Law Students

september!

Posted on September 16, 2008

there and back again

Posted on September 15, 2008
I skipped most of the political theory/philosophy conference this weekend, but I did attend most of the receptions, and hung out with the law and philosophy crowd. Usually, philosophers make me feel nervous, out of my league, and intellectually inferior, and usually not by design...

this captures it all

Posted on September 15, 2008
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Palin and Clinton on SNL.

My condition isn't...

Posted on September 12, 2008
The worst thing about coming back from vacation is... coming back from vacation and having to hear all about Sarah Palin. Seriously, can the media please stop championing her utter stupidity about... well, almost everything... as some sort of charming "everyone's just falling in love with her" personality quirk? Please? Anyway, now that I've vented - and since Belle was on a bit of Big Lebowski kick, I leave you with Kenny Rogers & The First Edition on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour...

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too many conferences, too little time

Posted on September 11, 2008
There's always some conference or another at my school. Most of them are not within my areas of scholarly interest, but I usually try to stop by some panel for the sake of learning for learning's sake. But I'm shorter on time these days, and there are so many other colloquiums that are much more useful and interesting to me these days, mostly sponsored by other departments...

problem-riddled, under-enforcing agency of the day

Posted on September 10, 2008
OSHA. I read up a little on it for Admin law, and seriously, awful stuff. Nominations for others include the ever beleaguered FEMA and ICE, although arguments can be made for every single agency ever created.

hobbies by referendum

Posted on September 09, 2008
All those in favor of me taking drop-in social dance classes from the Liberal College Ballroom Dancing Club at school and then blogging about it, say aye.I am way too swamped with work, classes, work, classes, but I am still committed to having hobbies...

murphy's law or whatever

Posted on September 09, 2008
Time stamp of Fed Ex delivery guy's arrival: 2:26 pm.Time stamp of the dropping of my new refurbished under warranty Motorola v3 Razr on my hardwood floors: 2:47 pm.Also, I put in my sim card from my old phone. Why is it not loading my phone book? Hmm...

not so random roundup: gender edition

Posted on September 09, 2008
1. The most stupid and offensive Modern Love column ever (and that's saying something, considering there was an article in which the author compared training her husband to training Shamu), in which the author conflates cyber stalking with romance. I want to smack this person upside the head...

academic beefs and playing apples to apples

Posted on September 08, 2008
It's always interesting to me to take classes in other departments and learn about the entrenched disciplinary debates and divides. Obviously, law has its originalism wars and the whole Hart/Fuller and Hart/Dworkin debates, but I wonder if anyone has made a claim so bold as "everything else takes a toolkit approach; it is time to take the autonomy of ____ theory seriously...

phooey to the wedding industrial complex

Posted on September 08, 2008
Because I am a 27 year old woman soon to turn 28, I am the demographic of that awful, execrable movie, 27 Dresses. Also, The Wedding Planner. Also, this movie probably counts. And that show "Bridezillas." And one of a hundred E! Hollywood weddings...

subprime crisis for laypeople

Posted on September 08, 2008
I've been reading about Bear Stearns and the federal bailout of the Macs, but not really understanding what the subprime mortgage crisis was all about, and was talking to TD about it last night. This PowerPoint stick figure cartoon (via TD) was helpful...

Help Paul counsel a 1L

Posted on September 07, 2008
Who wants to chip in with advice for this person? (Cross-posted to Uncommon Priors.)Just read your essay from last year, "Why you shouldn't go to law school." You've probably gotten lots of emails like this...I'm 35 and a published (but obscure) writer of fiction, essays, book reviews, etc...

chain bookstores suck

Posted on September 06, 2008
I hate to say it, because it sounds like I'm just another liberal elite, but Border's sociology section is appalling. Amazon.com all the way. If you want to hang out at Borders for a couple of hours waiting for someone to get out of a meeting and you figure you might be able to read a little more of The Protestant Ethic at the bookstore in the mall (because you only got excerpts via PDF), you'd be sorely disappointed...

doing other people's work and your own

Posted on June 11, 2008
So, I will be an RA this summer for a public policy prof, working on coding cases and I need some advice. I've been talking to another grad student friend, and she's suggested 20 hrs/week, so that I'm sufficiently engaged with the project, well remunerated, and still with time to work on advancing my own research...

The Model Minority

Posted on June 11, 2008
Asian American blogging week continues. I feel very weird even saying that, although I have in the past blogged about Asian American issues, mainly because I am still figuring out how that aspect of my identity fits into my overall identity. The Democratic primaries highlighted the apparent divisibility of race and gender issues, as if one had to choose between one or the other...

put that hitch in your gitalong

Posted on June 11, 2008
We're going on a road trip this weekend to hang out and watch a dear, darling friend graduate. There are vast stretches of highway with dead air. Thusly, I am making a few mixes.Mine are usually highly themed, but this time the only themes are "Music I Love/TD Hates" and "Music We Both Like...

