Monastery of Idealism

Did I leave you in the lurch again? Did I stop posting? Has it been almost a month? It got a little hairy there. I turned in The Paper That Did Not Want To Die, and then I spent the next four weeks trying to catch up on all the work I’d been ignoring while writing The Paper That Did Not Want To Die, and now I’m almost caught up just in time to start the mad dash toward finals.

It hasn’t been all work and no play, though. I did spend the weekend in Detroit, attending a buddy’s wedding and visiting the Henry Ford which, my mother informs me, I’ve visited many times before. I don’t remember them. But it was a nice refresher on giant locomotives and how trucks are made.

Also, I’ve been reading. Yes. And not only that: I’ve been reading books without any legal connection whatsoever. I just finished China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun, which I highly recommend to the young adult fantasy crowd, and I’m currently in the middle of The Namesake, which was recently made into a popular film, but I’m not going to watch it until I’m done with the book.

And I’ve been working out, too, realizing that I need to drop a pound or two if I want to fit into my suit throughout the summer. The more immediate goal? A 5k on May 11. Wait. What? Arwyn? Running? Yeah. I’ve discovered a nascent appreciation for it over the last year or so, mostly when it’s done indoors, on a treadmill, where I can breathe the entire distance. Unfortunately, the main side effect of a good workout is an exhausted Arwyn who crawls into bed by 10:00. This leaves less time for blogging on those late-night/early-morning ruminations.

Still, I’ve been remiss. So I offer this: The World’s Cutest Kitten.

(Do feel free to offer links rebutting that claim…I could use more procrastination mechanisms as finals approach.)

As it’s not Sunday yet and I don’t belong to a religious tradition that celebrates a whole Holy Week (though sometimes, simply for that reason, I wish I did) and I’ve not yet devoured the ears of a chocolate effigy, I’ll hold my usual Easter post.

But I’ll share this: another Slate piece for your enjoyment, on why Easter isn’t as commercialized as Christmas.

And I share it because I got a chuckle from the hypothesis — not a haha, that’s funny sort of chuckle, but rather one to the tune of, “Oh, that’s true. I never quite thought of it that way before.” You see, because I thought the reason Easter never got quite the same broughaha was something along the lines of, while the birth of the Son of God was pretty important, the whole point of his birth was, eventually, his death and resurrection.

The Slate piece suggests, rather, something along these lines:

Despite the awesome theological implications (Christians believe that the infant lying in the manger is the son of God), the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum. How pleasant it is in mid-December to open a Christmas card with a pretty picture of Mary and Joseph gazing beatifically at their son, with the shepherds and the angels beaming in delight. The Christmas story, with its friendly resonances of marriage, family, babies, animals, angels, and—thanks to the wise men—gifts, is eminently marketable to popular culture. It’s a Thomas Kinkade painting come to life.

On the other hand, a card bearing the image of a near-naked man being stripped, beaten, tortured, and nailed through his hands and feet onto a wooden crucifix is a markedly less pleasant piece of mail.

…and while this may be the case, it also has more awesome implications.

Then again, we stole the timing of both of these holidays from older observances anyway. Maybe people just need an excuse to party in the bleak midwinter more than at the coming of spring.

Just about every legal blogger under the sun is talking about D.C. v. Heller the past couple of days. I haven’t, mainly because a) I’m only marginally a legal blogger, and b) I had to write a paper because I intend to graduate from law school so I can become a legal blogger.

But now I am.

If you don’t know what D.C. v. Heller is, it’s the Second Amendment case that went before the Supreme Court for oral arguments yesterday. In a nutshell, the District of Columbia passed a law making it illegal for people to possess most guns in their homes. The case is being challenged by residents of DC who own guns. The D.C. Circuit ruled that citizens of D.C. have an individual right under the Second Amendment to own a gun and keep it at home (loaded and unlocked), and now both sides have asked the Supreme Court to review the decision.

The Supreme Court hasn’t looked at a pure Second Amendment case since 1939, which means there are a lot of unresolved issues that could be resolved in any of a couple (albeit limited) different directions. Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy explains:

Heller Will be Decided on Originalist Grounds. Among law professors, enforcing the original meaning of the Constitution is highly controversial. Critics of originalism deny that we should be ruled by the “dead hand of the past.” They prefer following Supreme Court precedents that may or may not be consistent with original meaning. Any justice who today professes a commitment to originalism is branded a radical; and all Supreme Court nominees are now grilled on their commitment to the doctrine of stare decisis. But what are old precedents if not the “dead hand” of dead justices?

Significantly, then, both sides in Heller are making only originalist arguments. The challengers of the law contend that the original meaning of the Second Amendment protects an individual “right to keep and bear arms” that “shall not be abridged.” In response, the District does not contend that this right is outmoded and that the Second Amendment should now be reinterpreted in light of changing social conditions. Not at all. It contends instead that, because the original intentions of the framers of the Second Amendment was to protect the continued existence of “a well regulated militia,” the right it protects was limited to the militia context.

So one thing is certain. Whoever prevails, Heller will be an originalist decision. This shows that originalism remains the proper method of identifying the meaning of the Constitution. Heller reveals that today’s debate over originalism is really about whether old nonoriginalist Supreme Court decisions should supercede the Constitution’s original meaning when doing so leads to results that nonoriginalists like better.

