what can i say? he was jks’ film TA. and then there’s that small matter of absolutely amazing everything.

oh, yeah. and neil patrick harris.

so, SCOTUS struck down dc’s ban on handguns last week, in an opinion likely to create ripples across the country as more gun laws are challenged. an interesting article in the wsj law blog discussed the practical implications of the decision in terms of gun-buying in the city, the upshot of which seemed to be “nothing is going to change quickly.” the immediate reaction in the dc metro area seems to have been a flurry of interest among wannabe hand gun owners who are trying to buy guns in md and va.

given this backdrop (and the wsj interview particularly), a new development in the district caught my eye. the wapo reports that a new gun bill is being introduced by phil mendelson today. the liberalization of the city’s gun laws seems to be happening more quickly than i’d expected, but apparently not quickly (or liberally) enough for some.

alan gura, the attorney who argued against the gun ban before the supreme court, is apparently of the opinion that mendelson’s legislation doesn’t go far enough:

After looking at the draft yesterday, Gura said in an e-mail, “It’s a good start, but there are other issues with the code.”

In particular, he is concerned about the city’s decision to continue a ban on semiautomatic weapons, which he said is unconstitutional.

if i were a writer of very bad puns, i’d say gura was setting himself up for a heller ironic ending.

this isn’t so much a comment on the problem with blogs, but a comment on what happens when you have access to a window into an author’s personality, and you find you don’t like what you see.

i read a few authors’ blogs. neil gaiman, warren ellis, wil wheaton, posner and becker.¹ perhaps that should read “very few,” because that’s the sum total i read regularly. (there’s a whole list of ‘em here, though, should you be curious about other authors who blog.)

some, i really like: neil gaiman, wil wheaton.
others, i read because they’re good for me: posner and becker, and, back in law school, volokh. (also not an author, except of law-school related headachiness. and it’s a group blog.)

one, i’ve decided to take off my feeds: warren ellis. i guess i’m tired of reading angry, self-involved, cooler-than-thou posts about things i don’t find that relevant. let’s face it: if i wanted to waste time with that, i’d just read the archives of baggage carousel 4.

so bye-bye, warren. i’ll probably keep reading freakangels, but maybe i’ll replace his feed with david brin.
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¹ okay, posner and becker aren’t really authors in non-scholarly sense, but they do write quite a bit. although for the purpose of this post, they really don’t count because they don’t write much about themselves, but use the blog as an extension of their scholarly thought. for all i know, they may have nothing but scholarly thoughts.

this morning’s random bits:

• it’s apparently difficult to get rid of all the personal data on an iphone.
• xkcd introduces geohashing. geekier geocaching for the investment-inclined.
• sometimes i think people would be easier to understand if their speech had html markups.
• nick has photos from istanbul up - quite neat, even if he didn’t take his SLR. apparently his main site is down, tho. is this the end of defenestrate.org?
• bad political news: kennedy’s malignant glioma. good political news: va’s abortion law gets overturned. again.
• and a quasi-art project.

that is all for now.

does anyone remember the back room of sin-o-matic at club 7969¹ err, peanuts? grandville? i was there once, back in ‘94 or ‘95, and it popped into my head this morning after googling sexbat (which i do every few years, just to see if he’s still alive and kicking) which proceeded from feeding a 30-second rhps (with bunnies).

because wednesdays always start with bunnies.
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¹ the site for the club “reopening in spring 2008″ looks cheeze-whizzy. “This site will become a favorite amongst the entertainment industry for celebrations and location shoots.” yuck. not that i plan to visit the left coast any time soon, but with a description like that, you can bet i won’t be going there.

i have a blog post simmering in my head, based on my somewhat yearly re-read of sheri tepper’s gibbon’s decline and fall. the basic contours are ruminations that the current wave of religious zealotry may be a frightened response to an increasingly complex (albeit better-understood than 250 years ago) world. i don’t know how much further i will get than that, so in the meantime, i offer up alejna’s unread book meme/not meme.

according to alejna (and you should read the provenance of the meme over at her blog; it’s interesting - the top 106 unread books at LibraryThing):

Bold what you have read, italicize your did not finishes, strikethrough the ones you hated, put *asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once, and put a + cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf.

i’m probably going to add editoral comments [in brackets].

so, continue below the fold for my reads of the unread (as opposed to deads of the undead)… and i apologize for the order in which the books are listed. they are not alphabetized, sorted by author, date of publication, or anything logical i can discern. unless it’s the most-unread to the least-unread (or vice versa), but that would be wholly subjective. and subject to change without notice.
(more…)

james made himself a store. so i did, too. (buy my stuff. i’m unemployed.)

more swag to come.

via crimlaw, a video project showing what happens when you obey the law. a must-see.

over at the consipracy, eugene volokh expresses his disdain for the new french prime minister, ridiculing his flowery language. volokh would apparently rather have a political leader who thinks “misunderestimate” is a word than one who is familiar with greek mythology. disdain not withstanding, i think the examples nicely illustrate the difference between the french and the american philosophies of government. the french code civil has been called the greatest work of french literature; in comparison, i hardly think this excerpt (or any other) from the u.s. code could be described as anything other than pedantic:

Wherever, in the statutes of the United States or in the rulings, regulations, or interpretations of various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States there appears or may appear the term “products of American fisheries” said term shall not include fresh or frozen fish fillets, fresh or frozen fish steaks, or fresh or frozen slices of fish substantially free of bone (including any of the foregoing divided into sections), produced in a foreign country or its territorial waters, in whole or in part with the use of the labor of persons who are not residents of the United States.

granted, the code civil is annoyingly sexist (not to mention maddeningly vague, from a legal standpoint), but at least it’s beautifully written.

UPDATE (13 june): see the stopped clock for some insight into the actual context of the french quote. seems it was from poetry written in the pm’s spare time, not from a speech or interview or other somesuch source.

maybe this will be the pebble that starts the avalanche towards meaningful prohibition of spam.

i ask you: if the big ISPs can work with the chinese government to block access from within china to blacklisted sites, how difficult would it be for them to get rid of spam?