LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®

Originally posted 2010-12-01 20:08:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Welcome to Blawg Review.  Cold, rainy, prematurely wintry greetings from metropolitan New York.

No exclamation point.  It has been that kind of year, it seems.  Nothing depressing about it, or it shouldn’t be.  That’s just life, and in particular that’s the way life feels at that dreary moment when you’re living it clustered around the winter solstice.

Historic Courthouse, Newark, NJ

And if I were perkily to emit that Chanukah, the festival of rededication, is “all about” pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps in the face of dread and gloom, for of course a little light will banish a great deal of darkness, I would not be the first to say it; and it’s not as if cliché is too good for LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®.

But no.  It is not going to be that kind of Chanukah Blawg Review this year.  Let’s instead think a little less loftily, but maybe more fruitfully, about where we are.  Where we’ve been since last Chanukah.  And what we’re doing, blawgily speaking.  And why.

Is there a Chanukah concept in that?  Rabbi Avraham Chaim Feuer says there is — and it seems to be a very appropriate one for this moment, for this blog, even, and for the constellations of blawgs that still form and swirl around us:

Only recently — barely a hundred years have elapsed since the invention of the lightbulb — has Edison’s genius transformed [mankind's formerly] bleak [benighted] situation. Today, mankind’s blindness is banished by billions of powerful and enduring bulbs. Artificial light has become so economically feasible that even the poorest can afford to squander it. Everything glows in the Age of Illumination. . . .

Centuries ago, prior to the Age of Illumination, people did not waste light. A fire with no function was promptly extinguished, and the fuel was carefully hoarded. If the flames of the menorah burned constantly without apparent function, it must have been that this was not light made to shed external illumination, but rather to symbolize the inner glory associated with Godliness.

For this reason, it is prohibited, according to Halacha, or Judaic Law, to use Chanukah candles as illumination for any ordinary activities. Such utility would strip the candles of their essential message — that there is more than one kind of light, that of the soul besides that of the eyes.

“The time for lighting the Chanukah candles is from sunset until the time that the traffic ceases in the marketplace,” states the Talmud (Shabbos 21b).  As long as men are involved in the affairs of the marketplace, as long as they are engaged in the pursuit and purchase of all their eyes see and their hearts desire, then they are still in need of the lesson of the Chanukah menorah.

No doubt, our era is the age of the eye and the age of the market. This is self-evident and does not need further elaboration. When before in history has the consumer been flooded with such a staggering array of tempting products, wrapped in millions of dollars of “eye-catching” advertisement? When before has the human eye been so constantly exposed to the distracting sights of the stage, screen, and street? In the Age of Illumination, the outer lights have all but blotted out the inner lights.

It is time to gather around the . . .  candles of the menorah, and give the inner lights the opportunity to convey their soft, subtle, penetrating message.

So, let’s sit down — come in out of the wet; can I get you a hot drink?  No, no latkes, sorry — trying to stay away from the heavy stuff, since the operation.  We do have these nice dreidel-shaped cookies… here.  Say a brocha.  Nice. Read More…

Originally posted 2009-07-13 10:14:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Walter Olson hosts this week’s Blawg Review:

Professional Courtesy

Welcome to Blawg Review #220, rounding up some highlights of the past week from around the legal blogosphere. It’s my second time hosting it here at Overlawyered, a blog that as its name implies maintains a certain critical distance from many of the doings of the legal profession. Despite (or because of?) that, lawyers make up a large share of our most loyal and valued readers. Overlawyered just celebrated its tenth anniversary, which so far as I know (though someone may come along to prove me wrong) makes it the oldest blog about law.

With an introduction like that…!

Originally posted 2008-12-08 09:42:39. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

At Infamy or Praise, tales of an ancient mariner:

For my first three Blawg Reviews, I’ve let Dante lead me through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Inconsiderately enough, however, Il Maestro never completed a fourth cantica for his Divine Comedy, leaving me stuck for a theme this time around. Finding that theme was an albatross around my neck until a friend made a timely and much – appreciated suggestion — Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Notwithstanding the theological question left hanging — besides Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, what does Colin thing Dante had available for a Divine Comedy encore? — Colin Samuels is in a literary class of his own with his Blawg Reviews, and this one is no different.  It’s hard for us to understand how such a well-educated guy could then go ahead and misspell “rhyme” but, hey, there must in every flesh and blood be some sin.

