We had an intern here at our office who liked to do trivia challenges with me, and we would go back & forth with questions of our own devising. The problem was, all my questions to her were about B story characters in Firefly, and all her questions to me were about Japanese cosmetics brands. What we had there was a failure to communicate.

So, we chose internet quizzes as a level playing field. I didn't find out about Sporcle.com until she had already left, which is too bad because it is an amazing repository of random quizzes. Whether it's TV nicknames (pretty easy, I got 19 out of 20), groups of three (much harder, I got 25 out of 38),  or Olympics by Insignia (really hard, I got 7 out of 20) the breadth of trivia available is pretty cool. I haven't taken it yet, but I challenge you all to Civ II Technologies.

So, go ahead, prove that you kn0w who Gordon Shumway is or what Spock's first name is, waste your Friday showing all the useless stuff you know. Feel free to suggest your favorite quizzes (and your score here) and we can try to beat them.

On mornings when the weather looks poor, instead of biking to work, I casual carpool. It really is a great thing. Drivers pick up willing riders and everybody gets a free ride across the Bay Bridge in the carpool lane. It's a win-win. The driver doesn't pay toll, and gets to use the carpool lane, and the riders get dropped off in downtown SF for free.

Of course, it can lead to strange moments – I've had rides where the couple in the front listened enthusiastically to scary religious sermons (good old fire & brimstone) or one notable ride where an old woman in the front seat threw up, and the driver continued on as if nothing happened – but for the most part it's great.

This morning, I got in the car, and the very first thing the nice lady driving said was "sorry about the burning smell, I managed to burn dinner last night." First off, I didn't really notice a burning smell. Secondly, why would it be in the car? Was she grilling dinner on her engine? I am still a little sad I didn't ask any follow up questions.

Over at Not a Potted Plant, the Transplanted Lawyer (in the course of explaining a decision by Justice Scalia the principled basis of which requires resort to a proctologist with a flashlight) is kind enough to give us a shoutout for what he aptly calls our Rule #1: Just Shut Up.

Well, technically, that was my Rule #1, inspired by my criminal practice. But I suspect that Patrick would agree it's usually applicable to civil practice as well. The bottom line: when folks on the other side of the v. want you to run your mouth, it's almost never in your best interests. Rather, it's almost always in their best interest.

I'm in Miami this week for the American Bar Association's annual White Collar Crime Conference. At one of the many alcohol-drenched social events at which the defense lawyers mingle, I had occasion to discuss recent trends in the consequences of clients failing to shut the fuck up. I've talked before about a chickenshit tactic the feds have increasingly been using in the last decade — interrogating suspects, and then charging them with false statements to the government in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1001 if they deny their guilt. This week some colleagues pointed out a fun variation on this practice. This colleagues practice maritime law, which often involves getting rolled out of bed at three in the morning because your client's vessel has been detained by the Coast Guard for discharging oil or dumping garbage or some other environmental regulatory violation. Very often, federal investigators pursuing maritime incidents don't have a wide variety of charges available to them — in fact, often the only possible charges are misdemeanors.

But 18 U.S.C. section 1001 is a felony. You see where this is going, right?

So increasingly the feds approach maritime incidents by aggressive questioning of everyone involved — often including crew members who may speak little English, may be unsophisticated, and may come from countries where you lie to the police to avoid being shot in the head. The feds go into those interviews with a specific belief about what happened in the incident, and if they get a statement in variance with that belief, they use it to bootstrap a misdemeanor violation of maritime regulations into a felony false statement to the government. In some circumstances they can even bootstrap it into felony charges against the company, or against supervisory personnel, on the theory that the false statements are part of a deliberate cover-up of the incident.

How to respond to this? Well, do I need to read Rule One to you again? Shut up, for God's sake. Now, I'm aware this fights with every instinct as a suspect — and often instincts as a lawyer. As a suspect you're conditioned by popular culture to believe that you need to cooperate and talk your way out of the situation or you'll be arrested. As a lawyer, we're conditioned to believe that the worst possible thing to happen is for your client to be arrested because you didn't somehow finesse the situation. Fight those instincts. Shut up. The people wanting to question you — or your client — do not care about your best interests. They care about charging someone. It might as well be you.

