I just finished Serving Justice, by now-Judge Harvie Wilkinson. The book is a short autobiography of his time clerking for Justice Powell, and it is compelling in its own modest way. It doesn't make any grand claims or arguments, but is full of lots of little vignettes and curiously time-bound claims about the hot cases of the time (San Antonio v. Rodriguez, Roe v. Wade, &c.), most remarkable for Wilkinson's humility and reverence for the Supreme Court as an institution.

Unfortunately, the book did not shed any light on my burning query-- why did Judge Wilkinson leave teaching at the University of Virginia to be the editorial page editor for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot?

[50 Book Challenge]

Via Michael Phillips, via Reuters UK, news of gay bombs.

Via Stoppard, via AE Housman, via Plutarch, via Plato, my thoughts:

Oh, one can sneer, the sophistry of dirty old men ogling beautiful young ones; then, as now, ideals become debased. But there was such an army, a hundred and fifty pairs of lovers, the Sacred Band of Theban youths, and they were never beaten till Greek liberty died for good at the battle of Chareonea. At the end of that day, says Plutarch, the victorious Philip of Macedon went forth to view the slain, and when he came near to that place where the three hundred fought and lay dead together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he shed tears and said, 'Whoever suspects baseness in anything these men did, let him perish'.

Victor Muniz-Fraticelli and Phoebe Maltz have penned their latest entries into the undergrad-grad-library debate.

[If posts like this (and these two posts) keep up, I may have to create a new Crescat category for libraries (which would also include ones like this, from the Arbitrary Aardvark).]

In the spirit of blogging, my reactions--

1: I don't know who Phoebe hangs out with, but I'm skeptical of her claim that grad students "party" more than undergrads. I heard stories about a weird North-side circus party among the math grad students, but those seemed outstripped by the frat parties that are rumored to exist (but which I cannot confirm from personal experience) at Chicago.

2: I agree with the vast majority of Victor's post (i.e., I am cool, Phoebe is cool, quiet spaces good, loud spaces are tolerable, books are good) but he loses my sympathies by the end. So long as the merchants sell quietly or in designated free trade zones, who could care less that they are selling in the temple? The Regenstein library is a gathering place for everything from ancient books and seminar classes to late night chatter and illict sex. Thus may it stay.

UPDATE: Emails roll in from multiple Chicago undergrads to the effect that there are many hard-partying grad students. Fair enough. But I submit that those undergrads geeky enough to read this blog (especially to read it regularly enough that they had responded before I got up this morning) may not know a totally representative cross-section of the other undergrads, and thus may underestimate the amount of partying that goes on in their own camp.

This is an empirical question, and calls for further research! Surely somebody can turn this into a B.A. paper.