BRAIN LESSONS: THE CONSEQUENCES OF EXCISING EMOTION

Two weeks ago, my wife propped open the door of our (too-long-for-any-reasonable-use) screened porch.  She was shuttling plants in and out every night and got tired of latching and unlatching the porch door.  Well, it’s closed now—for good—because a hummingbird got into the porch.  I can’t seem to forget that little bird and I thought

BRAIN LESSONS: THE SEVEN PERCENT DELUSION

Advice from mock trial judges must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.  Especially from one who, after expressing surprise over a move by students to use the defendant’s deposition in the plaintiff’s case, opined that “you don’t necessarily have to meet your burden during your case.”  But I was intrigued, if abashed by

BRAIN LESSONS: HOW WE MAKE AN APPEARANCE

With Valentine’s Day less than a week away, I am again trying to become a better, more romantic version of myself. It is the season for it. It started me thinking about poetry and, specifically, Shakespearean sonnets and the works of Lord Byron. The most famous poems from the two authors both start with the

BRAIN LESSONS: ATTRACTIVE ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

I [Grant] discovered recently that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the hilarious movie about two con-men competing to swindle a rich heiress, was released on December 14th, 31 years ago.  You may recall the premise of the movie:  A dashing and debonair swindler, played by Michael Caine, gets into a winner-takes-all swindling battle for an heiress’s money

BRAIN LESSONS: A DOG IS A JUROR’S BEST FRIEND

In honor of national Adopt-A-Dog and Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog month, we will look at an interesting study on drug-dog evidence and mock-juror decision making, examining whether jurors would credit the alert of a drug-sniffing dog as a *sufficient condition* for guilt in a trafficking case.  The researchers in this study tested how much credit mock jurors would