Snow in New Orleans!

It was a Winter Wonderland here in the Crescent City this morning. En route to work the semi-sleeting ran quickly changed to snow and started coming down pretty steadily. I turned around, went back home, and woke up the wife and dog to make sure they got to see it.



The entire city got a nice dusting, though at most it accumulated an inch, but it was beautiful and, according to the weather service folks, only the 17th time since 1850 that the city had a measurable amount of snow. St. Charles Avenue looked beautiful:

and, as you can see, the streetcars were getting stacked up because the tracks were blocked by everyone out taking pictures of them.

The Latter Branch of the public library was only one of the many mansions along St. Charles that evoked Currier and Ives:

I had to force myself to go into work but when I got there it soon stopped snowing. But for a while, it was a gorgeous magical morning.

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Never Been #1 on a Top Ten List Before!

In fact, I've never been on ANY Top Ten list before. And, yes, its not really me, but one of my CALI Lessons was the #1 CALI Legal Research Lesson of Fall 2008. This was the list posted on the Law Librarian Blog on December 8th:

Top 10 CALI Legal Research Lessons, Fall Semester 2008
1 Introduction to Secondary Resources by Brian Huddleston.
2 Legal Research 101: The Tools of the Trade by Sheri Lewis.
3 How to Find Case Law Using the Digests by Brian Huddleston.
4 Anatomy of a Case by Brian Huddleston.
5 Updating/Validating Case Law Using Citators by Rebecca Trammell.
6 American Law Reports by Kimberli Morris.
7 Periodicals Indexes and Library Catalogs by C. Andrew Larrick.
8 Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies by Sarah Gotschall.
9 Legal Research Methodology by Wendy Scott & Kennard Strutin.
10 Finding Statutes by Kit Kreilick.

As noted on the Law Librarian Blog, this ranking is from the "CALI Zeitgeist" statistical ranking of all lessons run since August 1st. (Thanks to Joe Hodnicki, who, as the post's author, I presume, extracted the legal research lessons from this master list.)

Instead of ringing my own bell by pointing out what two of the other top five entries on this list were, I'll admit I was lucky to be a participant fairly early in the CALI Legal Research Authoring Project, and so I got to write some of the main lessons. And editor extraordinaire Deb Quentel does a great job of shepherding all us CALI authors through the process, and the legal research editing committee is a thorough and very professional group of law librarians who help push the legal research authors to new heights of excellence.

I'd like to thank the Academy, and my wife, who is my ultimate inspiration and the love of my life, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and I'd like to dedicate this award to all our brave men and women in uniform, and I hope those serving overseas will soon return home safely. I'm King of the World! Let's party until dawn! You like me, you really, really like me!


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Follow-Up: The Who2 Kennedy Honors and "The New Boss, Same as the Old Boss"

How funny! I was just rambling with my post last night about Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend being among the Kennedy Center honorees this year. Then a news article today appropriates the same quote from "Won't Get Fooled Again" that I used!

The article is at Politico and the relevant paragraph is below:

Liberals voice concerns about Obama
...
Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.
...

Or, as Pete Townsend put it:

"Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss"

Can I get an Amen?

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Kennedy Center Honors Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend

What? The two surviving members of the Who were Kennedy Center honorees this year? My teen-age icons of rebellion? This story confirms it, and notes that they weren't the first British rock stars to be so honored - Elton John was a recipient a few years ago, but then I never had my father tell me I was shaking the house by playing "Your Song" too loud when I was fourteen.

This White House photo and press release shows all the recipients this year. George Jones was the one deserving musician who received the honors this year.

I will never be able to listen to their music the same. How can I ever sing along again with:

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

But next month I can still take to heart the final lines of what is still the greatest rock anthem ever:

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

And I guess since they've become so establishment now just like any old fogies, this serves as official notice that we can rebel against them.

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"Slow Blogging" as a Movement

This story in the New York Times the other day:

Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace

basically talks about leisurely, reflective and in-depth writing in blogs and calls it "Slow Blogging", or rather picks up that term from a few people who adhere to this approach, including some guy who wrote a "slow blogging" manifesto.

I guess it can be useful giving anything a handy label, and "slow blogging" might be useful to distinguish these types of blogs from the now-too-common "two lines and a link" (my jargon!) blog of the "Here's an interesting story about XYZ: [WITH A LINK]", which seems to be what many blogs are.

But, and I don't think anyone interviewed in the NYT article points this out, blogging used to be viewed, at least early on, and the ultimate self-publishing format, and was seen as an alternate to traditional media, though it was then shortly criticized for being mostly self-centered naval-gazing. But, the point is, most blogs used to consist of long postings, and many always have. The better ones in legal education, though they haven't replaced the law review process as some predicited, are auxillary brainstorming forums to the process.

Did I have a point? I guess since I seem to have fallen into a once-a-week average posting, after a pretty prolific October, I was somewhat happy to see my pace (or lack of pace) of posting to be justified as a "movement".

What the article didn't mention is whether there's been any study of the lengths of post in relation to their frequency on different blogs. When I get started, I can write up a storm so I would rank high in that comparison.

The NYT article points out that some blogging, mainly those are consist of short posts to keep friends and family updated, are being displaced by Twitter and such. Similarly, I think the the "two lines and a link" blogs, where people just note an interesting article or web page and try to push people there with just a cursory description (which describe a LOT of law library/librarian blogs) are also going to fall by the wayside - people won't "read" those blogs, but they might follow someone's del.icio.us or digg tagging/accounts/whatever they're called, if they're interested in similar subjects.

Funny, I wrote up the AALL meeting in Portland last summer, including a whole session on those sharing technologies - and I don't even have the jargon down. And there was that discussion on the ALL-SIS list about RSS that somewhat confirmed how little its actually being used by law students. All this points in one direction, and idea for an article I had a while back: all these technologies that get hyped when they're the newest thing are reall just "Solutions in Search of a Problem" (that would be the title of the article).

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