My impression is that the legal ethics dialogue is highly developed in the United States. The extent to which people practice what is preached over there is something I have heard word about but can't guess at too accurately. Maybe its lawyers are more prone to extreme badness and so the discussion has more to feed on; they bribe judges over there, or try, or so it is alleged. And lawyers get access to their clients' alleged victims' laptops by having private investigators pose as researchers on internet use, and offering a new laptop in exchange for the old. And get away with it on the basis that they did not do the deed personally.

The extent to which the appearance of heightened discussion is merely a function of a huge population and a huge blogosphere is also something I find it difficult to guess at. Now there is an experiment which will help me work it out. An Englishman, John Flood, author of Random Academic Thoughts, is over in Miami, visiting a law school. And he's blogging about it. So far, he's impressed. While he's in Florida, he could drop in on Jim Morrison's birthplace, Melbourne, and let us all know how Melbourne, London, and Miami stack up against each other.