f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

  I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to share a pair of haiku from Tom Painting‘s chapbook piano practice.

autumn light

I lower the window

cover my child’s feet

 

 

 

the gossip

her yard fills

with leaves

 

                                                                                  

 

one-breath pundit  

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  It’s rare that I disagree with Bob Ambrogi, but I don’t buy his notion that lawyers will not continue their weblogs without the incentive of advertising revenues.   (see our earlier post).  Bob asks for comments, and Kevin O’Keefe and I responded; please join us.  Update (Oct. 20, 2004):  Bob Ambrogi has written a follow-up on this issue; my reply is here)

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  Thank you, Kofi Anan, for speaking the truth: the Iraq War has not made the world safer.  (See Jurist Paper Chase) 
  
  
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  Dear President Bush: Please go over your Harvard Business School notes on externalities and unintended consequences.  The White House should not be a Nuance-Free Zone.
  
  
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  Ms. Dowd said it well today: “America is awash in selective piety, situational moralists and cherry-picking absolutists. “

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  Like Jim Moore, the Washington Post, and Nicholas Kristof, I wonder why the world isn’t doing a lot more to save Dafur.

 

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  by dagosan:

their children

never cry

never stop crying

                                                [reprise, Aug. 25, 2004, for Dafur]

                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                    from victorystore.com

 

Thursday’s Eckblad seat belt decision in Washington State must have disappointed a lot of libertarians.

(see, e.g., Georgia Libertarian Party, “Stick It” to “Click It or Ticket”, June 7, 2001; and LPMass’ “danger”

Press Release).  The Eckblad court rejected “unconstitutional vagueness” charges and upheld the

State’s seatbelt law in this multi-faceted criminal case.                                                               

 

As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted, Justice Sanders’ acidly dissented:

“The government has determined our citizens are not intelligent enough to decide

for themselves whether to wear a seat belt, yet they apparently have enough intelligence

to locate and interpret an elusive federal administrative rule.”

Meanwhile, because “the Internet teems with information both accurate and inaccurate which can

and does mislead users,”  two concurring justices declined “to adjust the vagueness analysis to take

the Internet into account.”  (via Paper Chase)

 

 

   f/k/a has been googling its little yabut off trying to find seat-belt haiku that might ease

the pain of our libertarian brethren.   Sadly, there isn’t much of it around on the Net, and it is of uneven

quality.    Here are our annotated results.

 

 

seatbelt laws —

wrinkles in the fabric

of freedom

                       dagosan 

                              [we know, it’s not-quite-haiku]

 

 

 

Valentine’s Day
she reminds me
to fasten my seatbelt

Michael Dylan Welch, from Simply Haiku 

[posted  here before; I like it]

 

 

a haiku ..

about a seat belt?

Hey! Look . . . an eclipse!

                                    

                                      from Silent Running 

                                              [weblog by a ranting neo-con; PG14]

 

to leave Ohio

buckling up

the seat belt

              Jane Reichhold, Death Haiku 

                   [it’s worth it to get out of a swing state!]

 

 

Drank my Budweiser

Got into my pickup truck

Mesh ain’t no seatbelt

        Aram “Aggro P” Peterson/ Meshcap Haiku 

        [a whole page of haiku homage to the Mesh Cap]

 

                                                                                                                                                         

I guess there were no seat-belts in 19th Century Japan; but I couldn’t leave Kobayashi Issa out:

 

the big cat sleeps
in the same seat…
with the doll

          

world of Buddha’s law–
the snake strips
his clothes

 

Issa, translated by Prof. David G. Lanoue

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   by dagosan: 
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  she eyes his wrinkled shirt —

  
  

  
  

  seatbelt saves

  
  

  another life

  
  

                                  [Oct. 16, 2004] 

  
  

                                             [Prof. Yabut has been using this excuse for decades]

 

• LawMeme notes that the AMA now backs Medicare bargaining on prescription drug prices (NYT article).  It seems natural that physicians would want to assure there are more Medicare dollars available for non-drug (e.g., doctor) services.

• 9 PM Update:  Inspired by a great post by Scheherazade Fowler, there is a very interesting discussion at Stay of Execution today, on what “thinking like a lawyer” means and whether it necessarily precludes other values.