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A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand. --Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion. Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com Home
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Oriana: la sibilla eremita The Sage of Baltimore: Browbeating the booboisie. Reason: As in voice of. Lileks: Il miglior fabbro Volokh: Dean of Kozinski clerks Olympia: I read her only for her literary qualities. Really. Say it isn't so!: Do you think it's the lumpy oatmeal? Our girl Jane: Keep em flying, Miss U.S.A. My man Baruch: Amor dei intellectualis. Hubba hubba. Scrofula: With a name like Scrofula, it has to be good. The Idler: No frills. IJ: Fighting the good fight. ACLU: Good when they remember what the L stands for. Yourish: Meryl smash. Heidi's letters: I think she does reprisals, too. Her pinkness: Each time she falls she shall rise again! And woe to the wicked! In Context: Lynn provides it. Andrea: One spleen to rule them all. Still Waiting: Don't believe the hype. The Droll Weevil: Posts, pedantry, and pie(?) Perugia: Second home. Craven Road n.7: His name is Dog. Dylan Dog. Tom Bell: Internet law, online where it should be. Just the place for a snark: I've told you but once, but it's true. Greed is Good: And doesn't look too shabby in a T-shirt, either. Translator's Buddy: Didn't have "gliridi" though. CGFA: Favorite source of desktop material. Fallacies: Check yourself. Cosmo for men.: Implementing our equal right to feelings of inadequacy. Caplan: Visit the Museum. There's just one hitch: But it's a good one. Samizdata: Libertarian lexicographers. Unqualified Offerings: But quality assured. She is Wendy: Hear her roar. The Divine Blogroll: Entrate, che troverete speranza. Like the corners of my mind: Read it and weep. Aziz: Providing perspective. IJTIHAD: The future of Islam. I hope. Himishi: Where I acquired that raw fish addiction. My generous sponsors Alan Moore: Quis custodiet? Spoonerism: A blushing crow to tyranny. The Onion: Scary thing is, they're not far off. ScrappleFace: More important news. Day by day: Trudeau Schmudeau. Fumento: Brockovich Crockovich My alma mater: Not basketball. Croquet. The Capitol Steps: providing their fodder is the government's only indispensible function Randy Andy: Get used to it. Vasco Rossi: When they're in Italy, the Stones open for him. The Shadow: Useful counterpoint. Italiani liberi: Dr. D. Vider's Italian minions. Friendly Neighborhood Sinners: Swim the warm waters. Yuppies of Zion: The blog with two backs. Hobbit's repast: I'm partial to onesies, myself. The Friesian School: going Diderot one better Head spinning?: They can help. Looking sinister: Brian is watching. Murray's ghost: Stalking the state. Hell, no.: So anti it's not always clear what they're pro. Bureaucrash: takin' it to the streets Joe Cartoon: Indulge your inner 12 year old boy. There's a light: Rand sans droid. The Fake Detective: Rescuing damsels in dis-dress. Stromata: Amazing how much good stuff some people leave just lying around. The VRWC: Conspiring at a law school near you. The VLWC: Practicing the sincerest form of flattery. Corriere della Sera: Haven't sued me yet. Who am I?: Che ti frega? |
Monday, November 28, 2005
'Tis the season to excoriate bad Christmas songs. And as with so many similar pastimes, no-one does it better than Lileks. They’re playing Christmas songs at the coffee shop now; the staff informs me that the selection consists of the same four songs played over and over again, but by different artists. I wouldn’t doubt it. There are only four songs, really – religious, secular songs sung like religious songs, happy upbeat modern tunes, and modern krep in which Grandma is run over by a reindeer or the various members of the family gather to rock around the Christmas tree. How this rocking is done I am unsure, since the tree is usually in the corner; thus it would be difficult to rock around the Christmas tree. You would have to rock in a semi-circular pattern. The people on the end would either have to circle around the others, which would mean they were rocking around the persons rocking, or the entire line would have to shift back and forth, permitting the occupant of the center position no more than a few feet of rocking. It is also unclear what sort of rocking we are talking about here; most rocking doesn’t take you around anything. From the Bruce Springsteen grin-and-thrust-and-pump-hip dance to the Foghat-stoner stand-in-place-and-bob-head style, most rocking is done in place. So the whole song falls apart under analysis. Note: it is possible to rock around the clock, this being an expression of rocking performed in time, not space.To bad he didn't get off a riff on that supremely stupid lyric "It's the new old-fashioned way." Though I suppose that's a pretty accurate description of Hallmark's business model. Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Of wands and trenchcoats Via a commenter on Heidi's blog, I found this bit of Harry Potter fanfic, in which the premise is that John Constantine (if you associate that name with Keanu, I pity you) gets hired by Hogwarts to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Now one could easily imagine doing this sort of thing as a quickie pastiche joke. But the author Camwyn is far more ambitious, and has the talent to carry it off. While she certainly mines the rich vein of humor inherent in viewing Hogwarts from Constantine's jaded perspective, she's also writing a mini mystery novel that's as intruiguing and engaging as one of Rowling's, in which the characterizations and voices of both Constantine and all the Rowling characters ring perfectly true. If you're a member of that particular subclass of geekdom to whom the above sounds interesting, you should definitely check it out. Here's a taste