"In this OpenUW course, you'll examine the early history of jazz, from its roots in African-American folk and religious songs, ragtime piano music, and the brass bands of New Orleans, through the development of the first jazz bands in Storyville and the expansion of jazz from the South to the northern music centers of Chicago and New York. You'll also meet several important musicians from that time, such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Sidney Bechet, and learn about the contributions they made to this growing art form. via [The Shifted Librarian]
Thanks Jenny. I love Jazz, but not as much as my dad who gives out an award every year to a deserving student in the University of New Orleans Jazz program. Unfortunately I don't get out to hear much jazz (except for Thursday nights at Nacho Mama's when Vincent Marini plays with Gingerbread--that's her real name-- and Chris). Anyway, I'll definitely check this out....
11:09:31 PM
I'm just a little black rain cloud hovering under the honey tree...
Disney reveals depth of deep Pooh. Disney's latest SEC filing reveals that the company will owe AA Milne's agent's heirs hundreds of millions of dollars if a court finds that they are indeed the exclusive owners of the merchandise rights to Pooh-Bear, as a recently discovered document indicates. Link via [bOing bOing]
Uh, sounds like a smackerel of something quite litigious...
11:04:38 PM
Copyrighted Coconuts - Say it three times real fast.
I missed this one, but Overlawyered didn't. A local parade organization (called Zulu) claimed a Slidell business man who painted 150 coconuts for a St. Patricks' Day Parade was infringing on their intellectual property. Everyone here in New Orleans knows about the coveted Zulu coconuts. But that doesn't mean they have an intellectual property right. [Times Picayune]
10:56:18 PM
What is the path to clerking on the U.S. Supreme Court?
Study the trends. via Howard (whose site is developing into a very appealing legal venue) (pun intended).
10:29:04 PM
Summer Airline Travel Tips - From the Friendly Folks at American Airlines
There's a creative blogger out there, and her name is Mary. This is funny stuff. Reminds me of the Lazlo Letters. You just can't make this stuff up; but corporations can afford to hire professionals...
10:16:08 PM
Good article on E-learning, which I will return to again after the guys from New Horizons come to our firm to pitch their web-based learning program. If I've got this right they will charge about $240 per person per year and that person gets to take as many online courses as are available. This has got to be too good to be true. But, if it isn't, then it will solve the problem of getting staff trained without having to commit them to a "scheduled class" that their attorneys can disrupt at the last minute if they find that they REALLY have to have the secretary or paralegal available (I know it will shock you to learn that attorneys would do that). Anyway, we'll see...
9:48:57 PM
Laptops Are Dropping Like Flies - and I need the name of a Florist.
First Doc Searls' laptop crashes, then Jim McGee reports that he is conducting a full reinstallation of software. Meanwhile the Klez Worm keeps knocking at my door pretending to have a "Candygram for Mongo". I'm going to be really nice to my laptop and order it a dozen roses.
3:04:15 PM
New Orleans Cuisine - Portobello Cafe - Ringing Endorsement
Okay, I'm definitely way off of my regular beat when I cover food, but I have to recommend Portobello Cafe. They do catering and have a restaurant. They catered for our firm today and everyone was blown away. Their brochure has a great quote that says a lot about them (their food says a lot more): "The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure no slight pleasure." (by Montaigne). Ask for Wendy Graham if you call (see website above for info) or E-mail her.
12:45:38 PM
Klez Virus - This is like the Land-Shark skit from Saturday Night Live.
My anti-virus software is up to date (Thank God), and I don't open any E-mail that even remotely looks suspicious or that seems strange in anyway. Even though we run Groupwise (which usually doesn't succumb to these mass mailing viruses) someone called me about 10 days ago to say he had gotten the Klez virus from me (and of course I hadn't knowingly sent him any emails). Time passes. Lot's of weird emails and some are infected, but I'm okay.
So yesterday I get an E-mail from "postmaster <postmaster@garmd.com>" that says the E-mail is "undeliverable". I figure it was something that needed to be examined, if for no other reason to see if I had sent someone the worm again. Oh, it was in there allright. And my Norton AV jumped on it like a rabid dog.
