links for 2009-05-04

"Our trademark application for "Act Like A T-Rex Day" has been OPPOSED by a very large company. In other words, we got servedâ¦

The company opposing the trademark is a restaurant called "T-Rex Cafe, Inc.". They have trademarked the word "T-REX". Any merchandise with the word "T-REX" anywhere on it according to their Opposition, "is
likely to cause confusion as to the source or origin" and "mislead consumers" doing damage to their business "T-Rex Cafe, Inc.""

"Why categorize and measure students by race? Aren't there better ways to organize the data? "Lower-performing 9- and 13-year-olds make gains," says one section of the NAEP report [PDF]."No significant change for 17-year-olds at any performance level," says another. "Reading scores improve for 9-year-old public and private school students over long term," says a third. "Score increases for 17-year-olds whose parents did not finish high school," says a fourth. These tables organize the data by factors that can help us target and adjust educational policy: kids with low scores, kids in public school, kids in high school, kids whose parents didn't graduate. I'd like to see tables for income and spending per pupil, too. But race? Does that category really help? And what message does it send to kids when headlines assert a persistent "racial gap"?"

"Justice Souter displays none of the pomposity that mars the Court's reputation. In person, he is one of the most charming, congenial people I know, one of the few Justices (or clerks) who knows the name of the guards and the cleaning staff. When Souter writes, his language can sometimes be ponderous, and it is decidedly old-fashioned. But his prose is never vapid or self-aggrandizing. He is the most powerful person I know well, and yet the most decent and humble. To this day, I still cannot fathom how a man of such integrity negotiated the Serbonian bog we call Washington. "

"President Obama should nominate someone whose life experience provides a perspective that the current justices lack. Diversity in court appointments is often thought of in terms of the nominee's race or gender. Obama should go beyond simple identity politics. He should choose someone like Justice Thurgood Marshall, who encountered segregation and discrimination and whose law practice was a critical part of the experience he brought to the court. Marshall represented African American defendants in Southern courtrooms and saw firsthand the way the criminal justice system could be stacked against people of color and the poor. He applied that understanding to his work on the bench."