Things That Make You Say "Hmmm"

(Updated to include more Hmmm-worthy posts)

Marie Reilly explains the relevance of all the banking law and history surrounding the Bailey Savings and Loan in It's a Wonderful Life. Like, what was the big threat from Mr. Potter's bank to the welfare and happiness of the town's citizens, and why did Uncle Billy have to deposit the money that he misplaced in the first place? This is very interesting!


Colonel Density at Scatterplot admonishes (grad) students not to give gifts to faculty for things that are a part of the job as an academic, and a 41 comment thread tells them not to bring food to dissertation defenses either. Hmm. Maybe I should take back those "thank you" Levenger note jotter things for all those letters of recommendation that got me into Liberal College Law.


Jeff Lipshaw, professor of contract law at Suffolk University School of Law, cannot find contract law remedies for his bad but expensive Ecco shoes. Apparently, shoes whose soles wear within 6 weeks do not violate the implied warrant of merchantiblity because there is a warranty disclaimer on Ecco's website. The Internets disintermediate legal remedies! Foiled again! By the way, I love that the former VP and general counsel of a Fortune 500 company cannot conceive of paying $200 for a pair of shoes. I love how he keeps it real. My suggestion: buy shoes from Nordstrom, which has an excellent return policy for pricey shoes. Not that I buy those.


Mike Dorf at Dorf on Law points out inconsistent reporting by two issues of The New Yorker, telling us that people are getting smarter at the same time they are getting dumber. And yet, I do still love The New Yorker, despite the fact that both Paul Gowder and Ben Wolfson think of it as "middlebrow." Of course, their brows are so high and burnished that they reflect light well into space. Talking to either of them (or heaven help you, both of them at once) raises your IQ and yet makes it feel diminished by comparison. And only philosophy graduate students and child prodigies who read pretentious magazines like n+1 would consider the bedside reading of millions of academics and professionals "middlebrow," anyway. In case this is not coming across, I love you, Paul Gowder and Ben Wolfson. So very much.


Speaking of my smart friend Ben Wolfson, he has a very clever villanelle about "liberals are fascists" Jonah Goldberg, and you should read it.


Some people's one-paragraph summaries of entire relationships make me feel like I haven't been living enough.