During the drive home tonight, I caught some of Terry Gross’s interview with Jennifer Ackerman, author of Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold. It’s a timely topic for me because the arrival of autumn puts me in a heightened paranoid state about catching something from a sniffling colleague (even though I seem more predisposed to summer colds lately). In the interview, Ackerman patiently explained that herbal and folk remedies are almost completely ineffective at preventing or curing colds, although chicken soup may have some mild anti-inflammatory properties. In a separate interview with the New Yorker, she suggests that the best way to avoid colds is to engage in frequent hand-washing and avoid touching one’s face. I shouldn’t have any problem with at least one of those recommendations.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series has been optioned for both film and television with Ron Howard at the helm. The ambitious scope of the project (three movies and two television seasons) is encouraging, but…Ron Howard? The name doesn’t inspire much in the way of geek buzz and the source material doesn’t lend itself to the kind of mainstream vanilla fare that Howard has been churning out in recent years. I’d love to be proven wrong; Howard has made some entertaining movies and perhaps he can pull off a Peter Jackson. But if Tom Hanks is cast as Roland, I will lose all faith in humanity.

Polling released today indicates that a Republican takeover of the House is an increasingly likely scenario. The underlying factors influencing the electorate aren’t difficult to understand: the economy is terrible and Republicans are more motivated to vote by an order of magnitude. Governance is never easy and bad times invite a backlash like the one we’re seeing. If the Democrats do lose the House, plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking will keep the bloggers and pundits busy until Christmas. But I’m not sure anything could have been done differently, or at least not in a way that would have made a significant difference. A bigger stimulus might have helped, although this quasi-recession seems to have a stubborn inertia that has overwhelmed the political will of our leaders.

So what could the next two years bring? A whole lot of nothing, at least from a legislative perspective. The House will pass its share of Tea Party manifestos disguised as proper bills, most of which will die in the Senate or on the President’s desk. Republicans will become even more gleeful deficit haawks, bolstered by the knowledge that they won’t have to make any politically tough cuts as long as a Democrat is in the While House. Any improvements on the employment front will be in spite of rather than because of Congressional action. For progressives like me, it could be a tedious and exasperating couple of years. But I also have every confidence that Republicans will not hesitate to unleash their inner batshit-crazy uncle/aunt at every opportunity, giving us amnesiac Americans ample reminder of why we voted them out not so long ago.

I’m going to spend part of my long holiday weekend trying to find out whether deep fried mashed potatoes are worth a trip to the State Fair. Expect a full critique on Monday. Until then, excelsior!

When I graduated from law school in the dotcom boom years of the late 90s, few of my peers chose public service careers. When a big law firm is offering you a six-figure salary, you’re not likely to give much serious consideration to the legal aid position that pays roughly 75% less. An interesting consequences of the current recession is that some firms are offering paid deferments to newly hired attorneys whom they can’t afford to bring on board at full salary for a year. Legal aid organizations and nonprofits are benefiting from an influx of talented and eager young attorneys who can afford to work for little or no money because of these deferments. Some attorneys are even choosing to remain in public service after their deferments end.

The world would be a much better place if these firms made deferments a permanent recruiting tool. New associates could get some great experience and lose some of that newbie awkwardness before entering the office grind. Clients in need would receive excellent representation from talented attorneys. Unfortunately, this practice is likely to end once the economy improves.