More Law School Advice

CM asks:

Journals versus law review, in general? Are editorial positions on journals worth it? Does it really matter on your resume whether you're the X Editor (unless maybe you're the EIC) or an article editor?

(Warning: some of this applies to HLS specifically. All of it is my jaded, biased opinion.)

I didn't make the law review. In retrospect, I should been more focused when I took the competition, although it's probable that this wouldn't have made a difference. Despite the occasional obvious omissions and AA, the law review seemed to do a good job of selecting the best and brightest. It may come as a shock to learn that you are not among the best or brightest in your class. Contextual mediocrity is a bitch.

Instead, I spent a lot of time on a specialty journal. My thoughts on that are here. Many of those thoughts are bitter and snarky, mostly because the average specialty journal staff member puts in very little work. This is good if you are one of those staff members, since you can get some marginally useful resume fodder in exchange for a small time commitment, but it is bad if you are in charge of those staff members. I basically burned out before our second issue even hit the presses. Being EIC of a journal was very helpful, resume-wise, but I might not have needed that help if I had spent the hours consumed by worrying about galleys, author contracts, MIA editors, and obscure Bluebook errors on classes.

If you take the law review competition, be serious. Don't move to a new city the day before you start. Don't start a new job and try to do it at night. Some people do this and still make it. You will probably feel better about the result if you clear that week of other commitments.

If you don't make law review, and you don't have a burning desire to work with legal scholarship in a field for which there is a specialty journal, just forego the journal experience entirely and focus on your grades. Many people who are not on law review get excellent clerkships and jobs. Those people almost always have really amazing grades. I did hear some anecdotal evidence of some people's GPAs declining after they made law review due to the time it demands, which essentially equals a part-time job. Being on the editorial board might compensate for less than stellar grades. Being a generic HLR person might not.

People say grades don't matter if you go to a top school. Those people are either full of crap or they already have a job lined up. Law review is great. Journals are nice. But unless you're willing to backstab your way to a top slot and are obsessed with legal scholarship, you're better off studying for exams and taking some clinicals you enjoy. Shoot for magna.

AskMe

(No, not that one.)

I still don't have a solid justice's worth of profiles, so no Supreme Court clerk stalking this week. I'm bereft of good blogging topics in general, thanks to my continued slog through Moby-Dick, work, travel, and an undifferentiated sense of malaise. What should I blog on? Put your suggestions or questions for me to answer in the comments.

Flom!

Sometimes what we really need during stressful times is an outsider's perspective.

Relatedly, I will be in D.C. this weekend for a job interview. Any old friends who wish to have tearful reunions should contact me.

"Taking opportunities" from less qualified people is not unjust.

Randy Cohen, author of the New York Times's "The Ethicist," all too often gives the wrong answer to reasonable questions. This week, though, he gives the right answer to an astonishingly stupid question:

At 55, after a satisfying career as an English teacher, I am considering nursing as a second career. The local community college offers programs leading to the R.N. degree, but these are oversubscribed. As a Yale magna with several prerequisites already satisfied, I could be a strong candidate. My family does not need the extra income. Should I worry about taking opportunity from someone who might use it to earn a living?

The alleged ethical dilemma here is ridiculous in the extreme. (Where was all this hair-tearing liberal guilt about taking up scarce slots in competitive programs when I was in law school? At least this person plans to use the degree.) If you would be a superior nurse, go forth and change bedpans (although whether or not a Yale magna who probably last took chemistry in 1970 would be a better nurse than someone younger is debatable, especially since nursing can be a physically demanding job). I love how it's implied that someone's financial need might make them more worthy of a slot even if they would be a worse nurse.

Those who disagree with me get to have the dumb but poor nurses stick them for blood.

I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"

I feel more alienated when surrounded by Americans talking about sports than I do when I'm in a foreign country.

One of us

Was it me, or was Stinky Pete's fate at the end of Toy Story 2 a deliberate nod to Freaks?

Must Have

I have a black thumb but am always in need of fresh herbs. This looks like the space age solution. Bio-dome seed pods! No window necessary!

Rape and Incest

Interesting stats on rape and abortion:

• The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age.
• Among adult women, an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.
• Among the cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator.
  
• Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape.
  
• A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.
  

(h/t)

True Confessions

I have had a crush on Thomas Jefferson ever since I saw 1776 in the seventh grade.

I save the 2005 nickels because they have a hot Jefferson (plus "Liberty") on them.

With friends like you who needs friends?

I've been mulling lately over what we expect of our friends. When your friend is attacked by others but in the wrong, do you close ranks and defend him, even if that means disingenuously arguing in favor of his mistaken position, or try to support him without compromising your own ideas of what's right? What do you expect your friends to do for you? Would you rather have your friends admit to you when they agree with third parties that you are in the wrong or keep their mouths shut? (Assume that this is done in the absence of said third parties and you do not attack your friend's position publicly.)

Decline and Fall

Nearly a year and a half after I vociferously argued in favor of Christina over Britney with my journal staff, the comparison just gets funnier and funnier.

Oh, barf.

Another blogger asks for my thoughts on this NY Times article about contemporary girls' fiction. I don't know what to say, really: these crosses between Sweet Valley High and American Psycho are even more disturbing when one considers that the audience for YA fiction is typically a few years younger than the characters. This means that the girls reading these persecution and consumption manuals are probably middle schoolers and are thus at their peak stages of meanness and impressionability. I met enough of the grown-up versions of these girls in Cambridge to be thoroughly exhausted with them, from their thousand-dollar outfits to their tiny designer bags to their equally tiny designer noses; I'm sure they could have more acutely honed their superficiality had they been weaned on books like these.

Any girl mature enough to read this trash is mature enough to read real adult fiction. Some Edith Wharton might be nice, or some Fitzgerald.

SLOBO

Slobodan Milosevic is dead. I went to Belgrade in 2004 and found it to be a remarkably cosmopolitan city full of relatively friendly people and tasty cheese. The only potentially off notes were displays in the history museum, which focused on battles with non-Serbs to the exclusion of all else, and the wall-to-wall SLOBO posters in the subway exits. I wasn't able to tell if the sentiment they expressed was broadly held or if it was more of fringe position, a la "Free Mumia" in the U.S. There didn't seem to be a diplomatic way to ask anyone.

The root problem is me.

Because I am a masochist, I've been reading the Crunchy Con Blog since its inception. It keeps my blood pumping. There's always hilariously wrong stuff, like this email claiming that libertarians think moral considerations should have no impact on our economic life.

Imagine my reaction to this passage, quoted approvingly in a recent post on the family wage:

It will be absolutely necessary to see to it that female labor is kept from the labor market, something that will have to be attained by prudent and clear-sighted measures.

Clearly I should be in the kitchen baking you an organic cherry pie with fruit I bought at a co-op from warmhearted Christian farmers instead of clerking!

