Like the old They Were Lawyers post, this post became too bulky to be here on the main blog, so it's now its own page on the blog.
They Had Been Soldiers.
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Related Posts:
They were Clerics.
They were Farmers.
They were Hunters or Fishermen.
They were Lawyers.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Proposed Constitutional Amendment: Non Resident Trustees
Wyoming's voters have a proposed Constitutional amendment to vote on this November. That amendment reads as follows:
The legislature shall provide by law for the management of the university, its lands and other property by a board of trustees, consisting of not less than seven members, to be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate, and the president of the university, and the superintendent of public instruction, as members ex officio, as such having the right to speak, but not to vote. The duties and powers of the trustees shall be prescribed by law. Not more than twenty percent (20%) of the appointed trustees may be nonresidents of the state, notwithstanding the provisions of Article 6, Section 15 of this Constitution.
The legislative note accompanying this proposal states as follows:
The adoption of this amendment would allow the governor to appoint nonresidents of the state to serve as University of Wyoming trustees. Not more than twenty percent (20%) of the appointed trustees may be nonresidents of the state. The governor would not be required to appoint any nonresident as a trustee. All appointments to the board of trustees are with the advice and consent of the Wyoming Senate.
The effect of this would be to allow, but not require, the Governor to have two non residents be Trustees. While it's an "allowance", not a requirement, the effect would undoubtedly be the addition of two non residents. Wyoming is out of compliance with the law on Trustees right now, as it's failed to observe the two party requirement that also exists, but I'm sure that the Governors would follow the allowance here.
There's been next to nothing said in this election season about this proposal at all, but the Tribune ran an article on this this past weekend which was very well done in which Joan Barrons interviewed Phil Roberts of the University of Wyoming at length. Roberts, a lawyer who is a history teacher, is against it, and so am I.
I feel the passage of this is inevitable, for reasons that fit into Wyoming psychology, but the bill shouldn't pass. It won't be a disaster if it does, but it fits right into the Wyoming mindset that we're a service for others and that the only ones who really do good are those who start here and then leave, or those who did well and come in. Perhaps all people are that way everywhere, but it's been a long time feature of the State to view things that way.
The concept of allowing people from out of state to be Trustees is that we can thereby allow those former Wyomingites who did well to come back and share that with us here. Well, their career paths are largely ones that feature leaving. That's fine, and their absolute right, but the University already exist in an environment in which the ability of those who have educations and stayed is a bit under threat, and to emphasize that leaving is the smart thing to do in this fashion isn't the wisest.
None of this is to say anything negative about our ex-patriots. A lot of them keep a strong connection the state their entire lives (some, of course, make a point of emphasizing that it is where they were "from", not where they are). More than a few of those people left because they had no other rational economic choice at the time. But in a state that has but one university, which belongs to the residents of the state, a large board like this would seem better served by residents of the state who have stayed and made their livelihoods here and therefore would seemingly be in better touch with what Wyoming needs.
Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouse
Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouse:
Natrona County Courthouse
The "old" (actually second) Natrona County Courthouse in Casper Wyoming.
This courthouse replaced a 19th Century courthouse that had become too small. In typical Western fashion, that old courthouse was then torn down, and the street now runs right through where it had once been. This courthouse that replaced it was built in the Great Depression as a part of a WPA project. Within the last decade it was in turn supplanted, as a courthouse, in favor of one built in an early 20th Century vintage five store hotel, in order that more courtrooms could be provided, reflecting the addition of more sitting judges since this one was constructed.
This is from our Courthouses of the West blog and can be linked into on the link above. This particular photo is one of several of this courthouse, which was the second entry on that blog.
Natrona County Courthouse
The "old" (actually second) Natrona County Courthouse in Casper Wyoming.
This courthouse replaced a 19th Century courthouse that had become too small. In typical Western fashion, that old courthouse was then torn down, and the street now runs right through where it had once been. This courthouse that replaced it was built in the Great Depression as a part of a WPA project. Within the last decade it was in turn supplanted, as a courthouse, in favor of one built in an early 20th Century vintage five store hotel, in order that more courtrooms could be provided, reflecting the addition of more sitting judges since this one was constructed.
This is from our Courthouses of the West blog and can be linked into on the link above. This particular photo is one of several of this courthouse, which was the second entry on that blog.
The Big Picture: Pabst Champion Six Horse Team 1904
Panographic photograph of a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer wagon from 1904. Strange to think that Pabst will soon belong to a Russian company.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
A Commentary on Commentary
I guess Bill Maher is taking some heat for some things he said about Islam, in a discussion or debate, or something, with Ben Affleck.
I didn't see his show, and I never do, but the commentary on it has been somewhat interesting, although not for the reasons its supposed to be.
