Light The Canons

If you are concerned about the viability of federal government employee blogs (and blawgs), and in particular those of federal judicial clerks, get on over to this lengthy, thoughtful and oft-updated post from The Curmudgeonly Clerk, and click all the links. I agree with Howard and TCC that preapproval appears to be needed to comply with Canon 4 of the Code of Conduct For Judicial Employees. I also have to say that some of the rigors of the Canons seem to me a little like losing those last five pounds—great if you can do it, perhaps regrettable yet understandable if you can't. (If I had to avoid the "appearance of impropriety" every day, I'd probably never leave the house. But never leaving the house has its own appearance issues I suppose...)

TCC makes the fine point that writing is writing, and there's no reason to treat it differently because it appears on a weblog. This too captures my sentiments: "[T]he curtailment of blogging by those affiliated with the government is more likely to assure that the views of those familiar with and sympathetic to the government are absent than to achieve any other aim." (By the way TCC, that's not cursoriness, it's pith.) ;-)

RYB* Auto-Discovery

Perfectly Sassy (A Sassy Lawyer in Philippine Suburbia), on learning she's a blawger: "I just checked my ranking in Google and my individual pages outrank the Philippine local dailies. Wow."

*Right On, You're Blawging

The Professor And The Dean

Howard Dean is up and writing—out of the gate, about media deregulation—at Professor Lessig's: "James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power. No consolidated economic power has more opportunity to do this than the consolidated power of media."

Over at The Screen Savers, today's poll asks "Could a Web-only campaign win the Presidency?" Current results: 25% Yes, 75% No.

Functionality Karma

Fix a few, break a few. In theory, there is a fleeting, blissful state when all elements of one's life function harmoniously. In practice, that condition violates so many recognized and as yet undiscovered laws of physics that were it to occur, one's being would shrink to a tiny pulsing glow around the former navel area, and pop suddenly off into the ether. Anecdotal proof:

Working (by 7/14, 7:00 a.m.)

• Blogger in Safari. Publishing interface on a browser tab, side by side with other Web pages. Very nice.


• Maxtor external firewire drive, nonfunctional on the floor for four months, now happily gobbling iMovie projects.


• Virtual PC 6. Why? To retain access to years of Windows-formatted Quicken data, and to my CD-ROM law library via Premise (which is OS X challenged; I'm OS 9 challenged). Don't yet know if it'll turn out to be practical for these purposes; it's riillly slow.

Broken (by 7/14, 7:30 a.m.)

• Hot water heater.


• Dishwasher.


• Sprinklers. (Flooding.)


• Cordless phone.


• Terminix. (Ants. Everywhere.)

All is, in other words, perfectly normal and in relative balance, and any extraneous good karma has better things to do.

What He Said

John Palfrey has a fine follow-up to his recent RSS copyright post, including this observation: "I very often hear technical people rely on fair use as a reason for doing something, and those people are almost always overstating its reach." Yep. Go read.