Nerd Alert!

So....we're talking about the dormant commerce clause in Con Law, and obviously we've gone over the New Jersey and Clarkstown cases about the shipping of waste from state to state. (*puts on nerd hat*) Just saw today that the Supreme Court ruled on another interstate waste shipping case: UNITED HAULERS ASSOCIATION, INC., et al. v. ONEIDA-HERKIMER SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY et al. They cite both the New Jersey and Clarkstown cases: "Discriminatory laws motivated by 'simple economic protectionism' are subject to a 'virtually per se rule of invalidity,' Philadelphia v. New Jersey." AND "Ruling in the haulers’ favor, the District Court held that nearly all flow control laws had been categorically rejected in C & A Carbone, Inc. v. Clarkstown." The district court was affirmed.

Strangely, though, Alito dissented with Stevens and Kennedy... "This case cannot be meaningfully distinguished from Carbone [Clarkstown]. As the Court itself acknowledges, '[t]he only salient difference' between the cases is that the ordinance invalidated in Carbone discriminated in favor of a privately owned facility, whereas the laws at issue here discriminate in favor of 'facilities owned and operated by a state-created public benefit corporation.' Ante, at 1. The Court relies on the distinction between public and private ownership to uphold the flow-control laws, even though a straightforward application of Carbone would lead to the opposite result. See ante, at 10–12. The public-private distinction drawn by the Court is both illusory and without precedent."

I am weird

Saw this on another blog and couldn't resist:

Six Weird Things About Me

1. There is a better than 95% chance that I would pass up a date with a Victoria's Secret model to go to a Jazz playoff game, even if there was a guarantee of hot action afterwards.

2. I use a q-tip everyday

3. I have to change the channel if someone is unwittingly making an ass of them self or is being aggressively confronted

4. my text messages always use correct English and punctuation

5. I calculate my gas mileage every time I fill up

6. Deep down in my heart of hearts, one day I would really love it if a musical broke out, just once, in the school lunchroom or commons area, like something out of Newsies

I'm supposed to "tag" 6 people to do this now, but I think only about 5 people read my blog. So if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged

C - O - L - T - S!!

That was our cheer in high school during sporting events. The other day I realized that I treat the Jazz with the same mentality of a high school fan. I want to paint my face, be right behind the opposing bench, stand the whole game, yell at the players and the coaches and officials, and generally just be an out of control fan. I saw the highlights of the Warriors/Mavs game last night (Warriors went up 2 games to 1) and it reminded me of a high school game. Everyone had on their yellow "we believe" shirts and they were loud and raucous. I would give ANYTHING to be at the Jazz game tonight...

San-WHO-ya?

Why must I be bombarded with Sanjaya news? Is this one clown SO important that I must hear about him on my radio show and respectable blogs? NEWSFLASH: not everyone loves American Idol, and NOBODY is going to remember/care about him in 3 months. Can we please move on?

/rant

[edit: am I psychic or WHAT!?]

More introspection

I am about to turn the ripe-old age of 25, which basically puts me at 1/3 of the way through my life. 25 years is a long time to accumulate wisdom, and, in the spirit of the title of my blog, it's mostly about the choices we make.

And what's more, is that it's not the long, hard, agonizing decisions that change our lives the most, it's the seemingly small, snap decisions that really have a lasting effect. The decision to ask a girl out, or to skip your homework to go out with friends, or to sit next to someone at lunch, or simply saying "yes" instead of "no," these are the decisions that have the biggest impact on our lives. Some will say that the person you marry is the most important decision you will ever make, I disagree. I think the most important decision we can make is whether or not we're going to take life as it comes or make life what we want. I can sit back and wait for something to happen to me, for that "special someone" to come find me and ask me out, or I can be the one to go out and find her. The simple decision to talk to that girl at Barnes and Noble, or that girl in class, I think, is really where we create exciting moments in life. Life happens in an instant, not in long drawn out chunks of time.

I've made lots of snap decisions, some good, some not so good, and these decisions have affected me much more than the decision to go to law school, or to change jobs, or to pick a major, or to buy a car. These choices have the inherent advantage of being conscious, affirmative decisions to act, so their consequences can be foreseen and planned for. The quick decisions and seemingly innocuous choices do not have that beneficial characteristic; we cannot plan for unforeseen consequences. That isn't to say, though, that we should be scared of making quick or simple decisions, because this is when life gets exciting! So go make an affirmative decision to act, to make life what you want and not simply to sit back and react to it.

"Did that blow your mind, because that just happened."

Thanks for nothing Google

I was trying to look up some information on spreading rumors and talking bad about people behind their backs, but Google did nothing for me. So I guess this will just be all me...

If I've learned one thing about the social life here at law school it's this: if you don't want everyone to read it or know about it, DON'T WRITE IT DOWN. It's that simple, if you write something mean, it WILL get out and it will likely cause you (or, probably more so, someone else...) a lot of pain. I've blogged before about how High School-esque Law School is, and also how we can combat it, to some degree. It's in our nature to look at the differences between people, to look at how we're different from each other. But in all reality all this does is create tension, drama, and hurts feelings. People really are capable of amazing things if we give them a chance. We need to focus on the good things about people, rather than their shortcomings because we ALL have shortcomings, no exceptions.

We sometimes bond with people in strange ways, like laughing at a person or group of people, or pretending like everyone is beneath you. This is how cliques form. You'd think that this sort of behavior would end after high school, or a couple semesters into undergrad, but it now seems stronger than it did in High School. I suppose that any group of 400-or-so 20-something age students are going to resort to this kind of behavior, especially when they have to spend 6-10 hours a day together.

So here's what I am going to do: I am going to apologize to everyone that I have spoken ill of while here at school. Is it going to suck? Yes. Some people likely won't even know that I talked bad about them, but that doesn't matter. Hopefully it will help to alleviate some of the pointless drama and tension around here and maybe it will inspire others to do the same, because the tension and drama are bad enough without having law school to deal with at the same time. 4 of the 5 people who read this blog will probably understand completely what I am talking about, and I hope that I have affected some kind of change in how they think about people.

[edit: I will be doing this in person where possible, email and IM/text are NOT the way to do it.]

"Did that blow your mind, because that just happened."

Make up your mind!

OK, so... 60 and some rain later today, 60 and sunny tomorrow, 60 and thunderstorms Tuesday, then SNOW AND COLD on Wednesday. WTF!?