Garden shadows.

In the Boston Public Garden today, the brilliant sun made lusciously dark shadows:

God bless the man...

... who chaperoned a gaggle of teenagers in Boston's Public Garden today and wore an utterly self-abnegating sweater, so that the kids who seemed only to disrespect him would be able to find him easily in case they got a little lost.

All the bad things you thought you might one day read had happened to Keith Richards...

Was falling out of a tree even on the list?

"The Star-Spangled Banner"/"Nuestro Himno."

Is it wrong to sing the national anthem in Spanish? (Listen to it here.) When President Bush says "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English," is he saying that it's wrong to have a Spanish language version?

Mr. Bush has tried to occupy a middle ground in the raging debate over immigration, supporting legislation that would grant immigrant workers temporary legal status and perhaps a path to citizenship, while pushing for immigrants to learn English also pressing for more steps to stop the flow of newcomers over the border. But his statement about the anthem was taken by members of both parties as a clear signal to conservatives that he stood with them on what many of them see as a clash between national identity and multiculturalism.

The middle ground is awfully hard to occupy!

I can't translate the Spanish words back into English to see the ways in which the meaning has been altered. But I can translate Bush-speak into plainer English for the purpose of fending off those Bush haters and Bush lovers who are reading more than they need to into his words.

He's said that people who want to be citizens should learn English, and to say that is not to say that they shouldn't also speak Spanish, just that wanting to be a part of the country should include wanting to be able to interact with the people here who do speak English. And he's saying that people who want to be citizens should want to learn to sing the anthem along with the rest of us, as we've sung it since it was written, in English. That doesn't mean you can't also sing it in Spanish.

Are we so partisan that we can't hear a moderate statement anymore?

In France, in a city I've never heard of, looking for an internet connection.

Nina's off on her long European trip, and the first stop is Apremont, because when you think of trekking to Europe, you think of Apremont, right? She's taking lots of beautiful pictures, and diligently seeking out an internet connection in places that -- judging by the photos -- look as though they don't even have telephones.

Meanwhile -- let's check in with all the Madison bloggers, while I'm far afield myself.

Tonya's reminiscing on the occasion of her sister's birthday, in a post that has a cool picture of her sleekly stylish family, posing back in 1970. I especially love Mother-of-Tonya's dress (and hairdo).

Oscar's doing a panel on blogging at the Journalism School:

[T]he J-school's first choice was the splendid and brilliant Ann Althouse, but she was unavailable.

I had to blab about blogging elsewhere.

The first thing I noticed as the panelists took their seats was that we were six white guys between thirty and fifty. Six married white guys. From my seat on one end of the dais, I looked to my right and caught an excellent "I wish had my camera" visual of five left hands resting in a neat row on the table, each sporting a wedding ring. From now on, if the topic is blog-related, I'm just going to take the damn photo and say "it's for my blog!"

The second thing I noticed was that the other five panelists were all professional print or broadcast journalists who seemed to believe that there are only two kinds of blogs: those that function as news clipping services -- essentially filtering and linking to useful news items that may not make the final edition of their paper or news show -- and those for people who want to post pictures of their babies.

I was dumbstruck, and kept thinking "man, if Althouse were here, she'd be ripping these guys a new one!"

Tee hee. Read the whole thing. There's lots more, and it's not all about me. But, as you go through your days, keep in mind the handy phrase: "man, if Althouse were here, she'd be ripping these guys a new one!"

Gordon's blogging the cheese we had for dinner. The cheese posed elegantly for a photo I was sharp enough to snap. Gordon's also got some pictures of the conference participants at dinner, and notes that it was hard to get good pictures in the room where the event was held. [CORRECTION: Christine Hurt took the pictures.] Yeah, I know. They had the blinds down so the big screen would have some clarity. At the end of the day, they opened the many huge blinds that had seemed like just part of the wall. Here were dozens of big windows. The room was transformed, beautiful. It made me sad that we had been oppressed by lack of shining window beauty all that day -- all for PowerPoint, damn it! I do have a kind of cool photo of Eugene Volokh speaking -- he's very animated, even when he's just eagerly awaiting his turn to talk -- but all three profs in the picture look angry, so I'm not going to post it. I find the picture amusing, but I'm not positive they would, so.... the nice side of Althouse prevails this time.

