Do you need a quick test to find out if other people are going to be able to tell? Even if you color your hair and “get work done” you’re still not going to be able to hide. Certain things will give you away to your more youthful and less annoying friends and acquaintances. This is one of them.

How many spaces do you put after a sentence?

It’s a pretty simple question, isn’t it? The fact that I’m asking it at all is proof that I’m fighting a losing battle against unplanned obsolescence. Young and Sharp people don’t ask this question, because they are blessed with the certainty of their age and the consistency of their life experiences.

I’ve been using HTML for more than 15 years. Finally, today, after noticing that every on-line editing program I use, including WordPress, requires one space after a period in order for the justification feature to work properly, and after noticing that I still choose to put two spaces after a period into all of my other written work, I decided to ask the question. I typed, “What happened to putting two spaces after a sentence?” into my browser and hit ‘enter.’

The first article I got was entitled “Space Invaders – Why You Should Never Ever Put Two Spaces After a Period.” Then I read a considerably more gentle, less dogmatic piece called “One Versus Two Spaces After a Period.” Finally, desktop publishers argue that you should Use One Space Between Sentences. They also offer constructive help in removing the extra spaces from old documents.

Sometimes it pays to ask the question, even if it takes a few years longer for the question to come to mind than might be ideal. OK, so now we put one, not two, spaces between sentences. Why? Because we no longer use old-fashioned typewriters with fixed-width fonts! Very good. Got it. I’m going to Make Change My Friend.

Oh wow, man. I’m like, totally spaced out. Or maybe it’s more like being “spaced in” since now there’s less room…

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You don’t need an ebook reader to enjoy these documents; any computer will do. I got my copy of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc from Project Gutenberg. Plenty of interesting documents are available at the Internet Archive, too.

Like most kids of my generation, I was force-fed Mark Twain from time to time in school. I liked the Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, but I can’t say Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn did much for me. As an adult, I came to admire Mark Twain more, both as a writer and as a social critic. I found I liked his later stuff a lot better than the more celebrated and famous material.

Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc is not funny. It’s basically a docudrama based on the life of Joan of Arc as told through various church and court records. I enjoyed every page and I recommend it highly! It turns out that this is the last full-length book Mark Twain ever wrote, and he published it in the mid 1890′s.

My best guess is that this book is not taught in schools or widely read because it’s about events that took place in France in the 1400′s.  It’s not about American society. Apparently this book took our author many years to write because he spent 12 years researching it, while the others didn’t require any preparation.

This is my favorite Mark Twain book. Does anybody agree with me? Yes – it turns out that Mr. Twain himself considered Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc to be his best book. I recommend you take a short leave of absence and read it right away. (You don’t have to pause to wonder why you’re reading a stupid blog entry right now instead of classic literature, but it might not be a bad question to ask yourself.)

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“What’s the difference between Tiger Woods and Santa?  Answer: Santa limits himself to three ho’s.”

I should mention that this is one of the jokes the girls are telling! This shows us all just what sort of a future we’re in for. Back when I was in sixth grade, we didn’t make fun of Santa! Sure, we might have told jokes about “cock fighting at a nudist camp” – and we might have turned a famous patriotic song into “You’re a Grand Old Fag” – but we had enough decency and respect to treat Santa with the reverence appropriate to the Christmas story and the holiday season!  People forget that Santa was one of the Three Wise Men.

Come on, sing a few bars with me!  “…Every heart beats false when you don’t have a pulse…”

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This picture of my mom was taken at the University of Oregon theater department almost exactly sixty years ago, in January of 1950.  Joan Pearce died five years ago today.

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It’s easy to be impressed with the quality of cell phone pictures. Not to be outdone, the phone insisted I capture the scene with video, too.

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Cream of Cauliflower Soup

1 cauliflower  -  2.5 cups 2% organic milk  – 1 cup plain organic goat yogurt  – 3 tsp ‘better ‘n’ bouillon’ chicken  – 4 tbs butter  -  1 onion  -  3 tbs flour  -  parsley and Parmesan cheese for garnish (I left both of these out.)

Steam a head of cauliflower and set aside. Chop up the onion and fry it up with 3 tablespoons of butter. Take your time. When the onion is cooked, add a fourth tablespoon of butter and blend it in. Add the flour and blend it evenly with the buttery cooked onions, then cook it for a while (3-5 minutes). I did this slowly too. Then blend in all of the milk, cook for a minute or two, and then blend in all of the goat yogurt and the bouillon. Once again, I worked slowly. My tendency is to rush white sauce, with disappointing results. When I say ‘blend’, I used a small metal spoon with a long handle, and the cooking surface was a fancy stainless steel skillet. Once the white sauce is smooth and hot, chop up the cauliflower and throw it in. Cook until cauliflower is hot and fully saturated, then throw into blender and blend to taste. I made it as smooth as possible, which took some patience – but it was worth it! Return to skillet and heat very warm to serve. This was an enormously popular soup and other than steaming the cauliflower I don’t think it took me much more than half an hour. Most of the recipes I consulted used about half a cup more milk and a little less yogurt and/or butter. I imagine a lot of people would make this soup a bit more thin than I did, but I figure my recipe is healthy enough to justify making it a little more rich. Yum.