from Constantine's "field notes" to whet the appetite: Hagrid's war all down to one man, some git calling himself Lord Voldemort. Apparently he's some magic psychopathic racist dictator or something who held power 15+ yrs. ago. Reign of terror, people dying left & right, armies of sinister magic creatures, etc. etc., but got his arse served to him on a silver platter by a baby name of Harry Potter. Been trying to stage comeback ever since. Lord V wants to 'purify wizarding race', can't even stand wizards w/muggle ancestors, would be happier if muggles all died screaming. Sounds like every fascist wanker to come down the pike only w/magic. Tried telling Hagrid this. Did not help. Hagrid unwilling even to say Lord V's name. Talked about his allies, though. His Nibs has gang of wizards & witches hanging on his every word- "Death Eaters". Pure-bloods and Muggle-haters, the lot of 'em. All chomping at the bit for a magical race war, though they'll stop off for a bit of torture & such along the way if they're not in a hurry. Then they kill you. Thursday, November 03, 2005
He comes by it honestly... So it was Halloween, and what did Lucas insist on dressing as? A monk. Of course, this was not just any random monk. It was a monk with a well-defined schtick. You see, on the hallowed eve he walked around the neighborhood accompanied by a friend of his who was also dressed as a monk. The two of them chanted Latin in unison...pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem...after which each of them would smack himself in the forehead with a wooden board. (In Lucas's case a clipboard, in his friend's a piece of stryofoam painted to look like wood.) They had a few other friends with them as well. One was dressed as the Black Knight, and the other as a strange cloaked figure in a viking helmet who asked at each house whether they had a shrubbery. I won't even tell you what happened every time they passed some poor girl dressed as a witch. Saturday, October 22, 2005
A Firefly/Serenity question. Yes, I'm a fan. Not to the point where I'm spending large amounts of time and money to become a volunteer member of Universal's marketing arm mind you, but a fan nonetheless. I do have this nagging question, though. Why don't the Reavers rape and kill each other until there's none (or, I suppose, only one) left? If they're that crazy aggressive, how can they even cooperate with each other enough to keep spaceships flying, plan sophisticated booby traps, organize raiding parties? How can Reaver society be anything but a contradiction in terms? Anyone? Friday, October 14, 2005
Aristocratic Originalism I was intrigued enough to go see this movie, but didn't find most of it as funny as I'd hoped. To make that joke work, you either need truly inspired details that go beyond mere shock value, or a style of delivery that makes it funny. (If anyone's keeping score, I think the best two recitals were Carlin's and Cartman's, for those respective reasons.) Also in the inspired category is the below variation from Wings and Vodka. I think it's actually better than any of the ones in the movie. WARNING: If you are at all squeamish, read no further. Harriet Miers walks into the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings. Arlen Specter asks her, "Ms. Miers, how would you describe your approach to interpreting the Constitution?” Thursday, October 13, 2005
When judges have baggage From a case I had to read today: The Erlichs may have hoped to build their dream home and live happily ever after, but there is a reason that tag line belongs only in fairy tales. Building a house may turn out to be a stress-free project; it is much more likely to be the stuff of urban legends--the cause of bankruptcy, marital dissolution, hypertension and fleeting fantasies ranging from homicide to suicide.Erlich v. Menezes, 21 Cal. 4th 543, 557-58 (1999) Gee, I wonder what the backstory to that little observation was. Indisputably hilarious Opposing counsel has served a request for judicial notice of facts contained in a Wikipedia article. If you understand the operative terms in that sentence, you probably understand why I've been chuckling all morning. Friday, September 09, 2005
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
The watchmaker may be blind, but students should be taught to keep their eyes open. While on one level my gut reaction is to agree with Glenn and Rick, on the other hand I actually don't think it is a worthless exercise to expose kids to a debate like this as an exercise in critical thinking. Which is what science is supposed to be: a careful weighing of the evidence and reasoning that support two different ways of understanding a phenomenon. Unfortunately, the way science is taught and discussed these days is too often too close to a sort of religious faith. Instead of "revealed truth" we have "proven theories," and instead of accepted dogma we have the current "scientific consensus." This is dangerous to science and to critical thinking in general, because it encourages the idea that unless you are a "scientist" you have no basis on which to form an opinion about certain topics and no ability to evaluate the relative merits of two "scientific" assertions. And yet we ask jurors to evaluate the competing views of opposing scientific experts, and voters to evaluate policy arguments based on competing scientific assertions of cause and effect. And well we should, unless we would place all decisions in the hands of a class of self-selected mandarins. We are all called upon to be scientists to some degree or other, and you do not train scientists by teaching them to toss out dissenting theories with a sneer rather than an argument. Intellectual authority is the death of science whether the authority is Aristotle, the Church, or the op-eds in Scientific American. Even if (as I believe it is) Intelligent