Taking Lessons From Shawshank Redemption

Don't read this if you have not watched Shawshank Redemption (which, incidentally, is a very good movie)



Now that I've gotten that out of the way, two (former) inmates apparently took (at least somewhat) careful notes on Shawshank Redemption. The long and short: two inmates chiseled their way out of a prison in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and, although they didn't crawl through a sewer pipe, they did take careful notes on the movie, in that they covered their chiseled hole with models from a magazine. I wonder if they'll meet in Zihuatanejo.

A Late Halloween Posting

I had meant to post this around Halloween, but never got around to it. Anyhow, this is a link to a posting about witch trials in Connecticut. It's unfortunate, but witch trials didn't just happen in Salem. There's actually a lot of documentation linked in that blog entry about it.

Ikea Breaches the Implied Warranty of Merchantability

I bought some pots from Ikea awhile back. Like most things Ikea, they were assemble them yourself, so I finally got around to assembling them this week. Within a week, the handle fell off the pot. The weld that holds the bracket broke as I was washing it in my sink. So, it looks like I will be returning the pot to Ikea.
I don't think I will get into the intricacies of the Implied Warranty of Merchantability with the clerk, though.

Regional Variations In Store Stock

Yesterday at Giant, I tried to find Maypo. Usually this is by the oatmeal, but I found, much to my surprise, that they didn't have it. Today I tried Safeway, which also didn't have it.
Safeway, on the other hand, stocks Tilamook Cheese, which is from Oregon.
It's a bit frustrating, since brands that I've taken for granted in New York are difficult to find here. At least they still sell Campbell's Soup.

Highway Sunrises, Back to Carlisle

I went to the alumni weekend this weekend at Penn State Dickinson. To do this, and get to an 8:00 lecture, I had to get up at 5:20 a.m. and drive up there. It was dark when I started out. As I drove into Pennsylvania, dawn broke over the fields, mist was rising, and it was pretty neat. I'm not usually up and driving before dawn, but when I am, I always think it is neat to see the sun come up.
All of the events were at the Advantica building, which I think they've done a somewhat good job with. The only problem is that students don't hang out at the school after class, they all flee back to Carlisle, so there isn't as much community at the law school.
I saw a few people from my class, and overall, it was a good experience.

A Little Cajun Music at the Kennedy Center

Last night I saw The Lost Bayou Ramblers at the Kennedy Center. It was part of Millenium Stage, which puts performances on 365 days a year free of charge. There is quite a variety of music, as you can see if you check out the calendar.
The Lost Bayou Ramblers not only sang in French, but also spoke to the audience in French too. I think it's neat that over 200 years after we bought Louisiana from the French, there is still so much French culture in Louisiana that there are still people that speak French and preserve this excellent music.
You can catch a recording of the concert here, and there are free downloads of music at The Lost Bayou Ramblers website.

People Who Think Rules Are For Other People

People like these people annoy me. Short story:
People from my synagogue parked in front of a fire house in a no parking zone so they could do this ceremony where they throw bread crumbs (symbolizing sins) into the water. This was on a Jewish holiday -- Rosh Hashana -- the Jewish New Year.
It is a no parking zone so the fire trucks can get out. The fire department asked them to move. The congregants didn't, because they thought an exception should be made because it was a Jewish holiday.
They (rightly) got ticketed. I wish their cars were towed, the extra fees might have made an impression on them. It's not as if Cold Spring Harbor was enforcing some strange ordinance. It's just common sense. You don't park in front of a fire department, because, if there's an emergency, the fire trucks need to get out. Did the congregants think that there wouldn't be a fire because it was a Jewish holiday?

They are Penn State...Too

There was an article in the Times about Penn State's football team and how, to fundraise, they have to clean the seats at Beaver Stadium after football games.
I think this is wrong. The football team (except this year, when they are being punished for alleged misdeeds) does not have to clean Beaver Stadium after the game. I realize that the fencing team does not generate the same type of revenue for Penn State that the football team does. But, it strikes me that Penn State could invest some of the vast fortune that football generates and put it into the fencing team (and other "minor" sports). The fencing team, after all, had a better record than Nittany Lions Football last year. Of course, then Penn State will have to hire someone to clean the football stadium, rather than using free slave labor from the fencing team.
A disclosure: In high school, I was on a fencing team, not a football team.

