A couple of weeks ago, I registered with the truth laid bear’s blogosphere ecosystem just for fun. Right out of the box, I was a lowly Insignificant Microbe, but after a few days I ascended to the status of Flippery Fish, bypassing completely the Slimy Molluscs, Lowly Insects, Crunchy Crustaceans, Wiggly Worms, and Multicellular Microorganisms.
After a few days as a Crawly Amphibian, I am proud to report that I am now a Slithering Reptile.
Thanks to n.z. bear for the fun.
You can keep track of my evolution on the sidebar over there, but I’m pretty sure that Slithering Reptiles is as high as lawyers get.
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Boy, this guy is good for only 7 inches high!
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Just completed my move from joelhollingsworth.blogspot.com to joelhollingsworth.com.
The metaphorical last box to be unpacked was re-directing all internal links to the non-blogspot URL. Just finished. It’s late. I’m going to bed.
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The powers that be in Hollywood are apparently beginning to recognize the value of producing family- and church-friendly films. Check out the story. It’s encouraging.
Upcoming movies that major studios are actively promoting directly to church groups include
Bravo to Disney, Sony Pictures, PictureHouse, and Twentieth Century Fox, which is reportedly optioning some Christian best sellers by Bishop T.D. Jakes and Frank Peretti.
The article suggests that this move by some major studios is directly attributable to the blockbuster success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
I’ve posted on this subject before, and I think this is really good news. It also shows the power and effectiveness of turning out for a movie that’s good.
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I’ve been messing around with the computer for a couple of hours now, trying to get iTunes to work. It simply won’t start up. I figured Slappy, who is starting to spend some time on the computer alone, had messed something up.
Well, after several uninstalls, reinstalls, system restores, etc., I finally found this. It’s apparently an upgrade problem. The symptoms described in the linked article are the same ones I’m experiencing.
Apple and Microsoft: a match made in heaven.
Hope they roll out a fix quickly.
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I just wanted to remind everybody that I have almost no control over the Google ads that show up on the site. They’re context-based, meaning that the ads should have some relation to what I write.
Based on the fact that my current Goggle ads are for night life and condos in Los Angeles, I’m guessing that Google hasn’t yet crawled the new site. Of course, now that I wrote that, who knows?
Soon, hopefully.
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The Boston Globe has an interesting piece on the potential application of Artificial Intelligence to the legal profession. Drake Bennett writes that:
[c]omputer judges, of course, aren’t going to be ascending to the bench in the foreseeable future. ‘’Nobody thinks that’s a good idea,” says Carole D. Hafner, a Northeastern University computer scientist and pioneer in using artificial intelligence to study the law. Judging, and most especially Supreme Court judging, is a complex and subtle mix of imagination, acuity, and political calculation. Still, at a time when doctors are starting to use software to aid in their diagnoses and when hedge funds are using computer models to make multibillion-dollar investment decisions, there is growing interest–even in an American legal establishment usually resistant to change–in finding ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into the law.
Okay, let’s just assume that the legal profession isn’t already full of artificial intelligence. Come on, go with me on this.
And we can agree that “court judging” is a complex and subtle mix of something — insert your own joke here — but “imagination, acuity, and political calculation?” I’m a former law clerk, and I’ve analyzed more than a few opinions. I’ve seen opinions that run the gamut of clarity, from perfectly pithy and precise (the ones ghost-written by me, of course!), to over-winded, tangential ramblings that serve only to raise more questions than they answer. And I’m not sure that imagination or political calculation really have much, if any, place in a court opinion.
The law is complicated and multi-farious, though, and I’m not sure that AI is well-suited for it. Still, the idea has a peculiar appeal, at least to the statutorily-based practitioners like tax attorneys (who, by the way, are a wild bunch). Just give these guys a set of facts, and they’ll start at the 101 statute and read their way through the dense material like it’s computer code, triggering a certain consequence here, referring to a definition there, and returning a result. See? I told you they were wild.
But for those other lawyers, those master manipulators of abstractions, the idea is almost laughable. Code may be able to mimic statutory analysis, but can it juggle the wind?
Anyway, the article refers to a couple of early products on the market, which, at the least, sound like fun:
The computer scientists John Zeleznikow of the University of Melbourne and Andrew Stranieri of the University of Ballarat, for example, have developed two pieces of legal software currently in use in their native Australia. One, SplitUp, calculates with impressive accuracy the likely results of divorce proceedings–its effect has been to encourage settlements, thus preventing unnecessary litigation. Another, GetAid, is used by an Australian government agency to appraise applicants for legal aid–a complicated calculation based on employment history, household income, the likelihood that the case will be won, and myriad other factors.