For the quick and dirty version of Crunchy Conservatism, check out the parody blog.

(Previously)

Why are all American girls so rough?

Damn, that girl can't ever hurt you enough.

Random lines

my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

Things Cats Do Not Like

1. Being brushed (Snape tries to eat the brush; Lily just hops down.)
2. Taking pills
3. Having a bath
4. Getting their nails trimmed and the remaining nails adorned with SuperGlued rubber tips (but said pedicures are so cute, and remarkably efficacious at preventing couch damage)

Greek Tragedy in the Alaskan Wild

Timothy Sandefur has some interesting thoughts on Grizzly Man.

Discount Book Club Selections

Via Karl, I note that three of the PTN Book Club's selections are also part of The Morning News's Tournament of Books. You can get a 30% discount on Saturday or Anansi Boys through the tournament sponsor, Powell's.

Shocker: Blockbuster Also Scum Liars

Some of you may recall that I was having problems with Netflix and decided to try Blockbuster Online. I do like the one free in-store rental per week, but even with Saturday shipping, the non-Clerksville distribution center makes Blockbuster discs arrive no faster than throttled Netflix ones.

All was relatively okay, though, until I came back from a weekend trip and noticed that Blockbuster had received a disc seven days ago but hadn't sent the next one in my queue, despite its being labeled "Available Now." This seemed a little weird, so I shot customer service an email.

The response: BBO will ship the next available disc in your queue only if it will reach you in an estimated 2-3 days. This means that if you want obscure movies like Burden of Dreams and the only available copies are in a far-off city that would take longer than that to ship from, they will just never send the disc. The only break would appear to be if someone in a slightly closer city rented the disc and then returned it to their local distribution center, allowing the flick to hopscotch across the nation until it came within the 2-3 day range. (This is confirmed by other BBO subscribers here.)

Their suggested solution was to add 40 movies to my queue, so they could dig less desirable discs out of the back and at least send me something. Since I hadn't cancelled my Netflix subscription and moved over my 200 movie queue, my BBO queue didn't have enough discs in it to mask the effect of their policy. My suggestion to them is to stop being dirty scum liars. If there's an algorithm based on my location and the location of the discs in my queue that determines whether or not those discs will be shipped to me, why not have the result of that algorithm indicated in the availability column instead of taunting me with discs that are "Available Now" in Hawaii? Jerks.

A Juicy Footnote

In the grand tradition of Judge Samuel Kent, Judge Clark of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court smacks down a motion for incomprehensibility.

HOWTO: Be a feisty young journalist

DON'T: invent social outings with the subjects of your news feature.

DO: insert "fictional composites" in lieu of actual research or interviews.

(Okay, Kalin is an op-ed writer and public school teacher, not a journalist, but the parallel was too amusing to let go. Those Harvard kids: so wacky!)

Happy Belated Birthday

While I was mostly MIA over the weekend, this blog turned two. Happy birthday, Blog Formerly Known as Class Maledictorian.

Every day I write the book

Apparently you can turn your blog into a book with Blurb. Other people have gone the non-Blurb route, but there's only so much demand for fake stories about Biglaw, so any future volumes in that sub-genre may have to be self-published.

I could have used this when I was reading 50,000 word fanfics. Even I have trouble staring at the screen for that long.

Easy Targets

Can vegans eat chalk? The answer seems to be yes. Apparently, they also can eat chocolate (despite the use of child slave labor on African cocoa plantations) but many refuse honey (because that involves exploiting the bees, dontcha know).

PTN Book Club Continues

Thanks to those who participated in the February PTN Book Club. Our March selection is Saturday, by Ian McEwan. I hope that we like it better than the previous months' books.

Pinning Down the Clerks

An email correspondent confirms that Adam Conrad (Georgia '05/Sentelle '05-'06) will be clerking for Justice Thomas in OT 2006. The clerk list has been updated.

Know me better than I know myself

I mentioned to a friend last night that I had been underwhelmed by Battlestar Galactica and quit watching after the first few discs.

"I bet I know exactly when you started to lose interest. The part just after most of humanity is destroyed, when we zoom in on a couple and Adama says, 'They better start having babies.'"

"Not true, although I don't understand why they can't just float around in space until they die of old age. Why should the people who are still alive rearrange their own lives for the sake of people who aren't even born?"

"See, this is what I mean. The show is uninteresting to you because you don't find the central conflict compelling. You have no species preservation instinct."

"And here I thought it was just that the doctor was really annoying."

Little Known Facts

When Anna Nicole first met her gazillionaire, she was an A-cup. The district court's opinion inexplicably left out this fact and asserted that she had to work the less lucrative day shift as a dancer because she was "big boned."

PSA

When in Sedona, do not eat at Casa Rincon.

Crash and Burn

Much as I hate to agree with the Douthat about anything, I must concur: Crash is a terrible movie. Nice takedowns can be read here and here.

Bits & pieces

I'm still collecting information for the Supreme Court clerk profiles, but in the meantime, here are some links:

Southern California taken over by bears. They apparently enjoy swimming in backyard pools.

Radley Balko sums up some of the reasons I've been appalled by the Crunchy Con movement.

Harvard is doomed. Dooooomed!

Apropos our earlier discussion, artistic nudity is blocked by some filtering software. There is, of course, a protest movement.

PTN Book Club: On Beauty

Amber: "I can't decide if the depiction of Howard and Kiki's crippled marriage was artfully done or utterly inadequate. . . . Since we were never sold on the idea of their marriage, it's hard to care much when it all falls apart. But perhaps the very refusal to give us good reasons for them to be together is a deliberate choice, illustrating the emptiness of the relationship? I'm probably giving Smith too much credit here."

Donna: "Cleaning my bathrooms seemed like a much better way to spend my time, so that’s what I did. I scrubbed toilets, wiped down mirrors, washed baseboards, and for the first time ever, it actually seemed enjoyable after struggling to finish On Beauty."

Karl: "As Larry Summers resigns as president of Harvard with a big bootprint o­n his behind, the notion that a similar faculty would unanimously approve the oh-so-controversial Monty Kipps lecture series struck me as a little far-fetched."

CM: "I wanted to like On Beauty, Zadie Smith's latest. . . . But books about the trials and travails of middle-aged academics tend to bore me, and this was no exception."

Rachel: "Mrs. Kipps is preachy, annoying, seemingly an active part of her own submission. Normally I consider infidelity the greatest crime, but when we find out that Monty has been philandering I can't feel bad for the woman; she is just such a sucker I can't even pity her."

Zubon: "I read the first 5% of the book before setting it aside. If I get this far without anything likeable happening or seeing the prospect for improvement, I have better reading options."

