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Jeremy's Weblog |
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Happy Second Night of Passover, to anyone who's reading this over a cold plate of matzoh and gefilte fish and hoping for happy holiday wishes. Gefilte fish, incidentally, is an appetizer made of lots of fish, ground up and formed into fish balls, covered in what I can only assume is fish-flavored jelly, eaten with little tiny carrots and bright red radioactive horseradish. Gefilte fish actually looks kind of like matzoh balls, except bigger and fishier. One year my grandmother couldn't get her matzoh balls to be the right consistency ("These matzoh balls are too firm;" "These matzoh balls are too soft;" "These matzoh balls are just right") and made about a hundred of them and froze the "defects." I joked with her that she should have given them out to the trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Heck, it's better than pennies. (This post was sponsored by the B'nai Brith, Anti-Defamation League, and the National Jewish Legal Defense Fund.) Incidentally -- if anyone wants to send me a haiku about Passover, I'll post it. I don't know why I've decided that could be fun. Monday, April 05, 2004
Very quick story that will only make sense to those of you who celebrate Passover. I went to my aunt and uncle's seder tonight. My aunt's mother has Alzheimer's disease and is in an assisted living facility. They apparently had a seder there earlier tonight, and hid the afikomen, but no one remembered where they hid it. I know I shouldn't find that funny, but it is funny. (For anyone wishing they knew what I was talking about: part of the Passover seder (seder = meal) involves hiding a piece of matzoh for people to find later (the piece of matzoh you hide = afikomen).) This recent bout of linking to other people's stuff is going to stop very soon, but before it does check out Neo Tokyo Times, a new blog by a law-student-to-be that's pretty entertaining so far. I've linked you directly to the post that mentions me, but if you scroll down a bit you'll get to a treatise on why John McCain should be Kerry's VP nominee. There's something nicely self-deprecating about this blog. Aw, I probably just like it because he said something nice about me. Scheherazade Fowler posts in response to Will Baude's post about making the decision about where to go to law school. For anyone making that decision, here's a few things I know now that I didn't know when I was choosing. This may or may not be relevant to anyone, but it's the best I can do. 1. My law school experience has not been dependent on how many hours the library is open, how many books the library has, how nice the classrooms are, how pretty the buildings are, how many faculty members there are, what the faculty/student ratio is, how much they charge for photocopies, how edible the cafeteria food is, the high-school-style lockers in the basement tunnels, how many course offerings there are, how much reading I've had to do, what the office of career service provides, the outside lecturers who come to speak, my legal writing class, the computer facilities available, the size of the student body, the health plan, or, hard to believe, the weather. 2. My law school experience has been only marginally dependent on the quality of the dorms and other available housing, the neighborhood eating choices, or the size of my classes. 3. So what's left? My law school experience has been mostly dependent on three factors: A. Finding some number of faculty members who I think are brilliant, engaging, and motivating -- enough to keep me interested in classes, and to hold out the hope that there are more that I haven't yet found. All you need is one, really. One who makes you want to take all of his or her classes, and who gives you hope there's more. The problem with this as a tool for decision-making is that I'm pretty sure there's at least one at every school. But I've found it important. B. The extracurricular opportunities. Make sure there's stuff you're interested in being a part of. Again, I'm pretty sure you can do this at every school. But, again, I've found it important. So make sure. Without extracurriculars, life is boring. C. Your fellow students. Once again, I'm sure there are great people everywhere, and less-great people everywhere. So, again, not sure if this helps anyone make a decision. But it's been probably the most important factor contributing to my contentedness here. I don't care if it rains every day. Well, all else being equal.... But it's not worth making a decision over it. This post offers nothing extraordinary, I know. I'm trying to help. But I think for the most part, you can probably make it worth your while anywhere you end up, or you can be miserable anywhere you go. I don't know how you can tell beforehand, or if there's really a difference in how you'll feel at one place versus another. Wow, that's unhelpful advice. Sorry. Sunday, April 04, 2004
Make Your Own Law School Course Catalog Combine in the following formula: [Column A] [Column B] of [Column C] [Column D] Column A Academic Alternative Analytical Behavioral Biotechnological Community Comparative Complex Constitutional Current Democratic Empirical Environmental Financial Governmental Industrial International Local Methodical Multicultural Regulatory Remedial Statutory Transnational Column B Advocacy Analysis Arbitration Authority Conflicts Discrimination Diversity Economics Governance Interactions Jurisprudence Justice Litigation Markets Methods Perspectives Planning Regulation Speech Taxation Tensions Thought Column C Antitrust Bankruptcy Business Civil Commercial Common Constitutional Copyright Corporate Criminal Employment Entertainment Evidence Family Federal Internet Islamic Japanese Patent Pension Securities Tax Telecommunications Tort Column D Law Sua Sponte has a post about law school rankings that links to a post by Glorfindel, and Waddling Thunder and Heidi have related posts. More than about the rankings, they're about how students at higher-ranked schools have more opportunities than students at lower-ranked schools, at least if you look beyond the top student or two at the