macs…go home!

how annoying is it that I have to spend like 15 extra minutes in the exam room, while the tech guy gives instructions to the laptop users and listen to “mine’s not uploading,” “mine’s not working,” ugh.  law students.  exams.

note to Madison hippies:  we have had 11 inches of snow plus freezing rain during the last five days.  IT IS TIME TO PUT YOUR BIKES AWAY.  Someone is going to get seriously hurt.  Is breaking your leg or getting your head run over by a snowplow really worth reducing your environmental footprint?  Do me a favor, and for the next 4 months, ride the bus, or - gasp - drive your car to work.  geez. 

ow!

those tiny drops of blood in the 3rd floor hallway of UWLS are from me STAPLING MY FINGER while putting up a bulletin board.  ah, the price of being a joiner.  should never have gotten involved.  this HURTS something awful.  Try it, you’ll see.

yep…

CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker Democrats vote to strip Michigan of its delegates «

as they should…

wha?

From a recent email sent out to UWLS students advertising a showing of ”The Paper Chase”:

“The very environment of the classroom is intimidating and scary for most of us. It’s confusing and causes even the most competent and brilliant students to doubt whether they made the right decision. Come speak with law students and professors about expelling the myth that law school is a decision between saving the world and losing your soul.”

First, since when is the classroom environment at UWLS scary and intimidating?  Only when LA is teaching…

And is it really what goes on during class that makes you doubt whether you made the right decision to come to law school?  Nope, it’s probably the fact that you have $80,000 in student loans, graduation looming, and no job in sight.  Oh, and you’re not sure if you want to be a lawyer (anymore, if ever).  Probably something you should have thought long and hard about BEFORE you signed on for all this.  You will never find more angst than among a group of law students who came to law school - not to become lawyers - but because 1) they didn’t know what else to do ; or 2) they’d always thought about it; or 3) they thought they’d find themselves.  Puh-lease.

And what is this juxtaposition of losing your soul vs. saving the world?  Who writes this stuff?  Oh, yeah, law students… 

um, yeah

“Oh, it’s terrible for us, too,” he said. Then he talked about all the ways in which flying has become so much more unpleasant, even for pilots, in recent years — overcrowded planes, impossible schedules, unpleasant conditions, etc.

So I asked him, if he were king for a day, what’s the first thing he’d do to improve Air Canada?

“That’s easy,” he said. “Change the class of the people who fly.”

We both laughed, but he wasn’t kidding. His complaint was that airline fares have gotten so cheap that there’s simply not enough revenue being generated to run an airline as it should be run, leaving everyone — employees included — pretty unhappy.  (Freakonomics blog)

individual rights?

If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued, liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second Amendment. And just as the First Amendment’s protection of the right to free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the government, though only for good reason.  (NYT)

I’M IN UR FRIG STEELIN UR F00DZ

just discovered this: http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/23/cats_can_has_gr 

and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat 

and this: http://icanhascheezburger.com/

and these are hilar. or at least enough for finals time wastage.

review session

one of my profs has asked us to email any questions about topics we don’t understand before our last class, an optional review session, on Wednesday.  I have a few ideas:

• specifically, what is going to be on the exam?
• what should we study for the exam?
• what was the point of this class?
• what was this class essentially about?

‘cuz I have no idea.  that’s why I’m pass-failing it.  whew.

oh yeah, we didn’t applaud. 

Congress, it turns out, plays fashion favorites.  

 Take bathing suits. It slaps a 28 percent tax on men’s imports, but just 12 percent on women’s.

Or overalls. The government imposes a 14 percent tariff on women’s, but only 9 percent on men’s.

Woven wool shirts? Men’s are hit with an 18 percent duty, more than twice as much as women’s.

There is no apparent pattern to the tariffs, which penalize men in some instances, and women in others. But the fees tacked onto clothing, shoes and swimwear as they enter the country’s ports may be the last legal form of sex discrimination in the United States, approved year after year by lawmakers and passed on to consumers.

For decades, apparel companies have grudgingly tolerated the peculiar disparities, writing them off as a vestige of smoke-filled, backroom trade negotiations.

But now, several major apparel makers, like Steve Madden, Asics and Columbia Sportswear, are challenging the tariffs in lawsuits against the federal government that have broad implications for the clothing industry, not to mention the battle of the sexes.

If the clothing companies prevail, they could reclaim close to $1 billion worth of tariffs based on gender differences. For example, the lawsuit claims that the government earned $2.5 million last year from discriminatory tariffs on underpants (penalizing women), $93 million for cotton shirts (penalizing men), $16 million for silk shirts (penalizing women) and $71 million for shoes with leather tops (women again).

The case also could help unravel one of the greatest mysteries in retailing: why similar clothing for men and women is priced so differently.

What the lawyers do not know — and what they hope their lawsuit reveals — is precisely why these glaring disparities exist.

Theories abound. Since the first appearance of gender differences in the tariff system dates back to the mid-1800s, plain old sexism is one hypothesis. An effort to protect American textile manufacturers from imports is another.

But after years of poring over dusty tariff lists, international trade court records and Congressional testimony, lawyers have found nothing that explains why, say, the tariff on an imported wool suit is 8.5 percent for a woman and zero for a man.

“It’s irrational,” said Peter Bragdon, the general counsel at Columbia Sportswear, one of the companies suing the government.

Columbia Sportswear imports a rugged hiking boot from China called the Diamond Peak. The men’s and women’s boots are virtually identical. But the tariff on the women’s version is 1.5 percentage points higher than the men’s (10 percent, compared with 8.5 percent).

“I think any first-year law student would have the same gut reaction we did — wait, you cannot do that,” Mr. Bragdon said. (NYT)

Next, fix haircut and drycleaning prices…