"Certainly I'll pray for this gentleman, who seems to be a troubled soul ... Part of that love of Christ is forgiving people."

So says Monsignor Paul Swain, the rector of St. Raphael, about the man charged with burning the cathedral to ruins. The linked article also quotes the man's former wife:

"I haven't been in touch with him for many years. I'm the mother of his two sons," said Arlena Wilson of Oregon state, who was divorced from Connell in 1993. "He left Oregon in 1990 and never came back," she said.

"His sons are 16 and 14. The oldest is a straight-A student, National Honor Society. They both lettered in wrestling. They're just great kids," Wilson said. "My kids are devastated. He's their dad. ... I hope he gets help. I'm sorry he felt led to do that."

What's interesting about the plague.

From the New Yorker review of “The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time":

There was no effective treatment for the disease. Medieval medicine was basically a mixture of the ancient “four humors” theory and the astrological formulations of the Arabic physicians of the end of the first millennium. According to the Arab treatises, certain planetary alignments could foster illness by creating miasmas, or clouds of noxious air. In the judgment of many of the fourteenth century’s best minds, that was the cause of the Black Death. Some cities took public-health measures—mainly, quarantines. People were advised to avoid pore-opening activities (bathing, exercise, sex), so as to prevent the miasma from penetrating their skin.

The New Yorker reviewer thinks this new plague book is too padded, and recommends Norman Cantor’s 2001 “In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made” instead. Cantor's book is better, we're told, because instead of wallowing in grim descriptions of buboes, it talks about the social and political consequences of living in a world suddenly bereft of one third of its inhabitants. Law students may like to know that "the most enthralling chapter has to do with property law."

In the course of their quarrels, the gentry and the nobility put aside old codes of civility, and that development, together with certain very striking national events—notably the ouster and probable murder of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke, at the end of the century—created what Cantor calls a “new dark age of bad behavior.” The modern conviction “that unrestrained greed is good” was born. The new property legislation controlled it but also fostered it, by encouraging people to do whatever the law would let them get away with.

Superimpositions.

Elegant, subtle images result from the automated combination of 50 photographs bearing the same Flickr tag. (Via Metafilter.) Here, for example, is what 50 superimposed photographs tagged "The Gates" look like. Here's "Eiffel." A Metafilter commenter notes the similarity of the effect to this set of images that uses mean averaging to produce a single image combining every Playboy centerfold from an entire decade.

Froth.

Latte art (via Drawn!).

Lexicographers are cool.

What's the coolest thing in this article about editing dictionaries?

1. Noah Webster was inventing American iconoclasm when he decided to oust the "u" from words like "glamour."

2. The first name of the author of the article is Strawberry.

3. Erin McKean, the new editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, while doing an interview in her office with NYT reporter Strawberry Saroyan, doesn't sit in a chair but sits on a black exercise ball and bounces.

4. An editor of the American Heritage Dictionary has a phonetic vowel chart tattooed on his back.

Ah, but now wait. This lexicographer coolness thing is all about marketing. The way they sell new dictionaries is by calling attention to all the new words they've located. So naturally, they need the kind of editors who can tune in to high tech terms and youth slang. Take McKean:

To find new words, Ms. McKean said she subscribed to 60 magazines, including The Oldie, a British publication for the elderly; The New Scientist; and Entertainment Weekly. She also watches television shows like "The OC," which she said was known for being linguistically playful. She also relies on her staff, freelancers, a group of four or five people she calls the "friends of the dictionary" and even small talk at cocktail parties.

Well, at least The Oldie got in there, so it's not all about youth. (The Oldie really is a pretty cool magazine, which I've had bookmarked for years.)

I'm sorry dictionaries are so focused on slang and high tech, even though I realize they need a way to convince you to buy a new edition. But I've bought a lot of dictionaries over the years, and I've never cared about which one had the most new words. I've cared about the presentation of the really useful words in the rich, beautiful vocabulary of the English language. How sharp is the usage advice? How clear are the distinctions between near synonyms? Is this book going help me see how to use words better?

It seems as though these dictionary people think the main use of a dictionary is to look up words you encounter while reading. I'm more likely to Google for definitions of such words. There seems to be a lack interest in the use of a dictionary for writing purposes. These new editors are all jazzed up about finding more and more new things, but I want a more insightful presentation of the the old -- the existing English vocabulary, which is always slipping out of our grasp.