PTN Book Club: Amber on On Beauty

Reading On Beauty brought back a lot of memories. The book is set at Wellington College, a thinly veiled version of Harvard. The transformation is an incomplete success; a liberal arts college, at least in my experience, has few of the cultural trappings, worshipful grad students, and community dominance of a Harvard. Why Smith didn't just make Wellington a university or set her book at Harvard is beyond me. It was still moderately amusing, though, to see my old Cambridge stomping grounds blurrily evoked and to play guessing games with the invented streets and squares. (More annoying was Smith's constant censoring of any details that might date the book. It's clear that she didn't want to tie the frictions in the wider world to current events, but her efforts to obscure them are so clumsy and obvious that it reads like an old British novel that gossips about Lady W---- and Mr P----.)

In contrast with Small Island, which I read last year, Smith has a decent ear for different kinds of dialogue, and for the contexts in which individuals are likely to switch between formal and informal manners of speaking. However, she's not always consistent; there were some descriptive passages where she lapsed into dialect. This seemed like bad editing.

The emotional resonance of the book varied wildly. The first chapter grabbed me immediately with the story of a young man who, dissatisfied with his own clan, falls in love with someone who provides a passport into another, much different family. This little internal drama has played itself out in my own heart, and despite being the polar opposite of young Jerome I yearned for him to find an emotional home amongst the Kippses. Alas, it was not meant to be.

And alas, we see little of Jerome after the first chapter (this is okay, because he was kind of a milksop). Instead, the remainder of the novel focuses on his parents and siblings. While these characters are fleshed out more than those in the rest of the novel (none of the Kippses ever becomes three-dimensional), they still sometimes seem flat or false. It seemed improbable that the youngest Belsey, Levi, would be so astonishingly ignorant, despite his home life and education (if your father is a Rembrandt scholar, it beggars belief if you do not know who Rembrandt is. in fact, it beggars belief even if your father is not a Rembrandt scholar.). This was one of many wrong notes that startled me out of the text: Carlene's successful concealment of a terminal illness was another. Each time she's glimpsed by a casual observer, that person immediately notes that she is seriously ill, but her family is apparently oblivious to her shuddering, twitching, and inability to walk? Even woman-hating British conservatives are not blind.

I can't decide if the depiction of Howard and Kiki's crippled marriage was artfully done or utterly inadequate. We're never sure, exactly, why these two got together, but they appear unsure why they are together as well. They've accumulated the in-jokes and know each other's behavior by heart, but little can explain the initial pairing beyond Howard's former flexibility and Kiki's former beauty. While we are bludgeoned with the fact of Kiki's transformation, nothing addresses Howard's absurd slide into self-parody, perhaps because despite the negative effect of those changes on Kiki, she still loves him until, suddenly, she doesn't. If I were Kiki, my tolerance would have been exhausted some time around the point when Howard appointed himself art censor and refused to allow representational paintings in the house. Since we were never sold on the idea of their marriage, it's hard to care much when it all falls apart. But perhaps the very refusal to give us good reasons for them to be together is a deliberate choice, illustrating the emptiness of the relationship? I'm probably giving Smith too much credit here.

I don't think On Beauty is really penetrating on any score: race relations, the academy, modernity, intergenerational frictions, aesthetics . . . the writing is skillful enough that one can trip merrily to the end, having the impression all along that some depth of insight waits, and the ending is satisfying enough to temporarily blur the realization that the meaning you sought didn't materialize. In that way, it's much like a less pedantic American Beauty. Coincidence?

Nudity returns

Timothy Sandefur responds to my previous post on male nudity. He seems to admit that at least some male nudes are beautiful, which I appreciate. But he we may have reached an impasse when he says that my contention that men are sublime means that the male nude is "admirable."

Language is tricky, and when I said female nudes are beautiful and male nudes sublime, I intended to use those terms as they are used in art criticism and to capture the distinction between this more restrictive concept of the beautiful and its more colloquial meaning of "things I enjoy looking at." As a society, we apparently don't enjoy looking at male nudes as much as we do female nudes, but is this because male images are challenging or because they are less pleasureable to look at, setting aside cultural baggage? Is something like the Shelley Memorial beautiful because it is feminine? Is this beautiful? If not, why not?

Certainly this is both beautiful and dynamic, but so is this. Defining terms such that only effeminate men can be called beautiful is a neat way to win the argument, but it's no proof that the female body is aesthetically superior to the male body in an objective way.

(Incidentally, I never fail to be puzzled by men who continually deride their own bodies. Women may hate their bodies in the specific, but seldom do you hear them claiming that female bodies in general are lumpen, gross, or weak. Men, on the other hand (because they can't seem to assert their heterosexuality fast enough?) claim that the form they possess is innately inferior, hideous, and grotesque. This is acutely noticeable when American men discuss circumcision; not only are the majority of American males in favor, they are always quick to point out that the natural state of their genitalia is disgusting and requires immediate surgical correction.)

Apparently our cultural enjoys looking at female nudes much more than it enjoys looking at male nudes, and Sarah gets to the heart of the matter by noting that this stems largely from attitudes about sexuality, not because the male form is less attractive.

Relatedly, even artistic nudity is blocked by some filtering software. There is, of course, a protest movement.

PTN Book Club Reminder

Posts about February's selection, On Beauty, should be mailed to me ASAP so they can be posted tomorrow.

I ♥ Werner Herzog

From My Best Fiend:

Kinski sometimes seriously believed that I was mad. This isn't true of course. I am quite sane, clinically sane, so to speak. . . . I was never out of my senses, but perhaps just very angry. One day I seriously planned to firebomb him in his house. This was prevented only by the vigilance of his Alsatian shepherd.

Previously here and here.

Men are sublime.

UPDATE: Lots of discussion in the comments section on this post.

Timothy Sandefur asks, in re the Vanity Fair cover hubbub:

Is the preference of female over male nudity due to some objective aesthetic superiority of women over men, or is this determined simply by a person’s sexual preference? Do women’s magazines not feature male nudity because women don’t find that as compelling as straight men find female nudity? Or is it, as I think, because naked women are prettier than naked men?

As a heterosexual woman, I'd like to agree with Phoebe: women like to see naked men, and if it were not for the impact of gendered expectations about female sexuality, female consumption of images of unclad males would be much higher. (Phoebe also aptly demonstrates the absurdity of the familiar line about women being interested in character rather than physicality by taking it to its utmost extreme.) (Update: this post makes me think that transmen illustrate Phoebe's point even more keenly. How many women are willing to date a man with a vagina? It's not just gay men for whom a penis must be "the prelude to a kiss.")

