SBM Blog

Just Because: Photoshop As A Political Tool

This is not a law-related post, except to the extent that it involves copyright or the right of publicity. The point of the post is simply an observation that political cartoons have always been a powerful way to influence the public's perception of political figures, but that for most of history political cartooning has required not only someone capable of making sharp political observations but someone who also possesses the relatively rare artistic ability to render a good likeness. (Unless of course you are a Gary Trudeau and have a comic strip with a strong narrative to rely on.) No more. Today, all you have to do is master software for manipulating visual images and you can be in the political cartooning business. You don't need to catch Michael Dukakis looking small in outsized military headgear, you can dress him up however you want to suggest a damaging viewpoint and fuel latent or emerging perceptions. And you don't need the newspapers or posters any more to disseminate the image. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are making regular meals of this technique, and their work lives on not only on their websites and in YouTube but also in screenshot captures spread through Facebook and other social media. It seems to me that we're just in the early stages of this transformation.

Just Because: What Your Favorite Books Say About You

"All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.

Apparently there's a some kind of flap about Ann Romney's Pinterest identification of Anna Karenina as one of two books worth reading because, well, the Karenin family was nonchalant about sexual fidelity. As a one-time Russian literature major I feel qualified to weigh in on this question. Imagine, for purposes of evaluating the probative value of this shocking information about Mrs. Romney, the following two cross-examination questions:

Lawyer: Mrs. Romney, you have said that Anna Karenina is a book worth reading. Can we infer from your approval of the novel that you are sympathetic to the main character and have no moral objection to her adulterous behavior?

Lawyer: Mrs. Romney, you have said that Anna Karenina is a book worth reading. In Anna Karenina, all of the several families engaging in infidelity are unhappy, and the main character herself meets a tragic end. Can we infer from your approval of the novel that you agree with Tolstoy that fidelity is the cornerstone of a happy family life?

Objection?

A confession. I have, in the last 12 months alone, urged friends and acquaintances to read, among others, one or more of the following:  1) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy; 2) Fathers and Sons; and 3) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. For the record, I do not advocate, nor do I personally engage in: 1) computer hacking and/or mutilation, self- or otherwise; 2) violent revolution; or 3) smuggling.

Photo: Leo Tolstoy, 1908, by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, via Wikipedia

Just Because: A Lesson In Kindness

An obituary in Sunday's New York Times serves as a reminder that spontaneous gestures of kindness can carry enormous significance. Roger Boisjoly was a trouble-shooter with Morton Thiokol, the maker of the rocket boosters for NASA.  Months before the Challenger disaster he warned of the danger of the boosters' seals failing if temperatures at lift-off were too cold, precisely what was ultimately determined to have happened. The night before the lift-off, as temperatures plunged below freezing, Boisjoy and other engineers pleaded for the lift-off to be postponed. In the weeks and months that followed he emerged as the key whistle-blower of the investigation by a presidential commission  -- a hero to some, but ostracized by many, including colleagues. He began to suffer from depression, headaches, and double vision. He was removed from space work.  He sued the company twice, and both suits were dismissed. But here's the kindness part. Boisjoy said that he was sustained by a single gesture of support, a hug from Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, after his appearance before the commission.

Photo (NASA): Ice on the Challenger launch pad, hours before launch

Just Because: Instant Major League Baseball Story Classic

Last Wednesday night's wild night of baseball wild-card elimination games, broadly proclaimed as one of the most dramatic evenings in major league baseball history, inspired what has been proclaimed broadly as one of the best pieces of analysis/writing on baseball, ever.  It's by East Lansing native Nate Silver, in the New York Times.  If you're a baseball fan, don't miss "Bill Buckner Strikes Again." And one more thing -- Go Tigers, BTY!

Just Because: Inspiration to Be Tidy

If Ursus Wehrli can do this, I can clean up my desk.

 

Just Because Weekend Edition: Free App That's Better Than Buttered Popcorn

RunPee identifies the best point in first-run movies to dash out to take a bathroom break, and tells you what you're missing while you're otherwise occupied. 

HT: Law Actually

For slightly off-color but amusing universal language signage (from the Beijing Olympics via a charming Copenhagen restaurant, Huks Fluks), see below the fold.

Just Because: Roger Angell on Hurricane Irene's Predecessor

Yes, Roger Angell is great even when he's not writing about baseball. Here, he remembers the hurricane that hit the East Coast in 1938. The New Yorker, of course.

And here's a review of Hurricane Irene:

Lawyers on Their Own, Redux

A classic study of solo lawyers in Chicago from 1962, Jerome Carlinl's Lawyers on Their Own, The Solo Practitioner in an Urban Setting, gained such a following that it was republished in 1994.  Now it has been been "remastered" and reissued for our times, when the turbulence in the economics of the profession is forcing more and more lawyers into involuntary solo practice. It's available both in paperback and as an e-book.

From an introduction by Golden State University's William Gallagher:

The world Carlin depicts in Lawyers on Their Own is at times strange, almost shocking, and certainly does not comport with an idealized image of lawyers constituting an independent and learned profession. The solo, urban, and largely ethnic practitioners in Carlin’s study have a marginal professional existence at the bottom of the status hierarchy of the bar. Most of their law practices are generally not economically successful or emotionally satisfying, as these lawyers—due to economic necessity—have little ability to pick and choose the types of clients they will work for or the types of cases they will accept. The work these lawyers engage in often has little to do with the practice of law (or at least with a very high level of practice). It more often involves completing and filing routine standardized legal forms, referring clients to other attorneys (and thereby collecting “bare” referral fees without doing legal work for the client), and manipulating local governmental officials on a client’s behalf. As Carlin concludes, the lawyers he studied served more as “bookkeepers, brokers, or fixers” than as lawyers engaged in tasks requiring significant knowledge of the law, legal analysis, judgment, or creativity (Carlin 1994:207-209).

Just Because: Steig Larsson and Anders Breivik

Joan Acocella at the New Yorker says Steig Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, saw Breivik coming.

Cursive! Foiled Again!

Think that handwriting is an antiquated skill that should be ditched as a pedagogical endeavor?  You're not alone.  As keyboarding rolled over handwriting as the primary way to convey text, educators began to call for ending the exercise of training in cursive; this year, for example, the Indiana Department of Education eliminated handwriting instruction as a mandatory element of the state curriculum altogether.  (Michigan's standards appear to still include cursive training.)  But the pushback has started, based on evidence that handwriting instruction develops the brain and improves confidence and grades, not to mention the invaluable advantage of enabling the reading of historical texts (including letters from grandparents). And for whatever it's worth, there's the anecdotal evidence of a law professor who says that handwritten bluebooks are better written than keyboarded bluebooks.

HT: Utne