Tag: KcM

Summer Hours.

Yes, yes, quiet again here at GitM (and at Revise & Dissent, where I’ve been even more negligent about posting.) There’s been quite a bit of traveling on this end — a visit to my my sister‘s summer pad in Cambridge, an HVL wedding in New Hampshire (Congrats!), and, currently, a few days’ retreat on the Jersey shore. And, I’ve been busier than usual with work-related matters, since – as most all grad students out there know — summer is more often than not the fend-for-yourself lean season of our profession-to-be. At any rate, updates may continue to be sparse around here for the next few weeks…apologies in advance. And, for those few of you still dropping by, I’ll try to keep at least a few scintillating links on the front page through the remainder of the summer…I promise!

A gal walks into a bar…

Best of luck to all the local folks sitting down for the first installment of the 2-day New York Bar exam this morning (including one of my favorite people these days.) While I’m loath to concur with anybody from the von Mises Institute, I’ve always been inclined to agree with this article, which points out that, much like the AMA over on the doctor side, the primary purpose of bar organizations ever since the progressive era has been to create arbitrary barriers to entry and thus raise the salaries of practicing lawyers, to say nothing of the cost of both law school and legal services. Having now witnessed the bar-prep experience from some remove, I have to say that my suspicions about the somewhat shady nature of the whole enterprise have been sharpened, what with the seeming Bar/Bri monopoly on prep courses and what appears to be the test’s extreme emphasis on rinkydink legal minutiae that could very easily be looked up when (or if, so much of it being archaic and obsolete — dueling, anyone?) it ever became necessary. All that being said, the bar is obviously aptly named, so here’s hoping any and all GitM readers/lawyers-to-be in the NY area hurdle it with maximum dexterity and minimum fuss over the next two days. 🙂

Muggle Memories.

As part of the sixth anniversary festivities for The Leaky Cauldron, the Harry Potter blog-turned-comprehensive-fansite I set up way back when, Melissa Anelli, Sue Upton, and John Noe — current heads of the site team (now numbering 150 strong) — interviewed me this week on their weekly Pottercast. Great job over there, y’all, and thanks for the chance to reminisce. 🙂

Joga Bonito, trabalho feio.

As if the Dallas-Miami NBA Finals (ok, I was way off) weren’t sports bliss enough ’round these parts, the 2006 World Cup has begun, with host Germany defeating Costa Rica 4-2 and Ecuador besting Poland 2-0 on Day 1. Alas, since I have to maximize my research time while I’m briefly back in the 202, and since the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress aggravatingly keeps bankers’ hours (and charge $0.20 a photocopy, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant), it looks like I’ll be missing much of the first round. But I promise to make it up on the back end.

Surfacing.

Hey all. So, as you may have noticed from the radio silence, it’s been hectic in these parts of late, what with trips out of town and around town, guests visiting, my sister Gill‘s ABT season at the Met, and many errands to run and a rather large work project to complete before I hit the road for a dissertation research trip later this week. That being said, the work wave seems to have crested, so hopefully normal update patterns should resume around here in very short order.

Revisionist History.

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” A personal note: At the kind invitation of Ralph Luker at Cliopatria, I’ve joined up as one of the founding bloggers of Revise and Dissent, a recently launched group effort by younger historians and historians-to-be over at the History News Network. I haven’t gotten around to posting there yet (and I expect I’ll be cross-posting quite often with GitM), but it’s now up-and-running and my new blog-colleagues are already posting, so check it out!

Fools of a Took.

Happy April Fool’s Day, y’all. Since I’m feeling lazy, I guess I’ll recycle Toast in the Machine for the sixth year in a row. But funnier, fresher stuff can be found elsewhere: Google gets into online dating, Bradlands goes Madlands, Fluxblog self-promotes, and the Museum of Hoaxes offers the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of all Time. Update: Wikipedia has a list of the day’s hoaxes. (Via FmH.)