Good Neighbor Policy

First, read: Phoenix officer won't let neighbor rescue cat, PD helps. In brief, a cat gets stuck up in a neighbor's tree, and the neighbor, a police officer, wouldn't let the guy get his cat out of the tree, citing "insurance" as his reasoning. After 9! days, several other officers went and got the cat down. At one point, the officer flashed his gun and badge at the would-be rescuers.

Merry Christmas.

On to the legal analysis. The claim of "insurance" is simply so much junk. Liability to property visitors follows a general sliding scale: the more likely one is to be present, and the owner/occupier aware of the presence of the person, the greater the duty of care owed. Some states still break it down into categories. At the lowest end of the scale is the unknown trespasser, to whom no duty is owed at all. The second level is the known trespasser, to whom a duty is owed to warn of unnatural or man-made hazards that pose a serious risk of injury and that are known to the owner/occupier. The third level is the licensee, a person present with the owner/occupier's consent (the general category for social guests), which carries with it the duty to warn of any known dangerous condition. The fourth category is the invitee, someone who is there for the owner/occupier's benefit - the duty there is to warn of any known dangers and to make reasonable inspection.

In this case, the owner/occupier, the officer, would at best have had a duty to warn of any known dangers, if he would have consented to let the pet owner on to the property. The officer could also have simply said "no, you don't have my consent to come on to my property, but I won't stop you either," which would have left the pet owner a known trespasser, with only a duty to warn of known artificial dangers imposed on the officer.

In the worst case scenario, say the pet owner falls out of the tree to his death, would the owner/occupier have any liability? Probably not, if he had warned of any risks of serious harm on his property. If one fulfills one's duty, there is no tort, and thus no liability.

Also, the officer was a jerk, who likely simply did not like the neighbor or cats or both. It says a lot about the police (to serve and protect?) when it takes 6 other cops to browbeat the owner/occupier to let them get a cat out of a tree.

Handwriting and education

I came across this article which discusses the teaching of handwriting (cursive/script) and makes a couple of good points. Primarily, she speaks of changing technology and the eventual obsolescence (though not in those words) of handwriting as an art form by way of the evolution of technology, from the days of the monks in the scriptorium, to the printing press, and to more modern technology like voice recognition software.

She misses one point, though. Handwriting shouldn't be taught not because it is a dead art, but rather because the entire handwriting concept has failed as a whole. Poor handwriting kills 7,000 people annually. The effort to decipher someone's illegible scrawl is a common enough problem. Sure, there is some mystique about the written word, but overall what is the gain? I have never seen anyone's handwriting that is easy to read at a glance, especially compared to the typed word.

Personally, the only thing I write in script is my signature; I haven't used cursive script for anything hand-written since 4th grade. My cursive script is barely readable, to the point where I do not see why I should subject others or myself to having to decipher it; and my scripts is considerably better than some other's.

Instead, I use block printing exclusively for anything handwritten - easy to read at a glance, hard to mistake, and simple. Not elegant, of course, but at least my handwriting won't kill anyone.

The purpose of writing is to communicate - so that which provides the clearest, simplest, and easiest to understand mode of communication should triumph. Ergo, death to script.

Hulu and the Continuing Evolution of the Internet Bussiness Model

For those few who don't know, Hulu is a streaming-video service by NBC Universal and News Corp. It provides, free of charge, streaming video of popular television series and some movies. Shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, House, Heroes, and Sons of Anarchy are among those available. There's a good number of movies also, and a good selection of anime. The service is ad-supported, so you'll have to suffer through commercials just like good, old-fashioned television.

Hulu even allows for embedded video, like this:



What I find interesting is how Hulu constantly updates, removes, and adds media. A given television episode my spend only a month on Hulu, starting a week or so after its original air date. Television shows have a life cycle, it seems: it starts with the original broadcast showing, and then makes a hop to iTunes or some other pay$ download service, and then it may jump to Hulu for a while, before making it to DVD.

In theory, Hulu and its kin should work to combat piracy. The idea is that folks will watch Hulu, with its ad-supported video, rather than use torrent sites. Of course, that's only theory. In practice, however, it seems to me that the powers-that-be are missing the point. The current model leaves 8 days or more between the original air date and the Hulu launch, so if one misses an episode, one can't catch up (without the aid of torrenting sites). Taking down the videos after a given time also runs the same risk. For example, if you missed the first two seasons of Heroes, your can't catch up on Hulu.

