Listen for the Fat Lady

Yogi Berra, my dad's favorite baseball player, is credited with saying "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." That's my view on sports and why football frustrates me. I'm there till the buzzer sounds or the horsehide smacks leather for the final out. Come rain or come shine, blow out or nail-biter, I'm there till the end. The Missus hates it. But every once in a while, I get vindicated.

She admits I got vindicated at a game we went to last July.

And I got vindicated last night. Down 10-1 going into the bottom of the seventh, the Orioles kept plugging away, small-ball style. Five in the seventh, five in the eighth (only three by homer), and the Orioles pulled off the biggest comeback in franchise history, winning 11-10. Of interest to trivia hounds like me, the previous team record also came against the Pinko Bostons way back on September 2, 1956, when they overcame an 8-0 deficit after two innings to win 11-10.

That is part of why I love baseball. It doesn't matter what the score is, you've got time to make it up. Even if you're down 30-3.

Wash Your Hands Less

For your edification:

Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed.

Michael Crichton, State of Fear (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 455.

Thank you, Dr. Crichton, for everything you gave us.

Tales in Avacado

As I inch closer to 400 posts and 16,000 visitors, I feel the desire to take stock in my life. Not because I think I have any good insight for you, my faithful and haphazard readers, but because I like taking stock. Maybe we can add your experience to my experience, and together we can solve all the problems of the world.

Our lives are full of significant dates. I was thinking about mine. In no particular order, these are ones that seem significant to me:

• April 2, 2001: the day I ran into The Missus during a fire drill and decided to make her The Missus
• May 21, 2004: the day I made The Missus The Missus
• March 2, 1993: the day she (not The Missus) waved me across and then ran me over
• August 12, 1994: the day John Kruk said $13,000 a game wasn't enough

I posted about August 12, 1994, two and a half years ago, so I'll try not to be redundant. Succinctly, baseball---who had me from Jesse Barfield and the 1989 Blue Jays---slapped me in the face. I beat my bullies by avoiding them, so that fall (sixth grade), I discovered comic books and really picked up a pencil for the first time. By the end of eighth grade, I knew drawing wasn't in my future, so that summer I picked up a guitar. By my junior year in high school, I knew being a rock star wasn't in my future, so I picked up a law book. (Not really. I just phrased it that way for the sake of parallelism.) I still haven't given up on that dream, but in May of 2003, I picked up Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and really read a book for the first time. I decided I wanted to make a living telling stories. In truth, if you want to tell stories, you become a trial lawyer. It's the easiest way.

So now here I am. No ball skilz, some word skilz, mad trial skilz, and John Grisham dreams. There's only one Grisham, but maybe one day you'll see my name in raised letters on a trade paperback in Barnes & Noble. Here's hoping.

Maryland is the new Louisiana

Maryland is a disturbingly (awesomely?) common law state. You remember those crazy concepts we learned in first year where Prof. ____ said "But don't worry about it. It's a common law concept, and nobody really follows it anymore." S/he forgot to add the words "except Maryland."

Examples:

• contributory negligence and assumption of the risk as absolute bars to recovery are alive and well in the Old Line State
• the Model Penal Code and it's four mental states are frowned upon in favor of the classic triumvirate of specific intent, malice, and general intent
• Daubert and its progeny are laughed at in favor of the classic "general acceptance" test
• judges wear powdered wigs and lawyers wear formal attire in court and trill their R's

I love it.

Insightful Lawyer Joke

So three guys---a mathematician, a philosopher, and a lawyer---are in Hell when their numbers get called for furlough. They show up at the furlough board's reception desk and are told that they will be granted furlough if they can answer one easy question. The mathematician offers to go first and goes into the board's conference room. He takes a seat, and the board chair asks him, "What is 2 + 2?"

"Well," said the mathematician, "if you're confining your question to the realm of whole numbers, the answer is 4."

"Very good," replied the chairman. "Please send in the philosopher."

The philosopher sits down, and the chairman asks him the same question: "What is 2 + 2?"

"Ah yes," said the philosopher, leaning back and scratching his chin. "Assuming an objective reality exists, then 2 + 2 ought to be 4."

"Very good," replied the chairman. "Please send in the lawyer."

Like the others, the lawyer walks in to the room and takes a seat. The chairman asks the lawyer the very same question: "Counselor, what is 2 + 2?"

The lawyer looks at the chairman, then at the other members of the board. He leans forward conspiratorially. "That depends," he says, raising an eyebrow. "What do you want it to be?"

