1. can't resist:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/10/ten-best-faculties-in-intellectual-propertycyberlaw.html
2. americanizing: spent a large part of our Sunday at a corn maze with my JSP cohort (just one eerie thing happened. It wasn’t an extra terrestrial abduction for those of you who know what corn mazes are. Instead it was a large woman sitting astride on a hay stack and wondering whether I too found hay to be arousing. Not the word she used exactly, by the way, but my fingers quiver on the keyboard when I try to write that one so I opted for the scientific term). And what do you do once you are out of the maze and yearning for food? Of course! You BBQ! What else. However, when your type of America is Berkeley-type, you barbeque tofu burgers which you eat on glutton-free rye buns.

* Two of the law school's professors had just been awarded faculty chairs. I offer my congratulations and part of the text of the announcment (the interesting part is highlighted)

Renowned professors of law Eric Talley and Jonathan Simon ’87 have been awarded faculty chairs at Berkeley Law.

Talley, a corporate law expert and faculty co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy, is the first holder of the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Chair. He teaches courses on corporate finance, contracts, and law and economics. Earlier this year, Talley was one of two risk-analysis experts tapped by the Congressional Oversight Panel to review the U.S. Treasury Department’s methodology in its stress tests of America’s 19 largest bank holding companies.

His chair was funded by the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, of which Martin Blank ’66 is a co-director. The foundation invests in programs that promote education, tolerance, social services, the State of Israel, healthcare, and the arts.

Cracks in the Future

Berkeley, Calif.

While the U.S. has struggled with enormous problems over the past several years, there has been at least one consistent bright spot. Its system of higher education has remained the finest in the world.

Now there are ominous cracks appearing in that cornerstone of American civilization. Exhibit A is the University of California, Berkeley, the finest public university in the world and undoubtedly one of the two or three best universities in the United States, public or private.

More of Berkeley’s undergraduates go on to get Ph.D.’s than those at any other university in the country. The school is among the nation’s leaders in producing winners of the Nobel Prize. An extraordinary amount of cutting-edge research in a wide variety of critically important fields, including energy and the biological sciences, is taking place here.

While I was roaming the campus, talking to students, professors and administrators, word came that scientists had put together a full analysis and a fairly complete fossilized skeleton of Ardi, who is known to her closest living associates as Ardipithecus ramidus. At 4.4 million years of age, this four-foot tall, tree-climbing wonder is now the oldest known human ancestor.

People in my dreams have started to use English in order to converse with me. I think that this isn’t a new thing. Other Israelis in Berkeley are probably asleep concurrently and that’s why I am getting no guest performances of my compatriots.

Excuse me for this idiotic reflection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/world/africa/12briefs-Zimbabwe.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mugabe%20prisons&st=cse

Isn’t it swell? Robert Mugabe can show California the light. You can call him inhumane all you like but this guy certainly knows how to relieve HIS prisons when he needs to. And of course, we shouldn’t forget that his challenge is much more substantial than California’s – after all, dealing with drug-related criminals, homeless felons and petty thieves is naught when compared to having to allocate cell space for hoards of dissident miserables.

Anyway, I say we try and organize educational expeditions to Zimbabwe for the rapid resolution of the prison crisis.

* just burned my hand on a potato. this is emblematic of life absent Y during the day. or in other words; when I don't go out I have to engage in such high risk tasks as fixing my own lunch.

I realized that it takes courage to become an expert in one's field.

Up until now it had been my mistaken impression that choosing a field to excel in would just tell you something, not altogether positive, about the expert's character; that it means a certain squarish tendency, but one which goes hand in hand with an ability to delve into the minutiae of a particular field of interest.

So, in a sense, I always appreciated these people as studious. And my mind had other variations for studious that sound less flattering: like narrow-minded, slavish, neatpicky and what have you. For myself, as my idea of the opposite of such people I reserved words that were my idea of antonyms of studious, for example, broad minded, fruitful, creative, etc. to suggest that those other people are a paritcular brand of ignorant, because their fascination with a singular stem of knowledge meant that they simply had no time to be interested in other things.

Now I've come to realize that in order to do what they do you need to believe in your ability to be THE expert, that there are high stakes to this approach and an admirable level of confidence. If you do achieve this goal you deserve appreciation for a remarkable project, but even if you don't, then at least you single out yourself as someone who was willing to set that mark for himself. Sorry, herself (and by the way, I no longer think this particular brand of academic affirmative action is idiotic).

* I'm only adding this line on top of what I really want to say here so that I don't feel like since this post is under 140 characters it is Twitter material instead of speaking, emailing, or posting material. The solution I had chosen for this media conflict, or in other words, the "Twitter sucks in all" trend, is to simply write a longer message. How is that for a pragmatic's cure? Incidently, I find it truly debilitating that North Korea twitted that it hoped that the world would be consistent in its reaction to S.K's attempted sattelite launch. And now to the gist:

Y has his first academic publication! It's a book chapter!

·  Yep, I’ve been keyboard-tied for reasons that were beyond my control. Now it’s going to be the flood of posts as of right now.

