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I’ve become obsessed with these pocket-sized law books lately. These small books make for a great reference library in my courier bag, and I use these things all the time.

Right now, I have:

• Westlaw: U.S. Constitution
• LexisNexis: Federal Rules of Evidence
• United Nations: Charter of the United Nations and Statue of the ICJ

If anyone has a lead on where to get other books, please let me know. In particular, I’d love to see a copy of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. So far, these have been free; I’d like that trend to continue.

This will be the 201st entry on my website since moving to my current hosting company. I’m rather proud of my achievement, since I honestly didn’t expect to write as much as I had. While 200 posts seems like a lot, there were many more entries that were never written. Most of the unwritten posts were related to some news story that I’d seen and thought I would share with my reader(s). A few stories that I never wrote would have been original pieces. Since there are so many stories in my draft pile that I know will never be written, I thought it might be nice to compile a list of all the stories that I would have written into one list.
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On the train ride to Baltimore today, I was listening to NPR’s On the Media. On the program, they had a guest discussing the success and failure of the spinach industry (if it is an industry in an of itself) in marketing their product. One of the many points made during the current E. coli outbreak in spinach crops. The guest, Michael Pollan, suggests that if the outbreak was in contaminated hamburger, which has happened more than once, the government’s response would have been completely different.

I think this guy might be on to something.

Escherichia coli O157:H7, the strain that is making everyone sick, is a micro-organism that grows in the small intestines of mammals, largely cows. It only infects plants like spinach through contaminated water, run-off from fields and such.

The last time the hamburger supply was contaminated with E. coli, the government did not tell the American public en masse to throw out hamburger; instead, the government told Americans to “cook your hamburger thoroughly”. This time, with spinach, the government is instructing that all bagged spinach be thrown out. Why the difference? Certainly, it is more likely that spinach will be consumed raw rather than cooked, creating a bigger health risk. But isn’t the risk of undercooked hamburger just as great? Why not tell everyone to cook their spinach for a while instead of wasting tons of produce? Wouldn’t it be more consistent to either throw out both potentially contaminated beef or cook potentially contaminated spinach? What’s going on USDA?

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think the beef lobby has a bit more clout than the Popeye lobby.

I was reading the back of my bag of edamame this morning when I noticed something very peculiar. Edamame, for those who don’t know, is simply blanched soybeans. At the bottom of the ingredients list (Ingredients: Soybeans) was an allergy disclaimer. This is what it said: WARNING: PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SOY INGREDIENTS.

You can’t be serious, Whole Foods. Can you?

This week world leaders have been delivering speeches at the United Nations, a very contentious and unproductive exercise. We have seen world leaders lose credibility (e.g., Bush, Chavez) and lose their country (sorry, Thaksin). But what has largely gone unnoticed is the President’s latest policy decision: banks are not free to conduct business with Bank Saderat, Iran’s export bank.

Here is the relevant excerpt from yesterday’s Washington Post:

The U.S. Treasury said on September 8 that Iran’s Bank Saderat was blocked from any dealings with U.S. banks, even through third parties, an action taken as Washington sought sanctions against Iran for its refusal to obey a U.N. order to halt nuclear enrichment activities by August 31.

The directive is forcing the world’s largest transactional banks — like UBS, ING, CreditSuisse, and HSBC — to decide whether they want to conduct business with the United States or with Iran. While the United States is the largest financial trading partner, the banks could find ways around this prohibition. It would be better for them to continue to deal with Bank Saderat. Why? Petroleum. Oil. Black Texas tea.
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