Design is an inferior theory to Evolution, allowing proponents of both theories to present their arguments and critique those of the other side would be a valuable lesson, particularly because I guarantee it will make those kids understand the theory of evolution a lot better than they do now. You don't really understand a theory until you've seriously considered a counter-argument and worked through the reasons for choosing one over the other. Note that I said ID is "inferior," not that it is "wrong." This is an important distinction, and it points to another issue that is buried in the way kids are taught to think about science. A scientific theory is a tool that serves some end, and it can be evaluated only by reference to how well it fulfills that end. The criteria for making these evaluations are not self evident, nor are they easily separable from the kinds of considerations one might well call religious. Go read the debate between Newton and Leibniz, or remember Einstein's rejection of quantum theory on the ground that "God does not play at dice." No doubt one of the reasons the ID crowd prefer their theory is that they think it more consonant with the dignity of man and his view of his place in the universe. Is that an invalid criterion? If so, is it moreso than the requirement that a theory be "elegant"? Why? I don't say there aren't good answers to these questions; I merely say that kids should be taught that they really are questions that need answers. Nor am I claiming that no theory is ever really "wrong." Sure it is, if it contradicts observed phenomena. Easy enough to say in the abstract. But in practice how do you decide how much skepticism to aim at reports of new observations that call into question theories you hold dear? That too depends in part on what ends your theory serves, and there is a margin within which all of us are willing to tolerate some sacrificed accuracy in exchange for a comprehensive worldview that we feel at home in. Easy enough to sneer at the knuckleheads who cling to ID; how many of the people doing the sneering cling to a worldview informed by Marxism? Now, would the teaching of ID endorsed by Bush come anywhere near to what I envision as potentially salutary? I don't know, and I fear not. Worst case scenario would be that both views are simply presented as "equally valid" and left to the children to choose between as a matter of preference or faith without any serious criticism of either one. In other words, the very sort of mindless multiculturalism the right is supposed to oppose. There's also a slippery slope problem. Does every crackpot theory get equal time to be heard and refuted in school? I actually think that there is a good argument for distinguishing ID from the other competitors that Rick lists, few of which are seriously cared about by many people or deal with basic scientific issues. It's worth having somewhere in the curriculum where basic questions about the nature and validity of science are problematized rather than assumed and spoon-fed, and this is a good place to do it precisely because it implicates deep religious concerns and yet the ID people at least purport to be arguing on a playing field of reason. So let them have their say. Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Oh please Let this be good. Oh please oh please oh please. [Seen via the yuppies.] I dressed up as V for a Halloween party last year and had to spend all night explaining who the hell I was supposed to be. It appears that for once in my life I was ahead of the curve. Friday, July 01, 2005
Goodbye to Sandra D. Justice O'Connor is retiring. Effective, that is, upon the confirmation of her successor. How wonderfully in character! After all, we wouldn't want to decide now, definitively and for all time, whether she is retired. It's important to leave open lots of room for later facts to influence the result when the question is raised again: "Is Justice O'Connor retired?" "Well, I don't know. We need to apply the four-part O'Connor Retirement balancing test to the facts as reported in the newspapers today." I guess this is my last chance to drag out the little ditty I scrawled in the margins of my Federal Courts casebook one frustrating day... Look at me, I'm Sandra D.As Bill Maher would say, I kid the Justice. And I'll restrain my churlishness long enough to say that she's a very classy lady who deservedly made history. I wish her many happy returns back on the ranch. Sandy, you must start anew Thursday, June 23, 2005
Interview with Oriana Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).Just so. And it was so unnecessary. She could have made her case so much more reasonably, rigorously, without giving her enemies a pretext for dismissing it out of hand. But then she wouldn't be Oriana. Now he tells me... So I downloaded and read In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson's brilliant little (well, if 40,000 words is little) essay on the cultural and epistemological ramifications of operating systems. In junior high I actually took a "calculator/computer" class in which we programmed a computer (which even by the standards of that day seemed more like a glorified cash register, whose numeral-only output was printed on receipt tape) using punch cards fed into a reader, and got in trouble for playing with the resultant confetti just as he describes. And in college I had some fun writing little programs in BASIC to do things like calculate the golden mean or graph equations on my Apple II. (This was after Macs had already come out, thus continuing my unbroken pattern of being firmly behind the curve on adoption of new technology.) So even though my level of technical skill is so rudimentary that I would never dream of presuming to apply to myself the honorific "hacker," I kind of feel like a fellow traveller. So I read the essay, and Neal's got me all fired up to eschew the mediated idol worship of the GUI and take full grasp of my destiny by swallowing the red pill, learning Linux, and becoming a Morloch in good standing who actually knows how to read rather than just watch pretty pictures. And then, something in the back of my mind reminds me that long before I read the essay, I'd seen a follow-up comment about it by Neal on his website. What was it, now? Oh yeah, that would be this comment: In the Beginning was the Command Line is now badly obsolete and probably needs a thorough revision. For the last couple of years I have been a Mac OS X user almost exclusively.Oh. Well. Never mind, then. Friday, June 03, 2005