Does Jeremy count as a Madison blogger? Having given him too much trouble last week, I'll just say, here's his blog, it's the original model for the Madison blog. You should check it out every day. Jeremy's the best sociologist in the world.

Photography in buildings.

Kristian Knutsen writes about the difficult distinctions between bloggers and traditional press when it comes to taking photographs inside a public building. At issue are the photos taken on the opening day of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCa). The photos I took, blogged here, are part of the controversy. But -- as the article notes -- I asked if photography was permitted as I entered and was told yes. Now, the museum authorities are expressing concern about this photography.

Ironically, I gave them a lot of free publicity, better -- I think -- than advertisements they might shell out a lot of money for. I'm also quoted in the article saying that I think the rights of the artists need to be protected. Myself, I avoided closely picturing any artwork out of respect for the artists' rights. And I think it's important not to interfere with the aesthetic experience of museum-goers. Turning off the flash is an absolute minimum, and standing back and not intruding is a matter of basic respect for others.

As for architecture, however, I think you've got to be allowed to photograph buildings. The building authorities are now fretting about "professional photography," and saying it's different from photography "for personal use." Clearly, they haven't really grasped what photography has become in the age of Flickr. What does it mean anymore to speak of photography "for personal use"? Ordinary people upload their digital files. How repressive do public authorities really want to be about that?

Live-blogging the Bloggership conference!

I'm here, in the nerdy front row, and I'll be live-blogging all day.

Here's the link if you want to listen. No video, so you'll just have to picture a bunch of lawproffy types in a cavernous auditorium at Harvard Law School.

Next to me is Randy Barnett, who's reading my blogging on his Palm Treo 650, showing me that he's reading it, taking a picture of me blogging, and emailing me the picture to blog. Is that self-referential enough for you? It's really, really bloggy. And we're just getting started.

The photo:



Don't you love technology?

Gordon Smith is nudging me and saying pay attention. Good point! Live-blogging should entail paying attention. Paul Caron is talking. And Gordon is also live-blogging. Do we care about what the speaker is saying or what the bloggers in the audience are blogging about it and linking to each other and blogging about the blogging?

9:13: Here's the agenda, listing the times of the speakers. Paul Caron is doing the introduction, assembling a lot of statistics about blogging and scholarship. Paul used a lot of PowerPoint slides. There's a huge screen, and I haven't got slides myself. Now Doug Berman is speaking, and he's just displaying his blog on the big screen. So I guess I'll end up putting mine up too and that will mean this very post will be up on the screen. Should lawprofs be blogging?, Doug Berman asks. Hey, Randy's commenting on this post, I just noticed, causing him to turn that Treo thing away. I have to read it the tech way, after he posts it here.

9:22: Here's Gordon's live-blogging post. He notes the many empty seats in the room, so we big bloggers aren't such a huge draw. Somehow, I think the students are probably sleeping at this hour. Or are they studying or taking exams? Is anyone listening to the live feed? Gordon is putting together his PowerPoint slides, Googling for a picture for "network."

9:27: Berman rejects the notion that lawprof blogs are like listening in on a faculty lounge conversation. "It's not as robust and engaged as the law professor blogosphere is." I'm trying to think if things in Lubar Lounge are "robust and engaged." Randy tells me he can't post his comment because he doesn't have a Blogger account. Email it to me:

It is divine to be seated next to Ms. Althouse watching her at work . . . I mean at play. Maybe she will let me borrow her PC so I can post a link on the Volokh Conspiracy to her blogging here. I have not yet installed a blogging client on my Treo 650.

He used the Althouse code word "divine," but he called my PowerBook a "PC."

9:37: Larry Solum says blogs aren't changing anything about legal scholarship but are manifestations of other changes. He loves very long law review articles, but concedes that no one reads them. Yes, it's a funny thing about blogging: it's read. You have these elaborately written things that aren't read, and then everyone thinks of blogging as just thrown together. But short posts can be carefully written, and they can embody ideas that you have thought through in more formal scholarship. Larry's saying that short form "disintermediated" writing is a trend, and not just in blogging. He'd like to see a Wiki law encyclopedia.

9:47: Kate Litvak, commenting on the laptops in the audience, says she's going to ban computers in the classroom. Is she trying to tell me to to close the laptop? She's the panelist who doesn't have a blog.

