I picked up an autographed copy of Clark Blaise’s Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time a while back at Square Books in Oxford, and just got around to reading it. While I have no doubt that the Scottish-born Sandford Fleming was an interesting individual—in addition to being a driving force between the adoption of standard time zones, he was one of the architects of the unification of Canada and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway—Blaise’s book almost makes him seem boring.

The narrative flow of the book is horrible, employing no discernable organizational approach, and the book seems semi-randomly to leap into discussions of the use of time in literature—which may be one of Blaise’s scholarly interests, but has little to do with Fleming. Except for details of the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference in Washington and some confused recounting of Fleming’s role in surveying and building the CP, little of Fleming’s exploits get much attention. Blaise’s lament is that Fleming is being lost to history, but if he was such an important figure in Canadian and world history, his book does little to solidify his reputation, except as a crumudgeon who was annoyed that politics intruded on his efforts to create a “universal” reckoning of time.

If I’d had any sense after 9/11, I would have gone into business producing portable concrete Jersey barriers; you can’t pass almost any federal government building, even such unlikely terror targets as national guard armories and Corps of Engineers buildings, that doesn’t have a few dozen of the things around it.

I’m not dead, I just have nothing much to say—particularly on the wrong end of a 56k dialup line. Happy New Year to all our readers; I expect to have some things to say in a few days, probably including a review of one of my Christmas presents, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by Economist writers John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.

In the meantime I’m trying to relax my brain—and my separated shoulder—so I won’t look like a babbling fool when I try to teach three new courses (public opinion, civil liberties, and an independent study course in southern politics) in addition to a revamped Introduction to American Politics class in the spring.

Apparently Norm Mineta can’t figure out why the legacy airlines are in such big trouble. (þ Brian J. Noggle)

He could save us taxpayers a bit of money by just reading Virginia Postrel’s weblog. More succinctly: U.S. Airways sucks monkey balls, and they’re tightwad scum too.

Belhaven College wants to upgrade its home football field, which it shares with Jackson Public Schools, to have better facilities and artificial turf.

Left unmentioned is that Belhaven’s generous offer to pay for most of the renovations might have something to do with field envy for the new surface at Harper Davis Field a few hundred yards west. It’s gotta stick in those Presbyterians’ craws that us Methodists have ourselves a better football field.

I apparently have a love-hate relationship with my students; in my mailbox at work today were a Christmas card from a student and my abysmal (at least by Millsaps standards) course evaluations. Four students in my intro class apparently thought it would be amusing to give me the lowest possible ranking on all 19 questions, even such procedural items as “gives clear directions” and “presents [material] in a clear sequence.” Ah well, at least I “demonstrate knowledge” of what I’m teaching…

My response to all this, of course, was to finish my SPSA paper on voting in recent presidential elections and continue getting organized for my trip to Florida tomorrow.

Allow me another plug for the one, the only, Dead Pool 2005… and tell ’em we sent you. It’s all in good fun, and there’s no fee to enter, although Lair may get testy with you if you don’t have a blog. All you have to do is pick the 15 semi-famous people you think are gonna die in 2005. So, in the immortal (or at least immoral) words of Gwen Stefani, ”what you waitin’ for?”

Jane Galt is amazed to discover Britain’s television police, responsible for ensuring the BBC gets its £121 a year from TV-watching Britons—even if they never watch the BBC. From the article:

The fee is very much a part of British life. It is a criminal offense for anyone with a television set not to pay it, whether they watch the BBC or not. Fee-evasion cases make up 12 percent of the caseload in magistrates’ courts. Although most evaders are fined, 20 people were imprisoned for nonpayment last year.

The BBC took in £3.9 billion ($7.5 billion) from the fee in 1993, but 5.7 percent of television owners still failed to pay. TV Licensing regularly carries out campaigns to warn them about the consequences of inaction that say, for instance, “Get one or get done” – “getting done” being slang for getting caught.

Enforcement officers visit homes and businesses about three million times a year. They have a variety of weapons at hand, including a law that requires retailers to notify the government whenever someone buys a television; a database with TV-owning information about 28 million Britons; and specially equipped vans and hand-held devices that can detect unlawful television-watching.

