Disappearing Ice on Mars, According to NASA

Too exciting not to post about, NASA now believes what they thought might be ice–or salt–is, in fact, ice.  NASA’s press release is here.

Whatever the substance is, the lander has found another hard layer at the same depth in a location to the right of this trench (aka “Snow White 1″).

Enjoy the animated gif below, depicting the evaporating substance in a before-after sequence:

Lawyers that Game: Dianne Bonfiglio, Esq., aka, Hot Chief PMS

This interview is the first of a planned series of interviews of professionals — lawyers naturally among them — that are avid, earnest, unabashed gamers. I conducted this interview back in September, but a number of issues kept it from appearing on A.O. Without further ado, here’s my interview with a remarkable attorney from Florida who happens to also be a very skilled competitive gamer. Enjoy. Lime

AO: Hot Chief, thanks for doing this interview. Just by way of introduction, I met you via a comment you left on my blog… I Googled your name, and discovered that lo, you were not only Dianne Bonfiglio, Esq., but also “Hot Chief PMS,” of the online all-female gaming clan “PMS Clan.” Since Halo is one of your forte’s and I’m a Halo addict–and an attorney–I was immediately smitten. You agreed to do an interview, and so here are a few questions: how do being an attorney and a hard-core gamer jive. First off, for the law: what type of law do you practice?

HC: Harry, thank *you* for the opportunity to speak with you! It is my pleasure. Professionally, I’ve been practicing law for about five years. I am a business major and had substantial experience in business before I entered law school in

Obtaining a Name Change in Montana

Apparently this spurned husband didn’t take it so well when his wife entered into
a dalliance on a business trip.  William L. Managhan of the Managhan & Kortum-Managhan Law Firm, reportedly sent the following email to the entire membership of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association, detailing exactly how best to change your name in Montana:

Managhan & Kortum-Managhan Law Firm will no longer be known as such. The name is returning to Managhan Law Firm as Santana Kortum-Managhan is leaving the firm. Turns out that she was having sex with Tim McKeon of Anaconda while attending MMLP hearings in Helena. Call me silly but I no longer fill comfortable with her as my law partner or wife. Some will think this is an inappropriate announcement, but considering the small legal community in our state, I might as well preempt the roomer mill. Please address communication to William L. Managhan through Managhan Law Firm.

http://www.managhanlawfirm.com/profiles.htm

Managhan Law Firm PLLC

That’s a big “[sic]” for all those typos.  Whether the email is authentic or no, it’s quite a story, isn’t it.  The firm’s “Profiles” page reads “This page is currently unavailable,” lending a suspicious air of credibility to the tale.

And Mr. Managhan: if you did indeed send this out, can’t you take the time to be a real lawyer and run a spell-check before burdening us with your linguistic/romance woes and simultaneously trashing your wife’s reputation (if indeed that is you . . . hellooo?)?

Lime

See also HERE and HERE for more on the story.

A Toxic Shroud: "China is choking on its own success” and endangering neighbors and American cities

 

Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times, on August 26th, produced an excellent story on China’s industrial success/toxic pollution nexus. The situation is dire, and China’s difficulties overcoming the Victorian England-like pollution troubles in order to host an Olympics palpable to the rest of the world are well known, and have been covered recently in similar excellent coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a brief section of the NYT report:

…it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success

And this is not merely a problem for the Chinese. Acid rain containing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Chinese coal-fired power plants falls on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. The Journal of Geophysical Research reports that much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.

The World Health Organization and World Bank independently found that total deaths in China due to pollution have reached 750,000 a year. Chinese experts interviewed claimed that the Western estimates “probably understate the problems.” The World Bank told the NYT that China’s environmental agency asked them to remove this number from the Spring 2007 final report, claiming the numbers could detrimentally impact “social stability.”

The question, of course, is who has the credibility and sway to either guide China toward responsible environmental policies, or model a path forward by example.

Lime

AltLaw Beta: Free Boolean-searches of SCOTUS/Federal Courts of Appeal Decisions

AltLaw, the newest and one of the more promising internet legal resources to hit the scene, is now up and running and available for free public advanced searches of case law.

