That Close.

Nota bene: We were pissed after the game. Most of you can probably imagine (Macey used to cheer against USC in the big games, just cuz he knew we'd go buy a bottle of Jack Daniels and a 2 liter of Coke if we lost). A couple of our fellow law students attempted to console us with things like "At least you didn't get blown out" or "If my team had been that close to the #2 ranked team I'd be dang happy."

That's a load of crock in our book. So was the applause that the students and fans gave the team after the game was over.

There are no such things as "moral victories" in college football - either you win or you don't. A few UF graduates now USC law students heard us and commented that we sounded like Florida fans with our high expectations. Maybe so. If expecting to win each game and being ticked when we don't (especially when we could have) is a Gator trait, then maybe we're at the wrong school. But we don't think we are. And neither does Spurrier, according to this morning's paper: "Cheers ring hollow: Spurrier says fans need to raise their expectations; team does not deserve an ovation after a loss, no matter how close the outcome"

Right to Privacy?

Southern patriotism at its finest

Last night at the halftime of the Carolina game, USC and The Mighty Sound of the Southeast (Carolina marching band) had a halftime program to honor the past and present troops serving our country in the armed forces. Patriotic medleys, flags, veterans, troops in uniforms, balloons, etc. - it was quite the spectacle.

Being the good ol' Bible belt school that we are, the crowd sang God Bless America, and then were led in a prayer for our soldiers, followed by a long moment of silence as a the band played taps in honor of those soldiers who have given their lives for our freedom.

If having 80,000 people remain silent for an extended period of time is impressive, what was more impressive was what one loyal student yelled out to break the silence:

"God bless America!"

Silence.

"And F--k Osama bin Laden and those Afghannis!!"

Silence.

"Support your troops, b---ches!"

Consfused(?) silence.

"Go Cocks!"

The student section erupts in applause.

If only our student section at Covenant had been this colorful.

Oil Slick

This evening gas was down to $2.08.

Later tonight we purchased gas for $1.99/gallon.

Shortly thereafter we passed another gas station where it was $1.08.

At this rate, by morning we should be back down to a 1-1 dollar-gallon correlation.

OPEC is probably sleepless with concern.

Legal Services for Hire

Dear Murray,

I am advised that you may be in need of an attorney's professional services. May I be so bold as to recommend myself? While your past legal problems may be unsolvable at present, I am of the opinion that I can offer you legal confidence in your future endeavors, and as a result, peace of mind.

As proof, let me suggest what could have been a possible remedy for a situation you recently encountered, in hopes that my analysis of that prior problem will assure you of my future expertise. As you are aware, on or about August 12, 2006, you placed a bet with one Jamey P., wherein you agreed to pay him $100 if he could swim across the intracostal canal and back. He did. In his suit pants, I might add. This put you in the hole 100 bucks.(1) In hind sight, you recognized this to be a bad decision.(2)

For $25 I could have saved you $100.(3) Had I been your corporate counsel, I would have given you the following advice: Rather than placing a bet with Jamey, you should have entered into an oral contract. Oral contracts can be binding, and most folks (Jamey included) are more comfortable with the legality of "contracts" as opposed to friendly wagers. However, the terms of your agreement with Jamey would have classifed your agreement as a unilateral contract (rather than a bilateral contract). This is good for you. In a bilateral contract, parties exchange promises of performance to take place in the future. Such contracts are generally enforceable when consideration is present.

Unilateral contracts, on the other hand, exist when the offeror (in this case you) offers to exchange his promise of a future performance only in return for the offeree's (Jamey) actual rendering of performance, e.g. "I will give you $100 if you swim across the canal and back." You do not want Jamey's PROMISE to swim the canal, you want the ACT of swimming the canal.