According to the media, as reflected by Google News this week, they're phenomenal.  So phenomenal that hot dogs must be banned, redesigned (which would make them hot dogs no longer, but rather mushy cubes of meat), or should carry warning labels similar to those found on packs of cigarettes:

Now if one simply scans Google News for information of this sort, one might assume that hot dogs kill as many children annually as lead paint on Chinese-manufactured toys.  In fact, one would be wrong.  Hot dogs kill a substantially greater number of children than Chinese lead-based paint. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 77 children each year choke to death in a vain, futile effort to consume hot dogs:

[T]he academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs "redesigned" so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster's throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs.

"If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child's airway, it would be a hot dog," says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "I'm a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they're wedged in, it's almost impossible."

Yet it would appear, according to your own academy's data Dr. Smith, that it's ridiculously simple to dislodge a hot dog from a child's windpipe.  If only 77 out of 10,000 children admitted annually die of hot dog inhalation, that's far better than the rate for the most basic and treatable cancers, or indeed staphylococcus infections.

And yet there are far more than 10,000 children born each year.  According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has an estimated population of 307,212,123, and a birth rate of 13.83 per 1,000 people.  That means, roughly, that 4,248,744 children are born each year. Out of those children, as well as those born earlier, "up to" 77 will choke to death on a hot dog.

The actual odds that your child will choke to death on a hot dog are therefore, roughly, one in 181,230.

Admittedly I'm not attempting to calculate the odds that the child will grow to adulthood only to die of hot dog inhalation.  Those odds, presumably, would increase overall hot dog morbidity.

Yet by comparison, according to Political Calculations, the odds are better that an American will die in a fatal lightning strike, but somewhat poorer (though still close) that he or she will die at the fangs of a household dog, or a snake.

So, what's at work here?  Has there been a sudden onslaught of children killed by hot dogs?  That's doubtful. Hot dogs are pretty much the same today as they were when you and I were growing up. Is there a real need for legislation, or regulation, or redesign, of hot dogs?

Or is there a need for better education on the part of American pediatricians, journalists, legislators, and the public at large, in statistics and actuarial math?

Update: A commenter points out a reading error on my part.  While up to 77 children die annually of food asphyxiation, only 17% of food asphyxiation hospital admissions are caused by hot dogs.  According to our commenter, that means only 13 or so children are killed by hot dogs each year, if the percentages of deaths and admissions hold true.

I'm not willing to make that assumption.  To be fair to the American Academy of Pediatrics, I'll assume that all children killed by food-related asphyxiation in the United States are killed by hot dogs, and that other foods never kill.

We're not exactly huge fans of Ron Paul here. We've made fun of his blimp and decried his connection to Birchers and his nasty racist newsletters.

But you have to give the guy this: he's stalwart in his beliefs, even when those beliefs are inconsistent. He's much closer to a faithful devote of small-government libertarianism (in the style of a federalist, rather than in the style of a civil libertarian) than nearly any other visible politician out there. And hes got an extremely devoted and effective following. Hence, his victory in the CPAC straw poll of potential 2012 presidential contenders.

The reaction from the more mainstream Republicans is about what you would expect — outrage and horror. The Village Voice has a round-up of conservative blogger reactions that is every bit as biased, mean-spirited, and gleeful as you would expect. My favorite part:

Some leaned on the angle that Paul's people had organized effectively, thereby rendering his victory invalid.

It's funny because it's true.

I wish I could believe that the Paul victory at CPAC indicates that the Republican pendulum is swinging away from socially conservative authoritarianism and towards libertarian principles. But I suspect that it doesn't. "Security" and "values" just draw too many votes.

The daughter of Joe Stack, the crazy who burnt his house down, and then crashed his plane into the IRS office in Austin Texas, describes her dad as "a hero." Sadly, this line is getting play among many of the anti-tax right wing nut jobs. She is wrong. He is Mohammed Atta. There is no difference, except scale.

If you buy an electronic component from a vendor at a market stall in a country notorious for fakes and counterfeits, and you find out that you got scammed, you're pretty much out of luck, right?

