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l.a. legal pad

Hard to Tell Who Comes Off Worse

Mitt Romney or Cooper + the token attractive female news analyst. The latter should leave the funnies to Stewart and Colbert.

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Second Amendment Comes Through Again

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Three Links

#1 - Grrrreat News!
As if I didn't have enough reasons to love Last.FM, you can now play full-length tracks and full albums on their website for FREEEEEEE.

#2 - Hackers vs. Scientology, Hackers Winning
A crazy story about a group called "Anonymous" who has declared internet war against the Church of Scientology... and have scored a few victories already.

#3 - If Your Computer Screen Is Dirty
Click here, and it will be cleaned from the inside of the internet. Actually works.

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Rats Running from a Sinking Ship

Just wanted to point out that with Dave Weldon's retirement, that will be the 25th Republican not to run for re-election this upcoming cycle.

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Coachella 2008

I'm not sure if I can afford to go to Coachella, but for once there's a day stacked with a LOT of artists I'd pay big rupees to see. On Saturday 4/28, I would be willingly dehydrated to see:

Decemberists(!)
The Rapture
LCD Soundsystem
New Pornographers
Regina Spektor
!!!
Hot Chip
MSTRKRFT
Ozomatli
Ghostface Killah
Cornelius
Andrew Bird
Girl Talk
Red Hot Chili Peppers

If I go, I'm seeing a lot of awkward dancing in the desert in my future. And I'll be sure to go to the bathroom while the Arcade Fire is playing.

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I Need New Drumsticks Anyway

So I'll be buying them from here. Biodegradable, made from wheat and corn as opposed to wood. I'm officially an earth crusader, of the rock variety.

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TMQ Excerpts

The Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook, has been one of my favorite football and culture miscellanea writers for the past six years (in spite of his conservative leanings - this is how you know he must be good in my eyes). Some excerpts from this week's post I thought were worth sharing.

Harvard to Purchase Ireland: Last week, Bowdoin College became the latest elite school to announce dramatic tuition reductions for middle-class students. Davidson College started this welcome trend two years ago; since then, Amherst, Bowdoin, Harvard, Pomona, Princeton, Swarthmore, Williams, Yale and a few other top-ranked schools have rolled out cost reductions, either via a big extension of financial-aid eligibility for middle-class families or by converting all student loans into tuition discounts, as Bowdoin did last week. Everyone is impressed by the cost-reduction actions taken by these schools. TMQ pointed out early this past fall that some elite colleges have amassed such fantastic endowments -- Harvard's endowment now exceeds the GDP of Ireland -- that it was shameful the schools continued to soak middle-class parents. The developing dynamic was that poor kids with good grades could attend an elite school free and the parents of rich kids did not care about the price but that kids from middle-class families were being squeezed out. Now, many elite colleges will become more accessible to the middle class, allowing students to graduate with less or little debt -- so idealistic young graduates are in a position to enter public-service careers, rather than racing to Wall Street to cash in and pay off their loans.

Bowdoin is the latest super-elite college to aid the middle class. Wonderful -- but now who will aid the middle class at state schools?

Top schools are not cutting middle-class costs exclusively for reasons of improving education. Elite colleges have been coming under increasing congressional pressure to stop hoarding in their endowments, with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) leading the charge on that score. Federal law requires most types of charities and foundations to give away a minimum 5 percent of their funds annually; many elite-school endowments were giving away only 3 to 4 percent, and the overall average in 2007 for college endowment giving-away was 4.6 percent, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers. TMQ has been among many commentators to point out that if big-endowment colleges simply upped their annual endowment outflow to 5 percent, tuition prices could be slashed. The middle-class tuition price reductions unveiled by many top colleges will bring them some well-deserved positive press and should get Congress off their backs. Colleges would far rather improve their aid plans voluntarily than be hit with some 900-page congressional mandate.

But admirable as the recent elite-college decisions are, it's not enough. Harvard, with a $35 billion endowment, could charge undergraduates nothing at all, as could Yale, with a $23 billion endowment. Williams has the largest small-college endowment, at $2 billion, and could charge students nothing at all. Most well-endowed colleges are not in a position to charge nothing; neither Bowdoin nor Davidson could, for example. But Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Williams, Amherst and Pomona -- the best-endowed colleges relative to student body size -- should simply stop charging anything to students from other-than-rich families.

