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ReeFA Madness.
2007-08-19 00:08:00
It's been a while since we've had a Wikimedia post. Fortunately we have some good and juicy drama going on today.Recently, User:Crockspot did a request for administrator privileges. He was doing ok, until a post that he had put on Conservative Underground, sort of the opposite of Democratic Underground.I like Crockspot, and I'm sorry for him that his RFA was disrupted by trolling. I find Bmedley Sutler's actions to be awful and in poor taste. What one does off wiki has nothing to do with one's administrator abilities. Furthermore, it's been shown that Bmedley Sutler is likely either a sockpuppet of, or definitively and admittedly posting for banned user Fairness and Accuracy for All. (FAAFA).On top of that, Eleemosynary, who on Wikipedia is a repeat offender of trolling and multiple other things like edit wars, incivility, etc. posted a digg article about the RFA, encouraging them to disrupt it. Eleemosynary claims ignorance, but since it all happened on a TOR proxy, we'll ne...
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What news from the west?
2007-08-12 20:53:00
Some observations about the 10 days between the end of LAP and the beginning of the semester.1: I have been getting uproariously drunk, far more often than I did in undergrad.2: I have a tendency to say things that some people find offensive, when I'm drunk.3: Since I've lived in this apartment, I have found 25 new ways to use the phrase "Throw some D's on that bitch".4: While watching my cats sleep on the carpet is cute, it was more fun when there was no carpet and they slid everywhere, inevitably slamming into walls like Sonny Bono with a tree.5: "Two Colored Flip Flop" does not have to mean anything to be a hilarious phrase. The awesomeness of it triples in value when you understand the joke behind it.6: Youtube comments are funniest when they're actually on the mark. This comes from watching a video remix of "Throw Some D's". There was a youtube comment that said "Fuk RichBoy dat n*gga head look funny". See image for confirmation that his head does, indeed, look funny. 7: A...
More About: News , West

LAP: The final chapter
2007-08-11 22:03:00
Legal Analysis is over now. It's been an interesting run, and if your law school offers any sort of summer courses like it I strongly suggest you take it.I was quite disappointed in the exam though. The hypothetical was designed to test our application of CREAC, but it wasn't exactly well done. Apparently it was much better last year. I made the mistake of not going back to view the older exams. Don't make that mistake as well.They harp over and over about how in most classes your grades are 100% based on exams. If it's 100% based on exams, you should tailor your study to the exam. One way to do so is to go over the professors old exam. Law professors are lazy, and their questions are carefully tailored. The chances are extremely high they will go back and resort to their prior exams. Unlike Paper Chase, though, most professors actually make their exams available, either through the law library, or directly through them. Take advantage of it, it's a huge benefit.Also, I was rea...
More About: Final , Chapter , Fina

Warning to law students
2007-08-08 17:11:00
I've said it before and I'll say it again.For the love of lolcats, PLEASE check blackboard and TWEN BEFORE your semester starts. My contracts professor, known as being the evil, uber-socratic, executioner, snuck a reading assignment in before our books had even been ordered. Unlike fall students coming directly in, at least us summer students get to see in advance what's up on blackboard. So fall students: CHECK IT!
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Ways to maximize your law school experience - LAP Day 6 A.M.
2007-08-08 16:10:00
Today we are having a panel discussion on ways to improve in law school.--Points raised--It's a marathon. Don't burn yourself out. Don't overstudy or be paralyzed by fear into understudying.Don't pick one person in the class that's brilliant and constantly compare yourself to that person. Everyone is on their own track. Ask for help from your classmates. A lot of times they will help you approach things from an angle you didn't see before.Force yourself to be able to talk to your professors. Don't be intimidated by them. This is law school: they have a vested interest in you not failing. MOST law schools have extremely approachable professors.Don't take it personally if they don't have time to see you. That means they don't have time. Find out when they do have time and bring it up then.If you are going to litigate, get used to approaching authoritative figures like professors. In a few years, you'll be the lawyer and be approaching judges who are having bad days, but you...
More About: Law School , School , Experience , Peri , Maxi