The predecessor of the TV licence, the radio licence, went away in 1971. For more details, visit the TV Licensing website, where you can learn about the TV licence in 12 different languages.

Here’s a bit of a doozy from ESPN.com:

Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama has been chosen by the United States Soccer Federation for the first home qualifier in March when the national team will face Guatemala.

It will be the third time Birmingham, home of Auburn University, will host the national team, but it is the first World Cup qualifier for the stadium. In March of 2002, the U.S. beat Ecuador 1–0 on an Eddie Lewis goal – but the stakes will be much, much bigger on March 31st.

Aside from the minor geographic problem with the article, though, it also appears they got the date wrong, which means I’ll be watching on ESPN2 (since I teach Wednesdays) instead of going to Birmingham for the game.

A Kansas sports page editor is inviting a visit from the media neutrality goons:

The Associated Press is the largest news-gathering agency in the world. In this country, it hasn’t had any real competition since United Press International went belly-up about a quarter-center ago. The AP’s mantra, like all media, is to report the news.

At the same time, however, the AP manufactures news. That’s what a poll is. Manufactured news. Polls are released Mondays or Tuesdays because those are the traditionally slow news days, and the polls fills air space on radio and TV and columns in newspapers.

Basically an AP poll is a bunch of media-types—in this case sports writers and sportscasters—who band together to produce news that isn’t really news in order to sell more newspapers and lure more listeners and viewers. There’s nothing wrong with that in a business sense, but more and more, newspapers, in particular, are beginning to sense they’re sending the wrong message.

The media engaging in agenda setting and making up news? Never!

My cousin Melvin Ely’s most recent book, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War continues to draw rave reviews; the latest is from James A. Miller in Sunday’s Boston Globe.

Update: Joe Gandelman uncovered the article on his own and has some interesting thoughts (and discussion) on the matter. Comments of my own below the fold.

One for the News of the Weird file: the Palestinian Authority’s investments included, until this week, a $3.1 million stake in a chain of bowling alleys in the Northeast Corridor.

Alan Henderson has generously added us to his blogroll, but thinks I’m an “evil law prof”; actually, I’m an evil political science prof who teaches con law because the other evil political science prof has better things to do, and he’s the chair—so what can I do?

Heidi Bond clarifies that Mac OS X isn’t Linux, which probably explains why I could never figure out how to configure anything important that wasn’t in Preferences. She also links Gus, who started DynDNS.com a few Internet eons ago and whose creation helps keep Signifying Nothing on the air… our real hostname is lordsutch.dyndns.org.

Steven Taylor calls Signifying Nothing a “righty blog,” although I’m not sure any of us make particularly good right-wingers… though if you, like me, visit west Jackson or Orange Mound (substitute your favorite inner-city slum) and the first thought in your head is “40 years of failed social policy” instead of “residual racism,” I suppose that might be evidence of “rightiness.”

Will Baude asks:

Does anybody find libertarian Linux-users sexy?

Heidi Bond responds that at least the Linux-using part may increase perceived sexiness, but also adds that ”[t]here are plenty of people who run Linux who I wouldn’t date.”

Undoubtably this is a pressing question for our time—not to mention our blog. Presumably Brock’s wife finds him sexy, although I don’t know that Brock would consider himself a libertarian; if pressed to judge, I’d say Brock is tall and handsome, and thus probably considered “sexy” by women, but neither of those attributes derive from his politics or his choice of operating system.

Robert runs Mac OS X, as does Heidi Bond’s boyfriend, which may count as “Linux usage” for sufficiently vague definitions of “Linux” (i.e. operating systems that use a lot of GNU software and use a kernel patterned after that of the Unix operating system). I have no idea whether Robert is sexy, since I’ve never met him and don’t generally judge the sexiness of other guys (not that there’s anything wrong with that), my assessment of Brock notwithstanding.

Nobody has called me sexy lately, but for the most part I haven’t gone to great lengths to advertise either my libertarianness or my Linux usage in the “real world”; there may be individuals who think I’m sexy, but they haven’t told me that or otherwise indicated they think I’m sexy in an unambiguous manner—defined in my world as “not made blatantly obvious,” so I could be oblivious to such matters.

