Capital Game

Somewhere in the following paragraph is the embedded name of a U.S. or world capital. Here's an example:

"Mom, I think Jack's on drugs."

The answer is (somewhat obviously) Jackson (Mississippi). Basically, the word can be divided by punctuation and spaces, but will never be separated by a letter, as in "Jack is on the drugs."

Just to make it fun, I'll place three in the paragraph below. Two will be somewhat easy- the third will be (hopefully) hell to figure out.

The day fell hot and sticky toward its eventual transformation into murky night. Becky watched as the sun set over the mountains, and thought about how the scenery was pretty enough to serve as a backdrop to one of those cheesy made-for-TV movies that polluted channels such as Lifetime or HBO.

"Is everything okay out there?" Her mother's voice rang out like a shot.

"Yes. I'll be right in."

The screen door closed and silence enveloped her once again. A quick rain fell, and she leaned her head back, taking in the solemn sacrament of nature in quick gulps. Spirituality fell in drops and struck her face in uneven, yet fierce blows. Satiated, her head fell back down to the earth.

It was the time she hated- the time to go in. The time to enter the kitchen and stand there soaking wet, feeling as if she had failed some sort of unwritten test. Paul never made her feel that way.

No. She wouldn't do it. She stood up, felt the rain on her neck, and headed for the garden. Versions of her life were put on sale most every day- this time she was putting herself off the market.

I lied- there ended up being five. Good luck.

Hell Month

It appears the law school had done an insidious job of laying a trap for every 1L this semester.

If I weren't the prey, I'd be impressed.

Last sememester, the lion's share of the GPA was calculated using final exams- we had a few things to do during the semester, but nothing that couldn't be written in one night.

This semester is a very different animal, indeed.

I am in the process of finishing a memo that is due today at 1:00. After that, I'll pick up my second memo assignment. It's due on April 27th, I think.On April 10th, I have a 30 minute practical exam in the library that will require hours of practice in the library beforehand.This Thursday, my Contracts group gets an assignment that counts for 25% of our grade in the class. It's due on April 25th.

That would be bad enough, but exams begin May 2nd or so. So while everyone scurrying around to get their assignments turned in, exams will be looming. And exams count, this semester, for 59.3% of our GPA.

So as I see it, I only have a few choices:

1. Use most of my time on the papers and hope they pull up the exam grade.
2. Use most of my time on the exams and hope they pull up my paper grades.
3. Split the time evenly and hope the end result is the same as #s 1 and 2.
4. Load up on Red Bull for five straight weeks and then collapse into a heap after the last exam is over.

Basically, it's a gamble either way- I could burn out doing #4, or just not have time to cover everything well enough to ace it. But if I just skim over everything, I risk not knowing the material as well as my peers.

This month will be the toughest of my law school career- here's hoping it works out.

Bubbly

I have an idea that I think would make Coca-Cola millions if successfully carried out.

I'm posting it here because I don't know how to contact anyone there and let them know.

Coke's formula is one of the best kept secrets in the world. As a result, all of the other colas taste sweet, and have little or no of the Coca-Cola "bite". Trust me when I say I've tried a lot of other colas, and only a few come close. (I actually like Sams Choice Cola; it's pretty close to Coke's formula.)

As much as I like Coke, there I times when I would rather have a Pepsi. I think most people are this way- they switch out the drinks they buy every so often, just to have a change of pace.

The idea is this- Coke should remove the secret ingredients from their drink and market a brand of Coke known as Coke Smooth. This drink would basically recreate the Pepsi flavor, and seriously undercut the competition. And since Pepsi evidently can't recreate the classic Coke flavor (I'm sure they've tried) the competition would be decidely one-sided.

It's a simple idea, but one that I think would work.

Another, perhaps less feasible idea would be to market a Coke Bite, one that ranged on the other end of the spectrum. Both of these creations would serve to supplement the Coke line while seriously putting a dent in the other side's market.

If you know a Coke exec, tell him about the idea.

Scalia

Justice Scalia will be giving a talk to my law school on April 5th. We are allowed to bring two guests, and possibly ask him a (respectfully phrased) question at the end of the program.

My wife is going to go, but I still need to find a second person. Hopefully my father-in-law will be able to go, as everyone else I know works a day shift. I'd hate to have two slots open and only fill one for a chance to see a living, breathing Supreme Court Justice. Whether you agree with his views or not, he is 1/9 of 33% of our federal government. Which comes out to 3.6%.

Assuming there's 300 million people in the country, I would represent .0000000033 percent of the country's population.

Which makes 3.6% seem quite large indeed.

Secondly, what question should I ask him? I'm not familiar enough with his opinions at the moment to ask anything too pertinent, and I'll likely be too busy with assignments to do much reading.

Any suggestions appreciated.

What Year Is It?

Recently an Afghan who had converted to Christianity was arrested in Afghanistan after authorities discovered a Bible (gasp!) in his possession.

After an international outcry, the charges were dropped, but hundreds of Muslims still marched with shouts of "Death to Christians!" They are now trying to find a country that will offer him asylum, as many Muslims have threatened to kill him once he is released. Hopefully the Western World will step up, and he'll be offered his choice of new countries to call home. No so much to support Christianity, but to support freedom of personal beliefs.

What's amazing to me is that the convert didn't pretend to renounce his faith and re-embrace Islam. His refusal to waver and remain firm in his beliefs impresses me more than I can express.

Many Americans define themselves as "Christian," but most of them will never experience the brand of persecution one lone man across the world dared face. That doesn't in any way belittle their faith, but it does make it untested by comparison.

I would like to think most Christians would match his show of faith- but in truth, I just don't know. I suppose that answer lies in the heart of each believer.

Think about what you believe in (anything, not just Christianity) and ask yourself, truthfully, if you'd be willing to die for it.

(This posting was originally meant to comment on the fanatic behavior exhibited by some Muslims, but I'm tired. Suffice it to say they're nuts.)

Torts Update!

It appears I misspoke- I'm only going to waste forty minutes in class today.

We're also covering damages!

Here are the three categories:

Nominal damages- received when you win a case that doesn't require damages. Trespass is generally the cardinal example- if someone walks across your land, they probably won't hurt anything, but you still have a legal right to sue. Generally, courts will award a dollar in such cases.

Compensatory damages- any category of damages that involves restitution to the victim. Loss or earnings, pain and suffering, medical bills, etc. fall under this umbrella. These can be quite large if the injury is severe and the victim is quite young- thereby increasing the potential earnings loss.

Punitive damages- awarded to punish a tortfeasor for outrageous conduct and deter him from such future conduct. Punitives are usually calculated by the earnings of the tortfeasor- you want to hit him hard enough to make him wince, but not to knock him unconscious, or simply have him brush it off.

Note: I think my professor is quite bright, and I am in no way criticizing his teaching method. He is performing as well as a cog in the teaching machine could. It is the traditional limits on his abilities I am bemoaning, as they standardize every teacher and force them to teach the same way. Every law school operates this way, so it's not quite far to blame the school either. It's just the way things are, I guess.

I just always feel like I'm continuously studying books on how to swim, but they won't let us near the water. Would you trust a lifeguard who had studied Life Saving at Harvard University, yet had never attempted to swim? I wouldn't.

Hopefully, I'll get some firsthand experience this summer.

Memo

I've got a memorandum (memo in legal parlance) due on Wednesday.

I've written my fair share of papers in high school and college. One class I took during college required a paper a week, so I'm somewhat accustomed to churning out the stuff.

The memo is different from those papers, but only by degree. In English class, we had to find quotes from the text or literary criticisms that supported our viewpoint. In law, the "text" is the pertinent statute and the "criticism" is the case law that explains the statute.

The trick is to weave the statutes and case law into a cohesive format that explains the outcome of a hypothetical case. In a sense, writing a memo is easier than those English papers, because we already have the lens we're supposed to look through when making our determination. In undergrad, you had to choose your topic and then defend it.

In essence, then, writing this memo is basically an example of coloring in previously determined lines. In English class, I had to draw the picture first, then fill it in. Much more difficult to do.

My favorite part of the process is the tweaking- taking a somewhat finished piece and working at it again and again. Changing a noun, modifying a verb, cutting out sentences, etc. Each little change transforms the entire piece. The trick is to determine which changes are better and which are worse. Not always the easiest decision. Connotation is key- some words mean the same thing, but evoke different shades of meaning. A fine hair to split, obviously, but one that can have a major impact on a finished piece.

I've written the blueprints, set up the foundation, threw up a frame and put up the siding and roof. Now I'm at the point where I'm adjusting the hinges and washing the windows, so to speak.

A Magnificent Waste of Time

I'm sitting in Torts class right now, supposedly listening to a professor talk about a case for fifty minutes. The only problem is that the material could be effectively conveyed in five minutes. I'm not a math major, but it appears I'm wasting forty-five minutes.

The case is about a security guard who killed someone while patrolling a factory. The mother of the person killed sued the owners of the factory for wrongful death, using the vicarious liability theory.

Vicarious liability is a fancy term or art that simply means the employer is responsible for the acts of his employee, if the employee is acting within the scope of his employment. Thus, if a truck driver runs over an old lady, you can sue the truck company.