Roasted Kale (stick with me on this for a minute)

Get a stove and a bunch of kale. Heat the oven to 400. Wash the kale thoroughly. Spread each big leaf out on the cutting board and separate the fluffy leaves from the stems. Get rid of the stems, they’re disgusting. Spin dry the leaves or shake them around in the air for a minute to get rid of the excess water. Then put the leaves in a plastic bag with some olive oil and shake them around to distribute the olive oil. Dump the oil-tainted leaves onto a oil-sprayed roasting pan or cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt. Throw in the hot oven and roast about ten minutes. Take out the kale and flip the leaves. Add more salt. Throw them back into the hot oven for another eight or ten minutes. The goal is to get the leaves crisp but not burned. Elana, Alexis and I ate every bite of my first effort, even as we acknowledged I didn’t get all the leaves as crisp as would be ideal. Done properly, roasted kale leaves are like some kind of weird, demented ‘potato’ chip. Anyway, this was an idea Alexis found in the newspaper a while back and I decided to surprise her with it a couple of days ago, as a side dish for Pad Thai. (That was a nice success too, but it doesn’t count because I used jar sauce.)

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For those of you who aren’t veterans of what passes for a legal education today, here’s a bit of legal lingo for you. We study the law in part by looking at hypothetical stories, where the facts present legal issues. We call these stories “fact patterns” because it makes us feel better about spending a fortune to go over simple stories word-by-word, kind of like first graders.

Got it? “Fact pattern” = little story with legal issues. Cool.  Here’s today’s Contracts Fact Pattern!

Mama goes shopping and scrutinizes everything. Here is how her shopping went.

Mama: “I don’t like the looks of this whitefish.”

Merchant: “Lady, for looks you don’t buy whitefish, you buy goldfish.”

Mama: “Oy, and this chicken, it has a broken leg.”

Merchant: “Look lady, you gonna eat it or dance with it?”

Mama: “And before you weigh the meat, take out the bones.”

Merchant: “Lady, I buy with bones, you’ll buy with bones.”

Mama: “I don’t pay with bones.”

Merchant: “All right, no bones.”

Mama: “Thank you, you are a gentleman. Now put the bones in a separate bag for soup. And never mind the meat. I don’t like your meat anyhow.”

1.  Have the parties formed a binding contract? Discuss.

2.  Assume for the purposes of this question only that Mama is a “merchant” under the UCC. Would that make it more likely that Mama and Merchant entered into a binding contract? Discuss.

If elite law schools did more good than harm, John Yoo wouldn’t be a free man, much less a faculty member at a fancy law school…but don’t think about that. Instead, think about fact patterns.

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Yes, we know it is so tempting. Pianos are heavy and so darn awkward, and given the looks of this semi-demolished house, the stairways may be questionable. But honestly, is this the best you can do—a half-Nelson and poor footing on a moving piece of machinery? Why not just tie the darn thing on and let it take its own chances?

On the plus side, nice hat.

Here’s another of their images, which they entitle:

Location, Location, Location

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Ocean Beach is one of the most fun parts of San Diego. Here we see the view west from a few blocks up Pescadero Avenue. I’m looking forward to winter. When this neighborhood gets a few inches of snow, people snowboard down the hill, off the ski jump and into the ocean, and then catch a wave back to shore. During the warmer months, wheelchair users and bike riders take advantage of the jump ramp.

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Here’s a picture of Kay Ross that I took at the 1978 Hollywood High School graduation. Mrs. Ross was the debate coach for many years. She worked with me and with many of my friends. Kay Ross was continually frustrated with me for being too critical of America, but she generously gave her time and energy to help all of us sharpen our skills.

Even now, decades later, we recall Mrs. Ross’s basic teachings, such as “don’t begin a speech with an apology.” It’s interesting to note that she looks far younger in this picture than she does in my memories.

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Maybe these ducks are not exactly in a row. Maybe it’s more like a cluster. I like them. This photo is another artifact from our recent sojourn in Big Bear.

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The summer bar examination begins a couple of weeks from Tuesday. In between helping my students prepare for the exam, I am preparing new video and new written materials for the winter bar exam season.

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And here is the last picture, taken on November 28, 2002.

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The next administration of the bar examination is at the end of July. Here are links to a series of videos I have produced over the last few days. You are welcome to click on the image, above, but doing so will have the effect of merely opening a copy of the image in a new window. You have to click on the link, below, to watch video.

How to Pass the California Bar Exam – California Attorney Exam

First-Time Takers – Repeating the Bar Examination

Master Essay Method – Bar Exam Conspiracy Theories

Here is a video series that reviews the February 2008 Cal Bar Exam Essays:

Introduction – Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4 – Q5 – Q6 – PDF Document

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