10:05: Paul Butler starts the commentary on the articles, which he finds insufficiently excited about blogging. He says: "The blog is walking up to legal scholarship and slapping it in the face."

10:10: Butler asks, "What if law review articles had Site Meters?"

Eric Muller blogs a contribution to the scholarship and blogging conversation.

10:17: Jim Lindgren: "Why do you want to know if it's scholarship or not?"

10:35: Ellen Podgor says that before she started blogging -- at White Collar Crime Prof Blog -- she had never been quoted in the Wall Street Journal. She teaches at Stetson, note well. The reporters used to call lawprofs based on their law schools. Blogging can shake up the hierarchy and give different people a chance to be heard.

11:10: Gail Heriot says blogging is fun and lawprofs can do whatever we want. That's stating the problem plainly! "The legal academy has turned inward on itself," she says, describing what legal scholarship has become. It doesn't speak to lawyers and judges. Blogging lets the lawprof get back in connection with the practical legal world, to influence people on the issues of the day.

11:22: The audience has gotten a lot bigger since the break. I wonder if people in the room are reading my simulblogging. Leave a comment! Or are you going to tell me you can't register with Blogger? Email me, then (my last name, followed by @wisc.edu).

11:26: Orin Kerr starts off funny. He uses the computer on the lectern to check his Site Meter statistics. He's all, "Hold on just a sec..." Then he pretends he's accidentally brought his old notes from a 1999 conference called "Listservship: How Email Is Changing Legal Scholarship).

11:35: Orin ends by saying that if anyone is live-blogging the conference, we should say that he got thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Now, Gordon is up and he starts by displaying this post of mine, photo and all. He calls attention to the part about how he's putting together his PowerPoint slides, and then that's his intro into his PowerPoint presentation.

11:45: Gordon does care about whether blogging is considered scholarship, because he wants to legitimate what he's doing. Randy Barnett is next, and he frets about the "flight from scholarship," which has long been the "dirty little secret" of lawprofdom. "It's a syndrome," one symptom of which is saying nobody reads legal scholarship, and it doesn't matter. "I should also mention that a lot of law professors don't like teaching. Or serving on committees." Lots of lawprofs are looking for "something else." And along comes blogging, and the self-justifications of the lawprofs who get into it.



12:00: Michael Froomkin mentions classroom blogs. He suggests that lawprofs write 1 or 2 page posts reviewing long-form scholarship.

12:10. Question time. They've got a microphone now. The first question is about the "performative" nature of blogging, meaning that bloggers are performing for an audience.

2:00. Back from lunch, and now Glenn Reynolds is video-ing in his talk. He did not -- as I thought he might -- laugh at us for going to the conference, us low-tech losers. Walking to lunch, we were talking about the coming video'd-in performance, and Randy Barnett commented on how Glenn was going to be a 12 foot head on the screen, then said that Glenn Reynolds actually was a 12 foot head, which is why he couldn't appear in person. Waiting for the talk to start, Jim Lindgren compared him to Orson on "Mork and Mindy." Glenn compared himself to some other pop culture character on a screen, but I've forgotten which one. Anyway, Glenn's talking about why there are so few libel suits against bloggers. Answer: Bloggers are unlikely to commit libel. They're big on support, and their mistakes get pointed out and corrected quickly. Also, bloggers are less trusted so the crap they (we) say causes less harm.

2:15: Eugene Volokh is talking about blogging and liability. Lots of detail: listen to the podcast. Should bloggers get worse treatment than traditional journalists? That's just one of many things he covered.

2:30: Eric Goldman has a very specific topic: group blogging activities. Being a solo blogger, I guess I don't have to worry about these problems... unless you commenters are causing problems.

2:38: Jim Lindgren types with one finger. You rarely see that anymore.

2:50: Betsy Malloy is talking about anonymous bloggers and what rights they have to preserve their privacy.

2:55: Daniel Solove is comparing Eugene Volokh and Jessica Cutler (the "Washingtonienne"): both so love to blog about sex.

3:45: My panel is about to start. I'm up on the dais now and feeling nervous, even though I think there will hardly be any audience left (except out there is cyberspace, so I guess I can't just fool around). I check my email. A student at Georgetown has sent me this:



3:50: Larry Ribstein is listing the categories of lawprof blogposts: amateur journalism, self-expression, "blogicles" (little law scholarship articles), self-promotion (getting people to download your articles), and publicly engaged academic posts ("PEAPs").



