The Yin Blog

"24" and baby names?

My new colleague Jack Bogdanski wonders about some of most popular baby names in 2008, including Chloe and Ethan.  I say, it must be a "24" effect, with Chloe O'Brien (CTU tech goddess) and Ethan Kanin (first female President's chief of staff -- and, I'm guessing, romantic interest in season 8).

You decide, sloppy lawyering, or sloppy journalism?

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, my former employer is being sued for discrimination (again).  Last time, it was a claim of viewpoint discrimination; this time, it's age discrimination:

Dobkin, a veteran attorney, claims he was denied a position on the school's faculty because of his age. 

"I just think that it is pretty obvious to me and my lawyers that persons over the age of 40 are not considered for entry-level positions. That is widely known in academic circles. Not only do we see this as illegal, but it is a disservice to students who are being taught by professors, with some exceptions, that have never practiced law in the fields they are teaching," Dobkin said in a telephone interview with the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

The article goes on to note that, according to the lawsuit, "the College of Law has not hired a faculty member older than 40 in the past 10 years."

This is either an example of sloppy lawyering, or sloppy journalism. Thomas Gallanis was hired last year, and his CV shows that he earned his BA in 1987, which would generally mean that he was around 42-43 years old when he was hired. Of course, Gallanis was a lateral hire, not entry level, so the claim would appear to be true if it refers only to entry level hires -- in which case, it's sloppy journalism, since this is something that could have been checked pretty easily on the website.

UPDATE: Brian Leiter comments here, suggesting that Dobkin can't win the lawsuit because there are too many non-age related reasons that could exist, and concludes: "One he assumes he must know this--or have been so advised by his attorney--and so is pursuing the matter to draw attention to the more general issue about possible age discrimination in academic hiring."

But it could be simpler, too, no?  Survive or avoid a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, get into discovery, and then seek a settlement either before a summery judgment motion, or after surviving one.

The end of "Battlestar Galactica"

I finally finished watching season 4 of "Battlestar Galactica" -- all on DVD(!) -- and . . . wow.  (Spoilers ahead, obviously.)  From various heated comments on the TiVo users forum that were harshly critical of BSG creator Ron Moore, and from Amazon reviewers, I had the sense before watching it that season 4 had somehow self-destructed into some kind of awful, unwatchable mess.

But as the season unfolded, I saw the various story arcs being tied together in a way that made me think maybe Moore really did have a plan from the start.  Unlike seasons 2 and 3, which both started and finished strong but sagged in the middle, season 4 seemed consistently good throughout.  The Cylon civil war, with the Leobens, Sixes, and Sharons (except for Boomer) on the "good" side, and the Cavils, Simons, and Dorals on the "bad" side, was captivating.

What I especially liked about the series was that it was dark and grim, not just for the sake of being so, but because it was narratively important.  BSG was never shy about killing off characters, but until season 4, they were rarely key players.  (Offhand, the only exception I can think of was President Roslin's chief aide Billy Keikeiya, and that was driven by the actor's desire to leave the show.)  In this season, the body count soars, and it starts to touch major characters.  And unlike, say "24," which I love but dislike its gaudy way of killing main characters (look, Jack Bauer has to shoot his buddy Curtis!), the deaths in BSG made sense.

- Cally Henderson: "spaced" by Tory Foster for discovering that Tory, Tyrol, Tigh, and Anders were the original Cylons.  This was a truly brutal scene, with Tory having appeared conciliatory, taking Cally's son (whom she intended to kill with herself), then smacking Cally and then opening the airlock.  It made sense, though, because the writers had taken care to depict Tory, unlike the other newfound Cylons, as embracing her inner Cylon ruthlessness.

- Anastasia Dualla: shot herself in the head after the crew's discovery that "Earth" was nuclear wasteland.  Totally shocking at the time, but upon reflection, it made sense that *someone* would simply be unable to handle the shattering of the dream of Earth.

- Tom Zarek and Felix Gaeta: executed by firing squad after Gaeta's mutiny is turned back.  I always liked Gaeta, since he was the "nerd" of the ship, and I was sad to see him embrace the dark side.  But this too was foreshadowed well, starting with his ostracization by the rest of the crew for his perceived treason on New Caprica to the loss of his leg by what turned out to be one of the original Cylons.  And Zarek walked the line between terrorist and demagogue effectively, but this was a fitting end for him too.

