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[self-portrait]Scrivener's Error Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.
09 July 2009

14:17 [GMT-6]

Uninspected Sausages
No USDA inspections... not that the government could competently inspect much of anything on the 'net anyway.

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06 July 2009

09:39 [GMT-6]

Gambling in Chief Illiniwek's Admissions Offices
I think I've finally figured out why the Chicago Tribune is so bent on excoriating the "clout list" at the University of Illinois:

U of I undergraduate admissions standards — and, in particular, to (in order) the College of Engineering, the College of Business, and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences — are now too high for any of the so-called "journalists" at the Tribune to meet... and they can't stand the idea that high school students smarter than they are must still sweat over admissions.

Just compare an open letter from College of Law faculty (gratefully referenced from Professor Ribstein's website) to the substance of this morning's inane, unsigned rant in the Trib. Anyone who has applied for admission at a truly competitive school will recognize the "highly qualified, but still waitlisted" phenomenon; I remember it from applying to law schools, and even my undergraduate days (despite my "numerical qualifications," I actually got rejected from one undergraduate school... that was toward the bottom of my list; it was hardly the end of the world). Anyone who has been to any even moderately competitive graduate school — let alone the dehumanizing professional school admissions process — will break out laughing.

Instead, the Trib wants to move Champaign two states to the east, to the undergraduate-academics black hole of the Big Ten: Columbus, Ohio. (Note: In physics, black holes are powerful indeed, and in fact a necessary consequence of — and necessary to — the universe; I just wouldn't want to be near one.) In Ohio, actual qualifications only affect whether one must wait a year or two, or perhaps get shuffled to a "satellite" campus elsewhere in the state only to receive the same bloody diploma, so long as one has fulfilled the (laughable and minimal) course prerequisites; completing two years with a 2.0 average at an Ohio community college allows transfer as of right (which is slightly less generous than it used to be in the 1970s). Comparing "popular majors" between Illinois and Ohio State tells a fascinating story in itself... as does the comparative academic qualifications. None of this is to say that there are no outstanding undergraduate students at Ohio State; it is only to say that things are... different, particularly in the undergraduate programs — and evidently more satisfactory to the themselves-non-nerd journalism majors at the Trib.

Either that, or they're still pissed off that the Board of Trustees at the U of I finally decided to relegate the racist athletic mascot to official irrelevance, despite the Alumni Association's continued dithering.

Or both.

In any event, I'm shocked — shocked, I tell you — to find politicians attempting to influence admissions at a state school. Captain Renault would be, too. If it happens at Ivy League schools, should anyone really be surprised that it happens at public universities that (for some of their programs, at least) try to be comparable? Except, of course, in the little quirk that U of I undergraduate admissions files do not contain letters of recommendation... which is precisely what those with "clout" are used to being asked for.

And this little manufactured controversy continues to take attention away from the problem of "athletic" scholarships... and admissions; and of journalistic integrity at the Trib (when some of those state officials are/were responsible for denying the Tribune Company's request for subsidies for the Cubs); and of other aspects of journalistic integrity when some of the Trib's political allies in Springfield — and, given the personalities, quite probably some of the more-frequent users of the "clout list" — are the ones responsible for the continued budgetary deadlock. But far be it from me to question the so-called "liberal bias" of the MSM. I guess that sometimes that "enlightened" self-interest really doesn't reflect Enlightenment: It's more like Counter-Reformation, and a cultural Thirty Years' War.

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02 July 2009

10:09 [GMT-6]

It Was a Dark and Stormy Link Sausage
... and the ingredients were blending their flavours as teh internets churned themselves from chopped striated muscle of castrated young steer, and of pig that had never seen daylight, and of turkey that was so stupid it wouldn't recognize daylight — and, not incidentally but not officially, the stray fingertips of illegal immigrants staffing the processing plant somewhere in Iowa — and stuffed themselves into the cleaned intestinal linings of Clarice Starling's pets, appropriately spiced and lovingly garnished with sawdust; and meanwhile, Dr Lector contemplated a self-drawn cityscape of Venice — a city that, if the government had its way, he would never see — while waiting for his dinner to walk in...

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29 June 2009

10:51 [GMT-6]

Last, not First, Monday
Caffeine- and sleep-deprived. I think I'll poach the next batch of sausages in Turkish coffee.

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26 June 2009

11:41 [GMT-6]

Brutus
The putative "king of pop" is dead. Long live the king, whoever he may be. I come here not to praise Jackson, but to bury him. Friends, literati, countrymen — lend me your pixels.