The PEAPs idea is to "leverage your expertise" as you contribute to the public debate. You tap your serious scholarship, as you write about some timely issue.

4:05: I notice that Glenn noticed I was blogging about his head.

4:22: I'm done! Having written my article in bloggish form, I tried to do the talk in podcasty form (which is bizarrely stressful!).

4:25: Christine Hurt is talking about blogging without tenure.

4:28: Christine says that by blogging -- as part of reading the news every day -- she forces herself to keep up with legal developments, which gives her a headstart on the serious projects she begins in the summer. If she weren't blogging, she says, she'd be more consumed with teaching during the school year and putting off reading up on the current developments. This is a good point: I know I read cases as soon as they come out, cases that, pre-blogging, I would have just downloaded for later consumption.

4:38: Howard Bashman is up to comment on Larry, Christine, and me. He also has a lot to say about his blog, How Appealing.

4:50. Peter Lattman, the Wall Street Journal legal blogger, is next. He says journalists don't see bloggers as competition, but as fodder.

5:12. Nice questions. Listen to them in the podcast. Now, Harvard lawprof Charles Nesson is closing and talking about the Berkman Center, which sponsored the event. The internet, he says, has thrived because large institutions haven't figured out how to use it yet. There's a danger now, and he has a proposal, which you can hear on the podcast.

THE END!

ADDED: Douglas Berman was live-blogging here. And Larry Solum sort of disagrees with me here (that is, he thinks that to be taken seriously, a law scholar had better keep the fun stuff on a separate blog). Solum is concerned about how "academic administrators" will figure out how to reward the part of the blog that deserves to be considered part of one's professional work. I'll just say that I have not encountered this problem at the University of Wisconsin Law School and assert that that makes my school cooler than the schools that fret about clear line drawing, like a child eating dinner and worring that the meat is touching the mashed potatoes!

"On some level he means what he's saying, and is making fun of himself for meaning it..."

Amba on religion and "The Colbert Report":

Colbert is something far more subtle than a fundamentalist, but on some level he means what he's saying, and is making fun of himself for meaning it by impersonating a fundamentalist's absurdly over-the-top way of saying it. No wonder Harris is baffled: it's impossible to tell where Colbert is really coming from. If you assumed he was mocking religion itself and therefore agreed with you, you'd fall into a trap.

Harris is atheist Sam Harris, and you can watch Colbert's interview with him here. Enjoy all the perplexing subtleties!

So Alec Baldwin punched the wall because of the air conditioning.

Here's a puzzling story about an actress, Jan Maxwell, quitting her role in a NY play, because she can't stand Alec Baldwin, her co-star.

[Maxwell wrote] in an e-mail message to a friend that Mr. Baldwin "created an unhealthy and oppressive situation." She referred specifically to an incident in which Mr. Baldwin punched a wall because he was angry that the air-conditioning was not turned high enough....

Mr. Baldwin admitted to punching the wall, but said he had been sweating onstage and, as his character wears glasses, the sweat was making it difficult to see.

Baldwin also says that the play -- "Entertaining Mr. Sloan" -- subjects the character Maxwell plays to relentless misogyny. Is the actress broken by the "unhealthy and oppressive situation" of the play itself, or is Alec Baldwin really so terrible? That air conditioner incident just doesn't seem like enough to justify cutting out on the play. His explanation sound pretty decent, but maybe there is a whole list of scary Baldwinesque acting out on and around the stage.

Hmmm... we could try to make a Top Ten list: Things Alec Baldwin Did to Freak Out Jan Maxwell.

At the Bloggership conference.

Well, here I am at the Cambridge Hyatt, where, from your room, you hear some guy playing schmaltzy music on a grand piano that is located somewhere in the grand atrium. You know, there was a time when Hyatt atria were seen as quite wonderful. It was decades ago.

So we bloggers had a nice dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club, courtesy of Microsoft. Microsoft provided some excellent food for us humble bloggers. I met a bunch of famous bloggers, some of whom defied my mental image, like Orin Kerr -- because I always just pictured him looking like the only other person I've ever met in my life named Orin (who was an old man with a big head of white hair). Silly, but that's how the mind works, isn't it?

And now it's time to meet the public, in the Zephyr Lounge.

"I know that you will be able to read this from Heaven."