- Sharon "Boomer" Valerii: shot by Sharon "Athena" Agathon.  Redemption isn't always an option.  Boomer has turned on the other Sharons by siding with the Cavil/Doral/Simon trio in the civil war, so her days were going to be numbered by the surviving Cylons anyway.  But not only that, she seduced Athena's husband and kidnapped her daughter!  Sure, she ended up bringing the daughter back, but it was understandable that Athena would shoot her.

- Sam Anders: piloted the humans' ships into the sun.  When the only thing keeping you alive is the Cylon hybrid technology that keeps you immerse in a tank of goop, are you really alive still?  But at least his torment induced by Kara Thrace is over.

- Laura Roslin: died of cancer.  This was a bittersweet end for the Admiral Adama-President Roslin romance.  I really thought when he took her for her last ride in the Raptor that he was planning on crashing and killing himself as well.  I would've been happy for him, but I would have felt cheated as a viewer, if there had been some magic cure for her condition (though they kind of did that earlier with the Cylon-human hybrid fetus blood).

Did it make sense that they landed on our Earth 150,000 years ago, gave up technology, and blended in/mated with the humanoid creatures at the time, eventually spawning us?  That's a little hard to take, but I guess the 150,000 year mark was dictated by the real-life finding of the mitochondrial DNA of "Eve."  It was still an interesting and narratively-sensible end to the series.  Really, it was almost a flawless resolution of the show, the one weakness being the end of Kara Thrace's saga.  Having her just disappear into thin air was the one deus ex machina aspect of season 4 . . . .

If an American corporation handled its pension plan like Social Security . . . .

I got my annual "Your Social Security Statement" in the mail today.  This is the letter that estimates my benefits if I were to start collecting at age 62, age 67, and age 70.  It also comes with a caveat:

Your estimated benefits are based on current law.  Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time.  The law governing benefits may change because, by 2041, the payroll taxes will be enough to pay only about 78 percent of scheduled benefits.

I always wondered, if an American corporation handled its pension plan the way the federal government handles Social Security, what would the local U.S. Attorney's Office think?

I'm not even sure the quoted statement is 100% accurate.  It omits the fact that well before 2041, Social Security is going to need to collect on the IOUs sitting in its coffers.  Those IOUs were issued by the federal government, which has been raiding the surplus that Social Security has been generating.  However, it's just the federal government borrowing from itself!  So, to pay off the IOUs, the government will need to raise taxes, borrow more money elsewhere, or cut benefits. . . .

White men and Asian women

A former student linked to this story about how there's a trend of powerful, older white guys marrying younger women of Asian descent.  Probably the most provocative paragraph is this one:

While I'm sure that real love and affection is sometimes the bond in these culture-crossing May-December romances, could it be that power divorcés of a certain ilk make the perfect renegade suitors for these overachieving Asian good girls — an ultimate (yet lame) attempt at rebellion? Maybe these outsized, world-class moguls are stand-ins for emotionally repressed Asian dads (one cliché that is predominantly true). Or...are these women just glorified opportunists? What's so perverse is that while Asians have always revered their elders, sleeping with a guy old enough to be your grandfather is just creepy — in any culture.

I don't know about the cultural analysis therein and I certainly hope I'm not an emotionally repressed Asian dad, but then, I have two boys and no girls, so perhaps it doesn't really matter.  After all, one thing outside the scope of the story but of some potential relevance is how among white-Asian couples, it seems far more common to see the white male/Asian female configuration than the reverse.  Anecdotally, I have heard from more than one Asian female friend that she would never date an Asian guy.  (I don't imagine that this was meant as a brush-off of me, since I was just platonic friends, but I suppose you never know. . . .)  Fortunately, my wife was not one.

A really bad day in court(!)

Under the not mandatory but more or less kind of mandatory federal sentencing guidelines, even most white collar criminals are looking at some degree of prison time -- heck, Martha Stewart got a break from the judge and still had to serve 6 months in a federal prison for just lying to federal agents!  So if you're fraudster extraordinaire Bernie Madoff's lieutenant, you're probably looking at serious prison time.  To the extent the judge follows the sentencing guidelines, the only hope you have is to get the coveted section 5K1.1 "substantial assistance to authorities" departure, which allows the judge to drop way below the mandated sentencing range.

