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"The Spirit rover on Mars is currently stuck in a patch of loose material. After a few attempts to get free, the team has wisely decided to do further experiments on Earth instead of on Mars. They will now recreate the conditions in our sandbox at JPL and test out different sequences until one works reliably here, then try it on Mars. "
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"When did the simple act of recognizing that you are not the only one in the room become confused with lawlessness, activism, and social engineering? For a group so vociferously devoted to textualism and plain meaning, conservative critics have an awfully elastic definition of the word empathy. It expands to cover any sort of judicial malfeasance they can imagine. Empathyâthe quality of caring what others may feelâsignals intellectual weakness, judicial immodesty, favoritism, bias, and grandiosity. John Yoo also seems to be of the view that the kind of emotional incontinence that begins with empathy for others quickly leads to being "emotive" on the bench. Evidently it's a short hop from empathy to having the judicial vapors. "
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"You learn a lot about people from their offices. My office is a barely controlled state of chaos, which pretty much mirrors the rest of my life. The Rocket Scientist is the only faculty member I've ever known who keeps coasters in his office (and requires their use). I'll let you figure out what a coaster fetish tells you about RS - I have my own theories, but (ignoring for the moment the fact that we work for a public university and all our furniture is laminate) there actually are really good reasons for one to use coasters.
The cool liquid in glass condenses water from the air onto the glass. The water rolls down the glass onto the wood table and produces a white ring that doesn't wipe off. Removing that ghastly mark of shame requires esoteric cleaning approaches, like a warm iron applied to a towel over the damaged area or rubbing with toothpaste."
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"He was trying to show how things don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that, while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon. My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" Looking around the room, I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked confused by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at me like "What's your problem?" "But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more slowly." I protested.
"No it wouldn't." the TA explained calmly, "because you're too far away from the Earth's gravity." Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, didn't you?"
I countered, "why didn't they float away?"
"Because they were wearing heavy boots." he responded, as if this made perfect sense"
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"Often how scientists get started..."
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âPlease do not make any wishes about poop.â
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"He was valedictorian of his senior class, and had been accepted at all 13 colleges to which he applied. But when Miguel Garcia entered Harvard University last fall, he felt he didn't belong.
As classmates moved into Harvard Yard that first day with parents - and in some cases, chauffeurs - driving fancy vehicles packed with boxes, Garcia arrived alone. His belongings fit into two suitcases and a backpack. His mother, a worker at an industrial laundry, and father, a janitor at a Detroit casino, could not afford the trip."
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Re: Heavy Boots: Back in the day at the UW my old roommate had a comm arts TA explain that the electromagnetic spectrum went from 'electricity to x-rays' ("that 60Hz, I don't think it means what you think it means...") In the same class, they watched bits of Top Gun (a movie I swear was written specifically to give comm arts types something to slobber over for decades) and the professor was adamant that the planes were shaped the way they were as phallic symbols, not quite grasping that as a practical matter it's pretty damned difficult to make a donut go Mach 2.
Every specialty has its foibles I'm sure, but the comm arts people were particularly resistant to correction where basic uncontroversial physics was concerned, at least the ones that were vocal about it. Hopefully that's changed in the past two decades but I'm not holding my breath. Heavy boots indeed.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_15_feather_drop.html
Heavy boots
Are you going to believe what they tell you or what you observe?
Re: Judicial Empathy
I don't think Lithwick's point makes much sense. If empathy simply means putting yourself in the place of all different parties of a dispute, and has no dispositive implications in rendering a verdict, then why would the president name it as a significant quality to seek out in a nominee? After all, the president loves basketball, and would no doubt enjoy sharing that interest with one of his justices, but since it has no bearing on their decision-making as a jurist, he is hardly likely to cite it as a criterion for selection.
If it does have an impact on the verdict, then a judge is no longer rendering his judgments based on the law. And, if empathy leads one to side with one party over another based on their perceived status, then empathy to one party is necessarily legal injustice to another. People can often be sympathetic without being right, and despicable without being wrong. The famous case of the KKK suing for the right to march through a town that was trying to deny them a permit comes to mind. We already have a branch of government designated with the task of making law. Empathy is the role of these law-makers, not the law-appliers of the judiciary.
Once, after having lunch with Judge Learned Hand, as Holmes was departing to return to work, Judge Hand said to him: "Do justice, sir. Do justice." Holmes had the carriage stopped. "That is not my job," he said. "My job is to apply the law."
Heh. We heard the Heavy Boots story some years back and it's now marital shorthand for really unthinking stupidity.
MKK