So, Mr. Baude’s question is now in order. Let the debate commence.

The next time a student complains about a con law exam, I think I’ll assign them this question. Then again, I did give them this one on my second exam (open book, take-home, and optional):

In United States v. Lopez, while the Supreme Court did not overturn Wickard v. Filburn outright, the Court clearly staked out some limitations to Congress’s use of its power to regulate interstate commerce. With that precedent in mind, consider the upcoming Supreme Court case Ashcroft v. Raich, in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals argued that federal regulation of the noncommercial cultivation and distribution of marijuana exceeded Congress’s commerce clause powers. You should consider the following questions: Does Raich meet the standard for interstate commerce outlined in the Lopez test? How does Raich differ from Wickard—or, aside from the crops at issue, does it not differ at all?

I also gave this one on my first exam:

In 2007, the Supreme Court will hear the case Lewis v. Boulder County School District, in which perennial Pledge of Allegiance challenger Michael Newdow represents Sally Lewis, a 16-year-old atheist and high school student in Boulder who objects to the use of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, added to the pledge by Congress in 1954 (codified at 4 USC 4). Lewis advances essentially the same argument on the merits advanced by Newdow in Newdow v. Elk Grove Unified School District (2004); however, Lewis’ parents, English professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder, fully support her challenge to the law and have permitted Newdow to represent her in her case against the school district.

In the meantime, Congress has passed the Pledge Protection Act of 2005, which was signed into law by President Lieberman.* The Pledge Protection Act provides that no court created by Congress shall have original jurisdiction in any challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance, nor shall the Supreme Court have appellate jurisdiction.

How should the Supreme Court decide the case at hand? Consider the issues of jurisdiction and standing, as well as the decision on “the merits.” In particular:

• Does Lewis have standing to sue?
• Is the Pledge Protection Act of 2005 constitutional?
• Is the inclusion of “under God” in the pledge an unconstitutional establishment of religion?

Consider the court’s precedents on standing and jurisdiction, as well as the political circumstances that gave rise to the Court’s decision in Ex parte McCardle. Your response will be fortified by reference to the legal and attitudinal approaches to judicial interpretation outlined in Chapter 1 of the [Epstein and Walker].

Ok, maybe I am an evil con law prof after all.

The GayPatriot thinks that pro-gay-rights advocates have “red state” demographics working against them (þ: InstaPundit). They may also have some problems in their base—in states “blue” and “red” alike. Here’s some numbers among self-identified Democrats from the exit poll we did in Jackson (estimated margin of error ±3.6%, α=0.05):

Now, I would expect Jackson voters (black or white) to be more socially conservative than those in the nation at large, but I don’t think that 40-point margin between black and white Democrats would be that much smaller in, say, Oakland or Boston.

Of course, turning this into a working cross-cutting cleavage for Republicans is going to be hard work as long as the GOP can’t keep its semi-regular bigot eruptions under control.

Michael Jennings has further thoughts on the Millau Viaduct and bridge design more generally, in response to this thread at Brian Micklethwait’s Culture Blog.

Cable-stayed designs are definitely in vogue on this side of the Atlantic; recent examples include the asymmetric Leonard Zakim bridge built as part of the “Big Dig” in Boston, the William H. Natcher Bridge over the Ohio River; closer to home, there’s the I-310 Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge crossing the Mississippi River just west of New Orleans, and in the future there’s the Greenville Bridge under construction on U.S. 82 and the proposed Charles W. Dean Great River Bridge on future I-69 and U.S. 278, both crossing the Mississippi River between Arkansas and Mississippi.

(I previously mentioned the viaduct here.)

As Steven Taylor at PoliBlog notes, the Associated Press has decided to stop allowing the Bowl Championship Series from using its poll to determine the national title matchup. Ivan Maisel at ESPN.com has additional details that shed some light on the AP’s decision:

By pulling out of the formula, the AP has come full circle. In 1998, a sufficient number of AP members didn’t want their college football writers to be responsible for voting teams into the national championship game that the Division I-A commissioners developed the Bowl Championship Series formula to determine the standings used to pick teams for the BCS games.

AP members, worried about making the news instead of reporting it, felt better that their poll was only indirectly responsible for which teams received the eight-figure payout (this season: $14.4 million). ...

