An article in the Harvard Crimson today is titled: "Committee Approves Porn Magazine: H Bomb will feature nude pictures of undergraduates."

The Committee on College Life (CCL) voted to approve a student-run magazine that will feature nude pictures of Harvard undergraduates... as an official Harvard publication.... In order to avoid liability, students will not be able to take nude pictures inside of Harvard buildings.

My initial reaction was that this must be a joke. It appears not to be. I understand the whole free speech thing, and I'm not saying this should be illegal. But can anyone possibly make the argument that this is a good idea?

Perhaps I should go to bed earlier. Less than a week after I first saw Halliburton's "We do good things, honest!" advertisement during The Daily Show, I tuned in tonight only to confronted with the face of the current CEO.

I was too dumbfounded to tape the commercial so I could transcribe it here verbatim, but luckily it was announced in a company press release. The essence of the message is that despite what Halliburton's detractors might say, the company is doing a great job in Iraq. In a war zone, things might go wrong, but Halliburton's right there to fix 'em.

Two remarks stuck out particularly. "We’re serving the troops because of what we know, not who we know," and relatedly, "for 60 years for both political parties." The "who we know," everyone knows about. The "both political parties" reminded me of an LBJ tale:

Eugene Volokh thinks that this argument from Dahlia Lithwick's article on Bush and the FMA is strange:

The political reality is even more compelling: A Defense of Marriage Amendment would enshrine, for the first time, language of intolerance and exclusion in a document that was intended to set forth basic rights. Does President Bush really want to be remembered as the guy who first used the Constitution to codify bigotry?

Professor Volokh thinks it is strange because President Bush obviously doesn't think of it as bigotry. I think it is strange for another reason. Lithwick seems to have forgotten a couple of passages that went like this:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

Little thing called slavery. Some would call that "language of intolerance and exclusion in a document that was intended to set forth basic rights." I'm not disagreeing with the spirit of Lithwick's argument (at least not in this post), just the hyperbole.

UPDATE: Speaking of hyperbole, look at her first sentence:

[T]he fight over gay marriage will polarize this nation in ways that will make the abortion rights battle fade to a happy memory...

Uh huh. Don't mean to pile on Lithwick, she gets a lot of flak. But that is really dumb.

Professor Bainbridge posts on the Federal Marriage Amendment today and, in so doing, makes Bush's case far better than Bush ever could. Unfortunately, he takes things out of context in order to pretend that Bush even wants to be making his preferred point. Bainbridge discusses Bush's marriage lecture from the State of the Union, where Bush said:

Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

The New York Times has an article about the difficulties of selling homes when the owners smoke and the house smells. An issue I'd never thought about, and I'm as anti-smoking as anyone you'll find.

The first draft of my next paragraph read like this: "I'm setting myself up for a fight here, but this just reinforces in my mind the stupidity of the whole issue -- why haven't we banned cigarettes already?"

And then I wrote something about how I don't care so much what people choose to do to themselves, but, come on, secondhand smoke sucks. Banning smoking in bars and restaurants has made them so much more pleasant.

And then I realized: you know what, that was enough for me. I'm thrilled it's been banned in bars and restaurants. Since then, I really don't encounter people smoking all that often. So I'm cool. I don't feel the need to make the ban cigarettes argument. Do what you want, I just won't buy your house.

But in case you want to make the argument...

That's right, it has arrived. Mozilla Firefox. Download it. Use it. Love it.

Victoria's Secret PINK (TM), Glamour by Victoria's Secret (TM), even Such a Flirt (TM) were OK. How often were other people going to want to use those phrases? But now Victoria's Secret has gone too far: they've trademarked the phrase "Very Sexy."

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines trademarks as

protect[ing] words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of the goods. Trademarks, unlike patents, can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in commerce.

Victoria's Secret is not averse to bringing lawsuits to protecting its trademarks, even if it hasn't been successful in its more dubious stretches of logic. Victor's Little Secret was merely hypothetical dilution. A company that makes any products that plausibly could be made by Victoria's Secret (which already has lines of women's apparel, accessories and cosmetics) and markets them as being "Very Sexy" would make a more difficult case -- one that should have been averted by not granting the trademark of such a common phrase to begin with.

Arts & Letters Daily points to an interesting article on the "nuances of gay identities", describing "the gay lexicon".

