Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Document Review in Richmond, VA: A Novice's Take
After a couple months doing document review in Richmond (VA), I've come away with a few tidbits that I thought I'd share:
(1) Blend in. This is perhaps the most important maxim to live by when doing document review. By blend in I mean don't do anything, good or ill, that would draw attention to yourself. Firms routinely keep track of how many docs you are reviewing an hour and get suspicious if you are burning through too many or too few. Find out what the firm you're at expects, and do that.
(2) Don't Take Anything Your Agency Says Seriously. Temporary work is by its very nature, a fickle beast. A pigeon fart in Nebraska can bring about substantial changes in your project. Ultimately, there are far too many variables involved to put much weight on your agency's claims about project length, hours, or quality. Cases get settled. The scope of any particular litigation changes often. Get used to not knowing if you'll be working next week.
(3) Get Your Resume Out to Many Agencies. Firms tend to spread around their work to all the agencies in town and you want to have as many options as possible. Get registered at every agency you can. It's a time sink, but it can be a big factor in getting on a new job quickly.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Nod to Andrew Sullivan
Unfortunately, we've been seeing a wide range of ridiculous takes on the recent massacre at Fort Hood, from the far right to the religion apologizers.
Despite being a religious person himself, Andrew Sullivan had a very reasonable, and worth repeating, take on this issue:
I did not leap to that conclusion in this case as the primary reason for the attack because we didn't fully know the entire picture -- and still don't. But as the pieces fall into place, it seems increasingly clear that Nidal Hasan's faith -- and the conflicts it presented in the context of the war on Islamist terror -- was absolutely relevant in this horrifying massacre of servicemembers. It may well have been combined with individual stress, exposure to others with PTSD, fear of deployment, psychological disturbance, etc. But that it was a critical factor seems to me important to note.
But every case is unique.
If the man is not part of any wider conspiracy or terror group, it is silly to treat him the way we would a Qaeda cell, for example, as Lieberman seems to want to do. And the random murder spree was not designed to wound the US militarily in any strategic way. But religion is poisonous when it fuses with politics and deploys violence to control or punish others -- and Hasan's increasingly Wahabbist version of Islam is about as crude a conflation of religion, certainty and violence as one can imagine.
This applies to the extremes of Christianity and Judaism as well, of course. I do not think you can understand the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller without grasping the religious motivation of his killer, just as I think a brutal gay-bashing by a thug with Leviticus tattooed on his arm gives you a good idea of the religious motivation for the beat-down. Ditto, I might add, when we discover that it was a fanatical Jewish settler -- transposed from America -- who gunned down people at a gay walk-in center in Jerusalem. Religious fanaticism -- in Texas or the West Bank or in Gaza -- is a dangerous, dangerous impulse in an increasingly fundamentalist age. We should not balk at saying that as plainly as we can and demanding that religious leaders condemn the violent and extremist members of their respective flocks. And we should try much harder to find such extremists in the military and do a better job at monitoring them or throwing them out.
Despite being a religious person himself, Andrew Sullivan had a very reasonable, and worth repeating, take on this issue:
I did not leap to that conclusion in this case as the primary reason for the attack because we didn't fully know the entire picture -- and still don't. But as the pieces fall into place, it seems increasingly clear that Nidal Hasan's faith -- and the conflicts it presented in the context of the war on Islamist terror -- was absolutely relevant in this horrifying massacre of servicemembers. It may well have been combined with individual stress, exposure to others with PTSD, fear of deployment, psychological disturbance, etc. But that it was a critical factor seems to me important to note.
But every case is unique.
If the man is not part of any wider conspiracy or terror group, it is silly to treat him the way we would a Qaeda cell, for example, as Lieberman seems to want to do. And the random murder spree was not designed to wound the US militarily in any strategic way. But religion is poisonous when it fuses with politics and deploys violence to control or punish others -- and Hasan's increasingly Wahabbist version of Islam is about as crude a conflation of religion, certainty and violence as one can imagine.
This applies to the extremes of Christianity and Judaism as well, of course. I do not think you can understand the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller without grasping the religious motivation of his killer, just as I think a brutal gay-bashing by a thug with Leviticus tattooed on his arm gives you a good idea of the religious motivation for the beat-down. Ditto, I might add, when we discover that it was a fanatical Jewish settler -- transposed from America -- who gunned down people at a gay walk-in center in Jerusalem. Religious fanaticism -- in Texas or the West Bank or in Gaza -- is a dangerous, dangerous impulse in an increasingly fundamentalist age. We should not balk at saying that as plainly as we can and demanding that religious leaders condemn the violent and extremist members of their respective flocks. And we should try much harder to find such extremists in the military and do a better job at monitoring them or throwing them out.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Tee Hee, I know right! Hive five sister!
In a conversation strangely reminiscent of a sorority lunch table discussion, two bimbos on Fox News talk about how terrible it is that the liberal media beats up on Christianity. The fact that it's unclear what point they are even attempting to make aside, I'm struck with the question: is this all it takes to get on TV?
P.S.
Someone get me that "book" for Xmas.
P.S.
Someone get me that "book" for Xmas.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
New Humanist: Bad Faith Awards 2009
Every year the New Humanist gives the Bad Faith Award, as determined by voters, to the person "deemed to have made the most outstanding contribution to the cause of unreason." The contestants this year are:
Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya: The Islamic world's leading creationist charlatan will be looking to go one better than last year's second place finish, when he polled a staggering 1,091 votes on the back of his attempt to have Richard Dawkins' website banned in Turkey. Oktar must fancy his chances this year though – back in 2008, we mostly knew him as the producer of slapdash creationist literature, but in 2009 the stakes have surely been raised by his exposure in our own pages as the leader of what essentially amounts to a creationist sex cult. If you're looking for a good reason to vote Oktar, look no further than the many comments left by his minions on this blog post.
Anjem Choudary: This man surely represents Islamic extremism at its most ludicrous. He's the self-styled "judge" of the "Shari’ah Court of the UK", and a former leading member of Omar Bakri Muhammad's banned extremist organisation Al-Muhajiroun. Earlier this year he tried to restart that organisation with a meeting at London's Conway Hall, which is somewhat ironically the home of British freethought, using his heavies to try and enforce a spot of Sharia-style gender separation on the building. He recently called off a planned march to demand Sharia law for the UK, having earlier revealed on his website how Trafalgar Square would look once Britain is under Islamic rule: he'd replace Nelson's statue with a clock, while down the road Buckingham Palace would "be converted into a beautiful mosque".
Anthony Bush: Proprietor of Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, the creationist zoo on the outskirts of Bristol which we investigated in the September/October issue of New Humanist. Has grand designs for "Creation + Evolution", his very own theory for how life on earth developed, telling New Humanist: "Our paradigm is radical, but may, as Galileo’s did, take many years for people to take seriously." But it's not just creationism that has put Anthony in the media spotlight – it was alleged in October that Noah's Ark breeds animals for Britain's last live-animal circus, and that the head of a tiger which died in childbirth was stored in a freezer at the zoo. Noah's Ark has just been suspended from the British zoo association, pending an investigation into the allegations.
The British Chiropractic Association: An unusual candidate, since the Bad Faith Award is generally aimed at individuals, but there was no way we could leave out the organisation which has arguably done more than any other to put the problem of Britain's illiberal libel laws in the public eye. Unintentionally, of course – the BCA are currently trying to sue science writer Simon Singh for libel, after he described as "bogus" their claims that chiropractic can treat childhood conditions like colic and asthma. Extra credit must surely go to them too for accidentally appearing to libel Singh back via a foolishly premature press release.
Cormac Murphy O'Connor: As he prepared to make way for Vincent Nichols as Archbishop of Westminster, the former head of the Catholic Church in England bid us all farewell by branding atheists as "not fully human".
Dermot Aherne: Ireland stepped back in time a few centuries earlier this year when a law was passed making blasphemy a crime punishable with a fine of €25,000. As the Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Dermot Aherne was the man responsible for introducing it. For the inside story on why the law was passed, read Newton Emerson's view in our September issue.
Damian Thompson: Telegraph blogger and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald is no fan of atheists. In fact, he doesn't seem to be a fan of anything, unless it's Catholic (and even then, only if it's conservative and backed by Pope Benedict XVI). We've had our own run in with him before over God Trumps ("politically correct atheist cowards", I believe he called us), and he recently described Richard Dawkins as "vicious and crazy" for having the audacity to criticise the Catholic Church. The blogger The Heresiarch, who nominated Thompson for Bad Faith, hit back by pointing out that "Thompson's house style of triumphalist, sneering, ultra-papalist camp ... does more damage to the image of Catholicism than Richard Dawkins ever could". Thompson was also nominated by sceptic Richard Wilson on account of the opinions he expressed in blog posts such as this. And, just as I was compiling this list, Damian shored up his claim to the Bad Faith Award by declaring a wish to burn an effigy of national treasure Stephen Fry on a bonfire.
Pope Benedict XVI: The Pope was up for the award in 2007, but failed to make the shortlist in 2008. Having stated in March that AIDS "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems", could 2009 finally be his year?
Terry Eagleton and Karen Armstrong: An unusual double nomination, this – one's an ex-trainee nun and a scholar of religion, the other's a combative Marxist literary critic. The link is that both have written books this year criticising the New Atheists and mounting what some might call a more sophisticated defence of religion – see Richard Norman's piece on the subject in our current issue, and Laurie Taylor's interview with Eagleton from our July issue ("God didn't create the world. He loved it into being. Now what that means, God knows, but that's exactly what Aquinas was saying"). As a result, the two academics have been nominated for the Bad Faith Award by "Valdemar" for "attacking Enlightenment values from the well-padded comfort of Enlightenment institutions". Ouch!
Tony Blair: Another repeat nominee. Last year our former PM was put forward on account of his round-the-world interfaith quest, and that's something he's continued this year, in between making millions from after-dinner speeches and consulting roles with global corporations. And trying to bring about peace in the Middle East. Oh, and trying to become President of Europe. What's probably earned Tony his nomination this year is a speech he made in October, in which he suggested that the major world religions should work together in the face of "an aggressive secular attack from without".
Go vote!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Stickin it to the gays
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Nailed 'Em - Mormon Church Trespassing | ||||
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Sunday, November 1, 2009
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