"[The] Point of Law diarist [sic] is an AEI fellow, and not to be trusted on the ideological spin given to the facts." — Adam Bonin, 18 January 2007

Testing the YouTube embed feature with a commercial I ran across that I'd've wanted to email Slim—except that the stupid page title gives away the punchline. When we see a child in the store like this, I turn to her and say, "Let's have only six kids," and she responds by not talking to me for several hours.

I've loved those Lexus commercials that conclude "I used to have to parallel park by myself." Alas, Calvin Trillin (via Throwing Things) reports that it isn't all that:

The Advanced Parking Guidance System works only if the spot is six and a half feet longer than the car — the sort of spot, in other words, that the average Manhattan parker comes upon about once every 14 or 15 years. The only parker who might need help from a guidance system to get into such a spot is a parker who is driving himself home from rotator cuff surgery. For Lexus to offer a self-parking system for a spot that size is the equivalent of some high-end kitchen-equipment manufacturer offering a self-carving system that only works on meatloaf.

I wonder if that's a liability thing: this Lexus commercial shows the car parking in a much tighter space—which would imply consumer fraud class action possibilities.

Update: My father sends along this CNBC video of a Lexus being used to (sort of) park in a smaller space, so who knows why Trillin says what he says.

Tom Stoppard's "Coast of Utopia" has apparently increased sales of Isaiah Berlin's previously-out-of-print "Russian Thinkers" more than 50-fold. (via Marcotte)

...is that one is competing with those who are not. Unhappy with our previous cat-mauling commercial maid service, we started negotiations with a highly-recommended husband-and-wife maid team to replace them. But those fell through when I announced that Slim and I would need to comply with federal requirements for taxation and I-9 paperwork. Perhaps this offended them (I certainly felt awkward about the racist implications of asking for the I-9), or perhaps I avoided being Zoe Bairded at some future date, but it's at least as likely that they didn't want to have to deal with losing 20-35% of their income to taxes when there were others who would pay them under the table.

The place where I had lunch almost every day for over three years isn't what it used to be.

Article about Madison High School in Brooklyn, which has three alumni as sitting senators, plus:

"When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was at Madison [High School] — of course, you're quite familiar with the look that she cultivates — would you believe that she was cheerleader?" said Steve Slavin, a 1959 Madison graduate, referring to the now-bookish-looking Supreme Court justice.

Sandy Roche, class of 1950, couldn't believe it. That is, until she cracked the spine of her old yearbook.

"It says she was twirler, so I guess she was a cheerleader. Oh my goodness," said Roche who knew Ginsburg, also class of 1950, by her nickname, Kiki. Roche and others from her time remembered Ginsburg as "very popular and attractive."

(Assignment for David Lat: Find that yearbook photo!)

As befitting my status as a second-string talking head, I'm stepping in for Steven Hantler at the Washington Legal Foundation's Media Nosh on legal reform Thursday morning. There will be a webcast.

Arkansas Rep. Dan Greenberg defends HB1035 to the Arkansas Times. [Arkansas News; KTHV; North Little Rock Times]

Alan Sepinwall reports that Aaron Sorkin is unhappy with this LA Times article. That "Employee of the Month Celebrates the Comedy of Studio 60" in LA show sounds fun. In a meta sense. More here. And Mickey Kaus reminds us of the original TWOP-predecessor controversy (over the Emmy for this episode) that led to the Lemon-Lyman West Wing episode.

The Patriots-Colts game is scheduled to start at 6:30 pm. I set the HDTV to record it, and I start watching the recording at 8 pm or so. This permits me to fast-forward past the parts where announcers are talking about nothing or the fifteenth iteration of the same Wendy's commercial or the halftime show, which just isn't interesting when there aren't highlights from other games. Fast-forwarding is far from perfect with the shoddy Scientific Atlanta DVR—there's a delay as it thinks about the process both in the beginning and the end, and I missed more than a few downs—but my TiVo doesn't record HD.

So I'm about a quarter behind when, at 10 pm, the recorder decides that the game is over and decides to take me out of the middle of the program I'm watching, and, without any sort of spoiler alert or warning, instead displays the picture for the current game at the current score, with about two minutes left. Aside from the fact that the suspense is ruined for watching the fourth quarter that I missed, the Comcast DVR has no way to easily fast-forward through three and a half hours of football, so I just delete the recording and watch the last two minutes of the game.

This is just ludicrous. TiVo (1) permits one to fast-forward in fifteen minute intervals, and (2) is intelligent enough not to turn off a recording that you're in the middle of watching just because it's finished recording. These are not complicated concepts. And if Scientific Atlanta can't master basic usability, why can't Comcast provide their subscribers with a TiVo system?

Via Kirkendall, the Houston Chronicle profiles Trey Wilson, the Bellaire High graduate who played Nathan Arizona in the great "Raising Arizona." Wilson, who had other character-actor roles, would've been one of the greats in the Coen Brothers troupe, but died suddenly of an arterial vascular malformation in his brain at the age of 40. Albert Finney took the role he would have had in "Miller's Crossing."

Video of David Foster Wallace on prepositions and good and evil.

How Borat was written. Not mentioned: how the WGA nomination is meant to raise public awareness of WGA claims to the right to have reality television shows subject to WGA union rules. (Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it reduces the incentive to use reality tv instead of scripted comedies and drama.)

Relatedly: Baron Cohen thanks, inter alia, the writers. And a YouTube of a post-Globes conference.