Red Cross Sued for Trademark Infringement

According to this BBC article, Johnson & Johnson is suing the Red Cross for trademark infringement. Apparently Johnson & Johnson owns the red cross that Red Cross uses as its symbol. Johnson & Johnson believes that the Red Cross is violating the agreement that it entered into by licensing the red cross to other companies, who are selling Red Cross-endorsed first aid kits.
A copyright/trademark attorney friend of mine tells me that Johnson & Johnson is going to lose, because the trademark does not make people think of Johnson & Johnson and really doesn't have a particular meaning.
I had no idea that Johnson & Johnson owned the trademark for the Red Cross. Prior to reading this article, If you had stopped me on the street and asked me who owned the trademark to the red cross, I would have answered the Red Cross.
To me, if I see a red cross, I either think of first aid or I think of the Red Cross. I certainly don't think of Johnson & Johnson. I think of Johnson & Johnson when I see the script Johnson & Johnson.
Perhaps that's why the Boy Scouts don't use the red cross for the first aid merit badge.

The meaning of the word "Yield"

I've been driving back and forth between Chambersburg and metro Washington, DC recently and have noticed that there is a particular intersection that people seem to have problems understanding the meaning of a yield sign. The intersection is I-81 and I-70, going east on I-70 towards Frederick/Baltimore. For Dicksonians, this is the intersection that you'd go through if you were going to the Hagerstown outlets.
Anyhow, I-70 is essentially three lanes at this point, with one lane being a segregated lane that is meant to just be used by traffic getting on from or off onto I-81. I go around the cloverleaf from I-81 south onto I-70 going east and am in this third segregated lane. This lane will end shortly after the intersection (it merges with I-70 east) so I have to be at highway speed or close to it. Shortly before the third segregated lane merges with I-70, traffic from I-81 north merges in, at a yield sign. There is no merge area. The yield sign tips people off to the fact that there is no merge area. Despite this, people come into this intersection and expect me to yield to them.
A yield sign means that you may proceed if the way is clear. It does not mean that you can proceed if in so doing you'll require another car to apply its brakes hard (or, technically, apply its brakes at all) or take evasive action. Yet, at this intersection, people seem to take it that way. If you have to stop at this yield sign, because there is no merge area, then you have to stop.
Of course, I'm not going to prove my right of way to them, sure, I may have the right of way, but I'll also have a car in an accident, with all the hassle that comes with. So I've just learned to watch other cars at this intersection.
Of course, why Maryland thinks it is a good idea to have no merge area where two interstates merge together is another question, but that's for another blog entry.

Apple Quality Control

Compared to Microsoft, Apple has serious quality control problems with their software/system updates. For many of the updates that they release, there are significant problems with them. One firmware upgrade caused my computer to become unbootable, requiring me to hold down a combination of keys on my keyboard to make their computer useful again, if Apple Support knew that trick (which they didn't, they made me send my computer in for service). One of the updates caused my computer's speakers to make popping noises (it wasn't just my computer's speakers, other people had the problem too). Apple resolved this problem with another update. Another update caused people's optical drives to stop working. Apple removed that update. Yet another update causes applications that were not specifically built for Intel-based processors (Rosetta applications) to stop working. I could sympathize with Apple (somewhat) if these were caused by obscure applications. But they're not. Many problems occurred directly with Apple's hardware. (The first three problems I've listed). While Apple may have come out with with Intel-native applications, there are certain applications -- for example, this obscure application called Microsoft Word -- that run on Rosetta. I'd like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but it is now at the point where if I see an update, I wait a week for Apple to iron out the bugs before I install it. For Microsoft updates, on the other hand, I install them instantly on my PC and, knock wood, have not had a problem with them.
Microsoft does not control the hardware that its updates are installed on, and yet still manages to have very few serious problems with their updates. Apple should improve.

Summer Reading Suggestions

I surfed into this website recently. It's published by the University of Texas at Austin, and has a list of summer reading suggestions. Kind of nice of them to go to the effort to get all these suggestions together. At the bottom of the page are links to previous years' lists.

Avril Lavigne Plagiarizing?

People are saying that Avril Lavigne plagiarized her latest song "Girlfriend" from an obscure band from the 1970s. There's an article discussing this on CBC. (Be forewarned, the video that this article links to, at least the quicktime version, is rather loud) Her manager claims there is "no basis" at all, but I disagree. The chorus seems pretty similar, in my opinion. I wonder if whoever wrote the song gambled that because the band with the song was so obscure, they could get away with it.

