Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall

More crucial, the tiny dresses and spiky heels draw your focus to how petite Ms. Wang is, how stark the contrast between her body and the forcefulness she achieves at her instrument. That contrast creates drama. It turns a recital into a performance.

Restrained, Then Madly Lyrical: The Pianist as Spring Mechanism

Bob Dylan

You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Proverbs 13:12

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Hertz & Liebman

It is precisely "where the record is unclear or the errors are hidden"* that the most pressing need for zealous advocacy arises.  The number of instances in which habeas corpus petitioners and attorneys uncover abuses belies any pre-investigative assumption that the actors and events in the criminal process leading to a client's conviction and sentence are beyond constitutional reproach simply because the paper record looks clean.

Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 358 (1963).

Antonin Scalia

All facts essential to the imposition of the level of punishment that the defendant receives –whether the statute calls them elements of the offense, sentencing factors, or Mary Jane – must be made by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 610 (2002) (Scalia, J., concurring).

Alice Cooper

Lines form on my face and hands

Lines form from the ups and downs

I´m in the middle, without any plans

I´m a boy and I´m a man.

I´m eighteen

And I don´t know what I want

Eighteen

I just don´t know what I want

Eighteen

I gotta get away

Eighteen

I gotta get out of this place

I´ll go runnin´ in outer space

Oh yeah.

I got a

Baby´s brain and an old man´s heart

Took eighteen years to get this far

Don´t always know what I´m talkin´ about

Feels like I´m livin´ in the middle of doubt

Cause I´m eighteen

I get confused every day

Eighteen

I just don´t know what to say

Eighteen

I gotta get away.

Lines form on my face and my hands

Lines form on the left and right

I´m the middle

The middle of life

I´m a boy and I´m a man

I´m eighteen and I like it

Yes I like it

Oh, I like it

Love it, like it, love it

Eighteen, Eighteen, Eighteen

I´m eighteen and I like it.

Rick Horowitz

As I watched the unfolding of events in Boston this past week, I have several thoughts on my mind. Two have been pre-eminent:

1. I feel deeply for those who have suffered losses of life, and limb, which means those directly touched by the bombs’ effects.
   
2. I fear deeply for those who have suffered a loss of liberty, which is all the rest of us.

Life in a Post-Constitutional World

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

United States v. Quintero-Barraza

During voir dire, prospective juror David Miller, a criminal justice student, stated his belief that one is guilty before proven innocent. Tr. at 20. He also stated that it would be “difficult” for him to be impartial. Id. Counsel did not strike Miller; instead, he expressed his admiration of Miller's truthfulness.

United States v. Quintero-Barraza, 78 F.3d 1344, 1349 (9th Cir. 1995)

Roger Ebert

I was told that I was an atheist. Or an agnostic. Or a deist. I refused all labels. It is too easy for others to pin one on me, and believe they understand me. I am still working on understanding myself.

Roger Ebert

What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.

Roger Ebert

Romance in the winter in Venice is intimate and private, almost hushed. One night we went to the Municipal Casino, carefully taking only as much money as we were ready to lose, and lost it. In a little restaurant we had enough left for spaghetti with two plates and afterward lacked even the fare for the canal bus. We walked the long way back through the night and cold, our arms around each other, figures appearing out of the fog, lights traced on the wet stones, pausing now and again to kiss and be solemn.

Roger Ebert

If I were on death row, my last meal would be from Steak & Shake.

Rogert Ebert

I didn't intend for (my blog) to drift into autobiography, but in blogging there is a tidal drift that pushes you that way . . . Some of these words, since rewritten and expanded, first appeared in blog form. Most are here for the first time. They come pouring forth in a flood of relief.

David Allen

Most often, the reason something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcomes is; you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust. That's why it's on your mind.

Jerry West

You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber Defends Death Row Stance

Kitzhaber ... repeated his call for a statewide debate on the death penalty, a day after the Oregon Supreme Court heard arguments over the governor’s reprieve of death row inmate Gary Haugen.

"If the Supreme Court decides that your reprieve is, in fact, valid – will you commute his sentence?"

John Kitzhaber: "No, but I will not execute him either. I don’t know if you understand the process here. Your phone rings with a code – to make sure it’s you, and they say 'is there any reason this execution should not take place?' And you can say 'yes' or 'no.' And I've said 'no' twice. And you sit there, by yourself, for three or four minutes, knowing what's going on, and you're the only person who can stop it. And it’s pretty easy to be 'for' capital punishment, when you’re not the one who has to carry that out, and has to do that moral questioning. If they call me, I will say'yes' -- there is a reason this execution should not be carried out. I don’t, however, believe that will be the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court."