So how does it fit together? For me, the studios are missing the point and costing themselves money. I don't have cable and broadcast is a joke, and paying for stuff on iTunes is silly. That leaves free, ad-supported services like Hulu and DVD.

For some shows, the DVD is a foregone conclusion - Futrama, Battlestar Galactica, Sons of Anarchy - but for others . . .not so much (I'm looking at you, The Shield, Weeds). It's not that they are bad shows, but rather that the cost of the DVD is simply not worth the entertainment from the series.

The bottom line seems to be the same as with movie piracy: if you make a good movie, people will buy the DVD/Blu-ray (or, if you make a medicore movie like The Dark Knight . . .). For the less-great shows, the studios are loosing money and screwing themselves by not putting the stuff on Hulu for free. Hell, I watched Jackass 2.5 (well, 30 minutes of it, anyway) on Hulu, sitting through 3 commercials. That's three ad impressions that the studio would not have gotten without Hulu. I would never buy Jackass, but thanks to Hulu, the studios will get a little bit more than they had before.

Also: South Park Studios. That's the right way to do it. Every episode, online, free.

Insanity and Internet Ignorance

My daily job search takes me to the local newspaper, the Southern, though the use of a local newspaper is largely a waste of time when searching for attorney jobs. The Southern simply does not provide the coverage necessary to be of any real merit when searching for that type of job, but I do it anyway, largely out of a sense of obligation and a duty to thoroughness.

I came across this story: "Ichard found not guilty through insanity," (Homan, 12-16-08). A quick link to Judici, the Illinois courts public records website, provides a glimpse into Mr. James L. Ichard's life: 5 criminal felony charges for burglary in 2003 (2003CF320-325), and one for murder in 2007 (2007CF369).

My interest was caught by one of the public comments posted by 4truth, which stated

Sad, this is what we get in our court systems today. This "insane" person will be relaeased in the next year or so because they say he is fine. Then he will strike again. By the way what happened to Garnati's perfect record on murder trials?

My B.A. is in psychology, so insanity has always been an interest of mine; I wrote several papers on it during my undergrad years. The ignorance regarding the topic is, in a word, astounding.

As a quick review, murder (or any crime, for that matter) requires two things: 1.) the mens rea, the mental state, and 2.) the actus rea, the act. Well, not exactly - some crimes are strict liability, and require no mental state (example: statutory rape), but it usually means that the mental state necessary is none, rather than there being no required mental state.

Anyway, insanity negates the mental state - if one is insane, one cannot have the necessary mental state to commit a crime, and especially murder, which has heightened mental state requirements, which very upon the degree of murder charged. Illinois follows the American Law Institue insanity standard, that is, substantial impairment of the ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of the act or to conform to the law. The burden is on the defendant to make the showing.

In practice, insanity is a hard sell, since jurys are naturally skeptical. The John Hinckley case is a prime example of the common idea of insanity, or the movie Primal Fear. In reality, insanity usually means the same or more time incarcerated and is probably never a get-out-of-jail-free-card. In regular prison, 1 in 3 state and 1 in 4 federal prisoners received mental health treatment after admission.

The idea that the public as a whole (or at least some ignorant [as in lacking knowledge] internet poster) is uninformed on a legal matter is nothing new, and neither is suspicion and doubt over mental illness. What bothers me is that anti-depresseants are among the most prescribed drugs in the U.S. (Zoloft is #12 among all prescription drugs), and yet there is still such a stigma surrounding them and mental illness in general. It disturbs me that something so common can be so quickly misunderstood.

Very First Post

Knock, knock?
Who's there?

[. . .]

A guy with altogether too much time on his hands, for one.

A little about me, to start. I am an attorney, and I graduated from law school in May 2008, passed the bar in Illinois (hurrah hurrah), and I have been job hunting since August 1. The nifty little script on this page tallies that at 138 days, which is to say about 38% of the year. That fact is, to say the least, depressing. I can blame it on a lot of things, like the economy, or my school, or myself, but the simple fact is that sometimes, there really is no good explanation for why things happen, and all one can do is keep on keepin' on, as the expression goes.

In the spirit of altogether too much free time, I have decided to firmly stake out my own little corner of the internet, where I can share my trials and tribulations, my opinions and rants, and generally vent the surprising amount of frustration unemployment brings. In any event, it will at least be something constructive, at least in theory.

If you've taken the time to read this far, you have my thanks. I hope I have give you some small amount of entertainment, if only at my misery, and that I will continue to make the attempt. Feel free to leave comments, post your thoughts, and generally make fun of me.

Cheers.