More news leaks out regarding reporter payola by the Bush admin: Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contract, although this second case isn't as bad as the Armstrong affair.
If the Democrats can't paint the GOP as drunk on power and out of control, then something's wrong. Not only is it a very salable story but, as Henry Kissinger once said in a different context, it has 'the added advantage of being true.'
I need a Firefox plug-in that would let me right-click on a case citation to a federal reporter or a state reporter citation and would return the URL to a copy of that case online somewhere other than pay sites like Westlaw.
This media neutral citations tool at Inchoate is cute….but that's not enough!
I have an odd teaching etiquette question. But first, some background.
I am teaching Administrative Law at 8:00 am three days a week. It's the first time I've ever taught at 8:00 since I'm not naturally a morning kind of a guy. More nocturnal, if anything. I didn't even take 9am classes in college or law school if I could possibly avoid it. But in order to get the kids off to school we have to be up by 6:15 anyway, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And it turns out I like it. The 50-person class is surprisingly lively at that hour, and the class doesn't break up my day as much.
But an early morning meeting time also seems to have created an increased potential for a new classroom situation that I am not entirely sure how to deal with. Yesterday, a student actually fell asleep in my class. In the front row.
Dull as I may be (and it would have to be me — Administrative Law is a delightful and interesting subject), I'm pretty sure that this has never happened before in 13 years of teaching. Never? Well, hardly ever—there was that one time when they had a big free beer bash in the quad just before my 6:30pm class, and one of the night students whose day job was construction had about four too many, and, well, never mind. (He was very apologetic the next day.)
So, what is the etiquette when a student just slides quietly into Nod? If he had been snoring, I'd have had to do something, but he was quite a tidy slumper, so this time I did nothing..
The whole incident reminds me, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, of a story that was popular when I was a law student at Yale. Myres McDougal, the great international lawyer, was emeritus by the time I got there, but his v e r y slow southern drawl was as distinctive as ever. The story was that when, as a young man, he had taught at Columbia, they had given him a lecture room with a ground floor and a balcony. Supposedly, one of the Columbia students fell asleep in the front row of the balcony. McDougal looked as his seating chart, called on the student next to the sleeper and asked him to please waken his colleague.
The student supposedly responded, “You put him to sleep, you wake him up.”
Well, should I?
First Draft – Deomocrazy reports that a full five — count them, five! — days before the election, the Iraqi voters get to know who the candidates are! Such great democracy.
In a few days, they'll even get to know where some of the polling places are! (I am not making this up—many voters, except of course for those in the three provinces where we aren't bothering with elections at all, will be eligible to learn where the polling places are on election day.)
And no cars, just in case you wanted a ride to the polls.
And we closed down a major opposition newspaper months ago. And are enforcing Saddam's anti-union laws.
And… oh, what's the point?
C.E. Petit, he of the luridly designed but very interesting “Scrivener's Error”, notes an important and under-reported anniversary.
Six Apart released a patch to MT 2.661 and 3.x that fixes a hole which would allow evildoers to send email to third parties. Unfortunately, the patch is not promised to be compatible with lower versions, such as 2.64 which is what I'm running. I purposefully didn't upgrade to 2.66x because I didn't like some of the new improved features. And I didn't go to 3.x because some of my favorite plugins won't work there and it would require some redesign of the site, which would take time.
But it's increasingly clear that I'm reaching the end of the line. Sooner or later I have to either go to 3.x, which is hard, or to WordPress, which will be a very very hard conversion, especially for the archived posts.
I have other things to do.
Meanwhile, I've loaded up the patch despite the lack of warranty. Please drop me a note if something seems weirder than usual.
Jotwell Blenderlaw