In the novel The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, a young German named Hans Castorp sets out to visit his sick cousin in a mysterious mountainous sanatorium perched high among the Swiss Alps. Castorp plans to stay for 3 weeks. Just enough time to call on his cousin, breathe some fine mountain air, and return relaxed and refreshed to his everyday concerns and duties. However, seven years later Castorp still finds himself at the sanatorium, his departure date extended indefinitely, his status as "merely a visitor" changed into full-fledged "patient." The mountain, it seems, holds this strange, seductive power that enchants its guests, convincing them of the merits--indeed the necessity--of the special "treatment" offered inside.

It's the time of year you've been waiting for: finally the opportunity has come to overanalyze team rankings, watch gut-wrenchingly close competitions, and flaunt adamant loyalty for a team you've never even heard of. Except this time, you've heard of the number one seed. (Get March Madness off your minds already--I'm talking about moot court here.)

Yeah, yeah, the legal market's crap. We all know that. Thankfully, if the most recent SFF auction is any indication, neither rain nor sleet nor complete economic meltdown can deter MLaw's generosity; this year's auction raised a whopping $66,000. Despite the fact that the SFF board's work is nowhere near done, as they still have the time-consuming task of handing out all that filthy lucre, the RG managed to snag time with Jesse Taylor, SFF co-chair, to get answers to all the questions you wanted to ask, but didn't feel like sending to LawOpen.

Sometime in the spring of 2007, just before I decided to enroll at Michigan, I read about "Building a Better Legal Profession," a new group composed of Stanford Law students devoted to, well, doing that thing in their name. What a great idea, I thought; who doesn't want better things? Similar bursts of creative thinking did wonders for the mousetrap! So these folks proceeded to put together a much-ballyhooed report cataloguing the mostly self-evident evils of BigLaw and otherwise communicating their earnest desire for more work/life balance and co-workers with varied skin color. And while many of their goals are laudable, if you read the manifestos they've sprinkled around the web it becomes quite clear that these students are engaged in what has to be called, only slightly uncharitably, a T-20 circle jerk. Essentially, they want the option of doing less work for less money and they want this opportunity at the country's most prestigious firms (manifesto #1 was sent to the AmLaw 100) even though they claim that "[i]t's not about finding the most prestigious place with the highest salary." It would be a stretch of only the physical sciences to say that the sense of entitlement oozes out of these papers.

Michigan sends its students and graduates to virtually every jurisdiction in the country, and our recent Food and The Law Mini-Seminar readings have been pushing us to eat and drink more locally. To that end, The Beer Guy would like to inaugurate a new series aimed at exploring the local beers and drinking habits in a few of the most popular summer job destinations. Some of these will be published exclusively on the Res Gestae website, and indeed all of them will end up there, so please comment and add your expertise if you happen to have local knowledge of the jurisdiction.

Not to be lazy and too terribly cliché (too late, I can actually hear my editors cursing me as I type this), but as they say, music tames the savage beast, and I've been feeling the need for some musical taming lately. Law school may be almost over for me, but I struggle every day not to lose myself in it. That's part of why I write Save Yourself, to remind myself there's more to the world than any one thing, no matter how important that one thing might be.

CRIME ALERT
Time: About 2:45 PM
Location: Hutchins Hall 120, Property Class
Summary: An unknown lone gunner opened verbal fire on the class, injuring four loves of the law and killing a class discussion on entails. Eyewitnesses report that the suspect repeatedly and agitatedly raised his hand until finally the professor called upon him, whereupon he unleashed his barrage of self-aggrandizing bombast. By the time his third question was complete, Scrabble opponents were also receiving collateral damage.
Suspects: Suspect is a male in his mid-20s, 5'8'', as white as you can get.

Love's like fire. Play with it, and you get burned. It's happened to me before. Twice, actually. First time, a dame put a .22 up to my gut and pulled the trigger. Second time, I was taking a piss and...well, you can guess the rest.

[Testimony of Ms. M.]

Q. Please state your name for the court.
A. Ms. M.
Q. And what is it you do, Ms. M.?
A. Broadway actress. For the past year I've been doing "The Little Mermaid."

You've seen 'em in every bar. They hog the stools at Bar Louie, they descended upon your favorite watering hole in Cambridge or Chicago, and they love playing cornhole.

With break (1) coming up next week, I thought it would be a good idea to look into some day trips and weekend trips here in Michigan (2). Even if you already have plans for this break, sometimes what you really need to do to save yourself during the semester is get away for a day or two and remember all the things you loved to do before law school. Here are three options, varying in price, time, and distance, but all offering a lot of fun.

There's a concept called "Midwestern nice" which generally refers to an almost pathological obsession with polite behavior and surface courtesy that some Midwesterners exhibit. One of us actually grew up in the Midwest and thinks that Midwestern nice isn't an act--people here really are like that--but some people take it to extremes, creating a personality that borders on insincerity.

