silence of the mutton

Damn.

Between joining a new firm and the release of Time Matters 5.0, there's been no time left to blog, which sounds a bit like a song by the Guess Who, but isn't. Free associating here, I am a bit in overdrive right now.

broadband rules!

In the course of establishing myself in my new office (note to the typing weary--Kinesis keyboards are the caterpillar's boots) I have now obtained broadband access.

Oh man.

No more dependency on The Evil Empire for a meager trickle of Net.

I may never live in the real world again.

the end of an era

Some philosophical musings, no links today.

So I have joined an actual law firm, effective today. The timing has perhaps not been ideal. Some of my colleagues who are more keenly aware of my sense of whimsy have refused to believe that I am seriously making this switch. For this, I have only myself to blame.

Nevertheless, I have now left the ranks of solos and joined a firm, so I took down most of the content of my solo site this morning, and converted the remainder into a campaign site for the minor Bar office I am pursuing.

It was like watching the carnival being knocked down at the end of its stay in town. Really, I am proud of the content I developed, and it made me very sad to take it all down.

another example of the prisoner's dilemma in real time

If you believe that the correct philosophy is to cooperate, not to defect, you might be interested in Swappingtons.

If the preceding paragraph makes no sense to you, you might be interested in an introduction to the Prisoner's Dilemma (trolled up almost randomly through Google), a facet of game theory which I believes explains almost all social interaction. Well, I exaggerate. But not by much.

great, great resource for solos and small firms

I've been very impressed with what I have seen so far at myshingle.com, which is as my heading describes it. Moreover, Carolyn Elefant's style of writing is informative, but with a light touch. Dennis Kennedy's new blog, though just as informative, reads like an appellate brief.

question for my reader(s)

Does the community of blawgers, taken as a whole, constitute a k-log? Comments invited. I'm still mulling this one over.

i'd like handicapping these thoroughbreds

You have to be a licensed attorney to play in the Fantasy Supreme Court League, so the site owner is thinking of starting a law student league too. This tidbit comes from the print version of Law Office Computing, the only paper technology magazine I still buy and worth every penny. Their website, however, is uninspired.

the tragedy of the common man

I absolutely love it when life imitates logic, though some dead guy said that the "life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."

An application of this principle can be seen in the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement currently being flogged in newspapers and on the Net.

The more consumers filing claims in this settlement, the lower the recovery to each. Each additional person signing up produces a marginally worse deal for those who went before him. If enough people sign up, all the money will be subject to cy pres distribution, which in less technical terms means nobody gets nuthin'. I note, by the way, that although I think of cy pres as a reasonably obscure legal term, a google search of the term got me 2,510 hits. Replevin weighs in at a corking 10,900 hits, but I like to think that's because of my blog.

In any event, the problem is allied to the logical dilemma sometimes described as the tragedy of the commons. A commons is any resource used as though it belongs to all (the classical illustration is sheep grazing a meadow and breeding until they all starve), and a commons is destroyed by uncontrolled use. If you believe in the tragedy of the commons you are less likely to believe in the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. And vice, of course, versa.

Another way to look at the dwindling CD settlement is to view it as a multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma, one of my favorite facets of game theory. From the point of view of the person sitting at the computer screen pondering whether to apply for a refund, however, the choice is between having a chance at some free money or having no chance at all (if s/he doesn't apply). Because this is not an iterated game, there was only one logical course of action. At least that was my experience.

more mailing list sins

Lawyers who respond to an entire 112 KB digest of 25 messages by hitting "reply" should not be allowed to post messages to mailing lists. Sheesh.

even county clerks are blogging now

I find it very encouraging that someone from the King County Superior Court Clerk's Office is keeping an occasional blog. It doesn't matter that there aren't many entries--at least someone there knows what a blog--or a blawg--is.

really, he's got a point

I generally agree with the opinion that Tim Eyman is a horse's ass. Mainly because Eyman appears unwilling to accept Washington state's constitutional provisions against logrolling of initiatives, he costs the state millions of dollars in dealing with the consequences of enacted initiatives that are unfortunately as unenforceable as they are popular. Consider, for example, the sad history of I-695. On the other hand, maybe he just can't write initiatives. Either alternative is bad for the state.

I think Eyman's completely correct, however, that H.B. 1014 is a good idea. This bill looked to be a sleeper technical correction item until Eyman publicized it by speaking in support of it in Olympia. Let's face it, 8 1/2 by 14 inch paper is an anachronism. It's still called "legal" paper, but every court in which I practice switched over to letter-sized paper years ago. It's also hard to imagine that this bill will have any particular opposition (who? the paper companies?).

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

mystery of the missing archives

According to Blogger, my archives aren't "missing," you just can't see them on my page. At this point, September 15 entries and following don't show up as archive links, and I have a May 10, 2002, critique of Cardinal Law's deposition performance that I'd like to be able to refer to, but I practically have to stand on my head to find it. I've deleted index entries and re-indexed till I'm blue in the face, but no go.

This is very annoying.

Considering that I have just today figured out that I can add fixed links to my posts (although my attempts to format this turned the coding on the page katywompus for half an hour), which enables me to surface the previous Law entry, and that I have a totally free blog, my expectations are awfully high. If I'm going to do this, I want to do it right.

actual replevin update

We are still looking for the damned cab of the eighteen-wheeler. We got the drop-deck trailer by peaceful means (hitching it to another truck and towing it away) last year.

Damn.

dg phone home

Now you can blog from a cell phone. That's good. I have a very devil of a time getting AvantBlog of which I believe I am one of the 19 authenticated users as of May 9, 2002 to work.

Okay, will someone please invent a cell-phone news aggregator now?

802.11g

Here's the deal. I get a new PDA that's wired for wi-fi and use a PDA news aggregator. Desktop? Desktop? We don't need no stinkin' desktops.

Only drawback so far, aside from my needing to purchase the above-referenced PDA--this "way alpha" software is only available in Wince, which I refuse to use.

Signed,

Clinging lovingly to her Betamax