Someone who is "genderqueer," for example, views the gender options as more than just male and female or doesn't fit into the binary male-female system. A "trannydyke" is a transgender person (whose gender is different than the one assigned at birth) attracted to people with a more feminine gender, while a "pansexual" is attracted to people of multiple genders. A "boi" describes a boyish gay guy or a biological female with a male presentation; and "heteroflexible" refers to a straight person with a queer mind-set.

Read the article for more from the lexicon. What's interesting to me is how the lexicon has evolved. The article offers a partial explanation:

For those back in the linguistic dark ages still wondering what's wrong with "homosexual," the evolution of queer identity language has progressed something like this: "Homosexual" sounded pathological and clinical, so activists went about creating their own words, starting with "gay" and "lesbian." That was well and good, but terms like "dyke" and "queer" had an appealing spikiness and served double-duty by stripping the sting from words that had heretofore been considered unspeakably nasty.

Nalinaksha Bhattacharyya posted a short and interesting paper today on the economics of student evaluations titled Student Evaluations and Moral Hazard. Here's a bit from the abstract:

Most universities solicit feedback from students at the end of a course in order to assess student perceptions about the course. This feedback is put to various uses, and increasingly, in many universities this feedback is used by academic administrators to evaluate teaching. One would therefore expect faculty to rationally take this into account while formulating their teaching strategy. In certain cases, such strategic considerations can give rise to moral hazard.

The problem is modeled using the Prisoner's Dilemma game. The basic finding is that, given a particular academic scheme, teachers may be influenced to move towards the short-term optimal but long-term sub-optimal teaching method (where the optimal result is defined as the long-term learning interest of the students) after considering the potential implications of being assessed poorly in student evaluations.

Geneva Overholser, currently a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, formerly editor of The Des Moines Register, ombudsman of The Washington Post and editorial board member of The New York Times, returned to the editorial pages of the Times Friday to shake her finger at Robert Novak over Plamegate.

As a piece of journalism, the Novak column raises disturbing ethical questions. He apparently turned a time-honored use of confidentiality — protecting a whistleblower from government retribution — on its head, delivering government retribution to the whistleblower instead. Worse, he enabled his sources to illegally divulge intelligence information.

How busy are busy people? How many productive hours do productive people spend being productive every week? How much television do they watch? How many hours do they sleep? How many hours do they daydream? E-mail? Eat? Shower? How many of the hours at their desks are they shopping online, or playing solitaire, or just staring at the wall?

These aren't rhetorical questions. I'm really wondering. Because you know how you'll sit down for a few hours sometimes, do a couple of hours of productive work and spend a couple of hours basically not -- is that good? Is it bad? Should I feel grateful or guilty? I have no idea. Anyone?

Here's a funny cartoon in the San Francisco Chronicle comics section about John Kerry's did-he-Botox-or-not.

Someone is having far too much fun in his most recent article, which is short and quite humorous. I personally think he's trying to giving Jeremy a run for his money.

I wanted to take a moment to make sure everyone is aware of our policy on comments:

Offensive, insulting, off-topic, or otherwise obnoxious comments will be summarily deleted and those who write them may be banned without warning.

This is going to be enforced. Our comments section has generally been about as friendly and interesting as such things can be when topics of controversy are at issue. But from time to time, and several times this week, someone uses the anonymity, distance, and safety of the internet to employ tones, words, and ideas that are unacceptably hostile and insulting, either towards myself, one of my co-bloggers, or another commenter.

This is a place that promotes discussion. We have discussed turning off comments in the past and have always reached a consensus that we are better off for having them. But this is not a public street corner, this is our website. It is created and maintained with our energy and money. When someone leaves a hostile, insulting, or obnoxious comment, it is disrespectful of that. In addition, it makes the target of such comments (including myself) less likely to come and share their thoughts here, and I don't want hecklers and bullies chilling debate. You can tell me I'm wrong six ways to Sunday, but do it politely or not at all.

So if you're one of the few who have left such comments here, or if you're ever tempted to be hostile or insulting, please don't. Just spend a few seconds, re-word your thoughts to be more constructive, and you will always be welcome here.

While looking for a summer sublet for my stay in DC, I came across this very strange classified ad and thought it was worth a few laughs:

PLEASE: NO " PROFESSIONAL " PEOPLE. We are looking for simple people. Everywhere we look at the advertisement for people looking for rooms, all we see are people that advertise themselves as either " law students " or " professional " We do not see people advertise themselve as " poor students/interns " or " broken and lost human seeking room " Can you tell us: Why everyone advertises his or herself as a law student in order to get attention? Do you think a landlord would not rent you a room if you do not tell them that you are a "law student" or "professional"?

