Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category

Sunday Poll

posted by Jon Siegel

Q.  Did you participate in International Talk Like a Pirate Day yesterday?

A1. Arrr, be sure that I did, me hearties!

A2. Nay, ye scurvy scoundrel!

  September 20, 2009 at 11:52 am   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   One Comment

Yes, Prime Minister on Obama’s Health Care Frustration

posted by Gerard Magliocca

“Things don’t happen just because Prime Ministers are keen on them. Neville Chamberlain was keen on peace.”

  September 11, 2009 at 6:32 pm   Posted in: Humor, Uncategorized   Print This Post   One Comment

So, Some Thoughts and a Rib

posted by Deven Desai

Legend: When someone informed Peter Gabriel that his fifth album was named “Peter Gabriel” as his previous four had been, Gabriel replied “So.”*

Although I tend to agree with Dave and Larry that we should strive for more precise use of language (despite my use of “so” to begin my last post), I think the word in the right place such as to start a story or anecdote gives the impression of being in the middle of a conversation and draws others into that flow of thought. To use the term too much as Larry described does not seem to be a problem of the word so as much as the bad habit of repeating a phrase as a crutch or space filler. I recall those who say “you know” or “know what I mean” or “right” or the ever popular and with us forever “like” having the same effect Larry describes. Nonetheless, like Larry, I admit that I try to eliminate poor usage and find that I slip. I hope to do better. Here, however, is another way to think about the problem.

*Security was supposedly a label choice, not Gabriel’s.

After the break is a little pop culture fun Amadeus (as in Rock Me) style.

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  September 10, 2009 at 10:55 am  Tags: Amadeus, Falco, grammar, too many notes  Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   One Comment

More Python, Fair Use, and Attribution

posted by Deven Desai

So I had my iTunes open and on shuffle yesterday when Monty Python’s “Finland” came on. That was what prompted me to check YouTube for Python offerings. Now the Python chaps have offered their own channel. This video has the usual Python cheek as they talk about YouTube, being ripped off, and the open plea that viewers buy the products after they enjoy them. The clip also touts the troop’s interest in showing the clips as they wanted them to be shown and in high quality.

Fun stuff but here is the problem. The Monty Python Channel has nowhere near the quantity of Python material one can find elsewhere on YouTube. I wonder whether the Python folks chose to leave the other posters alone and offer what they see as the best or most in demand clips in a branded area. Then again, they may have decided to go after the other posters too. And to think this train of thought all started in Finland. Finland? Yes, because I could take a CD, put into MP3 format, and listen to “Finland” as a shuffle tune. But wait. There’s more! The devil you say. No, really.

Check out the clip for Finland below. It is a good quality stream of the music. It is funny and adds a fair amount of creativity. It attributes the visual work and the software to make the work. It also acknowledges Python as the source of the music. In addition, it has embedded ads to allow a viewer to buy the song from iTunes or Amazon. Now given all the new works, Python’s failure to offer a similar video (even if they did the video is a new work albeit one needing the song to make much sense), AND the ads is it fair use? After all YouTube and the poster probably take a cut, as would the seller, but as the Python folks acknowledge they too are giving access to and enjoyment of their clips away for free with the plea that people buy their work. As my essay Individual Branding: How the Rise of Individual Creation and Distribution of Cultural Products Confuses the Intellectual Property System argues these facts present confusing situations for intellectual property. Sharing, attribution, some control, encouraging purchases, remixing, and more can all be seen in my encounter with Finland which may be my new personal metaphor for IP. Watch the video and tell me what you think, fair use, attribution, new work, infringement, all of the above?

  September 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm  Tags: copyright, fair use, Finland, Monty Python  Posted in: First Amendment, Humor, Intellectual Property   Print This Post   No Comments

Law School Reality (sort of, or at least to some)

posted by Deven Desai

As some may know from previous posts, I rather like the Socratic method. I think it can be used well and that the cliche of the Paper Chase meanness is not really the way the method should be used. That being said, I thought the following clip “Argument Clinic,” by Monty Python may capture what law students perceive to be the way law classes and law school in general operates, at least on more absurd days.

  September 8, 2009 at 1:24 pm  Tags: Argument Clinic, Monty Python  Posted in: Humor, Law School   Print This Post   No Comments

The Art of Renaming

posted by Daniel Solove

If people don’t like something, the solution is often as simple as a name change.  Consider fish.  Some of the most popular fish today are renamed versions of less desirable fish.  Orange Roughy used to be called slimehead.  Chilean sea bass used to be called toothfish.  Monkfish used to be goosefish. The result of these name changes has been a dramatic increase in popularity, so much so that many renamed fish are now overfished and endangered.