Oriana's trial date set In case you were wondering exactly how long Oriana has to wait for the worms to come, this article says the trial has been set for June 12, 2006, in Bergamo. (Thanks again to Signore Vige for the link). According to the article, the choice of venue is because the book was printed there. I'm not sufficiently familiar with Italian legal procedure to understand exactly what this means, but apparently a public minister by the name of Maria Cristina Rota requested that the case be "archived," but the presiding Judge Grasso chose instead a course of action that requires Fallaci to appear in court. Fallaci has already publicly declared that she has no intention of doing so. (This raises intruiging questions: Will Italy seek to have her extradited from the U.S.? Would we comply? I'm pretty sure that they refuse to extradite to us when the defendant would risk capital punishment. Would we extradite someone to face a crime that violates our constitutional norms?) UPDATE: Here's another little article that has some quotes from Fallaci in reaction to the lawsuit. This trial is not against me. Nor is it a trial brought by a judge in search of publicity. It is a trial aimed at creating a Precedent, the Fallaci Case.As they say in Italy, no hair on her tongue! Saturday, May 28, 2005
And they say we’re nuts about religion in this country. Alright, I have the text of the Italian penal code provisions underlying Smith’s complaint against Fallaci. Are you ready for this? Here’s both the Italian and my translation. Suggestions for improving the latter are welcome from those in a position to offer them. The complaint against Fallaci cites article 406 in relation to article 403. Thus the charge is that Fallaci offended Islam by vilifying some individual or individuals who profess it. When I read these provisions, I wrote to an Italian lawyer friend of mine to ask some questions, among the first of which were: “There’s a State religion in Italy?” and “So how exactly do other faiths get ‘admitted’? His responses were as follows: Well, this makes Fallaci’s defense quite obvious, as the main theme of her book is to point out all the ways in which the social and religious practices of Muslim immigrants, from infibulation to subjugation of women to polygamy to wearing headgear in I.D. photos, violate Italian and European norms regarding public order and the rights of persons. Her book is, in effect a long brief arguing that Islam should not be regarded as a “culto ammesso nello Stato” according to the court’s definition. That, of course, is not the way it will actually play out. It would be a stupid defense from a legal realist perspective, as there’s no way in hell a judge is going to hold that Islam is not allowed in Italy. I’ve asked my friend if he can find me an opinion defining the distinction between “offending by means of vilification” and merely criticizing. That, I imagine is where the argument will be if it actually takes place. As for the imposition of lighter penalties for offending religions other than Catholicism, that's apparently been struck down in a case involving none other than our friend Adel Smith. (Hat tip Bartholomew.) The complaint also invokes another provision, from the “Act of ratification of the Convention of the rights of man":
Whether Fallaci falls within the meaning of 1a) depends I think on the meaning of “ethnic.” She unabashedly espouses the superiority of Western civilization, culture, and mores over those of Islamic civilization. Her book also expresses a fair amount of personal distaste for most people from the latter civilization, but it certainly doesn’t call for acts of discrimination against them. Mostly it just calls for evenhanded application of existing norms to them without making exceptions in deference to their religious or other practices that violate those norms. I also don’t think it can fairly be said that she has incited violence against anyone. (Though there is a marvellous passage in the book where she suggests that a couple Italian male politicians who have defended the Muslims’ right to perform “soft infibulation” on their daughters try out the analogous procedure on their own bodies, and offers to do the honors.) Well, between the free speech and establishment issues above, I’ve provided Eugene with enough fodder for a day or two. I need to go bed, as tomorrow it’s off to Family Camp with the Boy Scouts. Buona notte. Thursday, May 26, 2005
