Dogs will eat you, Kentucky edition.

Apropos of absolutely nothing resembling my filing reorganization at the office:

"Arthur Dent had just came home from hitchhiking across the Horsehead Nebula, and was sorting though a large stack of mail. Dent collected a small pile of letters that actually meant something, and placed the letters in a cardbord file labeled 'Things to Do.' But because 'Things to Do' didn't seem important enough, he added the word 'Urgent!' That made Arthur feel better, when he placed the file on a shelf, never to open it again."

(From the comments section to this post.)

Joel Waldfogel notes a Jennifer Brown study showing that golfers do worse in tournaments where Tiger Woods participates than in tournaments where he doesn't, and concludes that the ferocity of Tiger's competition causes players to "quit." I haven't seen the study, so I don't know if it controls for possible ceteris paribus problems (such as the fact that Tiger these days tends to skip the easier tournaments and plays a higher percentage of his tournaments in "major" courses that are "Tiger-proofed" and hurt everyone's score), but, assuming that it does, there is another possible explanation.

Recall the movie "Tin Cup," where Kevin Costner's character insisted on trying to overshoot the water hazard in one stroke rather than laying up and avoiding the hazard with a safer second stroke. Golfers facing Tiger may take similar riskier shots that hurt one's expected score, but increase the variance and the likelihood of an abnormally exceptional score that can beat Tiger. (Poker players are certainly familiar with the phenomenon of the player who is in a hole and starts playing much looser, a strategy that has a lower expected mean performance, but a higher chance of taking down a big pot.) Golfers who are doing this will have mean scores indistinguishable from golfers who lose a stroke or two because they are "quitting," but they are clearly doing the very opposite of quitting.

Update: Ok, now that I've looked at the study, Brown claims to have tested for riskiness, and did control for golf-course difficulty. If Brown's result that superstar presence in a tournament decreases performance by non-superstars is generalizable to other fields, that has interesting implications: for example, it suggests that gigantic signing bonuses for Supreme Court clerks are a bad idea.

My op-ed on the Supreme Court's denial of cert in the Enron class action is in today's New York Sun.

That Ted Frank guy who told the Legal Times "The proper way to look at it, I think, is that the Enron case is dead after today," appears to have been right.

Separately, the New York Times extensively discusses my Vioxx panel of two weeks ago, but doesn't mention me, though the concluding sentence is quite similar to something I said there.

Before 1997, Oreos were made with lard, and my family was sufficiently kosher that that meant we were a Hydrox family. I haven't had a Hydrox in at least fifteen, maybe twenty years, and that is perhaps why the cookie went off the market. Hydrox came four years before Oreos: the knock-off was what succeeded and surpassed the original. I suppose Hydrox have actually been off the market since 1996, when Keebler bought Sunshine and changed the recipe.

If you're willing to buy into the construct "What would 'Godzilla' seem like in the first-person perspective of the average man-on-the-street?", the framing device of the entire movie being shot by the handheld video of that person (including the silly functioning-cellphone, anachronistic tape-over and infinite-battery continuity issues), don't mind the occasional scene where the actors are looking up at the sky in different directions, and are willing to go for the roller-coaster ride without worrying too much about the implausible physics and biophysics, then you'll agree with Tyler Cowen that Cloverfield is a "remarkable cinematic event." If you aren't willing to buy into that, can't tolerate ambiguity in movies or get seasick without a Steadicam, you'll be very unhappy with the movie. It's a smart-and-subtle dumb movie that I like more the more I think about it, though I found the unspoken 9-11 references discomfiting when I was watching it.

Some reviewers complain about how unrealistic it is that Hud doesn't stop filming, but (1) it's sixty minutes of tape in a seven-hour experience--because of the lack of omniscient perspective, we don't see when he's not filming; and (2) I didn't have a problem with it, because I obsessively watched every 9-11 videotape and photo album put on the web and saw plenty where one is wondering why the camera is still running. Hud is adequately established early in the movie as the sort of clueless galoot who'd keep filming when it makes no sense to do so, and we're necessarily seeing the filming only because someone didn't turn off the camera.