The larger problem is that as welcome as the decisions of the well-endowed elite colleges are, most kids don't attend elite colleges. About three-quarters of American undergraduates attend public colleges and universities, where the listed tuition price might be lower than at an elite private school but the effective price for a middle-class family actually might be higher. Under the new setups, a state university might list a $15,000 tuition price but not grant much financial aid, while one of the well-endowed elites lists a $35,000 tuition price but waives most of the cost for middle-class families. Now that the middle-class-crunch problem has been addressed, at least at the well-endowed elite schools, more attention must be paid to the middle-class crunch at typical colleges and universities. Consider that the University of Connecticut, which has twice as many students as Yale, has an endowment of $300 million -- meaning Yale's endowment is 75 times larger, and meaning the University of Connecticut has far less endowment income to give away as aid. Traditionally, the wealthy have given to elite schools for prestige reasons but giving to public universities tends to focus on athletic facilities, not on the endowment. It's time to convince the wealthy that Harvard, Yale and Stanford don't need any more money: They should give instead to public universities and lesser-known liberal-arts colleges, where their donations will have more impact. Here's an encouraging story about a rich man who is doing exactly that.

Suppose the General Manager of the Miami Dolphins Awarded Himself the Same Bonus as the General Manager of the New England Patriots: Last week, this story appeared buried inside the business pages of The Washington Post. Why wasn't the story on Page 1? The Post reports that the blue-blooded five, Wall Street's five top investment banking houses, awarded their management $39 billion in bonuses for 2007 -- a period when those firms combined to earn investors about $11 billion in profits. Merrill Lynch lost $8 billion in 2007, Morgan Stanley $3 billion and Bear Stearns $230 million, yet the executives of these companies were showered with billions of dollars in bonuses. Otherwise, they would refuse to do any work! Which, apparently, would be in shareholders' interest. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley could have done better by their shareholders in 2007 by simply purchasing Treasury bills; a software program designed to make simple conservative investment decisions about market-following mutual funds would have performed better in 2007 than the top management of most investment banking houses. And the software program would not have paid itself billions of dollars in bonuses for screwing up! (TMQ owns no stock in any of the mentioned firms.)

It's one thing when profitable firms shower money on their CEOs and other top brass; often the amounts are indecent, but as long as shareholders come out ahead, the executives have at least some justification for their windfalls. But in the modern milieu of corporate kleptocracy, even when the company does terribly and the CEO makes decisions that blow up in the firm's face, the CEO awards himself hundreds of millions of dollars, anyway. Why is this not seen as white-collar crime?

Last week's buried Post story included this priceless quote: "'To many people, [the bonuses] will be shocking and questionable,' said Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search. 'People in New York in the world of investment banking will understand it. It's critical that pay is still there or you're going to lose really good people.'" Beyond that executive headhunter firms such as Boyden have a self-interest in running up CEO pay -- this can increase the search firms' headhunting commissions -- consider the reasoning: OMG, we can't lose the really good people who cost our shareholders billions of dollars with dim-witted decisions! The notion that top corporate managers must be paid fantastic amounts because they possess incredible, astonishing expertise often is used to justify CEO pay, even when the managers who claim the incredible, astonishing expertise make foolish decisions. "We'll put billions of dollars of money entrusted to our care into subprime gimmick mortgages backed by no documentation of income; my incredible, astonishing expertise tells me this is totally safe!"

If corporate managers who screwed up received $5.85 an hour, the federal minimum wage, for the year in which they screwed up -- that is, if their wallets were at risk when they perform poorly -- then they might fairly argue for huge bonuses when they perform well. But there is no evidence that the people who made the big investment calls on Wall Street last year (except at Goldman Sachs, which avoided the subprime mess) are any better at what they do than people chosen at random off a Brooklyn street. You bet "people in New York in the world of investment banking" will understand huge executive bonuses paid in the same year as huge losses. What's happening is basically a hustle, intended to enrich the executives while separating the investors from their cash. "People in New York in the world of investment banking" understand that, all right!"

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It Seems Like You Have to Be Rich to Be Green

I found these doodads called SolarRolls which are essentially roll-up solar panels you can use to power your gadgets or laptop.



Amazing idea, but the price ($300 and up) is a little prohibitive. But can you put a price on this kind of public display of moral superiority?

Oh, right. $352. Plus shipping.

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After a Painful Packer Loss Yesterday

This just makes me feel a little better.

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In An Alternate Universe

If I wasn't an unlicensed lawyer, what else could I have done with my life? And why did I not do that instead?

NBA Center - too short, unathletic, lack an enlarged heart or growth hormone defect

Sunday Morning Cartoonist
- can't draw, imagination destroyed by sitcoms, I sleep in on Sundays

Metal Band Drummer
- only own plastic drums, can't grow long black hair, reluctant to embrace the night

MLB Beat Writer - don't like to travel, don't like to bother famous people, don't know enough cliches

Video Game Developer
- don't like Flaming Hot Cheetos, don't want to know how the sausage is made because I love sausage

Computer Tech Guy
- not condescending enough, glow of computer screen will make me blind, computers just a dying fad

Looks like I'll be sticking to suing for now.

