Amidst all of my more frivolous blogging this week, I neglected to mention Senator Specter's proposal to take appeals in immigration cases out of the regional circuit courts and put them into the Federal Circuit. In addition to my basic prejudice against subject-specialized courts (regulatory capture is a concern), I find it a bit odd, since immigration seems not-entirely-related to the other subjects in which the Federal Circuit specializes. And if Henry Monaghan, Peter Schuck, and Judith Resnik all think the plan is a bad idea, that's not a great sign.

The benefits here seem to be rather limited, and the costs non-trivial.

1: What is the "geographic center of the (continental) United States" supposed to mean, anyway? My father always suggested you should imagine trying to balance the U.S. on a needle but the U.S. is not flat. And it turns out that if you try to balance the actual topographical U.S., you can get multiple balancing points (and some odd results). But if you want to balance a "flat" U.S., that requires a way to project the three-dimensional country onto a two-dimensional space. There are various acclaimed projections, but no one true projection, and therefore no one true geographic center of the U.S.

2: Two fire trucks, an ambulance, and a police car are all "running hot", i.e., have their sirens on, as they approach a four-way intersection. Who has the right of way? (My initial inclination is to put the ambulance first, the fire trucks second and the police car last; my second inclination was to apply the "yield to your right" rule, but that might lead to a total standstill if the cars are in a dead heat; my third inclination is to say that the regular rules of traffic should apply again-- the vehicles with green lights should go and the red light-vehicles should wait for them.)

These are the questions that occupy my family when we're not playing games.

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