The renaming trend is now spreading to academic courses. From the Boston Globe:

Boston College German studies professor Michael Resler went searching for a way to boost flagging interest in his “German Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ class a few years ago, and settled on the idea of simply giving the course a sexier name. The resulting “Knights, Castles, and Dragons’’ nearly tripled enrollment.

Resler then replaced his class on “The Songs of Walter von der Vogelweide,’’ a great German lyric poet, with “Passion, Politics, and Poetry in the Middle Ages.’’ Again, enrollment swelled.

“I suppose the moral of the story is that we live in an age where everything has to be marketed in order to find a willing audience,’’ Resler mused.

Maybe it’s time to rename law school classes:

Torts –> Crashes and Accidents

Criminal Law –> Murder Most Foul and Other Dastardly Crimes

Trusts & Estates –> Dead Hands: Power After Death

Corporate Law –> Gold and Parachutes

Property –> The Story of a Whale and a Fox

Hat tip: Inside Higher Ed

  September 8, 2009 at 7:32 am   Posted in: Culture, Education, Humor, Law School, Law School (Teaching)   Print This Post   10 Comments

More Weekend Music

posted by Deven Desai

I fully laud Dave’s encouraging folks to listen to Nina Simone’s Sinnerman. As the long weekend is upon us, I offer another tune to help get you pumped up, the B-52s’ Private Idaho (Rock Lobster may have been a great fit for beach goers, but I could not find a good stream).

Enjoy (Remember these folks were cool once upon a time; and even if not so cool today, the song still thumps).

  September 4, 2009 at 2:35 pm   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   5 Comments

Yes, Prime Minister on Health Care Reform

posted by Gerard Magliocca

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

“Cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health Service. We are saving many more lives than we otherwise could because of those smokers who voluntarily lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.”

  August 11, 2009 at 2:48 pm   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   No Comments

Huffington: Goldman Buying Treasury Department

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

I don’t usually use this blog to direct traffic on the Web, but Andy Borowitz has a laugh-out-loud post over at Huffington. 

Yesterday, Goldman reported extraordinarily high earnings, and promise of massive employee compensation.  It recently repaid the billion dollar loans government made to it to help it weather the financial crisis.

This report was jarrringly juxtaposed with news of relentless increases in unemployment.  In many parts of the country, it exceeds 20% when measured using realistic inputs like part-timers seeking full-time work.  Official Labor Department statistics don’t capture that when reporting unemployment at the 10% level, still disturbing. 

Here’s an excerpt from Andy’s piece, titled Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department, but check out the whole thing:

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is “a good fit” because “they’re in the business of printing money and so are we.”

The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: “We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things.”

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger “is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don’t already own.”

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

Hat Tip: Lynn Turner

  July 16, 2009 at 8:47 am   Posted in: Current Events, Humor   Print This Post   No Comments

Latvian Twist on Faust

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

Is a usurious cash loan secured solely by the borrower’s immortal soul enforceable, as a matter of mortal law?

Fantastic as it seems, a report proliferating on the Web says a new company in Latvia is using that business model, successfully. Two-month old Kontora Loan Company of Latvia, brainchild of a 34-year old entrepreneur, offers cash loans up to about €700 (about $500) with daily interest rates of 1% (and some opacity on the frequency of compounding).
The soul part aside, requirements are modest: borrowers must be Latvian residents and provide name and signature. The company has low overhead, foregoing collection staff or policy, reasoning the soul is security enough. Business is off to a good start, with 200 customers on board, a demographic heavily populated by poor drunks recently in bar room brawls.
Regulators in Latvia reportedly do not object, except that its Consumer Rights Protection Center questions the business from “a humanistic standpoint.” It would not take our nascent Consumer Financial Product Safety Commission much effort to find the loans objectionable in the US, although mere excuse from mortal legal obligation may leave risks that human judges cannot exonerate.

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  July 13, 2009 at 4:53 pm   Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Humor   Print This Post   3 Comments

The Six Stages of Scandal

posted by Gerard Magliocca

The Sanford tango gives me an excuse to repeat this classic from Mickey Kaus, which works for almost any political scandal.

Stage 1:  That’s ridiculous.  It can’t possibly be true.

Stage 2:  It’s not true.

Stage 3:  You can’t prove it’s true.

Stage 4:  Why are you trying to prove it’s true?

Stage 5:  It’s disgusting that you proved it’s true.

Stage 6:  What’s the big deal anyway?

  June 27, 2009 at 11:14 am   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   One Comment

“Yes, Minister” on Government Failure

posted by Gerard Magliocca

Courtesy of Sir Humphrey Appleby, here are the five standard excuses for mistakes in public policy.

