Archive for July, 2006
Blogging in Higher Education, The Invisible College
Bradford DeLong has a great article, The Invisible College, in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
The hope of all of us who blog is that we will become smarter, do more useful work, be happier and more productive, and will also impress our deans so they will raise our salaries. The first three hopes are clearly […]
Reality Check
Grades from CivPro are expected today. Here’s the message I got from the student enrollment services site, where they will be posted:
HTTP Error 500 - Internal Server Error
Due to heavy load, Enrollment Services Online is unable to perform your request at this time. Please try again in a few minutes. If the problem persists, please […]
Dow on Death Penalty: “Innocence is a Distraction”
University of Houston Law Professor David Dow had an op-ed in the NY Times not too long ago entitled The End of Innocence. It turns out to be one of the few op-eds I’ve read in recent history truely worth reading. The gist -
Innocence is a distraction. Most people on death row are like […]
Yates Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity
A Harris County jury has found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity during her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her children in the family’s bathtub in 2001.
Houston Chronicle headline | my Yates verdict post on Metroblogging Houston | Video
I met Yates’ attorney George Parnham on two occasions, once just […]
How many sips does it take to get to a heart attack
I wondered more than once over the course of the past semester if it were possible to overdose on caffeine. Meeting at a starbucks to carpool didn’t help. Not surprisingly, it is. Energy fiend’s Death by Caffeine allows you to calculate the exact level of excess you’ll need to do the deed - in my […]
Fun with AR-15s
We likes are pseudo-machine guns here in Texas. Reading Staples v. United States got me to thinking about how much fun we had with one of those a few years ago at the lake house - of the non-automatic variety, of course.
A new form of alternative dispute resolution
CNN Money: Acrimonious attorneys told to settle dispute by playing a round of ‘rock, paper, scissors.’
Language and the Law
The language of lawyers is furtile ground for hilarious euphemisms, none more so that in criminal law. Reading People v. Beardsley today yielded “houses of assignation” aka “brothel”. Using “Assignation” to indicate sex is achingly lawyerly, as it connotes a transaction or occurrence, or even worse, an allotment or apportionment. I can almost see them […]
Country Songs to Illustrate Crim Law Concepts
saq104 made the country song connection all too apparent in a recent post and I couldn’t help but notice that country songs seem to make excellent illustrations of criminal law concepts. Case in point - I can think of no better illustration of the question of actus reas and the impact of incapacitation by alcohol […]
Rappaport on legal implications of death of Ken Lay
Jurist: No Redemption Now: Thoughts on the Death of Ken Lay