Osler's Razor

A few posts back, people with Star Wars knowledge were debating the wisdom of Naboo's custom of electing a 14-year-old as their queen. It's an interesting question. Sure, you end up with a leader who has a bizarre obsession with hair, makeup, and clothes (see photo), but there must be some advantages.

In all, would the US be better off with Padme as our leader, or a third term for George W. Bush? Please opine.

Today, we are a nation at war, and we have been continuously for the past seven years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, thousands of lives have been lost, and realms of tragedy we don't know about have been created.

The start of this all was a single incident. That incident followed decades in which the United States viewed war as something that had to do with technology and spending, unmanned missiles and bomber drones. Meanwhile, there was less and less attention paid to soldiers, the humans who died in the Revolution, the Civil War, the War to End All Wars, and then the wars that followed that.

There must be some kind of cruel irony in the fact that the first successful attack on an American city in the past century was accomplished by fewer than twenty men whose most sophisticated weapon was a box cutter. For those of you who never stocked shelves, a box cutter is a stubby knife used to rip open boxes. They are a ubiquitous tool for many people who make American commerce work, and it used to be legal to carry them onto planes.

So, those 17 guys carried box cutters onto four planes, and used them to bring down several enormous buildings. All of the aircraft carriers, all of the NSA surveillance satellites, all of the robotic weapons and stealth bombers and advanced tactical systems, the trillion dollars worth of machines, were helpless against that bagful of humble box cutters.

I wish I could say that America learned from that, that what happened was that we realized that we had suffered a great loss at the hands of individual (evil) creativity, not technology, that our post-human technology had been turned against us, but we did not. Instead, we continued down the same course. Our soldiers are kept in humiliating conditions, deprived of decent health care, and too often treated as an afterthought. Why? Well, giant weapons systems-- there's real money in that, I guess, the flow of our money that goes from government to contractor to sub-contractor with little bits dropping off at each stage.

So now we have a whole new Department with a huge budget, all-new sophisticated weapons on the way, control of Iraq, etc. etc. And what do they have?

Not much really... their numbers are down, I read, and they are losing power where they are. In a few years they may be ground down by our technology to a fraction of what they were... maybe if we continue to succeed, they will be down to just a handful of motivated individuals with box cutters.

I've been watching the second Star Wars movie, and I have a few questions:

1) Is there some reason that these advanced societies have not come up with the seat belt? People are constantly flying out of vehicles.

2) If these Jedi are so wise, how come no one ever carries a second light saber? Most of the time, they get in a jam by losing their light saber, and there is no back-up. It just seems like a natural idea...

1) Fortunately, the new "Female Parts" blog focuses much more on haiku than gynecology. In fact, Jessica is a practitioner of the art of "Lawku," which combines the simple beauty of haiku with the elegance of, uh, the Uniform Commercial Code.

2) "Citizen Lane," meanwhile, focuses on law, philosophy, fiction, and politics. Lane actually understands philosophy, which is something that always impresses me.

3) Sharing some of the other bloggers' bizarre obsession with 0-0 soccer matches, "Magnificent Vista" also has a nice recap of Prof. Cordon's recent work and other insightful law school observations.

4) Meanwhile, I'm not sure who "快乐成长" is, but it looks like he or she knows how to throw a decent birthday party!

Yes, I realize that Jerry Hall and I are the only people in Waco who care about hockey (or at least we were until he decamped for Dallas, now it is just me).

Still, I'm all excited that the Red Wings won game one of the Stanley Cup finals tonight, 4-0. No one lost any teeth.

Intriguingly, the Wings are chock-full of immigrants, all of whom are legal (I think). Interestingly, when I was in Detroit, Red Wing Bob Probert actually did something that caused him not to be re-admitted to the U.S., which was kind of a problem for the Wings. Probert, of course, was a unique player-- a goon who could score. Of course, as an illegal immigrant goon who could score, he was at a real disadvantage...

According to the New York Times, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week for using false documents to get employment at an Iowa meat-packing plant. This story was intriguing for several reasons:

1) The speed with which they were passed through the federal system. There is a "fast-track" process for simple deportations, but I don't think that is what was going on here.

2) That this is pretty rare.

3) That they were mostly from Guatamala (except the one pictured here), messing with our perception that illegals come only from Mexico.

Pandas buyd Razor fromm the Frenndch. Use moneyy from "Pandaa Express" Restaurants, and now have blogh. Typeing with big paws hardf! Detroit Rock City!

Now you musts haiku. Pandas pick themes for our blogf:

1) Stupid other kinds of bear
2) Mating
3) Employment Panda
4) Bamboo goodf to eat
5) Lemmy from Motorhead
6) Ling-Ling smells bad
7) Bimbo: A panda?
8) Nixon visit us!
9) Panda-monium!
10) Panda v. Wookie

Here is Panda's:

Panda love music
Of Lemmy from Motorhead
When still with Hawkwind.

Now haiku or Panda take your shirtg.

I hadn't noticed that the American Airlines execs were getting bonuses at the same time they were killing off their company.

Of course, the financial troubles at American "just happened." High oil prices-- who saw that coming? I mean, besides Southwest, who hedged on oil prices. And sure, they could have gotten credit to buy more fuel-efficient planes a few years ago, but who knew credit would dry up? The execs just let the company go where the river took it, they aren't responsible for where that river went.

I have always taken the legal construct of corporations as an individual pretty seriously, and this is one of the times it really fits. We all know those people who didn't plan their life, but rather let the river take them wherever, and it wasn't their fault, stuff just happened. They let the water carry them down. Same as it ever was...

What language is this guy singing? I do like his friend who shows up at the end, too...

American Airlines announced today that they will both stop running 11-12% of their flights and begin charging passengers $15 to check a bag. As for the first idea, well, given American's flight-cancellation problems, they may have already done this without us noticing. On the second, I can imagine that is going to bug some people.

Naturally, all of this is blamed on oil prices, and that certainly does have all of the airlines in a bind. American's management, however, made some poor decisions that are exacerbating the pain. Over the past few years American has tried to become more profitable by not buying new planes, instead relying on out-of-date and fuel-guzzling MD-80's. During those years, they could have financed more efficient jets, but did not.

Now that the oil shock has hit, the credit market has also dried up, meaning they cannot easily finance those new jets that now look like a much better idea. Instead, they are going to retire some of the old fleet and just not fly those routes anymore. So the remaining planes will be more crowded, the fliers will be upset about paying to check luggage, and there will still be no food available. Sigh.

Will we respond by flying less, or flying on a better airline, like Southwest? If we do, American will slip into bankruptcy, and the government may well bail them out instead of letting them die, which would be the better fate in terms of economic policy, just desserts, and ultimately, good air service.

As I have said before, I think you can bail out companies, or you can deregulate, but you shouldn't do both-- the theory of deregulation is letting the market work, and if you save failing companies, you are not letting the market work.

Over on one of Brian Leiter's 400 blogs, he recently noted a data set compiled by Daniel Solove of George Washington which shows the success of applicants for law teaching jobs. It breaks down the applicants by school (for their JD), and looks only at those who interviewed through the big annual Association of American Law Schools Conference. The AALS combine is the way most people (including me, in 2000) get teaching jobs.

The general impression I got from this data was that I'm very lucky to have found this job, since the overwhelming majority of applicants were unsuccessful. Consider the following daunting facts about the applicants from 2006-2008:

1) None of the 22 applicants with a Cornell J.D. got a teaching job.
2) Only 8 of the 80 applicants from Georgetown got a teaching job.
3) 19 of the 68 applicants from Columbia got a job.
4) Only 3 of the 37 graduates of the Univ. of Pennsylvania got a job.

Crikeys! All of these schools are well within the top 20.

Below, you can see Employment Panda attack an unsuccessful AALS participant from Baylor two years ago: