Sunday, May 29, 2005
Happy birthday J.R.! (Look -- I'm using the real initials.) ;-)
Hope you had a wonderful day.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
It's 3 am. Do you know where your debtor-in-possession is?
Day before the last day of the semester (ok, technically it already is the last day of the semester), and I'm up late again, studying the intricacies of reorganizations for my Bankruptcy exam tomorrow. Very nearly done. Had fabulous good news today in the form of favorable feedback on my SAW (That Which Shall Not Be Named, The Thing Which Kept Me Up At Night). Still have to do some revisions, but the groundwork is there and my diploma -- assuming I actually manage to complete and pass all three of my exams -- is safe once more. Suffice it to say there was much hopping around my living room this afternoon. :-D
Passing exams made substantially more difficult by the nasty cold I've been afflicted with since late Sunday night -- and which, unfortunately, I've managed to pass along to some Undeserving Parties. :-( Very sore throat --> lots sniffling --> hacking cough --> more unfortunate nose consequences. (I've been very whiney.) Will try to think happy SAW-done thoughts. And hope I somehow manage to get a couple of nagging paper/clinic obligations out of the way...
For your enjoyment, another fine quote from my Bankruptcy casebook (this one courtesy of J.W.): "[T]here is a principle of too much; phrased colloquially, when a pig beomes a hog it is slaughtered. ... But sitting as a judge, by what criteria do I determine when this pig becomes a hog?" Norwest Bank Nebraska, N.A. v. Tveten (In re Tveten), 848 F.2d 871 (8th Cir. 1988) (Arnold, J., dissenting) (internal quotations omitted). In case you're wondering (we certainly were), "'[p]ig' refers to any wild or domesticated animal in the Suidae Family" while "'[h]og' is only used for domesticated [p]igs on a farm or for [a] Warthog of Africa." More here. Of course, this still doesn't help much with that whole pig/hog distinction.
Day before the last day of the semester (ok, technically it already is the last day of the semester), and I'm up late again, studying the intricacies of reorganizations for my Bankruptcy exam tomorrow. Very nearly done. Had fabulous good news today in the form of favorable feedback on my SAW (That Which Shall Not Be Named, The Thing Which Kept Me Up At Night). Still have to do some revisions, but the groundwork is there and my diploma -- assuming I actually manage to complete and pass all three of my exams -- is safe once more. Suffice it to say there was much hopping around my living room this afternoon. :-D
Passing exams made substantially more difficult by the nasty cold I've been afflicted with since late Sunday night -- and which, unfortunately, I've managed to pass along to some Undeserving Parties. :-( Very sore throat --> lots sniffling --> hacking cough --> more unfortunate nose consequences. (I've been very whiney.) Will try to think happy SAW-done thoughts. And hope I somehow manage to get a couple of nagging paper/clinic obligations out of the way...
For your enjoyment, another fine quote from my Bankruptcy casebook (this one courtesy of J.W.): "[T]here is a principle of too much; phrased colloquially, when a pig beomes a hog it is slaughtered. ... But sitting as a judge, by what criteria do I determine when this pig becomes a hog?" Norwest Bank Nebraska, N.A. v. Tveten (In re Tveten), 848 F.2d 871 (8th Cir. 1988) (Arnold, J., dissenting) (internal quotations omitted). In case you're wondering (we certainly were), "'[p]ig' refers to any wild or domesticated animal in the Suidae Family" while "'[h]og' is only used for domesticated [p]igs on a farm or for [a] Warthog of Africa." More here. Of course, this still doesn't help much with that whole pig/hog distinction.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Currently oddly fascinated by CT public access channel. (It's got break-dancing!) Perhaps brain still recovering from antidiscrimination law exam this morning?
