Coloring Not FDA Approved

I got them post-holiday back-to-the-daily-grind blues — which does not reflect any ingredient of the following sausages.

• RIP Professor/Dean/Chancellor Cribbet. Although the Cribbet & Johnson property casebook is not considered the most "rigorous," in many senses it is: It pays attention to language, time, and context in a way that its competitors don't, and it provides a solid foundation for learning more about property law. Not to mention that Professor Cribbet was a great guy, excellent teacher, and good administrator.
• If this story is accurate, President Obama plans to elevate Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and will announce that in about an hour. (I'll update later today, including comments on other Supreme Court activity, which will also be in about an hour.) This is not a good thing for authors and creative people: Judge Sotomayor's track record is very pro-licensee on intellectual property, specifically including screwing up the Tasini matter both substantively and procedurally when she was a trial-court judge at the Southern District of New York. Admittedly, she's had a lot of help from dubious lawyering in front of her, but that won't change all that much at the Supreme Court...

  I suppose that beats worrying about what's on the walls at the White House. I'd be just fine with "cowboy art" and falsely idyllic views of the American West... in somebody else's house. But selecting works for who created them, instead of on their own merits, is a losing game for everyone; and, sadly, that feeds right back into the preceding paragraph, which is essentially forced by the political gamesmanship that goes into selecting judges.

• I'm not going to comment much — if at all — on the opinion on the gay marriage issue that the California Supreme Court is scheduled to release later today. The whole situation is a procedural mess caused by a combination of excessive intrusion of religious belief into civil affairs, an inept means of amending the California state Constitution, a nearly ossified court system in the state, and failure to take courts' countermajoritarian mission seriously (too often by calling it "activist"). There's no win there for anyone.
• Robert McCrum muses on shortlists for literary prizes and what they mean for "categorizing" fiction and misses the point entirely (which is not all that surprising, given the source). Taxonomy is not about making distinctions; taxonomy is about exploring relationships.
• Meanwhile, also across the Pond, The Bookseller lists its perceived "100 most powerful/influential/ people in UK publishing" — alphabetically, so it's difficult to see exactly where the eight authors and single editor fall on the "list"... which is particularly disturbing compared to the number of s&m dorks and bookstore owners appearing on it.
• YAMOTIE (Yet Another Music-on-the-Internet Essay).