lower-ranked places, and how sometimes having more opportunities isn't really that great because there are also more costs and more pressures to take certain jobs, and also how the rankings can distort stuff because what's really the difference between #15 and #18 yet sometimes people make decisions based on that, and how it's bad to go to law school not knowing what you want to do and get sucked into doing what everyone else is doing, but it's not that bad to go do what everyone else is doing if that's what you really want to do. I'm making a mess of their posts, so go read them if any of this interests you. I wouldn't be linking if I didn't think they were worth it. For now, I'm just going to point you over there and leave it at that. I started typing to see if anything useful came out as far as my own feelings and thoughts, but I'm not there yet. It's a muddle of stuff like "we all have lots of choices and no choices, both at the same time," and "the risk/reward threshold falls at different places for different people," and "it would suck to spend three years in law school and not be able to get a job -- but I'm not sure it would suck more than spending three years not in law school and not being able to get a job, so I don't know what that means." Many of my friends are not in law school. Not many of them are thrilled with what they're doing, although lots of them are doing things that are reasonably interesting. One of the things I like about law school is that it's not really stopping me from doing too many things, and at the end I get a degree, which will let me do all sorts of things I couldn't have done before, will make it easier to get to do some things I could have done before, and even if it turns out I end up doing something I didn't need the law degree to do, I can make the argument that it took the three years here to figure out that what I wanted to do was whatever that is, and so I needed this to find that -- and I can also make the argument that if I'm wrong, I've still got the degree. Because my opportunity cost is unclear to me -- I don't know what it is exactly I'd be doing if I wasn't here, and certainly I have no idea how successful I'd be at it, and whether I really am losing three years that I'd have otherwise used much better if I wasn't here, and so I'm happy to keep myself in the dark about that, assume I'm losing very little (except for the cost, which is obviously really really non-negligible), and stay convinced that even if this doesn't end up being the only possible decision I might have made, it was at least a good and reasonable one. I don't know how that relates to the U.S. News rankings at all. And, yeah, I realize that for the second post in a row I've apologized for having nothing to say and then written a paragraph. Whoops again. What else can I do? UPDATE: See here. A guy who's going to be a 1L at Harvard next year, and has a week-old weblog, comments. Heidi has a thoughtful post about being unable to force yourself to work all the time and needing to just let things happen as they will, when you're ready to do them. I think she articulates it all very nicely. I'm tempted to add my own thoughts, since this is my weblog and everything, but I don't think I really have anything all that profound to add. I think we all struggle with the balance between forcing ourselves to do stuff that isn't fun but we have to get it done versus trusting that we'll get it done without forcing ourselves. And despite the track record -- I'm guessing most people in law school generally get stuff done that they need to get done, eventually, somehow -- it's still hard to trust that at some point before the paper's due, writing it will actually not feel like torture. Okay, I guess I did add some thoughts of my own. Whoops. But not too many. Saturday, April 03, 2004
Back in Boston I made a "to-do list" while I was on the bus and discovered I have 64 things to do. That's not an exaggeration. I've accomplished one and a half of them so far. One of the items on my list is to come up with some headlines/stories to contribute to the April Fools edition of the law school newspaper, which will be a week late because of Spring Break. Feel free to e-mail any headline ideas, if you don't mind my stealing them and turning them into articles. "Lawyer comes to campus, talks about law" is my first inspiration. No More Spring Break :-( I was going to head back up to school tomorrow, but all reasonable-hour journeys of the $10 Chinatown bus are sold out. So back I go this afternoon. Tasks for the 4-hour bus ride: 1. Read copy of Entertainment Weekly I took from parents 2. Lament how few pages it is, and how much more time I have on bus 3. Figure out how bus makes a profit charging only $10 4. Reluctantly, open casebook and do my corporations reading 5. Try to ignore smell of Roy Rogers food residue that has built up in every crack and crevice of the bus, since it stops there in both directions 6. Make to-do list, realize how long it is, and ponder the feasibility of cloning myself 7. Watch ten minutes of Spider-Man on small TV screen, since it's apparently the only videocassette the Chinatown bus company owns 8. Look out window. Oh, it's highway. 9. Regret not bringing anything to eat or drink. 10. Eavesdrop on phone conversation of girl across the aisle. Make mental note to avoid getting too close to her, since she seems to have some sort of grotesque illness she's describing to her best friend. Also, she (ohmygod!) has such a crush on the bus driver it's unbelievable. Uh, yeah. 11. Revise to-do list. 12. Make cell phone call. Realize people are listening. Hang up. 13. Re-read Entertainment Weekly. Return to step 2 and repeat. I saw "Jersey Girl" this afternoon in between a lovely lunch and a delightful dinner (don't you wish you were on Spring Break?). It was as if Kevin Smith decided to make the most commercial movie he could possibly come up with. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. Some notes that don't give anything away: 1. What a waste of the marvelously talented George Carlin. Why would they decide to cast George Carlin when any one of a thousand actors could have played his part? His character spends much of the film communicating via facial expression, which isn't exactly taking advantage of Carlin's talents. He spends most of the rest of his film interacting with his two buddies, both of whom look like they came from Central Casting under "older blue-collar working stiffs," and, for me, were the most unsatisfying characters in the film because they added nothing but made the whole film seem that much more paint-by-number. 2. The young actress who plays the daughter of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck looks exactly like Jennifer Lopez... and nothing like Ben Affleck. It was as if they held a casting call for seven-year-old girls who look just like Jennifer Lopez, but didn't bother to consider that a theoretical child may also look like its father too... so instead of really looking like their child, she looks like a disturbing Jennifer Lopez clone. It's kind of eerie how similar they look, actually. 3. There is so much on-the-verge-of-crying going on in this movie, and so much obtrusive make-you-want-to-cry soundtrack going on that it even got me tearing up, and I wasn't sad. I just couldn't help it -- the violins swell, Ben Affleck starts rubbing his eyes... but it felt so wrong.... 4. Lots of movies have this baffling, baffling problem -- the entire climax hinges on a business meeting that's scheduled at the same time as a school play... and, apparently, in the world of very ordinary movies, business meetings cannot be rescheduled. Ever. I know I've seen this plot before. Mrs. Doubtfire comes to mind, where at least they pretended the meeting was with someone busy... but still, it strains credibility to its utmost to imagine that normal business meetings are scheduled (a) without letting someone consult their calendar, and (b) on stone tablets that can never be edited. Also, in this case, it wasn't even clear what the meeting was supposed to accomplish exactly. This is a weak way out of actually writing a good script. "Oh, we need a conflict. How about a business meeting, because those can never be changed." Lazy. 5. There's a scene in Central Park where the seven-year-old girl is walking on a ledge. There's no railing. I kept wishing she'd fall. This is not a good sign for a movie. 6. The movie jumps seven years forward in time, and none of the characters (except the baby --> girl) age at all. It's baffling that they couldn't throw some lines on Ben Affleck's face, or dye George Carlin's hair for the first part... or do something, anything to make these people look younger or older in seven years. 7. Liv Tyler, who I've never before noticed in any movie I've seen, I will likely never notice again. I was struck by a complete absence of any interest I had in either her character or her acting. She's reasonably attractive, but played a character I found very annoying, and, maybe this just means she's a great actress, but I got the impression it wasn't much of a stretch. I know nothing about Liv Tyler though, so maybe she's an awesome person who just got stuck with this dud of a role in this very ordinary movie. Friday, April 02, 2004
I'm going to take advantage of all of this traffic Brian Leiter has been sending me over the last 24 hours or so, and write a song parody about one of his favorite topics, the U.S. News Law School Rankings. "It's Still Number Twelve To Me" (to the tune of Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me") What's the matter with the kids I'm taking Are the scores that they have too low? Should I try to hire one more teacher 'Cause we're moving up the ranks too slow? How to raise the judges' score they're assessing, Is hard because the judges aren't doing more than guessing, Everybody's talking 'bout the new Dean, honey But it's still number twelve to me. What's the matter with the Bar/Bri sales rep Can't we get one who'll make them pay? I don't want the rate to fall any further 'Cause alumni call me up and say: "I saw the latest U.S. News says we're dropping, The check that I just sent you: payment I am stopping" New prof, new dorm, but Dean was caught with kiddie porn It's still number twelve to me Oh, it doesn't matter what they say in the papers Cause it's only US News that they read If there's a new list in town People gather all around All the anxious feelings numbers can feed As if one school has to be in the lead... How about we take a few less students? Our rates'll fall and ranking will rise How about we fudge the job percentage? How'll they know if our report's filled with lies? Why did number four become number seven? Do we have a hope of rising one to be eleven? New books, new course, cafeteria's serving horse But it's still number twelve to me. Thursday, April 01, 2004
April Fools Jokes on Law School Websites From Yale.edu: Yale Law School has ties to the city of New Haven, a small, lively urban center with several first-rate museums and the best pizza in America.From Columbia.edu: We believe that, if approached thoughtfully, your candidacy for admission to law school may itself become a valuable learning experience, and not merely a bureaucratic hurdle to overcome.From NYU.edu: The living expenses portion of the student budget at NYU School of Law reflects 9 months of living in New York City.From UMich.edu: And the vibrant university life enveloping the city of Ann Arbor is but a few paces away.From Stanford.edu: The Law School welcomes individuals with... learning disabilities.Yeah, that last one doesn't really work. I'm not trying to make any actual statement here. Stanford's website, though, is remarkably free of hyperbole and unsupported assertions that just sound silly on their face. So I had to take what I could get. A good April Fools Day gag for a weblog would be to post a long and melodramatic account of why circumstances beyond his or her control have forced the blog to end, and perhaps go into gory detail about these circumstances, which would no doubt involve a distant cousin, a fire, an unfortunate slip-and-fall, a rusty nail, a case of mistaken identity, and some instant Quaker oatmeal, bringing readers to tears only to realize it's April 1st. I don't feel like writing that post, so instead you'll have to survive on imagination alone. Exam