* * *

Some say the hallmark of good lawyering is the ability to argue any side to any issue. Maybe in developing that skill, we lose touch with objective reality.

That is assuming, of course, that there is one. Without any clients, I'm just not sure.

Plumbers Without Borders

For those about to plumb: I salute you.

On the train this morning, I was reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear and gazing out the windows at Lake Roland and the beautiful woods around the light rail. I was thinking about how sometimes it's hard to remember why you're doing what you're doing. It's especially hard when you're doing something either boring or unglamorous. And as we passed over some nasty creek (river?), I thought about cholera.

Cholera kills you by giving a serious case of the solid runs. Well, not quite solid. Anyway, your bowels move so much, so frequently, and so intensely that you lethally dehydrate, sometimes within four hours. The disease essentially spreads through infected water. The cycle goes something like this. I get infected. I get seriously bad diarrhea. Somehow, my infected diarrhea gets in contact with your water supply. You drink some water (or eat food washed in water). You get infected. You get seriously bad diarrhea. Et cetera ad nauseum. As you can imagine, this can be a really bad problem in the developing world.

When a pandemic strikes, we usually look to doctors to fix the problem. And they do a great job, but somebody else does enormously important preventative work. Arguably the most effective way of preventing the spread of cholera is water purification. That involves both purifying the water supply and keeping the water supply pure. Who's best at making that happen? You got it. The members of our local United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters.

Thanks, UAll.* Keep keeping us safe from cholera and Montezuma's revenge.

*Haha, sorry. Couldn't resist.

Michael Crichton's Prey: 4/5

One of my favorite things about reading novels and watching movies is when a movie or book attacks me with some new idea I've never thought of. That's probably the main reason I enjoy reading Michael Crichton. Some people don't like his style or his somewhat formulaic approach, but I don't read his novels for either style or innovation. I read them because (a) when they're fun, they're really fun and (b) they have some very thought-provoking ideas hiding underneath them.

I just finished reading his 2002 novel Prey. The basic concept is that a defense contractor develops nanotechnology to use for reconnaissance. Through some interestingly developed techno talk, we learn that Xymos, the evil bad guy corp, breaks all kinds of labor laws---including my favorite and yours, the 13th Amendment---by employing bacteria on the assembly line. Well, as usually happens, the nanotechnology gets out of control, learns how to self-sustain, evolves, and then tries to take over the world.

What's new about that? Well, just this. Crichton talks a lot about swarm intelligence. Swarm intelligence is, basically, the notion that a few simple rules can be followed by very simple creatures to accomplish amazingly complex things. Which brings me to an interesting idea . . .

If you want to think of it that way, a human being is actually a giant swarm. Or more precisely, it's a swarm of swarms, because each organ---blood, liver, kidneys---is a separate swarm. What we refer to as a "body" is really the combination of all these organ swarms.

We think our bodies are solid, but that's only because we can't see what is going on at the cellular level. If you could enlarge the human body, blow it up to a vast size, you would see that it was literally nothing but a swirling mass of cells and atoms, clustered together into smaller swirls of cells and atoms.

Who cares? Well, it turns out a lot of processing occurs at the level of the organs. Human behavior is determined in many places. The control of our behavior is not located in our brains. It's all over our bodies.

So you could argue that "swarm intelligence" rules human beings, too. Balance is controlled by the cerebellar swarm, and rarely comes to consciousness. Other processing occurs in the spinal cord, the stomach, the intestine. A lot of vision takes place in the eyeballs, long before the brain is involved.

Stay with me now.

So there's an argument that the whole structure of consciousness, and the human sense of self-control and purposefulness, is a user illusion. We don't have conscious control over ourselves at all. We just think we do.

Just because human beings went around thinking of themselves as "I" didn't mean it was true.

Could this explain why psychology is a two-way mirror? It seems like we can always look at our friends and neighbors and pick out their problems (and solutions), but we can never figure our own out. Maybe that's because our consciousness is spread across our billions of cells, the vast majority of which are too busy digesting, oxygenating, or doing whatever to pay attention to the deeper questions of life.

I'm not saying I buy it. I'm just saying it's an interesting thing to think about.

Balmy Balmer

People skills.  Do you learn them?  Are they innate?  Maybe they're molded by the time you graduate high school or college?  Maybe a mixture?  Or maybe they're a fallacy and don't even really exist.  Maybe it's really just a question of whether we like someone or not when we say they don't have people skills.  Maybe that's really the only test.  Somebody couldn't have people skills if nobody likes them.

