I'm Hot... You're Hot... He's Hot... She's Hot...

Considering the fact that normal human body temperature is approximately 98.6°F, why does a day when the ambient temperature is in the high nineties seem so hot? Is it just because it's somewhat unusual vis-a-vis the average daily temperature (in most places, anyhow)? I have no idea.

Would he have done it if he could have foreseen Laser Floyd?

It was this day in 1960 that Dr. Theordore Maiman, a physicist working at Hughes Research Laboratories, created the first laser using a synthesized ruby crystal. Without Dr. Maiman's brilliant efforts, we would have frickin' nothing to attach to the heads of sharks today and the world would be a lesser place for that.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (167)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] News (from Sunday, May 11; link good at time of posting):

England is an irritating and insular country full of overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts, a new guide warns tourists.

But in the new Rough Guide to England, the English are also hailed as a nation of animal-loving, tea-drinking charity donors who love nothing better than forming an orderly queue.

Gone, it seems, is the image of a genteel country awash with Englishmen politely tipping their bowler hats, groping through the London fog and being kinder to pets than kids.

The writers confess to bafflement over the quirky English, concluding that of the 200 countries the guide reviews there is none "so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse yet as insular, self-important and irritating as England."

[Previous TGIS]

NOTICE: Duncan Riley Is the Source of the Following Information

At his new Inquisitr blog, Duncan Riley offers a very sensible guideline for something which has vexed many a new (and not-so-new) blogger -- when and how to give attribution to sources of information.

Whistle While You Blawg

Blawg Review #158, hosted by The Mommy Blawg was a tribute to mothers; this week, with Blawg Review #159 hosted at the Whistleblower Law Blog, we give whistleblowers their due. Perhaps next year these fine legal bloggers could co-host. Don't scoff -- the concepts have worked well together before:


Highlights in this week's edition include burning and building bridges, determining when a pill is poisonous or merely bitter, and deciding whether to appeal or to just accept that you lack appeal. Next week, the Ruthie's Law blog will do the hosting honors, but the week following, Blawg Review will continue on ruthlessly.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (166)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Houston Chronicle (from Tuesday, May 6; link good at time of posting):

Judge Sherman Ross tried to assemble a jury of peers for a woman accused of possession of a marijuana on trial Tuesday.

But authorities say prospective juror Cornelia Mayo might have taken that concept a bit too far after she was caught smoking a joint outside the courthouse during a break.

. . . .

"I've had prospective jurors get lost before, but it never occurred to me that they might be getting ready for a marijuana trial by, allegedly, smoking marijuana," Ross said.

. . . .

The former juror was charged with possession of marijuana. She is scheduled to be arraigned next week in Criminal Court at Law No. 11 —across the hall from Ross' courtroom.

Mayo remained in the Harris County Jail on a $500 bail Tuesday night and could not be reached for comment.

[Previous TGIS]

Just Blawg, Baby

You know, I've been happily involved with the Blawg Review project as a reader, contributor, and sherpa for several years now and I can't recall midwifery every coming up in the carnival of legal blogging. Well, now it has. Boldly going where no man has gone before is The Mommy Blawger, who hosts Blawg Review #158 today on International Midwives' Day. Highlights in this edition include creating and finding great legal blogs, hiring a jerk to be your lawyer, and a polygamous mess in Texas. Brian LaBovick hosts next week's Blawg Review at his Whistleblower Law Blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (165)... The Sequel!

This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Star-Telegram.com (via QuizLaw) (from Tuesday, April 29; links good at time of posting):

An aspiring record label owner is singing the blues after he was arrested last week for allegedly trying to pass a $360 billion check at a Fort Worth bank.

Employees at the Chase Bank at 8601 S. Hulen St. grew suspicious after seeing all those zeroes (10 to be exact) and called the check's owner. The woman said the suspect, Charles Ray Fuller, 21, of Crowley, is her daughter’s boyfriend and that he did not have permission to take the check or cash it.

Fuller was arrested on suspicion of fraud, along with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possession of marijuana after officers found less than 2 ounces of the drug and a .25-caliber handgun and magazine in his pockets.

While inside a patrol car, police say Fuller blurted out that he is starting his own record label and had been given the money by his girlfriend’s mother to help him start it.

[Previous TGIS]

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (165)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Times Online (from Tuesday, April 29; link god at time of posting):

Ronaldo, the AC Milan forward, was questioned by police yesterday after an altercation with transvestites in a Rio de Janeiro motel.

Footballers in sex scandals are nothing new but this one has a twist. In an episode that seems more like a plot-line from the infamous TV show Footballers’ Wives, the striker left a nightclub in the Barra de Tijuca district early on Monday morning with three prostitutes, only to make an unexpected discovery at the motel.

Police said that the incident began when Ronaldo discovered he was dealing with transvestites instead of women and was reportedly infuriated. Carlos Augusto Nogueira, a police inspector, said that Ronaldo admitted he knew they were prostitutes when they met but did not realise they were transvestites until they reached the motel.

“He admitted to everything, he wanted to have fun,” Nogueira said. “But he committed no crime at all, it was immoral at best.” Prostitution is not illegal in Brazil. “Ronaldo said he is not good in the head and that he is going through psychological problems because of his recent [knee] surgery,” Nogueira added.

[Previous TGIS]

Friends don't let friends create Jar Jar Binks.

Friends don't let friends drive drunk, saith the original Star Wars cantina barflies in this classic public service announcement unearthed (or untatooined, as the case may be) by the io9 blog.



io9 has several others also worth a look, including advice from He-Man and She-Ra for the sexually-molested.

You know, I learned a valuable lesson today....

Good luck with that.

From The Register:

Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos have declared that they alone have the right to call themselves lesbians, and yesterday launched a legal action against the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (Olke) designed to wrest back control of the word from aficionados of Sapphic luuurv.

Local activist Dimitris Lambrou states in his complaint that the "seizure" of the island's name is responsible for the "psychological and moral rape" of true lesbians, and reckons the case will come before an Athens court in June.

Olke spokesperson Evangelia Vlam counterattacked with: "This affair is totally ridiculous. But if we are summoned by the courts, we will be heard."

UPDATE: Professor Eugene Volokh notes that he anticipated this claim in an off-the-cuff hypothetical he offered last year at The Volokh Consporacy.

Over at the Opinio Juris blog, Professor Roger Alford notes that "rules regarding geographic appellation are extremely important in the international trade context. Such rules resolve questions like what glass of bubbly can be called 'Champagne' and what mustard merits the label 'Dijon'? But I'm not aware of a similar claim that rules on geographic appellation can be used to prevent a social or political group from usurping the label."

This lawsuit has already garnered a surprising amount of attention around the legal blogosphere; if we follow Professor Volokh's suggestion and start referring to it as the "Lesbian-on-Lesbian Action", this could become the most-followed case in recent blawgosphere history.

If God insists on resting on the seventh day, He's never going to break Ripken's record.

The With Leather sports blog offers a bit of insight into the increasingly-strange trademark dust-up between Little League Baseball and the upstart Christian Little League. Confronted by Little League's lawsuit, With Leather reports that the founder of Christian Little League, Jay Kaplan

responded the only way a righteous Christian jackass knows how: by being a righteous Christian jackass.

"GOD is the ultimate judge and has the final say," he wrote in a March 15 letter to Little League's lawyers. Before filing suit Thursday, the organization's lawyers contacted Kaplan in a March 7 letter demanding that he stop using the Little League tag. The similar names could mislead and confuse the public by suggesting an affiliation between the groups, the lawyers wrote...

"Christian Little League was GOD's idea and it is a great and wonderful idea," wrote Kaplan, who grew up Jewish and converted to Christianity. "I have no plans on changing the name GOD gave me." [...] "My position is Little League should embrace the name of Jesus. Let's start with that."

From what I've read of this case, Little League's position looks like the stronger one, notwithstanding Kaplan's compelling arguments. Still, if God really has directed the formation and naming of this allegedly-infringing league, I don't envy the attorney who has to take the Big Guy's deposition.

I hear that the third time's the charm, although the first two were already pretty charming.

Professor Eric Goldman is pulling together another gathering of the legal bloggers here in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. I've been fortunate enough to have made it to the first two and I've already calendared this third meet-up. My favorite part of these events is the opportunity to meet people with whom I've corresponded for the last few years; making virtual friends into real ones is one of the treats of our digital age.