Condi-style.

The NYT reports:

Not even two months into her new job as secretary of state, she is routinely asked by interviewers around the world whether she wants to be president. Crowds gather to see her limousine. This week, a television reporter in India told her that she was "arguably the most powerful woman in the world." She laughed but did not exactly agree - or disagree.

But along with the new celebrity, Ms. Rice seems to have found her style - unremittingly positive and upbeat with allies and friends, but frank and even brutal with others.

Wherever she goes, she wears her close relationship with President Bush on her sleeve. It is the perception that she has the president's ear that gives her much of her power. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell carried the opposite perception, which left him at times without the influence that Ms. Rice so obviously wields.

Patronizing analogies.

I ran across the AARP ad in the NYT: "If you have a problem with the sink, you don't tear down the entire house." That explains why you should be opposed to the President's Social Security reform. Then there's the argument for the other side, that TV commercial where the Titanic is about to hit the iceberg: "Some people say Social Security is not in trouble. Just like some people thought the Titanic was unsinkable." That really explains why the President is right. Come on, you're just not trying hard enough with your patronizing, ridiculous analogies. Don't you know Social Security reform is boring us to tears? At least give us some animals! I'm getting nostalgic for the old "bear in the woods" absurdity. (Click on the bear thumbnail at the link. [ADDED: You might have to click through to the 1984 election page.])

Note: FactCheck.org has analyzed both the sink ad and the Titanic ad.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

Well, what kind of animal metaphor would you come up with for Social Security? "The Future is like a Lion: It EATS the old, sick, weak members of the herd!" "Social Security is like having a snake in the toilet, it can really bite you if you aren't paying attention, but if you think about it the answer is quite simple (sound of toilet flushing)" "Social Security reform is like putting a weasel in your freezer: it just Doesn't Make Sense!" "Social Security is like a goldfish; it will grow to fill whatever tank you put it in."

I think I'll leave it to my readers to email me some Social Security animal analogies. Thanks for getting us started.

And Spring Break begins -- with the biggest snow of the year.

You saw yesterday's snow pictures. Today, I look out my upstairs window and see this.




Much more snow than yesterday.




Here's the downstairs deck, its furniture deeply upholstered.




Yesterday, I was able to see the blue-wrapped NYT on the front walk. Today, even though the snow from yesterday was shoveled, there was twice as much snow on the walk. I couldn't even see a shred of blue wrapper poking out anywhere. I had to take the snow shovel and start clearing the walk, in the hope of finding the Times. Ah! Found it! And I got far enough down the walk to see that there was not a single footprint in the deep snow on the sidewalk in front of the hedge. If you've done any snow shoveling, you know it's much easier to shovel before any feet have compressed the snow, so I took advantage of the opportunity and shoveled the whole sidewalk. That was all done without a coat or gloves, and really, it's not very cold. The snow is already melting. Clumps of wet snow keep dropping off the trees. But it's great packing snow, kids, so get out there and start building snowmen. I expect to see snowmen everywhere, all over town, by early afternoon.

Music to read by: the suggestions.

Today, my iPod Shuffle arrived, and I adore it, as blogged here. You may remember I bought it to fill with music that would help me read and study without distraction, and I solicited advice from readers about what they thought would fit this need. I've already noted some preliminary suggestions, including a warning against classical music, the theory being that it's too complex and interesting, which makes it distracting. Clearly, you don't want to study while listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but I think there are some good classical choices. One reader writes:

In response to your e-mailer who suggested that classical music is too distracting to read by: presumably that depends a great deal on the individual reader/listener. I, personally, am distracted by schlocky music. Most contemporary movie soundtracks would have me yanking off my earphones and begging the barista to chat me up. The thing I love about Chopin (for example) is that, while it has a deep, complex musical structure and emotional texture, it doesn't have any of the insistent qualities that demand that you focus your immediate, conscious attention on it at every moment (like a driving beat, or an incessant rhythm or lyric, or a rigid structure). Last week in the library I read two books and skimmed three more in two and a half hours while listening to Rubinstein play Chopin, and my concentration never wavered. I can rarely sustain that level of concentration for that long, and I credit the music for helping to maintain my interest and focus.