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Cool things about Texas
Was looking up the landmark Supreme Court case City of Boerne v. Flores on Lexis today, when I noticed that the case was first brought in the Western District of Texas, San Antonio division -- which caught my eye... Anyway, turns out Boerne is a little town not far from San Antonio; the church in question (the case involved denial of a buidling permit to remodel a Catholic church), I'd imagine, is still there, and in a very law-student-nerdy kind of way, I'd love to visit. As for Flores, he's Patrick Fernández Flores, now Archibishop Emeritus of the Archdiocese of San Antonio -- or the Archidioecesis Sancti Antonii, if you prefer. San Antonio's diocese was erected 1874, and elevated to archdiocese in 1926. By way of comparison, L.A.'s, the Archidioecesis Angelorum in California, apparently split off from the Diocese of Monterey in 1922, and was elevated in 1936. Of course, our archbishop is also a cardinal, which is pretty cool. Plus we have a very exciting new cathedral.
Which got me thinking about cathedral and church architecture (I'm getting back to Texas in a minute, don't worry). On a purely architectural level, I really enjoy churches. Have long been a fan of Tadao Ando's Church of the Light, in Osaka (cannot believe I didn't think to visit it when I was so close!), which reminds me a bit of Le Corbusier's famous Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. Anyway, just a few years ago Tadao Ando also designed the New Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth! Which is incredibly cool, at least as far as I can tell from the slideshows...
Was looking up the landmark Supreme Court case City of Boerne v. Flores on Lexis today, when I noticed that the case was first brought in the Western District of Texas, San Antonio division -- which caught my eye... Anyway, turns out Boerne is a little town not far from San Antonio; the church in question (the case involved denial of a buidling permit to remodel a Catholic church), I'd imagine, is still there, and in a very law-student-nerdy kind of way, I'd love to visit. As for Flores, he's Patrick Fernández Flores, now Archibishop Emeritus of the Archdiocese of San Antonio -- or the Archidioecesis Sancti Antonii, if you prefer. San Antonio's diocese was erected 1874, and elevated to archdiocese in 1926. By way of comparison, L.A.'s, the Archidioecesis Angelorum in California, apparently split off from the Diocese of Monterey in 1922, and was elevated in 1936. Of course, our archbishop is also a cardinal, which is pretty cool. Plus we have a very exciting new cathedral.
Which got me thinking about cathedral and church architecture (I'm getting back to Texas in a minute, don't worry). On a purely architectural level, I really enjoy churches. Have long been a fan of Tadao Ando's Church of the Light, in Osaka (cannot believe I didn't think to visit it when I was so close!), which reminds me a bit of Le Corbusier's famous Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. Anyway, just a few years ago Tadao Ando also designed the New Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth! Which is incredibly cool, at least as far as I can tell from the slideshows...
Laugh at me
Yesterday, I turned in a draft of my paper for this term. Shortly before finishing it up, I excised from it a sentence (now lost forever) that read something like this:
While the Treasury Guidelines do not offer a safe harbor for charities, they may provide calm enough waters to ensure that donors are willing to come aboard.
Mock all you want.
Yesterday, I turned in a draft of my paper for this term. Shortly before finishing it up, I excised from it a sentence (now lost forever) that read something like this:
While the Treasury Guidelines do not offer a safe harbor for charities, they may provide calm enough waters to ensure that donors are willing to come aboard.
Mock all you want.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Home stretch
Took, the other day, the first of three exams; add in a paper or two that needs to be written, plus a couple of other things to take care of, and then, in just a week and a half or so, I can unofficially graduate!!
(Unofficial because the faculty doesn't actually vote on our degress until several days later -- and naturally, in the great YLS tradition, I probably won't have my SAW (Supervised Analytic Writing) done before I don that cap and gown...) It's been in a lot of ways a very very wonderful semester; and actually, this had the effect of making me more, rather than less, productive than usual. Still, somehow I managed to fall behind, and am stuck doing lots of reading and writing during this final stretch. Perhaps this should just serve as confirmation that, yes, they do actually give us more work than it's humanly possible to do?
