Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
My annual spring cold has arrived. . .
Most people associate colds with winter. But I'll go years with no wintertime cold. Not so spring, I get a spring cold every darned year. Must be something about the unpredictable weather or something.
From the phenominally bad idea department: M J Wright: Chickenosaurus lives
I'd note that there are a lot of bad ideas that seem to float around in the genetic modification department now days, everything from this step back towards dinosaurs to trying to revive mammoths. Studying this stuff is fine, but we seem to have utterly no restraint on implementing whatever bad ideas we come up with.
Monday, May 17, 1915. Van abandoned.
Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Matthews Church, Gillette Wyoming
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Sunday, May 16, 1915. Armenian casualties.
The Central Powers established bridgeheads over the San.
Ottoman soldiers killed 6,000 Armenians by artillery fire while covering the evacuation of Turkish women and children from Van.
The Royal Naval Air Service intercepted two Zeppelins, badly damaging one.
Last edition:
Saturday, May 15, 1915. Night attack.
Friday, May 15, 2015
The paused that refreshed.
Saturday, May 15, 1915. Night attack.
The British First Army launched a night attack a three mile section of the German line from Neuve-Chapelle, France, in the north to the village of Festubert .
The court of inquiry on the Singapore Mutiny sentenced 47 were sentenced to execution by firing squad. The remaining 600 Indian soldiers and officers that did not mutiny were ordered to serve in Africa.
It was of course Saturday.
Last edition:
Thursday, May 13, 1915. Sending a message.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
(Over)acclimating to technology
I hadn't thought of that, but I really think he's right. It has. Not completely, but partially.
Thursday, May 13, 1915. Sending a message.
President Wilson wrote a letter to Germany calling on it to abandon submarine warfare on commercial ships.
Canadians held the line at Frezenberg Ridge but sustained huge casualties doing so. Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry went from 700 men to 150 men resulting in the unit's unofficial motto – "Holding up the whole damn line".
Last edition:
Wednesday, May 12, 1915. Mackensen ordered to advance.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Wednesday, May 12, 1915. Mackensen ordered to advance.
General August von Mackensen was ordered to advance to the San River and establish bridgeheads on the east bank. While that was going on, further to the south Ottoman forces were unable to slow a Russian advance on Van.
French forces at Artois took 3,000 German POWs.
South African forces took Windhoek, German South West Africa.
The U.S. Army formed its 2nd Aero Squadron.
The stuck ship of the Ross Sea party, the Aurora, was drifting northwood with the ice attempted to make a radio broadcast to the stranded members of the party at Cape Evans.
Last edition:
Tuesday, May 11, 1915. Taking the high ground.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Tuesday, May 11, 1915. Taking the high ground.
French forces took vital high ground locations from the Germans in the Second Battle of Artois.
The Russians regroup and dug at the San River.
Last edition:
Monday, May 10, 1915. "There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Adopts the Uniform Bar Exam, and why that'...
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Adopts the Uniform Bar Exam, and why that'...: Wyoming Supreme Court in Cheyenne. Students of legal minutia know that the phrase "to pass the bar", or "to be ca...I noted a widely held concern that the adoption of the UBE would be detrimental to the practice of law in Wyoming in a number of ways. So far, at least one of the concerns, the increased exportation of the legal practice in this state to big out of state cities, accompanied by a decrease in practitioners who actually know Wyoming's law, has been coming true. Now, I work with a lot of really good out of state counsel, and this isn't a universal slam. Certainly quite a few of those lawyers are really good lawyers, but there a lot of lawyers residing in Wyoming who are equally good. The concern, however, was well placed and long term, this is not a good trend for Wyoming at all, as all the fine really good local counsel risk being forgotten simply because they aren't in a large city, in spite of their trial records.
Now I've read that New York is adopting the UBE with the expressed purpose of allowing transferability of its licenses.
This may seem irrelevant to Wyoming, but far from it. I don't know how many New York lawyers there may be, but it wouldn't surprise me if the number exceeds the number of residents that reside in any one of Wyoming's larger cities.
On a plus side, however, this will impact the same out of state bars that are presently poaching in Wyoming. So, now we can expect to see Colorado and Montana firms that have been practicing across state lines complain about the same thing we're experiencing, and they certainly will experience it. And it won't be good for the practices in their states.
I'm not going to cry about that, but we can shed a tear for one group, the legal consumer. An irony of the practice is that practitioners in small states are often highly experienced in the courtroom, with far more trial practice than some trial lawyers in big states. Quite often, a local litigant is better off with a lawyer from their home state, which is becoming less common, and stands to become even less and less the case as we move on.
Nothing every prevented a Colorado lawyer from taking the Wyoming exam, or a New York lawyer taking the Colorado exam. If they took it, and passed, we knew they were qualified. With the UBE, we don't know that.
Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Weston County Courthouse, Newcastle Wyoming
(Note, the text here is the original from the original Courthouses of the West entry. Since that time, I've learned that there is in fact an older courthouse still in use in the state, in Evanston Wyoming.).
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Monday, May 10, 1915. "There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."
Resisting demands the US immediately enter the Great War, due to the sinking of the Lusitania, President Wilson stated "There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."
Germany cabled its regret over civilian loss of life in the incident to the United States but in terms that placed the blame on the United Kingdom.
Wilson addressed naturalized citizens in a speech at Philadelphia's Convention Hall.
Mr. Mayor, Fellow-Citizens:
It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think to-night, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States.
This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world.
You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God—certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great Government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You have said, "We are going to America not only to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where we were born, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit—to let men know that everywhere in the world there are men who will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them if they can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; knowing that whatever the speech there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and justice." And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you—bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin—these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts—but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.
My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the "United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word "United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart.
It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.
See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We cannot exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We cannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day—that is common to mankind everywhere; we cannot exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.
When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee that accompanied him to come up from Washington to meet this great company of newly admitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spirit as an American to be here. In Washington men tell you so many things every day that are not so, and I like to come and stand in the presence of a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have been fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feeling what you have so generously given me—the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made America the hope of the world.
At Artois, the French launched a feint attack as a decoy while cavalry was moved to assist the Tenth Army. Germany launched a counter attack and recaptured some trenches and tunnels.
Last edition:
Sunday, May 9, 1915. Combined offensive.
Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Lander Wyoming
Saturday, May 9, 2015
The Press interpreting the news
This past week, however, I've seen two items that really show why the press lines up for criticism in this area. One story was local, and the other international. It's been interesting.
The local story involved an accusation of a minor assault following a city council meeting. I'm not going to get too far into it, as I don't know what happened, but it basically seems to have involved a contact with some papers. As assault is defined as rude and threatening contact, basically, a very minor assault is fairly easy to have happen. It doesn't mean you got hit or anything.
Anyhow, whatever happened, the Tribune reported that the assailant was a local religious figure, or words to that effect. That's quite the news. The on line Oil City News, which has a much different spin on this incident (and which frankly right now seems more accurate on it) said no such thing. When the name was reported, I looked the guy up.
Shoot, he's on the board of directors for his synagogue. That doesn't make him a religious figure at all. The Tribune is reporting this like he's a minister. Boo hiss Tribune, that doesn't seem supported at all. He's not the rabbi. Heck, I'm on the Parish Council for my church, and that doesn't make me a Priest or Deacon.
Frankly, were I Jewish, who seem to be the most picked on people on earth, I'd be super offended.
The second story was an article, perhaps an op ed, by the New York Times claiming that following this election we have a divided United Kingdom.
Oh really NYT? Maybe what we have is the Conservative party gaining and Labour collapsing. Sure, the Scots Separatist gained seats, but this isn't new. What it really looks like is a massive validation of the middle right path of the Conservatives, something a seemingly increasingly left wing NYT probably doesn't like.
The Press is long on its concept that it's a protector of the public. If it is, it ought to be a bit more careful on occasion to not appear to be partisan.
Sunday, May 9, 1915. Combined offensive.
French and British forces launched offensives, the French at Artois and the British to the north at Aubers Ridge.
The German government released a report accepting responsibility for the sinking of the RMS Lusitania but maintaining that the ship was carrying munitions in spite of its pre trip inspection that showed it was not.
Last edition:
Friday, May 7, 1915. The Sinking of the Lusitania.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Urban Sheep?
Urban Sheep?
Ummm. . . .
I can't see that working.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Did they listen to that song?
Now, I'm a fan of Janice Joplin.* I really like her music. Sure, she was before my time, and my parents hated her music, but I love it. It may figure, as I'm a fan of Jimi Hendrix as well, so I have a taste for the blues and blues influenced music.
Anyhow, as the ad was playing, I stopped to watch it. It was a Dior perfume advertisement.
My gosh, that's weird. Janice was one messed up woman, but I seriously doubt she'd approve of any of her music being used for perfume. Perfume wearing is sort of basically anti-Janice. Man.
Beyond that, the whole theme of the ad is weird, in relation to the music, which makes me wonder if anyone really ever listens to the lyrics of any song, ever.
In the ad, a bride at a wedding has a crisis, and fleas the groom, strips off her wedding dress, is lifted up into a helicopter, kisses the man therein, and flies off, presumably to a life of adventure.
In the song, an anguished singer cries out her love for a man who is mistreating her, professing her desperate undying love no matter what, in spite of the vast pain that man is causing the singer.
Boo hiss, Dior.
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*In spite of her death years ago, Janice Joplin is so familiar to our household that everyone had no problems in immediately recognizing the reference when I named a stray female cat in the neighborhood Janice. She's small, has long haired, and extremely disheveled. She's also desperately in love with our disinterested male cat and she hangs around trying to sing screechy songs to him in a very loud voice.



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