First of all, I'm amazed that Maher, in his commentary, apparently made the comment that Islam was different from other religions due to an attachment to violence. The reason I'm amazed that Maher made that comment as he usually picks on Christianity, or rather Catholicism specifically. Apparently his father fell away from the Church when Maher was in his mid teens, and whatever got his father rolling stuck to Maher and he's been a died in the wool hater of the Church since. So there's a real degree of irony here in that died in the wool Islamist probably would be justified in thinking, "hey Bill, we thought we had your back". They probably don't think that, however, as they probably don't know or care who Maher is.
For that matter, I don't know why we care what Maher has to say on these topics. Maher is a species of comedian, sort of, and Affleck is an actor. Maher has made a career out of Snark, a sort of juvenile minor sarcasm that tends to be of the type affected by middle school boys whose parents have told them that they're really smart, but who suspect that they aren't as smart as they've been told. We've all been there in that class, and there's always some almost witty kid who acts like he's super witty, and who is genuinely occasionally funny, but at the same time, you don't really figure he's a truly Big Brain. Maher has been lucky that just enough people like middle school humor, and that he is genuinely occasionally funny, that he's done well at it. But he still displays that condescending smile that tends to portray the message, "I'm funny, right? Right guys?"
I don't care what Maher dose and I don't watch him. He's not Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld or even Steven Colbert, but if folks want to watch him, so be it. I just don't get why anyone really cares what he has to say on anything really serious. For that matter, why would we care what Ben Affleck thinks either.
It's really odd that celebrity entertainment status translates into an illusion of gravitas. Frankly, it's disturbing that it does.
I didn't see his show, and I never do, but the commentary on it has been somewhat interesting, although not for the reasons its supposed to be.
First of all, I'm amazed that Maher, in his commentary, apparently made the comment that Islam was different from other religions due to an attachment to violence. The reason I'm amazed that Maher made that comment as he usually picks on Christianity, or rather Catholicism specifically. Apparently his father fell away from the Church when Maher was in his mid teens, and whatever got his father rolling stuck to Maher and he's been a died in the wool hater of the Church since. So there's a real degree of irony here in that died in the wool Islamist probably would be justified in thinking, "hey Bill, we thought we had your back". They probably don't think that, however, as they probably don't know or care who Maher is.
For that matter, I don't know why we care what Maher has to say on these topics. Maher is a species of comedian, sort of, and Affleck is an actor. Maher has made a career out of Snark, a sort of juvenile minor sarcasm that tends to be of the type affected by middle school boys whose parents have told them that they're really smart, but who suspect that they aren't as smart as they've been told. We've all been there in that class, and there's always some almost witty kid who acts like he's super witty, and who is genuinely occasionally funny, but at the same time, you don't really figure he's a truly Big Brain. Maher has been lucky that just enough people like middle school humor, and that he is genuinely occasionally funny, that he's done well at it. But he still displays that condescending smile that tends to portray the message, "I'm funny, right? Right guys?"
I don't care what Maher dose and I don't watch him. He's not Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld or even Steven Colbert, but if folks want to watch him, so be it. I just don't get why anyone really cares what he has to say on anything really serious. For that matter, why would we care what Ben Affleck thinks either.
It's really odd that celebrity entertainment status translates into an illusion of gravitas. Frankly, it's disturbing that it does.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Unsolicited Career Advice for the Student No. 4. Get a useful education.
Just recently I posted my Caveat Auctor post about career advice. Read that first.
Many years ago I worked with a lawyer who decided to drop out of law, which was his third career path at the time. He'd studied to be a meteorologist, switched to geophysics, and then gone to law school. Oddly enough, fwiw, and having nothing to do with this thread, I've known quite a few lawyers, including myself, who started out as geoscientists. Anyhow, when I ran into him after he quit the law, and was ready to go back to school (to become a teacher) he observed "lawyers are occupationally illiterate.".
Young men, African Americans, training to be wheel wrights. 1900.
Many years ago I worked with a lawyer who decided to drop out of law, which was his third career path at the time. He'd studied to be a meteorologist, switched to geophysics, and then gone to law school. Oddly enough, fwiw, and having nothing to do with this thread, I've known quite a few lawyers, including myself, who started out as geoscientists. Anyhow, when I ran into him after he quit the law, and was ready to go back to school (to become a teacher) he observed "lawyers are occupationally illiterate.".
That's absolutely true. Indeed, one of the great lies about law school, which this thread is not about, is that "with a law degree you can do anything." No, you cannot. With a law degree you can practice law, or teach it. The fable that you can "do anything" with a law degree came about in the day when you could "do anything" with a liberal arts degree, and get a decent middle class income even if you'd dropped out of school in the 10th Grade. None of that is any longer the case, and it hasn't been for a long time. Some law school profs still circulate that comforting bit of propaganda to their students, who apparently must be wondering about their course of study at the time, but like most of that type of slop, it just isn't true, and the people who circulate it, while they should know better, do not.