The predominance of female nudes in art can easily be explained by the centuries of overwhelming dominance of the fine arts by men. Access to art training was a major factor, as unchaperoned women were unlikely to be left alone with art teachers, for obvious reasons. Similarly, until relatively recently it was viewed as unseemly for women to hire male models at all, much less nude models. Female models were easier for male artists to come by and might offer the bonus of being an easy sexual conquest for the painter or sculptor. Male artists, the majority being heterosexual, had both motive and opportunity to produce female nudes.

Setting aside the issue of whether centuries of male dominance explains the preference for female nudity, is Mr. Sandefur's correct to assert that naked women are prettier than naked men? My first reaction to this assertion was to draw the parallel between the beautiful and the sublime.

Intrinsic in this view is our historical perspective of women as the weaker, lesser sex. Beauty is a property of the balanced, the pleasing, the graceful. The smooth contours and tidier genitalia of the female body meet this standard. But like many beautiful things, a female nude is not threatening. She lacks power to affect the viewer beyond the stimulation of the gaze. She exists to please: a beautiful decoration. The male nude is messier, woolier, more angular. Muscles, like the rolling thunderheads in a Turner seascape, threaten and awe us. With power comes danger, but with danger, desire. If the female nude is a lush landscape of rolling English hills, the male nude is the jagged mountain range. The women here, in their pale languor, may be beautiful, but they are not dangerous. Here, the male body retains a sense of dynamism and coiled power even while sprawled and still. One need not find the male body sexually attractive to appreciate its sublimity, but by definition a sublime image is less comfortable and more challenging than a beautiful one. Between the confrontational subject matter and the preexisting biases toward production of beautiful female nudes which aesthetically and (for the majority of creators and viewers) sexually gratify, is it any wonder that we have a dearth of naked males in media?

(Interestingly, the modern push for women to be both curvy and fit contrasts with the older, softer, more forgiving model of the female nude. Note Ms. Knightley's pronounced abdominal muscles; they seem odd in such a retrograde image. The male model's physique has probably changed only slightly, with more muscular definition becoming de rigueur. However, these shifts might make more female images sublime and increase the sublimity of male images, but do not alter the basic theory.)

New Blog on the Scene

I recommend that Snarky Bastards become part of everyone's daily blog reading routine. It's a group blog and while some of the posters are friends of mine, I wouldn't link to it if I didn't think it had independent merit. Everyone's life needs more snark!

Remembering Summers

Larry Summers, at the last Federalist Society Student Symposium, held at HLS:

His welcome was certainly warm, as he entered the room to a grand round of applause. The applause even extended to the overflow rooms, two floors away, where another two hundred attendees watched his speech and the following panel on video screens. After he was introduced, applause again broke out on both levels, and as audience members began to rise to their feet, he motioned them back to their seats: "Thank you very much, I think," he began. "Let me remind you, I am a Democrat."

Who's Who?

Help me fill in the blanks on this list of the Supreme Court clerks for October 2006 Term!
(UPDATED with new information obtained via e-mail.)

UPDATE II: Do you have information about future members of the Elect? E-mail me so I can profile everyone's favorite clerks.

UPDATED AGAIN: The list of clerks has been reposted here.

Kennedy:

1. Dave Foster (Harvard '05/Kozinski)
2. Mark Yohalem (Harvard '05/Rymer)
3. Eric Murphy (Chicago '05/Wilkinson)
4. Lisa Marshall (Yale '05/Leval)
   

Souter:

1. David Han (Harvard '05/Boudin)
   
2. Daniel Tenny (Michigan '05/Tatel)
   
3. Bryan Leach (Yale '05/Cabranes)
4. Boris Bershteyn (Yale '04/Cabranes)

Scalia:

1. Dan Bress (UVA '05/Wilkinson '05-'06)
2. Louis A. Chaiten (Northwestern '98/Sutton '03-'04)
3. Joshua Lipshutz (Stanford '05/Kozinski '05-'06)
4. Hashim Mooppan (Harvard '05/Luttigator '05-'06) source
   

Stevens:

1. Nick Bagley (NYU '05/Tatel)
2. Chad Golder (Yale '05/Garland)
3. Jamal Greene (Yale '05/Guidomaniac)
4. Lauren Sudeall (Harvard '05/Bleeding Reinhardt) source
   

Ginsburg:

1. Kate Andrias (Yale '04/Bleeding Reinhardt '04-'05)
2. Scott Hershovitz (Yale '04/W. Fletcher '04-'05)
3. Daphna Renan (Yale '04/Edwards '04-'05)
4. Arun Subramanian (Columbia '04/Jacobs '04-'05/G. Lynch '05-'06) source

Breyer:

1. Stephen Shackleford (Harvard '05/Boudin) source
2. Thiru Vignarajah (Harvard '05/Calabresi)
3. Tacy Flint (Chicago '04/'05, Posner)
4. Jaren Casazza (Columbia '04/Jacobs '04-'05/Wood '05-'06)

Thomas:

1. John Adams (UVA '03/Sentelle-tubby '03-'04)
2. David Bragdon (UVA '02/S. Williams '02-'03)
3. Brandt Leibe (Yale '05/Luttigator '05-'06) source
4. Adam Conrad (Georgia '05/Sentelle '05-'06)
   

Roberts:

1. George Hicks (Harvard '05/Brown)
2. Felicia Ellsworth (Chicago '05/Boudin)
   
3. ?
4. ?

Alito:

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Who's Who? II

Help me fill in the blanks on this list of the Supreme Court clerks for October 2006 Term! Do you have information about future members of the Elect? E-mail me so I can profile everyone's favorite clerks.

(Now with Soutery goodness!)

Kennedy:

1. Dave Foster (Harvard '05/Kozinski)
2. Mark Yohalem (Harvard '05/Rymer)
3. Eric Murphy (Chicago '05/Wilkinson)
4. Lisa Marshall (Yale '05/Leval)
   

Souter:

1. David Han (Harvard '05/Boudin)
   
2. Daniel Tenny (Michigan '05/Tatel)
   
3. Bryan Leach (Yale '05/Cabranes)
4. Boris Bershteyn (Yale '04/Cabranes)
   

Scalia:

1. Dan Bress (UVA '05/Wilkinson '05-'06)
2. Louis A. Chaiten (Northwestern '98/Sutton '03-'04)
3. Joshua Lipshutz (Stanford '05/Kozinski '05-'06)
4. Hashim Mooppan (Harvard '05/Luttigator '05-'06) source
   

Stevens:

1. Nick Bagley (NYU '05/Tatel)
2. Chad Golder (Yale '05/Garland)
3. Jamal Greene (Yale '05/Guidomaniac)
4. Lauren Sudeall (Harvard '05/Bleeding Reinhardt) source
   

Ginsburg:

1. Kate Andrias (Yale '04/Bleeding Reinhardt '04-'05)
2. Scott Hershovitz (Yale '04/W. Fletcher '04-'05)
3. Daphna Renan (Yale '04/Edwards '04-'05)
4. Arun Subramanian (Columbia '04/Jacobs '04-'05/G. Lynch '05-'06) source

Breyer:

1. Stephen Shackleford (Harvard '05/Boudin) source
2. Thiru Vignarajah (Harvard '05/Calabresi)
3. Tacy Flint (Chicago '04/'05, Posner)
4. Jaren Casazza (Columbia '04/Jacobs '04-'05/Wood '05-'06)

Thomas:

1. John Adams (UVA '03/Sentelle-tubby '03-'04)
2. David Bragdon (UVA '02/S. Williams '02-'03)
3. Brandt Leibe (Yale '05/Luttigator '05-'06) source
4. Adam Conrad (Georgia '05/Sentelle '05-'06)
   

Roberts:

1. George Hicks (Harvard '05/Brown)
2. Felicia Ellsworth (Chicago '05/Boudin)
   
3. ?
4. ?

