See this blog entry, in which the author analyzes many of the applicable ethical rules that an attorney who tried to smite his client with a baseball bat violated. I think this may be the first blog entry in which I used the word "smite."
With daylight savings time coming into effect this weekend, I thought I would post two websites about getting the exact time. This website will give you the precise time in every U.S. time zone. This website, on the other hand, will give you a more visually attractive clock, but won't show you the time in the U.S. It will show you Coordinated Universal Time (a/k/a Greenwich Mean Time), which is either five or four hours ahead of Eastern Time in the U.S., depending on whether you are on standard or daylight savings time.
Of course, if your computer is running Windows XP or above, or Mac OS X.4.x (Tiger) (and maybe even an earlier version of OS X, I'm not sure) or above, your computer is synced with a time server as well, so you can use your computer to set the exact time.
At this link, there is a detailed explanation of why the Washington Monument's color changes. The story doesn't start out talking about that, but if you search on obelisk, you'll see where it starts talking about the Washington Monument.
See this article from the Wall Street Journal.
According to this article, the Abbey Road studio is up for sale, but people are trying to save it. Maybe they can turn it into a museum?
I do sympathize with drivers who complain about it, though. Tourists posing in the crosswalk must be annoying.
In keeping with the intellectual property theme, I heard this discussion of fair use on NPR yesterday.
Yesterday (but not today), Google had the Olympic rings on its home page. Unfortunately for Google, the Olympic rings are protected by law. The law provides that no one but the United States Olympic Committee has the right to use the Olympic rings for "for the purpose of trade [or] to induce the sale of any goods or services..." Even if Google is not selling anything, I think that they are definitely using it for the purpose of trade. If you put aside the commercialization of the Olympics, keep in mind that corporations like Visa probably pay lots of money to use the Olympic rings in their logos. It's not right for Google to use the Olympic rings on its page without paying.
As an aside, I like the logos that Google is using, because of all the blue and the nice artistic syling. It's different from what they did for Beijing and Torino.
If you're snowed in, PBS' The National Parks: America's Best Idea are posted online. Some have full episodes available.
Today I went out in the blizzard in Silver Spring, Maryland. I could see, by going outside, how pioneers on the prairies could get lost in the blizzard and not be able to find the town. Without roads and buildings to frame my reference, I could have gotten disoriented, because I could not see more than a block (and a short block at that). I had a warm building to retreat to, and didn't have to try to pitch a tent in this weather, or try to start a campfire (which would have probably been impossible).
National Public Radio apparently had the same idea I did. NPR read some quotes from literature, including one by Laura Ingalls Wilder (best known for Little House on the Prairie/Little House in the Big Woods) from her book The Long Winter.
In searching NPR, I also came across this article which talks about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her life after the events portrayed in the Little House books. If you read her books, it is an interesting read.
Saw this article in the Times about how helmets are becoming more widespread at ski resorts. When I was starting to ski in the boy scouts in the mid 1990s, no one even thought to wear a helmet. Even when I went skiing a few years ago, I don't remember seeing that many people wearing helmets. Now, I wonder how people think about helmets with skiing, and whether they are going to become more widespread.
At the same time, though, as one person in the article points out, if you're speeding down a ski slope and crash into a tree, the helmet is not going to do much good.
Someone my brother knows was on hold with Delta trying to reschedule her flight this past weekend. Her original flight was canceled because of the snow. Delta's choice for hold music? "Let it Snow."
iTunes has a free Christmas album available. See this link. The song that I like the best is Auld Lange Syne by The Lonesome Traveler Band. It's a bluegrass version, but I think it is well done. I'm not sure whether the link will expire on Tuesday, as sometimes Apple only posts free songs for one week.
Google Scholar now has searchable legal opinions. They're not that comprehensive right now, but they have a primitive equivalent of Keyciting/Shephardizing.
Update:
Here's a link to Google's blog entry.
There is free admission to National Parks (and National Forests) on Veterans Day. See:
As a former high school cross country runner (and I remember we were only allowed to wear white T-shirts in addition to our uniforms), I can relate to this article. Someone in my high school wore a different colored hair band and was disqualified. While on the one hand, rules are rules, I'm not entirely sure what the point of the rule is. I mean, so long as one team isn't trying to disguise itself as another team, I don't see why there can't be a slight variation in uniforms.
According to this piece from the University of Florida, a hunch is worth listening to. One of my professors at law school said that if you were talking to a client and something seemed off, it probably was.
If you're on the Internet and don't want to wait to power up Acrobat reader, try Google Document Viewer on for size.
It can also create links for blogs. For example, IRS Publication 17.