I don't know.  Just thoughts I'm thinking about on a balmy Wednesday afternoon in Baltimore (prounced here with or without a d: "baldimer" or "balmer").

Move Over J.D. Salinger

There's something about novels that seems to provoke crime sprees in individuals.  I heard once that the guy who shot Reagan and the guy who shot John Lennon both had gotten obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye.  I also read that Rage was found in the backpacks of several school shooters, prompting Stephen King/Richard Bachman to pull it out of print.  Now, we can add Agatha Christie to the fray.

No wonder my fifth grade English teacher looked at me askance when I did my book report on And Then There Were None . . . 

Slummin, Oscar-Style

I almost fear the reprisal this post may prompt, but I'm having trouble sleeping just now and think this might help. Tonight, the Missus and I watched the 2008 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Slumdog Millionnaire. I haven't been so disappointed in a (allegedly) best picture since My Fair Lady. Good movie, sure. Great movie? I'm not so sure.

Think about other great movies. The Godfather tells us an old story about love and family within the Italian mob. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest forced us to ponder who the really crazy ones are and what we're doing about it. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind asked questions as old as the human race about the inevitability of life. What did Slumdog teach us?

That honesty is the best policy? Awesome. Ten Things I Hate About You, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, and a hundred other non-classics tackle that same weighty issue.

But maybe my real beef with the movie is its troubling social darwinism. Which slumdog wins 20 million rupees and which slumdog died alone in a bathtub full of cash? And which slumdog has been begging for so long he can identify your alms by smell (since he can't see)? And what about all those other slumdogs whom Javed made homeless? Those unglorified stories, juxtaposed as they are with Jamal's, stink of Victorian theories on life and fairness, that the downtrodden are downtrodden for a reason.

No thanks. I'll take Yes Man and the questions it makes me ask myself over another movie telling me life really is fair.

Sent from my iPod

Shh

We finally have the internet back today after more than a week of its absence.  In fact, I haven't had a consistent internet connection since I left my old house on May 13.  So I guess that's eleven days.  But I only got on to say one thing: check out the American League standings and look at who's knocking on the door of .600.  While you're looking at it, compare that team's record to that of the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, and Angels.  It turns out we were right all these years.  All we needed was pitching.

Now, shh.  Don't say anything.  You might jinx it.

Contemplation

Today, I finished loading the trailer and watched the guy drive it
away. Then I walked next door and disassembled the dog run I bought
from my neighbor. Then I came home and read twenty pages of Les
Miserables. Then I lay on my air mattress on the floor of my empty
living room and thought about the last three years.

My last class was certified yesterday, so I am officially a doctor of
jurisprudence. But with all my book learnin', I couldn't remember what
duty of care my neighbor owed me in case I got bitten by that black
widow whose nest I destroyed while disassembling the dog run. Maybe
there's a reason nobody calls us "doctor."

At least I spotted the issue.

Sent from my iPod

Le Futur

You probably saw the title and thought "Yay, jeremy's gonna talk about his future and his job prospects."  But you're wrong.  I'm on a basketball kick, so I'm going to share a quote that I really like.  Writes Buck Harvey:

[T]his [year's Spurs] was a 54-win team, and it limped to the finish. And it could heal.

So.  You know.  Go Spurs Go.  If my Rangers fandom has taught me anything, it's that there's always next year.

Go Spurs Go

As I'm sure you know by now, the Spurs have been eliminated from the NBA Playoffs in the first round for the first time since 2000.  I'm disappointed, but I'm not defeated.  The NBA is the kind of league where being a four-time former champion puts you in the elite.  Only the Lakers, Celtics, and Michael Jordan Bulls have more.

At any rate, I'm proud of my Spurs.  We played way too many games without Manu, and we still held on to the three seed going into the playoffs.  We really missed him these last five games.  But the rest of our guys deserve a shout out for their hard work, their gumption, and their class:

• Tim Duncan - St. Timothy played with more fire than anybody on the court.  His knees just got in the way.
• Tony Parker - What hasn't been said about Antoine?  Face the facts, NBA: Tony Parker is an elite scorer.
• Roger Mason Jr. - We will always remember your last-second shot against the Lakers. Welcome to San Antonio, Big Shot Rog.  I hope you stay a while.
• George Hill - The Pride of IUPUI may be the future of San Antonio.  Pop benched him for too long, but he was ready when the call came in Games 3, 4, and 5.
• Kurt Thomas - Do I need to say anything other than this about Sir Kurt?