Being a grouchy SOB myself, I'm not going to spread praise where little or none is deserved. The biggest problem with Michael Jackson's career as a performer is that much of it that was worthwhile was not his work. Michael Jackson did not choreograph or shoot the "Thriller" or "Bad" videos; if one listens to them, one finds vapid nonsense with average-at-best vocal performances over inconsistent background instrumentals. The rest of his oeuvre is consistent only in its inconsistency. I suppose one could say the same for Miles Davis, or for Jimi Hendrix, but then that also reinforces my point.

The less said about his non-performance influence on popular culture, the better: The Beatles catalog; the ranch; the refusal to act like an adult human being in public; and on, and on, and on. This is not what popular culture needs in a king. On another tentacle, it's usually what popular culture gets in a king... but that does not make me any sorrier to see the departure of an inept sovereign, because at least there's some hope for the new one.

    Perhaps it's just my lifelong aversion to "pop," which usually means "turn your brain off, now, nothing's going to happen for about three or four minutes." Or, perhaps, it's just my lifelong aversion to flash over substance. As to Michael Jackson the individual, I'm slightly saddened but largely indifferent; as to Michael Jackson the cultural figure, I'm actually somewhat pleased, although I would have preferred just a quiet fade into the background al fine to death — and in particular to death redolent of a previous "king"'s, that will no doubt result in similar worship, as satirized in the clip. For "Graceland," read "Neverland Ranch"... if, that is, it ever emerges from bankruptcy.

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25 June 2009

12:19 [GMT-6]

Sausage Links Ouroboros
... because they just go around in a circle until they end up where they started, biting their own tails. And if that's not a mixed-enough metaphor, just consider that they're sausages...

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22 June 2009

11:08 [GMT-6]

Bleary-Eyed Monday Morning Link Sausages
I'm bleary eyed, not the link sausages — the grinder did a pretty good job with their eyes.

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21 June 2009

11:42 [GMT-6]

At Any t > 0...
Jay Lake points to some interesting, if ultimately incomplete (and therefore unlikely — but not impossible! — to be correct) comments on the dubious future of the publishing "industry". For one thing, Mr Stevens' article fails to acknowledge that there is no publishing industry; there are, instead, thirteen (or perhaps eleven) distinct publishing niches with various degrees of cross-niche consolidation, which in turn indicates pretty clearly that there is going to be more than one future to the "publishing industry".

[reduced size] Ransom Stevens, 15 Jun 2009    Second, it continues to accept the long-tail meme without doing the discrete math. On the right, you'll find an example of the long-tail graphic as used in that article. It's vastly more realistic than most (but for the cringe-producing mislabelling of one data element that, ironically enough, torpedoes the article's later imprecation to leave proofreading to the authors), and looks pretty convincing, doesn't it? The problem is that it's a freehand drawing based on the typical curves found in a non-calculus-based statistics course. Things get much, much more interesting once one acknowledges a few real-world difficulties:

Ultimately, all of these "long-tail" theories fail because they are retrospective, cumulative snapshots that account only for aggregate income/sales — they do not account at all for the rate of the relevant transactions. I refuse to further mislead by trying to create a two-dimensional, web-friendly graphical representation of a four- (or more) dimensional reality that unfolds over time.

That said, there is one vastly superior model: Cellular energy acquisition, storage, and use. In this model, publishers aren't gatekeepers: They're enzymes (or, outside of the cell, catalysts) that reduce the activation energy required to actually start a reaction — say, the extraction and storage of energy through

ATP ←→ ADP + P

without disrupting other cellular processes... and is achievable without substantial further energy input. Of course, this all assumes some knowledge of basic thermodynamics — a part of physics and chemistry that thus far seems to apply to every natural system, even if the social "sciences" (let alone academic management!) have yet to figure that out.

So, in the end, this is another misleading snapshot. I guess what I'm really calling for is Publishing: The Motion Picture before I'll accept any of this stuff... because even under the 1934 Securities Act — what is really driving all of this nonsense — there's a nonzero temporal reporting horizon for publicly held companies (quarterly reports). It's rather ironic that the last graphic in Mr Stephens' {typo intended} ultimately misguided analysis does acknowledge time... and that he's a physicist!

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19 June 2009

11:02 [GMT-6]

These Internet Sausages Neither Kashrut Nor Halal
It may be Friday, but (as indicated by the last three items below) I have no objection to pork products. It's one thing to honor one's ancestry; it's another thing entirely to be bound by it (and what is the binder in these dubious internet sausage links, anyway... or does anyone really want to know?).

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17 June 2009

09:09 [GMT-6]

Buggy Sausage Links
No chocolate-covered ants here — just ant-covered sausages.