questions if exams were given on April Fools Day might be a fun post. Kind of predictable though. Long fact patterns, confusing ambiguities, how much could I really do with that? Maybe a hoax about a news article. Hard to do because of the linking, but maybe if I liberally "quote" from something, no one will bother to realize the link is a fake: WASHINGTON, DC (AP) -- Yesterday, on the steps of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist got down on one knee and proposed to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Despite each of them already being married, and despite that due to Rehnquist's advanced age, once he got down on one knee he needed medical assistance to get back up, the wedding is expected to occur next Thursday in the Rose Garden. Because they are both Justices, they can override the usual laws about bigamy, as well as the usual blood test requirements, since taking any blood from either of them would cause the stock market to collapse for no apparent reason other than to finish this sentence. Justice Antonin Scalia remarked, "I am so happy for Sandy and Bill. May they make many children together, despite their advanced age." Clarence Thomas will reportedly supply cans of soda for the guests; Orrin Hatch will provide the musical entertainment; Strom Thurmond will regretfully be unable to attend due to his recent death.See, that wouldn't be very believable. Perhaps if I wrote about something obscure enough, no one would doubt it. Like this fake-linked article: NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Yesterday, the New York state legislature passed a law banning beavers from urinating within 40 feet of a lamppost or within 30 feet of another beaver, except on Wednesdays, when antelopes aren't allowed to cough...But I don't even know what I was trying to do there. Let me sleep on it, and see if I get any better April Fools ideas in the morning. Hope everyone's pranks are successful and none of my readers end up in jail. WAIT! I've got it! The perfect concept, that I won't be able to execute to its fullest potential! Top Ten Pranks To Pull In Class On April Fools Day 1. Write mean things about your classmates on the chalkboard before class, but before they show up... ERASE THEM! 2. Leave to go to the bathroom... BUT GO CHECK YOUR E-MAIL INSTEAD! 3. Raise your hand, and then when the professor calls on you... PRETEND YOU WERE JUST SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD! 4. Instead of sitting in your assigned seat... MOVE ONE SEAT TO THE LEFT! 5. Spend the whole class looking like you're typing your notes... BUT NEVER TURN THE COMPUTER ON! 6. Bring the right casebook... TO THE WRONG CLASS! 7. Don't do the reading... UNLESS YOU'RE ON PANEL! 8. Replace the professor's white chalk with a piece of... COLORED CHALK! 9. Show up to class... THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LATE! 10. Go up to the professor after class... AND ASK HIM A STUPID QUESTION YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO! Wednesday, March 31, 2004
From the hypothetical "World's Worst Automated Telephone System" : Press "1" for Accounts ReceivableTen?? Hmmm. Didn't even realize this was a career. I'm on a couple of alumni e-mail lists from Princeton, and on one of them there was just a post: My daughter will be entering her senior year.... She is very much interested in an internship/apprenticeship this summer, anywhere in the U.S., in the field of glassblowing. She is very serious about glassblowing as a career.... If anyone has any leads or ideas...Hmmm. Glassblowing as a career. Interesting. Sounds like fun. And never a question about what gifts to give on holidays and birthdays. "Thanks so much for the vase! I put it right next to the candy dish and the candlestick holder! And the other seven vases!" How Appalling reports on a post I had up for about an hour last night before I realized I was just tired and not making much sense, and I'd be better off deleting it. His (or her) post explains my post pretty well, which was basically that it kind of bothered me that someone would say that its site, which has been up for a week and is essentially a one-joke parody of Howard Bashman's How Appealing is funnier than mine, because, while it's amusing, it probably can't sustain for much longer, and is kind of mean-spirited anyway because Howard is a real person and not a faceless corporate institution. Whatever. I took Overpundit's post too personally and it's not a big deal, and that's why I deleted the post.... UPDATE: Overpundit makes nice in a follow-up post. UPDATE 2: How Appalling makes nice too. Random stuff: 1. It's interesting how different cities have different quirks of law. Like in Boston, all restaurant menus contain a warning about eating raw and undercooked food, and how that might not be so good for you. Even places where nothing on the menu ought to be raw or undercooked (as opposed to sushi places), there's still that unnerving warning, forcing me to check my chicken just a few too many times. But in New York, instead we get signs in bathrooms about how employees must wash their hands -- because it's the law. If I owned a restaurant, I'd be a little peeved if my employees only washed their hands after going to the bathroom because it's the law. In fact, I'd want to put up a sign that says "Our employees would wash their hands even if it wasn't the law, because they don't want to get their pee in your food." Only I'd say it more tastefully. When I was in DC for a few weeks last summer, the only quirk I remember noticing is that they made a big deal about not leaving behind any "articles" on the subway. Which made me extra-cautious with my Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated (no, I don't read The New Yorker and Harper's Weekly... I'm just not that cultured). Ah, federalism. Without it, every state would have the same warnings and customs, and that wouldn't be much fun, now would it? Tuesday, March 30, 2004
"Yo Momma" jokes that are only funny to law students, and even then not so much, inspired by this uninspired line I tossed off in conversation this evening, and which actually got a pretty charitable response compared to what I thought it deserved as I said it: "The professor's so old, we know he clerked for Justice Harlan, but we're not sure which one." "Yo Momma's so poor she can't afford to file for bankruptcy." "Yo Momma's so fat she wants to sue McDonalds but can't get up off the couch to file the lawsuit." "Yo Momma's so stupid she doesn't know the difference between rational basis review and strict scrutiny." "Yo Momma's so mentally ill she might actually have a reason to plead insanity instead of just faking it to get out of jail." "Yo Momma's so deformed that if she had a skin graft operation that made hair grow out of her hands, it would be an improvement." "Yo Momma's so tired she couldn't even do twelve pages of Con Law reading before falling asleep last night." "Yo Momma's so sad she makes first-year associates look like they just won the lottery." "Yo Momma's so fat or stupid or both she had to take the LSAT twice just to get scores that added up to her weight." Monday, March 29, 2004
Every time I'm home on a break, there's always a little something new to see. When I came home for winter break, we had a new back porch. Last summer, we got a DVD player for the first time. And last spring I discovered that my mom had bought new toilet seats for the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. This time, it's TiVo. Well, almost TiVo. They switched from Cablevision to DirectTV, because it's cheaper, and DirectTV came with a TiVo-like digital video recording system, and even the TiVo remote control that the New York Times lauded a few months ago in an article I'd link to if it wasn't too far in the archives to make it cost money (but you can find it on Lexis for sure). I like TiVo (and I'm going to call it TiVo instead of DirectTV, because that's who makes it and it's really what it is), but I thought I'd like it more. I have some friends who have it, and love it. I'm intrigued by the ability to pause live television, and then come back and watch it about 10 minutes behind so you can fast forward through all of the commercials. The ability to record a "season pass" of every new episode of a program is cool. The ease of use, to set up recording, or to play something back, is fine -- although I'm okay with programming a normal VCR, so this isn't really doing all that much for me. And, as the Times promised, the remote control is nicely contoured and easy to use (although the TV-power-on button is really hard to find if you don't know where it is, and flummoxed me for a good three or four minutes). What I expect is sort of cool is the TiVo recommendations, where it gives you programs based on what you've already recorded. My mom turned that feature off because it was giving her stuff in Spanish for no reason she could come up with. But I've turned it back on while I'm home, because I'm curious what it will give me, now that I've recorded The Apprentice, a "freeview" concert on the "music choice" channel, and a few episodes of a show I read about on the Sundance Channel called Tanner '88, a fictional behind-the-scenes "documentary" of a presidential campaign, that initially ran on HBO in 1988 and is written by Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) and directed by Robert Altman (famous movies I can't name). They had 4 episodes back-to-back (-to-back-to-back) on yesterday and I recorded them. I've watched one and it was okay, but didn't compel me to immediately watch the rest, although I'm sure I'll get to them before the week is through. But it strikes me that there's nothing *bad* about TiVo -- they've done a very good job creating a set of features no one can really dislike. It's not like a computer, where you have to learn stuff and buy stuff and plug stuff in, and do all sorts of time-intensive activities at the start that can make it prohibitively painful to start -- although obviously computers have enough benefits that many, many, many people have decided it's worth the initial investment to become able to use one. But TiVo presents none of those problems, and although the upside isn't like what you can get out of a computer, it's reasonably cool. So I expect this will become standard stuff pretty soon. Man, this post isn't funny at all except for the gratuitous toilet mention up top. Oh well, yesterday's was hopefully funny, and maybe something later. Sunday, March 28, 2004
They’re telling us that next week, we’ll be given course selection information for next year. Due to an obscure provision of the Privacy in Information Act, I’ve been able to get my hands on a copy of the course catalog prior to its official release at a press conference next Monday, which will be attended by dignitaries from around the world along with former child stars Danica McKellar and Rider Strong. My advance copy has allowed me to preview some of the upcoming courses in the space below. Janet Jackson’s Wardrobe Malfunction and Other Issues in Media Law and Regulation Visiting Professor George Carlin Prof. Carlin, who is currently appearing in the hit film “Jersey Girl,” starring Ben Affleck and featuring Jennifer Lopez (but she dies within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, obviously), will be offering this course, which will examine (over and over again) Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “overexposure” in order to determine how the law should treat naked body parts on television, and whether we ought to create a big, long code that will flummox future generations of lawyers. (This course will be rated TV-MA for adult language, sexual situations, and, despite the pleadings of the faculty committee, occasional full-frontal nudity by Prof. Carlin.) Losing Election Law Visiting Professor Howard Dean Prof. Dean, who will also be teaching a class at the Medical School titled, “It’s Not Easy To Restart Your Medical Practice When Much Of America Thinks You’re Kind Of Loony,” offers a course that examines new law that could be enacted to help losing candidates turn their fortunes around despite massive media mishaps that turn the public against them. Among the legal regimes discussed: banning voters from voting for anyone but Howard Dean, erasing people’s memories, turning back time, and more easily translating fanatic