Legal Analysis Program Day 5
2007-08-07 21:16:00
We've reached the halfway point of the Legal Anal ysis Program workshop. And, interestingly, this time we have something worthy of writing both in the A.M and P.M.A.M. discussion was a continuation of our writing assignments and memo drafts regarding Miranda v. Arizona, Rhode Island v. Innis, and Berkemer v. McCarty. Since we read New York v. Quarles last night, the concept was, "You've made a memo on Maryland v. Shelley noting the caselaw from the above 3 cases. Now, how does it change with Quarles introduced?". Well, quite significantly.To make a short summary, in Miranda, statements made by a suspect during custodial interrogation are generally inadmissible unless police properly safeguard the right against self-incrimination. They do this by reading Miranda warnings ("You have the right to remain silent..."). Under Innis, "interrogation" was noted to include direct questioning as well as the "functional equivalent" of such. The key is that words or actions must be more than th...
More About: Gram

Wikipedia Administrator map
2007-08-07 00:41:00
At the DC Wikimeetup, I suggested to Greg Maxwell, "You know what would be cool? If you could build a family tree of administrators: who nominated who, etc." At the time I didn't think it was possible, but he reassured me "no no, it'll be pretty easy to make," but of course, I didn't believe him.I've been proven wrong, as rare as that may be. Greg has created an Admin family tree or adminship map if you want to call it that.. Kind of interesting to see who's spent time nominating people at RFA, and who got their admin bit and said "fuck it, lets go delete shit and block people," and never looked back.
More About: Wikipedia , Strato , Administrator

Wikipedia cited more in Law Reviews?
2007-08-07 00:29:00
You may recall we did a post a while back about Wikipedia used as legal evidence. Well today I've stumbled across a blog posting about Wikipedia being cited in Law Review from TaxProf, which if you can guess is a Tax Law Professor.From the post:The New York Times reports that "[m]ore than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court thus far has never cited Wikipedia.)"I asked my crack research assistant, Drew Marksity, to determine how many times law professors have cited Wikipedia in law review articles. Using Westlaw's JLR database, Drew found that 545 articles cite Wikipedia. (An additional 125 articles mention Wikipedia but do not cite it as authority.) Holds some quite interesting implications for Wikipedia, for instance: how many of those articles are featured? How many have templates for improvement, or NPOV/Unreferenced, etc. templates? Westlaw can't ...
More About: Reviews

Access Copyright and Misleading Copyright Notices
2007-08-06 20:29:00
Access Copyright (it's a Canadian thing, in case you're wondering), apparently has an incorrect, misleading copyright guideline, according to "Access Copyright and Misleading Copyright Notices " from UToronto Law faculty blog.Essentially what it boils down to is that:Canadian universities, including our own UofT, have entered into licensing agreements with Access Copyright - The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency. The license purports to permit the university to reproduce copyrighted material beyond what it is entitled to under the copyright act, e.g., under the fair dealing provisions. Under the agreement, when the university prepares coursepacks, for example, it is required to affix the following prominent notice: This material has been copied under licence from Access Copyright. Resale or further copying of this material is strictly prohibited.As a matter of law, the notice is highly innacurate and mistates the law. The law entitles every student who purchased a copy of c...
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Old, but good law school advice.
2007-08-06 19:24:00
This is from 2006, but still good law school advice. It's from threeyearsofhell.com, a blog of a Columbia Law student. Since it's now defunct, le sigh, but the back information is truly valuable.UPDATE: I've stumbled across http://www.lawschooldiscussions.org which is an interesting site chock full of info and forums about the law school process, both for Pre-Law students and admitted/graduate law students. I wish I'd known about it earlier, but might be a nice place to dig around for outline and memo material, or at least constructive criticism.
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Legal Analysis Program Day 4
2007-08-06 16:58:00
Welcome back. Over the weekend, we were given a writing assignment, drafting the facts section of a memorandum on Maryland v. Shelley, from the P.D.'s perspective.As far as I can tell, it's a pretty slam dunk case for the defendant, as the suspect made an inculpatory and exculpatory under coercion (10 officers with guns drawn, was handcuffed and placed on his knees, bit by police dog, was being yelled at by officers "where is the gun!") without ever having been read his Miranda rights. We've also been reviewing background cases for it, Rhode Island v. Innis, Miranda, and Berkemer v. McCarty. Today apparently is New York v. Quarls. More after lunch. I feel like I'm under custodial interrogation right now.
More About: Analysis , Legal , Program , Gram , Anal

Site update
2007-08-06 16:56:00
Polls are apparently down across blogger, which is why you can't see mine. If you click+drag across the area below it, you'll see a message "oops, polls are down" (it's black on black which is why you can't see it).
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