In fact, I have this CD already, and I put the only the slower pieces on my "Reading Music" playlist. Here's another email with classical suggestions:

My taste might be more vanilla than you're looking for, but I often study listening to Chopin's nocturnes, Schubert's impromptus, and Vanessa-Mae's classical work. A good Chopin CD is Jean Yves Thibaudet's "The Chopin I Love"; there's quite a bit on that CD, including the E-flat major nocturne, which is my absolute favorite. For Schubert, the Wanderer Fantasy CD is very nice, especially if you can find the one played by Leon Fleisher. Actually, most of Leon Fleisher's piano work is wonderful. And Vanessa-Mae--her Original Four Seasons CD is very nice. It has the Vivaldi pieces but also her own work, the Devil's Trill Sonata, which is fantastic. Her CD Violin Player is also probably good, but I don't have that one. I do have Storm, which is interesting--she is a beautifully talented violinist who likes to fuse classical music with more modern work. She combined Bizet's Can-Can with a driving techno beat, and that worked quite well. But some of her other pieces on that CD are a little annoying--Bach just shouldn't be combined with a synthesizer or electric guitar line.

Here's another:

I find that the Hilliard Ensemble's "Morimur" is great to read to. (It's on ECM New Series.) The recording was inspired by the research of Helga Thoene, a musicologist who argues that Bach alluded to chorales in the Chaconne from the second partita for solo violin. So the recording presents several chorales (in German) and the partita, followed by a reconstruction of the Chaconne with singers emphasizing the chorale melodies. (Of course, you can't go wrong with Bach for stringed instruments, either: the 'cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the lute music -- there is also a very fine, recent release of Segovia Bach transcriptions on Deutsche Grammophon.)

I have a lot of Bach on CD and am putting a good portion of that into the Shuffle. Someone recommended Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasy," which I had.

Another of the "preliminary suggestions" noted in the earlier post was movie soundtracks. As that emailer above indicates, many film soundtracks are bombastic and inappropriate for my purpose, but from my existing CD collection, I chose the Philip Glass soundtrack from "Kundun." Although I haven't ordered any of these, here are some specific soundtracks that were recommended: "Ghost in the Shell 2," "The Last of the Mohicans," "Cinema Paradiso."

Another recommendation noted in the "preliminary suggestions" post was Brian Eno's ambient music, particularly "Music for Airports." I've ordered that, along with Eno's "Ambient 4: On Land" -- a classic example of making a second purchase to earn the free shipping.

Now, for some extra stuff. One emailer pointed me to this list of music featured on The Weather Channel. A couple people recommended Sigur Ros -- which sounds great. Another interesting idea is "True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead" ("Radiohead consistently produces very complex melodies and this works surprisingly well. Classically they fall into the 'Romantic' camp. Very Debussy.") One emailer suggested Miles Davis, specifically "Kind of Blue" and "Sketches of Spain." Someone recommended Aphex Twin. Someone recommended Ottmar Liebert. ("He plays 'nuevo flamenco,' some of the most beautiful and interesting classical guitar you’ve ever heard. Perfect background for reading or just thinking. Or in my case, for coding :)")

From my CD collection, I pulled out a lot of early music. I have had very good reading success with this CD in the past, so it went right in. And I had these two Hildegard von Bingen chant recordings. I put in some Monteverdi.

One more email:

It may be rather SNAGy (Sensitive New Age Guy) of me to mention this, but there is, in fact, a lot of so-called New Age music that is not overly cheesy and quite relaxing. I read and write to George Winston, Michael Jones (solo piano), David Lanz and/or Paul Speer (they collaborated), among others. A lot of it is the sort of pretentious 'Toltec Magician' (I kid you not) crap, but there are also some halfway decent composers out there. I subscribed to Real's Rhapsody service, which is pretty cheap for streaming audio, and they have a New Age stream where I get some ideas. A bunch are available on iTunes.

Anyway, that's enough for now!

Blame "CSI."

Maybe the acquittal of Robert Blake is not just about celebrities and the fancy lawyers they can afford. Maybe jurors in all sorts of cases have come to expect the kind of neatly packaged, conclusive evidence provided by the stories told on the TV show "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

Across the country, prosecutors say juries are demanding more from them. In the Blake case, jurors said Thursday that they wanted more-convincing evidence, such as conclusive gunshot residue on Blake's hands, or a fingerprint on the murder weapon, or more precision from casual eyewitnesses about Blake's actions around the time Bakley was shot to death in a parked car in Studio City.