An AP voter in Alabama, Paul Gattis of the Huntsville Times, was chastised for voting Auburn No. 3 by the editor of his paper—in print. Three AP voters in Texas drew attention when they moved Texas ahead of California in the final poll, helping the Longhorns qualify for a BCS berth in the Rose Bowl instead of the Golden Bears.

This AP report gives the AP spin on the decision:

“By stating that the AP poll is one of the three components used by BCS to establish its rankings, BCS conveys the impression that AP condones or otherwise participates in the BCS system,” the letter [from the AP to the BCS] said. “Furthermore, to the extent that the public does not fully understand the relationship between BCS and AP, any animosity toward BCS may get transferred to AP. And to the extent that the public has equated or comes to equate the AP poll with the BCS rankings, the independent reputation of the AP poll is lost.”

On the other hand, the weak-mindedness that gave Tom Osborne and Nebraska a split national title from the coaches a few years back seems to have spread to the writers in the person of Neal McCready of the Mobile Register (þ: Big XII Fanblog), too:

I’m used to [my ballot] being publicized and scrutinized. In the past week, after the Austin American-Statesman published every ballot, I received hundreds of e-mails from irate Texas fans upset that I had the Longhorns No. 9 on my last week’s ballot. When they say “Don’t mess with Texas,” they mean it. Most of the e-mails received from the Texas faithful were profanity-laced and less than a stellar reflection on a university and its fan base. For the record, I’m not gay or Communist. I don’t live in a trailer and I still have all my teeth. Those that were diplomatic presented a strong case and after studying the numbers, I agree. I had Texas too low. I fixed it today, moving the Longhorns to No. 5. Please leave me alone now; you’re scaring my wife.

McCready previously had Texas (whose sole loss was to undefeated Oklahoma) ranked behind Louisville, whose only claim to fame was a close loss to 8–3 Miami in an otherwise weak schedule. Mack Brown lobbying or no Mack Brown lobbying, McCready clearly wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.

Now, if only the Associated Press would go one step further and acknowledge that the act of producing a poll in and of itself undermines the independence of the AP from the sport it is covering, I might be able to respect this decision. But the AP’s choice to distance itself from a controversial system without also taking stock of the reality that the AP’s football and basketball polls are key determinants of the attention given to, and thus the profitability of, all college “revenue” sports—not just the BCS championship game, but also regular-season matchups and, via the NCAA selection committees, the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments—smacks of hypocrisy.

Ivan Maisel has more today on what the BCS does next in the wake of the AP’s decision.

This is my entry in today’s OTB Traffic Jam.

By popular command…

I’ve added Dean Edwards’ IE7 hack to the blog on a quasi-experimental basis; the good news is that it fixes a lot of Internet Explorer’s rendering bugs, while the bad news is that it seems to introduce some quirks of its own and exposes IE’s lousy fallback behavior for missing Unicode characters. My general advice for IE users is to download and use Mozilla Firefox instead.

Apologies for the light blogging; I found out Monday I have a “second degree” separated left AC joint, which is doctor-speak for a separated left shoulder. I’ve been spending most of the past 24 hours in a sling, with a bit of physical therapy added. Allegedly I’ll be mended by the week after New Year’s.

Raise your hand if you didn’t see this one coming:

Iran has drawn up secret plans to make large quantities of a gas that can be used to produce highly enriched uranium, despite promises to suspend enrichment activities.

Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, Iran’s atomic energy chief, has authorised construction of a plant to make Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), a gas that has many uses, from petrochemical processing to uranium enrichment.

Cash money says the latter use is far more likely than the former. Ugh. (þ: memorandum).

Fellow Jacksonian Shawn Lea is compiling a directory of Mississippi bloggers and blogs about Mississippi.

Steven Taylor’s latest print column looks at the new frontier of municipal pork: Birmingham suburb Hoover’s addition of a new “Department of Homeland Security and Immigration,” complete with a $110,000-a-year director’s job. They’ve gotta protect the SEC baseball tournament from terrorists, after all… (þ: PoliBlog, of course.)

Blatant fabrications by their leading media outlets might be part of the explanation. (þ: OxBlog)