When are you willing to suspend disbelief and immerse oneself in the movie? I was able to do so for "Cloverfield" and "Children of Men." For "Live Free or Die Hard," I shook my head repeatedly, but enjoyed the ride. For the trio of trilogy sequels "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Oceans 13," and "Spider-Man 3," I was just utterly annoyed.

Stoneridge came down earlier this week, and the press quoted me on it quite a bit: Legal Times/New York Law Journal; Human Events; A.M. Best Wire.

Over the course of my career, it happened to me a number of times at various hours in the morning, night, and weekends, and was always enormously gratifying to so serendipitously achieve the intimidation factor of letting the other side know that you weren't afraid of outworking them:

How satisfying is it when an [expletive deleted] lawyer that you hate calls you at 7:15 in the morning, you pick up the phone, and they're stunned that you answered because they just wanted to talk to your voicemail?

[From the decidedly NSFW Do Not Overmix.]

Why isn't anyone protesting against the inevitable swarm of monkey-controlled robot armies? (Seriously, though: not so far away from bionics. Cool.)

Because two serious blogs and one unserious blog doesn't quite waste enough of my time, I've agreed to do some blogging for the Justice Talking website run by NPR and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Check it out.

Mr. Huckabee, for his part, responded with trademark humor. “The Air Force has a saying that says if you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target,” he said. “I’m catching the flak; I must be over the target.”

[NYT via Mankiw via Idaho Gal]

"There Will Be Blood" (thumbs up), otherwise scored atonally by a Radiohead member, ends with Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major (3rd Movement) and Slim and I made up words for the closing theme which we sang to each other throughout the mall:

There will be blood!
There will be blood!
There will be blood blood blood blood blood!

Relatedly: IDrinkYourMilkshake.com, which would be a lot cooler if it didn't play the same ten-second snippet every time you open a new page. And a Draiiiiiiinage! MP3.

On the car ride home:
Slim: We should contract with someone to kill us if we buy a Range Rover.
Me: I'm not sure we need the additional disincentive. Even if we did, Virginia tax law provides plenty of financial disincentive not to buy a Range Rover.
Slim: There was a Stephen King short story about quitting smoking—
Me: Yeah, they made a movie out of it.
Slim: Oh, really?
Me: It had, um, whatshisname, as the head of the company. Alan King.
Slim: Who's Alan King?
Me: Alan King! He's the guy who played the guy in that Stephen King movie.

Slim: Don't forget to pick up the packages from the front office.
Me: I'll pick up the packages.
Slim: They're the knitting needles I ordered. I want my knitting needles!
Me: You just want to stab me in the heart with your knitting needles.
Slim: I already have knives if I want to stab you in the heart.

ExpressO doesn't track dings, so next time you submit to law reviews, make up a spreadsheet so you don't have to search through a month of e-mails for the handful of rejections when your article gets accepted and you have to use ExpressO withdraw it from the law reviews who haven't accepted, and don't want to look like an idiot to the American U Law Review.

Commenter on the WSJ Law Blog, where a puffy version of my mug is prominently displayed today: "with any luck at all the [Vioxx] suit WILL prevent Merck from inventing the drug that saves Ted."

C-SPAN taped the AEI event, and will likely broadcast it after the New Hampshire primaries. Good crowd, and the other panelists were great. My opening parable, which came to me at 1 in the morning, got a good laugh, fit in beautifully with the rest of my talk, and I got better than average feedback on my talk. Even the Legal Times blog seemed to like it (but contains spoilers if you're waiting for the tv broadcast).

(Update: broadcast at 4:33 AM Tuesday morning.)

(And another update: to be broadcast 11:07 AM on the main C-SPAN Eastern Tuesday morning.)

A podcast and webcast are also available on the AEI website.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, 52, is allegedly marrying his girlfriend, supermodel/pop-singer/tire-fortune-heir Carla Bruni, 40, in February. The timing—six weeks after the engagement and four months after the divorce—is, er, interesting, if true. (And Bruni claimed to be voting for Sarkozy's opponent in the last election.) Perhaps the US will follow France's lead and elect a thrice-married president with a penchant for free-market policies.

