Well, THAT explains it....

From one of my favorite blogs (GraphJam.com):

More on LSAT-free admissions and the rankings

There are lots of good posts on this issue (see, e.g., here, here, here, and here), and I'm guest-blogging about it at Race to the Bottom (see here).

Looking forward to reading your comments on all of this.

And while I'm doing videos that tickled my fancy....

This clip from The Daily Show (here) is one of my favorites.

The point of corporate mergers

As seen in this video from the Colbert Report (here). Have patience: the video is about halfway through the clip.

Thinking of all those who suffered damage during Hurricane Ike

See here for some pictures of the disaster and here for a news report of one of the local landmarks (near where Jeff & I used to live) burning to the ground. Although our family was lucky (only a few days of no power for my dad, back in Houston), so many others are still suffering.

Suggestion for the Green Bag's proposed rankings system

Al Brophy's latest article, on the correlation between the citation rankings of law reviews and the school's overall rankings, is a new must-read (see here).

Welcome to Race to the Top!

I want to welcome to the rankings conversation a new blog: Race to the Top (see here). I'm on the advisory board of this group, and I'm excited about the mission:

[W]ith no information on educational quality, research shows that respondents simply replicate the previous year's U.S. News rankings, and the scores remain fairly static over time.

Given the question U.S. News asks, we need to think more about evaluating schools based on the quality of education that they provide for students, or the "value added" by the institution, in filling out the survey.

Similar to the Green Bag's survey, which is going to check to see if law schools' publications bear any relationship at all to the reality of their faculty productivity (see here), Race to the Top will try to measure those intangibles that go into a school's real educational quality. Please consider completing Race to the Top's survey.

Bravo to the co-founders (David Fagundes of Southwestern and Jason Solomon at Georgia)!

Enron's back in the news....

This morning's Wall Street Journal gives the update (here). For me, this news couldn't happen at a more apropos time: I just turned in the draft of our second edition of the Enron book for Foundation Press. It'll be called Enron and Other Corporate Fiascos: A Corporate Scandal Reader. There'll be both a print book and a website (so that we can continue to update analysis of the scandals that just keep a'comin'.)

Foundation Press has been patient (thank you, FP!), and I'm hoping that the book will come out in early 2009.

Roger Lowenstein got it exactly right.

In today's New York Times, Roger Lowenstein discusses why we didn't learn from the Long-Term Capital bailout (here). Marvelous essay.

Ann Bartow's meme

Ann Bartow has tagged me (see here) to get my five favorite non-legal blogs (thanks, Ann!), so here they are. And I'm not embarrassed to admit them. Well, not very embarrassed, anyway....

1. GraphJam.
2. I Can Has Cheezburger.
3. Fail Blog.
4. Funny or Die.
5. FrancisStokes.com (for God, Inc.).
   

OK, now I'm tagging Glenn Reynolds, Jack Ayer, John Steinberg, and Jim Chen.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Marquette!

Paul Secunda has just told me that Marquette is entering the blogosphere w/a faculty blog (here). Should be a lot of fun to read. Congrats, Marquette!