I think I may have found my candidate for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. It's Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook. In ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F .3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996), he wrote:

Think, too, about everyday transactions in intellectual property. A customer visits a video store and rents a copy of Night of the Lepus. The customer's contract with the store limits use of the tape to home viewing and requires its return in two days. May the customer keep the tape, on the ground that sec. 301(a) makes the promise unenforceable?

Could you imagine the day when Nina Totenberg reinacts this man's words? We can only hope.

Let's hear it for NIST!

With last Friday being February 29, NPR's Science Friday decided to have a segment devoted to timekeeping and the leap year phenomenon. The guess was Thomas O'Brian, Division Chief of the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). O'Brian was asked if he knew anyone who was born on leap day. He said that he didn't, but then corrected himself saying that he was not aware that anyone that he knew was born on February 29, but he left open the possibility that since he does not know the birthdays of everyone that he knows this could happen because if we took a random sample of the population, we would expect to find 1 out of every 366 people would have been born on February 29. "Always the scientist, being careful," was guest host Joe Palca's reply. Ooh, Dr. O'Brian, not careful enough. Wouldn't a random sample show that about 1 out of 1461 have a birthday on February 29? Would you want this man in charge of the world's most accurate clock?