Small Towns, Long Term Residents

I saw an article in my town's local newspaper about how this year's summer concert series on my high school's lawn will be dedicated to the memory of Donald Luckenbill. He was a music teacher in the school district from 1944 to 1980. Although I never had Donald Luckenbill as a teacher, I sang a song by him in elementary school (essentially an ode to Sagamore Hill, home of Teddy Roosevelt) and later played that song when I was a member of the Oyster Bay Community Band. I also played Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs that he arranged when I was in the boy scouts and performed at a kresh/memorial lighting.
I guess I'm writing about this because I really enjoyed growing up in my town. It's small enough so that my middle school band teacher had my third grade teacher when he was in kindergarten. This teacher could also point to a portrait of a basketball team hanging on the high school wall and point out his father on the wall.
I was at a meeting with the elementary school's principal while I was in high school to discuss a fundraiser that the club I was involved in was doing. He said, so, [D], your parents are long term residents, right? And without really thinking, I said yes. Looking back, I also don't know what this had to do with fundraising.
Afterwards, though, I realized that it all depended on how one defined the word "long" in long-term resident. Sure, my parents lived in East Norwich since right before I was born, but we're certainly not one of the "generational" families that have lived in Oyster Bay/East Norwich since the Revolution, or even since before suburbanization. In some ways, Oyster Bay is different from other towns on Long Island. Unlike other towns, it has a history of its own, and wasn't just potato farms until the suburbanization boom of the 1950s.

Free Music from Smithsonian Folkways

There is free music from Smithsonian Folkways (downloadable as an MP3, no signup or registration required) at this link:
http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/freedownloads.aspx
Right-click on the MP3 link to download them.
Check out Rabbit in a Log by The Stanley Brothers. It has some wicked good banjo picking.
One of The Stanley Brothers is Ralph Stanley, who did the "O Death" song in O' Brother Where Art Thou (this is the scene during the KKK rally)

A Spider, a Swan, and Another Spider

I was at the public library the other day and was flipping through a biography of E.B. White (author of Charlotte's Web) There was an interesting discussion of how, originally, Fern (the girl in the story), was not going to be featured so prominently, so he originally planned to start the book with what is now the opening scene of Chapter 3, at the barn. It also had pictures of drafts of the book that he had typed up and scribbled on, which I thought was kind of neat, to see the original wording and see how he had changed it.
The biography was critical of The Trumpet of the Swan. I enjoyed The Trumpet of the Swan when I was growing up, partially because I played the trumpet when I was younger, but also because E.B. White is just a talented writer. Louis' father is funny in that book.
And now, for "Another Spider," as promised in the blog post title.
When I was looking at my car in the hotel parking lot in Washington this weekend, I noticed a spider web on it, in between the spare tire and the side hinge of the door. I drove back to Chambersburg and discovered that the spider was still there (after hurtling at over 65 mph on the highway). Impressive. It spun a web between last night and today. I wonder what it thought when the blue "rock" that it had spun a web on started to move, and then was hurtling down a highway with other "rocks" at amazing speeds. (Probably nothing, since spiders don't think, but it's still impressive that it stayed on my car)

The Beatles in Court

A defendant wrote: "Like the Beetles say, 'Let It Be.'" when asked how he should be sentenced. The judge in his case, in Yellowstone County, Montana, wrote a two page opinion in which he incorporated many Beatles songs. He also took the opportunity to correct the defendant's spelling of The Beatles.

A Little Civ Pro Does a Body Good

There was an interesting Supreme Court decision published Monday where Philip Morris tried (and failed) to argue that because it used the government's method of testing cigarettes, it fell under a statute that allowed removal to federal court when someone acted "under" a federal officer. The opinion talks a lot about federal officers being accused of murder during prohibition and using the statute to get their murder cases removed to federal court. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this use of the statute, although I suppose the climate was different then and states had less respect for the federal government than they do now. A federal court (and its jury) might have more sympathy for a federal agent than a state agent would.
The opinion is pretty short and worth reading in my opinion. Who knows, maybe it will be used to torture first generations of law students for generations to come.

Oh, Dickinson

It looks like Dickinson messed up with their temporary facilities, since they are waiving the fee for transfer applications. To me, that means it is a fair bet that they suffered a high attrition rate from the 1L class. Not that I blame them, I'm not sure how much I would have liked going to school amongst the truck stops.

Dell Windows Install Disks

I read on this blog that Dell -- one time only -- will give you a copy of the installation disks that came with your computer in case you lost them. I'm not sure if they charge you for the install disks (I don't see a discussion of payment on the initial page for it, and I'm not going to type in my information since I have the install disks already and I'd rather wait until I've lost them before ordering them)
Yet another reason I like Dell.