However, when the employee is an independent contractor, the employer is insulated from liability. In the present case, the factory owner had hired an independent company to provide security. The security company paid the security guards, provided uniforms, and managed the guards. It's clear in this case that the guards were independent contractors, so the owners should not be liable.

However, there's an exception. When the work is inherently dangerous, the duty is deemed to be nondelegable, which means that the employer can't insulate himself from liability. Basically, even if you hire a bouncer as an "independent contractor," you can't escape liability when he beats the hell out of someone. The work was inherently dangerous and certainly foreseeable.

To summarize: Employers are responsible for the acts of their employees, unless the employees are deemed to be independent contractors. But if the work is inherently dangerous, the duty is nondelegable, and the employer is liable.

Got it? Good. Because I get to sit here for twenty-five minutes and pretend I don't.

Old Age

A land tortoise recently died in India that is estimated to be around 250-years old.

Let that sink in a bit.

For over two centuries, a tortoise simply was, eating flowers and watching the world change around him. If their estimate is right, he was born around 1755, making him older than our country.

If anything, it's a lesson that this moment is but a drop in the sea of time. What seems an eternity to us is merely a blip on the temporal radar screen.

And for the skeptics out there, don't worry- there is currently a tortoise living at the Australia Zoo who was captured by Charles Darwin. Her name is Harriet.

She's still a bit young. Her age? 176.

Stump

A few weeks ago (before Spring Break) I posed what I thought to be a rather innocuous question to my property professor. He didn't have an answer. This is quite strange, because the man if basically a walking Property dictionary. Everyone in the class kinda got uncomfortable.

The next day, he started off class by restating my question and giving what he thought was the answer. He said it was a "perfect teaching opportunity." Then he spent ten minutes explaining it.

Now, he mentions my name EVERY day in class. He doesn't call on me, but I get the feeling that he's expecting me to raise my hand and ask another question, so he can answer it and feel vindicated.

Either that, or he thinks I'm a genius- which I'm not. I just got lucky.

At any rate, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead and keep my mouth shut in class.

A Note On What Will

The future never happens
But every now and then
it gets damned close.
The What will? heat hits the face
Knocks us out of present place
And off our senses go
The greatest moments
Fire and foment
At times just like these;
When the present and the future
Tear apart the time-worn suture
And pick the scar-scabs clean.

The Past Crumbles Yet Remains

The present is not the past
Nor can it ever be-
But what is left fixes fast
In human memory-
Slowly growing less complete
Than when it first became
A symbol for a one-time feat
A file, a tag, a name.

The past crumbles yet remains
Indestructible despite
Every attempt to stain
What was once in sight
And before us, clear as day.

For some reason this moment
Cannot compete with what was-
Now is such a small increment
And the past is so much-

The ____ in the Tree

Today while hauling trash to the community dump I saw a large bird flying in front of the car. I slowed down and watched it swoop up to a branch overlooking the road. Instantly I thought it was a hawk or an eagle. Turns out I was wrong.

Instead, it was an animal I had previously only seen in zoos. It was large for its species, and watched me with piercing eyes until I slowly drove away.

Until today, I never knew such an animal lived in this part of Mississippi.

Your job is to fill-in-the-blank above. What did I see?

Non-Lethal

Over the past few months, I've been trying to come up with an effective, non-lethal way to stop attackers/intruders. Such a device would also be helpful to law enforcement officers who would rather not kill a suspect if another, equally viable choice was available.

(I understand the Rambo kill-'em-cause-they-need-to-die argument, but there are a lot of cops who have mental and psychological issues after they kill someone, even if that homicide is totally justified. I've never killed someone, but I can imagine it would be a pretty traumatic event. With our technology, we should be able to disarm and paralyze someone without resorting to such choices unless absolutely necessary.)

We need a device that causes a HUGE amount of pain, yet causes very little physical damage after the fact. At a certain pain threshold, the body is forced to instinctively react to the pain and instantly stop whatever activity we are currently carrying out. For example, I believe that if boiling water were thrust into someone's face, they would instantly drop their gun. That, however, would cause too much damage.

I think that intense, searing heat is the answer. Think about those times you accidentally burned your hand- how bad it felt, and how quickly you moved your hand away. Research tells us that when we touch something hot, the sensation actually reaches a point on our spine when we jerk our hand away- our brain isn't actually involved in the process until some time later. That's how instinctive the urge to get away from pain is.

There should be some way we can superheat a bullet/dart that will pierce the flesh and then latch on to the suspect, so that it becomes impossible to remove unless the suspect wants to rip off a good portion of his flesh. Then, while he is writhing on the ground, the cops can apprehend him and use a "key" to unlatch the projectile- much like those keys they have at department stores to take off security tags.