"There is no doubt that there's increasing expectation by jurors of [the evidence] they're going to see," said Joshua Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor and member of the board of directors of the National District Attorneys Assn. "Prosecutors across the country are very concerned about this."

Marquis found it disturbing that Blake jurors "seemed very dismissive of circumstantial evidence," he said. "Well, guess what? In most cases … you don't have physical evidence."...

Cecilia Maldonado was among the majority of jurors who felt from the beginning that the state had not proved its case. The 45-year-old Granada Hills legal secretary said she would have liked more of the kind of evidence she has seen in the cases on "CSI."

"I just expected so much more," she said, acknowledging that such television crime shows did create "a higher expectation" for her.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

I had jury duty on Thursday. During voir dire, the prosecutor specifically asked us if we watched CSI, and whether we understood that it was just a TV show, that in real life investigators don't find a ten-year old cigarette butt, wave it in front of a scanner, and have a magic screen pop up instantaneously with a photograph and complete dossier of the perpetrator. Everbody laughed, but we paid attention to his point, about which he was deadly serious.

Neuroeconomics.

The L.A. Times reports:

"Economics has hit the wall," said Andrew Lo, director of MIT's laboratory for financial engineering. "It has explained about as much as it can with the tools it has. There are too many inconsistencies between theory and data."

Pioneers in neuroeconomics believe the key to understanding economic behavior lies deep in the brain, at the level of cells and synapses.

The brain is above all an economic engine forged by evolution through eons of scrounging for scarce resources, they argue. So the ability to trade things of value is the defining characteristic of the brain, the keystone of human character.

"Trade preceded agriculture; it preceded cities; it is a major component in human sociality. More than anything, it explains our success as a species," said Vernon Smith, an economist at George Mason University whose work in experimental economics earned him a Nobel Prize in 2002.

Some experts suggest that stock markets and other financial exchanges, as creations of the human intellect, may mirror the biological networks in the brain.

If only they can understand the brain, researchers believe, the mysteries of markets will be revealed.

Women in the Mideast and the soft power of the United States.

Here's a free link to get to The New Republic's article on the use of U.S. power for the benefit of women in the Mideast. Excerpt:

Women remain marginalized and oppressed by many of the Middle East's secular and Islamist governments alike--including both America's allies and its opponents--and it's not clear what exactly the White House intends to do about it. Even in the two countries where the U.S. exerts direct military authority, the cause of women is advancing in some ways but regressing in others. In Afghanistan, human rights organizations report that rape, sex trafficking, and extra-judicial "honor killings" remain prevalent in rural areas, in part because the central government is too weak to exert much control outside Kabul. In Iraq, the security situation has effectively barred many women from leaving their homes to go to school or work. Furthermore, some newly elected Iraqi Islamist parties are pressing to repeal the relatively liberal personal status law for women that has been on the books since 1959. They want to replace it with a version of Islamic law that would take away women's inheritance rights and skew divorce law to favor men. These setbacks are the downside of political destabilization brought about by American hard power. The trouble is, American soft power is weak and inconsistent on the issue of Middle Eastern women--at a time when soft power is precisely what is needed to mitigate the negative side-effects of an aggressive foreign policy.

My iPod Shuffle meditation leads to "Ben Casey."

This morning my iPod Shuffle arrived via FedEx. Maybe I'm the world's biggest sucker for cute elegance, but I don't see how anyone can see this thing in its package and not want to buy it. I bought mine on line, but I'm just astounded by the coolness of the flat, square, green package with its vertical window within which floats the amazingly tiny and minimalist device. I expected to be surprised by how small it was, which you would think would prevent actual surprise, but I was in fact surprised.