Internet support to actual votes. The course will have a companion weblog, which will get more hits than there are people on the planet but still not increase enrollment beyond three or four liberal nutcases. Child Pornography Visiting Professors Paul Reubens and Michael Jackson Professors Reubens and Jackson, who will team-teach the course in a fully-equipped bedroom rigged with cameras, in front of a live studio audience of ten-year-olds, will announce the complete syllabus later, but want to emphasize that this will be a hands-on class. Students with children of their own are especially invited to enroll and add their unique perspectives. Securities Regulation Visiting Professor Martha Stewart Prof. Stewart acknowledges that many students may be more comfortable taking this class from a more familiar professor, especially since the law school does have a number of talented and experienced scholars in the area. However, she promises to provide food and drink at every class meeting, adorn the classroom with pleasant furnishings and fragrant greenery, and give every student the tools to make his or her own decorative book jacket, to hide how boring Securities Regulation really is. Expect to do “five to ten” hours of outside work per week for the class. The class will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, but not “Fraud”-days. Prof. Stewart apologizes for that not at all being a funny joke. Other offerings not funny enough to get a whole paragraph: Animal Law Visiting Professor Roy Horn Narcotics Regulation Visiting Professor Whitney Houston Seminar on Gay Marriage Visiting Lecturer Jerry Falwell Carbohydrate Law Visiting Professor Ghost of Robert Atkins Saturday, March 27, 2004
From the mailbag: I'm an avid reader of your blog, and I was just wondering if you'd give a shout out to me on it! Say sometimes like, "I give a shoutout to the coolest Californian Filipina I know, Paula Nuguid."I'm pretty sure you really are the coolest Californian Filipina I know, Paula. OK. If you're not a baseball fan, this post just won't be very interesting to you. I posted something possibly-amusing about law school a few hours ago, so you can just scroll on down to that (or click here to let your browser do the work for you. I just finished my 5th of 5 fantasy baseball drafts. Although no one cares but me, I figured I'd write something up in summary. Reds OF Austin Kearns has the distinction of being the only player on all 5 of my teams. Probably means I'm overvaluing him, but that's OK. Royals SP Jeremy Affeldt, Angels RP Francisco Rodriguez, Blue Jays RP Aquilino Lopez, and Indians RP David Riske are each on 4 of my teams. With Riske and Lopez, it illustrates my usual strategy of going with risky young closers after the Gagnes and Smoltzes of the world have been taken, instead of using a high-round pick on one, or grabbing mid-tier closers like Benitez or Hoffman. Although, I did end up with Mariano Rivera on 2 teams, and Arthur Rhodes, Jason Isringhausen, Joe Borowski, and Troy Percival on one team each. Also Ryan Wagner on two teams, and Damaso Marte, Jose Valverde and Rafael Soriano on one team each, in leagues that count holds. My final round pick in another hold league was David Weathers; I also have Mike Timlin in that league. And I think that rounds out my entire bullpen. I have a handful of players each on three teams -- Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Brandon Webb, and Javy Lopez. With the exception of Lopez, who in each case I grabbed because if I didn't take him I'd end up without a top tier catcher -- I have Varitek and Kendall on the other two teams; I probably spend too many picks considering position scarcity too heavily... unless there are some real deals available, I tend to try and fill my infield before my outfield. Affeldt, Santana, Peavy, and Webb show my bias toward young starting pitchers. Young players in general I guess -- the relievers I took were mostly young too. I like when there's upside. I don't even rank players like Jamie Moyer, Garret Anderson, Kevin Millwood -- too predictable; low risk but low reward. Roy Oswalt, who's one of my favorite players, largely because I drafted him on a bunch of teams the last few years and he did well, only fell to me once -- he kept being "next on my list" and someone else would grab him. I've got Rich Harden on two teams, Tim Redding on two teams, and Kerry Wood on one. Missed out on Prior. Last year I had Zito on a bunch of my teams; this year I have Tim Hudson on two. Didn't plan on it, but ended up grabbing Kevin Brown on two teams, when he fell unjustifiably low. I have Randy Wolf and Matt Morris on one team each, and, with early-round picks, grabbed Pedro Martinez in one league, and Javier Vazquez and Randy Johnson in rounds two and three of the sixteen-team draft I just finished... the league counts strikeouts, and I felt they were both the best available players at that point, even though I had no plans to grab either one. I thought I'd end up with Miguel Batista on more than one team, but I kept waiting too long, so only grabbed him once. And I've got Ted Lilly on one team. I had him on a lot more than that last year, and he was okay... but I thought he'd be better. Carlos Beltran is one of my favorite players, because of the power-speed combo. But he went in the first round in 4 of my 5 drafts -- I took him in the second round in the 5th league. Bobby Abreu is also one of my favorites, and also just ended up with him in one league. Besides Kearns, who's on all 5 teams, the only outfielders I have in more than one league are Geoff Jenkins (2), Magglio Ordonez (2), and Adam Dunn (2). Vladimir Guerrero and Manny Ramirez fell to me the second round of one league each; I grabbed Griffey late in one league, Jim Edmonds in another, and grabbed Suzuki in the 8th round on one team. I have Larry Walker on two teams, Carl Crawford on one team, and, in one deep league, Jason Bay, Jay Gibbons, and Bobby Kielty as outfielders 4-6. In the infield, second base seemed especially shallow this year. I ended up with Alfonso Soriano as my first round pick in two leagues, and grabbed Marcus Giles in two others. In the fifth, and as a backup in another, I