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Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me Fame, has launched a crowdsourced site called NoADNY which is an “Internet-based effort to remove all visual advertising from Times Square.” Here is Techcrunch’s writeup:

The idea is simple: take a 360-degree picture of Time Square, and use an online picture editor to remove all the ads, the re-upload the edited picture to show the world what a Times Square without ads would look like.

Specifically, the image has been cut up into 100 smaller images that users are asked to click on to edit in Aviary to remove the ads in their frame. Currently, five of the frames are done, and at this rate, the hope is that all of them will be done in a couple of weeks (though it could be sooner).

But why? Whenever I look at Times Square, I get the chills. It is perhaps the greatest monument to capitalism and the power of the mind on planet Earth. The advertisements are simply an expression of that progress. Without ads–and the companies that pay for them–Time Square would certainly not be as developed and vibrant as it is today. This effort to neuter Times Square is an effort to denude everything that built it.

Methinks this is part of a broader attack at corporate America, marketing, and capitalism in general. Techcrunch agrees:

Something tells me that Spurlock, best known for his extreme documentaries like Super Size Me, also has another documentary in mind here.

I didn’t realize this, but Sao Paolo Brazil has banned all outdoor advertising since 2007 in order to clean up “visual pollution.” Would this be a permissible regulation of commercial speech in the United States probably not? Though the entire commercial speech doctrine has always confounded me.

I live in Johnstown, PA. There are barely any outdoor visual advertisements. I can snap some pics here and send ’em to Morgan. That should suffice.

A few weeks ago I was meeting friends at a local Pittsburgh bar to watch the Steelers play the Ravens. I was circling around the block and could not find a spot. Finally, I saw an empty spot and started to pull in. As I started to park, I realized someone left a plastic chair in the spot. So I got out of the car, moved the chair and parked. When I told my friends I found a spot right near the bar, they asked me if I moved a chair. Confused, I said yes. I was advised to move my car post-haste, lest my car get slashed. Apparently, in Pittsburgh, following a snow storm, people reserve cleared-out spots with a chair. The Boston Globe had an article about this, and Wikipedia calls them parking chairs. I had no idea. Now I noticed that chairs are littered throughout parking spots on my block in Johnstown.

From an economics perspective though, I wonder about this private ordering of public resources. Parking spots are a free commons offered by the state (unless there is a permit or meter system present, which is not the case here). A spot filled with snow is of no use to anyone, so private actors take it upon themselves to shovel it out. By placing a chair after a homeowner shovels out a spot, the chair-placer is effectively claiming a possessory title to the spot as long as the chair is there. Certainly this is not a property right the state would enforce. And if an individual moves the chair, the chair-placer would have no recourse at law–short of self help (e.g., slashing tires). Yet spontaneous social order, and customs and rituals emerge to allow people to allocate these scarce commons in the absence of the state’s intervention. Now, as an outsider, I was not familiar with these customs (I do not recall ever seeing parking chairs in New York, and I’d imagine people would not adhere to the furniture-based-admonition), but once I found out, I moved my car immediately. And in case you were wondering, my tires were not slashed. I moved it before the end of the game, so the owner of the chair-spot was almost certainly glued to the screen, watching the black and gold en route to the Superbowl.

Talk about chutzpah. From the Washington Examiner:

Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

Let’s hope Johnstown doesn’t adopt the policy of the City of Brotherly Love.

Every year on the Fourth of July, I read the Declaration of Independence to anyone who will listen. This year, I brought this tradition to the fireworks show at the Johnstown Galleria Mall. H/T To AL, my director extraordinaire.

I have a lot of stuff going on in my life. Whenever people ask me what’s new, I find myself spending way too much time explaining my activities. For purposes of efficiency and economy, I will list here all of the things I am currently involved in. As I do more stuff, I’ll update this list.