"Toyota"

Posted on June 09, 2008
This weekend TD and I went to a baseball game, which is always fun for this occasional baseball fan (I like live games, always forget to follow on TV/news). By a fortuitous confluence of events, his hometown team is my chosen adopted team (chosen before we met, when I first moved here two years ago), the result of spurning every team within a geographic radius of my hometown for various reasons (sellouts, soulless marketing, oh no they di'n't just betray my hometown)...

the post that wrote itself

Posted on June 09, 2008
(not so much a verbatim transcript so much as capturing the gestalt of an exchange)Me: Want to go to the ____ Street Fair with a couple of my school friends?TD: Sure. Where is it?Me: A couple streets down from me, in that slightly-seedy-but-in-the-process-of-being-rehabilitated/gentrified neighborhood...

Who's on who's on first?

Posted on June 07, 2008
Have you even wondered what Abbot and Costello's famous bit, "Who's On First?", would be like if it was a dialogue between an African American male and an Asian female filmed in the style of Jim Jarmusch?I'd like this more if the walls were melting.

Coming soon

Posted on June 06, 2008
I WILL post on:1. Part I: How to go back to school2. How to teach a class on race and gender, or incorporate such themes in non special topic courses.Tomorrow though, and over the weekend.

SATC: Review

Posted on June 06, 2008
I stupidly read all of the reviews beforehand and so not only was I not surprised by most of the movies, but I became very convinced that this movie was antithetical to all of my feminist principles. There are some really good critiques of this movie (mostly at Jezebel), and they're right-on--the movie celebrates gross materialism and strident selfishness, and doesn't exactly celebrate diversity, even if they hire black magic in the form of Jennifer Hudson...

the inexorability of time

Posted on June 05, 2008
I rarely talk about my parents except to mention how strictly they raised me and how that upbringing shaped my views on gender, race, culture, and personal identity. In turn, this has affected my scholarship and scholarly agenda, insofar as I aspire to not think like my parents...

I'm Back!

Posted on June 04, 2008
Returned from suburban exile! After catching up with TD, I'm back to work, and being lazy about it. There are worse things than wasting away the day reading, for fun, Fabio Rojas' book and watching Flight of the Conchords. But soon, back to RA'ing and dissertating...

This Telfeyan thing needs to stop.

Posted on June 04, 2008
I'm starting to feel really sorry for this Phil Telfeyan guy. Nobody deserves to have their personality dissected on a gossip blog like ATL as punishment for publishing a law review note about public interest -- not even if the law review note is a crappy piece of non-scholarship (which it is)...

conferences for junior scholars

Posted on June 02, 2008
Over at PrawfsBlawg, Andy Hessick is asking about conferences that are aimed at junior faculty. Help him out.I'd suggest the George Washington University Institute for Constitutional Studies annual research seminar (topics change by year) and the Seton Hall Employment and Labor Law Scholar's Forum , which is "is designed to provide junior scholars with commentary and critique by their more senior colleagues in the legal academy and, more broadly, to foster development and understanding of new scholarly currents across employment and labor law...

A First Crack at Crispin Sartwell

Posted on June 01, 2008
Crispin Sartwell, a professor of political scientist at Dickinson College and philosophical anarchist, has offered the following challenge:A Philosophical ChallengeMy irritating yet astounding new book Against the State (SUNY Press) argues that all the arguments of the great philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, Rawls, Nozick, and Habermas, among others), are, putting it kindly, unsound...

Liberation from Gmail: An Essay on Memory.

Posted on May 31, 2008
I have a new laptop. It is awesome. I transferred all of my old files and then deleted them from my old laptop, to give to my sister. I also, for the sake of privacy (which I do have), deleted everything in my Outlook 2007 on that old computer. I log into my Real Life Alter Ego account in the Gmail webclient...

the institutional culture and "reputation" of liberal arts colleges

Posted on May 30, 2008
Lots of interesting organizational issues in this essay by Prof. Tim Burke (Swarthmore):It?s really hard to accept change in an institution that you cherished as it was. (Yet more declension narratives!) If alumni have a useful role, in fact, it?s as guardians of the essential traditions and values of their own institution...

quote of the day

Posted on May 29, 2008
"Hipsters are just yuppies without money."--TD(a comment made to my description of the latest lame-o DIY projects in ReadyMade)

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