Anyway, we have rooms available immediately, but we want simple, low maintenance, easy living people. People that want comfortable and safe place to stay, not anything luxury. Some of you have gone to those developing countries as volunteers, Peace Corps, missionery, sleeping in mosquitoes nets in the mudhouses and bamboo shacks helping those people in those thirdword countries. You had experiences with difficult life. You are the kind of people that we want, so come to live with us. We do not want any spoiled and rich people who want only luxurious things, (we do not have that for you anyway) We want a kind of struggling, easy-living people who would not mind crashing on a very comfortable sofa and live very comfortably for FREE, you do not need to pay anything to live here. Free fast internet for you all day all night. Free telephone calls, and extremely cheap telephone calls to your countries in Europe & Russia.

Is this the return of communal living? Is Yekaterina Novosibriskareva really an ex-KGB agent trying to position herself to corrupt America's youth? Should this anti-materialist invective be welcomed on Craigslist, that bastion of free market ideals? We report, you decide.

The New York Times has an article about gay penguins, bonobos, gulls, and dolphins. Seems to me that both sides of any debate about homosexuality could use this stuff to its advantage -- "look, animals do it" / "but we should know better than animals" / "but that means it's natural" / "so is eating your own feces" (or, the examples the article more politely uses, killing babies and abandoning the elderly).

I think the Animal Planet network could get about a dozen new television shows out of this revelation, though, including a gay animal dating show, a sitcom called "My Big Fat Obnoxious Gay Dog," and "Queer Penguin for the Straight Penguin," where heterosexual penguins get makeovers, learn to cook, and get newly-redecorated ice-houses to live in, along with a free DVD of the documentary "Winged Migration," courtesy of the Culture Penguin.

Ohio's got another big black mark working against it now. It already had too many.

Read about the governor's signing here.

UVA history professor and NAACP chairman Julian Bond recently announced, "I support gay civil marriage." While African American churches are often noted as being strongly opposed to gay equality, Bond is hardly alone. The National Black Justice Coalition counts Coretta Scott King, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Dr. Joycelyn Elders among "Our Supporters."

Some of the explanations given by these supporters are interesting:

Frequent commenter (and fellow Arsenal fan) TolucaJim has started his own blog, titled The Visible Hand. In addition to excellent coverage of Arsenal (any stateside coverage of Arsenal counts as excellent), he's got posts on Maurice Clarett and the guy I would take with the #1 NFL draft pick, Gov. Howard Dean.

Having briefly pondered Chekhov's views on the transitory nature of societal values and wisdom, I thought I'd throw open the question for discussion. One hundred years ago, it was widely believed that blacks were an inferior race, that racial purity must be maintained, that all women should stay at home, and so on. They likely did not have much hope of flight, either in the air or in space. They didn't have antibiotics. We look back on these things, and most of us shake our heads, either in disgust at their values or mild amusement at their limited understanding of science. I look back on 1904 and most envy the lack of urban sprawl, and am most disgusted at their racial policies.

Yet how will we be viewed in one hundred years? Here's the game I'd like to play, if you'd all be so obliged: name the one thing about America as it is now that the America (if it exists as such) of 2104 will look back on with the most admiration/envy/nostalgia, and the one thing the America of 2104 will look back on with the most disgust/pity.

I think people will be nostalgic for the days before total information awareness eliminated privacy, and disgusted at our massive consumption of nonrenewable resources and creation of garbage and waste.

UPDATE: Micah at Crooked Timber has posted his thoughts, and his commenters have interesting things to say as well.

A Tennessee woman named Terri Carlin has filed a class action lawsuit against Viacom, CBS, MTV, Janet Jackson, and Justin Timberlake in response to The Incident that occurred during half-time of the Super Bowl. Here are excerpts from some of the more interesting factual allegations:

11. The corporate defendants...committed acts which constitute extreme and outrageous conduct which went beyond the bounds of deceency and which defendants knew or should have known was conduct considered atrocious and utterly intolerable in American communities. Defendants knew or should have known that such conduct would cause average members in American communities to immediately react in outrage upon seeing the incident.