One from the referral logs: Here's an interesting post that provides some links to more background on Adel Smith, one of which illustrates that this is not one of those situations where only the non-PC speech is subject to censure. Apparently Smith himself has faced charges for denigrating the Catholic church as a "criminal organization." And as I noted before, Fallaci herself has sued a newspaper for libel simply for responding to her celebrated "Fuck you" with a "Thanks, same to you." I get the sense that filing libel suits in Italy is largely a symbolic gesture (as it sometimes is here), though I'd be curious to know how often people actually go to the mats on them. UPDATE: And here's another. Scroll down to see a nice photo showing the reaction of some Italian sports fans to Mr. Smith. The 18 things you can't say about Muslims in Italy. Thanks to Ilario Vige, my indefatigable source of Oriana intel, I now have a pdf copy of an article from the Italian newspaper Libero, which reproduces the text of the complaint filed against Fallaci. How’s that for social capital in the internet age? (Ah, Prof. Putnam, there are more things in heaven and earth…) I don’t have time now to try to translate all of it, but eventually I hope to obtain copies of the cited code provisions so as to be in a position to understand the way the legal issues are being framed. What I can do for now is list the 18 “incriminating sentences.” As I had guessed, a few of the offending passages are from the section I translated earlier. Many of them are mere snippets taken from longer contexts. For now I will present them only as they appear in the complaint (at least as cited in the article), ellipses and all. If there is reason to do so later I can provide more of the context for each. UPDATE: As you can see, Oriana doesn't really live up to her claim that this time around she is appealing solely to the power of reason and putting aside her rage and pride. This was my main disappointment with the book when I read it. She does cite a lot of facts in support of her attacks on Islam, and as you can see several of the 18 sentences are simply historical assertions. She doesn't provide any footnotes or sources for any of her facts though (no doubt Muslim historians paint things differently), and it is undeniable that the overall tone of her book is one of visceral revulsion for Muslims, not just rationally alarmed criticism of certain political and cultural developments in Europe. This is unfortunate, because her book does raise a lot of genuinely alarming and important issues, and I think this time around her haranguing jeremiads, bracing and delightfully trenchant though they can be (particularly when directed at various politicians and organizations), actually wind up detracting from the message. They surely detract from the chances of persuading anyone not on her side already, or even of getting them to give her an open-minded hearing. They also make it easy to understand why a Muslim who does not wish to blow up the Eiffel Tower or conquer the West would rightly feel that he was being stereotyped and hatred being fomented against him. On the other hand, plenty of people like the ones Fallaci describes assuredly exist, and the gap will not be bridged by pretending it isn't there. None of my criticism, of course, changes my view that in a free society this sort of expression ought to be beyond the reach of legal sanctions. UPDATE 2: David Harbottle has another translation of these items here, except that the source he was looking at lists a few of them differently. I have no idea why that is. I’m trying to track down a copy of the actual complaint so I can find the 18 sentences Eugene is interested in. In the meantime, here’s a quick and dirty translation of a relevant passage from the book in question, The Force of Reason. Relevant both because it talks about the earlier legal process Fallaci was subjected to in France, and because it illustrates the general tone of her comments about Muslims. This is the beginning of Chapter 2: I understood that the dream [nurtured by the sons of Allah] of destroying the Eiffel Tower was superfluous in the late spring of 2002, when “The Rage and The Pride” came out in France, where a novelist had just been criminally charged for saying that the Koran is the most stupid and dangerous book in the world. And where, in 1997 and then in 1998 and then in 2000 and then in 2001 Brigitte Bardot had been condemned (as a racist-xenophobe-blasphemer-etcetera) for having written or said those things people never get tired of repeating, poor Brigitte. That the Muslims have robbed her of her country, that even in the most remote villages French churches have been replaced by mosques and the Our Father with the cries of muezzins, that tolerance has a limit even in democratic regimes, that halal butchery is barbarous... (By the way: it is. It is, I’m sorry to say, in just the same measure as shechita butchery is barbarous. That is, the Jewish version which is carried out in the same way and consists of slitting the animals’ throats without dazing them, thus causing them to die little by little. Slowly, bleeding to death. If you don’t believe it, go to a shechita or halal slaughterhouse and observe that never-ending agony accompanied by heart-rending glances that stops only when the lamb or calf no longer has a drop of blood remaining. So at that point the meat is “pure,” nice and white, pure...).Fra Accursio, by the way, was the inquisitor who went after Mastro Cecco. Oh, and for anyone who's not familiar with Oriana's J'accuse, here's the (somewhat corrected since) translation I did of that when it first came out in April 2002: I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swasitka, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.The individual to whom she sends the two word salutation, by the way, is Adel Smith, the same person who is now behind the lawsuit against her in Italy. As I've explained elsewhere, while I don't doubt that Oriana has received death threats, I don't think the statement by Smith that she refers to above really was one. UPDATE: It occurs to me that the account Fallaci gives of the proceedings in France doesn't make a lot of sense, at least to American legal eyes. I suppose I can imagine a judge denying a preliminary injunction on the ground that the feared damage is already done, so that the balancing of the equities weighs in favor of the burden on the publishers. But you wouldn't throw out the suit on that ground. It certainly wouldn't save you from prison or a damages award, assuming you had committed acts for which those were the legal consequences. Nor would it save you from a permanent injunction against further selling of the book. (As in copyright cases, for example.) So either Fallaci's not explaining what happened very well, or the French legal system is not very precise in the way it deals with these matters. Anybody know? Wouldn't surprise me if the answer was both. Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Here we go again... So Adel Smith is finally getting his way, and now Oriana's to be tried in Italy. (For my take on an earlier Italian legal scuffle involving this character, see here.) That makes the third European country to entertain legal charges against her for writing a book. Remember that the next time you hear someone asserting the cultural and intellectual superiority of Europeans over Americans. (Ironically, Oriana herself has done that at times.) The European populace is apparently so enlightened and sophisticated that the only adequate response to publication of a book containing harsh rhetorical swipes (backed by a fair amount of factual research) at a religious group is to legally suppress it. Otherwise, who knows what those gullible mobs might do. At least one Italian commentator gets this. Pierluigi Battista has a piece on the front page of the Corriere: It will be a sad day for the law if we discover that in Italy crimes of opinion exist, and are not confined, as they should be, to the antique shop. It will be a sad day for liberty of expression if The Force of Reason is dragged into court and a judge decides … to credit the complaint filed by Adel Smith in which Fallaci is accused of nothing less than “vilifying relgion.”It would be nice if Umberto Eco, who has spent some time criticizing Fallaci (with customarily opaque erudition), and who also once wrote a novel dramatizing quite vividly the lengths to which some will go to effect the "coercion of thought," would rise to this challenge. In any event, I doubt Oriana will be much fazed by this. She could probably just move back to New York and stay there, but I suspect she won't. She's already got such a martyr complex, and is so close to death, that this will simply provide her with a last glorious chance to grandstand on the way out. She'll get to write another long comparison of herself to Mastro Cecco or some other suitably noble wronged heretic, and the streets outside the courthouse will be packed with her admirers. Sunday, May 01, 2005
"You wouldn't really legalize heroin, would you?" Yes. Here's why. As usual, Jim does a great job of showing why what many assume to be an absurd, extreme libertarian position is merely a sensible cost-benefit analysis informed by principle. Tuesday, April 26, 2005
A sad day. You know, I've long defended Justice Thomas against the offensive and baseless notion that he is nothing more than Scalia's lapdog. But why, oh why, did he have to demonstrate the point in this of all cases? At argument there were only two justices who didn't telegraph their views. The Chief, cause he wasn't there, and Thomas, cause he didn't speak. I was somewhat worried, because I could see either of them going either way, but hoped this would be one of the ones where Thomas agreed with Scalia. I mean come on Clarence, it's taxes we're talking about here! Foreign taxes! Wouldn't you know it they both had to line up against us. I'm too busy to read the opinion right now, and haven't the heart. I'll comment later. Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Look, ma! After nearly three years of this, I finally took the time to work out how to enable comments. Stay tuned for more breathtaking leaps up the html learning curve. See, I'm what you call a late adopter. Wednesday, April 13, 2005
If I can't have her, no-one will! Not usually considered a noble position to take, is it? Unless you're an advocate for the handicapped, in which case it somehow becomes the epitome of righteousness. Look, I understand the laudable desire to help handicapped people not be excluded from society. But if you hated the handicapped and wanted to hatch a plot that would cause children and their families to resent them, could you really do better than this? (Found via sploid, which ought to replace Drudge in your bookmarks. It has in mine.) Sunday, April 10, 2005
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Lions and wires in the air! So high! Yesterday I read the Ninth Circus's latest three ring spectacle. Here’s the question: You own a copyright. Someone infringes it. Can you assign the claim to someone else, someone who owns no other interest in the copyright? Under the bigtop, we have a seven-judge majority making a big show of walking a strict statutory construction tightrope. The statute says that the owner of an exclusive right “is entitled” to sue “for any infringement of that particular right committed while he or she is the owner of it.” The “exclusive rights” (i.e., copy, distribute, perform, make derivative works, etc.) are all enumerated in the statute. The statute doesn’t say any other people are ever entitled to sue. Nor does it say they’re not. In particular, it doesn’t say that assignees of a right to sue are entitled to sue. Nor does it say they’re not, or that copyright claims are unassignable. From this, the majority concludes that copyright claims are unassignable and that purported assignees can't sue. Expressio unius, exclusio alterius, ipso facto Q.E.D. Of course, the copyright statute also doesn't say that the people who it entitles to sue are allowed to authorize lawyers to bring suit in their name rather than appearing in court on their own behalf. In fact, the statute is silent on this crucial point--just as silent as it is on the question whether accrued claims are assignable. And, the majority takes pains to emphasize, copyright is