What will happen to your web space after you die? Will the commenters swoop in and talk about you, talk to you? Will new readers flow in, tipped off by MyDeathSpace, to soak up the after-death atmosphere and contribute the perspective of the -- what should we call them? -- death spectators?

Extremely fussy bedding.

Here's an article about how women are layering their beds with all sorts of fancy pillows and "bed scarves" and other paraphernalia:

"I could go weeks without ever seeing my living room," said Judy Roaman, an art collector and retailer in Manhattan and East Hampton whose bed is as crowded and graphically articulated as the wall of artwork leading into her bedroom. "The bed for me is about having everything around me. We have the takeout on trays, and lollipops and Kleenex and every magazine known to man — and the dog, who has his water bowl on the floor. I hate to tell you this, but the dead dog's ashes are right by the bed, too."

The bed, Ms. Roaman said, warming to her theme, has two lives, "a glamorous, gorgeous day life, where she's made up in the morning, all fluffed with her glammy pillows and her propping pillows and her duvet and her chic little blanket at the bottom — and she's definitely a she — and the nighttime life, where we all jump in."

The least convincing thing in this article is the repeated assertion that an exciting and messy life goes along with a complicated bed system. Do you really think a woman -- they're all women -- who maintains a bed like this is enthusiastic about sticky kids jumping in? Do you really think she lets them bring whole takeout meals on trays into her insanely fancy bed? Does anyone ever actually have sex here or does the whole setup scream sublimation?

"American Idol" -- the results.

ADDED: If you're looking for the results of the latest show, click on the banner -- "Althouse" -- at the top of the page and scroll down to the newest "American Idol" post.

***

Oh, good, Althouse is back to talking about "American Idol." I'm soooo sorry I complained about her blogging about "American Idol."

So, from painful hyena sex to painful Ryan Seacrest. It's almost an anagram!

What's Paula wearing? It looks like caviar.

Did you see that Donny Hathaway's greatest hits collection is at #25 in sales on Amazon today, thanks to Elliott's singing "A Song for You" last night?

Cute "Call Me" ad, with doggies and Taylor Hicks acting up.

Andrea Bocelli belts out a number. His "American Idol" appearance has his new record up to #4 on Amazon. Expect it to go higher tomorrow.

They're breaking the contestants up into 3 groups of 2. Katharine, Elliott, and Kellie start each of the 3 groups. Then, Paris is told to join Kellie, and those in the know are assuming that's the bottom group. Taylor goes with Elliott, so Elliott's safe! Chris joins Katharine, and clearly she's now safe. Elliott and Taylor are the top. Nice!

After the break, we learn that Elliott and Taylor were actually the middle group. That makes sense, doesn't it, because of Chris? Chris and Kat are seated.

And it's Kellie who's leaving! America got it right!

Aw, but she was very sweet. I think she got a little tired. Someone ought to build a sitcom around her character. We love her as a comedienne.

"The Painful Realities of Hyena Sex."

See what I found for you? An article about the painful realities of hyena sex:

[I]n the final stages of pregnancy, high-ranking females provide their developing offspring with higher levels of androgen—a male sex hormone associated with aggression—than lower-ranking mothers provide to their developing young....

But providing the extra hormones takes a toll on the mother. The dose of androgen that she received from her own alpha mother damages her ovaries, making it difficult to conceive.

It also causes female reproductive organs to grow. A lot. Her clitoris, which contains the birthing canal, protrudes 7 inches from her body.

"Imagine giving birth through a penis," said study co-author Kay Holekamp of Michigan State University. "It's really weird genitalia, but it seems to work. Although giving birth through a 'penis' isn't a trivial problem."

And now it's a problem that you can think about.

"A strange combination of religion, karaoke, and pride."

Why Birmingham, Alabama is at the core of "American Idol."

The sleek new press secretary.

So what do you think of Tony Snow as the new White House press secretary? He's got a nice polished look and demeanor. That's got to help.

I like this:

In a November column, posted on Townhall.com, Mr. Snow wrote of Mr. Bush: "His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson. The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."

In a March column, Mr. Snow wrote, "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc." And he derided the new prescription drug benefit that Mr. Bush signed into law.

As press secretary, Mr. Snow would probably have to defend just such a program.

When asked about Mr. Snow's more critical comments, the administration official said, "What better way to pop the bubble that people think there is here."

At least it's something new.