If you're most of us, yes. But if you're my high-school classmate Donna, finishing up a foreign service tour in Beijing, and you're willing to use inexorable mom-fu, the answer is no.

I'm not big on mainstream conservative movements, because for the most part they seem to be made up of apologists for profligacy (so long as it is committed by Republicans), suckers-up to executive power (so long as it is Republican executive power), and shameful disdainers of civil liberties. Culturally conservative authoritarians, in other words.

On occasion, though, something happens to make me think that I am not as completely alienated from the political mainstream as I thought. Consider, for example, this thoroughly viscerally satisfying moment at CPAC when Ryan Sorba, blustering and jabbering and pathetically threatening, is jeered off the stage for indulging in a small-tent anti-gay rant. Don't let the door hit ya where you're afraid the gays will git ya, Ryan.

Edit: the sequel — via Andrew Sullivan, a blogger describes his encounter with Sorba. More bluster and moronism.

Even oceanographers.

Florida State University fires 21 tenured faculty members, in the departments of oceanography, geology, and meteorology:

"There's something wrong here," the 63-year-old [Philip] Froelich, [one of the fired professors] said. "To fire junior faculty like this is immoral — and that word is now around the country."

Eric Walker, an English professor and president of the Faculty Senate, isn't sure how layoffs in geological sciences and oceanography are playing around the country.

"I do know how this fact plays: We terminated 21 tenured faculty members," Walker said. "This is a fact that will get the attention of faculty members across the country.

What should also get Professor Walker's attention is that the state of Florida, hit as hard as any by the recession and an economy based on tourism and real estate, has a budget that can charitably be described as in the toilet. Faculty members in departments such as oceanography, who produce little of present economic value, depend on taxes paid by tourist attractions and realtors and orange growers and the like, who aren't doing too well.  The only solutions for such a problem in a state like Florida are to raise taxes (which will push the economy deeper into the toilet as any economics professor could tell you), to borrow until the state's economy resembles Argentina's, or to fire people whose jobs are less than essential.

That's fine, according to Florida State's faculty senate, as long as it's other people being fired.

FSU invested considerable resources in fall 2008 when it hired Wetz, Brian Arbic and Amy Baco-Taylor in oceanography and Davis Farris in geological sciences. Approximately $1 million in "start-up" fees were earmarked for the four new faculty members, who have all received layoff notices.

Gosh.  $1 million in "start-up" fees for three oceanographers and a geologist.   Who I'm sure produce more of value than their equivalent in primary school teachers, road maintenance workers, law enforcement officers, or state legislators.  (Heh.)   But though I don't know much about the Ekman spiral effect, it boggles my mind that the upper echelons of FSU's faculty, such as geography department chair Leroy Odom, didn't see this coming when they asked for a faculty expansion in 2008:

"I'm not expecting any reversal, but I do expect we'll be treated better in the future," Odom said. "Somehow we went from a department that was good enough to deserve new faculty positions to one that didn't deserve to exist."I didn't see it coming.

I knew there was a budget problem and they were considering faculty cuts and this and that. I didn't know they would all be coming from our departments."

Sounds as though Chairman Odom was reading too many geology papers and not enough newspapers in Fall 2008, if he couldn't see this coming.

In the Soviet Union they had ladies whose job was to polish subway stair railings.  That's all they did, all day.  And while polished stair railings are nice enough, make-work jobs and other non-productive uses of actual productive labor, resources, and energy drove the Soviet Union into bankruptcy more surely than its tyranny and ethnic strife.  And all of the rail-polishing ladies were fired.  It's tragic when anyone loses his job due to economic circumstances he couldn't forsee, whether it's a rail polishing lady or an oceanographics professor.

But it isn't immoral.  And for the academy to claim that it should be above the resources of the people who pay its bills indicates we may need fewer tenured oceanographics professors, and more grad student T.A.s in the economics department.

Via.

If I were to tell you that a politician had some sort of altercation with a rapper on an airplane, who would your first guess be? Clinton (maybe some Sister Souljah revenge?), Sarah Palin (probably looking for the publicity), Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney? Oh, it's better my friends, much better. Yes, some rapper named Sky Blue took a swing (which he says was self defense) at the new age Osmond – Mitt Romney.

