Voir Dire

Ramit Sethi (author of  the personal finance book “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”) makes the argument that falling house prices are not necessarily a bad thing. Here’s an excerpt:

Isn’t it funny how “home prices falling” is assumed to be a bad thing?

You never know how American your assumptions are until you go to another country. That’s because in the United States, we have been systematically taught that housing is a good investment and that prices must go up. Ask your parents why they bought their house. One of the top 3 reasons will almost certainly be, “It was a good investment.” Yet I’ve shown very clearly that for many people in many situations, it is not. In fact, housing is often a terrible investment.

Yet the illusion persists, whether it’s my friend wanting to buy a million-dollar house with no research, or people saying things like, “I wish I’d bought more real estate” after incurring a paltry 1.2% return rate over several decades.

As a result, you get media reports that implicitly echo the cultural assumption that housing is a good investment. The way they describe the housing market — oops, “housing recovery” — influences and reflects our cultural assumption. Let’s take a look at a headline from a major national news publication:

Interesting…it’s a “housing recovery” when prices are getting expensive. Would you say that with toothpaste?

You can check out the rest of the post here.

This one may be a bit of a stretch for a Law & Courts pol sci candidate and certainly having a JD would make it more viable … along with having some French language capability. [H/T Conflict of Laws Net] Keep reading →

Hat tip to Rogers Smith on the Law and Courts Listserve: Keep reading →

From the Law and Courts listserve:

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY invites applications for a Research Associate position in the Center for Justice, Law and Society. This is a fixed term, 1-year appointment, not applicable to tenure.  Possibility of renewal.

The associate will serve as coordinator of the Center’s federally-funded Wrongful Conviction Project, applying social science methods to understand the sources of wrongful conviction cases.  Duties will include project management, research, data collection and management, report drafting, and the supervision of three graduate research assistants.  Position may require national travel.

Requirements: master’s or law degree, although a Ph.D. would be preferred (and would be eligible for the title, Assistant Research Professor).  Knowledge of or experience with the criminal justice system, especially cases of wrongful conviction; excellent research and writing abilities; prior experience conducting social science, legal, and/or journalistic research; demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and to manage multiple priorities and projects effectively; demonstrated ability to supervise junior staff; excellent judgment and professional discretion.  Preferred: proficiency with SPSS and Excel; prior experience with large-scale quantitative or qualitative research projects.

Salary will be $44,000 on an annualized basis. Fringe benefits include retirement, health insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance.

Review of applications will begin March 10, 2010 and will continue until position is filled. Apply with equity / demographic information for position F9345Z online at jobs.gmu.edu. Send letter of interest, vita, official university transcript, samples of written work, and two letters of recommendation to: Professor Jon B. Gould, Director, Center for Justice, Law and Society, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS 6C7, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444.  No emails please.

To learn more about Mason’s Center for Justice, Law and Society, visit http://cjls.gmu.edu.

The Freakonomics blog asks the question – why do men always seem to drive when they share the car with a woman? Some interesting comments ensue. For what it’s worth – if I am ever in a car with you (man or woman) and you are not a really, really awful driver, then I am completely willing to let you drive. People who know me will confirm this assertion.

Got an iPhone or iTouch? If so, then this application could help you organize. Here’s some copy:

Want to put your iPhone or iPod Touch in disk mode? Use an iPhone as a flash drive? iPhone Explorer is an iPhone browser for Mac that lets you browse the files and folders on your iPhone as if it were a normal USB flash drive or pen drive. You can use the very easy drag-and-drop methods to add or remove files and folders from the iPhone. Compatible with all iPhones and iPod Touches including the new 3GS and 3.0 firmware. Works with or without jailbreaking.

Don’t ask me what ‘jailbreaking’ means – I don’t know. Here’s the website for the iPhone Explorer and here’s an instructional video (below):

Hat tip to Malia Reddick (Director of Research & Programs, American Judicature Society) on this recent opportunity with the University of Denver: Keep reading →

Just humor me – I’m working on a way to upload video from my mobile phone – enjoy the winter scene.

Siri is the new virtual electronic personal assistant. Many have tried before to create such an animal, but this one actually seems to push us closer to having something useful. Check out more on Siri (free, by the way) on Fast Company, or just check out the video below. [hat tip to Rachel Miller].

Nancy Rapoport

Please join us in welcoming guest blogger Nancy Rapoport to the Voir Dire Blog. She is the Gordon Silver Professor of Law at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law and was formerly professor and dean of the University of Houston Law Center and the University of Nebraska College of Law. She has authored entirely too many articles and books to list here, but you can see them by checking out her UNLV web page. She is also an avid internet writer, posting on a variety of blogs, including her own. I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that she is the only guest blogger we’ve had on Voir Dire to have credits on the Internet Movie Data Base (for her work on “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”). Finally, it is reported that she is an excellent ballroom dancer. We look forward to reading her posts

Asylum.com has a pretty interesting listing here. The ‘misery index’ is all about category of story:

The substance of the local evening news from the first full week of the New Year (Jan. 4-8, 2010) boiled down to the 10 categories of stories from accidents to crime to weather. Based on those categories, we created a “Misery Index,” which accounted for how depressing each category is, and the percentage of time each broadcast devoted to each category.

For example, here is how New York City (#8, tied with Washington, DC) breaks down:

The rankings after the jump:

Keep reading →

We will miss your late night antics Coco

Whatever one might think of the whole situation, I felt that this was a nice farewell speech.