Funny

Funny line--
[After Instructor Brad describes the defense against an attack with a small stick ]
Sensei Dave: "And if you get attacked by a quarterstaff, you have been hanging around too many Renaissance festivals."

Funny toon--
Irregulary Webcomic on Elven poetry

Update on life

Having not been very good about updating recently, I offer the following in abbreviated form:

Tunes: Basil Poledouris' The Jungle Book is amazing. The Heart got me a copy; the theme is a very full, grand view of life, the adventure in the wild. The track "Attack of Shere Khan" has some very nice brass work which I think comparable in quality to the Asteroid Belt music from The Empire Strikes Back.

Books: Timothy Zahn's The Icarus Hunt is a sort of Firefly (for starship, bad guys, and plot) meets Ronin (for characters), and a lot of fun. Sci-fi is just better when it's about the down and out who can barely keep their ship running.

Activities:


It rocks.

Vehicles: Angus passed 233k, but inspections may catch up to him soon. Have to wonder how it saves the earth to downcheck a car based on emissions, requiring me to buy a new one, and thereby causing all the carbon emissions of refining, processing, and working two tons of steel, making carpet, glass, etc.

Work: I am working full time but not permanently. Nonetheless, reversing the cashflow hemorrhaging caused by education has been nice.

Alabama Constitution

I like some of the oddly (or oldly) worded laws legislatures come up with and don't change. I offer as an example the following, which is the sole grounds (beyond the general provisions for all state officers) for impeaching a county sheriff:

Whenever any prisoner is taken from jail, or from the custody of any sheriff or his deputy, and put to death, or suffers grievous bodily harm, owing to the neglect, connivance, cowardice, or other grave fault of the sheriff, such sheriff may be impeached...

Ala. Const. § 138.

Yep, in Alabama, sheriffs can be impeached for cowardice, if a prisoner gets lynched.

Oh, and since it also seems interesting, the governor and other high state officials can be impeached for "intemperance in the use of intoxicating liquors..." Ala. Const. § 173.

Quote of the Week

"[Mr. T's] veins bulge with smaller veins. He sweats animal blood. His armpit hairs are made of beef."

--Gene Weingarten, "Cattle Call," Washington Post, Aug. 19, 2007, p. W60.

Congratulations to the 1000th visitor

The counter (unobtrusively posted at the bottom of this page) has, as of 23:33 (EDT) last night, reached 1000 visitors since I started keeping track.

Thank you, person from Iowa State University for visiting. Your prize is the following message: GO CYCLONES!

And thank you, Cavie, for providing the link that led to the 1000th visitor.

Reminds me of a someone who just took the Bar...

Bad Inventions

It would be a bad thing if a combo copier/fax machine was set up so that hitting the start button in fax mode would automatically redial the last number called. Especially if the difference between fax and copy modes was a simple switch, button, or light which you might not notice.

As in, "Please copy this super-sensitive internal document." "Oops, left it on fax mode again. I wonder if the last fax we sent was to the other side's lawyer?"

After a long hiatus...

Expect more hiatus to come (for the next few weeks)

Where have I been? Studying.

And in case I don't pass the bar:
$3990.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

Campaign theme songs

Hillary Clinton has openned up voting for her campaign theme song. One of the choices is Smashmouth's I'm a Believer. This seems an appropriate choice, in that it first appeared in the movie Shrek, where someone with political ambitions and connections finds out she is just an ogre.

Fortunately, Hillary has kindly provided a space for write-in nominations. One suggestion is that she just re-use the "Kennedy-Kennedy-Kennedy-Kennedy" song, but somehow I don't think that would work, insofar as people might remember that she is not a Kennedy, but Schwarzenegger is. Any good angry-chick-music ideas?

10 Month Old Baby Acquires Gun Permit

The baby's father secured the permit for his son after the baby's grandfather gave him an heirloom shotgun. Jr. will not be allowed to use the shotgun until his is 14 and the grandfather will hang onto it until then.