Bob Dole was terrific on tonight's Daily Show, but my attention was permanently distracted by a commercial I saw during the second break. It was for Halliburton. At first, what with its being on Comedy Central, I assumed it was a fake ad of the sort Saturday Night Live might do.

Yet there was no punchline. The commercial ended with a fresh faced young soldier on the phone, joyfully telling his brothers-in-arms, "It's a girl!" while the voiceover explained that Halliburton helped bring our servicemen and women a little closer to home. The final shot was "Halliburton: Proud to Serve Our Troops."

Apparently the advertisement has been on TV for a few months now, but this was my first viewing. Perhaps the Washington D.C. area recently has become as important a market for a government contractor as San Diego, CA is. Or The Daily Show is now watched by as many movers-and-shakers as are CNN and the other cable news channels.

Regardless, you can't fault Halliburton's moxie. To air this commercial when the Justice Department and SEC have asked for a report on its Nigerian dealings; when it has to reimburse the government for $27.4 million in wrongly billed food services; when the Pentagon has ended its contract to import fuel to Iraq in the wake of allegations that it had overcharged by over $61 million; when 60 Minutes runs a special on Halliburton's violating the prohibition against American companies' doing business with terror-sponsoring regimes... publicizing Halliburton even more takes guts. Or something.

The relatively new Jurist Law Reporting Blog has a reaction to Howard Bashman's 20 Questions with Judge Reinhardt:

I am unsympathetic to federal judges' complaints about salaries -- they should try to live on a state judge's salary, or a court clerk's.

And a follow-up:

Figure it this way: a judge has a lifetime appointment. I'm not sure the current salary, maybe its $160,000. Suppose a judge who is 65. He has an estimated lifespan of about 15 years. That's as much as saying that he has an annuity of 15 $160,000 "coupons." Discount it at five percent and you come up with an age-65 value of about $1.66 million. A lot of Americans would love to have that much in their 401(k).

I'm just a lowly law student, but come on! Yes, a lot of Americans would love to have that in their 401Ks, but a lot of Americans aren't being entrusted with the responsibilities we put on the shoulders of federal judges. It's nonsense to pay a 3rd or 4th year associate at a big law firm the same as we pay a federal judge. I'm not saying federal judges are the only underpaid people around -- teachers, state judges (I'm guessing from the first quote). No, I don't lose sleep over it, but come on. Just because other people are underpaid too, doesn't mean that federal judges aren't!

(VERMONT) "Wardrobe malfunction" was the term Howard Dean's advisors used to explain why he bared his breast during his concession speech following tonight's primary returns.

There were signs that this was not an accident. It happened during the portion of Dean's stump speech known among his supporters as "Rock Your Vote," in which he promises his supporters to "have you naked by the end of this cadence of standard political rhetoric." Dean's press director had told an MSNBC correspondent to expect "some shocking moments." And some Dean supporters were, no doubt, disappointed to see that it was only his breast that was exposed, and that his nipple was covered by a hanging chad.

It was a disappointing night for the former Vermont governor, who had once hoped to clinch the nomination with the round of contests tonight. Instead, it became just another in a series of campaign missteps. Dean was apologetic: "sometimes our emotions just get the breast -- er, best -- of us."

Here's the headline for a development in the Texas prosecution against Joanne Webb for promotion of sex toys:

Judge issues temporary gag order in sex toys arrest case

Interesting choice of words, from a Corpus Christi newspaper. The paper might consider putting some more distance between "gag order" and "sex toys," unless its reporters want actual firsthand contact with Texan obscenity prosecution.

Thanks to Freespace for the pointer.

The Associated Press reports that a gay student lost his scholarship to Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary, after coming out of the closet to his friends last year. The Dallas Voice has more information.

The seminary, unlike the military, has no Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. When school officials met with Matt Bass, "he would not answer questions about his lifestyle but acknowledged that he supports gay rights and marriage." At the end of that fall semester, he lost the Truett-Baptist General Convention of Texas scholarship that had enabled him to afford tuition.

The seminary's dean compares homosexuality to alcoholism, although apparently without proof that Bass is sexually active. The pastor of Bass's Baptist church reportedly knows Bass is gay and "doesn't make a big deal about it."

Baylor's student handbook broadmindedly includes incest, adultery and fornication (all sex outside marriage) along with "homosexual acts" under the sexual misconduct policy. Dancing on campus -- even by opposite-sex partners -- used to be forbidden as well.