Alito:

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
   

The opposite of schadenfreude continues

Kathleen Fitzpatrick discusses the opposite of schadenfreude, a subject of some previous musings on this blog. The Times calls it Erfolgtraurigkeit (success-sadness), where "others’ success [throws] the desolation of your life into bad relief."

(This appears tangentially related to the newly coined term "idolspize" although that word seems to imply envy, not sadness, and requires a certain similarity between the idolspizer and her target so that the comparison is more keenly felt. I don't idolspize anyone; although I do feel sad when I think about people who are very similar to me who have some of the things in life that I most desire, I don't direct that emotion at my doppelgängers.)

The emotion addressed in my original post, however, lacked both envy and idolization. A key component of what I was trying to describe is the sense of offense at a universe that would permit such persons to be showered with success, no matter how superficially deserving they might be and how little I wanted that form of success for myself. A critic points out that this is actually not the diametrical opposite of schadenfreude, since it goes beyond the basic joy-sadness/damage-success formula. The Times writer, though, also seems to think that a certain sense of injustice is required for truly intense Erfolgtraurigkeit:

if I think something’s good, and it wins prizes, or gets great reviews, I’m Erfolgtraurigkeit-free: at some level, in fact, I subconsciously consider these prizes and reviews a tribute to my own good taste. When I think something’s shite, however, and it’s garlanded, I get the most terrible, the most awful Erfolgtraurigkeit: I get Erfolgtraufigkeit with Ich mö chte sie mit einer Axt im kalten Blut ermorden-keit on top.

Whew!

Yay to cd for finishing the bar exam.

Another prof who's not evil

The amazing Jonathan Zittrain (an example of an HLS professor who liked to use the internet to communicate with students, unlike someone else I could name) has been guest-blogging at PrawfsBlawg. Check it out.

Souter Hires Clerks

Rumor has it that Justice Souter has hired one from Harvard, one from Michigan, and two Yalies. More to come (write with your gossip!).

UPDATE: A3G has revealed the names: Dave Han, Daniel Tenny, Boris Bershteyn, and Bryan Leach. Profiles will follow.

Lunch Break Funny

Miss Doxie has another tale of Bo woe for you.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

After reading this article on professorial complaints about student email, I was all set to snark on the professor who allegedly requires that her students thank her for responding to their messages. Typical Pomona snottiness, I thought. But apparently my snark should be directed toward the NY Times; the professor was misquoted. Poor Pomona prof! She did look more like a Miss Manners type in her photo than a Cartmanesque demander of respect for her authoritah.

PTN Book Club Reminder

The deadline for posts on this month's selection, On Beauty, is one week away.

Canadians: not all sugar and spice

The Bad Samaritan story involving a Canadian family, a blogger, and a lost camera becomes even more bizarre when a "lawer" starts harassing people who have covered the story online.

May the force be with you, bar takers! (redux)

Best of luck to cd and Kathleen Sullivan, who are taking the California bar exam tomorrow (for the first and second time, respectively).

Nothing says I'm sorry like a J.D.?

Another bad reason to go to law school. (Previously)

Gaslighted

I highly recommend the 1944 version of Gaslight. Ingrid Bergman has a fine turn as an opera singer (who we first glimpse performing Lucia de Lammermoor) whose debonair continental husband slowly convinces her she is mad, and Charles Boyer is delightfully evil as that Old Hollywood staple, a jewel thief. The film's title has made its way into the modern lexicon. Have you ever been gaslighted?

Call for Gossip

Does anyone have information on rising Kennedy clerks Eric Murphy (Chicago '05/Wilkinson) and Lisa Marshall (Yale '05/Leval)? If you know any of the other OT 2006 clerks, please share that as well.

Ah, Harvard

Magic Cookie has this observation:

Looking at my schedule today, I realized that we have no female professors this year, but we do have two professors with "III" after their names.

A tangentially related story. In one of my law school classes, the professor, who I believe had just obtained his third divorce (at least one of the ex-wives was a former student), announced that he was looking for research assistants. Female class members, not interested in being the next Mrs. Prof, stayed away in droves. He then complained to the class after hiring four men about the dearth of woman applicants. Straight faces were kept by all, but barely.

The Breyer Clerks

Without further ado, profiles of Justice Breyer's OT 2006 clerks!

Steve Shackleford (the guy on the right) is a double Harvard from Jackson, Mississippi. Like many, he dabbled in consulting and founded a couple of internet startups before deciding to follow in his father's footsteps and go into the law. At HLS, he won the prestigious Sears Prize twice and polished off his time in Cambridge by fathering twins and winning the Fay Diploma. An Articles Editor on the law review, he allegedly missed the coveted summa cum laude status by a fraction of a grade. He's not bitter, though. Shackleford summered with Goldstein & Howe and Dow, Lohnes & Albertson Wachtell Lipton before starting his clerkship with Judge Michael Boudin of the First Circuit. (His co-clerk, Felicia Ellsworth, is clerking for the Chief in OT 2006.)

Thiru Vignarajah, (shown here with his lovely wife, Rakhi, a med student) currently clerks for Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit. He is "quite possibly one of the friendliest fellows you'll ever meet." A former APDA "most eligible bachelor" and the first Sri Lankan president of the Harvard Law Review, Thiru has degrees from Yale and Kings College, London and used to work as a consultant for McKinsey. However, Thiru's not all work and no play; give him credit for initiating the recent shift by law reviews toward shorter articles (earning the gratitude of journal staff everywhere) and he was popular on the HLS law review for his attention to quality of life issues (earning the gratitude of a few dozen TiVo-loving people in Gannett House). Thiru also brought the law review's gender parity problem under control through intensive personal recruiting. He loves basketball and tries to attend every NCAA Final Four with his college roommates. Will Thiru rule over the highest court in the land? Only time will tell. Watch out for another Vignarajah to ascend to the ranks of the Elect in the future; his sis, a Marshall Scholar, currently attends Yale Law.

