Reader David Schraub points out that while the article by Professor Stuntz I mentioned is not available on the Harvard Law Review's website, a relatively recent draft is up at SSRN.

Meanwhile, reader Brett Bellmore suggests that I might solve the problem of my too-small and therefore-uneven oven by putting a layer of bricks in the top of the oven to retain heat-- a tactic I may try as soon as I find a convenient source of clean patio bricks and a bit of spare time.

But for now, back to reading The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial.

I recently had an argument about the "moral" of the Legend of John Henry. I claimed that it was neither a tale about why unions and government were needed to protect the working class from the growing pains of innovation nor a tale about how stupid it is to try and fight progress.

Faced with the steam drill that threatens to put him out of business, John Henry neither resorts to private thuggery (smashing the drill to bits with his hammer) nor demands that it be regulated or put aside. Instead he promises to beat in by simply being better (and he does, though fatally over-exerting himself in the process. The lesson here is of the perfect balance between traditional and modern methods-- they should compete; sometimes the new beats the old, sometimes the other way round. Long may it be so.

Anyway, in the same vein, I was pleased by this recycled story in the New York Times about a village in Italy that drove out McDonalds not by regulation or vandalism but simply by selling a bunch of cheap focaccia that folks preferred to McDonalds hamburgers.