Fun with Professor

Prof. U never fails to entertain. Among the things learned today in class...

• Yet another movie I ought to have watched.
• As usual, my vocabulary could use some improvement.
• There's a lot of new research to be done here.

That, of course, is in addition to the substance of the class, an element of which is illustrated here.

Curious Word: Megillah

Another classic from Prof. U. In class, he dropped the phrase, "the whole megillah." Our blank stares were enough to convince him to explain that it meant something akin to "the whole enchilada" in Yiddish. But Richard had a better explanation, which I also found here.

It’s the Hebrew word for a scroll. In particular, it refers to one of five books of the Old Testament, namely Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, which are read on certain Jewish special days. The most common reference, though, is to the Book of Esther, which is read in its entirety at the feast of Purim.

Though the feast day is a joyous one, the story wanders at great length through vast amounts of detail and it can be a bit of a trial to sit through it all. So it isn’t surprising that the whole Megillah (in the Yiddish from which American English borrowed it, gantse Megillah) came to be a wry term for an overly extended explanation or story, or for something tediously complicated, or an involved situation or state of affairs.

The original scrolls were apparently quite heavy, leading Richard to suggest you'd need a Megillah Gorilla to hold them aloft.

Money.

The Day Scalia Came to Class

Whoof, what a week.

Justice Scalia came to class, I played drunken air guitar at a party with a parent of a notorious criminal, and the Colts won the Super Bowl, which I attended.

Guess which one is false?

The answer is none, since I think of the Super Bowl as an international event that transcends the typical definitions of place and space. Or at least my post-modern self believes that.

But of the three, the only one that merits real explanation is Justice Scalia's visit. He did, in fact, come to class. As it turns out, he and my professor were buddies "in the trenches" of the Ford administration. Judging from their descriptions of how miserable being in the Ford admin was, I'd say "in the shark feeding tank" might be a better descriptor. Regardless, the bond they forged remains strong and before the Justice addressed the Claremont McKenna community at large, he popped in for a little over an hour. My thoughts:

• Justice Scalia is a warm, jovial figure who would make an evil uncle, benevolent granddad, and very shrewd paterfamilias.
• He's got a knack for catchy turns of phrase. I'm almost thirty two percent positive his improptu lecture cum Q&A was off the record, so I'll stick to generalities...except for this choice quote. Referring to judicial activism (of both political persuasions), he managed to describe the federal judiciary as the "black-robed mad mullahs of the West." We all laughed.
• I really should have typed my notes instead of writing them. I can't read most.
• He really doesn't like independent counsels. And after hearing him talk, I don't either.
• Another funny anecdote, this one repeated in his later talk, so I'm happy to describe it here. In the recent flag-burning case, Scalia agreed with the majority ruling that declared the ban on flag-burning unconstitutional. His logic was sound: you can have a ban on burning in a specific place, but if so it must be a ban on burning "bags, rags and flags," a ban on any type of burning, not exclusively on flags. As a result, an explicit ordinance against the combustion of the Stars and Stripes (or the Stars and Bars for that matter) violates the First Amendment. Even though he would have loved to throw that "bearded, sandal-wearing, reprobate" (I'm not sure about that last one) in prison, he can't. Unfortunately, people don't like burning flags, which is why they often don't mind judicial activism, in this case and many others. The best illustration of how people feel viscerally had to be his wife, who, on the morning after the judgment, whistled "It's a Grand Old Flag" as she prepared breakfast.
• And, finally, ol' Scales should really hit the treadmill.

That last point should be qualified. Anty is packing some major pounds, but I will say he looked about twenty years younger than he is. It wasn't until much later that I discovered he is approaching 71...after seeing him in person, I would have guessed mid-fifties. Perhaps that's just because his hair isn't graying (though thinning) and he smokes (ergo, he is hip which means he must have been a twenty-something in the seventies, wriggling into leather pants...whoops, just went too far in the bizarro imagery department there).

So, maybe there's something to his rolls that is keeping him fresh and spritely. If so, Justice Scalia, let me be the first to point you to the truffle tray (unless, of course, the gout is acting up). May you judge many years yet. More stories on Scalia to come as I recall the wild after-party that followed (somehow, I managed to give every penny of my own and a ten of a friend of mine to the bartenders...even though it was a free bar...and they refused my tips...hrm).

FRMSHAHA

I'm not laughing at the Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship. Rather, I'm chuckling at the five minutes I spent trying to think of a way to spin my work in political philosophy in such a way as to apply for this. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful.

But perhaps, you'll have better luck. Check it.

CMsCalia

Okay, silly title. But Antonin Scalia is going to be speaking at CMC on Wednesday. And thanks to a last minute class change, I'll be able to attend the rager (er, reception) to follow. Coo, coo.

2007 Pacesetters Fellow

A Matter of Constitutional Intrepretation

ANTONIN SCALIA

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2007

The Honorable Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University where he was class valedictorian. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he served as note editor for the Harvard Law Review. In 1960, he was the Sheldon Fellow at Harvard University, allowing him to spend a year traveling in Europe.

