2:26 p.m.

So there I was, trying to cram a few last-minute bits of legal research information before the exam, when it struck me: Wouldn't I much rather be looking at the first edition of the Canterbury Tales, published (arguably) in 1476 by William Caxton? You bet I would.

Whew

Well, just a couple more hours until my last midterm and things are rather tense in the library. Groups of L1s sit at tables literally covered with a dazzling array of papers, highlighted in at least seven shades of day-glo, buzzing on coffee and collectively freaking out. This is certainly an important test, but a couple of my fellow students seem about to lose it. I saw one girl's outline - she had highlighted almost the whole thing. What's the point? Despite the stress of exams, I've always sort of enjoyed them, the way everyone is in communal commiseration and one constant theme dominates every conversation. You meet more people when everybody's huddled together packing their brains. Anyway, this calls for celebration so there will be a party tonight at my house in Ada after the exam. I'll expect you all at 8:00 sharp for heavy hors d'oeuvres, and we'll sashay over the the Beagle at around ten. Dress is black tie (except for Regan, who gets to wear Birkenstocks). Just one caveat: No law talk. I'll suffer no federal regulation ponderings during the spiced meats and Veuve Clicquot.

Very cool

I missed my calling

Apparently I should have been a contender. A rock, paper, scissors contender, that is.

november 29, baby

Once again, we chastise ourselves for our abuses of the English language. Persnickety or relevant? I never met up with an article on English I didn't like..

Observations concerning my Property midterm exam this morning

- Woke up at 6:45 dreaming of balanced equities and large parcels of unclaimed land, just waiting to be adversely possessed. - Cooked up a bagel while reading over my outline. Could actually feel the knowledge entering my brain, seeing there was no room left, and leaving. - Put my outline away and sat on the front porch, watched mist rise from my lawn through the bright morning light. - Prayed, hopelessly. - Ran inside to consult outline once again, convinced I had done everything wrong. - Realized it was too late and that I would definitely screw this one up. - Rode bike to school in a cold sweat; almost hit car due to freaking out about exam. - Walked into law school, saw classmates cramming, swilling coffee and making vague gestures with their hands. - Sat down at seat, closed my eyes, thought nothing. - Looked at test. - Realized: I know this stuff. - yahoo. - beer.

Mom and Dad are off to India

They'll be gone a while, cavorting among the natives and dining on spicy baba ganouj. Feel free to write them here and wish them luck. Bon Voyage!

huh?

I just got out of a lecture by Allen Farnsworth, one of the authors of my Contracts casebook and a leading light in international contracts law, and I have absolutely no idea what was just said. The way the professors were all nodding and chuckling clued me in that something coherent and possibly enlightening was being described, but I felt like I was a foreign country, surrounded by a language I had no ability to understand. I'm just glad were weren't quizzed on it. I think he did say "unilateral contract" once, and for a brief moment I was back in little 'ol Ada, Ohio, but after that feeling passed I wandered lost for forty minutes across vast fields of nomenclature, gazing at the horizon for some clue as to where the hell I was. Hoo boy. Maybe one day I'll be able to comprehend a tenth of what was said.

Judge Roy Moore, please read this. Thanks. Now be quiet.

Here's a good article celebrating human error, with quotes from leading British personalities. You'd think after all this evolution we'd have ridden ourselves of the biological capacity to make errors.

It's over, the crowds have gone, empty popcorn boxes and pop cans litter the aisles. I think I did OK.

T minus sixteen hours until my Civil Procedure midterm.

Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

So there I was last week, sitting in my house at my desk, when this little ladybug goes crawling across my Property homework. I brushed her (him?) away and continued agonizing over adverse possession. No big deal. The next day, while riding my bike to school, I got hit in the face by another ladybug. This is weird, I thought. It wasn't until three days ago, however, that I realized what was happening: Ada is being overrun by ladybugs. I looked down the street as I walked out onto my porch Monday morning and it looked like the plague had descended upon Ohio. Ladybugs everywhere, thousands of them, were cruising around and hanging out on houses, pets, cars, you name it. The side of my house was party central. I've never seen anything like it.
So I did a little research and it turns out they aren't ladybugs, but Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles, or Harmonia axyridis, and they're a big nuisance throughout the state. There's a good article on the phenomenon here (with scary picture of beetle infestation). What's interesting is that they were introduced to the area in the 1980s to control tree aphid populations, and it worked. The only catch is that for a few weeks in the fall, after they've been chowing down on aphid cacciatore all summer, the fat and happy bugs have to find lodgings pronto before hibernation season arrives, so they swarm. As we just had our first frost last week, all the bugs in town are out cruising for rooms. Everyone seems pretty tolerant of the little critters, but but I did hear some guy yesterday say one bit him. I've been considering subleasing the upstairs bedroom to a few thousand ladybug families this winter, but I may have to reconsider if there's a chance they might get hungry and find I taste like aphid.