The fall is generally considered marathon season in the United States. Over fifty occur in October alone, including one of the biggest (Chicago), one only for women (San Francisco) (1), and even one right here in Michigan (Detroit). At least twenty more and, most notably, the one with the most participants and spectators (New York), take place in November.

1Ls - They come into the year filled with amazing experiences from all over the world and from all walks of life, and leave it careerist, GPA-grubbing pedants. Roughly 50% are lost to vampirism during the first round of exams, with an additional 20% becoming zombies due to lack of makeup and/or humanity. Insecurities abound in this newly born class, usually compensated for by obsessing about grades, pretending not to obsess about grades but actually tattooing E&E's on your arms, and founding secret societies to feel better about yourself.

OVERHEARD in a drafty dressing room below the stage at Mendelssohn Hall, January 29, 2009, some time between 8:00 and 9:00 P.M.:

"Is this too much lipstick?"
"Yes. Totally. It looks ridiculous."
"Perfect."

Yep, it's definitely January. We're knee-deep in Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the prevailing color all around us is gray - gray skies, gray buildings, gray food, gray people, and, if you're in Crim Law, lots and lots of gray areas. And let's not pretend that it's not cold out. So here's a list of beers that might keep you warm in these cold, dark times.

The Beer Guy is proud to continue Prof. Pick - an occasional series in which a member of our esteemed faculty is invited to reflect on a beer of his or her choosing. John Pottow is a fixture around Michigan Law, known both for his lightning quick wit and his willingness to tell it like it is. Both are apparent here.

This week we're taking a break from my usual dose of earnest law school-related babbling and moving on, temporarily, to some earnest national security-related babbling.

Like most students I went home for Christmas break. And on Christmas morning I was sitting on my couch, in front of my TV, unwrapping the Roomba I won't be able to use until I move out of AA and into a dwelling that more closely resembles something an actual adult would live in. You know, the kind of place that's amenable to being cleaned by a robot vacuum. I was just about to show my Mom a video of a cat riding a Roomba when the newsman started telling me that a well-educated Nigerian guy tried to hide some rather sophisticated but temperamental explosives underneath his testicles.

It's a big blue watery road. And after undergrad, rather than joining the cast of Deadliest Catch, Jess Bernfeld (2L), decided to research one of the more obscure aspects of commerce on the high seas: secondary registers.

The weather outside is, well, better than some of the storms crossing the country. Still, the temperatures are cold; bone-aching cold; fingers-and-toes-numbing cold; the kind of cold which leaves me envious of those of you who at the end of a long day can curl up in front of a fireplace with a good book.

We were going to write a column about how Restaurant Week is a scam, and give you an industry insider's perspective on how deceitful its purported "great deals" are. Then one of us went to the Wolverines' hockey game at Joe Louis Arena, witnessed a nerve-wracking win and was filled with endorphins to the point of inducing a wave of positivity. [If you want to read our views on Restaurant Week, and other tirades against the horrible Ann Arbor restaurant scene, check out it out here.] After walking home in the cold, a rant seemed unnecessary. New topic: soup.

Before I enrolled at Michigan my job was to play soccer--professionally. First in Scotland and then for about a season and half back in the States, I would wake up each morning, slip on a pair of shin-guards and head off to work. It is not a bad gig if you can get it. But it does come with its share of unexpected responsibilities, the most unexpected being, for me, the obligation to sign autographs.

So, apparently grades came out sometime in the past few weeks. I myself was unaware, having received my quintuple A-pluses via owl post over the break. On the morning when everyone decided to have their [grading] period, I strutted into Hutchins exhibiting my trademark insouciance (read: douchebaggery).

On a March night in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress. A few days before, African-Americans in Selma, Alabama had clashed bloodily with police. The marchers were asking for the right to vote.

My, how we've grown! One of the very founders of the RG wrote to let us know that, while he was surfing the Internet, he stumbled upon our beautiful website (theresgestae.com if you haven't yet checked it out). His pride for the publication is evident 60 years later, and we thank him for having the gumption and tenacity to pave the way for the one and only Res Gestae, which is clearly just as dear to our hearts today.

I might be the most unlikely person to write an article on football. Ever.

Dear RG,

Why is it so hard to take a public interest job after graduation? The average law student graduates with debt in excess of $80,000. Except for a charmed segment, most of us will leave here with a similar amount, if not more. This enormous financial obstacle to taking a low-paying public interest job is something that many of us choose to confront. That's why I'm writing. There's been much buzz around the Law School about the uncertainty of the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP). Many of us just don't know what its status is. In this vacuum pure speculation is just breeding more speculation. Themis is leading Homer.

Joe Harris Sullivan is the eye of the latest Supreme Court hurricane.

On a May morning twenty years ago, Sullivan and two friends robbed the home of Lena Bruner, a Florida resident. Bruner was absent during the burglary, but after she returned, someone again entered her house, threw a veil over her head, beat her, and raped her. At the time Bruner was 72 years old. Sullivan was just 13. He was tried for sexual assault as an adult.

When J. Robert Oppenheimer left Harvard College and went to study experimental physics at the famous Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge (England), he showed up and was, for the first time, surrounded by lots of people that were better than him at something.

A, a 17-year-old male, suffers from clinical depression and hallucinations, although he takes no medication for either condition. He lives in a large house with much of his extended family, including his mother G, step-father C, and girlfriend O.

After a somewhat delightful trip through a few local beers of Michigan last issue, we continue this time with a salute to our international students and faculty. Michigan Law School draws from over thirty countries, and each has something special to bring to the great pub table. Some are delicious, some are intriguing, and (to be perfectly honest), some are not very good. A word to our international friends: if you feel that I have unfairly maligned your country of origin or its beer, let's meet over a pint so you can set me straight. One thing missing is a beer from Africa--if anyone knows where I can get one in Ann Arbor, let me know. Now without further ado, let's get started.

Everyone in your section has swine flu. The football team will inevitably lose this weekend. You just got called on and thought the defendant was the plaintiff. The only thing to look forward to is Thanksgiving...where you'll get to stress about jobs and exams. All that's keeping you going right now is the two pounds of caffeine in your circulatory system. So why are you settling for shitty coffee?

The Beer Guy is proud to present Prof. Pick - an occasional series in which a member of our esteemed faculty is invited to reflect on a beer of his or her choosing. As part of our international beer survey, we could hardly ask for better than Judge Bruno Simma of the International Court of Justice. Prof. Simma has roots in Munich, long considered the capital of the beer universe, so we asked him to describe his favorite beer.

I. It is unclear whether having to battle cancer has made my still brutally sarcastic and, at times, hilariously uncompassionate sister a better person. It is clear, however, that it has made her a fitter one.

John Nannes is deceptively nerdy. Or, rather, he's not obviously a nerd at all -- at least not the kind that can't go more than five sentences without talking about his World of Warcraft avatar. He did, however, write two student Notes, graduate Order of the Coif from Michigan Law in 1973, and clerk for Justice Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. So there's clearly a big brain at work here. And while his prominent mustache may camouflage his avowed nerdiness, there's no masking his affection for the University of Michigan and the Law School.

Dear Editor,

In your September 17, 2009 edition, Matthew Talley raised some concerns about changes to the Law School's tutoring program. I know that there are many other students who also share his concerns. I'm writing to provide our reasons for modifying the tutoring program.

Not too long ago, on the eve of classes, a sadistic 3L emailed LawOpen to recommend a viewing of The Paper Chase to 1Ls that had not yet had the pleasure. For those of you who have not yet availed yourselves, The Paper Chase chronicles a 1L's journey through Harvard Law School as he becomes absolutely obsessed with doing well in a class where a tyrannical law professor belittles students who flounder when he questions them. Later that same day the LawOpen poster, who had actually acted without ill will, recommended 1Ls hold off on watching the film when he realized what it might do to them.

The Pearson correlation coefficient is a symmetric measure of association between x and y, denoted by the variable r, and is defined for data sets {(x1, y1), ..., (xn, yn). The variable r measures linear relatedness between x and y. As the observations in a data set occur more closely to the regression line, the correlation coefficient r approaches 1.0. To calculate r, all you need to do is subtract the mean value of x from xi and divide by the standard deviation of x. Then multiply this number by the difference of the mean value of y and yi divided by the standard deviation of y. Find the sum for all values of (xn, yn), and multiply this by 1/(1 + n) to find r. In other words, it is (nearly) the average of the standardized value of x multiplied by the standardized value of y.

One of the reasons I love writing "Save Yourself" is because it gives me a reason to explore Ann Arbor and find events I might not have heard about without doing the research. Unfortunately, I've been pretty sick these past few weeks, and I haven't been able to spend time around town.

Instead, I've been holed up in my apartment (or, as I now like to call it, the den of death), sleeping a lot and watching far too much television.

George Bernard Shaw once quipped that England and the United States are two countries separated by a common language. Something similar might be said of the University of Michigan's law school and its English department.

Welcome, and Welcome Back!

After Ben's fabulous foundation of the RG's beer column, I can only hope to build on his legacy as the new beer guy. Which is to say, "Hi, I'm the new beer guy." I enjoy beer, I love that the Ancient Mesopotamians, in their wisdom, gathered everything they needed for bread before deciding to make beer instead. I love that the Egyptian paradigm of knowledge was to write information down onto a papyrus and then wash the words into a cup of beer before ingesting the beer. I tried that once - it made reselling my law textbooks difficult.

My grandmother had her brain; my mother had a batter-stained, beaten-to-death Betty Crocker cookbook; and I have . . . a browser. This week, the Culinary Club evaluates the effect of modern technology on that time-honored family heirloom--the recipe. Below you'll find a brief examination of four major ways the internet functions as a modern form of recipe exchange: honored traditions, professional compilations, individual perspectives, and collective development.

Ok, this is a little odd, but I've been having really, you know, involved sex dreams about one of my profs. I mean, I really don't particularly like this guy, or even enjoy his class, but these dreams are insane. How do I stop them? I mean, what the hell?

