Monthly Archives: September 2011

Florida Wins Again

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

If you are a technogeek you will enjoy this post on The 10 Most Bizarre and Annoying Causes of Fiber Cuts, much expanded by some great comments.

But of course the top incident involves Florida:

There was a landowner whose property stretched across the border between Georgia and Florida. He was mad at Florida DOT because he didn’t get enough money when they purchased the right-of-way to widen the highway that cut through his property. Level 3 had fiber in the right-of-way, so he was mad at us too. One day he decided on revenge, so he jumped onto his backhoe and drove across the state line from Georgia to Florida, right up to the edge of the ROW and dug a 2 foot wide by 10 foot long trench. He then got down in the hole and cut the fiber and the ducts. Then he moved 15 feet south and dug a second trench until he found more fiber and ducts and cut them in a second location.When our field techs got on the scene, Mr. Landowner was waiting on them with his 12 gauge shotgun! He refused to let anyone repair the fiber on threat of death! When law enforcement arrived, Mr. Landowner had moved back over to the Georgia side and claimed he had no idea how the damage had been done. He was out of their jurisdiction. There were no witnesses, and all the law enforcement could do was talk to him and try to get him to confess. At least we were able to repair the damage. But during the conversation with the law, Mr. Landowner spewed anger and said he was going to come back tomorrow and cut the fiber again. Well, that was admission of intent to commit a crime and the rules of jurisdiction didn’t apply anymore. Ha! He was arrested and we were able to see frontline justice after all

Posted in Florida, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | Comments Off on Florida Wins Again

Next Time I’m Going to Mention the Bubble Gum

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Every semester I prepare a memo for my incoming students about how the class will work. Each memo is tailored to the class, although they all share some similarities. The one for incoming first years is of necessity the longest — I posted a copy of one on this blog a few years ago as A Note for my 1L Torts Class. It hasn’t changed that much since.

In editing the note for this year’s class, I spent maybe too long trying to decide if I should add something to make it clear that I do not want students blowing bubbles in class. (In fact, I don’t particularly want my students chewing gum, but I draw the line at big pink protuberances suddenly appearing in the front of their faces.) On the one hand, I really don’t like it, and think that bubble-gum-blowing is unprofessional and inappropriate for the classroom. On the other hand, I would like to think that everyone knows this, and worry that if I am stating an obvious thing like no-bubble-blowing-in-the-classroom it will justly offend people who don’t need to be told not to expectorate in class either. In the end, I chickened out.

And yes, yet again, we had a bubble-blower this week.

That’s it. Next year I’m putting it in the class policies.

Photo Copyright 2009 by maclauren70. Some rights reserved.

Posted in Law School | 13 Comments

Somewhere, Robert W. Welch Jr. Is Smiling

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I’m back from brief travels. Not much seems to have changed while I was gone. E.g. Bachmann says only ‘radical environmentalists’ wouldn’t drill the Everglades.

It’s the sort of theatrics that wows people and gets headlines, but has no substance as there isn’t much oil there anyway.

… geologists believe there’s not much oil under the Everglades anyway. Collier County’s Sunniland Field, the only significant oil field nearby, doesn’t produce large quantities of oil, and a former employee tells 10News the oil is difficult to refine.

…

10News sat down with USF Geologist Dr. Albert Hine, and he told us, “There is no known evidence that there is a significant hydrocarbon deposit beneath the Everglades.”

I am waiting for a democratic candidate to suggest confiscating guns from institutionalized mental patients. That seems about the same kind of thing. But of course they don’t do that. Which is why everyone is linking to Mike Lofgren’s Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.

It seems to me that Obama’s party is like the Rockerfeller Republicans of the 70s and 80s. Bachmann-Perry Overdrive 1 look like the John Birchers with a human face. I’m not sure what Romney is, maybe it depends on the phases of the moon.

  1. No disrespect intended to these guys.[↩]
Posted in Politics: Tinfoil | 2 Comments