Welcome to Blawg Review.  Cold, rainy, prematurely wintry greetings from metropolitan New York.

No exclamation point.  It has been that kind of year, it seems.  Nothing depressing about it, or it shouldn’t be.  That’s just life, and in particular that’s the way life feels at that dreary moment when you’re living it clustered around the winter solstice.

Historic Courthouse, Newark, NJ

And if I were perkily to emit that Chanukah, the festival of rededication, is “all about” pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps in the face of dread and gloom, for of course a little light will banish a great deal of darkness, I would not be the first to say it; and it’s not as if cliché is too good for LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®.

But no.  It is not going to be that kind of Chanukah Blawg Review this year.  Let’s instead think a little less loftily, but maybe more fruitfully, about where we are.  Where we’ve been since last Chanukah.  And what we’re doing, blawgily speaking.  And why.

Is there a Chanukah concept in that?  Rabbi Avraham Chaim Feuer says there is — and it seems to be a very appropriate one for this moment, for this blog, even, and for the constellations of blawgs that still form and swirl around us:

Only recently — barely a hundred years have elapsed since the invention of the lightbulb — has Edison’s genius transformed [mankind's formerly] bleak [benighted] situation. Today, mankind’s blindness is banished by billions of powerful and enduring bulbs. Artificial light has become so economically feasible that even the poorest can afford to squander it. Everything glows in the Age of Illumination. . . .

Centuries ago, prior to the Age of Illumination, people did not waste light. A fire with no function was promptly extinguished, and the fuel was carefully hoarded. If the flames of the menorah burned constantly without apparent function, it must have been that this was not light made to shed external illumination, but rather to symbolize the inner glory associated with Godliness.

For this reason, it is prohibited, according to Halacha, or Judaic Law, to use Chanukah candles as illumination for any ordinary activities. Such utility would strip the candles of their essential message — that there is more than one kind of light, that of the soul besides that of the eyes.

“The time for lighting the Chanukah candles is from sunset until the time that the traffic ceases in the marketplace,” states the Talmud (Shabbos 21b).  As long as men are involved in the affairs of the marketplace, as long as they are engaged in the pursuit and purchase of all their eyes see and their hearts desire, then they are still in need of the lesson of the Chanukah menorah.

No doubt, our era is the age of the eye and the age of the market. This is self-evident and does not need further elaboration. When before in history has the consumer been flooded with such a staggering array of tempting products, wrapped in millions of dollars of “eye-catching” advertisement? When before has the human eye been so constantly exposed to the distracting sights of the stage, screen, and street? In the Age of Illumination, the outer lights have all but blotted out the inner lights.

It is time to gather around the . . .  candles of the menorah, and give the inner lights the opportunity to convey their soft, subtle, penetrating message.

So, let’s sit down — come in out of the wet; can I get you a hot drink?  No, no latkes, sorry — trying to stay away from the heavy stuff, since the operation.  We do have these nice dreidel-shaped cookies… here.  Say a brocha.  Nice.

New York State Supreme Court, 60 Centre Street

We can sit by the fire.

So, yes, last year at this season LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® hosted Blawg Review for the second time.  It went over very well, and I’m grateful for the recognition.  At the end of the day (which comes mighty fast in mid-December) isn’t being noticed for having something to say why a person blogs?  It’s just that some of us need more of that than others, isn’t it? Read More…

Originally posted 2008-12-22 03:25:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® is privileged to host the Blawg Review of Lights on this festive night!

×—×’ ×—× ×›×” שמח!  That is, Happy Chanukah!  Yes, the fundamental narrative of Chanukah is black-letter:

Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, a small band of Jewish patriots, over the mighty armies of Syrian King Antiochus. When they restored the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the Maccabees found one jar of pure oil, enough to keep the menorah burning for just one day. But a miracle happened, and the oil burned for eight days.

A classic question, and one that lawyers, the people who blog about their work and the people who (God help them!) read those blogs will appreciate regardless of creed, for it is as steeped in legalistic dialectic as any greasy Chanukah donut:

The miracle of Chanukah is celebrated for eight nights.  But as the story goes, when the Temple was liberated, enough uncontaminated oil was found there to light the menorah for a day, so the miraculous light evidently only lasted for seven days, not eight.  Why, then, do we celebrate eight days of Chanukah?

The question is nearly as old as Chanukah itself (and that’s old!), as are many of the answers. Recently Rabbi Reuven Subar collected, not inappropriately, eight of those ancient answers, and we will do our best to jam — like the jelly in one of those donuts — our Blawg Review links and commentary into the topical concepts represented by his selection and thereby enlighten your winter solstice too (the explanatory links are ours):

They divided one night’s oil into eight portions. Miraculously, each portion lasted an entire night.

Bais Yosef

This practical approach, by which the miraculous appears in flaming relief, comes to us via the great codifier of Jewish law, Rabbi Yosef Karo.  His definitive work on this vast body of regulation, the Shulchan Aruch, or “the Set Table,” is a perfect table-setting for our broad consideration of the vastness of, may we be forgiven the comparison, the secular world of law, legislation and policy.

Thus first we visit the law blogs whose portion we can only envy for the brilliance by which their efforts illuminate a juridicial darkness that so many others can merely only curse for what is, to the blinkered among us, its dim bleakness:

• Cathy Gellis delivers a summary of an recent decision from Montana pitting public access to natural resources against private property rights in the matter of fish and water (actually a Chanuka-connected theme as well!)
• It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to make a fortune doing it:  Michael Doan continues a worthwhile series explaining the ins and outs of California foreclosures.
• Eugene Volokh s not a big fan of the work being done by the Monaghan-backed Thomas More Legal Center.  Whatever your view of the AIG bailout (see more below), a “First Amendment” argument that the bill favors Islam over other faiths doesn’t sound like a winner.
• Brian Kalt at Concurring Opinions considers whether a President can pardon himself.  President Bush might want to get a second opinion.
• Scott Henson writes that cops, crimes, and courts aren’t the solution to every problem.  Perhaps a world government, then? Read More…

Originally posted 2009-02-15 14:03:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Blawg Review at the East Central Illinois Criminal Law & DUI Weblog:

Today, we will find our inspiration in the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Without further ado, here are your submissions shoehorned into these categories.

Yeah, well, after that, who needs further ado?!  Rather, repent!  But first read this week’s Blawg Review.

Kevin Thompson of Cyberlaw Central, at considerable risk to life and limb, does a Skull-and-Bones themed Blawg Review.

As  a Princeton man I have my issues with this.  But as a family man, I would not dare utter them.

Originally posted 2010-04-13 09:52:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Legal Blog Watch, uniquely qualified for the job, hosts this week’s Blawg Review!

Originally posted 2010-08-30 11:23:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Blawg Review #279 is up at Mirriam Seddiq’s Not Guilty blog.

It’s not safe for work.  Unless you work in a law office.

Home… that’s something else.

Originally posted 2009-12-14 10:05:01. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

House of the Association -- Association of the Bar of the City of New York

Welcome to Blawg Review.  Cold, rainy, prematurely wintry greetings from metropolitan New York.

No exclamation point.  It has been that kind of year, it seems.  Nothing depressing about it, or it shouldn’t be.  That’s just life, and in particular that’s the way life feels at that dreary moment when you’re living it clustered around the winter solstice.

Historic Courthouse, Newark, NJ

And if I were perkily to emit that Chanukah, the festival of rededication, is “all about” pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps in the face of dread and gloom, for of course a little light will banish a great deal of darkness, I would not be the first to say it; and it’s not as if cliché is too good for LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®.

But no.  It is not going to be that kind of Chanukah Blawg Review this year.  Let’s instead think a little less loftily, but maybe more fruitfully, about where we are.  Where we’ve been since last Chanukah.  And what we’re doing, blawgily speaking.  And why.

Is there a Chanukah concept in that?  Rabbi Avraham Chaim Feuer says there is — and it seems to be a very appropriate one for this moment, for this blog, even, and for the constellations of blawgs that still form and swirl around us:

Only recently — barely a hundred years have elapsed since the invention of the lightbulb — has Edison’s genius transformed [mankind's formerly] bleak [benighted] situation. Today, mankind’s blindness is banished by billions of powerful and enduring bulbs. Artificial light has become so economically feasible that even the poorest can afford to squander it. Everything glows in the Age of Illumination. . . .

Centuries ago, prior to the Age of Illumination, people did not waste light. A fire with no function was promptly extinguished, and the fuel was carefully hoarded. If the flames of the menorah burned constantly without apparent function, it must have been that this was not light made to shed external illumination, but rather to symbolize the inner glory associated with Godliness.

For this reason, it is prohibited, according to Halacha, or Judaic Law, to use Chanukah candles as illumination for any ordinary activities. Such utility would strip the candles of their essential message — that there is more than one kind of light, that of the soul besides that of the eyes.

“The time for lighting the Chanukah candles is from sunset until the time that the traffic ceases in the marketplace,” states the Talmud (Shabbos 21b).  As long as men are involved in the affairs of the marketplace, as long as they are engaged in the pursuit and purchase of all their eyes see and their hearts desire, then they are still in need of the lesson of the Chanukah menorah.

No doubt, our era is the age of the eye and the age of the market. This is self-evident and does not need further elaboration. When before in history has the consumer been flooded with such a staggering array of tempting products, wrapped in millions of dollars of “eye-catching” advertisement? When before has the human eye been so constantly exposed to the distracting sights of the stage, screen, and street? In the Age of Illumination, the outer lights have all but blotted out the inner lights.

It is time to gather around the . . .  candles of the menorah, and give the inner lights the opportunity to convey their soft, subtle, penetrating message.

So, let’s sit down — come in out of the wet; can I get you a hot drink?  No, no latkes, sorry — trying to stay away from the heavy stuff, since the operation.  We do have these nice dreidel-shaped cookies… here.  Say a brocha.  Nice.

New York State Supreme Court, 60 Centre Street

We can sit by the fire.

So, yes, last year at this season LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® hosted Blawg Review for the second time.  It went over very well, and I’m grateful for the recognition.  At the end of the day (which comes mighty fast in mid-December) isn’t being noticed for having something to say why a person blogs?  It’s just that some of us need more of that than others, isn’t it? Read More…

Originally posted 2007-09-17 20:13:01. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Blawg Review continues its recent conceptual bent with Anita Campbell!

Originally posted 2005-04-11 00:00:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

I didn’t “go out” for law review in law school — don’t get me started – and my career has been a pretty sordid exercise since then because of it.

I’m not making that mistake again.

Next week this blog will be host of the second-ever edition of Blawg Review, the “carnival” (why a carnival? just because Glenn Reynolds calls these things carnivals? who made him chief pimp? (Meant in a good way.) Okay, who else besides half a million daily readers? And he didn’t even use my “carnival of the cardinals” idea!) — I mean the weekly festival of law blogs (blawgs, right?).

Information on the rules of the game, including submission guidelines (yes, you must submit) here. This week’s Blawg Review here at Evan Schaeffer‘s Notes from the Legal Underground blog, “A weblog that asks the question–Why are lawyers so stuffy?”

Incidentally, I resent the premise, Evan. Stuffiness is not something just anyone can affect. I have worked long and hard to affect  stuffiness.

UPDATE: The emeser mensch, Jeffrey Haemer, writes in to ‘splain as follows (hyperlinks added):

FWIW, I think all these are spawn of Silflay Hraka’s original “Carnival of the Vanities,” which, in turn, is an allusion to the carnival in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (as is the title of Thackery‘s Vanity Fair).

Education is a wonderful thing! I will have to try one of these fiction books one of these days. I think we might want to  slide Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities in there… along with WizBangBlog‘s own back mutation of the whole thing.