Month: April 2007

Content-Neutral Ban on Billboards

Sao Paulo recently banned all billboards from its city limits. (Pictures with billboards)(Pictures without billboards) Although the city is in Brazil and not the United States, it highlights an interesting point in my Constitutional Law reading. A “state” may place a content-neutral ban on an entire medium if:

1. The state interests are sufficiently significant,
2. The interests do not suppress the freedom of expression,
3. The law is narrowly tailored, and
4. There are viable alternatives available.

The United States Supreme Court has stated:

A majority of this Court found [in Metromedia] that [aesthetic] considerations would be sufficient to justify a content-neutral ban on all outdoor advertising signs, notwithstanding the extent to which such signs convey First Amendment protected messages. Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750, 783 (1988) (White, J., dissenting)(citing the plurality opinion and the dissenting opinions of Burger, C.J. and Rehnquist and Stevens, JJ.)

In Sao Paulo’s case, they are seeking to clean up the aesthetics of the city and are not targeting a specific type of billboard ad, but all billboard ads. The fact that an entire medium of communication is being banned could be seen as a content-based interest, however there are likely equally viable options to advertise other than billboards.

Price Per Gallon

When compared to the price per gallon of other liquids gas is relatively modest. I would argue that whether the price per gallon of gas is modest should also be judged with regard to the volume consumed and the demand for that liquid.

Interesting to note that if my car, like my body, ran on coffee, purchasing 25 gallons of Folger’s home brewed coffee would only cost me $17.50. However, if I filled my car with Starbucks coffee at $1.86 / 16oz it would cost me $378.

Here are some prices per gallon for various liquids (link):

* Coffee – $0.70
* Gas – $2.70
* Milk – $3.79
* Eggs – 5.76
* Beer – $8.88
* Chocolate Syrup – $13.23
* RedBull – $30.69
* Robitussin DM – 109.76
* Scorpion Venom – $38,858,507.46

Virginia Tech Shooting

The deadliest college campus shooting in history took place this morning at the Virginia Tech University. Over the course of three hours, a single gunman killed at least 32 students before taking his own life. (NYT Link)

This is a horror that chills my soul on an already cold and stormy day. It’s rare that a headline makes my eyes tear up, but there is little else to do when reading something like this. I want to say this places the fragility of life in perspective, but that doesn’t seem just – not at the expense of 32 innocent students.

What else is there to say?

Indentured Deed

Here is an interesting excerpt from my property text book that reminded me of those heart shaped best-friends-forever necklaces that split into two pieces.

In the days before typewriters and carbon paper, and centuries before Xerox, lawyers were faced with the problem of providing duplicate copies of deeds in certain instances when both the grantor and grantee wanted a copy (for example, in case of a mortgage). They found the solution in an indenture. The deed was written out twice on a single sheet of parchment (usually made from sheepskin stretched, scraped, and scoured) and signed at the end of each copy by both grantor and grantee. The parchment was then cut into two pieces in an irregular line, leaving a sawtooth or indented edge. The two halves, forming two separate deeds, one for the grantor and one for the grantee, could be fitted together to show their genuineness.

Subway Violinist

The Washington Post recently ran an article with video depicting Joshua Bell, a violin virtuoso, playing in a Washington D.C. metro stop during morning rush hour. The article notes that of approximately 1000 people to walk by the violinist, less than a dozen even seemed to notice.

If I still lived in D.C. and I came across the performance, would I stop? Probably not considering that it was in the morning and I would probably be late.

The article points out how people in Europe or Brazil would stop to take in the world-class entertainment, but what does that say? That the foreigners have more lenient bosses? That they have higher job security? Although we all may like to “stop and smell the roses” on the way to work, the world in which we live often does not allow such leniences.

If the violinist played in the evening during the homeward commute, I posit that the reception would be much warmer.

Big Decisions

Most of the last eight years of my life have been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. Getting an education was always a driving force in my decision making. At the end of high school the persistent question was where to go to college. For half of college the big question was what to major in. And after deciding that, where to work when I graduated. Working after graduating was interesting, however it wasn’t settling because it reminded me I had a lot more to learn, and kept me eager to go to grad school. So, during the two years I was working I was also focusing on where to go to law school. Now that I’m in law school, I’ll be looking for a job soon – a continuation of the two-year cycle. And I’m sure it will continue well into my life.

The clip below is from an essay titled “The Power of the Marginal” by Paul Graham. It’s interesting with regard to how to select a major. I think the general principles of the excerpt can be extracted and applied beyond the university setting.

One way to tell whether a field has consistent standards is the overlap between the leading practitioners and the people who teach the subject in universities. At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners. In the middle are medicine, law, history, architecture, and computer science, where many are. At the bottom are business, literature, and the visual arts, where there’s almost no overlap between the teachers and the leading practitioners. It’s this end that gives rise to phrases like “those who can’t do, teach.”

Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. When I was in college the rule seemed to be that you should study whatever you were most interested in. But in retrospect you’re probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who’s good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn’t. You often hear people say that you shouldn’t major in business in college, but this is actually an instance of a more general rule: don’t learn things from teachers who are bad at them.

Beyond YouTube

We’ve all heard of people making fools of themselves on YouTube, but Justin.tv just seems weird to me. It is a 24/7 video and audio feed of a guy doing nothing special. He’s not an adventurer, a sports star, or a sweet sixteen-year old, which means he doesn’t qualify for A&E or MTV. It has been effective viral marketing, which has led to publicity – but publicity for what?

It just seems like we should all have better things to do than watch someone else live their not-so-interesting life … or read my blog I guess. Ha.

PS – I’m still trying to decide if the online mini-series “Prom Queen” is interesting. It is 80 two-minute episodes. They’re on episode seven or eight now.