Spousal vs. Marital privilege

It has come to my attention that many of my friends, as well as a few of my enemies, do not know just when a person can be excused from testifying against their spouse. Accordingly, let me put forward this miniature encapsulation of the matter, which of course is a gross simplification of U.S. federal rules only, is not legal advice, and misses important exceptions that may apply to you and that only a highly paid attorney could tell you about.

The first thing to note is that there are two separate privileges that may come into play. First is the individual right of a person not to testify against their spouse. This right is the "property" of that individual, and only comes into play if the individual is called as a witness in a criminal matter to testify against their defendant spouse. If these circumstances are present, the law imputes the "one flesh" concept to the 5th Amendment and considers having to testify against your spouse the same as testifying against yourself. This protection covers not only what the witness has observed during the marriage, but also what was observed or known about the individual at any time before the marriage. Note that this only applies to a current spouse, so if the marriage ends or is not valid for any reason, it will no longer protect the witness.

The second type of privilege is marital. It comes about because of the special relationship of marriage, and bears analogy to the attorney-client privilege. Its purpose is to allow spouses to freely communicate without worrying about whether their communications will come out in court, and so is held by both persons and can be individually exercised by either to silence (for purposes of legal evidence) the other. It is valid in both civil and criminal contexts, and covers communications and observations that are sufficiently "marital" (sometimes a tricky test). It only covers those things that occur during a valid marriage, but can be used after the marriage is over to maintain the silence.

To illustrate all this, if a divorcee is the defendant in a criminal case and both his current wife and his former wife are called by the prosecution to discuss things the defendant had done in their presence, the current spouse could say, "I refuse to testify" and be excused completely. The former spouse, however, could not excuse herself, but the defendant could forbid her to discuss those things that had been done during the marriage. This would be true regardless of whether the former wife actually really wanted to testify against him.

Здоровье!

Dr. Sanders killed him. In the hallway. With the candlestick.

Kudos to the budding humorists back at the nest for this Onion-esque gem.

St. Louis Cardinals

Having been a Cardinals fan for around two decades now, I should have remembered this part of their cycle...

See, what happens is, they get close to doing well a few times, then against all odds the miracle kids actually win a world series or something like that, then the next year (and sometimes for about a decade afterwards), they sit back and it's like they don't have anything to prove anymore, so they slump around a bit. They pick up a few key injuries, and next thing you know the whole season is over.

The thing about the Cardinals is, they seem to be really moody. I know sports in general tend to be strongly influenced by morale, but I would say the Cards are even more so. If they are losing badly in the 6th, they will lose really badly by the time the 9th rolls around. If they only need one win to clinch their division but there are 10 games left in the season, they won't get a win until the last game or maybe the second to last, because hey, plenty of time to get a win later. (On the other hand, if it IS the last game, or game 7 of the NLCS or some other similarly momentous moment, it can negate their losing badly rule, and the need to win will actually let them come back seven runs in the bottom of the 9th with two already out.)

So, see you in the 2016 World Series when my Redbirds are feeling like maybe they will grace us with an appearance again once they can be properly appreciated for having been absent so long. Or maybe I am just feeling moody myself. ;-)

Wine review: Golden Kaan (South Africa) Pinotage 2003

This past week, in celebration of the end of law school, we tried a new wine, Golden Kaan's 2003 Pinotage, from South Africa. For us, it was both a new varietal and our first African wine.

The first thing to notice about the wine is the bottle (which was actually why I noticed it among the hundreds of other bottles on the shelves). The green glass/red wine black with little decoration or front labeling other than the golden African continent is bold but somewhat minimalist, an effect that pleases me.

The wine itself is dry but light bodied. The Pinotage grape was developed in South Africa from a combination of Pinot Noir and Cinsault, lending a fruity flavor to the lighter Pinot body. It has a primary bouquets of cherry, but backed up with perhaps a hint of mango and leather, giving it a cheerful but complex flavor. It is pleasant while not letting you forget that it has come from the ground.

It is rather finicky in its food matches, however. It is easily overpowered; heavy meat or strong cheese leave it feeling bruised. It does well with Monterrey Jack cheese, and would be a good red to accompany chicken or fish. Light pasta or a salad would probably also work.

Almost too cheesy to post... but not quite.