I love all things noir. Whether on film or in books, I love stories about shady people doing shady things in cities where the streets are always wet and the sun never shines. I love all the well-worn accouterments of noir; the tough-as-nails, hard-talking men, the dangerously seductive women, the rapidfire dialogue full of overwrought similes. I saw Sin City over the weekend and it’s apparent that the director shares the same love for noir. It’s noir on crystal meth; the movie has an almost insatiable appetite for violence, with a little sex thrown in for good measure. Visually, it closely adheres to the style of the comic books; stark black and white with splashes of color punctuating the scenery. In one early scene, a man is lighting a cigarette for a beautiful woman in a red dress. We see the red in her dress and in her lips, but when the flame of the lighter nears her face, her eyes briefly flare an intense green. It’s little touches like this that make the film a treat to watch.
One other thing. If I wrote a letter to Jessica Alba that included my picture and the claim that I have only six months left to live, do you think she would have dinner with me?

Beauty pageants should have died along with vinyl records and disco. But for some reason, they persist. And as long as there are beauty pageants, there will be scandal. The Wisconsin Miss Wheelchair has been dethroned after she was photographed standing up and the picture ran in a local newspaper. The woman in question has a form of muscular dystrophy and uses a scooter for mobility, but she can still stand. The pageant officials were miffed by this revelation and stripped her of her title. Silly, yes? The pageant officials seem to regard disability as an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you use a wheelchair or you don’t. Look, if you want to have a pageant for women with disabilities, fine. But the rigid requirement that your contestants be in wheelchairs all the time seems to fetishize the wheelchair to the point it’s a little creepy.

This whole brain-implants-for-gimps meme is really starting to take off. Now The Guardian has a story on it. Sure, it’s all good PR now, but what happens when some quad with an implant goes all Dr. Octopus and starts hijacking computer networks with his mind in his quest to take over the world? No more fuzzy human interest stories, I promise you.

I’ve been giving some thought to drafting a proposal for a Law School seminar course on Disability, Law, & Ethics. The course would focus on the disability experience, the laws that have been created to recognize the right of people with disabilities to participate in everyday human pursuits, and the ongoing ethical and policy debates that surround issues of disability. I want students to examine issues like the continued economic marginalization of people with disabilities, despite laws like the ADA, Rehab Act, and others. I want to look at the the funding crises in Medicaid and Medicare in conjunction with the continued evolution of expensive assistive technology devices. And of course, something on the interplay between disability and the refusal of medical treatment. This would bear some resemblance to other disability studies courses, but with more of an emphasis on law and policy.
Maybe I can put something together to present to the Law School for a possible offering in Spring 2006. I’m open to any suggestions regarding themes, content, readings, etc. My cursory Google research hasn’t revealed too many courses like this at other law schools. But if people have syllabi or course outlines that could be used as models for my own idea, I’d love to see them. I think this could be fun, assuming I actually follow through on my daydreaming.

The geek and the attorney in me can’t refrain from yesterday’s arguments at the Supreme Court regarding the Grokster case, even though other people have much more insightful commentary to offer. The Grokster case is the Court’s first real opportunity to define copyright law in a digital age. I was pleased to read that the Justices were asking the right questions of both sides. They seem to understand the consequences of holding software and technology companies liable for the potentially infringing uses of their innovations. If the Court sides with the movie studios and record labels, we might see devices like TiVos and iPods that come factory installed with all kinds of restrictions to prevent consumers from truly owning any of the content on these devices. Gone will be the days where you could tape a TV program and store it in your personal library or loan it to a friend. You might not even be allowed to rip your old albums onto your hard drive. The transformation of content into digital pieces of information is an ongoing and rapidly accelerating process. It’s critical, therefore, to define how much freedom we have to develop and market technologies that access and manage digital content. I suppose the more basic question, regardless of how the Court rules, is whether the genie can be put back in the bottle. Digital piracy isn’t going anywhere; that’s a given. But do we start treating every new technology, and by implication its users, as new perpetrators of piracy?
An inquiry to my Australian and New Zealand readers. Anyone know where I can get hooked up with the first ENZSO album? I heard the ENZSO version of “Message To My Girl” on a podcast and I loved the richness that the orchestra brought to that song. Hell, I didn’t even know Neil Finn was in another band besides Crowded House. It’s at times like this I bemoan my lack of any hip friends when I was growing up in Green Bay. Instead, I have to find out this kind of stuff on my own.