1.  The Antony Blunt Excuse

“There is a perfectly satisfactory explanation for everything, but security forbids its disclosure.”

2.  The Education Excuse

“It’s only gone wrong because of heavy cuts in staff and budget which have stretched supervisory resources beyond the limits.”

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  June 8, 2009 at 5:23 am   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   2 Comments

A New Federal Bailout

posted by Gerard Magliocca

I wrote this for some friends during the original congressional hearings on GM in November.  Given the news of today, I figured it was worth a rerun:

 

AP:  Washington, DC. — Santa Claus was greeted with deep skepticism on Capitol Hill this afternoon as he told members of Congress that he could not fund operations for the remainder of the year without federal assistance.

“Global warming created a real estate bubble in the North Pole that has burst,” Santa explained. “Now my elves are under water and under water on their houses too.” Aggressive cost-cutting steps, such as selling reindeer and reducing mall appearances, have failed to stem the tide of red ink.

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  June 1, 2009 at 7:33 pm   Posted in: Humor, Uncategorized   Print This Post   No Comments

“Yes, Minister” on Professors

posted by Gerard Magliocca

“No one really understands the true nature of fawning servility until he sees an academic who has glimpsed the prospect of money or personal publicity.”

“The surprising thing about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.”

  May 31, 2009 at 4:02 pm   Posted in: Humor, Uncategorized   Print This Post   No Comments

Where Trademarked “Eagles” Dare

posted by Michael Madison

The world is again safe for trademark law, now that the National Rifle Association has put an end to efforts at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to name the university’s eagle mascot “Eddie.”

For 20 years, the eagle has been the mascot of athletic teams at UW-L. Only earlier this month, however, did students at the campus get around to voting on a name for the bird, and the name they chose was “Eddie.” Unfortunately, “Eddie” is also the trademarked name of the mascot of the NRA’s “Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program,” which is aimed at students in pre-K through the third grade.  Apparently claiming that marketplace confusion would likely result from use of “Eddie the Eagle” in a post-secondary educational setting, when benchmarked against the elementary educational programming offered by the NRA, the NRA forced the university to stand down.

Undeterred by possible claims of intellectual property rights in alternative names, the students re-voted and named their eagle “Colbert.” Apparently, neither the actor nor the character objects to the use of a name that is likely protected by trademark law and right of privacy and/or publicity law, or both — despite the obvious and ubiquitous association of “Colbert” with eagles.  This seems to put Stephen Colbert squarely at odds with the National Rifle Association, at least when it comes to symbolic representations of birds of prey. 

There is no word on the matter of the validity of the NRA’s mark from the original Eddie the Eagle – Eddie Edwards, former ski jumping champion of Great Britain and world-famous competitor in the Calgary Olympics, who taught all of us important life lessons.

  May 21, 2009 at 5:49 am  Tags: colbert, eddie eagle, eddie the eagle, trademark  Posted in: Humor, Intellectual Property   Print This Post   5 Comments

Masterly Inactivity

posted by Gerard Magliocca

I want to start by thanking everyone here for inviting me to join on a full-time basis.  To celebrate this momentous occasion, I thought I should write about something profound.

So what is the best source of wisdom about politics?  Aristotle?  Leviathan by Hobbes?  The Federalist Papers? John Rawls?  Hayek’s Road to Serfdom?

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  May 20, 2009 at 6:03 am   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   4 Comments

Two Surprise Checks Received

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

Two unexpected checks arrived in my mailbox today, both dated late April for actions I took in late March. One is from the The New York Times for $300 for an op-ed piece I published in the paper March 18; the other is from the District of Columbia for $4 for jury service I contributed at its Superior Court March 23.

The checks were unexpected. I would have rendered either service without pay. Both were in some sense a civic contribution, the jury service by law, the op-ed piece by vocation. But the figures nevertheless struck me as backwards. Suppose no civic obligation, imposed or elected. In an arms’-length negotiation, I would have requested far less from the paper and far more from the court.

Neither outfit is doing well financially. The District of Columbia faces a $400 million budget deficit amid declining tax revenues and increased costs; The Times Co. lost $74.5 million last quarter amid declining ad revenues and contraction in its business. I appreciate both checks. And love both DC and the NYT. I am tempted to cash neither one.

  May 7, 2009 at 2:30 pm   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   2 Comments

It’s A Funeral; Time To Sing

posted by Deven Desai

Although much has been written about the importance of sharing culture and the way information flow helps connect people, concrete examples aid in illustrating the point. Infamous stories about “Happy Birthday” serve that role well, but now we have a possible new arena from which to ask “Did they really need to go after that use?” For we sing at the beginning of life, on the day we commemorate life, and of course when we die. Yes, funerals! Here’s the possible difference. Whereas old classics like Amazing Grace (not as old as you might think) are all over the place. It appears that popular songs are big part of modern funeral services.

