Take a look at this cover.

Now compare

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What is it with Brits and busts? Bentham asked that his head be preserved (and his body) as part of the auto-icon. I was listening to Wendy Brown’s lecture on Bentham and she reminded me of this oddity. As she explained, Bentham seemed to think that statues were less utile than a preserve body. The [...]

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Laura Heymann has a fun post on cease and desist letters here. It combines a little trademark fun, parental humor about commands to behave and eat certain foods (think greens). It’s a fun read for your weekend.

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Like John Cusack in Better Off Dead when all songs seem to be about what is on your mind (see below), education seems to pop up everywhere I look right now. Well, why fight it? This link is to a host of online resources (HT: Esther Wojcicki). I listen to lectures while exercising. So far [...]

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Yes! You can now shotgun a beer with less trouble and mess than before. I saw an ad for the new Punch Top can by Miller Light and couldn’t believe it. The claim is that the new hole is for a “smoother pour.” (see the ad below). Come on. This innovation is about shotgunnig beer. [...]

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The song “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye has been getting a ton of play on the radio around here (yeah I know, radio, how quaint, to which I say Radio is a sound salvation Radio is cleaning up the nation They say you’d better listen to the voice of reason … You [...]

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Hot off the presses and ready for use in your classes this fall, it’s Oliphant and Lloyd’s The Law of Horses, Including the Law of Innkeepers, Veterinary Surgeons, etc., and of Hunting, Racing, Wagers & Gaming, 5th ed.
Chapters include:

Contracts Concerning Horses
Horsedealers, Repositories and Auctions
Horse Stealing, and the Recovery of Stolen Horses
What Diseases or Bad Habits [...]

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Calling China Mieville and Perdido Street Station fans. TechCrunch reports on Jarno Smeets, a man who wants to fly with wings, and he has done it! Apparently Wii and HTC devices are part of the invention. He had a test flight in January. And, as the video below shows, he flapped and took flight. I [...]

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Yes it is deep thoughts time. The grey lurks between the western hills and the narrowing finger of the south San Francisco Bay. Luckily my friend Norm sent this video to me.
Darth Vader? Good. Bag Pipes? Good. Darth and bagpipes put together with a guy in a kilt and on a unicycle? I leave that [...]

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“If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
If you’re not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain.”
Bay Area radio struggles to have decent music. I tend to cycle through the few stations that may have something of interest. A recent addition to the dial focuses on 60s. 70s, and 80s. As a competitor [...]

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John Morton Blum died yesterday.
Like most of the great Yale historians of the latter 20th century, he was known to students mostly by his last name:  Blum.  Morgan.  Spence.  Kagan.  They weren’t just masterful scholars; they were masterful storytellers, and masterful teachers.
Thirty years after I sat through a semester of lectures on the Progressive Era, [...]

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OK, at some level I understand that this is a serious lawsuit. As reported by the AP, Hooters has accused a former executive of taking confidential information to his new employer, rival Twin Peaks restaurants.
Now, I’d never heard of Twin Peaks restaurants before (do I smell some kind of trademark or dilution claim out [...]

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While Bruce, in his last post, is lampooning Microsoft I started to think about more “annoying Microsoft” trivia.  Where, oh where, did the paperclip icon go??

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Run program, HAL. HAL, run program. Hello HAL do you read me?
Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Run program.
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
What’s the problem, HAL?
Dave, the publisher of that program cannot be verified. You should only run software from publishers you trust.
I installed that program myself, HAL.
This mission is too important for [...]

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We have a theme this week:  Cities and their images.  For earlier posts, see this (San Francisco and Los Angeles), and this (Pittsburgh today), and this (Dallas and Austin).
Let’s add Boston.
As a handful of you know, the Boston Bruins ice hockey team has been competing in the National Hockey League playoffs this Spring.  (As I write, [...]

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I heard Train’s “Save Me San Francisco” the other day, and the song made me think of Randy Newman’s “I Love LA.”  Different cities, different tunes, each capturing something cool about a city. Are there other (relatively) recent songs that do the same for other places?

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I promise to give up after this one, but here’s a link to an SNL skit I recently discovered starring Hugh Laurie (TV’s “Dr House”) as a ghosthunter.
Hugh Laurie as a Ghosthunter

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This isn’t a very serious contribution to the blog, but it’s Friday and I just couldn’t resist this short video showing the perils of pre-taping lectures at home…

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Quick, which service do you think has the most strict password requirements I’ve ever encountered? My bank? Mutual funds? My law firm network login? Credit cards? Paypal? Email providers? Configuring my home server for remote access? Electronics sites like newegg.com and amazon.com? Westlaw and Lexis?
No. Not any of those. There is a service that, judging [...]

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Hilarious!

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