It took me a while to open the package, because I spent some time just admiring the package. But eventually I extracted my new toy from its wrapper. Who can look at it and not think of a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum? One almost smells and tastes minty-ness – is that why the package is green? Unlike a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum, the corners are soothingly rounded and (unless you look at the back) there's no writing to disturb the iconic minimalism of the rectangle with its two concentric circles with their five silently articulate symbols:

+

|<<

>||

>>|

-

Ancient memory stirred up by the symbols: the opening sequence of the "Ben Casey" television show. "Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity." You know they have a special U2 edition iPod. I'd like a "Ben Casey" iPod Shuffle with the 5 Apple symbols replaced by the 5 "Ben Casey" symbols. "Infinity" would be the pause button. "Life" could be the + (volume up) button, and "Death" could be the - (volume down) button. Then we'd have to decide whether "Man" or "Woman" got to be the "forward" button, and who'd be the "backward" button. Better make "forward" the woman and escape charges of sexism!

And by the way, wasn't Vince Edwards (Ben Casey) handsome? I was ten years old when that show first came on the air. In those days, everyone had an opinion whether "Ben Casey" was better than the other doctor show that started in 1961, "Dr. Kildare." I was for "Ben Casey," and my sister was for "Dr. Kildare." How can you prefer "Dr. Kildare"? I would demand. Her answer: "Richard Chamberlain is such a dreamboat." I took the position that Vince Edwards was the better man. But he's mean, she would say. Casey was a moody guy, and Kildare a much sweeter man. Kildare was an internist, handling a variety of cases. But Ben Casey was a neurosurgeon, so all the stories were about people with brain problems. Doctor, this iPod is giving me synesthesia!

You'd think an Apple devotee would be more of a Kildare type. But no!

Murdered for the "spiky" and the "carré."

Terrorists in Iraq are murdering barbers for giving Western-style haircuts.

When was the last time anyone laughed...

At one of Jacob Weisberg's "Bushisms"? But he's got to keep cranking them out, because he's got his ongoing series of books to profit from. (Look how you can "click to buy" the Bushisms books right from the "Bushism of the Day" page.) You'd think at some point, Weisberg would get sick of himself. Think of a new humor concept, Jacob! Then you can run that one into the ground too.

Wireless access in the law school classroom.

Responding to my request for a description of yesterday's "Coffee and Doughnuts" session about the perceived problem of laptops and wireless access in the law school classroom, one of our students emails this:

Say, I went to that Donuts and Coffee discussion. My prediction? We'll default to the current status quo, leaving things as they are. So many speakers offset each other in their opinions, positive and negative, about wireless in the classroom.

One young man seemed truly offended that the professors would even consider taking away his classroom Internet, as he got about an hour's worth of work done on his laptop, before, during and after class, in the down time. When pressed by a prof as to what "work" he was accomplishing, he came up with: responding to emails, reading the newspapers, checking on things, etc. I do this at school too, but on the library and public access computers. If you cut off the classroom access, will the library suddenly become more crowded, meaning you have to provide more desktop computers or open areas for laptops? If the library has wireless access, some spills over into the classrooms, and people can still pick it up there.

Or is the administration considering cutting off access to the whole building? One student said gossip was going around, people were concerned what y'all were up to -- banning laptops? -- on that mysterious faculty listserv of yours. No one really was sure how these things would work out, affect admissions, etc. One woman explained her generation needs to multi-task. She knitted her way through undergrad, and found it helped her concentrate. They feel like time is wasting if they're not doing 3 things at once, giving the example of walking down the street, talking on the phone, or listening to music.

A few people said seeing games and images on other people screens was annoying. One explained she has ADD and these things DO distract. If you don't get there early the day they do the seating chart, there's not a lot extra available seats to switch to. This person, incidentally, reported seeing a semi-porn CSI type video game on the screen, played daily by the guy who sat in front of her. Nobody else said anything when one prof asked, really is porn out there in class?

The discussion, in fact, seemed to get most passionate about this issue. One older student, with a Ph.D who has taught before, was trying to explain how naughty pics might appear on laptop screens in class: if you're checking your email, say from AOL, some people have nude/provocative pics that go with their name IDs. He would just quickly close that window, he said, if it came up. He also was offended the administration would consider shutting off the wireless, said he had undergrads coming to class stoned when he taught, and really, what can you do when the students are adults? His criticism was of teaching methods -- when he can be chatting with the book open, get asked a question, skim to find a line that explains what the prof wants, and then go back to chatting... that's the prof's fault for being boring, and asking simplistic questions.

