the daily snivel

I still could. And in just 2 minutes. One wonders if Richard Cohen, the columnist for the Washington Post who advised a young girl failing math that algebra was something she'd never need to know and shouldn't bother with.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Via the inimitable PZ Myers at Pharyngula, a biologist who rightly tore Cohen a new one over this ridiculous assertion. 

A friend of mine in first year was regaled with this dirty Latin law school limerick by one of her professors. Anyway, it made me laugh:


There once was a young man named Rex
With miniscule organs of sex
When charged with exposure
He said, with composure,
"de minimis non curat lex"



The expression, by the way, meaning: "The law does not concern itself with trifles," namely the principle that the law is not concerned with very small things.

[Updated February 28th, 2006 to correct a verse: Thanks, Natalie!] 

First, the Law Society of Upper Canada had one more trick up their sleeves when I finished the Bar Admissions Course this summer: we're all required to take another exam during our articling terms. This is the Accounting Course, a self-taught ten-unit lesson in underscoring the fact that "Guys, we're serious about the trust accounts. Keep your hands out of the cookie jar and don't fuck with your clients' money." That said, as much as it's hard to find the time to study and self-test while you're putting in long hours at the office, someday we'll all be in practice and when the Law Society's Spot Auditor comes a'knocking on your door, you'll be glad you keep such careful records in accordance with all By-Laws, and that you learned well the importance of never mishandling client funds.

I wrote the exam this past Saturday, the very last possible day I could have booked it (old procrastinatory habits die hard), and was finished half an hour early. I passed. I passed very well. I have written the last exam I'll have to write before I become a lawyer. Not too frickin' shabby.

Secondly, now that I've upgraded domain registrars and hosts, I have greater access to stats about my site. And while I have a lot more bandwidth than ever before, I don't appreciate discovering that a fair bit of it is being siphoned off by people direct linking (read: stealing) my graphics.

Hey, people linking to my graphics: bandwidth costs money. So far I'm not in danger of running out of transfer bandwidth on my site, but let's face it: every time you use one of the images on my site as your avatar on a bulletin board, you're taking something that doesn't belong to you and making me pay for it. And every time that page gets loaded, my images get loaded again and again. So knock it off. Or at least link back to my site so I can get some traffic in exchange. Heck, just give me money. But if you don't quit it I'm going to tell your roommates to drink one of your beers every time you're not looking until you're left feeling pretty mooched out and thirsty.

Sweet and sour, that's me.