Deep Thoughts

Michael Fitzgibbon is one of my favorite legal bloggers; his blog, Thoughts from a Management Lawyer is a great, consistently informative, no gimmicks legal site. This week, he's hosting Blawg Review #157. Highlights of this labor and employment law-centric edition include a few dos and don'ts -- micromanaging employee expenditures (do), waterboarding your employees (don't), conducting a proper workplace investigation (do), and bringing your baby to the workplace (don't -- at least in Britain). This last highlight might be an issue to revisit next week, when The Mommy Blawg hosts #158.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (164)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, April 23; link good at time of posting):

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs.

. . . .

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

[Previous TGIS]

Random Thought (10)

I blog under my real name because I don't want people to know my pseudonym.

[Previous Thought]

Why turn a blind eye when you can turn an all-seeing one?

It's not difficult to join the crowd in criticizing Microsoft for their product, security, and strategic choices. The company's done a lot right, though, and it's a genuine pleasure to recognize that Microsoft can not just display a leadership mentality from time-to-time, but also bring to bear the resources necessary to lead; I congratulate them for leading on security issues at the ToorCon security conference in Seattle recently. The Register reports:

In a first for a major company, Microsoft has publicly pledged not to sue or press charges against ethical hackers who responsibly find security flaws in its online services.

The promise, extended Saturday at the ToorCon security conference in Seattle, is a bold and significant move. While researchers are generally free to attack legally acquired software running on their own hardware, they can face severe penalties for probing websites that run on servers belonging to others. In some cases, organizations have pursued legal action against researchers who did nothing more than discover and responsibly report serious online vulnerabilities.

"This is actually really important because online services - that's our stuff," Microsoft security strategist Katie Moussouris told several hundred researchers. "The philosophy here is if someone is being nice enough to point out your fly is down, they're really doing you a favor and you should thank them rather than calling the cops and saying you're a pervert."

Moussouris said she is pushing to get a provision added to a proposed standard that's making its way through the International Organization for Standardization that would protect ethical hackers who responsibly disclose vulnerabilities in other companies' websites. "If I get my way, it'll be in there," she said.

. . . .

The idea is to make websites safer by taking advantage of the legions of independent researchers who stumble upon security bugs. As she put it: "Don't hate the finder, hate the vulnerability. We don't actually want to discourage people who are trying to help us by being iffy about whether we're going to go after them."

. . . .

"There's definitely a lot of trepidation among legitimate researchers to find flaws in public-facing web applications because you never know how [companies] are going to react," said Alex Stamos, a founding partner at iSEC Partners, a firm that provides penetration-testing services. "That hurts us because the only people finding these flaws are the bad guys."

Kickin' Back, Keepin' It Virtual

One of the more focused and interesting legal blogs around is Benjamin Duranske's Virtually Blind. For those of you who've not yet found this ongoing discussion of the legal issues associated with the virtual world (e.g., Second Life, World of Warcraft), this week's Blawg Review #156 offers a great opportunity to get a real education about all things virtual. Highlights in this week's edition include intellectual property infringement in the virtual world, Apple's efforts to stake out its legal territory online, ethical negotiation in the real world, and what's possibly the end of the world if you're on death row -- a roundup of commentary on the Supreme Court's Baze decision. Next week, Michael Fitzgibbon does the heavy thinking -- really rather than virtually this time around -- at his Thoughts from a Management Lawyer blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (163)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of KITV (via Quizlaw) (from Monday, April 14; link good at time of posting):

The Honolulu Police Department asked for the public's help in Monday in tracking down a man who tried to rob a bank.

. . . .

A man walked up to a teller with a note demanding money, then past [sic] a second note for a withdrawal.

"The note says 'This is a robbery.' She takes a little while. What he does is he gets another note, and this time it's a withdrawal slip for a certain amount of money. She asks for him for ID. He gets flustered, and he flees," Sgt. Kim Buffett said.

[Previous TGIS]

It's not a bird or a plane... it's a "superhero lawyer-turned-CEO"

Andrew Feinberg at the Capitol Valley blog has more of the wonderful response of Blue Jeans Cable's CEO to bullying competitor Monster Cable, which I posted about yesterday. That letter should be required reading in every law school. Tremendous. Thanks to Blawg Review's anonymous Editor for pointing this post out to me.