Lawyer, 1940, doing exactly what a law degree trains you to do.
I mention that not to pop that balloon. Presumably (but perhaps I shouldn't presume), most people who go to law school do not do so in the hopes of never using their degrees to pursue law. If they are, they're making a rather odd choice, sort of like "I got on this train that goes only to Duluth, but I have no desire to go to Duluth." Rather, I note that as I'm doing one of those things that I shouldn't, and I'm offering a bit of career advice. And that advice is get a good educational broad base, but don't major in anything that can't be employed, unless you are rich.
Okay, what do I mean by that?
Well, whether we like it or not, because of the increasing automation of technology, anyone entering the workplace in anything today should not count on that field really still being around, in its present form, in ten to fifteen years. Yes, I hope it really is, but you can't count on it. Some fields, law being one, definitely will not be really recognizable in their present form within twenty years. Yes, there will still be lawyers, but they'll all be poorer and there will be fewer of them, and a good deal of what they do in some fields will have been farmed out overseas to equally well versed and trained individuals, who work for a lot less. This isn't unique to law, and is already happening in a lot of fields (some doctor's offices, for example, have their records handled by firms in India..
Because of these changes, in my view, a person's educational base and training base should be broad enough to hopefully give them something to fall back on, or move to, should they need to.
Using law as a model again, there are those who take undergraduate courses of studies in something that can not be used for gainful employment in and of itself. If it can't, it won't, and in a pinch, that education was wasted.
For that matter, there are entire institutions that focus on this sort of training. There is, for example, a private university in Wyoming that focuses on a classical education centered on the "great books." That's fine, except that education will not put food on the table. It might get you access to a law school, or a seminary, but that means you are really locked in. When you get that law degree, for example, your bolt is really shot as you don't get endless chances and you sure better darned well like it. Nobody is going to hire you in a corporation at this point, or in business, or whatever, to head their Duluth widget making branch. Shoot, they won't even hire you to work on the factory floor at Duluth Widgets and Cat Grooming Supplies.. You are a lawyer, with a degree in something that only prepared you for that, and that's what you are.
Now, any one of those degrees may be fine if you can work it into a teaching career. But you had better have had some plans for that and be capable of moving on it, and it better really be one of those. A degree in History, or English, or Math, and not a degree in "I wanna be something else so I'm taking this now." After you get pretty far along this path, it is the path, and there's not an easy way to turn around and walk back down it.
Moreover, at least in the professional fields, I really feel a professional is better off having a broader base of knowledge. I've known a lot of lawyers whose undergraduate degree was focused on being a "pre law" degree, and frankly they missed out. Their education was so focused on a path, they don't know what's off of it. And this isn't limited to just lawyers by any means.
And I don't mean this post to be. Wanting to be a pilot? Great, study something else in school too. We don't know where that field will be headed in 20 or 30 years. Wanting to be a welder? Great, but why don't you take those welding class as a community college and maybe take some accounting as well. Could be useful. Want to be an accountant? Fantastic, but why not also round that out with some other field as well.
Now, a lot of this can only be taken so far. Students only have so much time, and so much money. But, be that as it may, ideally a person would be better off having some manual skill they can at least do, and some field that requires a college education, if they're pursing a college education. Stuff happens. I've known two lawyers who, due to circumstances, had to work construction jobs after years of being in the law, but at least they could. One reemerged and another disappeared, but at least they were able to do that.
Now, as I can already sense the hackles raising, let me note what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that any field outside the engineering department is worthless, and that a university should be a species of trade school. I've seen those arguments countering that trend made, and I agree with them. But that doesn't have so much to do with a person's major, as it does with the failure of the modern university and the evolution of the modern economy. I fully agree the classic liberal arts majors should remain, although I'd fully dump some, like political science, that have little real utility. But the problem we see here is that any university education is, in and of itself, supposed to be "liberal". A student shouldn't be able to get out of university without a foreign language that they've studied, without a solid foundation in history, and without exposure to the various arts. If the hard sciences and engineering have become trade schools, that's because the schools have let that happen. And that's because we have an erroneous concept that everyone, everywhere, needs a college education.
But many will needs such an education, and it should be "liberal" in the classical sense. But, the realities of the world being what they are, the education should also have a practical application, or the student should have a goal in mind. Just hoping it works out isn't a good goal. The institution needs to inform the student of the chances of applying the education, after which it is up to the student to go forward or not. For some, that education will not really fully work out immediately, and for others it will fail sooner or later.
And that's the point really. As nobody is that accurate at predicting the future (indeed, according to those who have studied this topic, most such prognostications are in error) it's better to have something to fall back on, in some ways. The more education you have, the broader that education can be, and the better your chances, maybe, of having something going disastrously wrong.
