Kinsella Law

IP Funny — Intellectual Property Humor — new blog.

Useful list: David Veksler’s Essential Free Windows Software List

I’ve just received the brochure for my latest legal treatise, International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide, published by Oceana Publications, a Division of Oxford University Press, and coming out sometime in the next few weeks. Co-authored with prominent international arbitration attorney Noah D. Rubins, of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Paris (France, that is, for those of you in Rio Linda), this book is a successor to my 1997 Oceana monograph Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk.

Bay of One Hundred Fires by J. Lanier Yeates, Brazos Valley Press, 256 pp, 2004, $24.95
Reviewed by N. Stephan Kinsella

For readers looking for the next Tom Clancy or John Grisham, or for the perfect beach novel for 2005, the new thriller by first-time novelist and prominent Houston lawyer Lanier Yeates is for you. Bay of One Hundred Fires is an intriguing blend of geopolitical intrigue, Naval intelligence, high-tech weaponry and colorful Southern culture. Scenes replete with local color carry the reader from antebellum homes along the Mississippi River to storied venues in New Orleans, including a charitable gala at Audubon Park, aptly called the Zoo-to-Do, and dinner at the famed Rex Room at Antoine’s in the French Quarter.

Bay is a lawyer-military-terrorism thriller centered on an imaginative and interesting terrorist attack on America. The tale begins, innocently enough, at the modest home of a Cuban family of four in the picturesque city by Cienfuegos Bay—the Bay of One Hundred Fires. The stage for intrigue and action is set when the father and son, while fishing in a remote spot in the bay, are strafed by a Cuban MiG because the Cuban government thinks they might have seen something they are not supposed to see. And that could threaten a clandestine operation at the big base near Cienfuegos, where a suspiciously enormous low-flying transport aircraft frequently arrives near a supposedly abandoned nuclear power plant.

While the father is killed, the son, Juan, is rescued by a US Navy chief petty officer sailing from Guantanamo Bay to Pensacola. Juan, a reserve Cuban Naval officer, is handed over to interrogators at the Office of Naval Intelligence, who, along with the CIA, quickly become interested upon hearing his description of the aircraft.

The focus then shifts to the other major characters and plot threads—Bay is Clancyesque with its multiple, converging plot lines and characters—including Juan’s beautiful sister, Marilisa, a Press Attache for the Cuban National Sports Authority, stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Navy Lieutenant Commander Fletcher Smith. Smith, in Halifax during a port visit by his ship, the nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser USS California, ends up meeting Marilisa, who has just learned of her father’s death. With emotions running high, Smith and Marilisa quickly become lovers. Other key characters include maverick CIA analysts, a self-made oil explorer and Hoss Mueller, Captain of the California.

The story centers on an alliance between a Cuban dictator, a new despot in Venezuela, and Middle Eastern terrorists, funded by Arabian oil profits and employing rogue scientists to develop horrible weapons to be deployed to the alliance’s enemy states around the world. The Cuban dictator’s facilities and fleet of nuclear missile firing submarines play a key role in this scheme. (Yeates amusingly refuses to refer to certain distasteful characters by name: Castro is sarcastically referred to as “El Presidente”; the Clinton administration is only referred to as the “previous” administration, and so forth.)

Without giving too much of the plot away, one of the novel’s most imaginative evil schemes can be touched on—a plan involving used automobile tires impregnated with deadly Sarin gas to cause unprecedented carnage at a southern university sporting event where alert scientists at the university race against time to stay one step ahead of the deadly scheme. Bay also spins an intriguing possibility as to what Saddam Hussein might have done with the deadly weapons many believed he had—send them to Castro by way of Syria just before the American-led coalition invasion of Iraq. The nuclear material could then be processed in Cuba and sent to Venezuela where it would be developed into nuclear weapons for distribution to a global terrorist network. Also part of the scheme are submarines at a secret base at Cienfuegos, bought by the North Koreans from the bankrupted ex-Soviet republics, to be armed with nuclear missiles.

As the multilayered novel unfolds and the nefarious schemes of the worldwide network of terrorists is revealed, US Naval Intelligence works to unravel these mysteries stemming from Juan’s revelations. The California and its crew are central to the response provided by US intelligence.

Interestingly, Yeates, a graduate of Louisiana State University and LSU Law School, served in the Navy during the ’70s and actually served aboard the real USS California, as a member of its first crew. Some of the ideas for this book arose when, while the California was stationed in Guantanamo Bay for refresher training, Yeates heard from public media sources about the Soviet base at Cienfuegos. It was during the early 70’s that terrorism was becoming recognized more and more as a serous threat, and thus it was coming to the fore in international relations. By the mid-1980’s, terrorism was quite prevalent as the Cold War wound down at the end of the decade with the self-demise of the Evil Empire – so labeled by President Ronald Reagan. Therefore, for the early 70’s, Yeates is a member that generation of Americans who served on active duty with the Navy during the Vietnam War. This generation included John McCain, John O’Neill – and, of course, John Kerry.