Tacy Flint, (left) former Executive Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, is a survivor. She's fought cancer twice, once while wearing a smurfy blue wig. A current Posner clerk, Flint has a lovely soprano and married a fellow member of her Princeton a capella group. She's certain to be popular at the Supreme Court Christmas party; last year's carols were less exuberant than they might have been, so a strong voice like Flint's will surely be welcome.

Jaren Casazza is a curly-haired "rock star" with a passion for the arts (she founded a charity to bring together starving artists and uber-rich I-bankers). Her tastes range from Cyndi Lauper to Italo Calvino, and this NoVa native also admits to a certain fondness for the Gilmore Girls. She clerked for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the Second Circuit last year and currently clerks for #1 Judicial Superhottie Judge Kimba Wood. She summered twice at Paul Weiss. A graduate of Columbia Law School and Columbia College, Casazza has spent the last nine years in New York but will finally make a triumphant return to the D.C. area for her Supreme Court clerkship. She's also the only single Breyer clerk, so liberal gentlemen should take note!

Alito Clerks for the Current Term

Justice Alito has a glut of clerks for the next few months. The Washington Post reports that he just hired Adam Ciongoli, who clerked for him on the Third Circuit in 1995-96. Justice Alito had already picked up two clerks from Justice O'Connor (Benjamin Horwich and Sasha Volokh). He will also have the services of former Rehnquist clerk Jay Jorgensen and former Thomas clerk Hannah Smith.

UPDATE: More on Alito stalwart and Federalist Society champion Ciongoli here.

It's all about the billables

Last week we briefly talked about the lawyer lifestyle and how it might be improved. This Metafilter thread deals with the same topic, although there's plenty of uninformed lawyer-bashing to go along with the serious discussion.

Oh frabjous day!

Happy Valentine's Day, all. In lieu of cheap pieces of paper with mass-media characters printed on them, I will accept positive adjectives. (Via Bitch Ph.D)

Pseudo-Roundup

Because I am lazy, a roundup post:

- Instapundit's niece sounds like a budding slash fan.

- Does it even make sense to have a discussion about disparities in pay between fields without talking about supply and demand for labor? Augh.

- Meanwhile, an economist dives into the advice business. I'd rather have Tyler Cowen tell me how to run my love life than have law students setting wages.

- Without having read any of the linked articles: was I the only one who saw "groin injury diagnosed at 2:15 AM" and thought that maybe this research was on the wrong track after all? (Yeah, yeah, she fell. But that's not funny.)

Weekend Bake: Orange Kiss-Me Cake

In honor of Valentine's Day (which I will be spending alone in Clerksville, more's the pity), I made an Orange Kiss-Me Cake. Mmm, mmm.

Allegiances

After all of my frustrating experiences with Netflix, I finally decided to move over to the Dark Side and joined Blockbuster Online. I don't like the user interface as well as I like Netflix's, but they have already won my love by shipping on Saturdays. The in-store coupons have already come in handy as well. Suck it, Netflix!

Why Ayn Rand had a messed up love life?

Apparently altruists have better marriages. I don't think of altruism in love as altruism per se, but more as selfishness + a utility function that values future returns. Many things that seem like "sacrifices" in the short run are necessary to obtain happiness in the long run. Your mileage may vary.

Working stiffs

PETER: What if we're still doing this when we're 50?

SAMIR: It could be nice to have that kind of job security.

-- Office Space

I was driving home from work yesterday listening to Dolly Parton sing Nine to Five, and all I could think was how amazing it would be to find a legal job with those hours. Ted Frank discusses alternatives to the high billing, high stress model in this post.

The Roberts Clerks So Far

Felicia H. Ellsworth is the newest member of the Elect, having been hired by Chief Justice Roberts. Ms. Ellsworth graduated cum laude from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 2000. She received an honors certificate from the university's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and wrote a paper entitled "Sexuality as Sin or Sacrament?" comparing Christian and Islamic attitudes toward sexuality (sounds hot!).

At the University of Chicago Law School, Ms. Ellsworth was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review and published a comment on stadium seating in movie theaters and the ADA (71 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1109). She also found time to marry Timothy Smith, a software executive. She currently clerks for Judge Michael Boudin of the First Circuit. Ms. Ellsworth enjoys Ayn Rand, the first Legally Blonde movie (boo), and CSI.

As previously documented, Chief Justice Roberts has already hired George Hicks for OT 2006. Who is George Hicks? A3G briefly profiled the Jeopardy! winner here (photos!). Mr. Hicks wrote and acted in the HLS Parody, wrote for the HLS Record, and also was notes editor for another publication. Although he was originally hired by then-Judge Roberts, Hicks spent the last year clerking for the fabulous Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit. So: George Hicks: Hoosier. Gunner. Hunk.

Markets in Dersh

I guess Harvard Law School's $35,000/year tuition is a bargain after all. That would pay for one public appearance by Alan Dershowitz. As a 1L, I had three Dershowitz appearances per week for thirteen weeks. That's $1,365,000 worth of Dersh! And for the low price of $70, I bought some hornbooks to actually learn criminal law!

No wonder the law school had to restrict the number of times professors could cancel class. (I heard that before this rule was in place, Dersh and other profs went AWOL for TV on a regular basis, for obvious reasons.)

Somewhere in here there's an Enron joke to be made

I recently acquired a new board game that consumed a large part of my weekend: Power Grid. It's a German game based around building power plants and supplying cities with electricity. This game may be the most unabashedly geeky one I've ever played; it's like SimCity without any of the creative aspects of building a town. The box is hysterical, especially if read in a fake German accent, although luckily the rules are translated well. From the box:

Earning money with electric power? Earning lots of money with electric power? A very good idea!!! ... Certainly nuclear power is very exciting and as long as government will manage the nuclear waste there will be a lot of profit. ... Over 200 wooden pieces included.

You can play it online. (Alas, no wooden pieces.)

Solicitation

Does anyone have information on rising Kennedy clerks Eric Murphy (Chicago '05/Wilkinson) and Lisa Marshall (Yale '05/Leval)?

Summoning the dead

Strangely, just 24 hours after I discussed Raffi's clerkship-long hiatus with a fellow law blogger, this post appeared on Waddling Thunder.

Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking

Is esprit d'escalier applicable in a professional context?

Alito Hires Clerks

The questions about Sasha Volokh's fate may stop: according to A3G, he and fellow O'Connor clerk Ben Horwich have been hired by Justice Alito.

Pretty good day so far

There are few things more delicious than a Coca-Cola Slurpee. One of those things is crispy duck.

PTN: the new home of Supreme Court clerk gossip

I am honored that Article III Groupie has temporarily delegated the duty of stalking The Elect to this little blog. In the grand UTR tradition, I will profile the chosen ones, starting with those closest to me: the HLS grads of 2005. If you have any information about these fascinating individuals, please e-mail me. (Anything scandalous will be put in a blind item.)