Kitzhaber Defends Death Row Stance, Presses Case For Govt. Reforms

New York's Not My Home

Well, things were spinning round me

And all my thoughts were cloudy

And I had begun to doubt all the things that were me

Been in so many places

You know I've run so many races

And looked into the empty faces of the people of the night

And something is just not right

Cause I know that I gotta get out of here

I'm so alone

Don't you know that I gotta get out of here

Cause, New York's not my home

Though all the streets are crowded

There's something strange about it

I lived there about a year and I never once felt at home

I thought I'd make the big time

I learned a lot of lessons awful quick

And now I'm telling you

That they were not the nice kind

And it's been so long since I have felt fine

That's the reason that I gotta get out of here

I'm so alone

Don't you know that I gotta get out of here

Cause New York's not my home

That's the reason that I gotta get out of here

I'm so alone

Don't you know that I gotta get out of here

Cause New York's not my home

Operator [That's not the way it feels]

Operator, well, could you help me place this call?

See, the number on the matchbook is old and faded

She's living in L.A. with my best old ex-friend Ray

Guy, she said she knew well and sometimes hated

Isn't that the way they say it goes?

But let’s forget all that

And give me the number if you can find it

So I can call just to tell them I’m fine and to show

I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well

I only wish my words could just convince myself

That it just wasn't real but that's not the way it feels

Operator, oh, could you help me place this call?

’Cause I can’t read the number that you just gave me

There’s something in my eyes, you know it happens every time

I think about the love that I thought would save me

But isn't that the way they say it goes?

Well, let's forget all that

And give me the number if you can find it

So I can call just to tell them I'm fine and to show

I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well

I only wish my words could just convince myself

That it just wasn't real but that's not the way it feels

No, no, no, no, that's not the way it feels

Operator, well, let's forget about this call

There's no one there I really wanted to talk to

Thank you for your time

Oh, you've been so much more than kind

You can keep the dime

But isn't that the way they say it goes?

Well, let's forget all that

And give me the number if you can find it

So I can call just to tell them I'm fine and to show

I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well

I only wish my words could just convince myself

That it just wasn't real but that's not the way it feels

Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

David Foster Wallace

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

David Foster Wallace on Life and Work, Adapted from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College.

Sexion d'Assaut

Sexion d'Assaut is a French rap group formed in 2002, and composed of 8 rappers from the Paris regions. The group distinguishes itself of staying away from "bling bling" that other French rappers have adopted.

Wikipedia: Sexion d'Assaut

Fauja Singh

I am not a learned person in any shape or form. To me, the secret is being happy, doing charity work, staying healthy and being positive. If someone says I must stop running I ignore them - invariably they're younger than me. The secret to a long and healthy life is to be stress-free. If there's something you can't change then why worry about it? Be grateful for everything you have, stay away from people who are negative, stay smiling and keep running.

World's oldest marathon runner, 100, reveals secrets of his success

Oscar Pistorius

In this painting – I mean photograph – Olympic and Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius is given tremendous dignity. The solitude of his situation is dramatically illuminated as he faces the most serious murder charge that can be brought in South Africa. It is hard to believe the picture was not set up for hours to get the composition right and the lighting suitably Rembrandtesque. It really does have the gravitas of an oil painting. And yet this is a real-life image seized by Siphiwe Sibeko during an emotional, contentious, crowded pretrial hearing.

The pain of Oscar Pistorius: an extraordinary courtroom photograph

Seneca

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is busied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest—this man desires an advocate, this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another.

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

On the Shortness of Life

Randy Barnett on Dworkin

When he asked me whether I was willing to trade off property rights for an increase in liberty, and I declined, he replied: “Well then you’re not a libertarian, you’re a propertarian.”

Ronald Dworkin RIP

Epictetus

Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don't stop it. Is it not yet come? Don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Do this with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy partner of the feasts of the gods. And if you don't even take the things which are set before you, but are able even to reject them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of the gods, but also of their empire. For, by doing this, Diogenes, Heraclitus and others like them, deservedly became, and were called, divine.

Epictetus

If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to live for ever, you are stupid . . . . Whoever, then, would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave.

Epictetus

Never say of anything, "I have lost it"; but, "I have returned it." Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is returned.

Epictetus

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.

Epictetus

With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.

