Nicole Stockdale at A Capital Idea writes about two books that we all may want to add to our Christmas Lists.  "The Yale Book of Quotations” and "What They Didn't Say."   They look like interesting reads, but may upset accepted notions of who said what. 

According to a recent review of “The Yale Book of Quotations” by Arthur Spiegelman:

Showman P.T. Barnum never said "There's a sucker born every minute" although he wished he had. And Civil War Admiral David Farragut probably never said "Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead" -- words that have inspired generations of fighting men.

To make things even more complicated, it is doubtful that Paul Revere warned that "The British are coming" when he would have at the time of the American Revolution thought himself British, although a revolting one. He probably would have said "The Redcoats are coming."

    In “What They Didn’t Say:  A Book of Misquotations,” editor Elizabeth Knowles addresses “many supposedly historical lines, such as Napoleon's ‘Not tonight Josephine’, but also covers modern icons including Star Trek. No one ever said ‘Beam me up Scotty’, and Mr Spock never said "’It's life Jim, but not as we know it.’"  In a review in the Guardian, Ms Knowles said: "The last thing we want is to be seen as clever clogs, saying that these quotes are wrong. The fascination lies in how and why they were altered. Misquotations are much more interesting than mistakes."

      Next thing you know, they will be saying there is no Santa.

Lynn Gaertner-Johnson has a great post on “How to Scare Away Customers.”  The same would apply to scaring away clients.  She quotes this message that a sales representative (yes, this person was trying to sell something) sent to a friend: 

thank you for the rapid response I am grateful for the follow up. as far as information, I sending you an up coming schedule of class's we are offering but let me tell you this, I would like to purpose a special offer of 15% off for all your employee's, plus multi enrollment discounts and periodic specials like buy 2 get one free on select class's. thank you for your time should you need more information please let me know. I look forward to doing some business with you.

It’s easy to feel a little sanctimonious when reading that appalling missive.  But it should be a good reminder that the things we write say a lot about us and our work. 
 

In his Writing Tools blog, Roy Peter Clark has an interesting take on active vs. passive.  As you know, passive voice has long been criticized as being, well, too passive.  Active voice, on the other hand, is generally seen as being more powerful and persuasive.  Clark, however, points out that the two voices can be used together very effecively.  Read his example here.  This is the writing tool to remember: 

When you are trying to emphasize the victim or receiver of the action, use the passive voice. But when the subject turns to direct action, use the active voice to describe it.

The ABA issued a press release on November 9, 2006 about a new ethics opinion:

The opinion is contrary to the view of some legal ethics authorities, which have found it ethically impermissible as a matter of honesty for lawyers to search documents they receive from other lawyers for metadata or to use what they find, according to the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.

I have not seen the full opinion, but it should make all of use review our procedure for transmitting documents. 

 Thanks to Wisblawg!

 

I have said several times that  lawyers should not limit their internet searches to Google, but should try other general search engines such as www.ask.com.   But general search engines simply cannot find all the goodies on the Internet.  Search engines are constantly expanding their search areas, but some parts of the web remain “invisible”  to general search engines.

In 2001 Chris Sherman and Gary Price wrote a book called “The Invisible Web” and defined the Invisible Web like this: 

In a nutshell, the Invisible Web consists of material that general-purpose search engines either cannot or, perhaps more importantly, will not include in their collections of Web pages (called indexes or indices).  The Invisible Web contains vast amounts of authoritative and current information that’s accessible to you, using your Web browser or add-on utility software – but you have to know where to find it ahead of time, since you simply cannot locate it using a search engine like Hotbot or Lycos.

Many things have changed since 2001 (for example, Lycos is now powered by ask.com), but the Invisible Web remains invisible.  Gary and Chris discuss the details of the Invisible Web in much more detail, but, in general, think about it this way.  First, remember that when you use a search engine, you are not really searching the web; you are searching the database of web pages that that particular search engine’s crawler has gathered.  When the crawler goes out into the web to create its database, it is stopped – just like you and I are – when it gets to a place where it has to make a decision.  For example, the crawler is stopped when a website asks for a password to continue the search.  Without the password, the crawler cannot reach those pages, so those pages are not included in the search engine’s database.  There are also non-password decisions, such as when a website for a store asks you to choose a location before proceeding.  The search engine may not be able to make that decision and therefore cannot include all the pages from that website in its database.  The technology of search engines changes and gets better every day, so they can reach more and more pages.  We just hope that they never are able to reach those things that we think are password-protected. 

Anyway, all this to emphasize that you cannot find everything on the web with a general search engine or even a combination of search engines.  You need to get into the Invisible Web, but that requires using many specialized databases and search engines.  The Online Education Database has put together an excellent list of those resources and you can check it out here.  Bookmark the page and remember to go back to it when you need some specialized search tools. 

Thanks to Wisblawg for the Online Education Database link

BarclayBlog links to the NCSL 50-State Legislative Tracking Web Resources, a compilation of legislative resource from all fifty states.  It includes a topical, alphabetical listing of legislative and statutory databases, compilations and state charts/maps. 

This could be a very helpful research and searchable resource.  The first page identifies categories and subcategories.  Within each subcategory, you can formulate your own search terms and/or search by state, topic, year, bill type and status.  I looked at the subcategory of “Healthy Community Design” within the Agriculture and Rural Development category.  I then searched for any documents relating to “direct marketing” and got a list, by state, of pending and recent legislation that relates to direct marketing by farmers.  The links, like a search of any statute database, tell me the law in various states.  But this database goes further and gives me a means to compare what the states are doing recently on a particular topic.  Check it out. 

The issue of direct marketing by farmers is especially interesting to me because last week we received our last delivery of goodies from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in which we participate.  For the last six months, we have gotten a chicken, a dozen eggs and a surprise bin filled with fruits and vegetables every week.  In addition to having great, fresh food all summer, I have expanded my knowledge of fruits and vegetables and cooking skills.  The winter CSA starts soon and I am looking forward to that.  If you don't know about CSA's, the USDA has some information here.