What's this got to do with the price of tea in China? In contract law, a contract is not enforceable until there has been an offer, acceptance, and some sort of consideration between the parties, which, in unilateral contracts, such consideration and acceptance is bound up together in the rendering of the desired performance. And, because the "offeror is the master of the offer," until an offer is accepted the offeror retains the right to revoke the contract at any time. Thus, as classical theory of contracts would suggest, until Jamey has swam the entire canal, you are not bound to pay Jamey, because no contract actually arises until the completion of the act called for.

With the bet, once Jamey jumped in the water, most people (Jamey especially) expected you to pay. With a unilateral contract, once Jamey had swum across the canal and was headed back, you still retained the right to withdraw your offer, at which point "all bets are off." Despite Jamey's objections that this is a bit hard on him, classic contract theory suggests that "hard" cases should not make bad law.(4) Jamey was not bound to swim the canal, and if he is will-free, shouldn't you be will-free as well? So despite your propensity for brash betting and impulsive gambling, a unilateral contract would have given you time to pause, consider the consequences, and recant, regardless of where Jamey and his suit pants were currently swimming.

As for your terrible golf game, you may wish to seek professional counsel elsewhere.

I hope to be of service, and I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

The Sleuth



(1) Murray subsequently attempted to win this money back with a series of smaller bets, the majority of which centered around golf, compounded by "double or nothing" bets. He lost all of them.

(2) As taken from Murray's Myspace "Blurb": "I recently lost one of my wallets. Word of advice: don't play golf when you have work to do. 2nd word of advice: don't bet money when you can just dare. 3rd word of advice: don't bet money on your golf game. 4th word of advice: don't do any of that when you are missing your wallet."

(3) $25 initial consultation fee based on average costs for similar legal counsel. Prices may vary, see office for details.

(4) Jamey may also raise issues of limitations on untrammelled revocability, but he wouldn't know what the heck that is anyway.

Vatican Sleuth

The recent Muslim reactions to the Pope's comments last week have me thinking again about this religion known as Islam. I still stand by my previous thoughts during the whole Muhammed cartoon kerfuffle, that Islam by it's very nature is a religion of violence and agression.

To be sure, the Pope's comments may have been ambiguous as to whether he was stating personal opinion, vatican views or just quoting medieval leaders. "‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Regardless, it is again the Muslim reaction that is more telling. And, as my now beloved James Taranto suggests, if the Pope (and myself) was wrong in suggesting that Islam is violent, perhaps torching churches and threatening war against "worshippers of the cross" is not the best way to make your point.

Or maybe it's my point (and the Pope's/medieval dude's) that's being made.

Sleuth is a Wall Street Journal contributor

The Wall Street Journal publishes a daily "best of the web" segment on their website, a humorous look at the important (and sometimes not so important though highly publicized) news items of each day. It's compiled by James Taranto, the WSJ's inhouse blogger and an occasional guest on Fox News.

After our "oily concerns" blog post on Monday, we got to thinking and decided to email James Taranto and see what he thought about our journalistic sleuthing.

Apparently, he liked it a lot. Or enough to include it in today's Wall Street Journal installment

The text below is his rendition of our "Oily Concerns" post.


Hard to Please
Here's an amusing series of news headlines about the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Dollar figures in parentheses are the price of a barrel of crude at the time of the article:

"OPEC Secretary-General Expresses Concern Over Rising Oil Prices"--May 16, 2004 ($40.77)

"OPEC Says It's Lost Control of Oil Prices"--March 14, 2005 ("north of $50 a barrel and rising")

"OPEC President Voices Concerns Over Rising Prices"--Aug. 28, 2005 ($66.13)

"Falling Oil Prices Add to Opec's Worries"--Sept. 12, 2006 ($63.76)
OK, we can reconcile the last two headlines and conclude that the optimal price of oil is somewhere between $63.77 and $66.12. But how can $63.76 be too low while $40.77 is too high? It's Goldilocks in Bizarro World!


Lest you doubt us, the bottom of every Best of the Web includes his thanks to the contributors:

"Thanks to John Krickus, Ed Lasky, Fritz Sands, [Sleuth]..."

