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Academic

The Yin Blog

Random thoughts on law, politics, game theory, sports, books, television shows, and movies. - From Tung Yin, Associate Professor of Law at Iowa. \r\n

Post Frequency: 0.9/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 17:08:59

Obama and Kanye

Posted on September 16, 2009
I don't get why this is a big deal at all (other than the part about journalistic standards). . . . A recap of the alleged controversy: during the MTV Music Video Awards, 19-year-old country star Taylor Swift won the...

Revenge of TV lovers!

Posted on September 15, 2009
This is a pretty hilarious story by a TV writer for "The Simpsons," getting a well-measured dose of revenge against one of those annoying "I don't watch TV" pseudo-intellectuals!

Serena Williams' meltdown at the US Open

Posted on September 13, 2009
Wow, I read about Serena Williams' match-losing meltdown and then managed to catch a rerun of her US Open semi-final match against Kim Clijsters. The short version is that Williams was down 4-6, 5-6 (15-30) when she faulted her first...

Things that make you go "argh!" -- financial services edition!

Posted on September 11, 2009
I suppose I can't really fault these financial institutions for being extremely scrupulous, but it's still pretty annoying . . . . When we moved from Iowa to Oregon, we closed some of the local Iowa bank accounts that hadn't...

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Disneyland and property rights in tickets

Posted on September 11, 2009
Due to a family matter, I had to head down to Los Angeles last week, so naturally my wife and I took our two little boys to Disneyland as well. While there, the following two possibly analogous incidents occurred that...

The declining stigma of strikeouts in baseball

Posted on September 09, 2009
My baseball brain having been warped by fantasy baseball long ago, I've long thought that strikeouts were overly stigmatized as being worse than other outs. I mean, they're usually not as bad as double plays (unless there are no outs...

Some thoughts on teaching at a new institution

Posted on September 02, 2009
After seven nice years of teaching at the Iowa law school -- 13 semesters' worth of classes, since I had one semester off on a pre-tenure leave -- I moved back to the West Coast and started teaching at Lewis...

Does this mean lawyers, especially in these days of market carnage, are mosquito repellant?

Posted on September 02, 2009
According to this story, it sounds like mosquitos can smell stress, and they don't like it!

"24" and baby names?

Posted on August 27, 2009
My new colleague Jack Bogdanski wonders about some of most popular baby names in 2008, including Chloe and Ethan. I say, it must be a "24" effect, with Chloe O'Brien (CTU tech goddess) and Ethan Kanin (first female President's chief...

You decide, sloppy lawyering, or sloppy journalism?

Posted on August 24, 2009
According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, my former employer is being sued for discrimination (again). Last time, it was a claim of viewpoint discrimination; this time, it's age discrimination: Dobkin, a veteran attorney, claims he was denied a...

The end of "Battlestar Galactica"

Posted on August 20, 2009
I finally finished watching season 4 of "Battlestar Galactica" -- all on DVD(!) -- and . . . wow. (Spoilers ahead, obviously.) From various heated comments on the TiVo users forum that were harshly critical of BSG creator Ron Moore,...

If an American corporation handled its pension plan like Social Security . . . .

Posted on August 17, 2009
I got my annual "Your Social Security Statement" in the mail today. This is the letter that estimates my benefits if I were to start collecting at age 62, age 67, and age 70. It also comes with a caveat:...

White men and Asian women

Posted on August 14, 2009
A former student linked to this story about how there's a trend of powerful, older white guys marrying younger women of Asian descent. Probably the most provocative paragraph is this one: While I'm sure that real love and affection is...

A really bad day in court(!)

Posted on August 11, 2009
Under the not mandatory but more or less kind of mandatory federal sentencing guidelines, even most white collar criminals are looking at some degree of prison time -- heck, Martha Stewart got a break from the judge and still had...

"1" is not a prime number!

Posted on August 07, 2009
While watching the summer season finale of "Burn Notice" (awesome stuff!), I caught a commercial for Sonic. The gist of it was some math nerd talking about how easy it was for him to remember some combination of numbers, one...

14 or so hours 'til my new HD TiVo goes online!

Posted on August 05, 2009
Back when I was setting up the utilities for our new home in Portland, I was confronted with the cable company vs. phone company dilemma. I opted for the cable company (Comcast) partly because I was concerned about having satellite...

New West casebook covers

Posted on August 03, 2009
I'm preparing the syllabus for my Criminal Law II course, for which I'm using Julie O'Sullivan's Federal White Collar Crime casebook. This is in a new edition (4th), and it's one of the casebooks for which West is using a...

Sotomayor, Supreme Court nominees, and a suggestion for Obama

Posted on July 30, 2009
If the Senate Judiciary Committee vote is any indication of things to come, it looks like Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed handily, but with nowhere near the commanding votes that Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer got (well over 90%)....

Why is it 100+ degrees in Oregon?!?

Posted on July 29, 2009
It's always been sunny in Portland when I've visited, but I fully expect to get my share of gray, overcast days. What I didn't expect was that it would be in the high 80s or hotter just about every day...

On the road from Iowa to Oregon, part 1

Posted on July 14, 2009
At 5:15 am on July 10, the morning that our movers were arriving to load up our stuff for our move from Iowa to Oregon, I finally gave up on packing and woke up my wife, who'd gone to bed...

A nagging question about MP3s and married couples

Posted on July 05, 2009
While starting the pretty awful task of packing our house for the move to Portland, I noticed that my wife and I had two copies of two CDs. Which was kind of weird, because we have somewhat similar tastes in...

Sarah Palin and "Prison Break"

Posted on July 04, 2009
For some reason, when I first saw that Sarah Palin was quitting as Governor of Alaska, I wondered if it was an instance of life imitating art -- specifically, "Prison Break"'s season 2, episode 19 ("Sweet Caroline"), in which President...

Nice write up for my former employer

Posted on July 02, 2009
According to the ABA, my former employer, Munger Tolles & Olson, topped American Lawyer's A-list of law firms, based on its commitment to pro bono work, its diversity, and its associate satisfaction. Although I'm of course much happier in my...

The Mall of America and the Minn.-St. Paul airport

Posted on June 27, 2009
So the other day, I was flying from Portland to Iowa City, with a stop in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Naturally, I arrived in the F terminal and had to head over to the A terminal, which gave me a...

Signs of the end of TiVo?

Posted on June 19, 2009
As I've blogged before, I absolutely *love* my TiVo . . . . But I'm afraid that I see signs of the end of its viability as a company. With my move to Oregon less than a month away now,...

7 years of separation(s)

Posted on June 19, 2009
I was just thinking today about how 7 years seems to be a defining period for me going back a ways now. I finished college in 1988 without much of an idea of what I wanted to do for a...

On clutter vs costs, when it comes to books

Posted on June 08, 2009
With our move to Oregon about a month away, we've started the packing process. As you might expect, we have a lot of books. And I have a penchant for collecting hardcover books (new, remainders, or used), which take up...

My unknown Good Samaritan!

Posted on June 05, 2009
You have to love Iowa City! Today, I was biking home from the law school (for the first time), and somehow, unknown to me, my bike bag fell off my rack. When I got home, I got off my bike...

Talk about an understated news headline . . . .

Posted on May 18, 2009
This story shouldn't be a surprise to any of you who are astronomy junkies, or anyone who's read the classic Larry Niven short story "Neutron Star," but check this out: the news headline reads "Neutron Star Crust is Stronger than...

You can't script stuff like this! (Celebrity Apprentice)

Posted on April 27, 2009
Oh, my, reality TV might not be all that "real," but you can't script stuff like last night's episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice," where Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa both totally melted down after Melissa was fired.

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