Dear Diary,Today I will attend a special Friday Colloquium, in addition to our weekly Tuesday meetings. Today's topic is “Similarities and Differences Between Statutory and Scriptural Interpretation”.
Some of the past colloquiums I attended discussed:
Aug. 23rd, The mind manager software
Aug. 30th, The Supreme Court's recent internet filing sharing cases
Sept. 6th, De re and De Dicto
Sept. 13th The D.C. Circuit's Handan military detention case
Sept. 20th The Constitution as a written document.
The next one I plan to attend is Religion and the rise of modern culture.
I remember attending my very first one on Tuesday July 5th, which was only my second day here. And when I left my heart was literally beating faster than it ever has, except when I rode the Whizzer roller coaster at Great America. I was so overly stimulated mentally that it was hard to breathe.
I was so proud that I was working among clearly some of the most brilliant minds and I was apart of this elite group of intellectuals. These colloquiums are just what I had always dreamed an academic environment would be like. A group of intellectuals in a room debating the merits of current hot topic political events. We have had discussions of faculty's trips to Alaska where they point out the waste left behind at abandoned military camps. I recently attended one where we discussed China and how half of all the construction cranes in the world are in China, rapid growth. But there are lighter sides to these discussions as well, for example, "The Colonel" (KFC) is more prevalent than the "Golden Arches" (Mickey D's) in China. No matter what the topic nor how esoteric it may seem, I leave each colloquium feeling more informed and more inspired to stay informed.
Some colloquiums are more heated than others, for instance the one on Detainees was intense. But the speaker explained about the 2 options for dealing with detainees under the Geneva Convention. And the importance of selecting the appropriate noun to describe these prisoners, either "Enemy Combatants" or "Detainees" and the different times that laws of war apply. And the captives' rights under each of those 2 titles. There has been much criticism about America's unchecked executive power, as is explained in this article:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.
I am summarizing a complex issue, so for an abstract of one of this faculty's writing, click on this link http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=811046
I also helped some LLMs locate materials in the stacks. I did a reference request to locate "Audiences" from the Vatican, requires selecting appropriate "Holy Father," and I searched for articles on LexisNexis.
On a brighter note, all of this citation "stuff" is finally making perfect sense to me now. In fact, I helped a 1L student verify that there were no "Supreme Court" citations even though his answer was marked incorrect. So I showed the resources and the answer marked "incorrect" to the professors. And they changed the answer on their answer key. Phew! I am very proud of myself, and the fact that I felt confident in my answer, even though it clearly differed from what was touted as correct, proves I am becoming much more comfortable with the material.
Interesting article in the Observer...Gay? Fine By Me Tees.
http://www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/paper660/news/2005/09/30/News/Bright.Orange.Shirts.Make.Bold.Statement-1005171.shtml
