Unused and Probably Unusable http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/ U & PU is a blawg by a Philadelphia lawyer. This is a linguistically-inclined blawg; we also do general legal commentary, political and social current events, and any senseless rants or worthless posts are hereby disavowed and disclaimed. Some rights reserved. All* comments welcome. *Not all comments welcome. Flippant, fierce, or fatuous, fine. Fraudulent, felonious, fabricated, facially insufficient, and farkin' futile, fuggeddaboutit. en-us 2007-03-28T11:03+00:00 Heinlein unFriday: Gender and Change, coming soon http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1175001380.shtml To quote another legal epistolary writer (Aaron Streett; the extra T at the end is probably for Terrific), "Greetings, sportsfans!" See here, for the first March issue of his periodic... Eh Nonymous 2007-03-27T13:03+00:00 See here, for the first March issue of his periodic chatty Supreme Court opinion, order and grant roundup. I highly recommend it to all SCOTUS groupies. Prawfsblawg reprints them, but you can get them delivered straight to your inbox by mailing him at the link at the end of that post. Streett, an associate in Baker Botts' Houston office, provides all the inside baseball commentary one could want, in a breezy and entertaining tone. Oh look, there's links to all of them at Baker Botts.

Anyway. Hello to those who enjoy watching athletic events. How's your NCAA tournament treating you? Thought so.

I had an intention to write about Gender and Change in Heinlein's writing. So that'll be my next topic, because I think it's got more juice for me right now than the grim-seeming discussion of war crimes that I had planned. I'd planned to unroll that one in mid-August 2006, and then the topic so disheartened me that I went and did things I felt like doing more instead.

So: forthcoming, a discussion of gender-bending, gender roles, stereotypes, cross-dressing, a bit about sexuality (although that's not the focus), and gender as a mutable characteristic in the works of R. A. Heinlein. Because after all, if I can't write what I feel like, what am I doing out here in the blawgoverse, anyway?

Other posts I'm brewing up: a quick perusal of the controversial No Child Left Behind act, which has been heavily criticized as elevating testing, and particularly apparent improvement in testing, over real education, as well as skewing priorities in educating students - like, how much to test-prep vs. other skills, how much to the bottom quintile vs. the next vs. the next. My favorite example of unhappiness was the NY Times article about an excellent school that had been deemed a failure under NCLB. I might do a more searching review of what's being said about it. Wikipedia now notes in the No Child Left Behind Act article that "a new Congress has already started considering major revisions, as one group of 50 Republican senators and representatives introduced legislation in March 2007 that would provide states much greater freedom from NCLB's controls and punishments." - but as always, trust Wikipedia only so far. How do we KNOW that they introduced such proposed legislation unless we go looking through THOMAS ourselves?

Also, a possible HF post on addiction, and another on wealth and power.

Until next time, that's today's unused & unusable inside baseball! (Again, a tip of the imaginary hat to this guy.)]]> Rededicating http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1172554431.shtml Blog Burnout is a serious problem. Not "serious," per se, but worrying. If one worries about trivialities, anyway. And for some, the problem is more of a situation, rather neutral in... Eh Nonymous 2007-02-27T05:02+00:00 timbre, as I just learned from Wikipedia, but has nothing at all to do with Timber, or Timberlake, or Timberlands. Wait, that's not right, Justin Timberlake presumably has tonal qualities. Oh, nevermind.]

Just as blogs grew up, mushroomlike, in the wake of the popularization of web software that made it effectively free to blog, requiring only expenditure of time and the effort of banging fingers upon keys, so many of them waned, much like webpages built in the pioneering days of the Internet, ca. late 1990s to early 2k0s.

People realized they had better things to do - or, lacking those, that they could free up really prodigious of time in order to do nothing at all, merely by allowing their site to fall into disuse. Let a daily update slide to a week - then two. String together a couple twos and make a month, and after just a pair of them, most readers reluctantly (or secretly gratefully, since there is then one less Thing they have to read) conclude that the blog has been abandoned.