-Desperate Insomniac on Sub-3

Brendon Olson did some intriguing things before coming to the University of Michigan Law School this year. The only thing is, he can't tell you about most of them.

For the past two years Olson worked for the National Security Agency evaluating information gained from intercepting wire and radio signals. For five years before that he worked in Operations.

"I can't talk much about that," Olson said.

Hey y'all,

Goodness but we're old. And no, I'm not talking about the Law School itself, though the RG will be featuring news items from the Susquetennial events in our upcoming issue, 60.2. No, I'm not even talking about the age, wisdom, and questionable sagacity of the 3L class (holla!). Nope, folks, this time it's the Res Gestae itself, the august (and the rest of the year) publication I have the joy of heading during this, its Diamond Anniversary. Yep, you read that correctly - sixty years of all the news that beat the publication deadline.

Dear Editor,

Like many upperclassmen, I was surprised to return this year to find that one of the best peer-to-peer support services available to 1Ls has been so radically retooled as to make it almost useless. Like the majority of 1Ls, last fall I took advantage of the tutoring service that has, for years, provided 1Ls with a proactive way to quell their anxiety over classes, manage course loads, and keep study groups on track.

Each year our incoming 1L and LLM classes participate in a law school-sponsored Service Day as part of the orientation program. At its best, some students have fun for a couple of hours. More often than not, though, memories of previous Service Days elicit eyerolls and a few cheap shots. ("Oh yeah...Service Day...that's where the school puts you on a bus with 80 people, gets you lost in Detroit, tells you to tear down a house of asbestos, and the only equipment they give you is a box of latex gloves. Then after a couple of hours of standing around and getting stung by bees you come back and pretend like you did something meaningful and somehow bonded with all 79 other people, right?")

Chapter I

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a second year law student in possession of a good transcript must be in want of a job at a big city firm. However little known the feelings or views of such a student may be on her first entering the job market, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of American Lawyer Top 100 firms that she--and her billable hours--are considered the rightful property of some one or other of their practice areas.

Welcome and welcome back, as appropriate, to another year at Michigan Law. For those of you who aren't already familiar with "Save Yourself," it's basically a reminder that life is bigger than law school and you shouldn't ignore all the things you loved to do before you were a law student. Your time here will pass quickly, and though I know well the pressures of grades, resume building and job hunting, especially in this economy, I highly recommend that you spend some time outside Hutchins exploring the Ann Arbor area and living a well-rounded life.

As your 1L year gets under way, increasing numbers of adults in your life will describe the main difficulty of the first year of law school as "learning to think like a lawyer." Not only do they make it sound exhausting and terrible, but loads of them have packaged this observation along with a general admonition against becoming a lawyer at all. This is information that might have been helpful a year or so ago but now seems more like hostility cloaked as advice. They'll come brandishing out-of-context Shakespeare quotes and bemoaning the state of tort reform in two-sentence talking points and will aggressively accuse you of mortgaging your future only to be turned into a bigger and more useless jerk than you already are. There may be something to that last bit, actually, but now's not the time to sort all that out.

For those of you new to the column, When You Were Cooler is a window into the way the cool kids lived. Note that I said lived - here at WYWC we focus exclusively on what your classmates did prior to losing their coolness by coming here. To start the year off right, we have a double feature, paying tribute to what was hopefully a summer full of live music (or at least Pandora), eargasms, and crowd surfing. Saying that, I'm fully aware that very few of you have crowd surfed. But I digress.

LawOpen is a strange and awkward beast, like walking into a shopping mall where one of the stores sells something that's really, incredibly sexist. It is, however, our strange and awkward beast, and so we must tend to it lovingly and with care, lest it turn on us in our sleep.

Law school is trying to kill my love for HBO On Demand. I'm sure of it. I can't see Six Feet Under without contemplating trusts and estates, Cathouse without thinking about feminist jurisprudence, Deadwood without hiding from the FCC, True Blood without the 14th amendment, or Carnivale without contemplating the religious, historical, and yet strangely post-apocalyptic mysticism of we, we happy few, we band of schmoes who willing decided to put ourselves through law school in the hope for something, anything better.

And now, Real Sex.

Hey y'all -

This past Sunday, for the first time in 2009, the staff of the Res Gestae surfaced from our subterranean home in the bowels of Legal Research to a crisp spring day, bright, clear, and even relatively warm. We saw our shadows and thought, well, must be time for the last issue of the year.

It's the time of the semester when students are eager to start their finals preparation but instead find themselves up to their necks in footnotes, lengthy documents, and deadlines. No, we're not talking about journal assignments or note writing, we're talking about navigating the school's Priority Registration System. It's a journey we students take twice a year, and each time we do it we find we have more to learn.

This article is about the importance of footnotes.¹ We see them all the time−the ubiquitous, cramped text decorating the bottom of the pages of our course books²−but how often do we read them or take time to ponder the awesome importance held by footnotes? Probably not very often.³

Three of the closing paragraphs from a recent New York Times article on the craptastic legal market:

If the downturn is prolonged, law schools will need to keep tuition and other costs in check so students do not graduate with unmanageable debt. More schools may follow the lead of Northwestern, the first top-tier law school to offer a two-year program.