You can find Split-Up, which has apparently hired some marketing folks whose first task was to rename the product Family Law Software, here. Check out the picture on the front page. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Okay, look at the lawyer (you can tell he’s a lawyer by the tell-tale Wall of Gold-Embossed Solemn-Looking Tomes just behind him). He looks like he’s about to dive across the polished cherrywood desk to keep the clients (you can tell they’re clients because they have their hands on their wallets) (it’s hidden from view!) from clawing each other’s eyes out. Can a computer do that?
I wasn’t able to find a link to GetAid, but while looking, I did find this piece from The Economist. It’s opening lines are much more fun than any link to a software program would have been anyway:
GIVEN the choice, who would you rather trust to safeguard your future: a bloodsucking lawyer or a cold, calculating computer? Granted, it’s not much of a choice, since neither lawyers nor computers are renowned for their compassion.
Hey!
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I’ve migrated to joelhollingsworth.com! Please update your bookmarks and/or blogrolls. I’ll leave the blogspot posts active for a little while, but all new posts will be to the new site. For some reason, the comments aren’t making the transfer. Neither are some of the posts.
It will undoubtedly take some time to fine tune the new site. I’m sure the internal links need to be corrected, and I know I’ll need to keep searching for, customize an existing, and/or create from scratch, a new look or “theme” with Wordpress, which is what I’ll be using instead of Blogger.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the new site!
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Comment spam out of control. Started getting all sorts of stuff, so I’m turning them off.
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James Lileks documents one more ordinary day of a loving father before the “bolt-cutter transitional day” of tomorrow. An excerpt:
Wednesday is our last day before school. We’ll go to the gardens we visit every year at summer’s end, where I shoot the video of her in the same place, binding the years together. She has no idea what this means to me. Just as well. Just another happy day with Dad; the fact that I release her to kindergarten in a day, and this feels like a great flaming bolt-cutter that severs tomorrow from all the wonderful yesterdays – well, of course she has no idea. In a sense, it’s nothing new. She’s done pre-school for the last two years. We’ve had dozens of transitions – the day the high-chair was replaced by a real chair, the day the inedible gorge-raising microwave mac n’ cheese in a nukable cup gave way to the real thing, the day she no longer laid on the floor and gurgled at fabric toys but stood up and tottered over to the bin to pick out something she wanted, the day she first said “I can do it” when I tried to help with the computer. All those moments come and go; every day is the alpha and omega. She still takes my hand when we walk down the stairs; she likes to do the Charleston to Paul Whiteman tunes; she still says “you can fix everything about computers” when I use SysAdmin privileges to boot into Classic mode so her game can run. She still casts a wishful eye at those whore-bot Bratz, but knows that both Dad and Mom disapprove, so they’re out. For now.
WARNING! Net Nanny violation toward the end of the piece.
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Check out Instapundit’s excellent post on lessons learned from Katrina. All of this on September 7, 2005, a little more than a week after the disaster.
A Katrina Commission will be appointed and will take 18 months or longer to come up with roughly the same list.
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Instapundit quotes a Salon story reporting that Geraldo Rivera played to the cameras by doing two takes of his rescue assistance of a New Orleans flood victim.
Nice.
UPDATE: Apparently, Fox News says this story is not true. Sorry, Geraldo.
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Cold Fury has posted a screed on how lefty bloggers contributed to the post-Katrina havoc by ridiculing Tom Ridge when he suggested we all gather together a disaster preparedness kit. The post catalogs the proof by linking to various blogs doing just that.
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From A Mom and Her Blog (by the way, I recommend the “Sleepy Mom” look for her blog): A test to help you determine whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or a Southern Republican.
The difference between the Republican and the Southern Republican is the funniest part. I imagine the Southern Republican saying “Bless his heart,” afterwards.
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An example of how quickly the window of opportunity opens and closes. Read the comment, as this is in fact still a very good deal on a TiVo, which is a great product, even if you can’t get paid $51 to buy one.
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Just discovered Kobayashi Maru, thanks to Instapundit. The name is derived from a Star Trek episode in which Captain Kirk beat a simulation, designed to be unwinnable to test the character of the participant, by re-programming the simulation.
The top four Kobayashi Maru posts at this time are all excellent, and rather than link to them all individually, I’m just going to pitch the site.
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Kobayashi Maru suggests that Hillary Clinton is already moving to mitigate any potential political benefit that might accrue to Rudy Giuliani as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
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