Will save the touching words for closer to the actual end-date -- for now, good luck to all those writing, outlining, and frantically trying to make sure they aren't returning to NH in the fall!
Took, the other day, the first of three exams; add in a paper or two that needs to be written, plus a couple of other things to take care of, and then, in just a week and a half or so, I can unofficially graduate!!
(Unofficial because the faculty doesn't actually vote on our degress until several days later -- and naturally, in the great YLS tradition, I probably won't have my SAW (Supervised Analytic Writing) done before I don that cap and gown...) It's been in a lot of ways a very very wonderful semester; and actually, this had the effect of making me more, rather than less, productive than usual. Still, somehow I managed to fall behind, and am stuck doing lots of reading and writing during this final stretch. Perhaps this should just serve as confirmation that, yes, they do actually give us more work than it's humanly possible to do?
Will save the touching words for closer to the actual end-date -- for now, good luck to all those writing, outlining, and frantically trying to make sure they aren't returning to NH in the fall!
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Happy birthday K.F! :-D
Friday, May 06, 2005
Three unrelated things
Encountered the following in my Bankruptcy casebook:
"Thus, by a process similar to one method of sculpting an elephant, we approach a definition of executory contract within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Act." Footnote: "Obtain a large piece of stone. Take hammer and chisel and knock off everything that doesn't look like an elephant."
Vern Countryman, Executory Contracts in Bankruptcy Law: Part 1, 57 Minn. L. Rev. 439 (1973). Yeah, I know there should be a pin-cite. And small caps.
Been wondering about this for a long time, in both my mathy and legal capacities:
"Prove has two past participles: proved and proven. Proven is a variant. The Middle English spellings of prove included preven, a form that died out in England but survived in Scotland, and the past participle proven, a form that probably rose by analogy with verbs like weave, woven and cleave, cloven. Proven was originally used in Scottish legal contexts, such as The jury ruled that the charges were not proven. In the 20th century, proven has made inroads into the territory once dominated by proved, so that now the two forms compete on equal footing as participles. However, when used as an adjective before a noun, proven is now the more common word: a proven talent."
From dictionary.com. (Can't you just see the particples battling, proven in Scottish garb a la Braveheart, each trying to make inroads into the other's dominion?)
Last but not least: had the last class of my law school career on Wednesday. Unless I decide to get an LLM in Taxation (not unlikely), this may well be the last formal academic course I ever take. Assuming I actually graduate. Oh dear oh dear oh dear...
Encountered the following in my Bankruptcy casebook:
"Thus, by a process similar to one method of sculpting an elephant, we approach a definition of executory contract within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Act." Footnote: "Obtain a large piece of stone. Take hammer and chisel and knock off everything that doesn't look like an elephant."
Vern Countryman, Executory Contracts in Bankruptcy Law: Part 1, 57 Minn. L. Rev. 439 (1973). Yeah, I know there should be a pin-cite. And small caps.
Been wondering about this for a long time, in both my mathy and legal capacities:
"Prove has two past participles: proved and proven. Proven is a variant. The Middle English spellings of prove included preven, a form that died out in England but survived in Scotland, and the past participle proven, a form that probably rose by analogy with verbs like weave, woven and cleave, cloven. Proven was originally used in Scottish legal contexts, such as The jury ruled that the charges were not proven. In the 20th century, proven has made inroads into the territory once dominated by proved, so that now the two forms compete on equal footing as participles. However, when used as an adjective before a noun, proven is now the more common word: a proven talent."
From dictionary.com. (Can't you just see the particples battling, proven in Scottish garb a la Braveheart, each trying to make inroads into the other's dominion?)
Last but not least: had the last class of my law school career on Wednesday. Unless I decide to get an LLM in Taxation (not unlikely), this may well be the last formal academic course I ever take. Assuming I actually graduate. Oh dear oh dear oh dear...