Epictetus

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

* * *

Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, "You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be." And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

The Enchiridion

Epictetus

Epictetus (Ancient Greek: Ἐπίκτητος; AD 55 – AD 135) was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present day Pamukkale, Turkey), and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses. The name his parents gave him is unknown; the word epíktetos (επίκτητος) in Greek simply means "acquired." He spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to Nero

In some manner Epictetus obtained his freedom, sometime after Nero's death in the year 68 C.E., and began to teach philosophy in Rome. About 93 AD Emperor Domitian banished all philosophers from the city, and Epictetus fled to Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece, where he founded a philosophical school.

He lived a life of great simplicity, with few possessions and lived alone for a long time, but in his old age he adopted a friend's child who would otherwise have been left to die, and raised him with the aid of a woman. Epictetus was never married. He died sometime around 135 AD. After his death, his lamp was purchased by an admirer for 3,000 drachmae.

Wikipedia: Epictetus

Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher. He proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely ("authentically").

Existence precedes essence

A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an individual—an independently acting and responsible conscious being ("existence")—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individual fits ("essence").

The Absurd
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world. The concern with helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. The possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy. It has been said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists.

Facticity
Consider two men, one of whom has no memory of his past and the other remembers everything. They have both committed many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing about this, leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his own past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past for "trapping" him in this life. There is nothing essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past.

Despair
Despair, in existentialism, is generally defined as a loss of hope. More specifically, it is a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity. If a person is invested in being a particular thing, such as a bus driver or an upstanding citizen, and then finds his being-thing compromised, he would normally be found in state of despair—a hopeless state.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is in even when he isn't overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, he is considered to be in perpetual despair. And as there is, in Sartrean terms, no human essence found in conventional reality on which to constitute the individual's sense of identity, despair is a universal human condition.

Opposition to positivism and rationalism
The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death.

Existentialism and nihilism
Although nihilism and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused with one another. A primary cause of confusion is that Friedrich Nietzsche is an important philosopher in both fields, but also the existentialist insistence on the inherent meaninglessness of the world. A pervasive theme in the works of existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist through encounters with the absurd . . . and it is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or one's self-created meaning.

Wikipedia: Existentialism

William Brennan

At some point in this case, Warren McCleskey doubtless asked his lawyer whether a jury was likely to sentence him to die. A candid reply to this question would have been disturbing. First, counsel would have to tell McCleskey that few of the details of the crime or of McCleskey's past criminal conduct were more important than the fact that his victim was white. Furthermore, counsel would feel bound to tell McCleskey that defendants charged with killing white victims in Georgia are 4.3 times as likely to be sentenced to death as defendants charged with killing blacks. In addition, frankness would compel the disclosure that it was more likely than not that the race of McCleskey's victim would determine whether he received a death sentence: 6 of every 11 defendants convicted of killing a white person would not have received the death penalty if their victims had been black, while, among defendants with aggravating and mitigating factors comparable to McCleskey's, 20 of every 34 would not have been sentenced to die if their victims had been black. Finally, the assessment would not be complete without the information that cases involving black defendants and white victims are more likely to result in a death sentence than cases featuring any other racial combination of defendant and victim. The story could be told in a variety of ways, but McCleskey could not fail to grasp its essential narrative line: there was a significant chance that race would play a prominent role in determining if he lived or died.

McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 321 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).

Gideon

People shame defense lawyers and shun them for their choice of profession because of the company we have to keep, or so they say. Our clients are bad people, scum of the Earth, scourge of society, dogs and animals and so on. I’ve long argued that they aren’t that different from us and that tomorrow, you could be the one in shackles, standing next to me. Which is why I’d rather hitch my wagon to the fallible human beings who are subject to the wrath of society, than the fallible human beings who purport to bring that wrath and righteous indignation upon others.

A matter of perspective

Middle Aged Crazy

Today he traded his big '98 Oldsmobile

He got a heck of a deal on a new Porsche car

He ain't wearing his usual gray business suit

He's got jeans and high boots with an embroidered star

And today he's forty years old, going on twenty

Don't look for the gray in his hair 'cause he ain't got any

He's got a young thing beside him that just melts in his hand

He's middle aged crazy, trying to prove he still can

He's gotta a woman he's loved for a long, long time at home

Ah, but the thrill is all gone when they cut down the lights

They've got a business that they spent a while coming by

Been a long uphill climb but now the profits are high

But today he's forty years old, going on twenty

And he hears of sordid affairs and he ain't had any

And the young thing beside him, you know she understands

That he's middle aged crazy, trying to prove he still can

Russ Roberts

I'll agree with you and I'll disagree with you. The disagreement is that: those of us who like the Constitution, I don't think we're saying, Oh, well Madison said so, therefore it's true. It's not an argument of authority. It's an argument about limits to human reason, the limits to political discourse, the limits to political governance, that I hope we can get to at the end. But where I agree with you, and I think you make a very telling point, is that the document is ambiguous, and those of us who don't like what's happened under its name, we are fooling ourselves a little bit in that we are saying, not just that we want the Constitution. We want the Constitution that's the one we like. The one we interpret.

Seidman on the Constitution

Orin Kerr

For judges, the statement that they will follow the law doesn't say anything interesting; the heart of the issue is what influences they consider relevant to determining what “the law” is. And for scholars, I would hope that a scholar’s interpretation of how to interpret the Constitution is more than just a throw-away thought experiment that even the scholar would ignore entirely if nominated to the bench.

When a Scholar Becomes a Judge: How Much Does Legal Scholarship Indicate Likely Decisions on the Bench?

David Brooks

Liars use more upbeat words like “pal” and “friend” but fewer excluding words like “but,” “except” and “without.” (When you are telling a false story, it’s hard to include the things you did not see or think about.)

The Philosophy of Data

What Mike Tomlin wants in a special teams coach

A guy who can inspire a large group of men. It’s one of the few positions within a staff, other than the head coach, where a guy has the potential to address the larger group on a regularly scheduled basis. So you’re looking for somebody who is a great communicator not only in terms of small groups but also in extremely large groups. He has to be a guy who sees the game from a 22-man perspective. The schematic end of it, of course, is a very challenging end of the job, because you have the whole field to work with both horizontally and vertically. You have to make the 22 men dance within that space.

Tomlin talks special teams

Ben (song)

Ben, the two of us need look no more

We both found what we were looking for

With a friend to call my own

I'll never be alone

And you my friend will see

You've got a friend in me

Ben, you're always running here and there

You feel you're not wanted anywhere

If you ever look behind

And don't like what you find

There's something you should know

You've got a place to go

I used to say, "I" and "me"

Now it's "us", now it's "we"

Ben, most people would turn you away

I don't listen to a word they say

They don't see you as I do

I wish they would try to

I'm sure they'd think again

If they had a friend like Ben

Carl Sagan

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Justice Blackmun

Because I believe that the Court is creating a Byzantine morass of arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable impediments to the vindication of federal rights, I dissent.

Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722 (1991)

Alain de Botton

I’m devoted to the essay. This is a much less defined genre than, say, the history book or the novel. The kind of essays I have in mind come down in a line from Montaigne, and tackle large quasi — philosophical themes in a tone that is warm, human, digressive and touching. You feel like you have come to know a friend, not just a theme. I have loved essays by, among others, Emerson, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Donald Winnicott, Cyril Connolly, Joseph Brodsky, Lawrence Weschler, Milan Kundera, Julian Barnes, Adam Gopnik and Nicholson Baker.

A Boy Named Sue

My daddy left home when I was three 

And he didn't leave much to ma and me 

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. 

Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid 

But the meanest thing that he ever did 

Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue." 

Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke 

And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk, 

It seems I had to fight my whole life through. 

Some gal would giggle and I'd get red 

And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head, 

I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named "Sue." 

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean, 

My fist got hard and my wits got keen, 

I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame. 

But I made a vow to the moon and stars 

That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars 

And kill that man who gave me that awful name. 

Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July 

And I just hit town and my throat was dry, 

I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew. 

At an old saloon on a street of mud, 

There at a table, dealing stud, 

Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue." 

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad 

From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had, 

And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye. 

He was big and bent and gray and old, 

And I looked at him and my blood ran cold 

And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do! 

Now your gonna die!!" 

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes 

And he went down, but to my surprise, 

He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear. 

But I busted a chair right across his teeth 

And we crashed through the wall and into the street 

Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer. 

I tell ya, I've fought tougher men 

But I really can't remember when, 

He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile. 

I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss, 

He went for his gun and I pulled mine first, 

He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile. 

And he said: "Son, this world is rough 

And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough 

And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along. 

So I give ya that name and I said goodbye 

I knew you'd have to get tough or die 

And it's the name that helped to make you strong." 

He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight 

And I know you hate me, and you got the right 

To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do. 

But ya ought to thank me, before I die, 

For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye 

Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue.'" 

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun 

And I called him my pa, and he called me his son, 

And I came away with a different point of view. 

And I think about him, now and then, 

Every time I try and every time I win, 

And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him 

Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!

Lessig on Swartz

He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

Prosecutor as bully