Scrapbooking for the patriarchy?

Maybe it's just my cynical feminist side talking, but it strikes me that these scrapbooking women have found a perfect way to fulfill their urges to pursue creative hobbies without risking being accused of "selfishness" for directing thousands of hours and dollars toward something that has nothing to do with their roles as caregivers.

Grisly fate for actor averted

It's not all hostility, chaos, and murder for Werner Herzog. (h/t Karl)

UPDATE: Photos of the crashed car here.

Where is Jill Carroll?

Her headscarf may provide clues.

Oscar!

John Scalzi has a really good post on this year's Oscar nominees. I actually was underwhelmed by both Wallace & Gromit and Corpse Bride, but who knows if Howl's Moving Castle deserves to win. I don't have an informed opinion on most of the acting nominations except that Philip Seymour Hoffman is always awesome and deserves a small Caribbean island, not a dumb statuette.

What federal rule of civil procedure are you?

YOU ARE RULE 12(b)!

While you might be a defendant's best friend, you
aren't exactly polite to others. You have
seven separate grounds on which to dismiss a
plaintiff's case. You are a bit paranoid,
since if you fail to raise your 12(b)(2,3,4,
or 7) in a motion or a pleading with one of
the other 12(b) defenses or a 12(e) motion,
you waive those objections for the rest of
trial. Some might say that 12(b) is the
biggest bully of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, but hey, somebody needs to keep
the peace. You might not be the most popular
guy in the office, but you're probably the
most important.

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

In the criminal justice system, you're considered especially gorgeous!

For that special someone: Law & Order: SVU valentines.

PTN Book Club: Blindness

This month's selection for the book club, Blindness, produced mixed reviews.

Sarah: "Even if the story had been fabulous and not at all predictable I probably still would not have enjoyed this book because of the way in which Saramago wrote it."

Carina: "Perhaps I was supposed to be learning something about the human condition here. I just didn't buy it."

Marc: "even one person's sight and humanity was no match for the moral and literal blindness of the masses."

Paul: "One thing that really interested me was the stance on morality - one of the central question being 'if no one can see our sins, and judge and punish us for them, what is to keep us doing the right thing?'"

CM: "no matter how grim it gets, it never seems farfetched. It feels familiar."

Heather: "I didn't like the way this book was structured. . . . I understood why it was written that way, but I didn't like it."

Tom: "it was 28 Days Later without zombies, or Lord of the Flies with sex."

waterhot: "It's hard to see the story as a fable, and the blindness with which all but one character are afflicted as a metaphor for moral blindness when the survival of the central group of characters is the entirely fortuitous result of their finding themselves in the company of the one person who has retained her vision."

Dylan: "As it's the end of the month, we're supposed to write about the book. Accordingly, I'll tell you why I didn't read it."

dgm: "I started writing a song about it . . . Blinded by the white/Locked up by The Dude/
Another one has lost his sight."

Sui Generis: "The "white blindness" begins like a classic zombie outbreak, with the initial cause of infection sudden and unknown, and is even more dreaded because the method of transmission is mysterious as well."

Zubon: "advertising a rape on the cover does not make me want to read the book more."

Karl: "For me, the most difficult part of reading Blindness stemmed from a childhood of wildly deteriorating eyesight, an eye infection that left me extraordinarily light-sensitive for weeks, and the morning when I awoke to discover my eyes had swollen almost entirely shut from an allergic reaction, which left me near-blind for a few weeks."

Amber: "If it had not been for the book club, I might not have finished Blindness. That probably would have been a mistake, but maybe not much of one."

Thanks to all who participated! I hope we can have an interesting discussion about any issues on which we differed. If you haven't sent in your review yet, e-mail me and I will add it to this post.

Remember, next month's selection is On Beauty. Happy reading.

PTN Book Club: Guest Post

Marc Reiner on Blindness:

Saramago's book reminded me of Kubrick's 1987 film, Full Metal Jacket, based on the division of the book into two distinct parts. The internment in the ward, like Basic Training, and then the prisoners off on their own into a state of chaos.

Before the characters meet, we get a basic glimpse into their lives, and then as the first man goes blind, a steady succession of events occur that culminate into their imprisonment. Saramago paints the characters in great detail, but we never learn their names. This balance of personal quirks but no names was very odd. I suppose it had something to do with imagery of us being blind to certain attributes. This is similar to how I had to reread the dialogue to make sure I knew who was talking, which became difficult at various points.

The prison basically functioned as a Hobbesian state of war. Most people looked out for themselves, even to the point of horrific sexual gratification, and discarded any semblance of humanity. The city basically forgot about the prisoners, and soon there became no difference. Even the soldiers joked that the "blinds" should all be shot, and when a colonel did infact become blind and shot himself, they further joked that at least he's consistent. That scene, coupled with the drawn out mass rape, showed utter depravity.

The doctor's wife was the sole voice of reason, as she used her sight as an obligation for her to retain her humanity and do all she could; cleaning the dead, asking for food, even killing a rapist. But even one person's sight and humanity was no match for the moral and literal blindness of the masses.

The second half of the book was a major letdown. I just didn't find them foraging through the town for food, and the realization that everyone was afflicted as being all that interesting.

Overall, the book could have come down with the fire that ended the prison. Everything else seemed superfluous and no new points were made other than wrapping up the plot, quite unsatisfactorily.

Amber on Blindness

When I first started reading Blindness, I had to suppress the urge to chuck it across the room. One of my least favorite reading experiences was when my high school English teacher assigned All the Pretty Horses and I had to suffer through hundreds of pages of sporadically punctuated prose with unclearly attributed dialogue. However, this is my book club and I cannot quit in a huff, so I kept going.

As Dylan points out, Saramago's "innovations" are chiefly stylistic: run-on sentences and a failure to endow any of the characters with a name (this didn't register with me when I first read it, and it doesn't hinder the storytelling). Post-apocalyptic degeneration of social norms is hardly a new idea. The writing, however, makes up for the lack of creativity; my sense of creeping dread grew as I saw that one jackal-like group of blind men would sexually enslave the women in less aggressive groups, and if I also knew that rebellion and liberation were inevitable, that did not stop my stomach from churning when I realized that Saramago would not permit this until after at least one orgy of violent rape.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is that so few episodes like this occur within the blind community. Partner-swapping and food distribution caused fewer emotional and physical battles than I thought would be the case; the shock of sudden disability and social upheaval seem to muffle the reactions of many characters, who themselves seem to exist in a white fog. Even though one character maintains her sight and recounts her experiences through the book, Saramago relies on little imagery to pull the reader along.