But the thing is, now I'm afraid to open my door at night. It's like that skit from Saturday Night Live with the Land-Shark. That's the Klez worm! This thing is relentless.....
11:39:10 AM
Star Wars - I haven't seen it, but I have seen this review and it's priceless
A working draft of policy and functional standards for electronic filing processes in the courts have been placed for public comment until June 16, 2002. The draft appears on the National Center's Standards page. Direct links to the lengthy documents: [105 pg. PDF, 108 pg. Word]. The final work product is scheduled to be presented to the National Consortium for State Court Automation Standards and the COSCA/NACMJoint Technology Committee in July 2002. For more info on court XML initiatives, I recommend Robin Cover's piece on the COSCA/NACM JTC project. via [Rory Perry's Radio Weblog]
Good thread on institutional memory and attrition at law firms:
"I imagine it's very frustrating to spend 5-7 years somewhere building up a set of tools and having to leave it behind when you go. Not an easy job. I happen to think that the tangible things like documents and databases, while valuable, pale in comparison to the knowledge gained from working with peers and senior people over a period of time. You can't capture that in a system." - Christopher Smith, 10:33 PM
If a firm commits to capturing best practices - in effect, capturing the experiences Chris refers to above - then the cost of attrition goes down. In fact, one of the reasons associates leave (certainly not the only, or even the primary reason, but a reason nonetheless) is that they don't feel like they're able to learn enough, that they're simply a grunt worker churning out memo after memo, brief after brief. (Want proof? Take a gander at Greedy Associates.) If they could start to assimilate the experiences of the more senior attorneys, while benefitting from the work product at the same time, it's a win-win situation.
To make this happen, you need two things: a commitment from the senior members to contribute, and a straightforward way of capturing information once they decide to share. The first is purely cultural (and can be helped along by strong management, something far too many firms lack), and the second sounds suspiciously like a K-log (a knowledge-oriented weblog). More on that topic later. [Rick Klau: Radio for Lawyers]
I agree with Rick and I'm hoping that Rich will jump into this discussion because he has a lot to say about this (he is a serious student of law firms and management, just like Rick). Of course, Denise has much to say as well, and I edited her discussion out of this post just to save space, but this is a topic that a lot us who work in the legal profession are interested in. It would also be good to hear from law students and lawyers who are just starting out.
8:04:23 AM
Add this to my Wishlist...
WSJ. Mossberg on the new Treo. Phone/PDA/E-mail/color screen. $500. If it could also leverage a paging network for hard to reach locations (that means satellite), it would be perfect.
>>>For this reason, heavy e-mail users may want to wait to buy a Treo until this summer, when Sprint's version will come out. It will work on Sprint's forthcoming high-speed network, providing a nearly always-on experience for downloading e-mail, much like the BlackBerry does, eliminating the need to constantly place calls to get e-mail. It will also download mail much faster than the current Treo and will offer billing plans oriented toward heavy data use, thus limiting runaway phone bills.
The bottom line, however, is that the Treo now has a new capability: automatic reception of e-mail. That means it can replace a separate phone and PDA -- and a BlackBerry as well.<<<
"Plaintiffs Allege Restaurant Owners And Managers: Offered Money for Sex, Encouraged Male Managers to Seek Sexual Favors From Female Manager and Hooter Girls, Masturbated While On Phone With Female Manager, Propositioned Female Manager and Hooter Girls for Sex, Strip-Searched Hooter Girl, and Called Hooter Girls Bitches and Whores" via [PR Web - Legal]
I'm sure the media will cover this closely. So I'll reserve commentary and let the facts come out, but we do live in a world where sexual harrassment happens all the time. Sometimes people make up stories that are hard to disprove, but a lot of harrassment goes unreported and if there was ever an environment that would be conducive to having males slip into harrassment-mode Hooters would have to score high in the danger-zone rankings.