purely a creature of statute--which apparently means that background principles of common law simply don't apply, even to matters on which the statute is silent. So, I'm wondering, where does the right to have a lawyer prosecute copyright claims on one's behalf come from? As there is (as far as I know) no federal statute expressly granting people this ability to delegate the prosecution of their claims to lawyers, should we assume that unless a particular federal statute expressly says otherwise, any causes of action created by it must be prosecuted in propria persona? Or should we make the opposite assumption, that general principles of background law apply unless the federal statute expressly abrogates them? Though the majority had introduced its act as one of simply plodding step by textually bound step along the tightrope, at a certain point it breaks into an intriguing dance. Apparently only half of the crucial statutory language is realio trulio exclusio--the part about being an "owner of an exclusive right under a copyright." As long as you are such an owner, not only are you "entitled" to sue on your own claims, you also have the power to sue on copyright claims assigned to you. But wait--wasn't the statutory entitlement limited to people who own an exclusive right that is infringed "while he or she is the owner of it"? Yet the majority appears to say (granted, without holding since it's not before them) that an owner of any exclusive right, being a member of the class Congress intended to empower to sue on copyright claims, is entitled to sue on an assigned claim--even though the exclusive right she owns wasn't itself infringed. And even though she didn't own the right that was infringed at the time the infringement was committed. So now we've got one foot shuffling along the tightrope, and the other out there doing the hokey pokey. The really bizarre thing about the majority's position is that it seems trivially easy to get around. As the majority acknowledges, the exclusive rights under copyright are infinitely divisible and transferable. So if you want to assign an accrued copyright claim, all you have to do is transfer along with it some exclusive right defined in such a way as to have no practical significance. Say, the right to use the copyrighted work in the making of a derivative work whose sole subject is the depiction of a peppercorn. In ring two we have a pair of judges who don't really believe in tightropes. A rope after all is just a bridge trying to get somewhere, and as long as a smart judge knows where Congress was going, she can take her own route. In fact, these judges generally see one of their main jobs as that of building safety nets to catch all the people who would otherwise fall off Congress's various tightropes, but who they--don't ask them how--just know were intended to make it across. Actually, the ring two judges clue us into something that the majority had done a fairly good job of keeping under wraps. This isn't really about tightrope walking at all. It's about lion taming. The lions are all the non-copyright owners to whom copyright claims might be assigned. Some lions are relatively well behaved, jumping through hoops and furthering the progress of science and useful arts like they're supposed to. Others are mean nasty creatures who growl and bite for no good reason but a desire to harass. These latter are also rumored to be, ahem, rather fecund. The majority tried to keep all lions out through a strict no lions rule, albeit a strangely defined one. The ring two judges, though, know that the way to deal with lions is not on a categorical, speciesist basis, but by using your special judgely powers to divine which lions are mean and nasty and which are really sweet widdle puddytats. The former get the whip and the chair; the latter get into court. And what makes this a really fun ongoing act is that you can never tell in advance which new lion will get put in which category. The entertainment is endless. Ring three contains two more judges. Like the ones in ring two, they had hoped to be in the majority but instead got shunted off into a sideshow. These are the kind of judges who generally take tightropes pretty seriously. But, like the ring two judges, they find it hard to take seriously the one-footed dance the majority is doing. Plus they think this particular tightrope was put there not by Congress but by the majority itself. They're textualists, but they don't see how the text "I grant X a right to sue" implies the other non-existent text "X may not assign his right to sue to anyone else." The ring three judges also see that what's going on here really has something to do with lions. In fact, they lift another curtain and show us who it is that's really afraid of the lions--a particularly juicy zebra. Unlike the ring two judges though, they don't think they're equipped or authorized to decide which lions are suitable for domestication and which aren't. If Congress hasn't made any anti-lion rule, then you just take all comers and make them jump through the same hoops. If there are too many of them, or they get too nasty, well then Congress can make rules about which ones should be admitted. Should the ring three judges be more concerned about the lions than they are? Or are these really imaginary lions? Zebras, after all, are likely to think they see lions lurking behind every bush. You can't blame them for this; it's a survival instinct. Here's what our zebra thinks it can "envision": …a market developing in which speculators with no relationship to the copyrighted work pay a small sum to the copyright owner—who might have no belief in the merits of an infringement claim and no incentive to sue—in exchange for the ability to pursue a high volume of nuisance settlements or unwarranted jury verdicts.We'll leave aside for a moment the disturbing