Another reason law is less desireable

There's been a spate of stories in the last year or so about how more and more law school graduates are struggling to find jobs.

The recession usually gets the blame.

Maybe it's time to "blame" technology instead; new software is replacing many lawyers.

Computers allow much "discovery" work in civil cases to be done electronically, and without drudgery complaint:

“(E)-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time (of lawyers) for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Wow. And, that was before Watson won at Jeopardy!

And, not to get too Luddite, but, while some people talk about technology creating new jobs, what kind of jobs are they?

“There is no reason to think that technology creates unemployment,” MIT Professor David H. Autor said. “Over the long run we find things for people to do. The harder question is, does changing technology always lead to better jobs? The answer is no.”

And, anticipating Watson II:

“The economic impact will be huge,” said Tom Mitchell, chairman of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “We’re at the beginning of a 10-year period where we’re going to transition from computers that can’t understand language to a point where computers can understand quite a bit about language.”

There's even supposedly software that can recognize the "tone" of an e-mail. If that improves, a la Watson II type computers, customer service reps are probably also in danger of losing more jobs.

Specific to law, jobs can also be outsourced. India has plenty of good English speakers who have grown up in the Anglo half of Anglo-American legal traditions.

The five-year plan for getting greener

Like most five-year plans, it's in a communist country, namely, China.

But, it makes blunt economic sense even without the environmental angle, for China to do this.

For example, China is about to pass the U.S. on the amount of oil it imports. So, even after Libya settles down, no matter who "wins," worldwide demand will keep pushing.

Of course, part of the plan is bass-ackwards environmentally. Pushing for more electric cars may control oil imports a bit, but, with a coal-heavy electric power grid, it will likely increase air pollution, if anything.

That said, this is the first time China has set consumption goals, not just efficiency goals, limited as they may be.

Boboes, fictionalized to the second power

I've always thought David Brooks wrote fiction whenever he talked about his stereotypical suburban "boboes." (And, if you Google, there's websites that document instances of lying about and making up details of bobo life.)

Never did I think he would go novelistic on the world, though. But, given the stupidity, insularity, conventionality and timidity of the New York publishing world, I shouldn't be surprised that moment has happened.

His new Pop Ev Psych through bobo consciousness book is excerpted here.

And, really reviewed here, far more snarkily than even I might do, courtesy Pharyngula!

Die, bobo, die!

Why is Ryno in the HOF and Sweet Lou isn't?

For several years, while not embracing Ryne Sandberg as a Hall of Fame member, I haven't argued he should be removed.

That said, why isn't Lou Whitaker there with him?

If you look at their stats, they're the same player.

(Actually, Sweet Lou's OPS+, oWAR and dWAR are all slightly higher.)

So, how is Whitaker not only not in the HOF, but how did he only get 2.9 percent of writers' votes his first year, and thereby get forcibly dropped from the ballot for the future?

A travesty indeed.

And, given that Whitaker retired one year after Sandberg's second and final retirement, it's not like writers couldn't directly compare them.

The only things where Sandberg has an edge is modestly superior home run power and many more stolen bases.

That said, per the ESPN link, Ryno did have a "peak" that Sweet Lou didn't:

One could argue that Sandberg's best was better than Whitaker's best, and that's probably true. Whitaker was never QUITE as good as Sandberg was in '83, and didn't have four consecutive seasons that can quite match Ryno's '89-'92. But he also didn't suffer the valleys Sandberg did in the mid-'80s, and I'd argue that "consistently good and sometimes great" can be just as valuable as "inconsistent but sometimes slightly greater."

But, as the story notes, it can also be argued Ryno had less Gold Glove competition in the NL than Sweet Lou did in the AL.

Friday Macho scatblogging

To be precise, this is Macho B scatblogging, as in the Arizona jaguar well-known to many environmentalists.

A federal judge has upheld the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's right to snare the jaguar, but did NOT dismiss charges against Janay Brun, the private research technician who has admitted using jaguar scat as "bait" at the site Macho B was snared.

I hope Brun doesn't get hung out to dry in court for being a whistle-blower. Or simply for not being a government employee.

Given that Emil McCain, a fellow employee of the private Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project, contracted by the state and federal agencies to help with jaguar snaring, pled guilty last year on this very case, that wouldn't surprise me.

But, given the history of this case so far, and especially her history within it, Brun very likely is being hung out to dry.

That's not to mention the hypocrisy of the jaguar being listed on the Endangered Species Act, but the federal government doing nothing to actually protect it, like restricting cattle grazing on the Mogollon Rim, creating protection areas, etc.

Once again, can you smell the sweet smell of hypocrisy?

How the U.S. could intervene in Libya

The Department of Justice has never officially closed its case on the Lockerbie bombing. That includes never shelving the indictment of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, "compassionately" released to Libya by Scotland a year or so ago under major, lied-about pressure from London.

Suitable pressure on Gaddafi, with the "carrot" of a leave-the-country deal, could be put together.