My life's Adventure

Reading about the rule of law and other legal studies topics and listening to a law student's podcast

I am reading about rule of law and completed reading about the special case of England and also started to read about social welfare states and A. I. Dicey and his critique of administrative law involved in supporting the social welfare state and how all these government agencies escape the judges and courts and thus erode the rule of law. I also briefly read about the legal profession and the rule of law and this leads to another book I am reading.

This other book could be part of legal informatics or law and the semantic web project. In fact it is about the semantic web and the law. I read the beginning chapter of this conference/workshop proceedings book. It is interesting this first chapter as the connections are made between computer science and legal studies and I found it a good overview of law and also a good summary of the types of things going on in legal studies. I am interested now to search out languages/schemas like LeXML and LegalXML etc.

The other book I am reading is one of these cute history books in this case called Power and Greed and is about the rules governing acquisition in history and then covers people who have broken these rules to gain more wealth than the rules allow. I have just tonight completed reading about the historical rules which covered rules made by everyone from Mohamed to Jesus to Plato and and others who lived long ago and were all men. Thus is this book really valid history considering that womyn might have made rules too? I am not sure but my professor recommended it in my present criminal law course early on in one of the first lectures. So am I being spoon fed a patriarchal view of the history of the world? I probably am being spoon fed this point of view. Will I question this publicly? I just did. Oh the mysteries of the educated masses.

I also downloaded and listened to a podcast by a first year law school student. I found it in the education subcategory in Apple Computer's music store inside the iTunes software. This is my second day exploring the education subcategory in the podcast directory in iTunes. I listened to this student's introductory podcast. I started to listen to his first podcast on contracts which was from his notes from his first lecture in his contracts course. It was good to review the basic components of a contract and follow his American examples of enforceable contracts. I got about half way through this first podcast on contracts.

I also listened to some Wall Street Journal podcasts and a Sun Microsystems podcast. One of the Wall Street Journal podcasts was about living wills and I emailed about ten family members with some thoughts and rules I would want for my living will. I included no electroshock as a wish but all other medically acceptable procedures. There was a Wall Street Journal podcast on cell phone company mergers but I didn't listen carefully to this podcast. But I did hear the journalist discuss the trend to having only a cell phone and no land line, as they call traditional phones in this context. The third Wall Street Journal podcast I managed to listen to was about how to get Wall Mart to sell your product if you are a small business trying to do this. I deleted the first two Wall Street Journal podcasts but kept this one about getting Wall Mart to carry a product, because it is a useful listen for marketing statistics material. The Sun Microsystems podcast was about a portable internet classroom being used in the Brazilian rural school system and was obviously an uncritical look at providing children with Internet access and was meant to make Sun Microsystems look good without too much depth of content.

Well I will proof read this entry now and then go back to reading these three books for tonight/this morning as they all relate to my lecture later tonight. I may end up staying up for 34 hours today maybe 36. I have one union meeting today and one multi union meeting and then time off and then my lecture later tonight. The bad planning today is the last meeting may be over by 14:30 and then my lecture won't be until 18:00. I will be in a tired state at 14:30 and staying on campus for long periods with no classes is not something I do well. But what I may do is watch the lecture on TV tomorrow and tape it of course instead of attending later this evening. I am obviously working too hard at my studies as some readers commented here. But it is what I want to do and it does not really hurt anyone to do this.