Justice Dylan

Well Bob Dylan has long been hailed as a great lyricist, if not always as a great vocalist. And it turns out that judges in courts throughout the land agree.

Back in July (the things you miss when you're on vacation huh? Um, totally worth it) Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS, like POTUS) cited Dylan in his dissent to a case that the NY Times described as "an achingly boring dispute between pay phone companies and long distance carriers"

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing, ‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).

Rolling Stone chimed in as did the online self described legal tabloid Above the Law. Everyone was all too happy to point out that the quote isn't quite right. While online lyric sheets, including Dylan's website, agree with the cite Rolling and the others say if you listen to the words its actually a double negative cause really 'When you ain't got nothing...'

In another interesting tidbit you'll find in the stories Dylan is the most cited musician leading his closest competition, Paul Simon, 26-8.

I got to this story while catching up on the Freakonmics blog.

If you want to see the whole researched paper follow this link.

Every time I see Dubya speak I hear the lyrics to Idiot Wind in my head...

Lost in the Shuffle

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson had his speaking slot moved from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoonish in order to keep from pushing Senator Biden's speech even later in to the night. (while I've been enjoying the headlining speeches they're keeping me up pretty late, just like playoff baseball)

Gov. Richardson actually gave a great eight minute long speech at Mile High. I'm not sure exactly where it fit into the schedule but it was still light out so it was fairly early. It's a fun eight minutes and he does a great job of delineating the differences between the candidates. and for me it's right up there as one of the best speeches of the convention.

Gov. Richardson got in a few real zingers too:

Lets be honest America John McCain may pay hundreds of dollars for his shoes, but we're the ones who will pay for his flip-flops...

John McCain called our recession psychological, his economic advisers say American families are whiners, but when the big oil companies whine John McCain says they need more tax breaks...

From Russia With Love?

Paul Krugman offered up this comparison and it struck me as such a great match that I stole it from him, right down to the screen shot from the Bond flick.

You be the judge, is Vladimir Putin really SPECTRE's Number 5?


























Apparently our President doesn't watch movies either.

Foto Friday - The Return

Not quite back with a blast because the image that I want to bring you today is actually a flash doohickey on the NY Times website.

So follow the link for an awesome view from atop the 10 meter (highest) platform at the Beijing Water Cube. Once again the NYT web team has provided an excellent interactive experience online they're definitely leaps and bounds ahead of any other newspaper website in terms of utilizing the opportunities provided by the web.

I got there via Kottke.

Next week real pictures, I promise.

Back with a Bang

Yes I have returned to civilization, no I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. While I get caught up with the world at large I'd like to bring Trouble the Water to your attention.

Trouble the Water is a documentary from the film makers who worked with Micheal Moore to bring us Fahrenheit 9/11, only they didn't shoot most of the footage. Kimberly Rivers Roberts shot it on her newly street purchased camcorder as Katrina came ashore and the water rose in the lower ninth ward.

Andrew O'Heir has a great write up on the movie and America over at Salon, seriously folks go read it. A few snippets because I don't trust you to follow the link without prompting...

In many ways, I think Kim Roberts' authorship, not just of her amazing storm footage or her music but of her life, is the true subject of "Trouble the Water." We can have a "national conversation about race" until we all turn blue and keel over from boredom -- Did we have it already? If so, what did we say? -- but people like Kim and Scott Roberts don't generally have their own voices, or any other kind of autonomy. A former drug dealer and drug addict, raised in dire poverty by a mother who died young of AIDS, may be understood by way of abstract categories: She's a symptom of criminal pathology or a symptom of racism, a victim or a perpetrator. She is hardly ever going to be seen as a complicated individual utterly free of self-pity, who believes herself fully in charge of her own destiny...

To me it is Katrina that puts the lie to any fantasy of a race-neutral America. And it's Katrina, not 9/11, that displays the nation's potentially fatal 21st century weakness. While countless billions have been spent converting our society into a police state to prevent another unpreventable attack by a handful of neo-medieval wackos, the story of the ongoing destruction of a historic, majority-black American city -- before, during and after that storm -- has been briskly swept under the carpet or, more accurately, abandoned to investigative journalists, documentary filmmakers, NGO social workers, corrupt or incompetent bureaucrats and other irrelevant social debris...

Now like I said go read the rest, oh ok you can watch the trailer below first. Trouble the Water will open tomorrow (August 22) in New York and LA, be shown adjacent to both conventions, and come to Landmark's E Street here in DC on September 26th.

Wait, you didn't think Katrina was over did you?