lack of faith in our judicial system shown by the vision of a "high volume" of "unwarranted jury verdicts." The question is how likely it is that copyright owners will want to sell me their meritless claims so I can set up Nuisances R' Us. It seems to me that in many if not most cases, if copyright holders prefer not to bring suit themselves, they will also prefer that no one else do so either. For a number of reasons. One is that any lawsuit involving a copyright they own will likely wind up dragging them into the ring one way or another even if they’re not the plaintiffs. They will be subject to discovery and the other hassles of litigation over a case they’re not interested in. In addition, if the suit really is nothing but a nuisance suit, whatever public or private opprobrium falls on the perceived bringers of nuisance suits will splatter them as well, for everyone will know where I got the right to make a nuisance of myself. In Silvers, the assignee was actually the author of the work, who didn’t own the copyright because she’d written it as a work for hire for a production company. (Which is why the ring two judges see her as a puddytat and not a lion. Even though she doesn’t own any exclusive rights, she still has some sort of meaningful relationship with the work in question.) Why did the company assign the claim to her? I’d guess it was because while they didn’t want to pursue it themselves (probably to avoid conflict with Sony), they also couldn’t just ignore it without arguably violating some contractual or fiduciary duty to protect the author’s interest in royalties. So they said, “Here, if you think this cost you money, you can go after it. We’re keeping out of it.” If I had tried to buy the same claim from them, the desire to avoid conflict with Sony would not be counterbalanced by anything but the “small sum” my business model allows me to offer. So, to make my high volume nuisance copyright suit enterprise work, I have to identify a steady stream of potential infringement claims whose value is iffy enough that the copyright owners have no interest in pursuing them, that affect no-one the copyright owners want to have good business relations with, that are colorable enough to keep me from getting thrown out of court and/or slapped with sanctions, and whose owners are unconcerned enough about the potential costs to them of my bringing suit to sell to me for small sums. All things considered, I think I’ll keep my day job. On this one, my hat goes in the ring with Judges Bea and Kleinfeld. Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Born in Tijuana... I just bought tickets to take the family to see King Tut in June. I remember going to the exhibition as a kid the first time it came to SoCal in the late seventies. I guess it's kind of like Haley's comet: each generation gets a chance to go. Lucas just finished studying Egyptian civilization at school, so it's perfect timing. Another auspicious sign: the continued involvement of the best-known scholar in the field. Monday, March 07, 2005
I for one wouldn't be offended by this, if it were actually funny. Trouble is, it's not. Unless you're still able to channel that 12 year old part of you that once thought, for about 15 minutes, that dead baby jokes were funny. Even then. Well, #25 is kind of funny. Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Drudge is linking this article in the Harvard Crimson under the description: HARVARD NOW UPSET OVER JADA PINKETT SMITH COMMENTS... The article (which fails to explain even in summary what the lady actually said) contains the following sentence: According to the Foundation’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC) Co-Chair Yannis M. Paulus ’05, the two groups have already planned concrete ways to address the concerns that Pinkett Smith’s speech rose.I'd say Harvard has more important things to be upset about. Boilerplate Headlines Sudden Violence Derails Hopes For Peace In Middle East Democrats Criticize Republicans For Serving Interests Of Rich Kennedy Writes Opinion That Reaches Result In Line With Most People's Gut Reactions; Scalia Writes Scathing Dissent Demonstrating Its Lack Of Coherent Legal Rationale Friday, January 21, 2005
When the doodoo hits the Fanfan. Alright, I sent this query to some of my friends in academia and haven't received any enlightenment yet. Is there any to be had? Pages 13-14 of the Stevens majority opinion in part (not to be confused with the Stevens dissent in part) explains to us how the 6th am is about protecting us from "judicial despotism," and says I have the right, before being deprived of an extra ten years of my liberty, to have the fact which provides the basis for adding those ten years submitted to 12 of my "equals and neighbors," rather than just to some "lone employee of the State." All of the Supreme State Employees, however, apparently regard it as undoubtedly true (p. 8-9) that "when a trial judge exercises his discretion to select a specific sentence within a defined range, the defendant has no right to a jury determination of the facts that the judge deems relevant." So it's "judicial despotism" if a judge is required by Congress to add 10 years--no more, no less--to my sentence if he determines that I had another 566 g's of crack that the jury never heard about. But if Congress just tells the judge to sentence me any way he deems reasonable (say, a "defined range" of 0-1200 months), and the judge decides all on his own to give me an extra 10--or 20, or 50--years in the clink because of those same 566 g's that the jury never heard about, this is not judicial despotism, and would be perfectly constitutional. As far as I can make out, there's no Sixth Am requirement that Congress prescribe sentences at all. They could just define crimes, and let judges make up sentences as they went along. What am I missing here? |