Someone's in my carrel all the damn time and what's worse, they keep leaving random stuff! I could handle the extra books and the scarf, but the snacks seem to be taking it a few steps too far - is there anyway to politely evict the asshole who's trying to adversely possess my study space?

Keeping it Real on Sub-2

Most of us have seen the old anti-drug commercial: "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs." Erin Opperman has actually operated on several brains on drugs, all of them belonging to furry little coke-fiends.

Picture this: It's Friday night, 8PM, and you're about to have a bunch of the coolest law students over for a little pre-game at your apartment. Suddenly you realize that you haven't visited the iTunes Music Store to make sure you have all the latest "cool kid" music, and quickly sign on to check out the scene. Uh oh, new Britney song, better have that on hand (obviously). "Buy Song" gets clicked, but then you notice...

The economy is depressing and the stress of finals growing every day. You need a break that won't break your budget. Save Yourself presents a selection of free activities to get you through the end of the semester.

Welcome everyone to the final issue of The Beer Guy this year. Thank you all for the questions, praise, and encouragement along the way. I've really enjoyed the opportunity to share with you a subject that I know and love. I know that some of you have already put my recommendations to good use, and I hope others continue to do the same.

The year 2009 will live in the memories of many as a bad, bad year. Banks, law firms, and businesses have collapsed around us like so many Soviet engineering mistakes. I will not even look at my stock portfolio statements anymore; I just don't want to know. And remember on-campus interviewing? Hopefully you don't. You're better off. Unfortunately, I am not the only entity suffering priceless losses; the University of Michigan is facing its own priceless loss with the retirement of Professor Tom Green at the end of this semester.

Here's a quick look at the Law School's early engagement with the Web, or the "WWW" as the author of this February 2, 1995, article in the RG put it. The description of hypertext is pretty sweet. If tragedy plus time equals comedy, then perhaps, fourteen years from now, editors of the RG can giggle when they come upon our articles about the consternation generated by MLaw Live.

Beginning with the 2009-2010 academic year, the Office of Student Affairs will be implementing a new class scheduling policy. According to Dean Baum, "[T]he administration is making some fundamental changes in the way it schedules classes at the Law School.  The vast majority of four-credit and three-credit classes will be offered in 3 x 75-minute and 2 x 85-minute class sessions, respectively (instead of in 4 x 55-minute and 3 x 55-minute sessions)."  Additionally, more upper-class courses will meet on Fridays. Based on the draft schedule for Fall 2009, this includes several generally large classes, such as Federal Courts, Evidence (one of two sections), and Transnational Law (one of two sections).

I hate Microsoft Office. There, I said it. The newest version of the software (Office 2007 for PCs, 2008 for Macs) unnecessarily hides the simplest tasks behind a shiny globe and a huge, oddly organized menubar Microsoft calls "the Ribbon." Every time I have made the bad decision of sitting (on the horribly uncomfortable stools no less, but that's a rant for a different day) at one of the crappy Dell workstations that populate the Law School's computing centers, I dread having to open the world's most ubiquitous failure in software.

Some people list "cooking" as an interest on their resumes; Tomek Koszylko did it for a living in New York City.

When it comes to teenage sexuality in the United States, it seems the end times are pretty much always near.

It seemed like a straightforward enough idea: recycle paper and cans in the dorms. Why not, right? Most of us got into the habit of recycling through our undergraduate dorms' programs. The University of Michigan's undergrad dorms, for example, have recycling. For those of you who have never lived in the Lawyer's Club, our little residential hall community doesn't have recycling bins in each room or even in each entryway. The exceptionally diligent resident might ferret out the bins in the basement under the dining hall (not being one of those myself, I couldn't tell you exactly where). So where do all those hundreds of pages of Westlaw printouts and soda cans go? I've got all of my paper sitting in a bag on the floor of my room, which I half-heartedly hope I'll recycle at the end of the year. I know one girl who keeps all of her cans and beer bottles in a J.Crew bag, occasionally sneaking them into the law school and abandoning them by the bins. "I know it's silly, but I feel like I'm doing something wrong," she told me.

I am a graduate of Michigan Law.  I did well (although even now, I'm not really sure how) and I went to work at a big-name, selective firm during the boom times.  I've put in the blood, sweat and tears.  I've staggered out of the office at 3 a.m., hailed a cab, and come back the next morning to do it all over again, for months at a time.  Things have obviously changed a bit since then.  I'm still employed at the firm, and because I'd like to keep that job, I must remain anonymous.

Ever plan a party? How about one for 150 people over three days? Our Michigan Law student chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS) did just that a few days ago when we hosted the Constance Baker Motley Moot Court here March 13-15. While our ACS Chapter has been growing rapidly over the past few years, this was the first time we had the opportunity to host such an event, and we were determined to make a good impression on our guests.