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12 June 2009

10:00 [GMT-6]

Sausage Pot Pourri
This one's for you, Dittoheads:

Non Sequitur, 11 June 2009

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10 June 2009

12:20 [GMT-6]

Kangaroo Sausages
...because they're just hoppin' off the grill, and they're not made from the usual mix of ingredients.

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08 June 2009

15:26 [GMT-6]

How Much Is That Jurist In the Window?
Just some side thoughts — the paperwork snowstorm has not abated (if anything, it's worse).

Today, the Supreme Court decided that the title question of this post does, in fact, have an answer... and if it is "too much," then the judge may not hear certain cases. In this instance, it's referring to Chief Justice Benjamin of the Supreme Court of West Virginia, who was elected during the pendency of a large commercial lawsuit largely on the back of campaign contributions from one of the two companies (or, at least, its CEO and/or PACs and other actors beholden to him) involved in that lawsuit. He refused to take himself out of the lawsuit and cast the deciding vote. Care to guess which way he voted?

This is not to say that Justice Benjamin was, in fact, prejudiced in favor of either party; I simply have no knowledge of that. Today's US Supreme Court opinion treats actual prejudice as irrelevant; instead, what matters is the appearance of prejudice.

In other words, based on the facts presented by Caperton, Justice Benjamin conducted a probing search into his actual motives and inclinations; and he found none to be improper. We do not question his subjective findings of impartiality and propriety. Nor do we determine whether there was actual bias.

* * *

We turn to the influence at issue in this case. Not every campaign contribution by a litigant or attorney creates a probability of bias that requires a judge’s recusal, but this is an exceptional case. We conclude that there is a serious risk of actual bias—based on objective and reasonable perceptions—when a person with a personal stake in a particular case had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing the judge on the case by raising funds or directing the judge’s election campaign when the case was pending or imminent. The inquiry centers on the contribution’s relative size in comparison to the total amount of money contributed to the campaign, the total amount spent in the election, and the apparent effect such contribution had on the outcome of the election.

Applying this principle, we conclude that Blankenship’s campaign efforts had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing Justice Benjamin on the case.

Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc., No. 08–22 (08 Jun 2009) (PDF), slip op. at 12–14 (internal citations omitted).

Bluntly, this standard is far too weak. I believe that the legal profession as a whole — let alone judges — must follow the military officer's code on conflicts of interest: The appearance of a conflict of interest shall be treated as an actual conflict of interest pending clearance after reasonable investigation by a disinterested party competent to both perform and evaluate the investigation. That leads implies another problem, though... and the Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to grapple with it.

I do not believe that elected judgeships fulfill the Republican Form of Government clause (U.S. Const. Art. IV, § 4). After all, the only "Republican Form of Government" that the Founders could have been pointing to that allowed for a separately elected executive was the one they were constructing for the federal government... which included appointed judges. Further, at that time judges in England and (as far as I've been able to determine) the rest of Western Europe were also appointed, not elected.

But even if judicial elections do fit within the minimum constitutional scheme, they are such a horrible idea that they inherently call the equal-handed administration of justice into question... to a greater extent than does any system involving nomination followed by confirmation, however imperfect that may become in practice. Not too long ago, it was Illinois — not West Virginia — that was the subject of handwringing over a nasty, expensive election campaign to our state Supreme Court... and since it was for a Justice from only a part of the state, it got even worse, because he gets to cast binding votes for the whole state. And not too long after I got out of law school, a local jurist ran for election on a "tough on crime" platform. That's right: His ads to become a judge in criminal cases flaunted that he'd have little, if any, sympathy for any accused wrongdoer. <SARCASM> Yeah, I'm sure he'll give anyone who can't afford private defense counsel a fair trial — just as fair as the trial he'll give anyone who can. Pro se defendants? You've got to be kidding me! </SARCASM> And regardless of the substance — for all I know, this judge actually does give everyone a fair trial — those attack ads with barely concealed glee/horror that the judge's opponent had let an accused murderer go free on a "technicality" and had refused to impose the death penalty on a different (convicted) murderer have certainly undermined the credibility of the criminal justice system in this community. I do keep my ears open in public around here, and you'd be surprised how well-remembered those ads are among some members of the public when they don't think anyone is listening...

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05 June 2009

11:57 [GMT-6]

Spring Snowstorm
A bit snowed under in paperwork for a few days here... at the moment, I'm just sticking my head out of the drifts for a moment to catch some air. Some humid, pollen-and-cropdust-filled Midwest farmbelt air, but it'll have to do.

And now, your moment of creation-science zen:

Non Sequitur, 05 June 2009

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01 June 2009

10:27 [GMT-6]

No Caffeine
These aren't diet, but they are uncaffeinated.

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