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Friday Follies 2.12

Why people hate us lawyers: Jennifer Walzer was charged $6,000 for a review of a sublease. The bill included a $60 charge for responding to a courtesy e-mail she sent that she would review the lawyer’s comments when she returned to the office. Billed as taking 12 minutes, the response said, “I hope everything is […]

Booking Through Thursday: And God said

God* comes to you and tells you that, from this day forward, you may only read ONE type of book–one genre–period, but you get to choose what it is. Classics, Science-Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Cookbooks, History, Business … you can choose, but you only get ONE.

What genre do you pick, and why?

*Whether […]

April: A cruel month for historians?

April isn’t ending well for a couple of historians.

Orlando Figes, a University of London professor who specializes in Russian history, was identified as the author of some scathing reviews of other historians’ books on Amazon. Figes originally claimed his wife wrote the the reviews but now has ‘fessed up. But that does not […]

Is violence the legal equivalent of obscenity?

Whether violence is a functional equivalent of obscenity may be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yesterday, the Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of a California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, a law predicated in part on the Court’s obscenity jurisprudence.

The California statute defines a […]

Musing Mondays: War

Rebecca asks: With yesterday being Anzac Day, I thought I’d ask a theme question this week. Are you a reader of war books? And if so, do you have any favourites?

I decided to respond to this meme in large part because I just finished Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl […]