I nominate Brent to cater the Blogger Bash.
Slashdot has a story on an asteroid named for Douglas Adams:
Fittingly, the asteroid carried the provisional designation 2001 DA42, thus commemorating the year of his untimely death, containing his initials, and incorporating the famous answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
Priceless.
Slashdot also points out this National Geographic story on the Dr. Moreau-like chimeras being created in labs as we speak. Interesting. I wonder at what point they'd have constitutional rights?
I saw this story on TV yesterday, and had to giggle:
"The BBC is reporting that a doodle left behind at a Davos press conference given by Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono shows the writer to be: "an unstable man" amongst other things. The Gates Foundation has confirmed the doodle was left there by Bill Gates."
The lawsuit against McDonalds for causing obesity progresses. How Appealing has the story here and here.
Iowa Law Girl wonders if she'll ever feel like a real lawyer, even when she graduates and gets out into practice.
Sometimes. And sometimes not so much. My first reaction when asked a legal question that's outside my immediate area of expertise is "Oh, sh*t, do I know anything about that?"
Salon.com re-examines some of the historical assumptions behind the persecution of witches in medieval Europe. Turns out the phenomenon might be less due to a conspiracy against women than a simple feud between neighbors fueled by the prejudices of the time.
It also has another piece on conspiracy theories:
A study finds that a large proportion of African-Americans suspect that HIV was man-made as part of a plot against blacks.
Eugene Volokh has too much time on his hands? It makes my brain hurt. . .
A Court with a sense of humor. Cool! The Volokh Conspiracy posts these excerpt from an opinion by the Ohio Court of Appeals:
III. The Normans Strike Again
{13} Monfort contends, “Although a ‘clear title’ is one that is not subject to any restrictions, the case at bar involved a ‘free and clear’ title, which is the same as a marketable title.” So, according to Monfort, a free and clear title is worse than a clear title. Say what?
{14} Would that Harold had not lost the Battle of Hastings.
{15} Free and clear mean the same thing. Using both is an unnecessary lawyerism. Free is English; clear is from the French clere. After the Norman Conquest, English courts were held in French. The Normans were originally Vikings, but after they conquered the region of Normandy, they became French; then they took over England. But most people in England, surprisingly enough, still spoke English. So lawyers started using two words for one and forgot to stop for the last nine hundred years.
{16} So free and clear do not mean separate things; they mean, and were always meant to mean, exactly the same thing. Just as null and void and due and payable mean the same thing. All of these couplets are redundant and irritating lawyerisms. And they invite just what has happened here—an assertion that they somehow have different meanings.
{17} The Norman Conquest was in 1066. We can safely eliminate the couplets now. . . .IV. The Normans Conquer Lorain County
{22} Monfort cites Zilka v. Central South Limited, a Ninth Appellate District case that distinguished a clear title from a free and clear title in much the same way that Monfort now argues. “In short, while ‘clear title’ cannot have any encumbrance or restriction whatsoever, ‘free and clear’ title is a marketable title * * *.” We are, thankfully, unable to find any case that has cited this aberration—the Norman invasion has not progressed any farther south in Ohio.
{23} We may consider Zilka and give it the weight that we consider appropriate. And we consider it inappropriate to give Zilka any weight at all.
{24} The Normans and Zilka have also corrupted an Ohio real-estate treatise—namely, Baldwin’s Ohio Real Estate Law. In the section defining “marketable title,” the treatise states, “Title that is ‘free and clear’ is not the same as ‘clear title.’ Rather, ‘free and clear title’ means title that is unencumbered by any liens and is marketable.” It then cites Zilka.
{25} Before Zilka, we are sure that Baldwin’s made no such claim. Another venerable Ohio treatise (published before Zilka) states it properly: “[‘Clear title’] usually refers not to the title itself but to the absence of liens or encumbrances against the real estate. The term typically appears in the following context: The seller agrees to convey to the purchaser marketable title, ‘free and clear’ of liens and encumbrances.” So the sample used to define “clear title” used the term “free and clear” title. But Monfort argues that they are two different things. Is it any wonder that lawyers get a bad rap?
{26} Nine hundred years later, courts in Ohio are still dealing with the consequences of the Norman invasion. We can only hope that some day logic will prevail over silly tradition.
{27} Since the trial court got it right, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
Stupid criminal of the week. Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy reports that California has made its first arrest under the Megan's law provision that prohibits convicted sex offenders from visiting the California online sex offender registry site. The provision was outlined in Kerr's earlier post from December:
Any person who is required to register pursuant to Section 290 who enters the Web site is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), imprisonment in a county jail for a period not to exceed six months, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
He raised the issue about whether the State had enacted sufficient safeguards to show intent:
The federal government and all 50 states have laws that prohibit "unauthorized access" and "exceeding authorized access" to computers. One of the big questions raised by these laws is whether they are triggered only when a user bypasses some kind of password gate, or whether they are triggered when a user uses the computer in breach of some condition of entry set up by the computer owner/operator. The former approach requires some kind of "breaking in" to the computer to trigger liability, but the latter does not.
In a recent law review article, I argue that the former is the right interpretation, and that the latter approach may render the statutes constitutionally overbroad or void for vagueness (see p. 1658-60). At the same time, a number of courts have taken the latter approach in civil cases, even if none have yet had the opportunity to apply it to criminal cases. Because courts generally apply the same precedents in the civil and criminal contexts, however, there is at least some precedent for the view that any computer owner can make it a crime for anyone to access their publically-available website simply by setting conditions of entry accordingly.
The legal issues are interesting, but what makes this case fun is the context of the offense. According to the article in the San Mateo County Times the offender was not accessing the site to try to erase his information, as one might presume:
Glen Westberg scrolled through dozens of online photos, wrote to several people he thought looked good and, when the time came, even showed up early for his date.
Trouble was Westberg was Internet dating by using the new online Megan's Law database and trying hook up with another convicted sex offender, authorities said. . . .
Authorities learned of Westberg's Internet activity from a sex offender registered in San Mateo County who got a letter from Westberg telling him he was "cute" and asking him for a date, said Bill Ahern, commander of the county's Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement, or SAFE, task force. Westberg allegedly told the man he saw his picture on the Megan's Law site, encouraged him to look at Westberg's picture and talked about his physique and the size of his genitals. . . .
The man contacted his probation officer, who put him in contact with SAFE. Westberg was arrested after police set up a fake meeting between him and the man at Sequoia station in Redwood City, Ahern said.
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon."
An interesting idea for Valentine's Day: Surprise your honey with vagina-shaped candy. Allrighty then.
via Dave Barry.
And on that note. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment