Happy Fourth of July

From sea to shining sea...and to those overseas as well!

Quizzie Time: Decades Gone By

Loosely (very loosely) inspired by this post and exchange:

The Thirties. Take this quiz!

That's reasonably close. I would've said '30s/'40s. Or as the Little Brother once said, "You were born old." Thanks, bro. It's true, though.


And on an even more random note...

What Kitchen Utensil are You?

Hmm. I'd have said "bowl" because I use them much more often than plates. I guess I do have a tendency to expound whilst cooking, a natural outgrowth of which includes emphatic gesticulation while holding cutlery. Knives are pretty darned useful, too, though.

Theory vs. Practice

Gee.

Relief

I admit it: not being the World's Greatest Law Student frequently worries me. I fret that this means I won't be the World's Greatest Lawyer, and will therefore not have a job, &c., &c. (I never claimed this was a rational fear.)

However, as the Great and Wise Nomad Mom--who would be an outstanding President but who'll never take the job--is wont to say, "if Ted Kennedy can make it through, so can you." Just now, I've come across another weapon for her arsenal for whenever I end up taking the bar and if, God forbid, I ever end up in a courtroom due to some truly evil stroke of misfortune:

But the hype was at times nearly overwhelming. To take just one example, it was often said that Mrs. Clinton had been judged one of the top lawyers in America. But both books point out that she failed the District of Columbia bar exam when she took it fresh out of Yale Law School. (Bernstein’s recounting of her years at Yale give the impression that she trained as much to be a social worker as a lawyer.) Of the 817 people who took the exam with Mrs. Clinton, Bernstein tells us, 551 — that’s 67 percent — passed, “most from law schools less prestigious than Yale.” The fact that Mrs. Clinton failed is not a scoop — after keeping it a secret for many years, she revealed it in a little-noticed
passage of her memoir, Living History — but it will receive new attention now. (She was also, by the way, unimpressive in the courtroom, and Bernstein reports that her worried Rose Law Firm partners “began steering her practice toward nonjury work.”)

Phew! I feel better already. Don't worry, though--I've no plans to run for Senate, President, or First Lady of anything, or even to try a hand at cattle futures. In all fairness* to HRC, though, hindsight appears to offer a cautionary lesson on hype for aspiring political power brokers: very few of those aspirants will in practice be consistently brilliant strategists or truly great politicians.

*However, having one's White House portrait painted with one's hand on one's book is, well, tacky. On that point, I am unshakeable.

With Bated Breath

I hope these bettors are wide of the Mark:

Bookies are certain Harry's a goner.

William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, is so sure of Harry's demise that it stopped accepting wagers and shifted betting to the possible killers. Lord Voldemort, who murdered Potter's parents, is the most likely villain, at 2-1 odds, followed by Professor Snape, one of his teachers, at 5-2.

``Every penny was on Harry dying, and it became untenable,'' said Rupert Adams, a William Hill spokesman. ``People are obsessed about this book.''

[...] Rowling has refused to give any clues about which characters will be killed off. Writing on her Web site last month, she asked people not to spoil the ending for fans by speculating about the outcome.

``I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going,'' she wrote May 14.

I do hope Harry survives, but as I always tell amused friends, I'll be even more devastated if Ron & Hermione die. I say "Ron & Hermione" because I think they are entertwined and one will not survive the end without the other. (Yes, I know, hopelessly sappy romantic.) I have only a few other simple requirements for JKR:

At least some of the Weasleys must survive.

And perhaps the most important of all, Remus must live, marry Tonks, and live happily ever after, because no one deserves it more.

But as for Harry's fate? You'll find no opinion here! Honestly, I enjoy reading and listening to others' predictions, but I've tried hard not to formulate any of my own speculations on that point. (Which is probably to everyone's surprise.) This time, I don't want predictions to burden the reading experience; I want to see what JKR has been plotting all these years.

HT: Marginal Revolution

Two Separate Thank-Yous

One:

I hope this means that both Rosie and The View can now slide back into their respective obscurity, and nevermore will I be subjected to news reports of "what ridiculous, and occasionally physics-defying, twaddle Rosie held forth on today" or, really, any other "who said what on The View." (Honestly. Women. I swear...) O Bliss! Nevermore!

Two--and significantly more important:

Thank you, on this Memorial Day, to the thousands upon thousands of brave men and women who have given life, limb, and sacred honor to defend this beloved country. "Thank you" is too small and insignificant, but it is the best we can do in honor of your heroism and sacrifice, of what you have done for us and for peoples around the world, and for what you continue to do.