have Ray Durham, who's at least steady if not spectacular. And I have Vidro and Brian Roberts each in one league. At shortstop I took A-Rod as my first round pick in two leagues (one where I was seeded first; the other third, but Bonds and Pujols were the first two to go), and have Furcal in two and Reyes in one league. At third base I wanted Chavez, but ended up with Rolen in two leagues, Blalock in two, and Dmitri Young in one league, out of desperation (and Morgan Ensberg snatched up by the guy who picked prior to me). At first base, I got Helton with pick 5 in one league -- hadn't planned on that, since there are so many solid first basemen, but OBP and SLG are two of the stats, and Helton's numbers are so huge. I have Mike Sweeney (so many Royals... him, Beltran, Affeldt...) in two leagues, and I have Huff, Millar, and Fullmer in one league. Josh Phelps as a utility guy in two leagues, and Edgar Martinez in one. 5 teams, 72 total players to root for. Fun! The blog myoclonic has a list of the most overused phrases in law school. His/her picks include "with all due respect," "reasonably foreseeable," "reification," and then a bunch of phrases I've never ever ever heard, like "lacuna in the law" (???) and "disjunctive element" (?). I like the idea, so I'm going to steal it. Jeremy's Most Overused Law School Phrases -- Objective manifestation of subjective intent -- Excuse me, I think you're sitting in my seat. -- Three-pronged test -- Well, I happen to think... -- Strict scrutiny -- Why is attendance so low today? -- According to the dissent... -- Will this be on the exam? -- Rules versus standards -- Is that a highlighter in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? -- Known or should have known -- I think that's Bluebook rule 14.5 -- The time-value of money -- I'm sorry, I just had some cafeteria food and need to go vomit. -- Administrability -- According to my student loan officer... -- Promotes the alienability of property -- Could you call on someone else? I didn't get a chance to do the reading. -- One hundred percent of students received job offers last year -- No, I'm sorry, that's incorrect -- This meeting will be mandatory -- Here's another hypothetical... -- Please stop playing solitaire in class -- Okay, let's take a ten-minute break and when we come back we'll move on to the next case. Friday, March 26, 2004
Any Blue Jays fans out there will want to check out this long but excellent season preview. Link courtesy of The Hardball Times. Also for baseball fans: tomorrow afternoon I have my fifth (and final) fantasy baseball draft of the pre-season (yes, I know I am slightly obsessed, but I will stop writing about fantasy baseball once the season starts, I promise)... I'm hoping to write up some sort of draft success/failure wrap-up that will also serve as a baseball season preview of sorts. Expect that Monday or Tuesday. Other posts-in-the-pipeline news (clearly I'm stretching for inspiration here, and kind of want to go to sleep...) -- course selection for next year is coming soon; as soon as the registrar posts a catalog online, I expect to be able to milk that for some fun posts. Also, I had dinner with a pair of fellow bloggers tonight that I'd hadn't met before and one of the topics that came up was how blogging about goup blogging can be fun, so maybe I'll write something up about the ill-fated En Banc, or the hopefully-better-fated De Novo (which, incidentally, is still looking for people interested in writing something for our Internet Law & Society symposium coming on April 5. E-mail me if you want to write something we might want to post there -- whether you're a fellow blogger or just a reader). The Office of Public Interest Advising just sent out a job listing for a summer position in Newark, NJ that ends with the line, "For those unfamiliar with Newark, it is located 7 miles from Manhattan and is only a 15 minute train ride away." How about this: "For those unfamiliar with Newark, you probably want to stay that way." My description is probably more accurate. Sorry, Newark. Also: courtesy of Scheherazade, check out Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974. It sounds uncompelling, but it's really, really funny. Laugh out loud even though there's no one else here funny. Thursday, March 25, 2004
Angry Book Review Trading Up: The New American Luxury, by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske The authors of "Trading Up" should be forced to "Trade Down" and go live in a housing project for a couple of years. The book is a well-researched, well-written, nauseating celebration of the wasteful and overindulgent consumer culture in America. Victoria's Secret. Panera Bread. Williams-Sonoma. Belvedere Vodka. What these companies (and more) have in common is that they're of marginally higher quality than their competitors, but through manipulative branding that takes advantage of people's emotional needs and desires, they're able to raise their price points and "rocket" to huge profits off the demand curve. I don't dispute the book -- I think the authors have done a fantastic job identifying what it is companies like The Cheesecake Factory and Callaway Golf and Samuel Adams beer are doing: making high-quality products, and pitching them as lifestyle choices, as more than just "things you buy" but as part of what gives you an identity and what makes you feel good about your consumption -- but the tone of the book is kind of sickening; it's a celebration of consumer manipulation and of shrewd branding that makes people feel like consumer products can change their lives. "They are my little mechanical buddies;" "They are part of my family" -- these are people talking about their $2,000 Whirlpool washer and dryer. It's disturbing and sad -- but the book uses these quotes to illustrate a success story. Okay -- it is a success story. But not for society, and not for these people who, because of broader societal issues, are left to rely on their appliances for emotional support. Buying a $50 pair of tongs at Williams-Sonoma does not make me happy, and I think if it does make people happy, then we have things to worry about and shouldn't just be applauding Williams-Sonoma on making