Blog Emperor Paul Caron has released the latest edition of the Blog Rankings. From 1/1/13 to 12/31/13, my blog was ranked #33 with 274,219 page views, with an increase of 155.5%.
So my traffic, in any given one year period, has steadied between 260,00 and 280,000 page views.
While I’m on the topic of milestones, I should note that I forgot to note post number 7,000 on January 21, 2014. I also forgot to note the 6,00th post, but I hit 5,000 posts on 12/19/2012. So roughly in one year I wrote 2,000 posts. I launched this blog on September 27, 2009. I hit 1,500 posts on 1/19/2011 and 2,000 posts on 5/10/2011. During my hiatus from August 2011 to August 2012, I hit 3,000 posts on 11/14/2011, 3,500 posts on 2/1/2012, 4,000 posts on 4/13/2012, and 4,500 posts on 7/27/2012.
I should hit post 7,500 in the next few weeks or so (I’m at 7,427).
The lecture notes are here, and the live chat is here.
What is the value of a law degree? According to a (controversial) article, titled The Economic Value of a Law Degree, the value of a law degree, as opposed to stopping with a bachelor’s degree is roughly $1 million over the course of the year:
After controlling for observable ability sorting, we find that a law degree is associated with a 60 percent median increase in monthly earnings and 50 percent increase in median hourly wages. The mean annual earnings premium of a law degree is approximately $53,300 in 2012 dollars. The law degree earnings premium is cyclical and recent years are within historical norms.
We estimate the mean pre-tax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000.
This chart depicts the value of a law degree over the course of a persons’ career.
This chart breaks down the lifetime earnings from a law degree by decade across percentiles (ranging from people the bottom to the top of law degree holders):
Here are the numbers broken down by gender:
This is the great diva Frederica von Stade.
Here is Stade singing at the 1991 Metropolitan Opera Gala
And more opera.
Justice Ginsburg, one of the most famous opera fans in the country, is a huge fan of von Stade, listing her work as among her favorite:
Mozart, “The Marriage of Figaro”; Samuel Ramey, Lucia Popp, Thomas Allen, Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica von Stade, Kurt Moll, Robert Tear, Georg Solti conducting the London Philharmonic and London Opera Chorus (Decca).
The duo also share something else in common. They were both selected by the Georgia O’Keeffee Museum as Woman of Distinction: RBG and van Stade.
This is Edith Windsor, the face of United States v. Windsor.
This map shows the evolution of same-sex marriage in the United States.
Here are forecasts of projected support of same-sex marriage over the next eight years from March 2013.
Texas Code 2.401 governs “common law” or “informal marriage”
Sec. 2.401. PROOF OF INFORMAL MARRIAGE. (a) In a judicial, administrative, or other proceeding, the marriage of a man and woman may be proved by evidence that:
(1) a declaration of their marriage has been signed as provided by this subchapter; or
(2) the man and woman agreed to be married and after the agreement they lived together in this state as husband and wife and there represented to others that they were married.
(b) If a proceeding in which a marriage is to be proved as provided by Subsection (a)(2) is not commenced before the second anniversary of the date on which the parties separated and ceased living together, it is rebuttably presumed that the parties did not enter into an agreement to be married.
(c) A person under 18 years of age may not:
(1) be a party to an informal marriage; or
(2) execute a declaration of informal marriage under Section 2.402.
(d) A person may not be a party to an informal marriage or execute a declaration of an informal marriage if the person is presently married to a person who is not the other party to the informal marriage or declaration of an informal marriage, as applicable.
Also relevant for our discussion is 2.001 (emphasis added):
Sec. 2.001. MARRIAGE LICENSE. (a) A man and a woman desiring to enter into a ceremonial marriage must obtain a marriage license from the county clerk of any county of this state.
(b) A license may not be issued for the marriage of persons of the same sex.
In an effort to probe the contours of Lawrence and Windsor, I posed the question of whether a state could prevent gay brothers, in an incestuous relationship, from marrying. I get an inordinate number of hits on that post, and I suspected it didn’t have much to do with the “mystery of human life.” These comments, apparently from “mom” and “dad” validate my theory.
First, “Mom’s” comment (read for the second paragraph):
this is ridiculously pointless stuff to spend your time on man… do you not have anything, like any other thing that you could be doing right now other than writing this utterly-endlessly-worthlessly pointless blog entry.. think, have you walked your dog yet, picked up your kids, finished work, maybe spent some time volunteering at a local charity…. did you visit your ailing parents, reconnect with friends and relatives, did you maybe hone in on your skills for a useful hobby.. maybe learning how to sew to help your partner, practice a sport to become good enough to show your kids or to be active? you’re either A) an amazingly organised individual who has done all those things and has some free time on his hands kudos, B) someone who hasn’t done like 80% of those t hings an d neglects decent human interaction for momentary self gratification (you’ll know if you are by how quickly you read this message from when it was posted) or C) you have no one in your life and this is what it’s come down to, writing unimportant context in a category of life 0.0005% of the planet wouldn’t even think of if all other gay and marriage laws were completely legal in all countries. whats going on Josh? you’re better than this.
granted i did find this site by looking up “hot sex gay twins fucking each other”, as i imagine anyone who reads this has, it was more curiosity of its existence than anything else >.> <.< you hear that josh, the people on your site come looking to get off only to be disapointed when they read nonhelpful legal information on a hypothetical problem no one cares about! thats your life josh, thats your life.
you took up my precious masturbation time with your terrible terrible god awful time waste and you should be ashamed.
mom.
