So what have you been watching on TV lately?

You may have noticed I haven't been saying much about television lately. American Idol ended, and Joe Schmo was too tedious to watch. (A...

Ugly political imagery.

Last night I posted a couple of photographs of rather creepy posters seen in Madison. There was a third photograph I was going to include, o...

Adult friends ... and dolls from the 1950s.

Nina has a post on the When-Harry-Met-Sally topic of whether men can be decent friends for women. I'm not going to wade into that other...

Would we tell France to keep their Statue of Liberty?

So asks a letter writer to a newspaper in Jersey City, where there are second thoughts about a plan to install a 10-story tall sculpture on ...

Poster anomie.

Recently observed in Madison.

I hope Ray Bradbury is not being exploited.

Ray Bradbury did a phone interview with Andrea Mitchell on last night's Hardball. He's upset, as has been widely noted, that Michae...

Hallucinogenic carpeting as art.

If I were in NYC, I would love to see the big Grand Central carpet-installation-as-art-installation that is written up in today's Times...

Ridiculous product search unearths old memory.

I started out trying to dig up an explanation for sauerkraut juice to answer Nina's question : "Did people really once diet on saue...

Earthquake felt in Madison.

Last week, it was a tornado. Now, an earthquake . Personally, I was asleep when it happened, and I'm sorry I missed it. "Madison po...

That "girthy" frank.

I zap commercials, so how are you going to get me to watch a commercial? You can make it something that looks cool when fastforwarding, or y...

Artists, their Barbies, and the law.

Much as I feel I should carefully read the Supreme Court cases that came out today and provide some enlightenment on the subject, I am going...

The medical marijuana case.

The Supreme Court took cert . in Raich v. Ashcroft, the 9th Circuit medical marijuana case. Can Congress use the commerce power to criminali...

Supreme Court headlines.

SCOTUSblog announces : "Broad defeat for the government in the detention cases." CNN.com front page teaser is "Supreme Court...

What a strange world it is

where a gentle image is projected by, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger .

"Hitler Image Used in Bush Campaign Web Ad."

So reads a misleading headline to an AP article printed in today's NYT. Here's the key text: President Bush's campaign contains...

Searching "torture."

Looking for the URL for the article linked in the previous post (" Defining Torture: Russian Roulette, Yes. Mind-Altering Drugs, Maybe ...

Sunday morning with coffee and caramels.

The Sunday Times has been read, at least to the extent that I'm going to read it, and not counting the things I've set aside: the Bo...

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is well received in Madison.

Highlights from the article in the Capital Times: Tickets to the 7 p.m. show at Westgate Art Cinemas went on sale Tuesday and, according to...

Larry McMurtry raves (literally) about Clinton's book.

Here's a typical passage ( appearing in this Sunday's NYT Book Review): The very press that wanted to discredit him and perhaps eve...

A Saturday walk.

This mysterious graffiti appears with the saying "Don't stop dreaming." Grace Church on Capitol Square has a bubble machine go...

The Presidential face.

John Kerry was in attendance at the event discussed in the previous post, and I want to give him credit for not drinking in the adulation a...

9/11 is not a punchline.

For a long time after the events of September 11, 2001, I avoided using the shorthand "9/11" to refer to what had happened. Recent...

Slacker!

If there is one movie I have been hoping will be released on DVD, it's Slacker . Finally, it's coming out--in August--and, making it...

Around the fishbowl.

I decide to walk back from the café to my parking garage a different way, not down State Street, but around past Riley's Wines of the Wo...

What we might find funny.

The Black Table (via Throwing Things ) has a nice "entirely subjective list of major influences to what We Find Funny." The first...

Speaking of synonyms ...

the official term for Clinton's 957-page autobiography is " tome ." Oh, and I like the way Google helpfully asks me "Did ...

Gore and "brownshirts."

As discussed by James Lileks (via Instapundit ), Al Gore is calling his internet critics "brownshirts." Quite aside from the gene...

Blogger spellcheck humor.

The Blogger spellcheck suggests changing Instapundit to "Instability." Oh well, it doesn't recognize "Blogger" or ...

The Calabresi apology.

I see that Judge Calabresi " apologized 'profusely' yesterday for remarks he made last weekend at a lawyers convention compari...

Tornadoes in Madison.

It's official. We had tornadoes here in Madison on Wednesday night. They were just F0 tornadoes, but "[i]n the University Research ...

The fifteen minute eternity.

The AP reports (via Kausfiles ) that Clinton interviewed that "he still feels sorry for Lewinsky and hopes she 'won't be trapp...

Oh, okay, I'll take the inner child test.

Because everybody else is doing it. (Profs. Yin and Bainbridge .) My inner child is ten years old! The adult world is pretty irrelevant to ...

How Reagan and Clinton learned to think.

Edmund Morris spins a theory in this week's New Yorker about how Ronald Reagan came to think the way he did. It all started with nearsi...

Schwarzenegger's smoking tent.

I'm glad there are smoking bans in various public buildings and I wish people wouldn't smoke, but I can't help admiring Governor...

The Big Bang was completely silent.

But you can listen to it anyway.

It's a political thicket out there.

Reading about American constitutional law, one frequently sees the words "political thicket" (in the context of cautioning against...

Three signs.

Today started out lively with a two-hour class about the political question doctrine--with a room assignment screw-up to cut the seriousness...

Writing a great memoir.

I see Slate's Summary Judgment used brackets in the middle of the Clinton "My Life" title in pretty much the same way I did ...

"My [Lackluster] Life."

Nina records the complete inactivity surrounding the huge stack of Clinton books at the big Borders bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. UPDATE...

That Calabresi remark about Hitler and Mussolini.

Prof. Yin invites me to comment on "Judge Calabresi's intemperate remarks" at an American Constitution Society convention (pa...

"Fahrenheit 911" and theaters.

I see the Michael Moore film is opening in Madison on Friday, playing in the very theaters where a significant documentary would normally p...

"A sinister exercise in moral frivolity."

Christopher Hitchens has some choice harsh words from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic ...

Two men who didn't want to say two words.

So today Larry Hiibel enters Supreme Court history , aptly taking his place alongside Michael Newdow in the same volume of U.S. Reports: th...

Clinton and Rather on 60 Minutes.

Clinton is a charming guy. I have no criticism of his 60 Minutes performance in pursuit of books sales--other than that he needs to control ...

Mellified man.

Yesterday at Borders, I got completely absorbed reading " Stiff ," by Mary Roach. I happened to open it up in the middle, which is...

The Aileen Wuornos documentary.

Speaking of documentaries, I recently watched the DVD of " Aileen - Life and Death of a Serial Killer " which is truly harrowing. ...

The most eagerly anticipated movie in years.

Not since " Waking Life " have I wanted to see a new movie as much as "Some Kind of Monster," about which there is a nic...

The mellow side of Trent Lott.

Deborah Solomon interviews Trent Lott in the NYT Magazine: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children? It's so importa...

"I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life/Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone."

Is the title of Bill Clinton's autobiography based on the Billy Joel song with the same title? (Hey, Billy Joel should go all Ray Bradb...

Can Clinton help us love Kerry?

In today's NYT, John Tierney conveys an expert psychologist's advice to John Kerry. The expert is Drew Westen, a psychologist at Em...

The mystery of the humps: learning to love the valley.

The previous post reminds me of something very important about doing well on law school exams (at least mine). Frequently, students interpre...