On several recent evenings in the city we all love to love, Las Vegas, your intrepid reporters had the pleasure of investigating one of the nation's hot new trends: Breadline dining. In response to the dire economic times, Las Vegas' top chefs are turning toward a sparer, more streamlined dining theme. In this vein, chefs are lauded for tracking down the cheapest cuts of meats directly from the stockyards that usually throw them out and even dumpster diving to retrieve outdated canned beans and the odd case of no-name peanut butter.

Here at the RG, we're rather unaccustomed to taking requests. Or rather, more accurately, we're perfectly adept at requests, we just infrequently get any. As such, after we'd heard numerous complaints that, though generally nice and terribly collegial, the average MLaw student could stand, perhaps, to be a bit more polite, we took it upon ourselves to do something about it. Unfortunately, we're not particularly polite either; luckily, Whitney Barkley, arguably MLaw's preeminent Southern Belle, opted to take both us, and y'all, in hand, in a new column: Bless Your Heart. (That's basically Southern for "It's really unfortunate that you don't know or weren't raised any better.")

Hey y'all-

Last time I said we're back - this time, we're live!

That's right, the Res Gestae has finally (finally!) made its way back online as of this issue - you can find us at our new website, www.theresgestae.com. (We claim no responsibility for what you will see if you accidently type ".org" instead.) Hooray!

There are few things scarier to a student journalist than researching school censorship. No, really.

It is still winter in Michigan, though the sun has come back and the temperatures are warmer. (Warmer but not warm. I am looking at you, people who are wearing shorts in 40 degree weather.) The cold in the air still bites into skin, especially when the sun goes down, but cabin fever is setting in and the sunlight is tempting. The semester is well under way, and the work is piling on as we head toward finals. Illness and stress run rampant through the law quad. It's time to get away.

In my last column, I talked a bit about using the "Getting Things Done" system to keep on top of your overflowing inbox. Believe it or not, some people actually found the article useful (I am flattered and shocked) and are holding me to my promise of further GTD goodness, so that's the plan.

Gourmet, edited by Ruth Reichl.
Michaela: Besides being my favorite author of non-fiction, Ruth Reichl happens to be the editor of my favorite cookbook. I can spend a lovely afternoon rifling through this book, then rifling through my kitchen, then back to the book, trying to decide what to cook. This book is pure recipes - there are almost no discussions of ingredients, and absolutely no pictures. So it's a good value. I love this book because all the recipes I have ever made from it have come out fantastically, but I also sort of hate the book because I never seem to have all the ingredients it calls for. It almost always wants fresh herbs, some obscure spice, or more butter than I keep around the house. Or a specific cut of meat that's a pain in the neck to find. You could be flexible and substitute things, but that's not how you achieve stunning success. By the time I figure out what I have the ingredients to cook, or commit to going to the grocery, it's usually too late actually to cook what I've chosen. So, then it's back to the drawing board, which for me is usually the Joy of Cooking. Even so, a day spent imagining all the wonderful things I could cook is usually a day well spent.

One of the great contributions of the past decade to the social theory of the Internet is John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which states that the proliferation of "Shitcock!"−shouting "Total Fuckwads" on the Internet is the natural result of giving relatively normal people anonymity and an audience. I submit to you that there's a related, parallel theory that explains or at least describes the behavior of otherwise circumspect people who use their Facebook status messages in order to share things they would never dream of sharing with a group of people that often comprises best friends, sworn enemies, forgotten acquaintances, and that guy they dated and contemplated marrying but who then slept with their French teacher at their graduation party.

Q: What's a firkin and why does Ashley's keep e-mailing me about them?

Traditionally, the term "firkin" referred to a small wooden cask for storing and serving beer in the UK. Over time, the wood was replaced by aluminum, and the word came to refer to any 9-gallon beer cask. (For reference, a typical keg is 15½ gallons.) The real significance of firkins to beer fans is the not cask itself but what's inside: firkins, unlike kegs, contain "cask" ale, also known as "real" ale.

The Law School Prom takes place in just a couple of weeks, so Kicking it Old School decided to look into the RG archives to see what sorts of parties and dances Michigan law students have planned and attended over the decades. Issues of the paper from 1957-1959 provided a few gems, including this one. The Crease Ball seems to have endured for a while--KiOS has seen references to it in many an old RG. KiOS also hopes it's true that one could have a date served a subpoena by a police officer. Not shown here is an ad for Crease Ball tickets noting that the first 150 people to buy tickets would "receive a card entitling them to a free 'clean and crease' of a pair of pants at the Kwick n' Kleen." Does anyone need a plank in a platform for an LSSS run?

We've basically given up on telling everyone to calm down.

No truly, we mean it.

It's not that we don't want folks to chill out about grades and the grade curves in general; we realize that, given the current job market, that's about as likely as a mythical Admin class wherein the majority of students actually received a grade.

Hey y'all-

We're back!