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The Daily Show Needs No Writers

Just more people like Jonah Goldberg, author of "Liberal Fascism."

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Take a Picture

Los Angeles Lakers: First place in the Western Conference. After losing Bynum for eight weeks with a dislocated knee and deep bone bruise in his kneecap, I don't expect that they'll stay here.



But don't forget, that there was once a time when you, elated, believed the sky was the limit for this team.

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Saturday Afternoon Retrospective

The Packers celebrated their first playoff win since 2003, a blowout to return to the NFC championship game and one game away from the Super Bowl. It's been ten, mostly mediocre years since their last trip to the Super Bowl in 1997, but the journey this year has been a delight. I'll let pictures tell the story of a big win at storied Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the frozen tundra.


Aaron Kampman celebrating a big W.


Little used rookie Brandon Jackson turns the corner on a sad Seattle Seahawk


Green Bay's football jesus was on target all day long.


A celebration is in order.

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World's Population and Environmental Stats

...viewed in real time. Gets to be depressing, if you stare at it for too long.

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Too Much Rock Band On My Mind

...and it's led me to contemplate what songs I would pay a pretty penny to pretend to rock out to. On my list of all-time must haves would have to include Forty Six and Two, a old Tool joint from 1996, my favorite part illustrated below. The frame rate does it no justice, but the drums are there, with the climax coming at 0:54 seconds.



That clip really doesn't capture it fairly, as this comes after six minutes of build up. Even so, it's not hard to imagine a 13 year old, angst-ridden version of myself, air-drumming this bad boy out in the shadow of my blacklight Tool poster (maybe it was even a tapestry? you could get a lot of weird stuff at tower records back then).

So come on, Harmonix. Let's get something brutal on this list.

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Death to Boston (not the band)

As badly as I'd like to see the Patriots go down, I'm forced to choose between two evils. As obnoxious as Boston sports fans have become over the last calendar year (or basically since the Sox won in 2004), I don't know if it's as bad as the '72 Dolphins yearly tradition. The '72 Dolphins were the last team to go undefeated for the year. Every year, after the last undefeated team loses a game, the Dolphins have a public popping of champagne to celebrate their continued unmatched undefeatedness.

I thought this would push me over the edge...

...but the fact is, these guys are going to die soon, and I'd hate to live through a whole generation of obnoxious Bostonians. I can't suffer that. Go Pack Go.

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Let's Get Political

"...you have a really cool style. how much of that is tied to your race?"

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One Day, Your Wedding Pictures Could Be In This List

Thanks to Amy for this amazing link to a collection of Olan Mills/Sears portrait studio photos.

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Workout Soundtrack

that is, if I can find the time to leave my apartment before March.

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Maybe One Day...

I'll have the pennies to see this in person.

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It May Be My Name of the Month

But good luck finding "Jamario" on this thing called the Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager. Nice time waster. I could make a post a day from all the dormant bookmarks in my firefox.

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Aich Two Oh

This morning, in an act of yuppie liberal good-heartedness, I purchased a bottle of Ethos Water at Starbucks. My thinking was, "I like water, I like Africa, let's get those people some water." Now I learn that my purchase only sent along 5 to 10 cents of the $1.80 purchase price. I feel like my bleeding heart has been bamboozled.

Next time, I'll ask for the venti ice-water to go with my heightened sense of moral superiority.

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Commendable

I don't know what's more impressive: the dog's persistence or the boy's commitment to the game.

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I Will Only Jam...

with my eyes closed and my chin wrinkled like a walnut. Those are my rules. I'm an artist.

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Election Season Tidbit

Initially, I thought the criticisms of Giuliani were a little overblown as campaigning as Mr. 9/11. Not so much now.

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Reader's Note

It appears somehow the template on my blog has gone to shit. In the meantime, sterile, white and plain will have to do.

We apologize for any inconvenience and we are working diligently to rectify the issue.

- The Management

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54 Days of Solitude

It's been a long while since my last post, but I can see that was right around the time law school finals took over. I've since morphed into full time bar prep mode. I knew this time would come. For the next consecutive 54 days, I'm going to the BarBri abbey for wayward future litigators on National and Motor, in the hope that after about 54 days, made up of 10-12 hours of work and study, I will emerge enough of an expert to ruin every legal drama we might watch together.

Until then, the ghost of this blog will wander the earth, maybe appearing long enough to post a video like this.

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