due diligence procedures when buying our new home, except that we had a friend and our real estate agent do the final walk-through, since we were still in Wisconsin at the time. Actually, they were pretty attentive to most of the details, but there is nothing like living in a house to reveal all of its secrets. Like the dog puke under the kitchen sink. Ugh!

I have been particularly disappointed in the number of burned-out lightbulbs. We have replaced at least 50 lightbulbs of all shapes and sizes in the past week! Our friend noted this on the final walk-through, but the sellers' agent shrugged it off, saying that in Utah, as long as a socket has a bulb, the sellers are not responsible to ensure that the bulb is working. I have no idea whether that is the local custom, but our real estate agent stepped up to the plate an bought a bunch of replacement bulbs. Still, the way I was raised, there is a right way and a wrong way to treat people, and the sellers compromised their reputation with us over a bag of lightbulbs. The kicker was when the sellers' agent -- now one of our neighbors -- told me that they wanted to leave the home in "pristine condition."

Anyway, as we have discovered these and other (mostly minor) surprises, we have become increasingly frustrated with the prior owners. And all the time I have been wondering whether the new owners of my Wisconsin home are thinking the same thing about us, even though we spent several hours with a bunch of friends scouring the house after the walk-through precisely because we didn't want them to have such thoughts.

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Though I am still surrounded by boxes and my "To Do List" remains uncomfortably long, I am starting to settle in. Aside from the delivery of our furniture and other belongings earlier this week, getting internet/cable/telephone in one fell swoop may have been the most important milestone so far in making this house into a home. Installing a four-pronged plug for the dryer didn't hurt either. Or perhaps I am feeling better because various new neighbors presented us with two freshly plucked Walla Walla onions, a towering chocolate cake, and a bowl of freshly sliced watermelon. In any event, things are looking up here in Utah, where it hadn't rained in a month until a few drops fell yesterday.

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Greetings from Utah!

We are still very much in transition, so I expect blogging to be light for the foreseeable future. A crew from Allied showed up last Monday morning and spent most of the day loading our things into a truck, but we still haven't seen the truck on this end. ETA: 9:00 am on Tuesday morning.

Though I have bought and sold a number of houses, I found last week's transactions particularly stressful. We closed on the sale of our Wisconsin home on Tuesday morning, then spent most of the rest of that day arranging the Wednesday closing of the purchase of a home in Orem, Utah, about two miles from BYU. At every turn, I was anticipating disaster -- and we had a few close calls -- but both transactions came together. We were debt-free for over 24 hours!

I hope I never again have occasion to do business with U-Haul. I reserved a car dolly weeks in advance of our move, but U-Haul rented it to someone else the day before I arrived to claim it, even though they called me on that very day to arrange for a pickup on the following day. We ended up with an auto transport for the same price, which is a good deal, except that U-Haul's equipment is in a general state of disrepair. We started driving on Wednesday afternoon, and it took us until Friday afternoon to make the 1,400 mile trip. If you are curious, a Suburban hauling a small car across the country gets about 12 mpg.

Whenever we move into a new home, we spend several days cleaning. Especially when the previous owners had dogs. (By the way, Dyson vacuum cleaners work miracles on dog hair!) In this instance, we had our crew of seven scouring the house with scrubbing bubbles and various other cleaners. The prior owners left so many burned-out light bulbs that we still aren't done replacing them. (We need the world's greatest ladder to reach some of them.) And, of course, there are the inevitable grand plans for adding this or changing that. All in all, however, the house is in good shape. Now, if we could just get some furniture.

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Every lawyer (and most every law student) has faced the awkward task of turning away free-advice seekers.  For just about every question I get asked, I can almost always (and truthfully) respond that the area is really not my specialty, and that the inquirer would be better served by asking a specialist.  In my younger and more naive days as a practicing lawyer, I'd actually try to give useful counsel to friends and relatives.  I was the first (and still the only) lawyer in my family, and my immigrant parents and extended family assumed that a Harvard law grad must necessarily possess mystical powers to resolve any legal problem of any variety.  Ironically, what little general advice I was ever able to offer was almost universally ignored, sometimes to my great frustration.  Maybe if I had charged them for it, they would have taken it more seriously!

In any event, yesterday's WSJ had a funny piece on how to avoid the free-advice-seeking throngs.  Apparently ipod technicians just can't seem to make it through a cocktail party without having to do some repair work or give some free advice.  My favorite comeback is the doctor's.  When another party guest says, "I have a medical question," the doctor replies, "Great.  Just get undressed."  Is there a good stock reply for lawyers?

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Don't come to Atlanta today.  Wildfires in southern Georgia have been spreading smoke and particles all the way to Atlanta and into neighboring South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama.  Air quality is not good.  Ugh.

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You can trust me. I am bad at it.

