Tuesday, February 18, 2025
D+103
1970 Chicago 7 defendants were found not guilty of inciting to riot
2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died
2014 Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 began as protesters, riot police and unknown shooters took part in violent events in the capital, Kiev, culminating after five days in the
In bed before 9:45, half-awake at 3:45, and up at 4:30. I put a small load of laundry in the washing machine and filled the humidifier. The temperature is -5° with the wind chill at -21°. The expected high-temperature today is +9°. The wind is NW at 14 mph and gusts up to 29 mph.
Prednisone, day 303, 5 mg., day 14, Kevzana, day 14/14. 2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:50 a.m. and 4;30 p.m. Other meds earlier today.
Genetic determinism. I'm thinking more about this topic and the political and social views of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I wondered yesterday whether J. D. Vance and Russell Vought might be members of the Determinist flock, considering themselves to be superior to the mass of other men because of their Chosen status, Vought as an Evangelical and Vance as an Evangelical turned Catholic. Do they believe, in a Calvinistic way, that they were predestined to be saved while the rest of us, Unbelievers, are SOL? Does personal merit have something to do with any such thought? How else to account for Vance's ascent to power and prominence from his childhood of Appalachian poverty with his druggie Mom hopping from man to man and his Mamaw, with her 19 guns in her house where she set fire to her husband? I'm just free-associating now but I wonder too about the worldview of Peter Hegseth with his fierce opposition to 'wokeness' and DEI and his insistence on 'meritocracy', the 'warrior culture', and 'lethality'. What are his views on nature vs. nurture, the effects of genetics vs. the effects of environment on any person's characteristics and life's journey? How is it that his views end up favoring straight White men over women, Blacks and Browns, people with various disabilities, and 'queers'? What is it about those disfavored groups that subordinate them to straight White men? Their genes, their upbringing, or some combination? How to account for his behaviors, his apparent alcoholism and his hostility to DEI? I'm wondering about the relationship between John Clavin's doctrine of predestination and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky's beliefs about Determinism, i.e., that there is no Free Will and we are all determined by our neurobiology, hormones, childhood, and life circumstances. Just wondering . . . What else does an old guy do in the pre-dawn hours on a bitterly cold February morning in Wisconsin?
The future of legal education and education generally? Ezra Klein's column in this morning's NYTimes is an interview with Massachusetts congressman Jake Auchincloss. The interview is broadly about the future of the Democratic Party and more broadly still just about 'the future.' One of the things they discussed was the interplay between technology and the delivery of goods and services to consumers, including goods and services that are labor-intensive and low productivity, like home building, health care, and education. They used the example of home construction, the less costly alternative of modular construction, and the competing interests of labor unions and local zoning ordinances that preclude modular construction. (not saying that correctly.😰) The discussion reminded of thoughts I had decades ago, sitting in our living room on Newton Avenue in Shorewood, grading a couple hundred handwritten blue books written under stress during 3-hour final exams. I thought 'this is an incredibly inefficient system' of assessing and measuring levels of base competencies and further thought that the same of true of law school classes generally. Why must every law school hire and compensate one or more teachers to teach Civil Procedure, or Evidence, or Securities regulations, or Torts? Why not use recorded lectures by recognized experts in those fields, or better yet, by professors who are especially talented in explicating the various subject matters found in law school curricula. Why not rely on some sort of standardized tests? Now I would wonder about how Artificial Intelligence might be used in legal education and education more broadly. Law school faculties and administrators have an interest in resisting standardization and cost controls. They have all sorts of arguments about the value of large faculties and good student-faculty ratios, and some of them are valid, but not all. It's necessary to have some faculty available for consultation, answering questions, and counseling, but how many? And why are there so many associate and assistant deans and directors? Why is legal education a 3-year ordeal? Why not 2 years or 2 and 1/2? Why is the cost to the students so high? Because it has to be, to assure a high-quality education and to produce highly competent attorneys? Baldedash! Law students are forced to pay huge sums and to go into long-term debt not because that is what it takes to acquire entry-level practice competencies but because it is in the interest of legal educators (almost all of whom disdain the practice of law themselves) to make the process long and costly, as long and as costly as the market will bear. Shame on them, shame on us, shame on me. In partial self-defense, I should note that when the faculty were asked to vote on annual tuition increases, I voted against them and objected that the costs were outstripping the ability of people of modest means to afford to attend law school. I was always outvoted.
Geri is much better today and actually went into Sendik's after her physical therapy today to pick up some food for dinner tonight. First time in over a month.
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