Bad California, bad! No treat for you.

Some investing advice from mom

- If you had bought $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. - With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00. - With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left. - However, if you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Miller LITE (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Don't you hate it when you have too much to drink and you go out and start a community college and you can't even remember it?

and the winner is..

JOHN MAXWELL COETZEE, for the Nobel Prize in Literature: "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider." A little bit about him here, more here.

Top five ways to tell you're not in Alabama anymore

1. Frost on lawn 2. Frost on bicycle 3. Frost on ears and face 4. Frost everywhere 5. It's October 2

good reading

Once again, a great link from metafilter (as many of these links are): US News publishes the results of their poll, "What are the 100 most influential American documents?" Read the list here. Wouldn't this make a cool class?

I love it

Bruce Willis is offering one million dollars to whoever captures Saddam Hussein. Is an autograph included?

This is good.

two questions

87 billion dollars? From where?

nothing's shocking

I know I'm late on the train, but I finally got around to watching Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine last night, and yes I was floored. Aside from wanting to move to Canada (only about an hour and a half away..), I wanted to throw away my guns. I wanted to join an anti-war protest. Such is the power of a good documentary, and it still resonates within me today. However, I'm undecided as to the answer to Moore's query: Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just plain nuts? I think his analysis of the symptoms of our violent society are correct: media-driven fear, widespread violent entertainment, hubristic warmongering, etc. Especially fear -- even here in little 'ol Ada people lock their doors and have vicious dogs and can be just as unneighborly as anyone on skid row. Watching the film gave me a profound relief in knowing that I am not afraid, that my optimism, like Moore's, is alive. While I felt the film left out a lot of other factors in examining our lust for violence, I was absolutely taken by Moore himself. What a humble, brave man. My favorite part was watching him shuffle up to Charleton Heston's house and secure an interview over the comlink. And they single-handedly got Kmart to phase out handgun bullets! (I'm going to check on this when I drive into Lima tomorrow) Anyway, if you haven't seen this very controversial film, do yourself a favor. You can see his response to the inevitable criticism at his Web site here.

Anyone else get this email?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. amzanig huh?

I don't think so. Since these are simple words they are easy to figure out (for a native speaker), but you could actually argue over what certain of them mean. Also, what's actually important in the sentence is the context the word appears in, like "huamn mnid" -- "human mind" is a familar phrase and is easy to figure out based on the traditional pattern. What if we applied the theory to these sentences: "One particular chronological interval, the materfamilias impelled her to convey a dosser, replete with alible pabulum and potations, to her matrilineal predecessor, forasmuch as, through her valetudinarian state, the somatic condition of the aforementioned octogenarian was compromised to the point of her being enervated and impuissant. Ergo, her being was delimited to the supine position. The vinaceous-bedaubed scion acquiesced extempore, and forthwith embarked on her entrustment."? (from "Little Red Riding Hood" at Fairy Tales for the Erudite)

What would God do?

Very cool article about the affect the discovery of extraterrestrial life would have on religious thought. Copernicus shook the foundations, but could E.T. bring down the house?

Sept. 20-27 is Banned Books Week

You haven't read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings have you? Catcher in the Rye? If you have, shame on you! Everyone knows that those pernicious little books do nothing but spread counterculturalism and heresy. For further information on what books we "should" and "should not" be reading, check out the list. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Scandalous.

Ada redux

I took these at Ada's annual Harvest Festival on Saturday. Basically a bunch of people and kids walking up and down Main street buying quilts, eating sno-cones and enjoying the day.
1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Standard sign fare in these parts 2. I love it - a kiddie tractor pull. Get 'em started early! 3. Amish baskets 4. All the bees and yellowjackets were attracted to the wax ornament vendor for some reason.. 5. I don't think the "train ride" met someone's expectations 6. Fireworks from the soil

Supreme Court Gets Free Box Of Shoes After Mentioning Nike In Ruling

WASHINGTON, DC — The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were treated to a free crate of athletic shoes Monday, following an offhand mention of Nike during a ruling in the case of McBrayer & Company v. The City Of Detroit. "All I did was say that the claims made by the defendant were similar to those made by Nike when defending labor conditions in its Asian footwear factories," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. "Next thing you know, we get this big box of red Air Zoom Spiridons in the mail. Inside the box was a form letter from Nike's publicist. Sweet!" The Supreme Court will begin its new session Oct. 6, with Case 03-130: Sony High-Definition Widescreen Televisions v. Fossil Sterling Silver Multifunction Watches v. Bombay Sapphire Gin. (as usual, from the Onion)

um

Not sure how I ended up here, but check out this list of Witches, Pagans and Heathens in the Military. What this world needs is a few more wiccan commandos.