It’s a sort of Google for Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions, and clearly holds promise to democratize the availability of relevant and useful case law in the States. LEXIS and Westlaw, of course, have long monopolized the availability of such information in any searchable or useful form, and have charged a pretty penny to those that want to easily search case or other resources (via “Natural Language” or the far more powerful, but underused, advanced/Boolean search engines). AltLaw now makes Boolean searching entirely free.

The catch: at startup, AltLaw’s coverage of SCOTUS case law extends fully only back to May 1991, and the Federal Courts of Appeals in a more irregular spread–the 7th Circuit back only to October 1999, and at best, the 1st Circuit back to 1992. Complete details about AltLaw’s initial coverage are posted HERE.

AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School and the University of Colorado Law School. The site touts, amazingly, advanced searching options akin to LEXIS and Westlaw, including proximity searching, Boolean searches, concentration searches, wildcard searches (my fave), among others. The site also intimates that West Reporter Citations will be added.

Yet another step in making U.S. case law readily available to the citizenry, along the lines of what Cornell’s indispensible Legal Information Institute has done, for example, in making the U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations, among LII’s many other items, very quickly searchible and accessible for free.

Thanks to fellow appellate litigator Greg May at The California Blog of Appeal, and Harvard’s Info/Law for the story.

Lime

The HD Molehill/Spitwad battle; and, Paramount and DreamWorks choose HD-DVD

Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG–including, inter alia, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies, and MTV Films–announced today (Monday Aug 20th 07) that they will release their next-gen DVD titles exclusively on HD-DVD, dropping the Blu-Ray format. Want to watch Transformers, Shrek the Third, and Blades of Glory? Gotta do it in HD-DVD, if you’re looking for that 1080p picture on your flatscreen. (And as we all know, the new Battlestar Galactica is HD-DVD only.)

Paramount described HD-DVD as superior due to “market-ready technology” and the “affordable high quality choice for consumers.” Paramount found that HD-DVD offered better quality, lower-priced players, and lower manufacturing

President Bush Speaks on the Zombie Threat

This has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my life. Yojoe, perhaps your reading can give our team some tactical pointers for the upcoming zombie war.

Lime out

NMCCA: US v. Ledbetter (Aug 07)

The Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals released U.S. v. Ledbetter, No. 200500009, unpublished op. (N.M.Ct.Crim.App. 14 Aug 2007). SPCM, military judge alone, guilty pleas, Arts 80, 81, 91, 95, 108, and 134. Sentence: 5 months, E-1, forfeiture of $500 pay per month for 6 months, and BCD. Appellant claimed (1) improvident plea to resisting apprehension, (2) he was deprived of right to counsel because trial defense counsel never contacted him regarding submission of clemency matters after NMCCA’s remand, (3) ineffective assistance of counsel prior to first CAX, and (4) post-trial delay.

The Court held: assignments of error 1 and 3 were without merit, and withheld ruling on 4. NMCCA resolved AOE 2 by setting aside the convening authority’s action (the 2nd one) and returned the case to the JAG for “proper post-trial processing.” On remand, the trial defense counsel, LT W, received the second SJAR and indicated by

BioShock demo now on XBL

The BioShock demo popped up on XBL today, August 12th. It’s had some very positive reviews by those who’ve seen the pre-release product, so many of us are holding out high hopes. It’s, in short, a sci-fi game set in an underwater, Ayn Rand-inspired Utopia called “Rapture,” which is riven by civil war and rampant genetic modifications and experiments. The theme appears to be very 30’s and 40’s retro sci-fi, and it’s a first-person shooter. Available for download now.

Lime

Catherine Tate teaches David Tennant a Spot o’ Shakespeare

And here’s the last one. British comedian Catherine Tate as Lauren, the annoying British schoolgirl. Here, she disses Scot David Tennant for not being English. Here we have it again: some very British humor, start to finish. Lovely.

Enjoy (with a wee bit of haggis, aye?):

43 years of Doctor Who (fantastic vid)

And then there’s this nostalgic take… Love it. I grew up with Dr. Who, and remember clearly the first Dr. Who I saw–Leela walking over a pit filled with grub-like monsters. I must have been 3 or 4 years old–and I think that I did indeed hide behind the couch, as it were.