Despite chuckles over warning labels, there appears to be a new one out there: "This Lawyer May Require Additional Lawyers."

No anthrax. No ricin. Per this article in The Washington Post:

The three Senate office buildings will be closed today as authorities continue investigating the powder found in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, which tested positive yesterday for the lethal poison ricin.

A pointer from Volokh sent me over to Wacky Warning Labels, a site that gives out awards for dumb warnings on consumer products. My link sends you to the past winners page, which is funnier (and longer) than the page with this year's winners, but you can find those here. Funny stuff.

Speaking of funny stuff, and since this isn't self-promotion, I feel like it's OK: a friend of mine who's a very talented writer wrote tonight's episode of "Yes, Dear" at 8:00 (eastern) on CBS. It's his first episode. Check it out. Especially if you have a Nielsen Box. Seriously, he's a talented writer, and a real nice guy, and I know I'll be watching. UPDATE: Hope you watched. It was really funny.

The Brothers Volokh are getting a kick out of some new blog, Proculian Meditations, which describes itself as "Uncontrolled outbursts and intemperate remarks by an angry untenured law professor." Here's a sample of what you'll find over there:

Eugene Volokh cunningly posts criticisms of right-wing nutcases like Irving Kristol on the issues that don't threaten the fundamental interests of the ruling class. Do not be deceived. The so-called "reasonable right" is actually the "dangerous right." So-called "libertarians" exist because it is in the interests of the ruling class to detach social issues like gay rights from the only issue that really counts, class struggle.

According to the author, Randy Barnett is "crypto-anarchist, pseudo-libertarian," and Judge Kozinski a "[n]ew age neanderthal." The Volokhs seem to see the humor in this, but Sasha adds:

If ever I have unintentionally taken for granted the gift that Howard Bashman has given the law, I apologize. Between Judge Posner's 20 Questions and today's installment featuring Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Bashman's mission to help foster a better understanding of the law -- exemplified daily by his service in producing How Appealing -- is clearly a truly remarkable success. Where else would you ever find this, from Judge Reinhardt:

Unfortunately, the policy of "judicial restraint" that we were told would result from this transformation [in the judiciary from the appointments of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush] has paradoxically resulted in an increasingly active judiciary, willing to strike down a litany of congressional laws and executive regulations that previously would have been considered unexceptional. The casualty of this movement has been the concern for social justice and individual rights that once served as the guiding principle of the judicial branch.

And as for the high "reversal rate" of the Ninth Circuit by the Supremes:

It is not . . . our job to anticipate when the current justices of the Supreme Court will cut back on individual rights and to rush to do the dirty deed for them.

I've been doing less online shopping than usual lately due to impending unemployment and tuition, so I may have been the last Amazon customer to have noticed this:

Presidential Candidates
Amazon.com takes the friction out of grass roots contributions to presidential candidates. A 1-Click payment is the easiest way to make a contribution -- from $5 to $200.

Technically, not all of the candidates have given Amazon permission to facilitate their intake of funds -- neither LaRouche, Fellure nor the incumbent has -- but Amazon claims to be seeking permission from every candidate who meets their criteria. For more information, check out the FAQs.

Professor Solum's latest Legal Theory Lexicon entry on Speech Acts is a must read. Here's a taste from the introduction:

Legal theorists are interested in speech act theory for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important is that speech act theory helps to explain the way that the law uses language. Statutes, holdings, and constitutional provisions aren't like "the cat is on the mat." That is, a statute does not tell us how the world is in the same way that a declaratory sentence does. Legal language is full of speech acts. This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon provides a rough and ready introduction to speech act theory pitched at law students (especially first-year law students) with an interest in legal theory.

If you've missed any past entries to the Legal Theory Lexicon, you can catch up at the Legal Theory Lexicon Blog. Aside from being an incredible resource, the Legal Theory Lexicon Blog stands alone, in my opinion, as one of the top 10 blogs in the 'sphere.

Not even two weeks ago, I mentioned here that I was blogging again at my solo site. Well, if you try to visit that site now you'll see that it's been abandoned. I don't want to go into specifics, but, because of my last name being the address, its high placement in the search engines when my last name is entered, and interest from someone close to me, I've decided to relinquish control of the site and hand it over for a family related use. I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but if it does readers of this blog will almost certainly not be interested in its new content. If for some reason you were reading that blog, you can continue at my old Law and Economics Blog. I'm sorry for another change, but this time it's not me being fickle!