“Trump lets himself be a truly weird buffoon (even as he makes a lot of sense a lot of the time). ”

That’s something I wrote in November 2005, when I was blogging about the TV show “The Apprentice.”

ADDED: From the comments back in 2005, Pete wrote: “I agree that Trump cares about his image but I find him amazingly tone-deaf about it. Or maybe he truly isn’t bothered by his bizarreness. Or his bizarreness is part of his mad, mad plan to dominate the world.“

"Does how to cook bacon count as my personal life?"

"If you say yes, then 1 of 11 posts today is about my 'personal life.' If not, then 0 of 11. Going back before today, I counted 47 posts before I got to one that could arguably be considered about my personal life, and it was only a photograph of our backyard garden with the TT parked next to it."

That's me, responding to Pete, who has the impression that other lawprofs blog mainly about law and occasionally put something in about their personal lives, whereas "the reverse is true" for me.

I'm posting to say that Pete's wrong, but I'm pleased by that wrongness. I like that this feels personal. But the notion that you're seeing my personal life... where does that illusion come from? I hope you're getting pleasure too... from this faux voyeurism.

And here's the garden + TT, in this morning's light-and-shadow.



Data mine that, peepers!

Words never used by the Supreme Court.

This should be a series, and if it is, this is post #1 in the series. This a word commonly used discussing Supreme Court decisions, but never actually used by the Court. The word is "vector."

My constitutional law casebook, talking about historical arguments in constitutional interpretation, says:

History may be perceived as snaphots, faded sepia photographs in the national photo album, or it may be thought of as a video, continuously running and always recording new scenes. History as "original intentions" or "original meaning" is static; history as "vectors" is dynamic. Thus, in attaching meaning to "cruel or unusual punishment" one might wish to ascertain the contemporaneous definition of the term. The pillory was certainly not unusual in the late eighteenth century, but surely it is now....

The word "vector" just came up in the comments to the fatness ≈ homosexuality post, and it struck me that the use of the word "vector" — outside of the technical scientific contexts — suggests the presence of bullshit. It's has that scientific vibe, but if you're not talking about something like astronomy or math or physics, it's probably an effort to make something seem precise and evidence-based when it's not. In math, a vector is "A quantity having direction as well as magnitude, denoted by a line drawn from its original to its final position." (OED.)

I'm pleased to see that the Supreme Court has never used that word. (The word appears in 2 places in the entire Supreme Court case file, but only because there was a party named Vector Distribution Systems in 2004, and a party named Electro Vector in 1977.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Pete said "I can't be bothered to see if this clip was used in the fat/gay thread but it seems appropriate here":