Indy 4

Is it that hard to have a movie make sense? Who reset the obelisk and refilled the sand after the conquistadors came? If you needed the skull to open the door to the inner chamber, how did the thieves steal the skull in the first place? What sort of "gift" is incinerating someone's head? Etc.

Book Collectors

If I had been one of the friends helping this fellow move, I think I might have told him to schlep his own 100 boxes of external hard drive. Reading them isn't the point? Sir, we can settle this outside.

Hot Stuff

The staff at my favorite Chinese restaurant apparently knows me from previous visits and calls me "Spicy Girl," after my taste in dishes. I take my fame where I can get it.

Success in Law Firms

A former BIGLAW associate ponders the mysteries of law firm success. It is uncomfortable to think about how much can turn on a first assignment, first impression, or whether someone clicks with your personality. Lots of lawyers pop up in the comments to add their thoughts.

Confess!

Are you neurotic? (via asg)

Knitting Puzzler

How does one manage to end up knitting a sock inside-out?

Does Not Follow

Perhaps I expect too much, but these two paragraphs of the NYT article on MEPA just do not make sense:

But it found that social workers and state agencies fear litigation and stiff penalties under the law for even discussing race with adopting couples. As a result, families often do not get the counseling they need. It also found that states have ignored an aspect of the law that requires diligent recruitment of black parents.

The report recommends that the law — the Multiethnic Placement Act, which covers agencies receiving federal dollars and promotes a color-blind approach — be amended to permit agencies to consider race and culture as one of many factors when selecting parents for children from foster care.

Shouldn't the second paragraph read "be amended to permit social workers and state agencies to recommend resources to help raise a black child in a white home and to strengthen recruiting measures for black parents"? What the recommendation is actually asking for is race matching. Race matching is the reason why MEPA was passed: social workers were letting black children stagnate in unstable and unsafe foster homes rather than place them with qualified and eager white couples. Part of the reason that progress has been slow is that even after MEPA was passed, many social workers flouted the law and refused to place black children with white parents.

Even with increased recruitment, there are not enough black adoptiers to take in all the black children in foster care. Identity issues and a loving home, or repeated ricocheting between an abusive or neglectful home and an only marginally-better foster home: those are the choices.

Comedy Gold

I hate to keep flogging this Telfeyan/Harvard Law Review Note thing, but this is just too good to pass up:

A commentator, not unreasonably, asks: "Why should any of the people you photographed have helped the woman [photographed by Telfeyan as she slept in Harvard Square] when you didn't." My answer: (1) I've never suggested any of them had a duty to help this particular woman; and (2) I did help the woman, and others similarly situated, by publishing my Note, and by starting this blog.

And after laughter, tears:

A commentator complains that my essay "has nothing whatsoever to do with law." Obviously it has something to do with law: otherwise I could not have gotten it published in the Harvard Law Review and received coursework credit for it.

I am very curious about the identity of the professor who signed off on this little project and what grade s/he gave.

UPDATE: A Cantabrigian who knows the homeless woman Telfeyan used in his recent preachy post informs him that:

If she wanted, she could have received mental health care and had a warm place to sleep, but she chose not to. ... [S]he has mental health issues and is homeless for a myriad of complex reasons, and ... is going about her daily life just as everyone else is. You may believe that she should be forced to receive help and be given a place to live, but that's a different argument altogether. To [intervene] would be unwanted and condescending to this woman.

UPDATE 2: According to ATL, some sources report that Phil Telfeyan sent emails to HLR editors disclaiming responsibility for blog comments and postings made in his name. However, Telfeyan would neither confirm nor deny responsibility publicly.

As ATL notes, "the blog contains no written content that could not be derived from the piece itself," and with that in mind I find the issue of whether Telfeyan actually authored the blog almost beside the point. If a blog consisting entirely of your ideas is universally condemned as patronizing, callow, unoriginal, and wrong, culpability flows back to you.

Because throwing out the first pitch is one of the sacred presidential duties.

Flag pins? Unnecessary. Being a sports fan? Absolutely required in a president.

Bah.

Wacko Outed

The author of the Harvard Law Review Note I previously blogged about has been identified as Phil Telfeyan. He has created a blog in support of his Note. He's spent a lot of time so far making excuses for the fact that the statue from which the title of his Note was taken represents the exact opposite of what he argued that it portrayed--as Telfeyan would have seen had he looked at the inscription on the other side of the statue.