Of course I realize that being a fan qualifies me to hang with the geekier elements (fringes?) of society, but I’m an unapologic and inveterate fan. He’s the biggest humanist of all, has had some very fetching companions (lots of crushes on these gals as I grew up, Romana, Nyssa, Sarah Jane), is a true Brit (and now Scot) and a true gentleman…

Enjoy:

Granted, the show historically suffered low budgets and special effects, but the writing now, despite the untraditionally very believable and modern effects, is as faithful as ever to the ethos that developed from 1963 through the early 80’s–corny, humanist, British, and apolitical. Few Americans really understand just how much of a British national institution Dr. Who is, such is the fondness over there. With Chris Eccleston’s Doctor and now David Tennant’s, the show’s writing is fantastic, and I think fans have high hopes that we’ll make it through all 12 lives, despite the three or so sadly squandered ones thus far.

Lime

Doctor Who visits the Cyber Family

I’ve always been a huge Doctor Who fan, but the last few days–thanks to my new Verizon FiOS service–I’m finally back in the high life and can enjoy the 3rd season of the brilliant UK revival.

I’ve been trolling YouTube and found quite a few gems. In this one, the 4th Doctor spends a little quality time with the Cyber Family…

Lime

Confirmed: Xbox 360 Price Drop / Rumor: HDMI to all SKUs?

Xbox’s Major Nelson confirmed Monday that there will be price drops come August 8th–the 360 “Premium,” as we’ve known it (20 gig) will drop $50 to $349. The Core (without hard drive) will drop $20 to $279, and the Elite will drop $30 to $449.

Official MS Press Release HERE.

Also, ArsTechnica reports that a “source” at E3 told their reporter that, across the SKUs, “HDMI will probably be the standard moving forward.” Microsoft officially states that HDMI will appear only on the Halo 3 special edition ($399), and the Elite “for now.” However, the same Microsoft official also declined to comment on what new electronics would appear in any of the consoles coming this fall, leading one to speculate…

Lime out

Lawyering Tip: RSS Legal Feeds

If any of you use RSS readers or depend on the internet for news related to your profession (or simply for enjoyment), you should be familiar with Netvibes. Netvibes is perhaps one of the more elegant and streamlined RSS readers out there. It’s been my intention to post a full review of the site in a future posting.

Until then, I’m publishing my law-related feeds in the shared section of Netvibes. The feeds, almost 50 sites in all, are a compilation of several dozen of the best legal sites and blogs out there, and via Netvibes, makes reading the content quite easy.

Simply float your mouse over a given headline, and you’ll get a bubble with a paragraph selection of the news item or blog post. Click on the headline, and you’ll be given a mini-RSS reader within Netvibes, without actually having to exit to another website. I’ve played around with software-based and web-based readers, including Windows Live, Google, and others, but I’ve continued to return to Netvibes as my main reader. The interface is very fast, and makes quickly locating the articles of interest a breeze.

Harry Lime’s Legal Feeds via Netvibes. Enjoy! And please send any good sites my way, I’d be glad to add to the pot.
HL

Ex-Military Smackdown: Court of Federal Claims Cracks the Whip Against “Razor’s Edge of Frivolity” Claims

In five recent cases last week, two of which are by ex-military members , the Court of Federal Claims has dismissed the cases because “Plaintiff’s counsel has submitted filings which contain numerous errors and exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of this Court’s jurisdiction.“ (emphasis added).  The court referred the matters, along with three other cases, to the Chief Judge under Rule 83.2(d), the rule governing diciplinary proceedings for “misconduct or allegations of misconduct” by the attorney.

The two cases involving ex-military plaintiffs are Janaskie v. United States, No. 06-602C (Fed. Cl. July 31, 2007) and Pope v. United States, No. 06-446C (July 31, 2007).  The other three cases were Locke v. United States, No. 06-629T (Fed. Cl. July 10, 2007), Leshin v. United States, No. 06-637T (Fed. Cl. Jan. 11, 2006), and Cherbanaeff v. United States, No. 06-640T (Fed. Cl. July 12, 2007).  Four, and I would presume all five of the cases have the same plaintiffs’ counsel (though I cannot locate the fifth, Leshin). 

In the two miltary cases, involving a retired U.S. Air Force senior master sergeant and a discharged member of the California National Guard, the plaintiffs both claimed that the Government was required to compensate them for violations of the Uniform Code of Military