Blogs need no excuse, since they take up very little real estate, but they also need a reason to perpetuate. For some bloggers, it is a sense of outrage. For others, it is the dread disease - the need to write, whether there is a readymade subject to hand or not. I suspect that many others write because they only want the attention. This, I think, explains the great many blogs on current events, many outraged in tone.

I got tired of being outraged, like in my last post. Reading headlines in the hopes of finding something to be outraged about takes a great deal of emotional energy. Why not read a good book instead?

So I did.

I've been reading, and watching movies, and television (almost caught all the episodes of The Sopranos that I had missed), and am ready to return, I think, to blogging. Life permitting. But I think I'll be a little less outraged, for a while. Life permitting.

A blog is also like an indefinitely deep hole, into which one can always toss in a few more shovelsfull of loose dirt. Or a handful of pebbles and gravel. Or the occasional precious nugget.

Happy 2007, although we're over a seventh of the way into it already. Goodness, it's almost to the Tuesday of the Week of '07. Well. In that case, the Monday hangover should be well over, and it's time to get some blogging done before the week is out.

I'll be back soon.]]> Live to Blog, or Blog to Live? http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1157108506.shtml Blogging goes through periods of varying frequencies, as with most aspects of life.... Eh Nonymous 2006-09-01T11:09+00:00
Sometimes, I post with a frequency which indicates a vast surplus of available time, available mental energy, or both.

Occasionally, as this month, my own self-imposed goals (weekly postings on Friday, at a minimum) aren't met because other rhythms have disrupted the schedule.

My vacation from Heinlein Friday will continue for another week, but its long-term status as a permanent weekly commitment is in doubt. I have more to write, but the very decision to start so huge a project as the Law of War post, which produced dozens and dozens of paragraphs with inadequate planning on how to tame them, has placed an unfortunate obstacle in the path of continued easy posts.

I may want to withdraw it, and prepare a more modest HF post. It wouldn't be the first time I've done this: my last major blawgging project was to be a Scalia Mega-Post, in which I dealt with each and every things about Scalia's jurisprudence (and personal style, and irritating statements) which annoyed or frustrated or infuriated or troubled me. As it turns out, that kind of project involves more than just brainstorming, writing, and collecting links.

To take on a really massive writing project, there needs to be some thoughtful editing, at the planning stage. What gets in, and what is excluded? What's the right order? How does one section relate to another?

I've seldom constructed such open-ended writing projects, and when I have, failure to adequately edit my own structure has been at least as big a problem as inability to find words.

I'm also better at starting projects than finishing them, but of course it's easy to finish a task when you can see its goal clearly and therefore understand the nature of the work that will accomplish it.

Writing a brief is easy by comparison. It's got to have the requisite pieces, to comply with the Federal Rules or local practice or the judge's orders. There's only one way to organize it - the right way, with first things first, all the necessary prefatory and preparatory announcements (introduction, statement of jurisdiction, statutes involved, etc.). A motion for class certification has a form that's virtually pre-ordained, just because it has to comply with Rule 23, or its state law equivalent - see the discussion in this long-ago post. August 5, 2005? It's been a while.

===================

What else is on my mind?

I try not to journal too much, this being a Blawg and all, but it's so pleasant to write down observations and get them out of the mental buffer. Nobody has to spend time reading about what my cat did today (she's nonexistent, so pretty much the same things she does every day, or rather doesn't do, or perhaps even doesn't not do). But some observations are worthwhilier than others.

Philadelphia's weather has turned distinctly dismal. Temps in the 80s or above (with miserably high humidity) have been replaced by highs in the low 70s, with a distinct overcast. Summer's over. The season has changed, and we can look forward to months of complaining and wishing it was unpleasantly hot again.

Politics in Philly is about to get increasingly unavoidable. I haven't heard from the Lynn Swann candidacy lately, but I assume he's still running against incumbent Governor Ed Rendell (who is married to Third Circuit Judge Midge - er, Marjorie O. Rendell). I haven't seen any lying commercials from Santorum lately - although I hear there's an accurate one going around about how often his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey, Jr., has sought different offices. Well played, Santorum campaign. Keep trying to distract us from the issues of character, philosophy, politics, trust, and substantive issues.

Philly car share, I can now report, is a lovely thing. It may not be competitive with Zip Cars or the other nationwide car-sharing programs. PCS is a nonprofit which (presumably for good and valid and insurance-related reasons) can't let you take one of their cars into D.C. or New York or Baltimore or otherwise outside the Area. But, I think it does finally eliminate the need of many students, many professionals, and most city-dwellers to actually buy, own, maintain, gas, insure, and find permanent parking for their vehicles. Google them if you're in Philly and haven't already considered joining. Many have - and many have sold their cars and finally rid themselves of that albatross, car ownership.

That reminds me, I can buy a new transpass today - why not be able to ride any bus OR check out a car with an hour's notice? It's affordable, as owning and insuring a car in the city isn't.

Life beckons, much as it intruded last week. Off I go, to face another long, dreary, wearying Friday, followed immediately by a three day weekend and then a four day week. Wait, that's not too cumbersome after all.

Posting will resume on or after the weekend.]]> Life intrudes http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1156504680.shtml So, "Eh," if that is your *real* name, why the blawg hiatus?... Eh Nonymous 2006-08-25T11:08+00:00 is your *real* name, why the blawg hiatus?

Well, me, since me asks, I've been busy.

Blogging grew out of my need to get it all out, and onto the page. I had been commenting anonymously (or pseudonymously) on blogs for some time, including at my favoritest, Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground, as it was then known.

I had spare time. I had unexpressed thoughts. I was visiting blawgs that had no commentability, and that annoyed me. I felt like, if the author had something to say, and it was provocative enough (or wrong enough), that they had an obligation - a duty! - to let me comment on it.

Obviously, that's not how writing works, but it is how blogging works - or one of the ways it can work.

Blogging was a hobby, but it was also fun. I could link, I could make snarky comments, I could vent - but I could also indulge my obsessive reading of news and blogs. Suddenly, being overinformed was not a sign of weakness; it was a source of inspiration.

When life gets hectic, as it has lately, I fall behind on my blog reading. Right now my Bloglines page has over 500 posts that I haven't had a chance to pore carefully over - or even skim or skip past. I love blogs - this is the Blogroll created for me by Bloglines, and here's what I have blogrolled at del.icio.us - that is, the same sort of thing, but more haphazardly, since delicious is about impulse and saving everything, like a magpie, rather than carefully selecting only those posts, blogs, or webpages I really and truly need.

I notice that I have 39 blogs on my delicious blogroll; that includes new addition Lawyers, Guns & Money, and Conglomerate, as well as "215 words," the sorts of things I would never have added to bloglines. That's because bloglines pushes posts to you, and they look like they pile up in the aggregator unless you read them. I prefer to lay out the links for myself to peruse at leisure, no obligation to buy, no money down.

I'm about to go on vacation. I'm winding up a document review and preparing for a filing - which will occur while I'm on vacation. I have family duties pressing. I have social responsibilities calling. There's a Jim Henson / Muppet exhibition down in D.C. at the Smithsonian's museum of American history, and not just the exhibit but the museum closes on September 5th, 2006 for a good several years for renovation.

Also, I have a headache, and the water's too cold, and I don't feel like it.

***

I have less to say about the Laws of War than I'd thought - and also have written far, far more words for that post than I can usefully use. When you write a lot and have nothing to say - and does that include this post? - you know you're deep in trouble.

***

'Tis better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and remove all doubt. Or so 'tis said by people who say 'tis and 'tain't a lot.

In that vein, I posted to del.icio.us this classic, originally run in Pl*yb*y (name munged to protect the guilty; after all, only illicit and licentious writing ever appears there, cf. this other favorite author of mine)...

The Dark Truth About Comp 101, blogged at Thus Blogged Anderson.