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I am half Norwegian (my mother is the real deal), but I learned a lot from Tyler Cowen's list, "My favorite things Norwegian." He concludes, "In almost every category the top offerings of Norway are underrated or at least underexplored." Skål!

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This is mesmerizing. Go into the control panel and fiddle with the colors and format if you really want to dramatize the effects.

HT Paul Kedrosky.

UPDATE: Also from Paul, Twittervision. Not related to immigration, but still mesmerizing.

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I am happy. In Japan-emoticonese, it's all about the eyes.

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When you criticize someone for being humorless, shouldn't you be funny?

P.S. I like Billy Packer.

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We are hunkered down at home today waiting for the blizzard to blow over.  Yesterday at 5:00 pm, before even one snowflake fell, all K-12 schools announced they would be closed today.  I thought this was a little premature, but sure enough we woke to yes, a blizzard.  Before the day is over, we may have 17 inches of snow.  Nothing like the Lake Ontario effect, but still.  We just received an email announcing that classes at Illinois have been cancelled.  Only essential personnel must report.  I'm really important, but I'm going to guess I'm not "essential."

Yesterday afternoon I stopped at the grocery store because we missed the normal weekend weekly shopping, and it was craziness in the aisles!  Twelve registers were at least 10 customers deep each.  Bored in my line, too far back from the register to read the tabloids, I looked to see what other people were buying to prepare for the storm.  Some had carts of regular items.  Others were waiting in line for 45 minutes for some odd things.  One woman had Diet Coke and two bananas.  Another woman had one box of granola bars.  She must really like granola bars.

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The Houston Chronicle is reporting that syndicated columnist Molly Ivins has lost her 7-year bout with breast cancer.  (HT:  Bill Childs.)  Ivins' wit and wisdom was legendary in Texas.  I did once get mad at Molly Ivins.  She made some remark in a Texas Monthly column that every girl that grows up in Dallas dreams of a teardown in Highland Park, just like every girl that grows up in Lubbock dreams of a double-wide trailer.  (Grrrr.)  But, I got over it.

I like to think that Ivins is catching up with Ann Richards right now.

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Apropos of Gordon's post on his ignorance of popular music (I knew none of the listed songs, by the way), I was reminded of our family's outling last night to Skateland, the local roller skating rink.  Our kids wanted to try out their new roller blades, so we headed over.  My memories of skating at the roller rink involve disco balls and the pounding rhythms of The Eagles' "There's Going to be a Heartache Tonight."  And of course, there always was a heartache, with some poor 7th grade girl crying in the bathroom because some guy didn't show/broke up/skated the slow skate with someone else. 

Well, last night at Skateland, the songs of choice were rap songs with repeated lyrics that are unrepeatable here.  There was no slow skate, no disco ball.  I didn't see gangs of girls huddled around a pay phone trying to find out if someone was on their way; instead I saw people skating with their cell phones.  I guess nothing stays the same!

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At Emory, we're in the process of implementing a transactional certificate program, a sort of analog to trial advocacy for budding dealmakers.  And we're looking for a director for this program.  Our ad and a brief job description are pasted below the fold.  Please contact my colleague Bill Carney with inquiries.

EMORY UNIVERSITY  SCHOOL OF LAW
Director of Transactional Studies

The Emory University School of Law invites applications for the position of Professor and Director of Transactional Studies, beginning with the Fall Semester, 2007.  We seek outstanding candidates with either academic experience or extensive practice experience.  The position is open to any field of expertise within the broad framework of transactional law, including without limitation corporate law, corporate tax, commercial law, bankruptcy, real estate finance, corporate finance and unincorporated associations.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Emory Law School has authorized a program in transactional studies leading to the award of a certificate for successful completion of the program.  The program contemplates an introductory course in contracting, followed by core traditional courses in the transactional law area, with the availability of “capstone” workshops or seminars in various transactional law subjects.  Candidates must be willing to undertake the management responsibilities associated with use of junior instructors and adjunct professors in the further development of this program.  Depending on the candidate, the position may or may not be tenure-track.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS:

Candidates must possess a J.D. or comparable law degree.  Either substantial experience in the practice of transactional law or experience teaching transactional law subjects is highly desirable.  Under the leadership of the Director we anticipate developing a multi-section course in contracting and advanced workshops and seminars using adjunct faculty to introduce students to a deeper understanding of the practice of transactional law.  The ability to relate well to practicing attorneys serving as adjuncts will be an important attribute.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE:

Emory University is an equal opportunity employer, committed to diversifying its faculty and staff.  Members of under represented groups are encouraged to apply. For more information about the Law School and the transactional law program, please visit our website at:

http://www.law.emory.edu/cms/site/index.php?id=2133

Nominations, inquiries or letters of interest and resumes should be submitted to:

CONTACT     Professor William J. Carney
                        Emory University Law School
                        1301 Clifton Road, N.E.
                        Atlanta, GA 30322-2770

or by e-mail to: