Progress (?): Price on Request

What is the price of progress ? Is it far above rubies? What is Ruby going for now days?

Civilization has moved forward from the days of the Salem Witch trials, as we noted in the last post. In 1955 Britain abolished the crime of witchcraft, having prosecuted the last witch in the year I was born. I have been reading a biography of Samuel Sewell, a judge at the Salem witch show trials--a pious Puritan who used to fast frequently to repent his sins.

Nowadays the word "fast" and the word "food" have come to mean something completely different--and recently fast food became as guilty in some Congressional minds as the sins of witches were to Samuel Sewell, reports our Fast Food Editor Wendy Mc Donald Berger-King.

Buried deep within the version of the health care bill passed by the House, is a provision to require calorie counts on drive-through board and vending machine buttons:

The provision—Section 2572—requires retail food establishments “part of a chain with 20 or more locations” to list calorie counts “on the menu board including a drive-through board,” as is currently required in New York City and other localities.

A “vending machine operator shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button” that includes similar data.

You will notice that it is only food that people who make a lot less money than Congresspersons frequently consume that needs to be labeled for caloric content. Your Hollandaise sauce and fois gras at eateries where l'addition will be more than $100 per person need not carry the guilty pleasure label, because, Congress presumes that if you can afford to eat there, you know that a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 °C, and quite possibly the number of stairs on the Stairmaster it takes to get one ounce of avoirdupois off your belly. You know that a "calorie counter" is not the place you go to order a Giganto-burger with super sized fries and a shake to go. For you, it would destroy the joy of eating out at a several star restaurant in your Michelin/ Fodor's or other guidebook if you had to read the four digit calorie totals next to the entrees. No use reminding you of the word "guilty" in guilty pleasures--they're no Samuel Sewells. The Health Care bill doesn't even require the kind of restaurant where the lobster entree on the finely bound Corinthian leather menu is often followed by "price on request" to provide the calorie count on request as well. Perhaps they just assumed that "there's an app for that."

This bill is aimed at people Congress thinks are too dumb to know that eating a lot of fast food will make them fat. The kind of people who need a warning that cigarettes can cause cancer. The kind of people who have heard the term "cancer sticks" and "coffin nails", the dysphemistic monikers given to cigarettes, yet do not equate tobacco with harm. The kind of people whose dress up shoes are Nike Airs--but are the reason that there is no model known as the Nike Air-U-dite.

The bill is likely to have even less positive effect than putting mandatory warnings on cigarette packs, or requiring bars to post notices that alcohol is not good for your unborn child did--but it will make the Puritan scolds in Congress think they have accomplished something other than ruining your day when you crave that burger.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet.

Sunday Shoot

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The Judge Who Stares at Men Who Stare At Goats: "It's Easy Being Green"

Kermit the Frog says its not easy being green, but in England it got easier recently. A judge ruled that believing in environmental causes is the equivalent of a religion , and persons may not be discriminated against in their employment on account of that belief.

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs. The UK's remaining Druids can now rejoice, unlike the discrimination that has occurred since King Arthur's time when the old ways vanished in favor of Christianity, employers can no longer discriminate against literal tree huggers.

Following on the heels (or maybe branches is more appropriate?) of that decision, comes one in which an employment judge has ruled that a belief in spirits, spiritualism, also qualifies as a religion against which discrimination cannot be practiced, reports our Senior Things that Go Bump in the Night Editor, Claire Voyontte. Alan Power, 62, won a ruling from a judge that his spiritualist beliefs qualify as a religion which should be protected in the workplace.

It says here Judge Peter Russell said that the case had merit because Power's Spiritualist views "have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance" to be covered by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. The judge wrote: "I am satisfied that the claimant's beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society."

The UK's 2001 census showed Spiritualism to be the nation's eighth largest religion with over 32,000 adherents, but this number is hardly significant when compared with the over 390,000 people who declared themselves Jedi Knights as a faith it says here.

Was this ruling presaged by the resurgence of alleged psychic crime-solving on TV? In fact, the media—especially Court TV’s Psychic Detectives, NBC’s Medium, Ghost Whisperers, and various programs of Larry King Live—have given an imprimatur to several self-claimed psychic shamuses as if they could actually identify murderers and kidnappers, or locate missing persons. The TV program Psych dissents. Have good guys on TV gone from having sidekicks to having psychics?

Can a couch potato or a court tell the difference between CNN and the Psychic Network? Maybe an empirical study can tell us if mediums and psychics helped to catch a thief. Here's one that did, and comes to the conclusion: "As these cases and profiles indicate, psychics do not solve crimes or locate missing persons—unless they employ the same non-mystical techniques as real detectives: obtaining and assessing factual information, receiving tips, and so on, even sometimes getting lucky."

But in the interests of being fair and balanced (even though this is the internet), here is a site that claims psychic detectives do solve crimes. Ah, the internet --where you can find anything--whether or not it's true. The truth is out there--but, how far out there, and what do you have to wade through up to your kishkes to get to the truth? And if you find it, can you handle the truth (without a pair of rubber gloves)?

Has this court ruling legitimized the Men who Stare at Goats in England?

The Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 was a law in England and Wales which prohibited a person from claiming to be a psychic, medium, or other spiritualist while attempting to deceive and to make money from the deception (other than solely for the purpose of entertainment). It was repealed on May 26, 2008. There were five prosecutions under this Act between 1980 and 1995, all resulting in conviction. Doesn't the act's name imply that there are mediums who are not fraudulent? If not, why wasn't it just the Mediums Act--were they afraid someone might mistake it for legislation about a shirt size or how a diner orders his meat cooked? The Fraudulent Mediums Act also repealed the Witchcraft Act 1735. As we have previously blogged on April 13, 2008 , the last Witchcraft Act trial in Britain occured during World War II.

The Fraudulent Mediums Act was replaced by new Consumer Protection Regulations following an EU directive targeting unfair sales and marketing practices. There will no longer be any happy mediums, we fear. But they are trying to keep their spirits up. Now mediums must live up to all the tedious regulations of the EU--something that will inevitably drive them crazy or out of business. But then again, they must have seen it coming. It was Ogden Nash who asked "Will you have your tedium rare of medium?" It is the rare medium who will put up with the tedium of even reading the incomprehensibly dull prose of the twelve pages of regulations with which they must now comply.

Under the old legislation, it had to be proven that any accused psychic was setting out to commit a fraud. Under the new laws, some mediums feel they will be obliged to prove what they do. And when you're in the business of contacting spirits in the afterlife, that's not easy. The alternative under the regulations would be to issue a disclaimer stating that what they do is just entertainment. They need a union.

And they have one. David McEntee-Taylor and his wife Carole have set up the Spiritual Workers Association to protect spiritualists and to campaign against the new regulations. McEntee-Taylor is particularly worried about the effect on spiritualist churches, many of which are held in impromptu venues which must be paid for. And he is not happy about having to start religious services with a disclaimer, something that most religions would prefer not to do, because they are partial to starting with a psalm, rather than sounding like they are retelling the story of the Emperor's new clothes.

Does the Consumer Protection legislation clash with the Judge's ruling? Can a religion still be labeled a consumer fraud if it asks for money? I can't foresee how this will come out, but if you're curious and you know a good psychic, feel free to ask.

Washingtons' Week in Review: A Honking Good Case: A Couple Loses Sex Appeal--May Now Seek Relief in Their Briefs

A British couple have been ordered by noise abatement officials not to have noisy sex. Now they are appealing--maybe not to you and me (their photographs are here)-- but certainly to one another.

It all began when Mr and Mrs Steve Cartwright, of Hall Road, Washington, Tyne and Wear's neighbors complained that the couple's nightly sex sessions, which would start at midnight and last an impressive three hours, were so noisy that they were drowning out the sound from their televisions. In some countries that's a capital offense. Neighbors made 250 complaints and 23 tapes of Caroline Cartwright, 48, "moaning and screaming."

Specialist equipment installed by the local government in her neighbor's apartment recorded noise levels of between 30 to 40 decibels, with a high of 47 decibels it says here. So this week, a judge and two magistrates listened to a ten-minute recording of what are these days termed "sex sessions" in Newcastle Crown Court.

It was just this kind of oppression that caused our foremothers and forefathers to sever ties with Britain. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence--the part about the pursuit of happiness.

There is no First Amendment in the British Constitution--so the Cartwrights' yippie aye Oh-ing in their Ponderosa spread in Tyne and Wear gave rise to a different claim. They said it was a violation of their human rights. " Mrs Cartwright used Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to argue she had a right to ''respect for her private and family life.'' Certainly no one can deny that spousal sex is a human rite right, right ?

Can you be prosecuted for making enough noise while copulating that it would scare the horses in the street? Mrs. Patrick Campbell, said: "I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the streets and scare the horses." But here the postman and the neighbors complained. What would a postman be delivering at 3 AM? If my right to swing my fist ends at your nose-- does your right to have noisy sex end when it bothers the neighbors watching some old black and white British "Carry On..." slapstick comedy movie on the telly's late, late show?

"I can't stop making noise during sex, it's unnatural. I'll appeal," says Caroline Cartwright, married to factory worker Steve, 46, for 24 years. She has been warned she faces five years' jail. I say the Cartwrights should appeal because she has a right that originated in the common law, and is now enshrined in British statutes. What right is that? I'll get there after this relevant diversion.

Washington, the Catrwright's abode, is a town in Tyne and Wear, England. It is unrelated to Wash and Wear (which, I think, must be a much newer Town in California). However, there may have been some foreshadowing at work here, because "Tyne" is an obsolete Scottish verb meaning "to lose."

There is a perfect segue from the British Washington case to another noise abatement case that clambered for our attention today. The state of Washington Supreme Court has agreed to hear Helen Immelt's claim that the city of Everett violated her First Amendment rights when it convicted her of excessive honking. Yes, another excessive noise case and another claim that there is a right to make an annoying --dare we say it --"arresting"-- noise. In her case Immelt argued that honking her horn is a First Amendment right.

Now, we all like to toot our own horns now and then, but how about a ten minute blast because you're having a dispute with (you guessed it--just like the Cartwrights) the neighbors? But, hark, the Evert Washington Herald sings : "The court ruled that the First Amendment didn’t given Immelt the right to lay on her car horn for 10 minutes on a Saturday morning in front of a neighbor’s house or honk at another neighbor after she was warned by police she was out of line. “Horn honking per se is not free speech,” Justice C. Kenneth Grosse wrote in the June opinion. “Horn honking which is done to annoy or harass others is not speech.”

The court did hold out the possibility, though, of a different result if a honker had "the intent to convey a particularized message in circumstances where it is likely the message would be understood." Wasn't the lady conveying the message: "This is what you get when you complain that I keep chickens in my yard"? Would her honking have been more appropriate if the lady kept geese? (Apparently the case did not deal with the issue of what the chickens thought about the racket, nor if it affected their laying ability.)

And speaking of that "ability," would the Cartwright case come out differently if there were a First Amendment right in not-so jolly-old -England to convey a message to your spouse? A message like "Harder harder," or, "Yes, right there" or, " Don't stop!"?

The British also recognize a right to convey a message to ones' own spouse. It is the statutory privilege that I tantalized you with a few paragraphs ago. The British courts recognize the spousal immunity privilege. There is an absolute right under British law to speak freely to a spouse in the sacred confines of the the marital bower. The statutes upon which the privilege is founded are the Evidence Amendment Act 1853 UK and the Criminal Evidence Act 1898 UK. Now normally (i.e., not on this blog) the spousal privilege is invoked to protect a spouse from conveying under compulsion what is said inside the marital bedchamber. But, logically, if there is a right not to reveal the communication, there must be, a priori, an unimpeded right to make the communication.

Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." The Cartwrights should not even have to get get up from their coochie coochie couch to make this a priori argument!

So, the Cartwrights should win--Q.E.D.

Fantasy Law League--It's All (Jimmy the) Greek to Me !

It has been said "It's hard to predict the future--but what else is there to predict?" Well, now you could predict the outcome of cases.

Do you remember Jimmy The Greek? He was a Las Vegas oddsmaker about whom there is a documentary on TV tonight because we need documentaries on gamblers to take our minds off the "investors" who ruined our economy by betting that what goes up will never come down.

Well now, you devotees of Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy 401-k's can bet on the outcome of U.S. Supreme Court cases! Here is the website to do it-- fantasySCOTUS.net. Here is the explanation of the contest:

"The Rules are simple. For each case the Supreme Court grants cert, predict:

-The Outcome of the Case (Affirm or Reverse the lower Court)
-The Split (9-0, 8-1, 7-2, 6-3, 5-4, 4-1-4, or fragmented)
- The Justices in the Majority, and the Justices in the Dissent "

It's got to be easier than predicting the outcome of Dancing With the Stars, but not as profitable. If you win the SCOTUS contest you glom a fabulous prize yet to be determined--like an FBI investigation to see if you've used leaked insider information or if you've wiretapped the court's conference room. If you're successful, you could get a TV gig on one of the major networks predicting the outcomes of cases. Or you could have Jimmy the Greek's old job in Vegas setting up the odds on when Roe v. Wade will go the way of the Dred Scott case.

Oddsmakers are also know as handicappers--but that term has nothing to with reasonable accommodations for your wagering losses under the Americans With Disabilities Act. (It apparently derives from placing wagers in a cap). I suppose it's only a short time until we see the odds quoted in the newspapers on horses and football games set on when Mapp v. Ohio will be overturned. With many of the Warren Court decisions being eroded away, about the only case out there that's a safe bet not to be reversed is Marbury v. Madison.

Does this sound like something unsavory--trying to predict a future court ruling for some monetary benefit? No, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said. In fact, that is what lawyers are in the business to do, he argued in this article in 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897). Our clients who come to us for advice want us to predict what a court would do given a set of facts that they relate to us. Holmes said " The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law."

So if we correctly predict what the Supreme Court will do--are we making or discovering "the law?" Does winning this contest make you the best lawyer in town--or the best law giver?

Veteran's Day

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Elephant Sues, Insurance Company Offers Peanuts...

Bill Carpenter was driving his SUV Wednesday night outside Enid, Oklahoma when he hit an elephant, our Senior Pedestrian Editor Jay Walker reports. At first he may have thought the large gray animal that was hard to distinguish from the road was the largest armadillo in the southwest, but it turned out to be Kamba, an elderly elephant escaped from a nearby circus. The papers have speculated that the Grand Old Pachyderm was spooked by something--either a thunderstorm or the imminent passage of the Democrat's Health Care Reform Package.

For those of you trying to picture the accident, the SUV is the one without a trunk. Should you encounter a similar situation on a road near your home, the Rule of the Road is that a 4, 500 pound elephant always has the right of way. That is know as the Rule in Panza's Case. Sancho Panza , as envisioned in Man of La Mancha, famously observed: "Whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock, it's bound to be bad for the pitcher."( He made the remark long before there were Yankee and Phillie fans that threw things in the direction of the bull pen).

Elephants have the right of way even in the absence of an elephant crossing sign (See the beginning of the post.) The elephant, Kamba, was insured by the TV gecko for damage to its trunk. News reports say its tusk was damaged, but still put a hole in the sheet metal of the SUV--so that was no tickle to the ivory. The insurance will pay for tusk damage at the rate of the ordinary and customary repair costs for horns. If you don't have mandatory health insurance in your state because it's socialistic, at least you've got mandatory no fault insurance requirements for all creatures great and small !

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident and may recommend to Congress that, in the future, elephants be painted red, or lime green, or that color that school buses are painted (which, believe it or not, is named National School Bus Chrome) or some other color that stands out better.

Carpenter's insurance did not cover elephant collision damage, but if his vehicle had been dented by a rhinoceros, it would have covered cover its rhinoplasty. The elephant was not greatly injured, but might have suffered less damage if the SUV had been a bloodless coupe.

The elephant has retained an attorney to sue for pain and suffering, emotional damage and post traffic smashup disorder. The elephant has been reliving the accident over and over again because elephants never forget, said Kamba's attorney-- M. A. ("Ma") Hout of Kibbel & Bitz.

Carpenter's insurance carrier, Urine Good Hands Insurance Co., has hired Scylla & Charybdis, Esq. of Anchorage, Alaska to defend the action. They chose an Alaskan firm because the road kill tends to be much larger up there. They will defend on the basis that the elephant had the last clear chance to avoid the accident. If Kamba had only looked at the front of the truck, he would clearly have seen the word "DODGE" on it--but dodge he didn't.

In other news, that five foot alligator that was taken to show and tell and later escaped has been recaptured. Apparently alligators can jump quite high when they perceive the need. Stan Kirkland, a spokesman for the Florida wildlife Commission says alligators have "amazing" jumping ability and that allowed it to escape. Now he tells us! Leapin' Lizards Reptiles ! It must be the (alligator) shoes!

The Obligation to Incriminate Yourself ? Some Strey Thoughts...

Does your state have a law requiring you to report crimes that you see? In Wisconsin they do. Wisconsin’s law was put into effect in 1983. It is a “Class C” misdemeanor, and states that “any person who knows that a crime is being committed and that a victim is exposed to bodily harm shall summon law enforcement officers or other assistance or shall provide assistance to the victim.” The penalty for violating this law can be as severe as thirty days in jail and a five hundred-dollar fine says here.

Maybe that law is why a woman in Wisconsin reported herself to authorities for driving while intoxicated. Mary Strey, 49, called 911 to report a drunk driver, revealing to the operator that it was she who was under the influence.

Strey is quoted in the report as stating to the 911 dispatcher, “Somebody’s really drunk driving down Granton Road.” She further replied after the operator inquired as to whether she was following behind a drunk driver, “No…I am them… I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m drunk.” The dispatcher then reportedly instructed Strey to pull over. She was apparently too blotto to think of that solution herself, since her blood alcohol was later reported as .17.

Strey was reportedly charged with a misdemeanor and is set to appear in court Dec. 10. Her cousin David Strey is quoted by the NY Daily News as opining of her call to 911, “That was a good thing… It would have probably been cheaper if she’d backed off one step and not gotten in the car.”

As usual with hopeless cases, the Supremecourtjester has a defense for her. It does not appear from the news articles that anyone actually saw her driving drunk, since by the time the police arrived she was no longer driving. Ah, you say, what about her admission? Well, the first line of defense may be that she was too drunk to know what she was saying --and who would accept the word of a drunk anyhow? If she is too intoxicated to drive a vehicle in a straight line, how can we say she was sober enough to know whether or not she was intoxicated?

But there is a defense that is even better than that one. (Good--you say--there had better be!) Strey not only must she overcome the admission she made when she was not in custody and to which Miranda doesn't apply; there is also the point one seven she blew. It begins with the fact that the police would not have known about the offense, and not have probable cause to arrest or ask her to take the test if it weren't for the statute requiring the driver to report her own crime.

Which brings us to a series of Supreme Court cases – including Garrity v. New Jersey (1967), Gardner v. Broderick (1968), and Lefkowitz v. Cunningham (1977) – which established that (1) a government can compel its citizens to speak under certain circumstances (such as the citizen is an employee being asked questions about his official duties), but (2) the Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from using those answers against the citizen in criminal proceedings.

Since the Mandatory Good Samaritan statute required the report, it was compelled, and cannot be used against the speaker. And that would make her simply a Samaritan--since she had no choice to be "good for goodness sake" in the words of the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Is it a calumny on the ancient ethnic group the Samaritans to refer to a "good Samaritan" as if to distinguish a good Samaritan from an ordinary one? For now, those are my Strey thoughts.

If Today is Saturday, How Come It's Not Raining?

New photos from this A.M. courtesy of the Leaf Liberation Front.
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Silly String Theory in Hollywood's Universe

Eugene Volokh, a (so far as we know) unindicted co-conspirator at The Volokh Conspiracy
reports that Silly String in banned in Hollywood during Halloween and has posted the sign on a post seen above as evidence of the ban.

He has kindly provided us the ordinance that explains/imposes/empresses the ban as follows:

a) For purposes of this section:

1. “Silly String” shall mean any putty-like substance that is shot or expelled in the form of string from an aerosol can or other pressurized device, regardless of whether it is sold under the name “Silly String” or any other name.

2. “Hollywood Division” shall mean the area defined by the Los Angeles Police Department as the Hollywood Division, the geographical boundaries of which include all of that portion of Los Angeles City bounded and described as follows: Beginning at the point of intersection of Beverly Boulevard and Normandie Avenue, and proceeding northerly along Normandie Avenue to Franklin Avenue, and proceeding westerly along Franklin Avenue to Western Avenue, and proceeding northerly along Western Avenue to Fern Dell Drive, and continuing northerly along Fern Dell Drive to its terminus, and proceeding due north through Griffith Park to Forest Lawn Drive at its intersection with Zoo Drive, and proceeding westerly and southwesterly along Forest Lawn Drive to Barham Boulevard, and proceeding southerly along Barham Boulevard to United States Highway 101, and proceeding southeasterly along U.S. Highway 101 to Mulholland Drive, and proceeding westerly along the various curves and courses of Mulholland Drive to the Crest of Ridge, and proceeding southerly following the Los Angeles city line along the eastern border of the Trousdale Estates area of the City of Beverly Hills to the northeast corner of the City of West Hollywood, and proceeding easterly following the Los Angeles city line bordering along its various curves and courses of the northern border of the City of West Hollywood to the eastern border of the City of West Hollywood that is to the east of La Brea Avenue, and proceeding southerly along the Los Angeles city line to Romaine Street, and proceeding westerly following the Los Angeles city line along its various curves and courses to the intersection of Romaine Street and La Cienega Boulevard, and proceeding southerly following the Los Angeles city line along its various curves and courses to Beverly Boulevard, and proceeding easterly along Beverly Boulevard to La Brea Avenue, and proceeding northerly along La Brea Avenue to Willoughby Avenue, and proceeding easterly along Willoughby Avenue to Hudson Avenue, and proceeding southerly along Hudson Avenue to Melrose Avenue, and proceeding easterly along Melrose Avenue to Gower Street, and proceeding southerly along Gower Street to Beverly Boulevard, and proceeding easterly along Beverly Boulevard to Normandie Avenue.

3. “Halloween” shall mean the 36-hour period from 12:00 a.m. on October 31st of each year, through 12:00 p.m. on November 1st of each year.

(b) No Person, as defined in Municipal Code Section 11.01(a), shall possess, use, sell or distribute Silly String at, within or upon any public or private property that is either within public view or accessible to the public, including, but not limited to, public or private streets, sidewalks, parking lots, commercial or residential buildings, places of business, or parks within the Hollywood Division during Halloween.

(c) Any violation of this section is a misdemeanor subject to the provisions of Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 11.00(m).

The first thing that we and others have noted is that the definition of "silly string" would include Cheez Whiz "i.e., a putty like substance extruded from an aerosol can, as well as aerosol putty and many kinds of insulation that come in a pressurized can like Great Stuff. The prohibition extends not only to the use or sale but also the mere possession of the substance. Cheese and Crackers ! (Until Kraft put that product in a spray can I didn't even know that Cheese could take a whiz.)

Some scholars at Volokh's blog discuss the Second Amendment implications of banning the use of string for self defense. (It's a slippery slope-literally, if you spray silly string or cheez whiz on a downhill incline) because the next thing you know they'll be banning Silly Rope.

Are there religious implications in the banning of substances on the day that is the most important in the Wiccan calendar? Might we need silly string to defend us from being embrassed by ghosts from another dimension? "That day, called Sahhain is seen as a time when the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest. The Celts believed that upon death, everyone went to a beautiful place free of hunger, pain and disease. It was called "Tir nan Og", sometimes translated as "Summerland". They had no concept of Heaven and Hell like that seen in Christianity and Islam. Many believed that two separate and nearly identical worlds existed. When a person died, they were transferred to the "ghostworld"; when they were born, they were transferred from the ghostworld to the mortal one. "The pagan idea used to be that crucial joints between the seasons opened cracks in the fabric of space-time, allowing contact between the ghostworld and the mortal one." according to this blog.

One of the few things you can't possess to smoke in Hollywood on Halloween is silly string. The old bag of flaming dog shit is OK to have on Halloween as long as it's not exrement from an aerosol can--one of the few things that is putty like and not dispensed in that manner.

Speaking of which, when we were kids the most often way of doing the kind of damage that kids do now with silly string was to use rolls of toilet paper to decorate bushes and trees. Hollywood is not considering banning the posession of toilet paper for the thirty six hours including Halloween I hope.

My clients frequently ask me, as one did today, "How long is a hearing?" I answer, "How long is a piece of string?" Some are long--some are short. How long is a piece of silly string?

Serious Scientific Studies of Silly String (serious silliness?) have measured at the greater than atomic level how much silly string there is in a can, and concluded it's 1,632 feet of string. That is about a third of a mile!

Wee Verdict is Quite Large: Strange Case Makes Interesting Law

This blog's Senior Bottled Water Editor, Heidi Rayshun, reports that in the "Hold your Wee for a Wii" wrongful death case previously blogged here, the jury has returned a verdict against the radio station that held the contest in which Jennifer Strange died from water intoxication.

The award was $ 16.57 million, perhaps the largest wrongful death verdict ever in Sacramento, it is reported by On Point. The attorney for the husband of Jennifer Strange, Roger A. Dreyer (Dreyer Babich, Sacramento), established that the D.J. who dreamed up the contest, Dermenjian, had heard of hyponatremia, or water intoxication, (a/k/a H 2 Oh No), before he took part in the contest and didn't know whether any of the other contestants knew about it.

He knew that some people just can hold their water, I suppose, or at least until their bladder bursts. Strange's husband testified he had never heard of hyponatremia and that his wife never indicated to him that she knew about it. Staff at the radio station, KDND 107.9, did not warn the contestants of the danger of excessive water-drinking. {ASIDE: I know a guy who tried to drink Canada Dry once--but he never got past Toronto.}

This is a blow to the hydration industry, which is said to have remarked that water doesn't kill people, people who hold contests kill people. The defense had argued that people who engage in contests assume the risk of, well, engaging in contests. But, this website notes that one of the the symptoms of hyponatremia is confusion, so a person who drinks so much water that her body lacks sufficient sodium (creating an electrolyte imbalance) would lack the judgment to know when to say "when."

The jurors felt that the on air people should have run the contest past the legal department--known to be party poopers about almost anything--who no doubt would have stopped it because they'd stop just about anything. The jurors also relied on calls taken on the air from callers who said the contest was dangerous--but who listens to radio callers? They are the same housebound agoraphobics who call in ranting to right wing talk show hosts about the black helicopters from the secret world government, or explaining to sports personalities on air why the Yankees need to buy Chase Utley right away.

The jurors deliberated for nine days about damages, or three days longer than it took to create the world and all the water on it, according to Genesis. In the end, according to juror Tammy Elliott, the jury agreed to averaging the dollar amount each juror felt appropriate. It was nine days for cryin' out loud, and they were starting to get on one another's nerves, we suspect, or at least run out of clean underwear. "Each juror's number was weighted equally," Elliott said according to the Sacramento Press. That seems fair, if one wants to award nothing and another $48 million, then $24 million would be about right, even if no one on the jury actually believed that to be the correct amount within a $24 million range. Just like the saying that a truly good settlement is one that leaves everyone unhappy, the same must be true for trial jurors.

They can't do that, can they?

No, they can't--it's called a quotient verdict and is impermissible in many states (see Houseworth v. Bishop 57 Ind. App. 62, 106 N.E. 380 (1914). California is one--McDonnell v. Pescadero Stage Co., 120 Ca. 476, 52 Pac. 725. Do you smell a good appeal issue?