Oily concerns

"OPEC Secretary-General Expresses Concern Over Rising Oil Prices," By Tim Johnston, VOA News. May 16, 2004
(oil was $40.77 a barrel at this time)

"OPEC says it's lost control of oil prices," by MSNBC.com & Rueters. 14 Mar 2005.
(oil was $50+ a barrel at this time)

"OPEC president voices concerns over rising prices," USA Today (Associated Press), August 28, 2005.
(oil was $66.13 a barrel at this time)

"OPEC concerned over falling oil prices," Financial Times. September 10 2006
(oil is at $67 a barrel, down from $77 a barrel a few weeks prior)

"OPEC stands for "Omigosh, Please Express Concern," Manville Times. September 11, 2006

Which is why I suggest you all try this (not so new) product:

The Master Card (my student ID)

A semester's tuition at the University of South Carolina Law School = $7,992


Books for my first 5 classes in law school = $650


Amount of money on my Carolina Card for lunch this fall = $425


Spending a weekend evening at home with 80,000 of my closest friends = Priceless


There are some things money can't buy, but if you think about it, even getting a "free" student ticket to the footbal game cost me a pretty penny. So I will enjoy every last cent of it.

Go Cocks.

Pronounced "Chay-Pin"

Today we rejoined an annual tradition from which we have been absent for several years - the Chapin Labor Day Parade. Everybody who's anybody is there. Including all of our extended family. Seriously, where else can you get a year's supply of candy in under 2 hours?

As you probably know, the Labor Day holiday was first celebrated in the late 1800s as an occasion to salute the working class and hold a parade. In Chapin, we take that time honored tradition to heart. Especially the parade part.

And, as The State newspaper suggests, being in the Chapin Labor Day parade won’t guarantee you a political victory in South Carolina, but history proves it definitely doesn’t hurt. Past political parade participants include former U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (he rarely missed this parade), President George W. Bush, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, Gov. Mark Sanford, and former Govs. Jim Hodges, David Beasley and Carroll Campbell.

Today's parade did not disappoint. As of the 2000 census, the Town Limits of Chapin contain a population of 624. Today's parade had over 10,000 spectators. And what a show they saw. Being an election year, the parade brought out everybody from county council and school board members to Represenatives, Senators, Congressman, and the Governor. We had floats from our Dixie Youth Baseball Allstars to the Chapin Baptist Children's Ministry, from the local BBQ joints to BiLo grocery, from the CHS marching band to the local cloggers.

We had the perennial crowd favorite Jamil Temple riders on their little gocarts doing figure eights like no 75 year old you've ever seen before...


We had the local square dancers club...


...and the parade regular firefighters, whose truck broke down and had to get pushed a few hundred yards before they jumped it off again. A vote of confidence for my homeowner's fire insurance...


We even had a float with some cows on it.


Sorry, that was actually a picture of a new addition to the parade this year, Chapin's fine "Desert Jewels". Apparently they are a local belly dancing club/organization, which, as my uncle noted, makes perfect sense, seeing as all the women had a lot of belly to dance with. Apparently they'd been hanging out too much on the Hardee's float in front of them. Shleigh, Paige and Tricia, with those belly dancing videos you had in college you may have a spot in next year's parade lineup.

Here's the cow.


All said it was a great use of our morning. If you ever wanna see some $100,000 tractors, or a host of utility trailers turned floats, the Labor Day parade is the place for you. If its got wheels or moves, we've got a spot for you. There were even several seniors on their electric wheelchairs (though whether they were official parade entrants is debatable).

Chapin: Capital of Lake Murray. Ya'll come visit now, hear?

TGIF

Life is good.

Our Gamecocks managed to grab a win last night and are now undefeated in SEC play (at least for a week), and we got called on in Workhard Burkhard's class this morning to answer a question no one could seem to get - and we nailed it. So much so that he asked us to repeat our explanation because it was an important distinction for the class to understand.

Also, no school on Monday. A clap offering for schools who recognize holidays other than Christmas and Thanksgiving.