I believe closeness between friends is all about rhythm and not much more.

I can think of many examples but this is becoming clearer and clearer to me as I have more and more experience at living: when people have a matching pace in terms of the way they think and express themselves, which ultimately affects their verbal ping-pong they would have a better chance of becoming great friends. Character, interests, other aspects of demeanor have less to do with it.

* revolutions 33. great coffee joint, Albany.

So at first I thought lo-roza-lo-tzarich, as you would expect someone who has been given to my mother’s influence for years on end. What I meant by that was that the US as a country can forget about me. If they – meaning uncle Sam’s evil insurers - don’t want to give me what’s coming to me, then fine, I will simply pick up my diploma and flee to my beloved motherland where the flowers bloom and people are adequately insured.

Then I realized: I am in fact the quintessential American! I have insurance, and a good one for that matter, and it’s good for nothing!  And obviously, me, Tom, Dick and Harry never run from our troubles! We stay and make the world a better one. Or not.

It was flow and ebb for us today. One moment, we were the rulers of the world, the other moment we were wallowing in the mud of the earth. And when I say we were wallowing, I do not mean in the spa-sense of the word, I mean in the “down to dirt” sense: we became truly like carcasses excavated from peat bogs, bodies almost intact in their paleness.

Well, all that’s left for me is to try and portray the optimist. So how is the following for an optimist’s script?

“tomorrow is another day”

I am struggling to understand what stands in the way of female nudity.

I spent the day priding at Pride 09. I’ve probably seen a gazillion guys naked. Yes, I'd say that's a fair estimate. And not a naked boob in sight and I am not even mentioning The Full Monty (The Full Anette?).

Why is that?

I don’t think those girls I saw today are what one might call ‘conservative’: I did see girdles, net stockings, bikinis, leather, serpents, chains, etc. Nope, those girls were not exactly Chador clad, chastity belted, or Amish attired. In fact, many of the girls I’ve seen today are what some circles would dub ‘exhibitionists’. So, why didn't they show some nipple?

Y pointed out that there is less female nudity in Nudist beaches. True. But this is trying to say that women just don’t have the urge to walk around naked. Do you buy that? I don’t. I don't believe women fail to appreciate the unconquerable physical pleasure of having the wind caress the entire body, on all its nooks and creivces.

I am starting to think this is a worthy feminist goal – to start preaching nakedness. Seriously, it was hot today. Men took off their shirts because they were hot. Hot. Don’t females ever get hot? I know I was hot. (in fact, I am always hot ;) but that’s not what I mean). What is it then? In today’s environment I am pretty sure that women could pretty safely walk around completely naked.

Why don’t they? Why don’t we? Is it some type of morality which is poured down our throats throughout childhood which we just cannot get over? How come? We get over so many other things... Is it fear? I don’t think women have a reason to be afraid in broad day light among a zillion homosexuals. Is it duck skin? Come on, it was 90 degrees today! It isn't duck skin, or at least, duck skin is not the rule.

I’d love to hear an explanation. Or better yet, I’d love to have the guts to organize my own group of stark naked ladies to walk around bare-bottomed in the midst of the throngs. Maybe then women would be able to take their shirts off, drinking beer after a long day of working the fields. Ok. Maybe not the fields, maybe just after a strenuous paper-grading spurt.

I don't have the energy to start thinking about what it means (women being the odd ones out a-la-de beauvoir?, women still feeling uncomfortable?, etc. etc. etc.) I just think a nipple is a nipple is a nipple is a nipple. Let them march on.

Mother to Baby, overheard in Café Gratitude:

“You should try and savor the cookie”

“Treat it as though it were your last”

“the red” is now “the green”?

I realize that I shouldn’t be surprised. Did I think that only in America the venerable “airs of change” have been filterized into “let’s get the air clean”?

Berkeley’s admirable youths who labored to create a better world have become what can only be called environmental fascists, so why not Cohn-Bandit? Makes perfect sense.

Only I think it is lamentable. Our radicalism, its tools and subjects is being blunted. We are satiated revolutionaries. Is it possible that there is nothing else worth our (green) fighting energy?

Yet that’s not exactly the thing that bothers me. What bothers me is that Fascism – yes, I am exaggerating to make the point – is hiding behind a tree.

“pants dry trees die” doesn’t just exemplify that we are not operating in the right arena in order to make humans better inhabitants of the world. On top of that it illustrates how we treat one another. One coffee-shop patron is eyeing with suspicion the other patron’s pants for signs of dampness so as to see whether he is sitted next to a tree murderer. One neighbor polices another’s recycling habits by following him on his way to the trash can and looking in there to see his produce. Smokers can be terrorized on the street by wayfarers. Etc. In other words, our former social movements were not only much more diverse, but they had a side effect of cohesion. This one green social movement – the one and only – has one social side effect, decomposition. Maybe after it is decomposed it can be recycled. Who knows.

* from home. noon and a bit. sun. birds. deck. the whole shebang of pleasure

It wasn’t us, it was the stage.