1. First, and foremost, I am a law clerk for the Honorable Kim R. Gibson in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, in Johnstown. I love my job, and I love clerking here.
2. Second, I co-teach with Judge Gibson Federal Court Practice at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law (syllabus here).  I lecture each week for about 2.5 hours on a host of fascinating topics, and really enjoy interacting with the students in the class. You can listen to podcasts of my lectures here.
3. Third, I am the Czar of FantasySCOTUS.net (I did not require Senate Confirmation for that position, though trust me, I am a principal officer). I built this league by myself from the ground up in November 2009. I now have nearly 4,000 SCOTUS watchers who make predictions on all cases pending before the Supreme Court. I have been interviewed by CNN.com, WSJ Law Blog, and ABC News radio. Justice Breyer was even asked about FantasySCOTUS in an interview!  See more of my clippings here.
4. Fourth, I write a Weekly Column for the popular legal blog, AboveTheLaw.com. You can see my posts here. Many thanks to Corey Carpenter, who provides stellar number crunching and analysis for these posts.
5. Fifth, I am the blogger here, at JoshBlackman.com. At one point, I was writing 4-5 posts a day. But due to all of my other activities, I am down to a few posts a week. But I still receive some serious traffic, and regular links from Volokh, SCOTUSBlog, How Appealing and others.  As part of my blogging duties, I have become the de facto live bloggers for most legal events. I live blogged the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, the ACS Constitution in 2020 Conference. I will be liveblogging the Federalist Society Student Symposium in Philadelphia. I will also be live-streaming video from outside the Supreme Court on March 2 before, and after oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago. And if the ACS lets me in, I’ll liveblog their national convention. I have also recorded a series of JoshCasts and JoshVlogs which are interviews with leading Judges, Professors, Authors, and other interesting people. Lots of fun.
6. Sixth, I am very closely involved with McDonald v. Chicago, the upcoming Second Amendment incorporation case. I co-authored Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed: Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Extending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to the States with Ilya Shapiro from the Cato Institute. This article was published this month in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. Pandora has already been cited in several briefs to SCOTUS, including Gura’s reply brief. I’m feeling stoked about a citation by Thomas, J. Ilya and I have an Op-Ed in the Washington Times on Pandora coming out next week. Also, I’ve taken this show on the road, and presented Pandora to the NRA’s Scholar’s Conference in New Orleans. I will be speaking to the George Mason Federalist Society on March 1, the Georgetown Federalist Society on March 2, and the Penn State Law Second Amendment Club on March 26. I have been selected to co-author an article about the McDonald decision, whatever it may be, in a journal. Details TBD.
7. In addition to Pandora, I have 4 other published (or in the process of being published law review articles). Omniviellance, published in the Santa Clara Law Review while I was a 3L, was my first piece. I wrote about the privacy implications of Google Street View.  I have an article about eminent domain and Village of Willowbrook v. Olech coming out in the Loyola Law Review. I have another article on the Lemon test coming out shortly in the George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal. I have another article about Youngstown’s Fourth Tier in the Memphis Law Review, which I co-authored with Elizabeth Bahr. And I have a bunch of articles in various stages, of development and will likely be published in the next year or so. Check out all my publications here.
8. Despite being an ardent defender of capitalism, I still derive utility from philanthropy. And especially good causes that promote liberty. To that end, Yaakov Roth and I co-founded the Harlan Institute. The Institute aims to harness the power of Web 2.0 to teach constitutional law. We will fuse cutting-edge technological initiatives with engaging educational programs designed by leading constitutional law scholars, historians, and Judges to show teachers and students the “greatness of this instrument.” I am actively expanding the Institute, seeking support, and looking to bring on several Interns this summer. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. As always, donations are welcome.
9. As one of the first projects of the Harlan Institute, Yaakov and I are writing a book, called Constitutional Places, Constitutional Faces (see posts here). We are acquiring photographs of the people and places behind famous Supreme Court opinions. We have already found an agent, and are going to market the dickens out of this book. Stay tuned. This is going to be on the Wish List for every law student.
10. Under the auspices of the Institute, we are also developing a Wiki with photographs and other media dealing with some of the most famous SCOTUS cases. One of the features I am most proud of is Constitutional Voices. I have obtained the contact information for a number of people involved in SCOTUS cases, and I have interviewed them. I am creating a living history of our Constitution. I am super excited about this site.
11. In addition to the book, the Institute is working on developing a version of FantasySCOTUS geared towards high school students. The site will allow classes to decide real cases pending in front of the Court in real time! They will learn about the law, understand precedents, and write and blog about the Supreme Court. Details TBD. Any teachers interested? Drop me a line.

Phew. I think that’s it.