Unbillable Hours is another one of those lawyer-written weblogs, which I find eternally interesting. They set up some kind of cognitive dissonance within my head (“how come busy lawyers have time to weblog?”) and I always like that. The author, whose name I can’t find on the page, wrote a nice bite about RICO and the Catholic Church, which prompted this posting. I also really liked his discussion of sex and law.

Belated, but this is the sort of story I can’t resist. Namely, the “screw the popular wisdom, let’s be contrary” kind of a thing. I know that the Olypmic skating controversy (original) is dead and gone, but I’m linking Joe Bob Briggs’ story on it anyway. It’s a real story, actually, not written like the movie reviews. Wish I’d read it back then. I’d like to look at replays with his thoughts in mind. Mind you, the ISU did nail two French skating officials, so perhaps there’s not really so much of a case to be made after all. ...

Ashcroft’s getting itchy again. This time he argues (original) that the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (original) misruled recently when rejecting Ashcroft’s wiretap guidelines (original). Spiffy! I can’t actually object to Ashcroft’s objection; he has the right to appeal, after all. I’m just surprised that the USFISC (which hasn’t rejected a wiretap request in years) held up their hands and said “No.”

The Internet Archive Movie Collection contains a few thousand digitized films from the Prelinger Archives; the latter is a vast collection of ephemeral films. Newsreels, “Our Friend the Bowling Alley,” instructional films, and the like. Check out A is for Atom today.

I will be flying out of the Bay Area, my stuff on a truck somewhere below me, on September 7th.

Lessig responds to Dave (original). Dave fails to get it (original). There’s a marked difference between supporting copyright for software in a modified form, and not supporting it at all, Dave.

Tagging this (original) for later use — it’s an implementation of a newish anti-spam concept, designed for qmail but I believe it could be adapted to procmail fairly easily. I want to let it go through a little user testing before I install it, though.

Declan McCullagh is on some strange Californian “let’s just relax” vibe lately; first it was his suggestion that geeks should ignore politics (original), and then his suggestion that the DMCA isn’t so bad (original). The first one, OK, I can see the argument that geeks are better suited to create social change by writing code… although his example is flawed, since Zimmerman went through a ton of political process to avoid being arrested. Declan also forgets the sad case of anon.penet.fi, which was effectively shut down by political pressures. It’s a shame Julf Helsingius didn’t worry more about the politics, no? ...

The director’s commentary for the Criterion edition of Traffic begins (literally) with a comment on the typeface used for the subtitles on the opening screen. Helvetica Light, because that’s what was used in All the President’s Men, for the record. How can I not love that particular bit of Soderbergh’s attention to detail? (The transfer, by the by, is gorgeous. I really want a digital television one of these days.)

What’s it like, being young and suddenly rich? Hard to imagine, for me at least, particularly if you were poor before. The seminar discussed in that article probably comes four years too late, though; you want to catch the rookies before they hit college, because that’s where the special privileges start. The techniques the NFL uses to guide these kids are nothing special. Not that different from what you read about in “scared straight” programs. They even bring in a former player and current felon to talk about the hell of prison. What’s interesting to me is the reaction of the rookies. That’s where the sociology is. ...