Milt

If you’ve been bar mitzvahed, should you get some respect? Why should you wait until you’re 14 before being addressed as “Mr.” or “Ms.”? I ask these questions because of an odd sentence that appeared last week in a ruling from a federal judge in Los Angeles: “Do not address witnesses over age 14 by their first names.” Thirteen-year-olds are fair game.

Hiring people is hard. No matter how good a prospect may look during an interview, your chances of hiring a dud are always going to be high.

If you have nothing better to do and/or you need some summertime reading, you might want to take a look at a Notice of Formal Charges issued the other day by the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission. Feel free to base a novel on the many fascinating tidbits in the 150 pages of exhibits detailing the frantic life of a jurist who doesn’t quite seem to have his act together.

Do experienced lawyers work faster? Is the prosperity of society in jeopardy because of legal fees? Does it make more sense to buy an apartment in Bay Ridge or a house in Elmont?

Here’s a weird fact: New Mexico is the only state that allows the recreational trapping and snaring of cougars. I have no idea why anyone would want to trap and snare a cougar for fun, but if that sounds like a good time to you in America, you’ll have to travel to New Mexico.

Here’s something to think about if you’re bored: If you own a restaurant and you set up a build-your-own burrito bar, are you using a recipe? After all, the customers are the ones doing the burrito building. Aren’t they the ones with personal recipes?

There’s a guy in Tennessee who’s learned that superstitions about numbers are silly. Or maybe he’s learned not to listen to gut instincts. What do guts know?

Never let it be said that I don’t appreciate police. I’m constantly finding things they do that impress me. Note this sentence from a Second Circuit ruling last week: “Officers are trained in the wrist-flick test at the Police Academy, and each of the officers involved in the events giving rise to this case received this training.”

I have a solution for the gerrymandering problem: Stop drawing lines! Of any kind. You know I’m right. None of the political lines we have now make any kind of sense. All you have to do is look at New York and Connecticut sitting right next to each other and getting the same number of U. S. senators.

I just want to say I’m sorry. I’ve been openly skeptical of public apologies in the past — most people are only sorry after getting caught. Hardly anyone who hasn’t been jailed or publicly shamed says they’re sorry.

I love it when something completely weird suddenly appears in the middle of an otherwise serious document. This is from a federal court ruling in Florida last week: “While walking to the car, one of the officers mocked plaintiff, saying, ‘You have lipstick on you sir, you have lipstick on you sir, now you need heels, now you need heels.’”

The California Supreme Court last month approved 69 new and/or updated rules of professional conduct and I know that all of you diligent lawyers out there are already completely familiar with them.

I’ve been obsessing about math and branding this past week because I’m confused. You might have thought it wasn’t possible after 2016, but marketing and election campaigning may be getting weirder.

The U.S. Supreme Court has finally solved the judicial financial crisis. In case you missed it, the court last week said states can legalize gambling. Is there a sport more compelling than litigation?

GIFs are like jokes — if you have to explain them, what’s the point? I feel I have to make this clear because a federal judge in Florida the other day got a little bit of news coverage because he sort of used a GIF in a ruling footnote and then felt compelled to explain what it means.

We, as a country, need to work harder on our conspiracy theories. It takes a lot of imagination and a very straight face to come up with good explanations for stuff we know nothing about and I sometimes think America’s pundits are getting lazy. Their ideas are losing their entertainment value.

I know judges are supposed to be unbiased, but we all know that’s impossible. The trick to successful judging is to pretend you’re not biased.

Truth — does it always matter? We’re so obsessed with fake news and lying politicians and foreign and domestic manipulators of fact these days that it’s easy to forget that truth doesn’t always matter.

Remember last week? Last week I warned lonely lawyers out there to beware Russians and marketers selling consulting services. Now remember me: I’m Milt Policzer, PS —    professional skeptic. It’s not an official title — if it were, I’d have doubts about it.

I was on the freeway stuck in slow traffic last Wednesday, listening to an Angels game when I heard an unexpected thing: “We’ve heard from the country of Russia. That’s a first for Angels Social Media Day.”