Sure, this is true in the "new year, new attitude" sense, but the RG is back in a more practical way as well. For instance, you may've noticed that you haven't seen a Res Gestae in awhile - this is because, in early December of 2008, the RG computer, Edith, decided to eat itself and subsequently self destruct rather than face the prospect of another day (don't worry, the whole affair was more whimper than bang). Since it was finals and all, we couldn't exactly blame her, but Edith's untimely demise did leave the RG staff in a bit of a bind.

A common misconception is that public interest law students aren't in it for the money. Au contraire, being able to cast off vicuña wool sweaters to Goodwill is exactly why we came to law school. We've just figured out a different path into Colbert Platinum membership. And that path runs right to (through) you. So take out your customized GoldVish iPhones and send a dinner-at-Tetsuya's invite to your favorite public interest charity case. After all, charity begins at home...specifically in the bedroom.

If you're anything like the average email account holder, your inbox is packed with unread messages and their potentially daunting collection of tasks, requests, assignments, and yes, spam. No matter how hard you try, these seemingly uncomplicated tasks become a blurry mass of subject lines every time you access your account. This is not an uncommon problem and popular authors like Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) have made a career out of demonstrating how our society is suffering from an information overload that slows us down more than helps us succeed.

Winter has fully set in, and maybe you, too, have forgotten what the ground looks like without a covering of snow. This time of year, in the afterholiday slump of back to school and nasty weather and illness, it can be difficult to dredge up the desire to go outside and deal with the snow and ice and wind. Curling up in front of a fire with a good book doesn't have the same appeal when the books on hand are casebooks and hornbooks and study guides. Instead, try one of these books instead.

A new intramural powerhouse is emerging within the grad/faculty/staff ranks. The 8-ballers are poised to win the all-points title, and they made serious progress toward that goal at the end of last semester by winning the championship in flag football and reaching the title game in broomball.

Hi! I'm Ben "Papa Junk" McJunkin, and I drink a lot of beer. I also make a lot of beer. I'm not sure that qualifies me as a beer expert, but I definitely have a beer passion. The goal of this column is to extend that passion to you. I want help law students expand their understanding of beer beyond just yellow fizzy stuff, and learn to appreciate the subtleties and complexity of beer. Right now, the format of the column is whatever the hell I feel like, so if you have thoughts or suggestions, feel free to let me know.

During 1L year, as I was navigating the murky waters of law school, I signed up for a contracts tutor and was assigned to one of the smartest people I have yet to meet. Hyland Hunt had the rare ability to explain complex ideas with ease and confidence. So, when I heard that Hyland had secured a Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Stevens, although elated, I was not too surprised. Although she is humbled by the position, I'll be the first to say that the Supreme Court will be better off for having Hyland as a clerk. Recently, she took a few moments to talk to the RG about her experience.

Dear Law School,

It's really fun to be a student here. There are so many performance groups that help me de-stress. They help all of us, really. It's easy to get involved, and fun to attend all the various shows. I went to the law school comedy troupe performance last night, and I'm looking forward to the law school musical next semester. Also, it's always nice to hear the chamber music group rehearsing in the lawyer's club lounge. All this makes Michigan Law a really nice place to be.

Sincerely, Wishful Thinking

Professor A.W. Brian Simpson says that institutions - boarding school, the British army, and academia - have made him the person he is today. It is not surprising, then, that to his students, colleagues, and friends at Michigan Law, he is an institution. As the two institutions of Michigan Law and Professor Simpson prepare to say goodbye to one another, the latter took some time on November 20th to share some "Anecdotes From an Academic Odyssey" with well over 100 students, colleagues and friends at the most well-attended LSSS Blue Jeans Lecture in recent memory.

Sada Jacobson could kill you in seconds.

With the beginning of December come many things: the falling of leaves, the ravens returning to the Law Quad, that first HUGE snow storm that makes us wonder why we picked a school in Michigan, and, of course, the opening of 1L recruiting season. (Shhhh! Be wawy quiet. We're hunting 1Ls!) [Umm, actually, we are. -Eds].

Scene: Large cavernous club, bouncer at door, variously decorated Halloween partiers inside.

A recent encounter with a fellow law student went something like this (I should qualify that this took place in a bar, and said student was a bit intoxicated):

On October 29th, 2008, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Wallenberg Medal for both his tireless struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and his unyielding crusade to fight injustice worldwide.

Next semester, Michigan Law School is fortunate to have Maurice Possley, one of the most distinguished investigative reporters in the country, co-teaching a class on Innocent Defendants with Professor Sam Gross. Mr. Possley has played a central role in dozens of exonerations of innocent defendants and co-authored at least two major series on courts, prosecutors and police that were extremely influential in spurring criminal justice reform nationwide. Over the years, he has taught nearly a dozen courses as an adjunct professor of journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Montana. His experience has shown him how important it is that students learn to become critical thinkers on matters they may take for granted and learn to better process information that may at times seem counterintuitive.

Elliott Smith committed suicide 5 years ago last month.