Say, interested in writing? See more links about it (del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/writing).

***

You know, you read a 1,600+ page opinion now and again, and people think you're obsessed. Still, sometimes a case will involve a lot of writing for a judge. See, e.g., this news story on the tobacco decision by the D.C.-based federal judge.

You know, if you like reading legal opinions, I should recommend that you check out del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/pdf for all my links to opinions (except the ones in html format, of course), as well as other PDFfy items of interest. That includes a teaser for an article by Prof. Nate Persily on Scalia's decision in the LULAC race-based gerrymander case, and advice on geting a clerkship, and a long philosophical paper by a soldier on why Don't Ask, Don't Tell violates the military's own ethical standards. Not to mention some of the Best Judicial Opinions On the Web, selected entirely by my own caprice and blind chance.

Prefer funny stuff? Or all the links that relate to law? Some categories overlap - they're tags, after all, not a filing system in the normal sense - but they're all pretty helpful.

Or if it's advice you need, I've found plenty of that too.

As with blogging, the best part about all this is: it's not just for you. It's for me, too. I get to have a flexible, endlessly interconnected set of bookmarks for myself. Oh, right, I also bookmarked some items to look over later. Hm. Must clean that out soon and add more.

***

So, while the Heinlein post (and the series as a whole, in fact) are in limbo, do like I'm doing: take a vacation from it. Get away from it all.

When I come back, I'll decide which way I'll wind it up. I might do it straight, as I've done most of the others, but I was also thinking about laying out the process of creation. Of course, that might be like explaining a joke, or dissecting a frog. It's messy, it takes a while, and in the process the frog dies.

Have a good August!]]> Heinlein Friday fast approaching: Laws & War http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1155859041.shtml As I noted last week, the promised Heinlein Friday post on the Laws of War was delayed by the utterly predictable, yet totally unexpected unfolding of the Universe.... Eh Nonymous 2006-08-17T23:08+00:00 last week, the promised Heinlein Friday post on the Laws of War was delayed by the utterly predictable, yet totally unexpected unfolding of the Universe.

In the meantime, here's what's up.

I've been blogging since June of 2005, and show no particular inclination to stop thinking, reading, commenting on (er, meaning "at" - er, meaning "at the location of") other blawgs, caring about politics, or writing about law, language, science fiction, or anything else that comes within my sights. Sight? No, sights.

Blogging serves a number of functions for me. It allows me to say what I cannot say at work - or at least, cannot say at such length. Work is for work, which is to say, is not the right place for a rant about Scalia, or a scholarly review of Heinlein's fiction pertaining to sex changes (pending...), or a snarky commentary on Tom Cruise's wacky religious beliefs.

Blogging is writing - and publishing, all in one. It's not journaling, at least not if done right. People can see this - will see it, if I point it out or their browsing brings them here. It's public expression, as well as personal exposition.

As Jeremy recently noted, blogging is (also, or especially) a way to get inside people's heads. He gets to eavesdrop on the thoughts and feelings of others, observe their mental processes. See his commentary at Powell's Book Blog. To the same effect, see architecture columnist Inga Saffron's thoughts on her recent BlogDay (anniversary of blogging). Her comments are thoughtful and, to me, quite interesting. They are the opposite of the fear that journalism will be killed by blogging:

I started the blog without knowing what I was getting into. I saw it as a place to channel odd bits of information that didn't quite measure up as column material, and to try out oddball ideas. It's been a dream situation for a journalist: No deadlines. No limitations on story length. No dumb headlines. No annoying editors. No plodding bureaucracy. What you see is what I write, flaws and all. I never expected that getting rid of the middleman would be so liberating. I also never expected the kind of feedback I see in the comments. Until recently, journalists could never be quite sure of how their work was being read. No more. I've learned a lot just by eavesdropping.


In her view, journalists are liberated by being bloggers. In Jeremy's view, a writer can (finally) connect with his audience, not just letter by letter or one at a time, but in a wave of two-way communication and reaction and reply.

