“Source Code,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal:
is just a gussied-up (and longer—hmmm) version of “Cause and Effect.” The answer is 3.

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This story in the NYT Magazine about Braddock, PA and its “revitalization” front man, John Fetterman, should be read in conjunction with this David Pogue column about page numbers in e-books. How can the future deal with the past?

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Like all Jeopardy! fans, I’m looking forward to next week’s broadcast showdown between Watson, the IBM computer designed to be a Jeopardy! killer app, and two all-time Jeopardy! kingpins, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
Here’s a NYTimes feature on a Nova TV special on Watson.  That piece concludes with the tantalizing question:  Does Watson’s lack of [...]

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One year in 2 minutes from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

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More fun with the Google Ngram viewer: “Innovation” and “creativity”
 

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American law professors are converging on San Francisco later this week for the annual AALS conference.  I won’t be there.  But as a Bay Area native, long-time resident, and frequent visitor I have a couple of tips for those who will be.  And those tips have to do with … food.
Given the ongoing brouhaha over [...]

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For those of you who follow Crazy Frog on YouTube, here’s the seasonal Last Christmas video…

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So in my continuing quest to complete the Harry Potter series of books before watching the new movie, I’m plugging through Book 7 now.  I started wondering, though, what would happen if a real high school decided to name its houses after those in Harry Potter ie Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin?  Would there be [...]

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Soccer’s peculiar systems of justice continue to work out their problems on the world stage.  The Italians, masters of faking injury on the ground, are being upstaged by the Spanish, who appear to have invented new forms of unsportsmanlike conduct while standing — and while touching neither man nor ball.  Is a soccer crime being [...]

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Boise State University has The Blue, its distinctive blue turf football field, which is now covered by a federal trademark registration.  Eastern Washington University now has a red synthetic surface for football. 
The University of Oregon is preparing to take the idea of a distinctive playing surface indoors.  The soon-to-open Matthew Knight Arena, the new home of [...]

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For those who may have missed Ben Zimmer’s article in the NY Times magazine last week about the origins of the term “world wide web”, here’s a link.
Apparently some of the other options for naming the web were “mine of information” and “the information mine”.  The article also speaks of prior literary and scientific allusions [...]

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While I’m on a sports roll this morning, check out this quotation (NYT) from University of Oregon Ducks football coach Chip Kelly, after his team rolled over USC and took over the number 1 spot in the BCS rankings.  Oregon
showed in one of college football’s hallowed venues what many have been reluctant to acknowledge: that [...]

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I go on here occasionally about whether the jurisprudence of sport teaches anything about other kinds of jurisprudence, and vice versa.  A football (soccer) match yesterday in the English Premier League offers a relevant nugget for thought.
Manchester United was leading Tottenham Hotspur 1-0, late in the match, and Spurs were not playing the game as [...]

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I think the video speaks for itself (but as embedding was disabled you have to click on the link back to YouTube (below)…

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A sports law story making the rounds involves the ability of Seminole County high school cheerleaders to wear their cheerleader outfits on game day. Not long ago, the county implemented a stronger dress code that required skirts to be longer than mid-thigh. This code also banned “sexually suggestive” clothing and appeared designed to [...]

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The New York Times highlighted the recent opinion of the Third Circuit in Bimbo Bakeries v. Botticella, upholding a preliminary injunction against a former senior employee of Bimbo Bakeries and keeping him from assuming a position at rival baker Hostess.  The former employee, Botticella, was accused of misappropriation of trade secrets.  The injunction was issued and [...]

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Just noticed, via Tim Zinnecker at The Faculty Lounge:
In re Erving Industries, Inc., a Bankruptcy Court opinion from last Spring in which the court considers whether the sale of “electricity” involved the sale of a “good” for UCC and therefore Bankruptcy Code purposes.
Once again, the legal thingness of arguably physical things raises its attractive head!
The [...]

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“Oh, the humanity,” the now-trite Herbert Morrison radio call of the Hindenburg disaster, came to mind today as I read Jeffrey Rosen’s “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” a NYTimes Magazine popularization of a theme heard in cyberlaw circles for some time:  The Internet never forgets.

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With apologies to Frank, who has been on a posting tear of late, I’m interrupting today to lighten the tone.  I just got back from two weeks in Munich, and I am suffering — or perhaps benefitting — from a serious fast food deficit.  Thus the following:
Not only can haute cuisine survive the absence of [...]

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I just saw a screening of the film “Whiz Kids,” which was a wonderful tour of the lives of three high school seniors in a science competition (the Intel Science Talent Search). And talk about topical–one of the protagonists even takes on a multinational corporation that is despoiling her local water supply! If [...]

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