I'm suspicious of relationships where the guy is twelve years older than the woman, but, hey, the lady can sing:

From the Economist, a longer-term view.

From Kausfiles:

Reader T.F. notes that Edwards did not improve on--or even match--his 2004 Iowa performance.

In 2004, Edwards got 32% of the caucus in Iowa in a four-person field.

In 2008, Edwards got 30% of the caucus in Iowa in a three-person field.

Richardson, Biden, et al might object to calling 2008's race a "three-person field," but you get the point.

If the story wasn't so barbarically horrific and nightmarish, I could remark about the absurdity of a Congolese rebel group that seems like it's out of a McSweeney's short story:

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

Amnesty International has more about the plight of women in the Congo, as does International Medical Corps. Mauro de Laurenzo testified to Congress on the political problems of the Congo in October.

Please register for this event online at http://www.aei.org/event1626.

The AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest and the Federalist Society present:

The Vioxx Settlement

Monday, January 7, 2008, 12:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

In 2004, Merck withdrew its pain reliever Vioxx from the market because of new studies showing increased cardiovascular risk. Merck announced that it would not settle any of the tens of thousands of Vioxx lawsuits filed, and set aside over a billion dollars to litigate cases without reserving a penny for damages. After a $254 million verdict in the first Vioxx trial in 2005, some observers predicted over $25 billion in liability for the company. Fifteen trials later, Merck and the plaintiffs’ attorneys announced a settlement of the outstanding personal injury litigation—for under $5 billion. Merck stock rose after the announcement, and is now higher than before it withdrew Vioxx from the market. But some law professors are arguing that a new and unusual provision in the settlement raises ethical concerns.

Why did Merck settle? And why was the settlement for so much less than originally anticipated? Is the Merck settlement different from the Wyeth fen-phen settlement, which was originally announced as a $3.75 billion settlement, but has so far cost more than $20 billion? Will the settlement stand up under legal challenge, and what will remain of the Vioxx litigation if it does?

At this event cosponsored by AEI and the Federalist Society, a panel of experts will explore these and other questions. Speakers include Vanderbilt law professor Richard Nagareda, author of Mass Torts in a World of Settlement; Virginia legal ethics professor George Cohen; author and leading pharmaceutical mass torts defense attorney Mark Herrmann; Andy Birchfield, a member of the Vioxx Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee; and Ted Frank, director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest. AEI resident scholar John E. Calfee will moderate.

11:45 a.m.
Registration and Lunch

12:00 p.m.
Panelists:
Andy Birchfield, Beasley Allen
George Cohen, University of Virginia School of Law
Ted Frank, AEI
Mark Herrmann, Jones Day
Richard Nagareda, Vanderbilt University Law School

Moderator:
John E. Calfee, AEI

2:00 p.m.
Adjournment

I refuse to put any weight on the weird popularity contest of web polls given how easy they are to manipulate, and the ABA Journal's categorization and selection of nominees is strange, but both Overlawyered and Point of Law are nominated by the ABA Journal as "Best Legal Blog" and it would be a shame if Overlawyered lost by just a handful of votes. Web polls are even less meaningful and democratic than the Iowa caucuses, but at least they don't take four hours or require you to go out in the snow. So the three of you who read this blog, and don't read the others, go vote.

In 2007, I

• lost 7 pounds (and then gained 5) in January;
• gained 32 pounds between February and July;
• lost 25 pounds from August to November; and
• gained 6 (and then lost 3) pounds in December.

And that omits some 10-pound swings. Need to do better this year, though at least the most recent trend is positive (even for the last week of December: all that Mexican food in Houston wasn't good for the diet). Overall, I'm down 53 pounds in the last five years, and the goal is to lose that much this year.

Investments also went in the wrong direction: after a great first four months of the year, a very bad July and November meant that I lost money in the market, have come to accept that I shouldn't be trying to beat the market if I can't spend full-time looking at it, and have been liquidating my stocks in favor of index funds as tax advantages permit. I was very briefly a millionaire, but the stock drop and real estate softness have taken me below that threshold.

Berkeley environmentalist performs publicity stunt and saves a year of trash.

My view: if he ever flushed a toilet, he was cheating.