As I am (purposely) a low-profile blogger, I don't have quite the same experience.

I've been asked why I bother blogging at all if I don't keep track of my number of hits, my blog traffic, my ranking, how well I'm linked, who links me, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Frankly, I don't care. I write because I need to, and the fact that I can get feedback (and, indeed, accountability for what I write) is a bonus. The icing on the compulsion cake.

I don't do this to change the world. I do this because it helps me out.

Blogging lets me:

- get things off my chest
- store my thoughts in their most coherent (sometimes) or cogent form
- try out various writing styles, from the most formal to the least
- store my links in one useful location

So expect more of the same, to my second Blogaversary, and on into the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, to those who do, and thanks for commenting - you know who you are. You help convert this from meaningless self-referential solo gymnastics into an exercise (literally) for the reader - and the blogger.

And now, to get back to work on this overdue (and still imposing) HF post. Maybe if I can find a better way to break it into pieces...]]> Heinlein Friday placeholder http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1155349066.shtml To my disappointment, the Heinlein Friday for this Friday wasn't done yet - not even half done yet, which would have let me post Part 1, to be followed next Friday... Eh Nonymous 2006-08-12T02:08+00:00
So, mea culpa, and let me just leave a few good links here as a taste of what I'm going for. The real HF will be posted... but not before midnight. Maybe not even before next Wednesday. :)

  • Wikipedia "Laws of War"

  • Fred (Slacktivist) on "You're Not Allowed to Kill Civilians"

  • Some links at my del.icio.us page on the Global War on Terror, starting at p.2, which includes some goodies. Of note: Neat Katyal's plea to finally start where we should have, and try courts-martialing detainees; Fafblog's biting satirical comment on the coordinated suicide of three Guantanamo detainees "6/10 changed everything!"; a guest post at Concurring Opinions about how a law clerk grew up, got appointed to the Supreme Court, and turned his former judge's great dissent into the law of the land, eviscerating a terrible precedent, in "Who's the Greatest Law Clerk Ever?" (referring to the recent Hamdan decision).

  • The first page of same, which includes the intriguing comment by Prof. Gerber at Intel Dump that perhaps not trying detainees at all would be the right way to go. Why go with kangaroo courts, when you can just decline to try (or punish) them at all? I need to review this, see what he's basing his argument on.



There's lots to say - including about ongoing events, including political ones such as the defeat in Connecticut of a certain formerly Democratic Senator by Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, a rich progressive liberal who won because the primary voters were sick and tired of the incumbent's refusal to vote or talk like a Democrat on a wide range of issues. The first and foremost being the need to show skepticism towards whether the Administration should be credited with competence and good will in the war in Iraq, neither of which it has actually demonstrated. And, of course, the War In Iraq (is it Civil yet? Is it Accomplished yet?) is not really a front in the GWOT - until our leaders turned it into one. "Come on," he taunted.

The Vice President talks as if Iraq were part of the War on Terror. The Senator (soon to be former Senator) talks as if "terrorists" (meaning guerilla warriors, or meaning terrorists? Does he even know?) will take heart if we stop fighting the wrong war and begin fighting the right ones. Both ignore the reality that Saddam was not behind 9/11. Saddam cheered when Americans bled, but that's not enough; many of our enemies did. Anarchist fanatical theocrats have remarkably little in common with westernized despotic secular tyrants. And just where did Saddam purchase that poison gas he used on the Kurds?

Much, much more when I get around to it.]]> Heinlein Friday preview: Laws of War http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1154734062.shtml This week's Heinlein Friday may be a bit delayed by the unavoidable, inevitable, ineffable unfolding of the Universe. Current ETA is this coming Friday, August 11th.... Eh Nonymous 2006-08-04T23:08+00:00
However, I can tell you that the next HF will involve

- discussion of Heinlein
- discussion of the laws governing the military, and their conduct in warfare
- " of the Geneva conventions
- " of war crimes
- " of detaining combatants
- " of detaining civilians
- " of killing civilians (hint: don't)

There's already been some mention of the above, particularly when I mentioned law and justice in the military, like in Starship Troopers.