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Related Posts:
Commentary on Career Advice: Caveat Auctor.
But many will needs such an education, and it should be "liberal" in the classical sense. But, the realities of the world being what they are, the education should also have a practical application, or the student should have a goal in mind. Just hoping it works out isn't a good goal. The institution needs to inform the student of the chances of applying the education, after which it is up to the student to go forward or not. For some, that education will not really fully work out immediately, and for others it will fail sooner or later.
And that's the point really. As nobody is that accurate at predicting the future (indeed, according to those who have studied this topic, most such prognostications are in error) it's better to have something to fall back on, in some ways. The more education you have, the broader that education can be, and the better your chances, maybe, of having something going disastrously wrong.
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Related Posts:
Commentary on Career Advice: Caveat Auctor.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Monday at the Bar: 19th Century Courts Martial
A 19th Century U.S. Army courts martial. Unlikely that there would have been lawyers actually at it, as a regular JAG Corps was a post World War One creation. Before that, all legal matters were handled by officers and enlisted men detailed to the task.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
A questionable monetary message.
Other than my recent posts on the wars in the Middle East, I generally have abstained from any religious commentary in terms of religious messages themselves. This blog isn't a forum for that.
However, I just can't help myself on this one.
This morning, I turned on the television and found a televangelist on whose message basically was that if you gave him money (no matter how much you might be hurting yourself) God was going to reward you with more money.
I know that there's a certain group of folks who believe this, but that message just isn't there in the Gospels. Indeed, while I can't claim to be an expert, that message isn't in any of the three major monotheistic religions.
That definitely isn't the message of Christianity. Far from it. At best, a person might receive such a blessing, but Christianity's message is you reward is in the next world, not in this one, although aid in this one isn't impossible. But take the lives of the Saints. None of the Apostles got rich and died wealthy. Quite the contrary. They lived poor and died by violence. Or take the Roman Martyrology, those saints whom Catholics remember at Mass at least in part. A long list of men and women whose ends were brutal.
I don't know why this offended me sufficiently to post about it here, but it does. I've seen this guy on television before, and his message is always "send me money" and God will send you more. I don't know what the guy does with this money, but a message always focused on the concept that God is some sort of reverse bank where you give money and get more in return is pretty far from the Christian Gospel.
However, I just can't help myself on this one.
This morning, I turned on the television and found a televangelist on whose message basically was that if you gave him money (no matter how much you might be hurting yourself) God was going to reward you with more money.
I know that there's a certain group of folks who believe this, but that message just isn't there in the Gospels. Indeed, while I can't claim to be an expert, that message isn't in any of the three major monotheistic religions.
That definitely isn't the message of Christianity. Far from it. At best, a person might receive such a blessing, but Christianity's message is you reward is in the next world, not in this one, although aid in this one isn't impossible. But take the lives of the Saints. None of the Apostles got rich and died wealthy. Quite the contrary. They lived poor and died by violence. Or take the Roman Martyrology, those saints whom Catholics remember at Mass at least in part. A long list of men and women whose ends were brutal.
I don't know why this offended me sufficiently to post about it here, but it does. I've seen this guy on television before, and his message is always "send me money" and God will send you more. I don't know what the guy does with this money, but a message always focused on the concept that God is some sort of reverse bank where you give money and get more in return is pretty far from the Christian Gospel.
No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola? : Shots - Health News : NPR
No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola? : Shots - Health News : NPR
Not very, as it turns out (and as I already knew).
In order for Ebola to become the disease that the panicky wish to make, it would have to become airborne, like influenza. The chances of that are next no nil.
But what about west Africa then?
Well, poor living conditions, poor health infrastructure, poor resources. That explains it. The disease is deadly, to be sure, and every person who dies from it is a tragedy. But this is the 1918 Flu Epidemic back a century later, or the Black Plague.
Not very, as it turns out (and as I already knew).
In order for Ebola to become the disease that the panicky wish to make, it would have to become airborne, like influenza. The chances of that are next no nil.
But what about west Africa then?
Well, poor living conditions, poor health infrastructure, poor resources. That explains it. The disease is deadly, to be sure, and every person who dies from it is a tragedy. But this is the 1918 Flu Epidemic back a century later, or the Black Plague.
Narrative and the Grace of God: The New 'True Grit' - NYTimes.com
Narrative and the Grace of God: The New 'True Grit' - NYTimes.com
I see that I'm not the only one whose noticed this interesting aspect of this film. This is also the case, very intentionally so of course, of the Coen's A Serious Man, although I find that to be a rather odd movie.
I see that I'm not the only one whose noticed this interesting aspect of this film. This is also the case, very intentionally so of course, of the Coen's A Serious Man, although I find that to be a rather odd movie.
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