99 bottles of beer on the broken down bed used as a table in the front yard, 99 bottles of beer . . .
Good news from this weekend. I walked out of my apartment at 8 am after a refreshing night of sleep to see, at the frat house just down the street, about 200 beer cans and bottles of various sorts piled up on this stack of pathetic broken down wooden bed frames that was apparently used as patio furniture for the welcome back to school party. Ah, college. Part of me definitely misses those days. The other part thinks it's disgusting. And both parts are ashamed of the other. But I'll not bore you with my internal demons.

The good news about this? Big party. Me sleeping. Same night.

Let's hope that's a sign of things to come.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 1:46 PM 0 comments

 
RAD One Sentence Review
Love Actually: For a romantic comedy, not too bad, actually.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 9:50 AM 0 comments

 
RAD One Sentence Review
The Big Lebowski: The best Cohen brothers movie ever, even better than Fargo, if you think things like "The Dude abides" are deep, White Russians at 10 am are cool, and German porn actor nililists are interesting - which I do.

If you need further evidence, check out this Big Lebowski Quote Generator. Cool.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 11:23 AM 0 comments

 
Bumper Stickers
Why do people in college towns cover their beat up cars with bumper stickers, like "Peace - Nonviolence - Vegetarianism" and "My pet saves lives - it's neutered" and "Kerry - Edwards." Well, ok, maybe the last one is pretty common everywhere, but still, why do they do it and why do "they" always seem to be liberals? You'd think that of any group, poor, well educated, socially involved people would have very little of their identity wrapped up in their car. That seems like a weakness of the sports car and souped-up-car-with-black-lights-on-the-under-carriage-and-huge-sound-system-and-hydraulics-and-shiny-hub-cap sets. Perhaps they think cars are a good place to advertise their causes, but do they also put their causes on their homes? Their clothes?

I mean, I don't have any answers, but moving back to a college town, it's just one of the first things you notice.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:58 AM 0 comments

 
"The Dumb Factor": D-U-M Dumb

Howell Raines, disgraced former editor of the New York Times, has an op/ed in today's Washington Post (and elsewhere) called "The Dumb Factor." In it he muses on the nature of presidential intelligence, and its importance in this race. It contains this wonderfully revealing line:

Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead.

Now, others have had a go at Raines for the intellectual sloppiness of this assertion, and what it reveals about the media: he has no facts for this, he just knows it. Yet others have had a go at the specific claim he is making about Kerry. Equally fascinating, though, is the interplay between the circumstances under which Raines left the Times and how he is identified by the Post.

The Post says simply: The writer is former executive editor of the New York Times. This is true, of course, but it hardly captures the conditions under which he became the former executive editor: the Jayson Blair scandal, which seriously undermined the Times' credibility. One might be tempted to think that losing your dream job because of an inability to ensure people check their facts might caution against wild speculation.

On this evidence, one would be wrong. And one would be tempted to wonder whether this sort of thinking still affects the culture of the New York Times, and even the Washington Post, which is content to describe Raines as merely the Times' "former executive editor."
- posted by Anonymous @ 11:00 AM 0 comments

 
What a couple days

Arsenal set the record for the longest unbeaten streak in English soccer history. USA basketball beats Spain, in what can fairly be called a surprise. The Kerry campaign proves the almost unbelievable fact that lawyers have more than one client, and that specilist lawyers sometimes have clients who bear some relation to each other (I know, I needed a deep breath and a drink to help me believe it too). And now Tom has returned, and RAD is new again.

Amazing.

- posted by Anonymous @ 12:16 PM 0 comments

 
Not Alone Leaving The Law
This should be very interesting for lawyers in general, and lawyers in my age cohort especially, as we're the focus of the study:

After the JD is a longitudinal study that will follow a calendar year 2000 cohort of law school graduates. It is the largest and most ambitious study ever undertaken by researchers of legal careers, and it aims to create a definitive picture of how the careers of lawyers develop in the early twenty-first century

I'll be very interested in how many of my contemporaries felt the same way that I did about being a lawyer, and how many of them decided to leave to do something else. Hat tip to the ever interesting Eugene Volokh.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:52 PM 1 comments

 
And Now for Something Completely Different
Well, we may not have been on an exclusive three year tour of Europe, Scandinavia and the sub continent, but we are back. And by we, I mean me.

I don't know if any of the other RAD contributors will be inspired by my return, nor do I know how long I'll be back at blogging, but I figured I'd at least give it a go. And every good comeback requires a new look - Jordan wore a new number, Deion's going to a new team - so I've redone our interface.

There will also be all kinds of new stuff up. I've changed careers, leaving the life of the law behind for reasons I may discuss next time I'm in a pensive mood. I've also gone on a news fast - all this election stuff gets me worked up and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm going to try to ignore it. So far, so good, and it does make me feel substantially more relaxed.

In any case, here's the new interface. Hope you like it.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 2:37 PM 0 comments