With over 14 million views, I'm surprised this (via Newmark) didn't make its way to Slim's blog yet. Snape fans with a taste for the silly should see it before lawyers get it taken down.

Is it wrong that there are mornings when I think it would be cool to be an appellate prosecutor in Boise? Cheap housing, good work putting bad people away, business trips to San Francisco and Pasadena, libertarian governor, good climate once global warming sets in, short flight to Las Vegas... Of course, David Lat quit a similar job in New Jersey to be a blogger/writer/pundit, so I am perhaps idealizing.

Perhaps ironic, given there are those who complain that I am biased against the ABA, but I am one of three panel participants in an ABA CLE teleconference course taking place October 17. I'm also interviewed in the related ABA Journal article appearing in the October issue.

Slim and I saw "King of Kong" with Shani and Dave. And, now the rest of the story (spoilers):

• Mitchell and Wiebe played head to head in 2004 in a San Diego tournament. [MTV News]


• Wiebe's wife was "was ready to throw the machine off a cliff." [New York Magazine]


• Mitchell's videotape, sent to Funstop, wasn't counted as a high score; Twin Galaxies revoked it a couple of days later. Mitchell says he didn't play Wiebe in Hollywood because he hadn't played for six months and was out of practice. (Of course, he loses sympathy when he murmurs of hopes lawyers would seek him out to bring a lawsuit.) [MTV News]


• If one is going to have record-keeping, it's not entirely crazy to have verification procedures: like most arcade games, Donkey Kong has dip-switches, and four of the dip-switches affect difficulty of play.


• Mitchell isn't a referee for Donkey Kong scores. [Steve Sanders @ EFilmCritic]


• And, oh, by the way, Mitchell has beaten Wiebe's high score again. [MTV News; Twin Galaxies; Twin Galaxies]


• Mitchell seems to do his share for charity, but that restaurant appears to be inherited family business. [Twin Galaxies; Rickey's Hot Sauce]

I liked the movie when I saw it, but now I'm feeling kind of manipulated—with 400 hours of footage, and unlimited access to music, it's invariably possible to put together 90 minutes that tell a story different from what happened if doing so makes a better arc, but it's still nauseating when you learn you've been taken. I do feel bad for the people who made Chasing Ghosts, as I suspect that the market for documentaries featuring Walter Day is rather saturated now. (ObWikiGroan: former solicitor general Walter Dellinger vs. Walter Day.)

There's Internet babble about a fictional adaptation of the documentary that has achieved Wikiality, but reading the source shows that it's wishful thinking that Johnny Depp and Nathan Fillion would reprise the real-life leads. I can't imagine any agent would let either make the movie, much less a studio greenlighting something that required people to be paid.

But there really is a Roy Awesome, and some of the scenes in the movie appear to come from this longer NSFW interview.

I've been saying for a few years now that the comparative advantages of living in a big city compared to a small town have been substantially narrowed by the Internet, and this Virginia Postrel post makes the same point.

I played in a small-stakes poker game in 1995 where one of the participants was Stephen Glass, who went on to have a spectacular rise and fall. Vanity Fair reports that he is today working as a paralegal in Los Angeles, and doing standup monologues at Un-Cabaret, where an ex of mine has also performed. Small world.

If you bought your iPhone less than fourteen days ago, you can get your $200 back from Apple. If you bought your iPhone fifteen days ago or more, well, that's the cost of being the cool kid on your block. Me, I'm still not buying an iPhone.

Update: Hee!

Liberally spray non-stick frying pan with no-stick cooking spray for two seconds. Chop one medium onion into slices, heat at high. Add 1/4 tablespoon of chili powder over onion, plus garlic and black pepper to taste, stir. As onion begins to brown, lower heat to medium, and add 1/2 cup of Lightlife Smart Ground veggie crumbles. Heat for five minutes, add 1/2 tablespoon cumin, stirring. Remove from heat, scoop into bowl, add 3 tbsp of spicy chunky salsa. (Optional: add non-fat Greek yogurt as a sour cream substitute.) Serves one when Slim is working late.

Calories: 180
Fat: 1.5 g
Sodium: 640 mg
Potassium: 685 mg
Carbs: 22 g
Fiber: 6 g
Sugars: 8 g
Protein: 19 g

Not only did I write a book when I was ten, but I wrote a law review article before I was born.

Theodore D. Frank is surely annoyed enough that for over a year I got credit for TDF's donations to John Kerry, and that the ABA kept sending me his mail, so I really worry how mad he must be that Wikipedia is giving me credit for his law review comment now.

From Esquiver's blog:

E to K: "Honey, do you think I could be less homophobic?"
K (with a surprising amount of tetchiness): "Not without abandoning your thin pretense of heterosexuality, no."

AEI and National Legal Center for the Public Interest Establish New Research Center on Legal and Constitutional Issues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, September 4, 2007

American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth announced today that the National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI) has been merged into AEI, forming a new research division named the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest (AEILC).

The National Legal Center for the Public Interest was founded in 1975 to foster knowledge about law and the administration of justice, especially with respect to individual rights, free enterprise, property ownership, limited government, and a fair and efficient judiciary. It has pursued its educational and intellectual missions through publications, conferences, and the annual Gauer Distinguished Lecture in Law and Public Policy, which will continue at AEI. Further information on the NLCPI is available at its website, www.nlcpi.org.

The American Enterprise Institute has conducted similar work for many decades as part of its domestic policy research program. AEI’s research staff has included such eminent legal scholars as Robert H. Bork, Robert A. Goldwin, and Antonin Scalia. It currently sponsors work on legal and constitutional issues by resident and visiting scholars such as Walter Berns, John R. Bolton, Theodore (Ted) Frank, Jack Landman Goldsmith, Michael S. Greve, Peter J. Wallison and John Yoo as well as adjunct scholars including Richard A. Epstein and Jeremy Rabkin.

The new AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest will pursue an expanded program of research, publications, and conferences drawing on the traditions, interests, and people of both institutions. The AEILC will be directed by AEI resident fellow Ted Frank (www.aei.org/frank), who has been director of the AEI Liability Project for the past two years. Mr. Frank clerked for Judge (now Chief Judge) Frank H. Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and, prior to joining AEI, practiced law with Kirkland & Ellis and O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. He writes AEI’s Liability Outlook and is a frequent contributor to several national publications and websites, including The Wall Street Journal and PointofLaw.com.

The AEI Legal Center’s website, www.AEILegalCenter.org, part of AEI’s constellation of more than a dozen websites, will feature publications, event notices, and conference and lecture videos and will incorporate the archives of both the NLCPI and AEI’s legal research programs. The NLCPI is being fully merged into AEI and will discontinue separate operations. Several of its directors and legal advisers will join a new AEILC Legal Advisory Council.

The AEI Legal Center has already planned several conferences, seminars, and publications for the coming fall. On September 28, it will host a Supreme Court Briefing, to be held annually at the beginning of the Court’s October Term; the September 28 session will focus on longstanding interests of AEI and the NLCPI that are attracting increasing attention from the justices—corporate law, antitrust, administrative law and regulation, intellectual property, and preemption and other federalism issues. Two additional AEILC seminars will concern cases of particular importance on the High Court docket: a September 27 session on Medellin v. Texas and an October 5 session on Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta. The Center’s first seminar, on September 25, “Patent Reform, Biotechnology, and Other High-Technology Industries,” will concern important aspects of the Patent Reform Act currently pending in the Congress. Further information on these sessions is posted at www.AEILegalCenter.org. ...