And, of course, I would be remiss not to remember Matt Bonner, Bruce Bowen, Michael Finley, Ime Udoka, Jacque Vaughn, Drew Gooden, and the Fabulous Fabricio Oberto.  Others contributed, of course, but these were the main fellas.  Today, I wear my $10-Wal*Mart Tim Duncan T-shirt in honor of you all.

Why Baylor Law Is Awesome

Intangibles.  It's what sports people cite to explain why the chamionship team is better than the runner-up.  And it's what I cite when I say Baylor Law is the best.  Here's a tangible intangible:

He made everyone t-shirts. They had caricatures of him that previous students had doodled on final exams, along with a few quotes that he’s said over 150 times this quarter

You may be curious about who this "he" is.  The man that my class knows and loves as Prof. LAPP taught Civil Procedure this quarter so that the usual Prof. Civ Pro could try some cases.  We may or may not know those 150-times quotes, but we know the man.  And he is awesome.

UPDATE:  Here are pictures.

Hoop Dreams

A few days ago, I told you---in complete serious---my picks for the NBA playoffs.  Today, I share with you my "Hoop Dreams"---the teams that would win in the world of my dreams.

But first, let me say that an awesome NBA Finals would be Lebron stuffing Kobe and giving him a swirly.  I think a sweep would be cooler than a 7-game back-n-forth.  But I just can't stomach the Lakers walking through the West.  

So here we go.

Eastern Conference, First Round

• Cleveland over Detroit
• Chicago over Boston
• Philly over Orlando
• Atlanta over Miami

Western Conference, First Round

• Utah over L.A.
• N'awlins over Denver
• Santonio over Fort Worth
• Houston over Portland

Eastern Conference Semifinals

• Toughie.  I like Cleveland over Atlanta, but I wish they could play in the Eastern Conference Finals.
• Chicago over Philly, but I don't really care.  Chicago just because they'd be a funner matchup for Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals

Western Conference Semifinals

• Utah over Houston (the I-10 Rivalry is still alive)
• Santonio over N'awlins (could this be another I-10 Rivalry?)

Conference Finals

• East: Cleveland over Chicago
• West: Santonio muting the Jazz

NBA Finals: Gosh.  I'm torn.  This is why you can't always get what you want.  I want the Spurs to take another championship, but I also sympathize with Lebron's Quest.  Well, I said I'm torn, but I'm not.

Go Spurs Go!

NBA Playoffs Picks

Eastern Conference First Round

(1) Cleveland beating (8) Detroit in 5

When I placed my vote on ESPN.com for the Cavs, I noticed that 49 states and the whole rest of the world think the Cavaliers will take it.  The only state unconvinced is Michigan.  And only 56 percent of Michiganders are deluded.  That makes it pretty clear who should pull away.

(2) Boston beating (7) Chicago in 7

I think Boston will take it, but they'll have to fight for it.  A younger, hungrier, healthier Chicago will put up a fight, but that Game 7 in Boston will be too rough for them.  BUT if I had to pick an Eastern Conference upset, this is it for me.

(3) Orlando beating (6) Philly in 6

Orlando is a powerhouse that's been struggling lately.  But not enough to really give Philly a chance.

(4) Atlanta beating (5) Miami in 7

I read recently that the Hawks are the Cavs of a few years ago.  Anybody remember when the Spurs beat the Cavs in the NBA finals two years ago?

Western Conference First Round

(1) Lakers beating (8) Utah in 7

Let's face it: Pau and the Lakers have to play thrice in Utah before they put the series away in Los Angeles.

(2) Denver nipped in the bud by (7) New Orleans in 6

This is my upset in the West.  CP3 is pretty good at point.  Chauncey Billups et al. can do their thing, but I don't know if it's enough.

(3) San Antonio spurring (6) Dallas in 2.

We'll beat'm so bad in the first two in San Antonio that David Stern invokes the mercy rule and calls the series.

(4) Portland nuked by the (5) Rockets in 6.

I don't consider this an upset, just facts.

Eastern Conference Semifinals

(1) Cleveland riding all over (4) Atlanta in 5, maybe burning it to the ground during King James's march to the sea.  Let's face it.  The Cavs are unstoppable this year.

(3) Boston tying (2) Orlando in 6, then both teams agreeing to take turns losing to the Cavs in the Eastern Conference finals.  Let's face it.  The Celtics and the Magic both limped into the postseason, both will limp past teams that wouldn't have made the top ten in the West, and both will limp into an embrace.