consumers believe that their neighbors will think less of them if they buy their tongs at K-Mart. I give the book credit for being awfully thought-provoking -- for getting me to think about these issues, and realize that there are certainly products I buy that I could just as easily buy the generic version of and it wouldn't make a difference. Shampoo comes to mind, actually, although it's an awfully negligible expense in the scheme of things -- not that what I buy is such a luxury brand, but still, I could save $2.00 if I bought the CVS bottle next to it, and I'm sure there's a negligible difference if any. But reading this book makes me want to never buy a brand name anything again, and scold people for reaching for the finely milled pet food when Walmart's Ol' Red will do just fine, and actually makes me angry that we live in a world where the thought of consumer products filling emotional needs is lauded and not shamefully disturbing. After a subway ride, bus ride, subway ride, bus ride, and short car ride (total trvael time: a shade under 6 hours), I have made the journey from school to home, and I suppose it's now Spring Break. My first Spring Break activity is a dental appointment at 5:30. My second Spring Break activity is taking my grandmother to the supermarket. My third Spring Break activity will probably involve another weblog post. :) Two things I'm looking forward to about Spring Break: 1. Seeing friends (and family) I haven't seen since winter break 2. Being able to watch Mets games on TV (even if they're only spring training games) More later. Wednesday, March 24, 2004
I just returned from the law school newspaper's newsroom. I say "newsroom," but it's really more like a "room" where there are some computers, a printer, and a small handful of people. Small handful for former baseball pitcher Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, that is. Anyway, in addition to writing my column, I'm "copy editor," which I may or may not have mentioned before but probably not since it's usually not that interesting. So I read everything and put some extra commas in, and then I leave and the other people add some misspellings to make it look like I haven't been doing my job. Anyway ("will he get to the point of this story already???), usually I get down there at about 4:30 and there's a person or two and a half a newspaper laid out so I can start reading stuff. Today there was no one there, and the door was locked. But I have a key. So I went in, and saw on the computer that only two pages had been laid out -- 4 opinion columns. "Hmmm," I thought. "No one's here, and there's not much of a paper... running late, or no issue this week but they just didn't tell the columnists?" You should already have some idea what the answer is, or there wouldn't be much of a story, would there? So I figured either way I'd copyedit what was there, so I did, and then checked e-mail, and checked e-mail again, and checked some more e-mail. And then the editor in chief came in and said there's no paper this week because Spring Break is next week, and so people may not bother picking up a copy before they leave... and that'll make it relevant... and whatever, not a big deal. Oh well. But the real point of my story (you mean this whole thing is just a prelude to the actual point???) is that in about a half hour I will return to the "newsroom" where we will do elections for next year. There are three positions that get elected: publisher, editor-in-chief, and business manager. There are two candidates for editor-in-chief (I am neither of them), and zero candidates for the other two positions. The other jobs -- news editor, editorial page editor, copy editor, photo editor, food editor, film editor, biased-coverage-of-law-review editor, promoting-his-own-political-agenda - at-one-of-the-extremes - although-it-doesn't-really-matter-which-one editor, music editor, and features editor (although we lived without features editor this year) -- are all appointed by the editor in chief and are usually picked out of the flurry of applications that are submitted prior to the election so as to be waiting in a pile for the new editor-in-chief to peruse. I submitted an application for editorial page editor. The pile of total applications for the half-dozen or so positions in my list I wasn't making up numbers one. Including mine. So clearly there's some sort of interest problem at the newspaper. Nobody seems to want to be involved. This is somewhat baffling to me, since the newspaper is one of the six or eight activities I'm involved in that I most enjoy being a part of. But my list of activities includes pretty much everything without the word "legal" in its description, so maybe that explains it. But even if you're here because you want to be the next Oliver Wendell Holmes, you do law all day -- why not do some less-law extracurricular activities? For fun. And because there are lots of smart people here, who I'm sure no matter how passionate they are about the law, also have other interests. Or they used to. And maybe they're just getting their fulfillment in non-law-school activities, or in stuff I don't know about, or non-law stuff I just don't happen to be that interested in. But I feel like we should be able to muster more than 3 or 4 or 5 interested students from among a student body of 1800. When Aaron Gleeman* can't get on the sports staff of his college newspaper, but at Harvard Law School we can't fill two out of three elected positions of leadership, something seems messed up. *Aaron Gleeman, who I've almost linked to a couple of times but I don't think I ever have actually, is a college student who writes a baseball weblog that's awfully solid. It's well-written and really pretty compelling, possibly even if you're not in five fantasy baseball leagues. Anyway, he's written a couple of times about trying to get on his college paper's sports staff (University of Minnesota) but it's really competitive and there are no spots, even though he's clearly a solid writer and deserves one. My only point is that people who can write well, wanting to write and not being able to is the opposite of here, where no one wants to do anything. That's all. |
