Scrivener's Error

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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.

03 October 2012

link to: 22:07 [GMT-8]

Every Way You Look at It, You Lose

That "debate" was entirely unsurprising: Romney rushed toward the center for the purposes of the general election, to meet the guy who was already in the center... and then it was just chance and soundbites. It exemplifies the problems that those of us who believe in nuance have with time-limited, prime-time organized question-and-answer periods masquerading as debates:

There's no place for the considered opinion. The time limits and artifacts of television require candidates to rely upon soundbites and oversimplification. Admittedly, there is always going to be some simplification, particularly when one approaches anything resembling a national security question (there's this little problem with all too often needing to using classified information to demonstrate that one has a warrant for one's position...). This, however, was ridiculous.

Here's an example, concerning PBS. Mister Entitlement claimed that although he loves Big Bird, he'd get rid of PBS. Leaving aside that the President can't do that — PBS has a Congressional charter; the Executive Branch can, at most, refuse to allocate funds for PBS, which still leaves a lot of alternatives (as demonstrated by the Post Office) — the implication that PBS can be entirely and satisfactorily replaced by something in the (not-so-) free market is what was entirely at issue. I'm not a big fan of government funding in the arts (even for very loose definitions of "the arts")... but a pure market approach is worse. That's how entire, significant niches get neglected; the former distributor of this becomes the host of this and a range of near-clones. I can take the time in a blawg entry to at least imply that there isn't a simple and obvious answer on this quasi-question, because (as the "moderator") I have the power to ban certains kinds of jingoism and salesmanship and soundbitery from my forum. In a "debate" that is nothing more than a question-and-answer session... not so much.
There's no place for drawing links between issues. This is guaranteed by the question-and-answer format (and indirectly by the kinds of people who are selected as the questioners, but that's fopr another time). It's very much a Heisenbergian problem: If the questioner explicitly draws attention to the link between Candidate X's answer on a question overtly concerning Issue Y and unmentioned Issue Z, we really don't get a sense of Candidate X's own thinking (or, more properly, his staff's... and that's the subject of the next objection), because the questioner has already provided it. Conversely, if Candidate X raises that connection him/herself, it takes away limited time from a "real", "direct" answer on Y, which may be merely a way for Candidate X to avoid answering on Y at all.
The staffs are not grilled equally. And this is the real flaw of the "debate process." In a modern representative democracy, we don't elect experts. Perhaps that's a good thing, perhaps it's not. American law is unusually aggressive in trying to proclaim that the guy on the ticket is the only one we need to worry about, due to our prohition on "shadow cabinets" and the like — it's actually unlawful for a US candidate for President to proclaim who he would appoint to any given office (except that of the Vice Presidency). In reality, the world is far too complex for a single person to know enough to function in virtually any elective office; instead officeholders all have extensive staffs. As a specific example, consider this: Would some at-the-margins voters in the 2000 elections have failed to vote for Candidate R if they had known he was going to appoint a black man as the Secretary of State... or, worse yet, that that black man was virtually guaranteed to be bypassed by a passel of privileged white men? And might their opinions have been influenced if that black man had been present at debates against the (never named, because it would have been illegal) prospective counterpart on Candidate G's team?

As a clarification, I'm not saying that the US prohibition on "shadow cabinets" is on balance bad; I'm only saying that it makes the illusory "debate" process even more deceptive. That prohibition, on balance, probably prevents a lot more ills than it creates... and in any event it's a close-enough question that we're back into nuance land, just like my first objection above, and the problems with linkages between issues, just like my second objection above.

OK, enough of that. Back to dealing with disgruntled former employees, idiot publishers, and other problems...

Labels: culture, mass media, politics, sport

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Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
Legal, free music is available through
- ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
- Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
- Janis Ian (artist)
- John McCutcheon (artist)

Other Blawgs, Blogs, and Journals

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
- Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
- Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
- Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
- Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
- Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
- Professor Rick Hasen (UC-Irvine)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
- Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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