Western Conference Semifinals

Here we diverge.  Dreamworld: Rockets blow up the dam, draining the Lakers in 6.  Real world: Rockets fizzle in the Lakers in 6.

Dreamworld and Real World: (3) San Antonio swats (7) Hornets in 7.  By this point, the Spurs will be getting tired, but they'll stop CP3 et al.

Eastern Conference Finals

(1) Cavs sweep (2-3) Bostando Magic Celtics in 7.  Lebron takes on playing both shooting guard and small forward . . . at the same time.

Western Conference Finals

Dreamworld: I-10 Rivalry climaxes with a raucous game 7 in San Antonio, with the Spurs squeaking by in triple overtime on Tim Duncan's second career three-pointer.

Real World: Pau & Co. bloody up the Spurs in 6.

NBA Finals

I have to confess.  I hope this is the Cavs' year.  I'd really like the Spurs to win it all again, but I'm not selfish.  And if the Spurs make it to the Finals, that complicates everything.  I mean---How beautiful would it be if King James and the Black Mamba squared off in an a m a z i n g seven game series for the ages?  Maybe Kobe : Magic :: Lebron : Bird?  If last year's finals were a shout out to the past, maybe this year's finals are a shout out to the present.

Newer and Better Fantasies

"Are you listening to all that?"  Thorne said.  "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously.  It's just theories.  Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies.  And they change.  When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston.  You know what that is?  No?  Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway.  They also believed that four humors controlled behavior.  And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old.  Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem.  We think those beliefs are more scientific and better."

"Aren't they?"

Thorne shrugged.  "They're still just fantasies.  They're not real.  Have you ever seen a self-esteem?  Can you bring me one on a plate?  How about a photon?  Can you bring me one of those?"

Kelly shook her head.  "No, but . . ."

"And you never will, because those things don't exist.  No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said.  "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh.  They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe?  They believed in photons and electrons.  Can you imagine anything so silly?'  They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies."  Thorne shook his head.  "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves?  That's the sea.  That's real.  You smell the salt in the air?  You feel the sunlight on your skin?  That's all real.  You see all of us together?  That's real.  Life is wonderful.  It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air.  And there isn't really anything else."*

So--are we getting closer, or are we running in circles?

*Michael Crichton, The Lost World.

Pythagoras Is Never Wrong

Pythagorean records are a cool new statistic that compares runs scored to runs allowed to show what your record "should" be.  The formula is:

(runs scored)^2

----------------------------------------

(runs scored)^2 + (runs allowed)^2

Then you multiply the resulting ratio by the number of games . . . et voilà: seventh grade math used in the real world.  (The same formula works in basketball, but you substitute the 14th power for the 2d.)

Yesterday, the Rangers pounded the Indians and last year's Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee, 9-1.  For those of you quick enough to pull out your calculators, you can guess my next sentence.

I hereby predict the Rangers will go 160-2 this year.  I have statistics to back it up.

The Why Chromosome

Some day, when I have kids, I hope to instill in them the importance of asking why.  Two recent cases I've read for class have made me want to ask the writers that question.

First, a dissenting judge in a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals case once wrote:

I believe that if this Court were abolished, its chambers demolished, the ground plowed up, and the site paved over, one day a crack would appear in the concrete, and through that crack a black-robed arm would thrust an opinion that says, "We hold that the indictment in this case was not an indictment."

Pretty harsh words.  What are those judges, ostensibly neutral, intelligent, and skilled legal analysts, doing invalidating indictments?  It can't possibly be that there's some good reason to invalidate the indictment.

And second, Justice John Paul "the Second" Stevens dissented in the recent gun control case (D.C. v. Heller).  He contested Scalia et al.'s interpretation of the Second Amendment and concludes:

The evidence plainly refutes the claim that the [Second] Amendment was motivated by the Framers' fears that Congress might act to regulate any civilian uses of weapons.

(emphasis mine).  Why did five of the nation's most highly respected jurists, ostensibly neutral, intelligent, and skilled legal analysts themselves, ignore such plain evidence?  It couldn't possibly be that the evidence wasn't quite so plain.

Sometimes people do things that I think are stupid.  But I have to remember to pause and reflect.  People aren't really that stupid, so they must have (or think they have) some good reason for acting stupid.  Even those crazy judges (who must be on some payroll) who claim to be protecting individual rights but are really just helping keep criminals out on the streets.