Saturday September 7, 2013  New York Times online, Real Estate section:  If you want a relatively cheap home in New York City, Manhattan is not the best place to look.

If this is news to you, and you're a fiction writer, I recommend against setting stories in NYC.

***From Twitter:

Techmeme Heds ‏@nottechmeme
This Startup, The Plorker Of Grillerps, Gets $6B To Be Your Fuzznuckle
Retweeted by Christopher Mims

Disalmanac ‏@Disalmanac
Today in 1921, the first Miss America pageant was held. Women were not yet allowed to participate, so the winner was William Howard Taft.

***Mnstf meeting at Linda Lounsbury's.

Books, floppy disks, and a few other things being given away.  I took a two-volume work:  Common Legal Principles, published in 1929.

American law has undergone a few changes since then. 

"The well known general doctrine of the common law is that when a wrong is committed against the person of the wife during coverture, as by beating her, slandering her reputation, or by malicious prosecution, she cannot sue alone." 

"The general rule of the common law is that the husband is liable for the torts of the wife.  When the tort or crime is committed by the wife alone, and without the presence or direction of her husband she may be held liable, civilly and criminally.  In such cases, the civil action must be against both the husband and wife."

There was a proposed Constitutional amendment authorizing Congress to make laws concerning child labor.  It failed; and it remained unconstitutional for Congress to pass such laws.  Until the Supreme Court ruled it wasn't against the Constitution.

Probably not changed:  The illustrative case I found most interesting concerned a district attorney who felt he'd been unfairly dumped from his position.  The Massachusetts supreme court's ruling included juicy details of a blackmail scheme.  The court considered this reasonable grounds for firing.