Thursday, February 20, 2025
For a few years a couple of other Buffalo Spree writers and I did an annual Academy Awards predictions column. It was fun to write, but looking back on it I am somewhat surprised that the Oscars don't really provide the sort of insight into the zeitgeist that I'd have thought. That said, it's interesting to consider this year's nominees as cultural signifiers.
- Emilia Perez
- A Complete Unknown
- Conclave
- Nickle Boys
- I'm Still Here
- The Substance
- Dune, Part Two
- Wicked
- Anora
- The Brutalist
What are we to make of this list?
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Christgau on Louis Armstrong. Teachout's bio is essential, and Laurence Bergreen's 1997 Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, does an amazing job of describing the New Orleans that Armstrong came from. Gidden's book is likewise essential.
I use my FB page for things that should be Outside Counsel posts too often. Here's what I was posting there when I was doing my Armstrong dive
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Some of my students are getting their LSAT results back this week. I hate the LSAT, which seems to mostly measure how white and advantaged a 20 year old person is. My Buffalo State students seem to fall at one extreme or the other on the LSAT bell curve, and this seem to be pretty much all based on race, although there is a little bit of pure socio-economic statis mixed in as well.
The thing is that although it is possible to prep for the exam- in fact, for most students a prep class seems essential- the prep classes seem to be exclusively test prep. I see this all the time with my students' vocabulary. They use the vocab they've learned in test prep classes, but their usage is ever so slightly off. They've learned the words, but they haven't learned the words in any context. The difference, as Mark Twain tells us, is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug, and I just don't know what can be done about it.
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