Can you imagine Romney & a rapper getting into it as the flight was taxiing? Apparently, Romney took umbrage to the rapper putting his chair back while the plane was still on the ground. I love that we live in a world where creepy over smiling presidential candidates dodge punches from rappers.

By the way, the rapper is clearly milking this for fame, but I have to give him props for comparing Romney's strength to a "vulcan grip" and explaining his problem with Romney grabbing him as "I'm not your prey. I'm not a salmon going upstream. You're not going to rip me up."

The Duke Lacrosse saga will always be with us, a mirror to our predispositions. The latest episode: Crystal Gail Magum, bearer of false witness and sometimes (sort of) author, has been arrested for arson and attempted murder based upon allegations that she set afire her boyfriend's clothing in the bathroom of his home, where his three hildren slept.

Magum will almost certainly receive something that comes far closer to resembling immediate due process for this alleged bathroom incident than did the three college students she falsely accused of raping her in a bathroom. The media's narrative in this case — nutty girlfriend acts nutty — is far less powerful than the narrative in the Duke Lacrosse case — racist privileged white boys victimize poor black woman. Therefore, even though she is a black woman, and even though there will be some media interest in her case, the presumption of innocence will likely be applied somewhat more seriously.

I will be waiting eagerly for Amanda Marcotte's take. It will be up any minute now.

When the state — and its politicians — give you something, they generally want something in return. They want your vote. They want your obedience. They want your dependence, preferably dependence that will stretch out to multiple generations. And, occasionally, they want to know things they have no damned business knowing.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. That's what Blake J. Robbins learned. See, Blake is a student in the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania. Blake's high school has some bucks. They had the resources to issue free laptops to high school students. What a great opportunity, right? What a fantastic resource for learning! What could possibly go wrong? What could Lower Merion School District have wanted in return?

Well, according to Blake and his family, in return the district wanted to watch him on a webcam in his own home. According to Blake's lawsuit, school administrators didn't tell him that they had the ability – and the intention — of activating the webcam and checking out Blake's out-of-school activities without his knowledge or consent — or the knowledge and consent of his parents, into whose home Blake brought the laptop. This came to light when Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko accused Blake of "improper conduct" in his home based on a webcam photo taken remotely by school authorities using his laptop. Blake's family's lawsuit is available in pdf form through the BoingBoing link above.

Now, we don't have the response of the school or the district yet. But if Blake's allegations are true — that school administrators were activating webcams remotely to observe students without their knowledge or consent, or the knowledge or consent of their parents — then the district, and some of its administrators, are in a world of hurt. In addition to the civil violations set forth in Blake's complaint, such conduct is almost certainly criminal. Hopefully Blake's family will refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for their district. If school administrators sent home laptops and then spied on kids, someone — probably several people — should be going to jail. If they captured or observed kids in any state of undress, some of them need to wind up as registered sex offenders.

If this went down the way Blake claims, the stupidity of the Lower Merion School District officials is breathtaking. That they thought they could do this legally – and that they thought it was a good idea to blithely begin to discipline kids for conduct observed secretly in their homes — speaks volumes of the entrenched cretinism in modern American academia. But the entitlement isn't breathtaking. It's perfectly ordinary. When the government and its officials give you something, they always expect something in return. Sometimes that something is your privacy. That's the way it works.

Update: The school district is claiming that it only activates the remote system to find a laptop that has been reported lost or stolen. If that's the case — if Blake had someone else's laptop, and was only recorded because that someone else reported the laptop lost or stolen — it's obviously a very, very different case.

It's time — well past time, actually — for the Road to Popehat, the feature in which we check the logs to see what search engine inquiries brought you here, and then stock up on lumber and nails to barricade the doors like a zombie movie. And what searches have brought people to our shores this month?

fuck a student to death sexual harassment or not Um . . . okay.

"doom" onesies Just because gamers can reproduce doesn't mean they should.

how do you come to hate someone Read his blog?

looking for a person willing to help me out with some money Hope springs eternal, even on Google.

pope hat made of hemp Ask Ezra.

south bend bikini wax Isn't that a tautology?

people talking in a different language and your [sic] really pissed off That's actually English, man. I'll ask them to use shorter words.