Justice Scalia began his legal career with a nationally-prominent law firm in Cleveland where he practiced corporate finance, labor, and antitrust law. In 1967, he became a professor of law at the University of Virginia Law School. During the 1970s, Presidents Nixon and Ford appointed him to a number of administrative posts, including that of assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. He subsequently joined the faculty at the University of Chicago School of Law.

In 1982, President Reagan appointed Antonin Scalia to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he honed his reputation for meticulous jurisprudence. In June 1986, President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by William Rehnquist’s elevation to Chief Justice. On September 26, 1986, he took the oath of office.

Justice Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey. He married Maureen McCarthy in 1960.

"That's nihilism!"

Such is a phrase one of my professors likes to employ to describe...well, just about anything. He, and you, will appreciate this transformation of the funnies:

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Post-phoric

The bliss has dwindled as reality forced me to recognize the three unfinished papers leering at me from my computer screen. If it's any solace to anyone, I have read and reread NSC-68 countless times now and learned only one thing: I should not be in the business of writing defense memos that will dictate strategy for half a century.

Shucks...that, sadly, is the assignment I'm now trying to complete.

On a happier note, NSC-68 has a real swell description of the purpose of the United States.

The fundamental purpose of the United States is laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution: "...to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for our common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.

There's more, but I'll spare you the pleasure. If you're interested, read the whole thing here.

Celebrate with Colbert

I'm happy to be done with at least one paper (of four) and I want you to be as well. So watch this clip from the Colbert Report and have a chuckle at AT&T's expense. He does come up with some pretty funny stuff...

Yowzah!

A paper is done, a paper is done! Bring a torch, Jeannette, Isabella, and let's burn a couch in Columbus!

LL#1: Papers Shtink

Alrighty, new feature here at the Doughty Traveler..."Life Lessons" from yours truly. Todays special should have arrived eight years ago:

Putting your papers off will make you hate your life.

At the very least, they'll make your emotional status an emotional rollercoaster.

You can add to that, as a bonus Life Lesson and no extra charge, vino (or any type of alcohol) will never make you less likely to actually finish a paper. Never. Ever. My current state (it just having passed midnight) is example enough, but this masterpiece from freshman year smashes the point home:

...

Oh hell, looks like we're having technical difficulties (read: I'm smashing my face into the wall until it's a bloody pulp because I've just discovered that my freshman year of college has disappeared from my computer which akin to having it erased from my memory). Suffice to say, an essay composed with the aid of extreme sleepiness and a dumpling of scotch produced two full pages of incoherent babble as I wandered in and out of consciousness, including the memorable phrase, "Trip...glider...hop." Taken independently, it seems innocent enough, just the insertion of "glider" between the common musical genre of "triphop." In the context of the two pages of nonsense that preceded it (which hung on the wall of my room for the remainder of that year), it was the metaphorical exclamation point at the conclusion of an all-caps, bolded sentence.

Best...Footnote...Ever...in...2007...so...far

Best...title...of...2007...yet.

But seriously, much personally backslapping and high-fiving going on here for working the following footnote into my paper:

Curiously, surprisingly little scholarship has centered upon the foresight of Plato in anticipating the current crisis of the designated driver.

If you're wondering how on earth I managed to pull that bad boy off, turn your attention to The Republic, 439c, line 2. There it is. Be amazed. I certainly am.

11th Hour Brainstorms

You know you're desperate when you start pretending your Socrates in order to figure out what the hell you're supposed to be writing about.

An excerpt from the work on my current paper:

Self Dialogue:

What do I want to write?
- A defense of the democratic man.
How do I defend him?
- By arguing that Plato’s description of the desires is inaccurate.
How is it inaccurate?
- Plato fails to give the democratic man the ability to discriminate between necessary and unnecessary desires.
- He also neglects the obvious fact that the moderation of desire in the oligarchy produces a society that cannot tolerate philosophy, while the equalization of desires, however monstrous in immoderate behavior encouraged, permits philosophy.
- Further, Plato does an inadequate job of resolving conflicts of desire.
- Additionally, there is disunity in Plato’s argument for the entropy proceeding through his account of regimes, thanks to his flawed conception of desire and its application to the tyrant as least unified due to his exercise of pure desire.
What evidence do you have to support any of these claims?
- Ooooooof, below the belt.

Yes, indeedy...back to work.

11th Hour Brainstorms

You know you're desperate when you start pretending your Socrates in order to figure out what the hell you're supposed to be writing about.

An excerpt from the work on my current paper:

Self Dialogue:

What do I want to write?
- A defense of the democratic man.
How do I defend him?
- By arguing that Plato’s description of the desires is inaccurate.
How is it inaccurate?
- Plato fails to give the democratic man the ability to discriminate between necessary and unnecessary desires.
- He also neglects the obvious fact that the moderation of desire in the oligarchy produces a society that cannot tolerate philosophy, while the equalization of desires, however monstrous in immoderate behavior encouraged, permits philosophy.
- Further, Plato does an inadequate job of resolving conflicts of desire.
- Additionally, there is disunity in Plato’s argument for the entropy proceeding through his account of regimes, thanks to his flawed conception of desire and its application to the tyrant as least unified due to his exercise of pure desire.
What evidence do you have to support any of these claims?
- Ooooooof, below the belt.

Yes, indeedy...back to work.