the CTA is officially on notice.

the "the moving walkway is now ending" woman is now the new voice of the CTA?

i hate those airport moving walkway announcements. they're obnoxious. i'll try and reserve judgment until i hear her work for the CTA...maybe she's got some nice voice-actress chops and can make the CTA announcements sound different from the airport ones. still, i'm apprehensive...and i will be really, really sad if my CTA rides start to sound like my long waits in airports.

free legal advice on the web? yeah, right.

i stumbled across the answers and advice section on avvo.com today.

it's like yahoo answers, but for legal questions. i'm seriously bothered by it, since it has a disingenuous premise, and is ultimately useless.

first of all, the site markets itself as "free legal advice from lawyers", but there appears to be no screening process to make sure that people who are answering the questions are actually lawyers. it looks like you can answer questions as long as you're registered for the site, and you don't have to be a licensed lawyer [much less a licensed lawyer in any given asker's jurisdiction] to start answering questions. that sounds like unauthorized practice of law to me.

secondly, there's something i find useless about people asking their legal questions online for all to see, other people answering them, and then allowing joe and jane blow to rate the answers. it's too cursory. a quick yahoo answers-style question, without any kind of ensuing conversation, is not going to unpack all the complexity that lurks in a legal question, and it's not going to provide any helpful legal advice. furthermore, assuming that the person answering is actually a lawyer, it's not going to give anyone the basis to make an educated assessment of the quality of the answerer's legal services.

:-(

suddenly, the story of the minor leaguer who got traded for ten bats isn't all that funny anymore.

old school.

i'm sick of seeing blowhards like rush limbaugh in the news. so, to counteract that with a megadose of awesome, i resurrect one of the most entertaining things that the foofy attorney has ever devised:



i feel better now.