Indeed, a funeral group in the U.K. did a survey of most popular songs played at, well, funerals. Apparently, Sinatra’s “My Way” was at the top of the list. I must admit that when I saw the headline about the U.K. funerals and My Way, I thought that they meant the Sid Vicious rendition; that would have been the more ironic, darker choice. As a sign that polls and surveys are only as good as their sample set, a different group’s poll showed that My Way was second to Robbie Williams’s “Angels” (my vote is an eloquent “Ick”) and thankfully Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”

came in third. At the risk of sharing too much, I have always thought that the Python is the way to go for a funeral and may be one of the more pithy ways to set forth a life plan.

So in the spirit of sharing and engaging with others about a key part of life here is the beginning of a list of songs that I think would be on my funeral mix (not in a particular order yet)

1. In My Time of Dying (Zepplin version, although Dylan and Blind Willie Johnson offer much in different ways; actually a whole Blind Willie funeral would make sense to me)

2. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (because it would be time to remind folks about the bright side)

3. Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding by Elton John – this one starts with a somber tone one may want, and then the 70s Elton/Taupin build up is almost too campy yet still so wonderful that it goes past the problems of later power ballads and works (Elton has a few others that would make this list)

Ziggy Stardust seems to work, but if you listen to the lyrics, it may depend on who the dead person is. And, the Bauhaus version may be one of those covers that surpasses the original. Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus almost made the list, but it may be too somber to want to hear at a funeral.

I am sure I have more for the list, but for now I invite nominations for the non-obvious choices (i.e., Over the Rainbow, Highway to Hell, Another One Bites the Dust, the classical choices, and others that made the lists). And in the words of Wayne’s World “No Stairway, Denied.”

  April 19, 2009 at 3:38 pm   Posted in: Humor, Intellectual Property   Print This Post   9 Comments

In the words of Monty Python, “I want to sing!”

posted by Deven Desai

This one just made me smile (and maybe sing). It is fun, and although I associate the music with Christmas, it works for Easter too.

Now you may notice that it is staged. Which I suppose means that the media company behind the event has taken its cue from flashmobs. One difference may be the high production value with excellent camera work and sound quality. Still, the YouTube tag claims that there were only two rehearsals. I admit that I had a blip, but just a blip, of thinking that it would have been nice without the media production. Then my brain kicked in, and I realized that it is fun, it is creative, and I can share it with others. Will I ever seek out or watch the Belgian show about finding a lead for the Sound of Music? No, but I thank them for their efforts.

  April 12, 2009 at 2:15 pm   Posted in: Humor   Print This Post   2 Comments

The Bard of the Financial Crisis

posted by Nate Oman

Over the weekend, I re-read A Merchant of Venice, and I was struck by the fact that Shakespeare manages to include in the play virtually every element of the current financial crisis. Scene one begins with a discussion of risk assessment, and Antonio’s belief that he has managed to tame the vagaries of commercial fate through diversification. Asked by Salarino if he “Is sad to think upon his merchandise” (I.i.40), Antonio responds:

Believe me, no. I thank my fortune for it

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

Upon the fortune of this present year.

Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. (I.i.41-45)

Having ignored the problem of fat tails and black swans, Antonio decides to engage in a bit of dodgy finance. He borrows in the wholesale market from Shylock under terms that appear favorable, but have a huge downside in the unlikely event of his default. Antonio, of course, is unconcerned. From his point of view he is getting cheap money by taking on what seems like an extremely remote risk. He then takes these borrowed funds and uses them to make what can only be described as a no doc, subprime loan. Bassiano wants money for a speculative venture — the wooing “In Belmont [of] a lady richly left” (I.i.161) — and Antonio agrees, in effect renting out his credit rating:

Try what my credit in Venice can do;

That shall be racked even to the uttermost

To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.

Go presently inquire, and so will I,

Where money is; and I no question make

To have it of my trust or for my sake. (I.i.180-185)

Shylock, for his part, does not approve of the loose monetary policy in Venice, which he rightly blames on wild lending practices, such as Antonio’s loans:

How like a fawning publican he looks.

I hate him for he is a Christian;

But more, for what is low simplicity,

He lends out money gratis and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice. (I.iii.38-42)

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  March 24, 2009 at 11:33 am   Posted in: Articles and Books, Bankruptcy, Behavioral Law and Economics, Consumer Protection Law, Contract Law & Beyond, Current Events, History of Law, Humor, Law and Humanities   Print This Post   11 Comments

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