Category Archives: Society

Good people

June 24, 2008 – 10:23 am

I’ve had a lot on my plate lately: marking a stack of exams, a conference paper that was supposed to be due in yesterday (erm…they’ll have to wait), amending another paper for publication, doing a PhD, looking after a 2 year old, another child on the way, as well as a terrible cold and cough which [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Personal, Pregnancy | Comments (12)

A new way of policing “doof-doof”

June 17, 2008 – 8:20 pm

When my husband and I first moved in together, we lived in a set of terrace houses. We’d lived there about two years when new tenants moved in two doors down. The new tenants were Columbian exchange students, and I don’t think they took their studies seriously. What they did take seriously was partying hard [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in England, Fark!, Intellectual property, Law, Media, Music, Personal liberty | Comments (4)

Human rights and criticising Islam

June 7, 2008 – 12:20 am

I’ve been following the case brought by the Ontario-based Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) against Mark Steyn in the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. And as per Pete M’s request, I’m writing a post on it (in the middle of the night because I’m an insomniac). Perhaps, as per John Hasenkam’s comment in response to Pete, [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Free Speech, Human/Civil rights, Law, Media, Personal liberty, Politics, Racism, Religion | Comments (31)

Intellectualism and the Emperor’s New Clothes

June 5, 2008 – 8:51 pm

I’ve been reading the interesting string of posts on the question of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. It all started off at PrawfsBlog, where Rick Hills explained why he was an anti-intellectual. At Slate, Eric Posner and Richard Ford mounted a defence of intellectualism, while still maintaining a dislike of deliberate obscurantism.
Hills’ example of intellectual obscurantism was Judith Butler’s [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Academia, Education, Law, Philosophy | Comments (31)

The scary side of karma

May 29, 2008 – 10:23 pm

Adrian the cabbie has an interesting post on karma. When someone does you wrong, you often wish that either that the consequences of their actions will come back to bite them on the bottom, or that something equivalent happens to them as a result of their bad actions. It’s a tantalising concept, and a tempting [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in General, Personal | Comments (14)

The Left Hand of Darkness

May 26, 2008 – 9:03 am

The other day I was reading Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. I hadn’t read it for 10 or so years; I had forgotten what an excellent book it was.
Shortly, the book involves a male human diplomat and explorer arriving in a world, Gethen, where the sentient inhabitants are humanoid androgynes. For [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Books, Children, Law, Sex | Comments (10)

Job interview boo-boos

May 24, 2008 – 8:54 pm

I must confess that when I was at law school, I didn’t do well in interviews. I had no trouble getting them. But I used to freeze like a rabbit in the headlights once in the interview. I guess the problem is that I  don’t like talking about myself. And, as I have described, I [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in General | Comments (3)

The value of saying sorry

May 19, 2008 – 7:58 pm

Saying sorry is not something that happens very often in legal disputes. When I was a young teenager, my sister was hit by a car in front of me, and had to spend a few months in hospital. Fortunately, she made a full and total recovery. I remember that one of my primary grievances at [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Law | Comments (16)

Oxford weirdnesses

May 2, 2008 – 11:46 pm

I’ve seen some pretty strange stuff in my life. No doubt, too, there are perfectly normal things that I think strange because, ahem, I’m pretty strange.
Anyhoo, that’s by-the-by.
The hot-penny-chucking ritual I witnessed yesterday was right up there on teh weirds list. A mate of mine suggested the RSPCA would be on your case if you [...]

By skepticlawyer | Comments (0)

Cause and effect

April 27, 2008 – 10:35 pm

I haven’t been too impressed with ethanol fuels for a while. My concern back then was “that if governments make emotional knee-jerk reactions, the cure may be as bad as the disease it is designed to alleviate.”
In that context, the current food crisis is a salutory reminder of the nature of cause and effect.  Food riots [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Economics, Environment, Politics | Comments (0)