Dahlia Lithwick takes a much more tongue-in-cheek but less optimistic approach to the oral arguments, at least, and the politics on the Court:

I sometimes fall for the old line that there’s no such thing as politics at the high court; there are merely different interpretational tools. Not today. Today we have four liberals rediscovering the beauty of local government and judicial restraint and five conservatives poised to identify a fundamental personal right that will have judges mucking about in gun cases for years to come. After all these years of deep conservative suspicion of turning over policy matters to the courts, the Roberts Court has fallen in love with a new constitutional right. And while they don’t seem much concerned about how the judges will manage it, they’ve just about ensured that judges around the country will soon be ruling in gun cases the way they used to rule on speeding tickets.

If you’re interested in the case — or, really, if you’re not — I recommend the rest of her piece. Highly entertaining while pointedly enlightening.

As a cyclist, I appreciate this kind of thing. It’s a public awareness spot drawing attention to the plight of cyclists who share the road with cars. Also, it’s kinda funny.

Al tries to upstage me with pretty images from Hawaii, but I’ve got something even cooler: the whole universe!

Okay. Maybe not the whole universe. And I don’t even get to keep it all to myself because Google is sharing the sky, the moon, and Mars with everyone who’s got a browser and an internet connection. Apparently the whole world just wasn’t good enough for them.

…and actually, I’m kinda glad it wasn’t.

I saw this on Concurring Opinions, but I knew it wasn’t the first time the idea had crossed my path. A few minutes’ digging came up with this xkcd comic from some time ago: a flow chart reference to 1990s rap.

But wading through the Flickr group provided a number of dandy examples. I laughed. I cried. I — okay, I chuckled a little. Some shiny song charts:

A pie chart related to taking it easy:

A line graph demonstrating party intensity by year:

A Venn diagram giving visual effect to wisdom from The Rolling Stones:

And a graph describing the pervasiveness of various martial arts:

I found it all so inspiring that I’ve spent the last hour putting together this blog post (I’m still learning how to put pictures in) and making my own song graph: a bar chart describing the subjects about which Sam Cooke has knowledge:

I’m not dropping off the face of the earth, despite a slower posting week than the previous. Rather, spring break approacheth and I’m trying my best to finish The Paper That Refuses to End so I can actually relax over the break.

And so far, I’m almost there. Another day of writing and a couple of revising/editing/magicking incoherent lines into something resembling a legal argument, and I should have a Substantial Paper on my hands. Or, at least, something resembling one.

So, a bit of amusement to share: Haikuvies. Movie summaries in haiku form. How fun is that?
My favorites:

Luke blows up Death Star
Darth escapes and flies away
to prep for sequel

Also amusing:

Men, hobbits, an elf,
and an angry, drunken dwarf
form the fellowship

And finally:

Mighty cliff-top duel
dodge duck dive dodge parry thrust
I’m not left-handed

As you all know, there was an eclipse a few weeks ago. During the event, Al called and told me how cool it was to see it through his telescope — me, all I’ve got are a pair of contact lenses. So I’m a little jealous, granted. But, well, top this, Al. ;)

From HiRISE, via kottke.org.

I am among that population whose heads are regularly filled with music. Against their will. Well. Against mine, at least. But my head seems to attract those viral strains that embed themselves into grey matter’s weakest points and — and just stay there until, with the tiniest nudge from the outside world, they burst open.

And then, for no reason whatsoever, I’ll find myself humming Bye Bye Bye, with everyone around me begging, pleading for me to stop.

Sometimes, it’s predictable. Sometimes the stimuli that bring on these episodes are perfectly clear. If I’m driving down the FDR, I can be pretty certain that I’ll suddenly be serenading lampposts.

Or sometimes we’ll have been rehearsing a song, preparing for an upcoming performance, and it will insinuate itself. It won’t leave. I’ve been known to lose sleep over this: the song wends its way through the channels of my brain, keeping those bits that need to slow down for sleep from doing so. Most recently, it was this little gem that tortured me so. It was more fun when I was singing with the Bowdoin Chorus: late nights, early mornings, with refrains of Mozart or Mendelssohn (though in English, of course) bursting through my brain. At least that’s a little less, um, well, less something than N’sync.

And every morning, without fail — without fail — my alarm goes off, the birdies chirping me awake (no, really, my alarm has birdies chirping; how cool is that?), and I stumble into bathroom and, with eyes half-cracked, fumble with the shower knob until it turns a reasonable temperature. And every morning, without fail, I do this to the tune of — and yes, I find this slightly embarrassing — The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh theme song.

It’s been happening for years.

Help.

I’ve taken this semester to attending compline at the Episcopal church down the road. It’s not unlike that which I listened to in Seattle, except it takes place in an old church with gorgeous acoustics rather than on my car’s radio, lit by candles instead of headlights, and smells not of motor oil but of incense.

The setting is quite pretty. But I don’t see much of it; my ears are too devoted to the sound of sung prayer and praise to let my eyes wander through the candle-lit sanctuary. Even then, I don’t hear much of it; the singers’ voices are passable, the soprano pretty, the tenor often a little flat, but it’s not the quality of the song itself.

There’s something in the very nature of voices raised in songs of praise that lifts my soul and bears directly to my heart the mercy and love of God.