The benefits would be instant stopping power and little practical injury to the suspect- the searing heat would instantly cauterize the wound.

The biggest engineering problem is how to heat the bullet safely and quickly. I don't see how this couldn't be resolved quite easily. If we can heat up a cigarette lighter in a few seconds to such a high temperature, we should be able to do so with a bullet. The material would have to be one that would retain its heat for a while, though. We wouldn't want the suspect to "cool off" until police had a chance to apprehend him.

Think about it, though- if you were hit with a dart/bullet that embedded two inches into your skin, latched on, and approached temperatures as hot as a fire, would you really have the wherewithal to fire back? Somehow I doubt it. As an experiment, have a buddy of yours hold a cigarette lighter to your ear while you try to raise and aim your gun. (Just kidding, although I'd bet you wouldn't even be able to raise and fire your weapon, much less hit anything.)

And yes, I agree that cops should continue to carry lethal weapons, as some situations would not be appropriate for non-lethal use (multiple suspects, suspects on a drug that makes thim numb, etc.) But we should have an effective, non-lethal weapon in our bag of tricks.

Nine-to-Fiver

I officially have a job this summer with an attorney.

I won't get rich doing it, but I'll get tons and tons of experience.

It's with a sole practitioner, so basically I'll be exposed to everything legal that comes through the door.

It's quite fortuitous that I found a position with a law firm, as the hurricanes have tightened up the legal market in this area considerably. Basically, everyone from New Orleans has consolidated in the Jackson area, which doubles their employees and shrinks the potential openings. Many of my peers- some of which are in the top ten percent- haven't been so lucky.

Well, that's one less thing to worry about...

Now, onto memos that will soon be due and exams that are looming around the corner.

An Open Letter to Barry Bonds

When I was young, I used to watch baseball in wide-eyed amazement- the milieu of fake-grass green and burnt brown providing a perfect backdrop for those tall and lean athletes who stood ever so stoically at the plate. The white zip of the ball as it passed through the air; the basemen tensing before the swing of the bat; the umpire watching the ball leave the park as he lifts his mask from his face.

To me, they could do no wrong. They were perfect then- just boys who looked like men, playing a larger version of a game I enjoyed quite often in a vacant yard down the street. There were no salaries, no cheating, and no endorsements. The game was simply that- a game. People doing what they love in front of people who loved watching it.

Of course as I grew older more and more of the childlike varnish wore off- but baseball, in its grandeur, replaced it with something less fantastic yet more durable. The men weren't so much perfect anymore as simply athletes who had reached the peak of their game through practice and hard work. And yet the humanity and all the imperfection wrapped up in it made the ascent all the more glorious to behold. Here were men of roughly my size and height hitting a ball roughly one tenth of a mile- not based on superhuman strength, but instead an intangible mix of raw talent and technique that forced the ball to obey.

Then came Barry. Sure, there were doubtless others who share the blame. No one suggests he was the first. But he is the bellwether of this sordid flock, and the only one who threatens to make meaningless all that which is hallowed in the baseball world.

He will likely play this season and surpass Babe Ruth for second on the all-time home run list. Next year, Hammerin' Hank will likely fall to his artificial prowess.

In an ironic twist of fate, Barry will replace a man who spent roughly thirty years of his life battling human frailty and death threats. He will do this by pumping himself full of fake fortitude and manufactured mettle- at any cost, at any price. It is an insult to an honest and storied game and to every honest ballplayer to take the field. It is a slap in the face to every man, woman and child who ever plunked down their money and spent two hours to watch a game.

For the love of all things decent, Barry- go home now. Sit on your couch in your mansion and write a memoir denying everything vehemently. Do interviews on ESPN until you turn blue in the face. Endorse Viagra. But do not continue to desecrate this game that at one time I would guess you truly loved.

Remember back, Barry. Remember when the game was nothing more than a kid with a stick hitting a ball. When the goal wasn't so much to win as to laugh with your friends and hope the day would never end. If some part of that child still exists in there, listen to it. Listen to it hard.

The day must end after all, Barry- let it go with some decency.

Interview

Today I went to a small town outside of Jackson and interviewed for a position with a sole practitioner. Every two years, he chooses one person from the law school to intern for him.

I think it went well, but I won't hear anything for a few days.

The good news is that if this doesn't work out, I just learned I can put in 40 hours a week at the library over the summer. I won't get rich doing it, but maybe I'll be able to save a little bit of money.

It's always good to have a safety net.

March First

Running is for kids
And walking for the old;
Instead lock your eyes
And stride strongly for the goal.

Crawling is for babes;
Skipping for the glib.
So march first, young man-
The grave completes the crib.