"john edwards" orgasm No, his chief of staff does it for him.

how much time in jail do you get for bomb threats Our quest to become a leading legal advice blog is well underway.

Here's a shocker: some college kids acted like assholes last weekend.

The college kids in question were students at UC San Diego, and apparently members of various fraternities. The assholery? They held — and advertised on Facebook — a an off-campus party they called a "Compton Cookout."

"February marks a very important month in American society. No, i'm not referring to Valentines day or Presidents day. I'm talking about Black History month. As a time to celebrate and in hopes of showing respect, the Regents community cordially invites you to its very first Compton Cookout.

For guys: I expect all males to be rockin Jersey's, stuntin' up in ya White T (XXXL smallest size acceptable), anything FUBU, Ecko, Rockawear, High/low top Jordans or Dunks, Chains, Jorts, stunner shades, 59 50 hats, Tats, etc.

For girls: For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks-Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes – they consider Baby Phat to be high class and expensive couture. They also have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave, usually in bad colors, such as purple or bright red. They look and act similar to Shenaynay, and speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face. Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it, by forming new words, such as "constipulated", or simply cursing persistently, or using other types of vulgarities, and making noises, such as "hmmg!", or smacking their lips, and making other angry noises,grunts, and faces. The objective is for all you lovely ladies to look, act, and essentially take on these "respectable" qualities throughout the day.

Several of the regents condos will be teaming up to house this monstrosity, so travel house to house and experience the various elements of life in the ghetto.

We will be serving 40's, Kegs of Natty, dat Purple Drank- which consists of sugar, water, and the color purple , chicken, coolade, and of course Watermelon. So come one and come all, make ya self before we break ya self, keep strapped, get yo shine on, and join us for a day party to be remembered- or not. "

Yep, that sounds exactly what a 19-year-old white suburban popped-collar frat douche of modest intelligence and ability thinks is hilarious. The rest of us find it offensive at worst and belabored, sophomoric, and tedious at best.

So, asshats act like asshats: news at 11! Why is this worth noting? Because it could be a teaching moment about the appropriate institutional and public response to detestable speech.

There are conflicting reports about the official response from the administration of UC San Diego. On the one hand there are reports of an official "investigation":

Campus administrators said Wednesday that they were investigating whether the off-campus party, held Monday, and its Facebook invitation violated the university's code of conduct and whether its sponsors should be disciplined.

. . .

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Penny Rue said the probe would examine whether the fraternity was involved and whether it should face sanctions. She said it was premature to discuss discipline for individual students but said she wanted partygoers to understand how much pain they had caused, especially to African American students.

On the other hand, there have been indications that there will be no discipline:

Jeff Gattas, the UCSD executive director of communications and public affairs, told the Union-Tribune that because the event wasn't sanctioned by the university or run by a student organization, university officials don't have a reason to penalize party hosts.

There's also an indication that the administration is engaging in response speech in the form of condemnation, which as I have argued before is completely appropriate and legitimate:

In an e-mail to students and staff, UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said the party showed "blatant disregard of our campus values." She said the university would hold a teach-in next Wednesday "to discuss the importance of mutual respect and civility."

On what basis might the university seek to punish the students, or the frats? Well, they might assert that the party violated the school's Code of Conduct:

Harassment by a Student of any person.

a. For purposes of this Conduct Code, ("harassment"):

1. Is the use, display, or other demonstration of words, gestures, imagery, or physical materials, or the engagement in any form of bodily conduct, on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, alienage, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability, that has the effect of creating a hostile and intimidating environment sufficiently severe or pervasive to substantially impair a reasonable person's participation in University programs or activities, or use of University facilities;

2. Must target a specific person or persons; and

3. Must be addressed directly to that person or persons.

UC San Diego clearly made an attempt to draft that policy sufficiently narrowly to comply with First Amendment principles. I think they fell short. FIRE — the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — has an excellent summary of the essential features of a constitutional harassment policy for a public university; this policy falls short in several ways, among them the lack of a "reasonable person" limitation. More to the point, it appears that the "Compton Cookout" does not violate this standard on its face. It didn't target specific people and wasn't aimed at them.

