It's coming

I got my seat assignment today for the bar exam. It's almost like the exam is really in a month. And the Board of Law Examiners finally got my transcript. That only took two attempts. Life is exciting as it hurtles towards possibly the last standardized test I'll ever have to take.

Does this qualify as abusive litigation?

The administrative judge who was suing his dry cleaners for $54 million lost. Not that the pants themselves was worth $54 million. That was just his pain and suffering of having to buy a new suit. The dry cleaners tried to settle, but he would have none of that. He was really attached to those pants. Though not so attached that he wasn't willing to come down from his original demand of $67 million. I guess he could drop that extra 13 mill when he remembered that these were only the diamond studded pants, and not actually the diamond encrusted pants.

Reasons why my sister is a loser

In another Harry Potter related post (it's quite the Harry Potter summer, so don't act like you're surprised), Scholastic is having a coast to coast tour of the Knight Bus. S and I were going to go tomorrow to see it at the Bethesda public library, but she has to start her LSAT class (like anyone would want to go to law school. I don't know what that's all about). Anyway, we couldn't go on Saturday. I had BarBri in the morning (contracts was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then we had off this morning. That could have been scheduled better), so we couldn't make it to the New Carrollton library, and in the afternoon it was at the Oxon Hill library, and we decided that it wasn't worth dying over. (For those of you unfamiliar with lovely Prince George's County, MD - New Carrollton, nice, Oxon Hill, the ghetto) But this does mean that I don't get to go and see it, since it seems like something that really should be done with another person.

It will be coming to St Louis, on Thursday 6/28. It will not be in Denver, Portland, or Missoula. Though I presume it will be passing through the greater Denver area, just not making a stop, as the next stop after StL is Phoenix (obviously they had to go there). So if anyone in St Louis would like to go, perhaps get a picture. . . It's not like you were going to be studying that afternoon anyway.

Harry Potter on Slate

Slate has their version of how Deathly Hallows will end. Like the Sopranos, since wizards in England and gangsters in New Jersey are really just different manifestations of the same story line.

Funny crimes that one can commit in Maryland

We had our lecture today on the MD distinctions in crim law. Why that lecture came on a completely different day than multistate crime, when every other section managed to have multistate and local at the same time, no one really understands. But anyway...

In Maryland, one can commit fourth degree robbery of the "rogue and vagabond" variety (actually how it is classified). Adultery is a misdemeanor punishable by a $10 fine - which probably wouldn't even cover the administrative costs. And vehicular crimes include boats, so marine traffic violations also go to traffic court.

Also, not having anything to do with crim law, but just BarBri in general. Russel McGeorge is taking the MD bar, and I saw him in class the other day. I had what I would say was the longest conversation I've ever had with him then (I would clock it in at a generous minute and a half). Wierd.

This American Life goes to summer camp

On this week's episode of This American Life, they had a story about the pivital role that summer camp plays in kids' lives. The main part of the story was pretty entertaining, but the best part came during the stories that listeners called in to tell about their summer camp experiences.

One woman called in to tell a story about her parents didn't want to send her to camp because they were leftists and thought that the girl scouts were just brown shirts. (Clearly her parents should have sent her to Habonim camp instead). So they sent her to a leftist Zionist camp. (Yay! They did send her to Habonim camp) So one day at camp the counselors staged an anti-Semitic attack on the camp to teach an important political lesson to the kids (though the counselor told her that "wouldn't it have been better to just keep her mouth shut" though speaking out like the counselors would have seemed to have been the point of the exercise.) And all I have to say is that I can so see that activity being planned, right down to the people being dressed up as Klansmen. Because it would be a valuable learning experience.

But just so you don't think camp totally screws people up, we did have some bounds when I went to camp. While we would have had the learn about anti-Semitism activity, we would draw the line at activities like lead the kids out into the woods and leave them there. They can find their way back. But while they're working on that, there will be some other counselors hiding in the woods, who can jump out from behind the trees and scare the crap out of the kids. Suggestions like that are usually made by Israeli counselors and are then shot down by the Americans who realized that that was a terrible idea.

But wait!! There's more!!

We had our corporations lecture today in bar review class. And the guy giving the lecture was really upbeat. Selling steak knives on late night tv upbeat. He also could have been a motivational speaker or a televangelist. They're all in that same vein of peppy. He's definitely been the craziest we've had so far. Even outstripping the property/secured transactions lecturer (it was the same person for both) who made a certain Trusts and Estates professor look sane - at least Foster didn't sing to go along with her excessive number of pop culture references. We also had the crim law guy who referred to us collectively as "Now, Marylanders." It remains to be seen how the upcoming lecturers will fare.

School rankings

Newsweek has a ranking of the top 100 research universities in the world. WashU is, apparently, number 33.

Other rankings that people might care about -
13. University of Pennsylvania
22. University of Washington
39. New York University
51. University of Colorado