Yeates was at the helm when the California went to sea for the first time in 1974, and again in 1998 when it sailed to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to be scrapped. Yeates’s military experience and obvious mastery of military technology and operations infuses the novel with a sense of realism not usually seen in somewhat fantastically premised thrillers. I became fascinated by Yeates’s diverse development of his characters, and his minute detail in describing Halifax and New Orleans, including the romantic ambience of their top-of-the-line hotels and restaurants. He spun an incredibly entwined drama around a sinister plot portending dire apocalypse. His writings are deeply imaginative as he spins a tale of intrigue and fictional action. Nevertheless, he subtly, and perhaps somewhat subliminally, posits a penetrating view of what he believes to be the primary threat to our national security in the 21st century, to wit: world-wide terrorism.

In sum, Yeates’s first novel is an absorbing page-turner—one that takes today’s headlines and turns up the octane to deliver a frighteningly realistic geopolitical thriller that cannot be put down. The fascinating descriptions of military technology and operations as well as political and legal maneuvering, colorful characters and background, and the deft, sure prose of Bay of One Hundred Fires will leave the reader wanting more. This novel promises great things to come by this impressive new author.

N. Stephan Kinsella is General Counsel of Applied Optoelectronics in Houston and author of International Investment, Political Risk, And Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide and Digest of Commercial Laws of the World. www.KinsellaLaw.com.

Interesting patent, No. 6,899,671 (PDF version can be obtained here). No comment necessary.

By accident, I discovered that if you type “e” into Google, the Google calculator is invoked and shows you e = 2.71828183, the transcendental number that is the base of the natural log. I’ve also found that it will pop out answers for pi, k (the Boltzmann constant), c (speed of light), and h (Planck’s constant).

You can also type in calculations such as 700*55.31 to use Google as a calculator.

Going paperless, scanning and chunking, I came across this oldie but goodie from a patent lawyer buddy of mine, Steve Mendelsohn.

Previously I whined (2) about lawyers using the title “Dr.” simply because they have a JD degree. As I noted,

More annoying than “attorney-at-law” is the practice of some attorneys of using the title “Doctor.” Although there is apparently some dispute over this, I view it as misleading, cheesy, unseemly, and self-embarrassing for a lawyer to refer to himself as “Doctor” such-and-such. In addition, the law degree is usually a Juris Doctor (J.D.), yet many lawyers insist on calling it a a “Juris Doctorate”, I suppose out of ignorance or to make it sound more impressive. (Note: a few law schools apparently do use “Juris Doctorate” on their diplomas—improperly, in my view.)

Some dude alerted me to this May 2004 opinion of the Professional Ethics Committee of the Supreme Court of Texas, which considers the question,

May a lawyer use, in connection with his or her name, the titles “Doctor,” “Dr.,” “Doctor of Jurisprudence,” or “J.D.” in social and professional communications?

The Committee says that previously, in 1968, the Committed “issued an opinion concluding that a lawyer in most circumstances could not ethically use titles such as “Doctor,” “Dr.,” or “J.D.” “… orally or in writing, professional or otherwise ….” because such use was self-laudation prohibited by Texas Canon 24 ….” In other words, you couldn’t say “Dr. Kinsella” because it was too crass.

But now that the bar approves legal specialization and lawyer advertising, “the stated basis for Opinion 344 no longer exists.” So, calling yourself “Dr.” might still be crass and it might still “tend[] to lower the tone of the profession,” but this is simply no longer prohibited.

The Committee goes on to ask whether the use of Dr. as a title for a lawyer is contrary to rules “that prohibit any form of communication that is false or misleading.” The Committee concludes that

the use of the title “Dr.,” “Doctor,” “J.D.” or “Doctor of Jurisprudence” is not, in itself, prohibited as constituting a false or misleading communication. The Committee recognizes that other professions, such as educators, economists and social scientists, traditionally use title “Dr.” in their professional names to denote a level of advanced education and not to imply formal medical training. There is no reason in these circumstances to prohibit lawyers with a Juris Doctor or Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from indicating the advanced level of their education.

They do say that in some contexts–e.g., where a lawyer is advertising “for legal services in connection with medical malpractice”, then the use of the title “Dr.” might be misleading if it implies that the lawyer is a medical doctor. But in general, since the lawyer does have a Juris Doctor, and since most people would not think “Dr. Smith” implies an M.D. (since many non-M.D.’s, such as Ph.D.’s, are referred to as “Doctor”), it is not misleading for a lawyer to use the title Doctor.