It will also, I warn you in advance, be very quoteful. Quotatious, I'm calling it.

More soon.

Also, I always in these preview posts take the opportunity to plug my del.icio.us page - check it out for the latest links, breaking news, rare resources, and surprising facts that make blogging so interesting. But instead of having to embed them in a post, with the inevitable wondering about how unique or "post-worthy" the link is, I can just post the link itself, and let you the reader decide what’s interesting enough to click on. I promise, there’s something for everyone.

Just browse to http://del.icio.us/eh_nonymous - and enjoy.

Or don't, see if I mind. :)]]> Heinlein Friday preview: Inventions http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1153913353.shtml As I've got my act (more) together this week than last week, when I needed to make the HF post mostly not about Heinlein, and come out on a not-Friday (HF:... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-26T11:07+00:00 Judge Jones speech report) - does that make it a non-H non-F post? - let's kick things off with a Wednesday preview of this week's HF.

So far, to recap, we've discussed


  • Courts and judges


  • Crime


  • Lawyers


  • Justice


  • Aliens


  • And there was a special post one week on Jerry Was a Man, which implicated humanity - implicated Being Human.


This week, I turn to another interest of mine: Intellectual Property. HF: Inventions will discuss patents, trade secrets, and invention in Heinlein's fiction.

Not all the inventions Heinlein discusses (or "discloses," or "particularly describes") are covered by IP. Intellectual Property, for anyone without a background is "an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form." (Wikipedia, which covers the topic nicely).

In other words,

with IP, instead of "owning" a house or a shirt or a wallet or a pile of sprockets, you "own" rights in the plans of the house, or the shape of the shirt, or the design of the wallet, or the name of your sprocket business.

These rights are different in some respects from Property Rights, which most people instinctively understand. If you own your home outright, only one person can be The Owner - sell it, and you no longer own. You can exclude others from entering (in general, with exceptions for emergencies, the police with a warrant or exigent need, etc.), you can let others in, you can allow others to trespass on your rights. And you can divest, as I said, by selling (or giving) your property away.

In intellectual property, you can do many of those things - but the law has to change, as always, when the underlying nature of the property alters. A song, for example, is not a fixed Thing until you record in some form (on a music sheet, or on tape, or in the head of a parrot) - at which point, there's a song AND a thing. The song can't be reproduced - it's a song. It can be imitated. It can be captured, replayed, edited, mocked. But the Thing can be copied, and copied, and copied - that's the nature of Things.

IP sometimes lets you prevent people from copying Things, and also sometimes from copying the Idea expressed in the Thing.

Heinlein didn't usually spend a lot of time discussing all this, the policy and nature of IP. But he certainly used it.

In "The Door Into Summer," the entire plot hinges on patents. And not in a normal way - TDIS is a time-travel story, with at least one paradox or bootstrapping problem. In other science fiction, authors (who often understand far too little biology) may ask, what if you go back and become your own grandpa? (Cf. the song - also note that things are different if a woman goes back and becomes her own grandmother.)

In Heinlein's book, Dan patents a design - but he does it after he's already seen it invented. This convoluted result is one of the things I'll discuss for Friday. The story also contains IP fraud, trademark issues, brand naming, and various new inventions, including Stik-Tite (think velcro on steroids), and "grabbies" (think movies, then extrapolate - they "null the theater on some shots" so "buckle your seatbelt").

Other stories I'll discuss include "Let There Be Light," "Lifeline," and "Friday." But you'll have to come back on Friday for the rest.

And since I've got your attention, and did this before, let me take one more opportunity to flog my del.icio.us page. It's HIGHLY linky, it's got my commentary, and it's much more categorizable (and categorized) than any blog. It's only bloggy in two ways: Newest added entries are at the top, and I post new (and old) links frequently with a note or a description if needed.
]]>