The New York Times reports on budget season at the UN and various battles hotting up. It’s a good piece by Neil MacFarquhar, dated November 7, 2009. As the article says, that fact that it costs the United Nations an average of $2,473 per page to create every single document in its six official languages, while […]
Archive | November, 2009
Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity
Here are the results of a very interesting study, which I participated in (along with 30,000 other people). FWIW, I usually pronounce the o in “orange” like “a” in farce, though the longer I’ve lived outside New York, the less consistent I’ve become; call the place that I attend services “synagogue”‘; am proficient in Hebrew; […]
How my father helped free Soviet prisoners
Last month in Massachusetts, my father, Jerry Kopel, received the Soviet Jewry Freedom Award from the Russian Jewish Community Foundation. He was honored along with his fellow former legislator, Tilman Bishop. (Bishop is now an elected Regent of the University of Colorado. He is a conservative Republican from Grand Junction; my father is a liberal Denver Democrat.) […]
Why the Neglect of Communist Crimes Matters
In my last post, I discussed the neglect of communist atrocities. Although communist governments murdered and repressed even more people than the Nazis, their crimes have gotten only a tiny fraction of the public awareness and recognition extend to the latter. But does that neglect matter? After all, the major communist regimes have either collapsed […]
MarineTraffic.com Is Also Really Cool
I’m sure many people saw this over at Instapundit, and maybe it’s not as cool as Sketch2 below, but I spent a while messing with this today and thought it was fascinating … MarineTraffic.com, with a live GoogleEarth map of marine shipping worldwide.
Sketch2Photo
Looks extremely cool, if it works. From Andrew Mager (ZDNet): What if you could draw some stick figures on a screen and somehow magically create a beautiful image montage? Well, it’s possible. A group of students in China have created [Sketch2Photo], a project that does exactly what I just described: it takes a rough, hand-drawn […]
California Withholding Tax Hike – Can Someone Explain the Legal Basis to Me?
I started out legal life in California, clerking for the California Supreme Court and, already being a tax geek, was handed many of the state tax issues. So I have some familiarity with California’s tax law. It is complicated and in many policy aspects problematic, but also, to be clear as a lawyer, it is […]
Much Better Than Being Cited for Our Substance — Being Cited as a Generic Example
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Americans tend to have fewer close confidants today than they did two decades ago — but that isn’t because they’re all huddled over their computers playing World of Warcraft or reading the Volokh Conspiracy. In fact, we like to think that reading the Volokh Conspiracy will give you more […]
Scenes from the Meat Market
My colleague Jacqui Lipton has posted some photos from the AALS faculty recruitment conference.
Paul Hollander on the Fall of Communism
This fall is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events associated with the collapse of communism. Paul Hollander, a sociologist who has written numerous works on communism and Western attitudes towards it, has an op ed in the Washington Post, noting some of the lessons of the communist experience, […]
New Jersey and Indiana Casinos May Not Eject Blackjack Players for Card Counting
From Donovan v. Grand Victoria Casino & Resort (Oct. 30), in which the Indiana Court of Appeals so holds, and cites a 1982 New Jersey case so holding: [The casino] may not simply take refuge in the common law right of exclusion, inasmuch as it is the public policy of this State that gambling is […]
IJ’s Bone Marrow Case: Wrapping Up
All of us at the Institute for Justice want to thank Eugene for giving us an opportunity to discuss our latest case this week (previous posts here, here, here, and here). I want to use this last post to respond to a few comments. First, some people have argued in the comments that just because […]
Establishment Clause Violation in San Francisco’s Condemning the Catholic Church’s Refusal To Help With Adoptions by Same-Sex Couple?
A Ninth Circuit panel said no in June, and I thought its ruling was correct, though I disapproved of San Francisco’s resolution on nonconstitutional grounds. But yesterday, the Ninth Circuit agreed to rehear the case en banc, so it might be that the panel decision will be reversed (though I still think that it’s correct). […]
Illegal to (Among Other Things) “Be[] at a Location Frequented by Persons Who Use, Possess or Sell Drugs”
Winston-Salem, N.C., had an ordinance that provided, (b) It shall be unlawful for a person to remain or wander about in a public place under circumstances manifesting the purpose to engage in a violation of the North Carolina Controlled Substances Act, G.S. 90-89 et seq. Such circumstances are: (1) Repeatedly beckoning to, stopping or attempting […]
Law and Robotics Panel at Stanford Law School
By Kenneth Anderson on November 6, 2009 11:15 am in Academia, California, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, War and Armed Conflict
If you are going to be around Palo Alto next Thursday evening, you might consider attending a panel discussion on robotics and law at Stanford Law School. I’ll be on a panel alongside some very interesting and knowledgeable folks taking up varied aspects of robotics (my particular interest is robotics and war, but the panel […]