Happiness is...

Sticky kisses. (The hardworking Little Bro will appreciate this.)

Real Men Do Not...An Occasional Series, Parts 1 & 2

Real men do not...

1. Wear fuchsia.

2. Tattoo enormous angel wings across their backs. (And if, for some wholly inexplicable reason, they have such a tattoo, they ought not jog by me, shirtless. Twice.)

Ha! (ish)

Well, it may be entirely possible to think one has a quasi-decent understanding of assorted international agreements--TRIPs! Paris Convention! Berne Convention! Patent Cooperation Treaty!--or to think one does, and yet to know that it is equally possible to have answered every single exam question incorrectly.* However, I did correctly answer that Canada is the 2nd largest country in terms of area, unlike a gaggle of TV anchors. Ha! Small victories.

*Actually, I think I got one right. The other 19, not so sure. Fortunately, most everyone else was probably in the same boat.

Observations over Ice Cream

I'm not persuaded that Segolene Royal's economics are much more than wishful thinking (I grant you I'm watching a translation, y no hablo el frances), but I am persuaded of her excellent taste in blouses.

Difficult Questions

Do I love Trip Tucker III Enterprise enough to purchase Seasons 1-4?

Update: Ayuh, apparently I do!

Hereby and Forthwith Concluded

Perhaps I should not be allowed to chose my own topics, for I shall inevitably have chosen something much better suited for a dissertation, without realizing it upfront.

Manual Gaming Gone Wild

Rock, paper, scissors? You ain't seen nuthin' yet. I'm not at all familiar with Lovecraft, but seriously, how does this not sound fun?

From the RPS-101 Outcome Guide: Chainsaw DICES Turnip, Turnip STAINS Cup, Cup HOLDS Beer, Beer AFFECTS Chainsaw USE. Wow.

Delightfully nerdy. (Would 'Mesh prove to be the champion of this game, too?)

Not a Popularity Contest

This is a refreshingly realistic observation:

I am somewhat pleased by the fact that very few of the frontrunners in either party are particularly likeable. We have had 7 elections in a row in which we were supposed to
care about how much we "liked" the candidates [...]
[...]

We're not electing a dad or a mom or a best friend. We're electing someone who is supposed to: show up on time and sober every day, even when he's on vacation; work his (or her) tail off; juggle an enormous amount of responsibility; use good judgment with little information or time to respond; appoint reasonably competent people
to wield enormous (and sometimes lifetime) power; engage in hardball political negotiations with a sometimes-hostile and sometimes-stupid Congress.

I want a competent President who uses his head and who, at least occasionally, sees things "my way". I don't care if he or she is a jerk.

Quite so. We're electing a President, not a Prom King.

Quizzie Time: L.M. Montgomery

Which L.M. Montgomery Heroine are You?

Way to make my morning!

TT Ben

Reflections

What's in a compliment?

I don't mean a throwaway "Cute shoes!" or an "I love that dress!" but rather a real, substanative compliment, one you will never forget and will always strive to fulfill because it concerns a trait or goal you value most highly. Though the speaker probably didn't know it would strike you so deeply, it did... And you gathered it into your head and heart so that you might try to incorporate it in order to one day be more deserving. In nearly twenty six years, I can think of exactly two--which is probably as it ought to be, else one's head should be sorely swelled.

Funny things, words.

Where I wanna be...

Springtime in Princeton. Funny how just a picture can bring back all the emotions associated with this time of year there...for Yours Truly, it was always intensely bittersweet. It still is...and being unable to go to Reunions this year doesn't help any. Next year, though, next year.

Thanks to TH.

Q: Who could possibly have predicted this?

A: Pretty much anyone with a pulse. See "Well I'll Be Darned -- Norks Ignore Deadline to Shut Down Nuke Plant." (Don't you just love Andy McCarthy?) As a friend once remarked, Kim Jong Il may be nuts, but he knows what he wants and is acting very rationally. Et voila... Some days ago--maybe it was last week?--C-SPAN2 had on a panel discussion regarding NK, and one of the panelists drily remarked that it would be very interesting if someone were to do the research to find an agreement of any kind, nuclear or otherwise, that NK had actually ever followed. Indeed it would.

Nor is it difficult to predict that Ahmadinejad & co. have been taking copious notes for quite some time. Whatever else they may be, naive and stupid they are not, particularly given their most recent success.

SmorgasBorge

Happy April Fools', y'all!

Some year I'll remember to plan some sort of practical joke, but this year, it will have to be someone else's wit instead. A few days ago, I was noodling around YouTube, looking for Victor Borge clips to show El Novio, and I was pleasantly surprised to find several.

For your April Fools' amusement, some vintage Borge--comedy with a musical touch:

Hungarian Rhapsody

Two versions of "Phonetic Punctuation"

Czardas duet-duel

Intro (in Minneapolis) Parts 1 and 2

Warning: since this is comedy from a slightly different day and age, you may find it lacking in shock and offense. You may, however, laugh anyway.

Yip, yip, yip

For the Nomad Little Bro: little Flat-coat furballs.

The Hammie and The Broccoli

I used to use the expression "toe-wigglingly happy," though I think people found it puzzling. But no more! With this expert demonstration by a wee hamster experiencing the transcendent joys of His First Broccoli, the days of befuddlement are ended!

Courtesy of Cute Overload, purveyor extraordinaire of warm fuzzies and the greatest site on the interwebs.

Fusion Flauting

Despite my firm--nay, passionate and immutable--string loyalties, I do think this "beatbox flute" concept is creative and well-done...as well as very entertaining listening:



That and I have a soft spot for Axel Foley and the Beverly Hills Cop theme.

Quizzie Time: Tarot Card

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

h/t Jeff the Baptist

Hmm.

Is there anyone who actually adores writing research proposals? I'm going to guess no...

Teensy Study Break

I saw printouts of these lying in the building printer this morning and thought they were entirely too funny (and entirely too true!) not to pass on:

Application for a Boys' Night Out
Application for a Girls' Night Out

Hehe...Yes, I'm sure those have likely been floating around in cyberspace for years, but (1) they're still hilarious and (2) see blog subtitle above.

Movies that Move Men?

From the Amazon.com Screening Room Blog:

The Today show conducted a survey that stated guys actually enjoy "chick flicks." That's all well and good, because far be it for us gals to stereotype what gets men choked up. Yet, looking at their Top 7 Movies That Make Guys Cry list, something seems amiss. Do guys really know guys who cried in The Notebook? In Titanic? In even Gladiator?The rest of their top four are Dead Poets Society, Rudy, Saving Private Ryan, and Legends of the Fall.

Intriguing! I have to agree: a few of the titles Today lists don't really seem to belong on that list. For the male reader(s) out there, which is more correct, the Today list or the Amazon list? Do both miss the boat? What movies, if any, have tugged at your heartstrings or have otherwise strongly affected you emotionally? Why? By all means, please weigh in; I'd love to hear!

Yes, I looked for a video clip of the classic Tom Hanks/Victor Garber "Dirty Dozen" scene from Sleepless in Seattle (possibly one of the Nomad Dad's favorite movie moments ever), but couldn't seem to find one floating around there on teh interwebs. I would've figured it would be out there. Anyone else know where one is?

Bernard Lewis Lecture & New AEI Mag

While poking around online to see whether AEI had put up its own video of Bernard Lewis' 2007 Irving Kristol Award Lecture, which I watched on CSPAN 2 last night--which I hope they do eventually--I noticed that AEI is producing (has released) a new magazine in print and online, The American. Undoubtedly everyone else is already aware of this and I'm behind the times as usual! Thought I'd mention it anyway. Since I really should go feed fish and work on writing my due-uncomfortably-soon prelim that has repeatedly gotten second billing to this semester's plentiful and substantial academic obligations, I only perused the titles; nevertheless, it looks promising. Whoever does have time, go forth and read.

Stop the Presses

Slackenerney...writes a thesis?? Now there's a plot twist for you!

At any rate, perhaps that will reassure El Novio: if even Mike Slackenerney can write a thesis, I'm sure I can too, someday. (I don't think you're actually reading this, but you can be reassured all the same.) Today, however, is not that day.

What's Leubh Got to Do With It?

In honor of Valentine's Day and celebrations everywhere of love and/or flowers and sweetened fat in the form of chocolate--70% dark, please!--John McWhorter discusses a bit of the history of that certain feeling:

Recently I was on a panel about language "usage and abusage." The idea was for me and three other language specialists to answer the audience's questions about why there is such an epidemic of "sloppy grammar" afoot in America. "Why are people using interface as a verb?" "What's with ‘nucular'"? [...]

The reality that animals and plants have changed eternally has gained a pride of place in enlightened conversation, such that creationism is on the defensive. On the other hand, the general public has yet to join the 21st or even 20th century when it comes to language. The educated person is taught that a language is something enshrined in its "right" form in dictionaries and Strunk & White, such that any departures from this book and guide are "mistakes."

In fact, it is every bit as inherent and inevitable for languages to change as it is for animals and plants to. What we are taught to recognize as "mistakes" are simply tomorrow's version of the language.

Valentine's Day provides an object lesson, in that humble yet marvelous word — love. A simple, proper word, some might believe. But, in fact, like all words, it has a chaotic mess of a history.

It is one of several offshoots of a little piece of lexical kudzu that some bands of land-hungry Neolithic farmers infected in Europe. We only know so much about them. Apparently they were eager to make the world safe for horses, wheels, and patrilineal inheritance, and they emerged either on the steppes of southern Russia or in what is now Turkey. But the language they brought with them when they spread westward into Europe is the seed for most of today's European languages.

In that language there was a word, leubh, that meant "to care" or "to approve of." In each region of Europe these people's language spread throughout, leubh settled in with them and morphed into different shapes and meanings, rather like Web log became blog.

By two millennia ago, this was happening to leubh in the language that was soon to become "Englisc." The word love was one outcome — one may well have love for something that one cares for or approves of. Love was as a noun, but quickly started being used as a verb as well. That is, when you say, "I love you" to someone, you are using a word that began as a noun just as fax, interface, and green-light did.

Yet we would have little interest in an early Englisc-speaking shepherd scolding us for using love as a verb. And love was only part of the story anyway. Meanwhile leubh also morphed into what we know as leave — not as in departing, but as in the archaic expression "I give you leave to … ," or in other words, it meant "approval." This leave is more alive to us as it was bound into the word belief — belief means approval. Like other nouns, belief was turned into the verb believe.

Plus, notice the jump from leubh to leave: people started "mispronouncing" leubh just as you-know-who pronounces nuclear as nucular. But the planet keeps spinning and we have no sense that the "proper" pronunciation of belief is "beleubh." It was the same with the transformation of leubh into love. Every time we say love or belief, we are, technically, mispronouncing leubh!

[...] One could note that the word love is the descendant of an ancient word that contained within it desire, approval, belief, and permission. That's sweet, but a tad antimacassar.

The word love that we will hear in such proliferation today is one dollop of restless horsemen's heedless splattering, unconcerned with its multifarious fates, of leubh all over Europe.

Ultimate Nose Shot

Because the world's cutest black wet noses are Flat-coat noses!

The Danio Diaries

Since I probably shouldn't be blogging about my own benchtop misadventures research even though it's rather tempting, how about someone else's instead? Ergo, tomorrow morning Keith Cheng is giving Grand Rounds, speaking on "From Cancer Genetics to Surprise Insights into Human Pigmentation from Zebrafish." From the condensed descriptions of what they do:

In order to discover new vertebrate genes that control tissue differentiation, we have performed a screen for histological mutants using larval array technology developed in our laboratory. Both organ-specific and multi-organ mutations were found, including
one with cytological phenotypes highly reminiscent of cancer. We expect the mutations to affect key decision points in processes including cell polarity, cell proliferation, and cell-cell interaction.

Oooh, tissue differentiation! Most interesting, no? Dr. Cheng's most recent Big Splash is the identification of the gene causing the golden mutation in zebrafish, the putative cation exchanger slc24a5. Should be a good talk all around!

Tale of Two Driveways

Mr. Edwards' Builds His Dream House: the Saga Continues. Reminds me a bit of the days back in the 'Bunk & the 'Port. (Which, as an added bonus were practically the safest places to be during the Gulf War.)

So There!

I'm with Jim Geraghty:

Aw, heck, why don't they just introduce a resolution declaring, "We, the Senate, like all the good parts of the war and disapprove of all the bad parts. We demand all credit for anything that goes right, and reject any blame for anything that goes wrong"?

If only. Think how educational, how enlightening it would be for your constituencies--oh wait, no, so much for that idea.

(One Reason) Why I Love Nino

I'm generally not in the habit of laughing when reading for law classes. That goes for Admin as well even though I'm finding it interesting so far, but laugh out loud I just did. The passage responsible for such a phenomenon--? It's as follows, in what I hope is a fair use excerpt, with the amusing part bolded. (I know it's a bit long, but I prefer not to abridge substantially excerpts even more than they already are.) At any rate, I chuckled, though perhaps you mightn't.

In my view, the theoretical justification for Chevron is no different from the theoretical justification for those pre-Chevron cases that sometimes deferred to agency legal determinations. As the D.C. Circuit, quoting the First Circuit, expressed it: "The extent to which courts should defer to agency interpretations of law is ultimately 'a function of Congress' intent on the subject as revealed in the particular statutory scheme at issue.'" An ambiguity in a statute committed to agency implementation can be attributed to either of two congressional desires: (1) Congress intended a particular result, but was not clear about it; or (2) Congress had no particular intent on the subject, but meant to leave its resolution to the agency. When the former is the case, what we have is genuinely a question of law, properly to be resolved by the courts. When the latter is the case, what we have is the conferral of discretion upon the agency, and the only question of law presented to the courts is whether the agency has acted within the scope of its discretion-- i.e., whether its resolution of the ambiguity is reasonable. As I read the history of developments in this field, the pre-Chevron decisions sought to choose between (1) and (2) on a statute-by-statute basis. Hence the relevance of such frequently mentioned factors as the degree of the agency's expertise, the complexity of the question at issue, and the existence of rulemaking authority within the agency. All these factors make an intent to confer discretion upon the agency more likely. Chevron, however, if it is to be believed, replaced this statute-by-statute evaluation (which was assuredly a font of uncertainty and litigation) with an across-the-board presumption that, in the case of ambiguity, agency discretion is meant.

It is beyond the scope of these remarks to defend that presumption (I was not on the court, after all, when Chevron was decided). Surely, however, it is a more rational presumption today than it would have been thirty years ago-- which explains the change in the law. Broad delegation to the Executive is the hallmark of the modern administrative state; agency rulemaking powers are the rule rather than, as they once were, the exception; and as the sheer number of modern departments and agencies suggests, we are awash in agency "'expertise."' If the Chevron rule is not a 100% accurate estimation of modern congressional intent, the prior case-by-case evaluation was not so either--and was becoming less and less so, as the sheer volume of modern dockets made it less and less possible for the Supreme Court to police diverse application of an ineffable rule. And to tell the truth, the quest for the "genuine"' legislative intent is probably a wild-goose chase anyway. In the vast majority of cases I expect that Congress neither (1) intended a single result, nor (2) meant to confer discretion upon the agency, but rather (3) didn't think about the matter at all. If I am correct in that, then any rule adopted in this field represents merely a fictional, presumed intent, and operates principally as a background rule of law against which Congress can legislate.

If that is the principal function to be served, Chevron is unquestionably better than what preceded it. Congress now knows that the ambiguities it creates, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will be resolved, within the bounds of permissible interpretation, not by the courts but by a particular agency, whose policy biases will ordinarily be known. The legislative process becomes less of a sporting event when those supporting and opposing a particular disposition do not have to gamble upon whether, if they say nothing about it in the statute, the ultimate answer will be provided by the courts or rather by the Department of Labor.

Scalia, Judicial Deference to Agency Interpretation of Law, 1989 Duke L.J. 511, 516-517. Hmm. Perhaps you had to be there :)

Perks

Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn't have dismissed a career as a trial lawyer out of hand.

On the other hand, one worries about being disowned for such a thing ;)

Rising Star, Part the Second

Regular readers might remember my mentioning a young violinist several months ago. As it turns out, I recently happened across a flyer indicating that the talented Tai Murray will indeed be playing here in Minneapolis. How cool is that?

As you might imagine, I'm looking forward to the concert :)

"Pigs' Ears"

Since I'm taking Admin Law this semester*, I thought this was an interesting aside on earmarks (regarding the President's SOTU reference thereto), statues, agencies, and the business of enforcing the law:

"[O]ver 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate-they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign
them into law. Yet, they're treated as if they have the force of law."

They're treated as if? That is to say, earmarks do not have the force of law, since "committee reports" are not part of the statutes passed. So who exactly treats them as though they were legal mandates? Why, the executive branch agencies whose funds Congress is appropriating in each spending bill. In other words, the officials who (in general) answer to the president in actually spending the money Congress appropriates-they're the ones who are treating nonstatutory earmarks "as if they have the force of law." Which they don't have.

Could the president then take unilateral action to ignore earmarks and spend the appropriated funds on other agency purposes consistent with each agency's statutory authorizations? It sure looks that way. What keeps presidents from doing this is not any constitutional principle supporting the earmarks practice (and by the way, when did "pork barrel" become "earmarks"? can we call them "pigs' ears"?). It's relationship maintenance between the branches of government, loftily called "comity," which presidents are loath to violate. And agency heads especially hate the idea of ticking off members of Congress.

[...]

"Pigs' ears!" Hmmm. Interesting. I'm only two weeks in, but that sounds all right to me. I admit that until the speech the other night, I was unaware that earmarking practice included extra-statutory insertions: I had oh-so-naively assumed Congress only sneaked them onto bills and the like. Silly me. Although--is extra-statutory placement of earmarks a constitutionally permissible practice?

Regardless, methinks Mr. Franck makes a good point with his final remark.

The end Bush seeks may be frustrated by the means he has recommended. If every earmark gets a vote in Congress, it gets put in the text of the spending bill, and henceforth has statutory protection from executive nullification, since there is no line-item veto, and there won't be one any time soon. If, on the other hand, the president
undertook to spend every dollar appropriated on executive-branch priorities in each agency, ignoring all nonstatutory earmarks, then after the howling died down we might well see some reduction in the magnitude of the practice.

Indeed :)


* If you're interested, my other courses are International Intellectual Property; Law, Biomedicine, and Bioethics; Advanced Human Genetics; and professional ethics for grad students/future researchers.

Welcome, Little One

A warm welcome into the larger world to the littlest Myers--who I hope didn't give his mom too hard a time of it--and a big congrats to his mom and dad!

Driving Dunaway

I don't watch The Apprentice, nor am I likely to do so this season even if it has moved to warmer climes, but I would definitely consider watching if the tasks were more like these (including the comments). Hehe.

I have a sneaking suspicion the Nomad Little Bro & Friends might line up to participate, too...

Ye Mighty

Is there any topic under the sun for which there is no blog or other species of website? One has to wonder. Just now, during a virtual foray regarding a completely different topic, I stumbled across an Egyptology Blog...oh, and there are others, The Eloquent Peasant, for example.

There was a time I wanted to be an Egyptologist, and like so many others, every encounter with the artifacts of that past civilization (including breathlessly narrated television programs) still tugs at my insides and probably always will. If you are also one of those folks, well, enjoy the links!

Snicker-snack

Cool. Alack, if only 'twere not so expensive.

Baby Tiger

Is it possible to be cuter than a baby tiger? Yes...if you're a sleepy baby tiger.



Thanks to CO, of course.

You don't say

Though I saw it here, I enjoyed Flea's "It is almost as if the press has inexplicably chosen not to hold them to account for their own clearly stated beliefs and convictions" so much on this cold, windy morning that I just wanted to add my own little bit of linky love.

Dear Congress, Please Go Home

I think the Nomad Little Bro, a certified econ and finance enthusiast, will find this item particularly interesting. Behold, investment returns from when Congress is in session compared with those from when Congress is out of session.

Hmmmm. Ouch. Surprising? Not very. I can't help but wish law students and law professors were clued into these sorts of things, though. I worry that all too often "regulate!" or "legislate!" is their very first impulse. So she says as she heads to day 1 of Admin Law...

Thoughts from a walk home

It's interesting, the things that pop into your head during a cold, late walk home as you try to ignore the fact that you can feel your face slowly freezing. For instance,

What would happen if a woman had absolutely nothing and no one to henpeck?

I can only imagine that to be an extremely frustrating state of affairs. :)

Those Benchtop Blues

Courtesy of KBee...not only do Ph.D. students have a comic strip to humorously depict our plight*, we apparently have an unofficial theme song as well (or perhaps an epic lament lacking only a hound dog): Ph.D. Blues.

Ph.D. Blues (Prins/Wilhelm)
I'm a Ph.D. student,
I'm working night and day.
I'm writing a dissertation,
and get a lousy pay.

I thought I'd be in business,
but I could not decide.
I waited and I waited,
and ended up in science.

Getting a degree.
If you don't know what to do.
I was looking for adventure
I was looking for the truth.

I started out with reading,
all pieces I could find.
Spent two months at the xerox,
till I was half blind. [Which is what I should be doing. -Ed.]

[...] RTWT

Happily, I'm not yet at jaded and bitter :) That seems to be a later stage of grad student development.

*Yes, yes, I know we chose it. Nevertheless...

For the billionaire, spelunking, BASE-jumping crowd...

...there will be more!! Probably the rest of the world knew this, but I didn't, so I'm going to bounce around enthusiastically anyway. However, memo to Absolutely Everyone Involved with Said Movie: please don't kill it, please? Batman Begins was almost uniformly good and it would be a shame if the sequels didn't live up to that standard, not to mention a waste of some excellent cast members as well. However, I do have faith...after all, Batman went to Princeton.