Typically, defendants angling for the 5K1.1 departure plead guilty pursuant to a plea agreement and cooperate with the government in ratting out other defendants.  For so long as they are useful, the government moves to continue the sentencing.  After all, the government wants the carrot of the 5K1.1 motion available to get continued cooperation; the defendant wants the government to say at sentencing, "Yes, he/she was helpful," because it's entirely up to the government whether to move for a 5K1.1 departure.

This arrangement benefits both sides, since the defendant is typically out of jail (though no doubt under government supervision), and the government gets to go after other defendants.  Then, at the appointed moment of sentencing, the defendant hopes that the 5K1.1 departure is enough to get the sentencing range to probation/supervised release, or at worst, home detention.

The expectation of this dynamic is probably why Madoff's lieutenant, Frank DiPascali, was shocked to get taken into custody after pleading guilty:

Attorneys argued the former chief financial officer should be free on bail to help investigators sift through a mountain of evidence. But U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan surprised both sides by ordering DiPascali jailed immediately -- a rarity for a cooperator in a white-collar case who had pleaded guilty.

Sullivan said he felt compelled to keep 52-year-old DiPascali locked up after hearing the defendant admit that, at Madoff's direction, he lied to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006 when he thought they might discover the fraud. The judge said he was troubled too that DiPascali also lied repeatedly "to people who entrusted him with their life savings."

Ouch!  Oh well, I suppose this will really ratchet up his incentive to help the government . . . .  Anyway, I don't feel bad for the guy.  It seems astronomically unlikely that he would get no prison time, even with a 5K1.1 departure.  With sentencing projected for early 2010, he'll get credit for time served, and his sentence isn't going to be less than 6 months.

"1" is not a prime number!

While watching the summer season finale of "Burn Notice" (awesome stuff!), I caught a commercial for Sonic.  The gist of it was some math nerd talking about how easy it was for him to remember some combination of numbers, one digit of which was "2" -- because it's the second prime number.

No, no, no!  2 is the first prime number, because 1 is not prime.  A prime number is a number divisible only by itself and by 1; in other words, it has two divisors.  1 is not such a number.

14 or so hours 'til my new HD TiVo goes online!

Back when I was setting up the utilities for our new home in Portland, I was confronted with the cable company vs. phone company dilemma.  I opted for the cable company (Comcast) partly because I was concerned about having satellite TV in a location where it rains so much.  And Comcast's triple-bundle deal was pretty good.

However, I was prepared to abandon my beloved TiVo because the two Series 2 machines that I have aren't HD compatible, and Comcast threw in free use of an HD DVR for 6 months.

WIthin a couple of days of using the cable DVR, though, I couldn't stand it.  It's not just that we're used to the comforting doo-doo-doo sound that TiVo makes when you fast-forward; it's that TiVo's interface is technologically superior in just about every way you can imagine.  When you super fast-forward and then hit play, TiVo is smart enough to rewind a few seconds back.  That way, when you see your show start again (after speeding through commercials), the auto-rewind gets you to the right spot without forcing you to rewind manually.  Not so with the Comcast DVR.

And then when it comes to scheduling recordings . . . .  I can't believe how stupid the cable DVR is.  Although I selected the option of recording only first run and not repeats, it somehow gets confused by cable network shows like "Burn Notice."  I ended up having to delete manually a bunch of repeat episodes -- ones that I'd watched within the last 30 days(!).

So, I called up TiVo, found out that I was eligible to upgrade my dual-tuner Series 2 TiVo and get a new HD TiVo for $100 off.  Cool deal!  It arrived today, and the Comcast tech is scheduled to come tomorrow to put in the cable smart cards, and then I will be reunited with my beloved TiVo!

New West casebook covers

I'm preparing the syllabus for my Criminal Law II course, for which I'm using Julie O'Sullivan's Federal White Collar Crime casebook.  This is in a new edition (4th), and it's one of the casebooks for which West is using a new cover.  The old cover was a somewhat unappealing brown with gold lettering, but the new cover is a dark gray with silver lettering on a black square background.  It's a classy look!

But sheesh, $150 for this book?!?