The first guy I mentioned, spoke up to say he really wasn't sure what was in his laptop either. Things happen. Pop-up ads, innocently typing in whitehouse.something, etc. can take you places you don't want to go. That's when one prof jumped in to give say listen up people, it can be a felony to have some things on your computer, period, and innocent explanations won't help you later down the line. He's seen cases of it in practice.

Another female prof also spoke strongly, I think this was after the student spoke of the CSI-type game, that NEVER should people have to tolerate porn in the classroom, period. This prof asked what students thought of a policy, laptop users sit in back, non-users sit in front. Sounded like a good compromise, but how would it work with the outlets distributed throughout the room? Some people still need to plug in. And does that create artificial distinctions among students?

Overall though, I think that prof may have had it right. She's no dummy, and reported to students that there's an obvious online, hunched- over look that shows you're not just taking notes. Very little typing, more slight scrolling with the mouse. Even if you're listening and doing other things, it's rude to the prof and to fellow students when you don't look up during a discussion, and listen to what others have to say. (It's different from doodling, one prof said, more like opening a newspaper and starting to read it.) Stay open, and give your attention to the speaker. One gives a little speech early on, during the intro/housekeeping portion of class, saying stay engaged, eyes off the screens occasionally, basically please pay attention people, and you might learn something not in the readings.

More than one student suggested, though, it's survival of the fittest, if people want to tune out, maybe they suffer the consequences come test time, and then again, maybe they don't. In the end, the conversation took a turn that teaching styles need to incorporate all the benefits of online resources. But this seemed like a cop-out to me, after we'd spent all that time discussing the low-level reasons people really are online during class. They're not all checking WestLaw or Lexis-Nexis, or sharing extra details about cases, though I'm sure that happens too.

I'll update this post if anyone has other perspectives on the event or the issue.

UPDATE: A recent graduate of another law school offers this:

1) I think that no matter what you do, a student is basically going to get out of it what he or she puts into it.

2) My undergraduate degree is in Computer Science and I really haven't handwritten anything much longer than a grocery list in 20 years. I simply could not take meaningful notes by hand. While my case may be kind of rare, I'm guessing that there are more and more students who would be severely handicapped if they had to take notes by hand. (Thank God VA had a laptop option on the bar!) [Althouse note: At UW, we have not yet decided to let students use laptops for their exams.]

3) It was very helpful for me to have access in the classroom because of my family. My wife had to work full time and caring for the children, ages 8, 11, and 13 now) was a constant problem. A cell phone wasn't really in our budget and would have been really rude in class. But Net access allowed me to be contacted by the kids' schools or my wife, or even the kids directly. ... I could even have set up a camera at the house if I had felt the need. My oldest son has standing instructions to check his email if he gets home and no one is here so I was also able to handle class running over or deciding to meet another student in the library easily.

4) Finally, and I know this is really weird, but I took all my notes using Netscape Composer. It handles outlines much better than Word and produces nice, clean HTML. My basic class method was to make a web page out of the syllabus with each topic linking to a subtopic. Each subtopic web page consisted of my outline of the assigned text material for that subtopic, supplemented by links to my class notes and to cases, statutes, and other sources that were often on the Net or in Lexis. By doing this I was able to maintain some perspective on the material and decrease the time necessary to find something during an open note exam.

Point 3 is especially interesting. I hadn't seen anyone make that point, but I believe it would have a decisive impact on some decisionmakers. And it should!

ANOTHER UPDATE: A UW law student comments on the controversy and thinks the faculty will adopt a lame rule for the sake of adopting a rule. Bet we don't!

YET MORE: Stuart Buck responds to my post:

I can’t imagine a good reason that law school administrators would go out of their way to offer free Internet access in law school classrooms. ... A law school might as well pay for a poker game and a clown act to take place in the back of a classroom, as well as handing out free newspapers for students to read during class.

And Will Baude responds:

Mr. Buck's attitude seems to be that since the benefits of internet use are very small the school should not subsidize distraction. I think the proper analysis is the reverse-- the marginal increase in distraction is uncertain, and in any case the costs of not-paying attention are personal rather than external. Meanwhile, the internet provides great rewards to some who use it well, which I think swamp the horrors of students' reading ... blogs during class.

I need to point out that my law school is considering going out of its way to turn off the wireless access in classrooms. We want wireless in the building generally, especially in the library.