Now, I do not disagree with this. I still believe it is cheesy, unseemly, self-embarrassing, pompous, and pathetic–it is just that these things are not prohibited by lawyers’ ethical rules, nor should they be. I suppose I agree that it is not misleading; when I said previously I think it’s misleading, I meant that I believe it implies the lawyer has a post-JD degree–a “real” legal doctorate. The Committee apparently did not consider this possible issue, but whether “Dr.” is misleading in implying medical specialty.

Update:

• Any Lawyer Who Calls Himself ‘Doctor’ Like a Ph.D. Should Get Punched in the Mouth
• Is A J.D. Degree The Same As A P.h.D??
• Is a J.D. a Doctorate?

Update: From Bryan Garner’s twitter:

Bryan A. Garner ‏@BryanAGarner

“@UHLawSchool: I learned that JD is an abbreviation for Juris Doctor. I see Juris Doctorate everywhere. Is this variant correct?” No.

And this post:

JD is the degree

by  Zearfoss, Sarah  on 7/18/2011 10:30 AM

One of life’s great indulgences is the cognoscente’s feeling of smug superiority when others get some inside-baseball bit of information wrong. It’s a heady amalgam of emotions—lamenting how the world is going to hell while simultaneously assuring yourself that it is, at any rate, not YOUR fault. And I have noted in my own case that the impulse is exacerbated when I learned the key bit of information relatively late in life. I suppose the increased degree of smugness is borne of overcompensation. There are things that I can actually remember learning as an adult, and yet they still elicit a quick, happy disdain in my heart when someone else gets them wrong.

I’m not alone in this, I’m sure. Once, while out of town for a law school conference, I had dinner with a faculty member—let’s call him Professor Black—who might reasonably be described as combative; he also invited someone from another law school. At dinner, Professor Black told a little story using the term “schadenfreude”; when our dinner companion chuckled, Professor Black challenged him, gleefully: “Do you even know what schadenfreude means?” No, the dinner companion was compelled to confess; he did not. It is hard to describe the level of exultation this confession elicited in Professor Black—the word “cackling” comes to mind. Meanwhile, I contemplated stabbing myself in the eyes with my dinner fork. My bystander-mortification didn’t stop me from retailing this story as soon as I returned to Michigan, mind you. And that’s how I learned, from the first person I told (we’ll call him, let’s see, Professor Schmiller), that he had introduced Professor Black to the word schadenfreude a mere week or so before. I’m happy to report that Professor Schmiller’s resulting glee and exultation in learning of his colleague’s behavior surpassed even Professor Black’s at the time of the incident.

Hilarious though it may be, this behavior is not attractive. Clearly, we should all struggle to better ourselves and overcome such impulses. But I haven’t reached that plane of development. I’m a flawed individual, and this flaw happens to be right up my alley. While I aspire to self-improvement, it just hasn’t happened yet. (Let’s be honest; it may never come. I don’t try as hard as I ought.)

So let me throw up my hands and share with you a mistake that elicits an unbecoming smirk in me. The degree people get when they graduate from law school is a JD. What does it stand for? Juris doctor. It does NOT stand for juris doctorate. “Juris doctorate” is not an actual thing.

The fact that many people get this wrong has been striking me forcibly of late, as I am involved in three separate searches for administrative positions to be filled at the Law School. The number of job applicants who erroneously identify themselves as possessing “juris doctorates” has been astonishing—although somewhat less astonishing than the fact that if you Google the term “juris doctorate,” you will find webpages of multiple law schools touting that degree.

But now I have performed a small public service, perhaps decreasing the number of people who might have made that mistake, which in turn might lead to fewer instances of bad behavior on my part. And who knows? Maybe someday I will actually improve my fundamentals.

-Dean Z.
Assistant Dean for Admissions
and Special Counsel for Professional Strategies

I recall we had this problem in one of my electrical engineering courses, studying packet communications between computers. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the answer and it’s driven me nuts for years. If anyone knows, email me.

You have 2 armies, on opposite hilltops. They are allied against an enemy army in the valley between them. Sometimes the 2 armies send runners to send messages to each other. The runners sometimes get killed–say, 1% of the time. So you can’t be 100% sure a message makes it to the recipient.

Now say they 2 armies can defeat the enemy if they attack togehter, but if attacking alone, eihter one will lose. Army 1 wants to attack at sunrise. So they send a runner to 2. But the dilemma is, Army 1 needs to get a message back knowing Army 2 got the message and will attack too. Army 1 can’t assume 2 gets the message since the runner might be killed.

Now Army 2, even if it gets the first message, and wants to attack, wants to be sure 1 got the reply, so 2 does not attack alone.

The question was: is it possible to arrange a communication scheme, given a less than 100% chance of message success, so that they can both attack?

It seems to me NO, but I wonder. It seems to me that to attack you have to have 100% certainty your message made it, and so does the other guy. This must be impossible. You can have an arbitrarily high confidence if you do enough handshaking, I suppose, but you can never be sure. Anyone know if I’m right?