Terrible Idea (.net)

I’m gearing up to post more regularly, since my post-exam cool-down period is over.  (I just had an image of laying in bed next to my Con Law exam, smoking a cigarette, asking “was good for you, too, baby?”  Hopefully I was… *ahem* big spoon.  I’ll find out in a few months.)

For right now, though, a bit of ill-informed wondering: “McCain Says He Would Put Conservatives on the Supreme Court.”  This headline has been showing up on my Google headlines, in various permutations, for most of today.

Why is this news?  Was there a chance that he wouldn’t appoint conservative judges?  Or is it just that the media feels they have to write something about McCain since Obama and Clinton have been so much in the spotlight with their continuing battle for their party’s nomination, and he happened to provide them with a good soundbite?

Exams are done.  For the next several days, I will be thoroughly engaged in a drunken stupor.  If and when I have occasion to rise from this abysmal state, I will, hopefully, write something.  I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.

My dad is a fairly tech-savvy guy.  Rather than calling to talk to me and find out how my life is going, he will contact me using GChat.  I don’t know how usual or unusual this is for people my age, with parents his age, but I’m impressed by it.  That said, despite his affection for modern means of communication, he still harbors affection for certain… out-moded forms, even when using a decidedly modern one.  Here is a conversation I just had with him over GChat (cleaned up slightly to be more… readable):

Parents: Are chats secure?
Me: no
Me: you can make them secure though
Parents: how?
Parents: write in Latin?
Me: different plug-ins
Me: i wonder if the CIA or the FBI has a latin translation team
Parents: Grandma mihi argentum multum davit.
Me: quantum?
Parents: supra MMM
Parents: multissima!
Me: quam ea ages?
Parents: eum celare paro.
Parents: vel in terra vel in domu vel in loco alio
Me: vel in manum meum?
Parents: in somniis tui
Me: heu
Parents: celeriter satis in latina non cogito
Me: partes eius celeriter mihi redeunt, partes non

Any Latin scholars out there, pardon the errors — I’ve been out of practice for years, and my dad has never had formal training (as far as I know).

Friends exclaim “oh, you’re almost done with your first year of law school!”  That’s true in the chronological sense, but not in the stress and worry sense — grades are determined almost solely by exams.  So, a week ago I was still only half done.  Now I’m three quarters done with my first year of law school, and the other quarter will happen in the next week.  But I still have time for a few non-exam thoughts:

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever come across in my broad traversal of the internet at large is the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive.  With almost 3000 artists, some with dozens of shows, all for free, it has served as a welcomed distraction this week when I get bogged down by the books.

From that archive, I recommend the inimitable Warren Zevon and the 73 shows he has up on the archive.  Much to my chagrin, Warren died a few years ago, just as I was getting into his music, but this amazing collection let me get a taste of the live experience I was never able to capture.  The rendition of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” from the Jan. 16, 1996 show has good stage banter, a great song, and a fun little diversion into what sounds like a German folk song.

Another fun studying distraction I ran across this week was a one-hour BBC special with Stephen Fry (whom I know and love from QI) in which he delves into the very early history of the printing press by means of a hands-on project: replicating a page of the Gutenberg Bible.  (The link goes to the first of the six parts into which it had to be divided to fit on Youtube.)  It fulfills my love of typography, medieval European history, and Stephen Fry.  OK, that middle one was a bit of a stretch.

Scott Greenfield writes one of my favorite law blogs, Simple Justice.  Today (yesterday, now — it is 4AM apparently), he writes about convincing juries.  Turns out that, no matter how convinced you are of your argument, as a (criminal defense) lawyer, you have to convince others, who may not only fail to understand your sophisticated legal argument, but also be actively hostile to it.  Sounds like my profs…