There will be enormous pressure on the UC San Diego administration to ignore First Amendment principles and conduct an "investigation" of this conduct even though it is clear, on its face, that the conduct does not violate school rules and that the school rules would be unconstitutional if it did. Such an investigation (as opposed to official criticism and condemnation, which is entirely legitimate) would be inappropriate, chilling, expensive, and thuggish. This is a teaching moment. The administration should make a clear statement that its brief review of the circumstances shows that the offensive and fatuous event warrants contempt, not official inquiry.

The "Compton Cookout" presents a teaching moment in another way as well — it's an opportunity to remind people that the First Amendment does not protect you from being proclaimed an asshat if you act like an asshat. Before long, the specific students who created, promoted, and threw the party will be identified by name. Their names will be spread far and wide on the internet, so that in a few years, when they are looking for jobs or potential spouses, a quick Google search will reveal that they think this sort of thing is funny or appropriate. They may face widespread shunning and ridicule in the UC San Diego community, except within the subset of their douchey friends. All of that is a feature of free speech, not a bug. We refrain from official punishment of offensive speech not because we like offensive speech, but because the marketplace of ideas can take care of it. Yet you can rely on people who misunderstand or misrepresent the First Amendment to try to portray them as free speech martyrs — not because of official sanction, but because they have become the subject of criticism and contempt. I've written about this phenomenon — the misguided and obnoxious "speech is tyranny!" whine — before, and it's just as bogus (and pervasive) as ever. Now is the time for people who care about genuine free speech principles to articulate them clearly. The "Compton Cookout" party-panners should not be punished officially. But if they suffer the social consequences of being assholes, that's exactly how free speech is supposed to work. Free speech is not freedom from criticism, even hurtful criticism.

Before this site assumed its current identity as whatever it is now, it was primarily a site about games, a subject on which we're still passionate.  We probably aren't the only legal blog that looks fondly back on our formative years, and our attachment to various pnp games  (of which D&D, in particular AD&D, was in some ways is incredibly important, but in many more is the least important.  We are nothing if not snobs sophisticates).  We're probably the only legal blog that also has its own World of Warcraft guild.*

And on that note, my co-blogger Grandy (and co-author of this post; fulfilling my 2010 quota!) and I have had discussions about setting up a Steam group, primarily for play of group-oriented shooters made by Valve software, principally Left 4 Dead 2 (without a doubt the best cooperative zombie shooter ever made), and Team Fortress 2, still the best squad-based combat competitive shooter on the market.  We suspect that many of you own these games.  Neither is particularly "twitchy," and while they involve competitive play against opposing teams in a variety of game modes (from traditional "capture the flag" gameplay to arena like gameplay to Left 4 Dead 2's exceptional scavenger mode), they also offer the prospect of social gaming and cooperative play for those on the winning team.

Our team.

Grandy and I are going to set up a group on Steam (as soon as we come up with a suitably clever name for the group, something clever so we can say "hello, we're intellectuals.  And insecure"), the service on which these games are run, for cooperative play.  Despite our recent turn into law, politics, and other irrelevant whatnot, we suspect many of you who read this site are avid gameplayers, and would welcome you to join us.  For information as it develops or to join us, you may read and discuss in this thread on the Popehat forum, respond in comments to this post on the front page, or email teamfortess at feralchild dot net.

This will be a casual endeavor, with no elitist asshats invited or tolerated (unless we like the elitist asshat in question).  If, like me, you enjoy group shooters but lack the reflexes and tastes of a fourteen year old boy, you may enjoy fighting with us.  We have access to Ventrilo (though both games have robust in game chat options), and would welcome more players.

*Our WoW guild, for the casual affair it is, is has been quite successful. We raid and would like to raid more, but also play lower level alts and assist new players on the way up.  If you have a high level character and would like to transfer to a low stress environment, or have played World of Warcraft in the past and would like a no pressure entree back into the game, see this forum thread here, or roll an alt on the Wymrest Accord server (US) and contact the character "Tusker" in game.