Brian Schmidt (along with two others) won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, which implies the existence of a huge amount of "dark" energy and matter that we can't…
Folks, I am sticking by my conclusion that the medical profession really does not need a billing code to indicate a second office visit by a patient whose complaint is that he was sucked into a jet engine. See “Injury Code V97.33XD:…
According to this report, a doctors’ group in Alabama is protesting the not-yet-implemented ICD-10 medical-coding system by ridiculing it, an approach that I certainly endorse. See, e.g., “Injury Code W59.22XA: Struck by Turtle,” Lowering the Bar (Sept. 13, 2011) (citing the WSJ). Given that…
Welcome to the new visitors who got here via xkcd. You honor me with your virtual presences. You also aggressively check my math, and that is totally fine. This post involves former New York Giant (not a man who was…
Not much trouble, to be honest, but some.
Randall Munroe's "what if?" project is going to be a zillion-selling book in September and as you probably know, his xkcd webcomic is all kinds of awesome. So it was very cool to see Lowering the Bar show up in…
The term "scent grenade" didn't occur to me until this morning, or else I would have used it yesterday ("TSA Confuses Perfume Bottle With a Grenade"), but better late than never. (Turns out I'm not the first to think of…
The 2013 Ig Nobel Prizes were given out last night at Harvard University, and the winners were outstanding as always. At first glance, only a couple of them look relevant to the law, but you never know, and besides any…
I'm a big fan of the Improbable Research group and the Ig Nobel Prizes they give out every year. Usually the achievements they recognize are scientific, but if there is any connection at all with the legal field I am always happy to…
Congratulations to Oregon for becoming the first state in the nation to designate an official state microbe. Wisconsin and Hawaii both dropped the micro-ball on this one (see "Oregon, Hawaii May Name Official State Microbes" (April 10, 2013) and "Bill…