We came over, rackets, balls and all feeling very professional performing our roles as serious players who have come to play a serious, albeit friendly, game. As soon as we got there we were notified by the doubles players playing the other court that ours is notoriously crooked. Pretty soon they realized why we embraced the crooked court. Obviously, under such condition I can neither serve, run nor answer any backhand balls. Wistfully I think of the glorious days in Europe where I played clay and consequently won the Roland-Garros. I told them, just so they know who they are talking to.

But what’s better than playing tennis at the Rose Garden in perfect weather!

* Inner Richmond, Bazaar Cafe'. Nice philosophy for a coffeeshop. I don't know if I haven't grown tired of ideological Americanos. Still, you have to appreciate the pretension.

I was glancing through the numbers of the Obama Poll.

Usually, I don’t have to poll myself. Usually, I know exactly what I think and I usually read the poll in order to comment out loud about the misleading nature of the way the questions are framed.

But this time was different. And it was different with regard to an issue tthat goes all the way down to “my trade”. In short, this is something that I should have more than the dilettante’s interest in, and yet I found the question to be very hard and marveled at the fact that people were able to offer a reply.

So, I am almost embarrassed to put this on paper: I don’t know what I think about “whether it is important that the congress know what Sotomayor’s views on abortion and affirmative action are”. Actually, you could put any other specific topic inside those ideological placeholders “abortion” and “affirmative action” and I wouldn’t know what I think.

Answering 'yes' means that we are not even shy about the fact that ideology is indiscernible from judgemanship. Do we truly thrust our hands over this idea unabashedly? Don’t we believe, somewhere, that the judicial arm is indeed an arm of government, but a critical arm, one that can sometimes rap the head in exasperation? Isn’t it important to extend the judiciary with at the very least a part time job of reviewing?

Evidently, there could have been much more moderate personifications of the same ideas. For example, that it is ok to care about the general political affiliation of the judge, but just the general affiliation. But to go to specifics, that is radical! It means that nothing but complete alignment, or at the very least, the tempered alignment achieved through the congressional bargaining is accepted.

I understand that this isn’t even a question from the viewpoint of Americans. I don’t see that this idea is criticized, and obviously it means exactly that that congress will inquire and expect a direct response from Sotomayor about all of these specific issues. Still, I think that general affiliation is the only legitimate information that doesn’t pertain to the professional expertise and that can be collected. In fact, perhaps I would agree that it must be submitted so that the judicial appointee doesn’t undercut the will of the people as is reflected by the congressional structure.

I think I think.

• Alameda. Noon. I had to restart my computer because of Babylon’s new technique – which they ought to be sued for – that is intended to persuade me to get Babylon 7.0 where I paid for a lifelong license to Babylon 6.0. Anyhow, while waiting for my computer to reinstate itself I glanced at the New York Times and saw this preposterous column in the business section, telling us about a first amendment challenge to the new tobacco regulations.  I just had to respond and so I am;

Tobacco regulation is expected to face a free speech challenge? Really? Is that what’s wrong with it? How about being afflicted with fascism? I have to be clear: I am not concerned that government is intervening too perniciously in the lives of individuals by adopting these regulations. It’s not the concern of a libertarian. I embrace any attempt by government to protect the public’s health, really I do. It’s just that I have a conspiracy theory about this: I believe that this is an initiative that originates from the same social trend that I find so noxious  which is the tendency to meddle in other people’s business under the pretense of promoting the greater good. Let my clarify: I am talking of the aggressive “suggestion” to recycle the rug we threw away, the disapproving cough you hear from the person standing behind you at the grocery shop when you decide you need a plastic bag instead of a paper one, the encouragement you receive from coffee-house toilets to wipe your hands on your pants instead of drying them on a paper towel, etc.

Now the violent regulation of smokers is that, only tenfold. People feel they truly have a right to aggressively regulate smokers because, quote on quote, they “endanger our children”. No less. And thus, we not only can, but must be rude to them, demand that they recline into closed confines, that the rest of the world won’t know that they exist. This is the true face of these regulations and it is far more pernicious than what it is made out to be. Let’s not get blinded by the sand casting of those 1^st amendment claims. It’s not rights that are being trampled, it is the entire social texture.

Is it possible that Judith Butler drives a Mazda MX Convertible?!?? I find it extremely hard to believe and yet in my courthouse we rely on eyewitness evidence, especially when it’s the court’s own (mine).

I am 70% sure:

ð  Subject Looked like Madame Butler. (funny, that sounds like i am discussing Vivian Leigh and actually, it would be less surprising to me to encounter Scarlet O'hara driving a Maz MX Conv through the streets of Berkeley)

ð   Subject was witnessed in Berkeley.

ð  Subject’s car had the Pride flag for a bumper sticker.

I am 30% baffled:

ð  How could it be that the revered scholar drives a Mazda MX?

ð  Witness viewed subject while making the long and strenuous bike drive from Milvia to the JSP program house. Witness may have been so exhausted as to lose control of her senses.

 I do believe that even suggesting that this is possible is as nefarious as to merit a libel suit.