And “Dad’s” comment in reply (no my Mom’s name is not Debra):
WAIT
i thought you told me to get out of the house because you were having your girlfriends over? instead you’re trying to find incest GAY PORN?? What the hell is going on Debra!?. also hi son, your blog is not a time waste, were all very proud, you’re doing great.
dad
And “Mom” replied back (no my Dad’s name is not Ron):
i NEED you to get out of the house Ron we talked about this. i cant have you glaring at me from across the room wearing your little costume while touching yourself as i try to get off. IT JUST DOESNT WORK FOR ME. besides how did you find this blog entry?? from what i can remember whenever Josh mentions his blog you reply with “that online crap diary again” , so you definetly didnt look up his articles specifically… so the question i have Ron is, why are you looking up gay brother having incest sex online while you “out with the boys” because now, that takes on a whole new meaning for me.
“Dad” wasn’t done (no I don’t have a sister named Tina):
Debra you sexbeast.. let’s just drop this whole thing and meet up later for some sweat sex at the motel 8 after Tina’s recital. i crave your juices and i ache for your tender bingo arms… im quivering at the thought of you.
daddy
In FantasySCOTUS, participants try to predict how the justices will vote in each of the cases that come before the high court during its term, which runs from October to late June or early July.
Josh Blackman, a Houston law professor who started the online game more than four years ago, said the site is a fun way of understanding an institution that for many people remains mysterious and far removed from daily life.
“People want to know what are they doing, and this is just one way of kind of peeling back the curtain,” said Blackman, who teaches at South Texas College of Law.
FantasySCOTUS started “almost like a joke,” said the 29-year-old Blackman.
The idea came in 2009 when he kidded with a friend about what the betting odds would be in Las Vegas over the then pending ruling from the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case, which lifted many restrictions on corporate spending in political elections.
Blackman and another person built the site in a month and launched it in November 2009. Within 24 hours, 1,000 people had signed up. Today, the site has more than 20,000 participants.
And best part–Kathy Arberg declined comment.
Kathleen Arberg, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, declined to comment about the fantasy league.
Blackman said he has heard that the justices are aware of his website.
If you are interested in the state of libertarianism in American politics, please take the time to read the Times A1-above-the-fold profile of Senator Rand Paul. There is a lot to digest, but in my mind, the takeaway is that libertarianism is no longer off the wall.
As Rand Paul test-markets a presidential candidacy and tries to broaden his appeal, he is also trying to take libertarianism, an ideology long on the fringes of American politics, into the mainstream. Midway through his freshman term, he has become a prominent voice in Washington’s biggest debates — on government surveillance, spending and Middle East policy.
I think this reverses the causation and the correlation. Rand Paul isn’t bringing libertarianism into the mainstream. Libertarianism has become the mainstream due to statist policies of both major parties. Rand Paul, if nothing else, is the torch bearer of this shift. The phrase “libertarian-minded Republican” is now acceptable.
Though the profile calls Lysander Spooner an “anarchist,” faults the works of the Von Mises Society, and highlights some of the outlandish statements of Murray Rothbard, on the whole it is pretty fair. That the Times is even mentioning these topics makes it mainstream, and on-the-wall.
Mr. Paul’s marathon filibuster in March instantly transformed him into a leader of a party seeking a fresh message, even as he found unlikely fans in the American Civil Liberties Union and Jon Stewart.
But tucked into Mr. Paul’s lengthy monologue — its 76,000 words would fill a 300-page manuscript — was another narrative, told in a sprinkling of obscure references. He cited the Posse Comitatus Law of 1878, which restricted the federal government’s use of the military to enforce laws in this country and is seen by libertarians as a vital barrier to totalitarianism; Lochner v. New York, a 1905 Supreme Court decision that struck down Progressive-era workplace regulations; and the theories of Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist who turned against the North in the Civil War, which he deplored as unjust aggression against the Confederacy.
These arcana drew little notice — except among dedicated libertarians, who took them as evidence of Mr. Paul’s solid mooring in a subset of ideological axioms. The Spooner reference, in particular, excited those attuned “to the dog whistles of anarchism,” said Brian Doherty, a libertarian writer. “In my particular community, that was a big, big day.”
A search of the Times’ archives for “Lysander Spooner” from 1851 shows only 6 hits, and only two in the 20th century! I’ll take it.