Comments on his blog are open.

UPDATE: Welcome, ATL trolls!

UPDATE 2: According to ATL, some sources report that Phil Telfeyan sent emails to HLR editors disclaiming responsibility for blog comments and postings made in his name. However, Telfeyan would neither confirm nor deny responsibility publicly.

As ATL notes, "the blog contains no written content that could not be derived from the piece itself," and with that in mind I find the issue of whether Telfeyan actually authored the blog almost beside the point. If a blog consisting entirely of your ideas is universally condemned as patronizing, callow, unoriginal, and wrong, culpability flows back to you.

Do Not Give Money To Harvard

Some people think there are better things you could do with it. (via)

Carrying and Berrying

It's too bad that it would be utterly unprofessional to knit myself a Blackberry case. I could make one with little sleeves on either side to hold my building pass and Metro pass. There are some you can buy online with card sleeves but they all have magnets, which don't play well with Metro cards.

Hillary as Henry II

Not good.

Tiny People Demand Discount Airfare!

Airlines charging for the first checked bag? Given the draconian and unnecessary 3-1-1 rule, this has dramatically increased the expense and inconvenience of air travel. I'm waiting for them to start charging for total poundage, as in passenger + bags. At least then I might come out ahead.

Out this wacko.

Via ATL, a Note from the Harvard Law Review on lawyers and career choices. If you ever wanted to see someone use half-digested Peter Singer to argue that BIGLAW attorneys are baby killers, check it out. I'm really curious about the identity of the author. Any tipsters?

By the way, how would you like to see my new bag?

50 Book Challenge #30 & 31: Before They Are Hanged & Last Argument of Kings

Somehow I forgot to write a review of Book 2 of The First Law trilogy, so it's getting combined with my post for Book 3. I liked Book 2 a bit less than Book 1; road-trip narratives tend to bore me. They may bore Abercrombie too, since he spends literally no time on the return voyage from the ends of the earth and begins Book 3 back in the familiar environs of the Union. In the tradition of most modern dark fantasy, there are few happy endings and blood runs in the streets. By the close of the trilogy, when a puppet king and his despised vizier must attempt to rebuild the capital after a Hiroshima-like disaster behind the back of the power-mad wizard triumphant, we grasp for whatever satisfaction we can get. Abercrombie's project of tweaking genre stereotypes is ultimately successful. Only a relative lack of complex female characters (itself a genre stereotype) mars what is otherwise a GRRM-level effort. Recommended for genre and non-genre readers.

Spencer + Dworkin

Via asg, an interesting article on libertarianism and feminism that I hadn't seen before.

Reading about what you already know (sort of).

Recently I was trying to defend my practice of reading the classics by arguing that there is significant value in actually reading works which are a fundamental part of our culture and which are often referenced, even if we are already roughly aware of what's being referred to. Is this just a rationalization for pretentious reading material or do we need to immerse ourselves in Beowulf to fully grasp what someone means when he throws out an allusion to Grendel's mother? Would one be better off reading some new masterworks that haven't yet percolated through the collective subconscious?

50 Book Challenge #29: The Arabian Nights

I took this to Egypt, along with Tristam Shandy, in what was intended to be a tales-within-tales double shot of literary love. Unfortunately, lazing on the pool deck of our riverboat in the oppressive heat was not conducive to reading Sterne. I needed something lighter, and this fit the bill.

The introduction, which discusses the previous translations of the tales, is perhaps the most engrossing part of the entire book. The excerpts from the overwrought European translations, some of which were filtered through one in a bizarre game of telephone, are cringeworthy in the extreme. The prose in this version is often flowery but never painful. There are less than 300 actual "nights" of tales, and though many of them took on a nightmarishly repetitive MadLibs-like quality* after a while, they really are the perfect thing to read while floating down the Nile. Recommended, with the caveat that you need to read the second volume to find the famous tales about Aladdin and Sinbad.

* For example: There once was a young man with a face like a [noun] who met a girl with a [noun, body part] like the moon). He saw her and was unable to [verb] for days. Finally he had to see her and disguised himself as a [noun] to get closer to her. When their eyes met they both fainted and had to be revived with [noun, fragrant liquid]. Etc.

Self Defense

This seems like a risky rape-resistance tactic but in this instance it was effective.