January 30, 2008 Peter In an article about the “befuddlement” of liquor laws governing the shipment of wine across state lines, the New York Times quotes a key stakeholder, Mr. Wolf, the chairman of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, who highlights another problem as a warning to us all:
January 25, 2008 Peter A recent NYT article outlines a quiet but remarkable shift in at least some strata of the legal world as more and more law firms begin to implement more family-friendly policies to stop the flight of would-be partners to greener pastures:
A harbinger of changing times might well be the brief filed by the hard-driving white-shoe firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges of New York, asking a judge to reschedule hearings set for Dec. 18, 19, 20 and 27 of last year.
“Those dates are smack in the middle of our children’s winter breaks, which are sometimes the only times to be with our children,” the lawyers wrote.
The judge moved the hearings.
Are the heady days of 2300 billable hours per associate numbered? What’s next, the 35-hour workweek? 26 weeks of maternity leave? A marked increase in the quality of life?
What do the lawyers here think? What kind of weight does your firm grant such considerations? How do you navigate professional and domestic demands?
January 24, 2008 john f. The media and supporters of the political opponents of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have labeled Romney a flip-flopper because he said he was pro-choice and committed to gay rights in 1994 while running against Ted Kennedy for the Senate and now says he is pro-life and has opposed same-sex marriage.
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January 23, 2008 Peter 
(Source)
On 23 January 1968 the North Korean navy captured the USS Pueblo, a spy ship operating off the east cost of the DPRK. (See the wikipedia account here.) Never one to pass up an opportunity to poke the US in the eye, the Korean Central News Agency unleashed a no-holds-barred harangue on the 40th anniversary of the Pueblo incident: (Careful about clicking that link–Kim Jong Il is an internet expert and may track you down!)
December 31, 2007 Hellmut I am an Obama supporter but I still think that Resa Aslan’s editorial is a must read for every American voter and elected official:
It’s just this sort of blunder — naive, well-meaning, amateurish, convinced that everyone understands the goodness of U.S. intentions — that worries me again these days. That’s because a curious and dangerous consensus seems to be forming among the chattering classes, on both the left and the right, that what the United States needs in these troubling times is not knowledge and experience but a “fresh face” with an “intuitive sense of the world,” and that the mere act of electing Obama will put us on the path to winning the so-called war on terror. . . . That is how the post-Bush “war on terror” must be handled. Not by “re-branding” the mess George W. Bush has made, but by actually fixing it.
Aslan then explains the complexities and cntradictions of the national security challenges that confront the United States in the Middle East. Enjoy!
December 17, 2007 RJH Snowdonia is a region that tends to suck in all of the moisture from the Irish Sea and drop it back down in buckets. That’s been my experience clambering over these glacier-cracked crags over the last twenty years. Luckily, that old Welsh wizard Merlin was feeling generous at the weekend and gave us sunshine despite the cold (he lies asleep with Arthur under Mt. Snowdon). Here are some pics from a hike up and around Moel Siabod near Capel Curig:
Nice scramble up the Daiar Ddu ridge.
The view over the Glyders with Tryfan — Wales’ most interesting peak — in the middle.
The Snowdon massif. You can just about make out the Crib Goch ridge. Unfortunately, I only had my crappy phone camera to hand.
November 23, 2007 RJH Chalk it up to arrogance if you want, but Britain is a nation with the institutionalised definite article. In America, you have the United States Postal Service, because, after all, it’s not the postal service, just its American manifestation. Yet in Britain we do not have the UK Postal Service, we have The Post Office (as if all others are pale imitations). And there is no English Football Association, it’s simply The Football Association.
Next year’s European football championships (second only to the world cup) will have no representation from The Football Association. The mother association, ye olde FA, cannot muster a team good enough to top Macedonia, Israel, Russia, or Croatia. England did not qualify and join illustrious footballing nations such as Andorra in their failure. Neither did Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland. To think that the British Isles will not participate in a European football tournament is simply unthinkable, given the level of the game in this country. I suppose it’s happy news for the good people of Vienna, however. No English yobs throwing bottles across the Rathausplatz next summer.
November 21, 2007 RJH Virtually every family in Britain, rich and poor, receives a monthly “Child Benefit” payment from the government. I have 3 children and receive about $300. To administer the programme, the government keeps a database of our names (parents and children), dates of birth, national insurance numbers, and bank account details (if they pay by direct deposit).
The UK is currently reeling from an absolute shocker: one government department burned all of these details to disk, password protected them but did not encrypt them, and sent them to another department.
The disks never arrived. No-one knows where they are. Potentially, the names of 25 million Britons — and their most important details — are in the hands of criminals.
This debacle is an absolute gift to those who do not believe we can trust the government with private data. The government claims that the mistake was one of a junior civil servant failing to follow procedure rather than systemic policy malfunction. But here’s the thing: the government has put itself into a position where reams of electronic data are frighteningly easy to access. As was pointed out on Newsnight, it’s one thing that your medical records are only available at the local doctor’s surgery, but what do we make of a system where all records have been centralised and a doctor’s computer in Birmingham or Bradford can access everyone’s data nationwide?
I think the Conservatives are right: no national databases, no ID cards.
November 16, 2007 RJH 
The EU has its benefits, most notably that I could live in Austria with a minimal degree of hassle. For that alone, Brussels be praised.
UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, has recently catalogued some of the EU’s failures, notably its utter inability to respond to crisis via military intervention.
“European member states must improve their capabilities. It’s embarrassing that when European nations - with almost two million men and women under arms - are only able, at a stretch, to deploy around 100 thousand at any one time.
EU countries have around 1,200 transport helicopters, yet only about 35 are deployed in Afghanistan. And EU member states haven’t provided any helicopters in Darfur despite the desperate need there.”
What does this mean? Note Miliband doesn’t say the EU “must improve its capabilities.” Instead, responsibility falls on the member states. Considering Britain’s adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, I suspect he has other member states than his own in mind. If the creation of a centrally-controlled European army is not on the table (thank goodness), what role should the EU play in encouraging “member states [to] improve their capabilities”? Because unless Europe can step up to the plate, it continues to cede de facto control of world policing to the United States, and as we all like to remind ourselves, the US is merd at that.
November 14, 2007 Peter This Friday at 9pm CET (Coordinated Universal Time +1) England faces off against Austria in Vienna in a friendly just days before their final UEFA European Football Championship qualifier against Croatia back at Wembley on the 21st.
Apparently in a bid to save the good guys for the game against Croatia, Coach McClaren is sending his B Team to Austria.
With Owen Hargreaves and Wayne Rooney out and only 4,600 English fans expected in (and bringing their own police escort), could Austria have a chance at redeeming its dismal record?
What’s your pick?
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