7:52:47 AM
Two People shot at New Orleans Airport Yesterday by Man Who Claims to be Muslim
A former Marine from Pensacola shot and wounded two people at the New Orleans Airport on Wednesday. The man was carrying a copy of the Quran, and had several more shotgun shells in his pocket, police said. He told police he is a Muslim who recites the Quran daily. [Times Picayune]
New Orleans Airport has been the focal point of some lax security since 9/11. About a month ago someone got past the first security check area with two loaded pistols that were discovered when the fellow was subject to a secondary random search. Before that someone got on a plane with a pistol and then voluntarily turned himself midway through his flight, telling authorities that he had forgotten about the weapons (this was apparently true). This latest event does not implicate the security procedures since it happened outside the area where passengers are screened (i.e. in the Main Terminal Area), but it no doubt will raise tensions of travellers passing through that airport.
7:23:12 AM
Legal Factoid #197
Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest of us a bad name.
(I'm told that comedian Steven Wright came up with that line)
1:47:11 AM
No, I'm sorry sir that will not fit in the bin so you are going to have to break that into Internet sized packets
Here's a quickie thought that I've been musing about a lot lately (and speaking of late, it's late and I'm punchy). Communication is now pervasively (for some of us) a packet-switched thing. As in, "asynchronous and byte-sized" It's as though the force of the Ethernet (which is a packet switched, contention-based system, you'll just have to trust me on that point) is co-opting me and making me more and more like "IT." Sort of like "the Borg" in that Star-Trek movie.
Anyway, the point is that I used to have extended direct communications with people by phone, in person, whatever. Now, it's E-mail (discrete little packets of information), or a quick instant message session, or a voice mail message. And then there's the multi-tasking. Yes, I'm talking to you on the phone, but maybe I'm reading and deleting email. Increasingly, I find that, during the work week, it's getting harder too hard to have a one-to-one, synchronous exchange with anyone. There's just not enough time...
1:35:42 AM
While it may not have four letters, shred is a dirty word
Rich is the consumate criminal defense lawyer, and he's got a good point. I didn't put his whole post up there so go to his site and read it all for yourself.
12:56:35 AM
Advertisers and TV executives see digital successors to the VCR as a threat to the economics of commercial television. By Amy Harmon. [New York Times: Technology]
They just don't get it, these advertiser guys (which is weird because I thought these "creatives" were supposed to think outside the box). Okay, here, let me do the non-heavy lifting for you Sarge.
I have a TIVO and it lets me easily record shows. Even if they move the timeslot. But to do that my TIVO box has to talk to its main headquarters to get updated info on programming. And I can tell it what shows I like a lot and it will try to find similar shows (I'm guessing that my preferences are sent back to TIVO-land, and that's okay with me). Maybe they are already using that information to send me stuff, like the other night for instance. I booted up my TIVO and there was an announcement that they had added a Sheryl Crow video clip of her new song "Gonna Soak Up the Sun". Wow. That's great, I thought. I lOVE Sheryl Crow! How did they know?
I don't know, maybe it was coincidence. But then, maybe it wasn't. Anyway it made me think: "why can't these programming/advertising guys send me stuff that at least is in the ball park of what I like. If they can figure out that I'm a techie then how's about you send me a video that demonstrates the new PDA gadget or phones etc.? Hey, you know what, if you want to call my TIVO late at night when I'm sleeping to send me stuff that I might be interested I promise I'll at least watch a snippet of the video, who knows, I might wind up buying the product and recommending to people. If I don't like it I just zap it. No time commitment for me and I let you use my spare space on the TIVO hard drive. That sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship....if you misguided fools can figure out how to give me what I want, and not waste my goddamn time by forcing me to sit through an ad that you have shotguned at me as though I am some mindless receptacle for propaganda living on Planet Drone. So, like uh, do you have the technology?
Later, I see that Jenny has excerpted the story (which I hereby admit I didn't read) and here is her exerpt with observations.
12:52:30 AM
Here "is a PDF of the National Writer's Union (et al)'s amicus brief on the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, to roll back the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998. It's brilliant -- and Ursula K. LeGuin is a co-signatory!" Link via [bOing bOing]
This is something I would like to try. If I understand this correctly I can use my palm to do a Powerpoint presentation. So I wouldn't have to have a laptop etc. Just my trusty (and quickly bootable) Palm m500. Now if I could make my Palm a universal remote and control my TV....
12:30:32 AM
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