Some reviewers tried to tie this book to the magical realist school (I don't see this; the most magical thing is when everyone is spontaneously cured at the end, and that's hardly more improbable than a sudden onset of blinding plague) or claimed it's an allegory. I don't see Saramago as being terribly successful if either was his intent. The book seems very literal to me, but then again I am a painfully literal person.

When I picked this up from the library, I also got Saramago's The Double. I haven't decided whether to read it or not. If it had not been for the book club, I might not have finished Blindness. That probably would have been a mistake, but maybe not much of one.

Jack Twist actually eaten by bears

I saw Brokeback Mountain at last. The theater was surprisingly full, given the fact that the movie has been out for a while and this is Clerksville. The acting exceeded expectations, but they were exceedingly low. Heath Ledger's decision to keep the lower half of his face completely immobile rendered the dialogue indecipherable at times, and I could have done with 50% fewer panoramic shots of mountains and sheep. It still managed to be heartwrenching, though. Relatedly, James Berardnelli is on crack if he thinks neither character was gay.

I also finally watched Grizzly Man. This may be the most arresting movie I can remember watching. Herzog's narration is an excellent antidote to the manic babblings of Timothy Treadwell, self-proclaimed "protector" of the bears in a federal park. I was left with deep sympathy for Treadwell's girlfriend, Amie, who feared the bears but stayed with Treadwell in the wilderness for two summers nonetheless. She apparently used a frying pan to try to fight off the killer bear, disregarding her mauled boyfriend's injunctions to run away and save herself.

Even if you survive a bear attack, the results can be grisly.

O my

Puzzlingly, Melissa "Opinionista" Lafsky purged her two most identifiable posts about law firm partners (previously linked here) from Google's cache but then promptly put up a new post about her summer associate stint at Morgan, Lewis which takes potshots at one of the partners there.

Somehow, I think the bit about how she'd "never been the girl that people didn't like" is revisionist history. People don't just suddenly become insufferable, self-obsessed whiners with entitlement complexes out the wazoo. A personality flaw of this magnitude takes years to develop.

Side note: welcome to UTR and WSJ Law Blog readers! I hope you stick around.

Random Roundup XIV

A perfect shirt if you and your sweetie are ubergeeks.

Half of men in a recent study said that witty women are a turn-off.

The Happy Feminist asks the question I've always wanted to press: why does gender apartheid produce so little outrage when racial apartheid resulted in so much?

Rust sucks. On the bright side, it won't give you tetanus, so a tiny amount of rust that doesn't adversely affect the usefulness of the item is probably not worth worrying about. If you are too anal about rust, you may end up like the housemate I had who supervised my washing of a grater (that did not even belong to him, I might add) and instructed me to keep scrubbing it until I could get some of the rust off. He is lucky I did not grate his nose.

PTN Book Club Posts Due Tomorrow

Tomorrow night I'll be linking to all posts about Blindness for the blog book club, so if you've written one and would like it to be included, send it to me. Also, if your blog has comments, please enable them. Part of the fun will be being able to discuss each other's reactions to the book.

Such a clown

The Washington Post recently published a fascinating article on D.C.'s hottest children's entertainer, The Great Zucchini. While he makes over $100,000 per year, the popular clown is almost always broke due to a compulsive gambling problem. The chat with the author, featuring a brief appearance by The Great Zucchini, is also interesting, although one passage rubbed me the wrong way. In response to the author's wry recommendation that the chronically disorganized clown find a good woman to civilize him, one commenter asked:

I am also a little flattered at your view of women as having the potential to civilize life for men who might come up short in some areas. What, however, do men offer to us women, then?

The author's reply:

Unconditional love. Intense, genuine gratitude. Loyalty. Honesty. Protection. A good income. A friend to talk to. Someone willing to overlook her own problems, whatever they may be. Slavish devotion. Etc.

Most of these are to be expected from any relationship and would presumably be provided reciprocally by the woman as well. Which of these are supposed to be exclusively male? (And where's the extra oomph to offset the life-crippling addiction?)

Bad teen poetry explained

All those depressed teenagers cranking out awful poetry are just self-medicating. (h/t)

Market niche unfilled

If peppermint is a stimulating, energizing taste, why do we use the same toothpaste at night that we use in the morning? Shouldn't we have sleepytime toothpaste with a more soothing flavor?

Weird.

Kissing may lower the risk of stroke, but sex makes you a better public speaker.

What is love?

I'm not Catholic, but I too find much to agree with here. I once said love was openness, which is muzzy way of saying it involves, beyond the wish to draw the beloved to the self, a broadening of the notion of well-being to encompass the happiness of the beloved. Without generosity of spirit, there can be no love.

Science solves ancient plague mystery

The plague that struck Athens during the Peloponnesian War was typhoid, DNA tests say. (h/t GeekPress)

Want a balloon? They float.

Clearly the appropriate response to coworker antics of this kind involves violence and clown makeup.

The sort of thing that makes me grind my teeth

I was displeased to discover that "sex" is listed in the OED as a slangy synonym for "to have sexual intercourse." However, it is listed there as an intransitive verb. Therefore, sentences like this post title, in which the verb takes an object, are just as incorrect as I thought. The transitive verb form of "sex" means "to determine the sex of, by anatomical examination," and we can all agree that this is not necessary for Ms. Anderson as she has displayed her emphatically female anatomy for all to see.

More masochism

Of the reading variety, that is.

Another member of the Elect

Congratulations to Hashim Mooppan, who has, to no one's surprise, procured a clerkship with Justice Scalia.

Airport!

Problem solved:

Harry Burns: You take someone to the airport, it's clearly the beginning of the relationship. That's why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.
Sally Albright: Why?
Harry Burns: Because eventually things move on and you don't take someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me, How come you never take me to the airport anymore?
Sally Albright: It's amazing. You look like a normal person but actually you are the angel of death.

Law jobs

The Yale Law School career development office has an interesting breakdown of how to make your billable hour requirement.

Of course, there are jobs where billables don't come into play, but you might end up working with this guy.

Huffy little beast

I am a bad cat owner.
I have a small plaster statuette of Athena that I picked up at a Greek souvenir shop. Athena is the women's mascot for CMC and also an all-around cool goddess, as Neal Stephenson has observed in his fiction (although, to be pedantic, the aegis belongs to Zeus). While I was away last week, the one of cats (probably Lily, since she is the better jumper) knocked the statuette off the shelf and beheaded her. The damage was reparable, so I went and bought some Krazy Glue to stick her head back on. Unfortunately, both cats really wanted to help. Snape kept jumping up and sniffing at the pieces as I was putting them together -- little bugger was probably getting high off the glue. I thought I'd successfully kept him back. I was wrong.

Viva Flickr

Here are some photos from my recent trip to the Pacific time zone.
Me + puppets
Me + waterfall
Me + makeup (I know, so out of character.)