Sago Boulevard

I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a movie I hadn’t seen in years, on HBO last night. I had forgotten just how great it is. First of all, the premise of blending animated, ink-and-paint cartoon characters with flesh-and-blood live actors is amusing. Having grown up with Looney Tunes, I appreciate the tribute it pays to the cartoon industry and its most famous characters. The plot is a clever spoof of hard-boiled American crime fiction. The dialogue, especially between the live actors and cartoon-characters, is witty and hilarious.

The best movies are the ones that are both fun to watch and interesting to think about afterwards. Who Framed Roger Rabbit definitely qualifies in my book.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog (via Jill):

“The emotional distress of law students appears to significantly exceed that of medical students and at times approach that of psychiatric populations.” That’s the conclusion of a new study, suggesting that law school has a corrosive effect on the well-being, values and motivation of students.

That sounds about right.

You may have noticed my recent lack of blogging. It’s difficult for me to keep any kind of regular schedule because of school. The extra time constraints of the holidays didn’t help. I toyed with the idea of calling it quits but I’m not ready to do that just yet. One problem I’ve had with blogging since I started law school is that when I have an idea but I don’t have the time to think about it seriously, I put it off because I like my writing to be thoughtful and polished. When I have more time, though, either I’ve lost interest in the topic or it’s no longer relevant.

I decided to accept the fact that, for the time being, I don’t have time to write detailed, carefully-organized posts. Instead, I’ll write shorter, pithier comments without worrying as much about writing style and thoroughness.

That said, here are a few forthcoming posts: The case for a retributive theory of punishment; Preview of the NHL season; Why William Safire is right about Islamofacism.

Stay tuned.

I’m beginning law school at Fordham. Orientation was this week and classes start on Monday. While I’m excited to get started (anxious too, but more excited), I realize I won’t have nearly as much time to blog as I did last year and over the summer. On one hand, I don’t want to give up on Sago Boulevard. The main reason I started is because I have a lot to say. That hasn’t changed. If anything, law school will give me more things to think about. On the other hand, I only want to blog if I can do it well and blogging well takes time.

So what to do? The short answer is “we’ll see”. Blogging will be sparse for at least a few weeks while I get a handle on the workload. Hopefully, I’ll work out something that resembles a normal schedule and return to regular blogging before long. Stay tuned.

My “about me” page has been updated. Expect a more-thorough expansion in the near future. I find that it’s easier to relate to somebody’s writing, especially bloggers’, if you have at least a general idea of the person’s background and interests.

My wonderfully-reliable computer crashed yesterday. Dell will supposedly send me a new hard drive by Friday, so until then expect erratic blogging.

Over the last month or so, I reread many of R. Soloveitchik’s essays. It’s particularly rewarding for me to return to these works now, having spent the last year studying Torah full-time. I still have to finish reading the Rav’s latest collection of essays, Festival of Freedom, which I started during Pesach but didn’t really get into.

Here’s my tentative reading list for the next couple of months:

Godel Meets Einstein by Palle Yourgrau (a philosophy professor I was close with at Brandeis); Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton; After Virtue by Alasdair C. MacIntyre; Expanding the Palace of Torah by Tamar Ross. This last one’s a reread. I read it last year and didn’t like it at all but I’ve been talked into giving it another chance.

Recommendations are welcome.