I was sitting in my bedroom, procrastinating as usual by stubbornly going through the entirety of my bookmarks in order, desperately wanting to be distracted by something that was not on a syllabus. Elliott Smith's fansite "Sweet Adeline" was not far down the list. Instead of the usual paragraphs of crisply arranged text there was a rambling lower-case post that began with a solemn farewell, "goodbye elliott." What followed was a grief-stricken encomium to a musician who had deeply touched a lot of lives.

When I began law school with the venerable summer-starters of May 2006 (38 days, guys!), I didn't know that a young, dashing defense attorney was also beginning his first adventures in the American legal system.

It struck me as I went to write the column this week that the idea of a technology column was neither well-thought out, nor is it incredibly compelling without some sort of reader input, at least on an occasional basis. Our first installation about backups was largely written in light of the sad realization that a good number of my fellow classmates do not bother to backup their computers, and some are not even familiar with the concept. While this would seem to be to my advantage (my crappy notes at least will always be intact, while your notes will be gone, causing you incredible anxiety at exam time), for some reason I try to be a good member of the stimulating community that is the law school.

It's that time of year again when everyone starts to stay inside, in part to hit the books with finals looming and in part because the weather is getting nasty, cold and gray. Still, too much of anything isn't good for you, and too much time spent locked in the underground law library or cloistered in your own home can make the time spent studying counterproductive.

If you're anything like me, many of you wonder about what people were like before they came to Michigan Law. In addition to ordinary Facebook stalking, you may have even Askjeevesed or Yahoo!ed some of your fellow classmates ("Askjeevesed?" Yes, I'm taking every opportunity I can to verb my nouns. And I don't know about you, but I'm a little concerned about the antitrust implications of a monopoly in the search engine and everything-else-related-to-technology market, so I am doing my bit to promote competition).

So you may've heard about the Rally for Equality held this past weekend (more coverage on that will be in the next issue), and no, we didn't have permits, so you're probably thinking, "worst law students ever." Because clearly, even with the near complete lack of black letter law in the Michigan Law curriculum, permits aren't exactly the sort of apocryphal, atypical legal measure one tends to find on one page in one book buried in the deepest nether regions of the stacks and under the protection of the industry standard seven seals. But honestly, it couldn't be helped - generally permits are obtained weeks, if not months, in advance, and no one really knew the country was going to go all Ted Haggard (pre-sex 'n' meth scandal, natch) come November.

First, find your orange vest and a shotgun . . . several days later, you're ready for plucking. At this point, you'll need a very, very, very large pot of boiling water, an equally large pot of ice water, tweezers, and a lot of patience . . .

The cold, rainy weather Friday night didn't dampen the turnout for the Women Law Students Association's Jenny Runkles Scholarship Banquet at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

It may seem at first blush that we of the Res Gestae aren't huge fans of democracy. After all, our board is selected through a strange combination of fiat and conscription and I'm pretty sure we haven't had a vote on anything in over a decade. In fact, other than being rather enamored of Tuesdays as a general rule, there's not a lot your most local paper has in common with the democratic process in the United States.

9:02: And here come the candidates! In one corner, we have the [Arab/family man--circle one] Barack Obama. In the other corner, tortured by Robert E. Lee himself, John McCain.

9:03: To add to the excitement, we're watching the CNN feed. Not only do we have the political expert scorecards, we have a group of Ohio voters who can't figure out if they are more racist or sexist. CNN calls them "undecided voters." They have little dials in their hands to let us know if they like or hate what the candidate is saying. Our prediction: the undecided Ohio voters will like stuff.

If it seems like every few weeks one of your friends' laptops craps out and results in a frantic, headlong trip down into the library to look for somebody wearing goofy glasses and a pocket protector, the RG has come to put your mind at ease. Our technology columnist, Greg Lavigne, explains in this first installment of his new column, how you can avoid being that person who needs to solicit outlines and notes and replacement porn on LawOpen because you didn't adequately backup your computer's hard drive.

Song of the Gunner
by Walt Whitman

1

I raise my hand, and sing myself,
And what I assume nobody should assume,
And all I read in Hornbooks will be shared with you.

The weather is getting colder, the sky grayer, and the days shorter. The semester is more than halfway over, and classes are picking up speed in the rush to finals. It's the perfect time to think about classes outside of the law school, ways to tap into other parts of your brain. Sure, you're busy. Don't forget all the advice you've been given: a balanced life is a good life; be a well-rounded person, and try new activities to keep yourself happy. In other words, here are ways to take mini-classes and save yourself from being only a law student.

There are few fundamental truths in this world. Bears generally crap in the woods, the Pope tends toward Catholicism, pretty much everyone dies, multiple choice finals are rarely as easy as they sound, Chemerinsky probably knows more ConLaw than you do, and Americans are completely bipolar about sex. These are the things we think we know for sure.

Now that the RG has officially informed us that we are currently in a recession, your two intrepid RG foodies have risked their waistlines to bring you this Recession Special. With rumbling stomachs and eyes on the bottom line, we ventured around Ann Arbor noshing our way through the cheap eats so that you too can save a couple bucks at lunch.

It's that time of year again: fall. This is the greatest time of year - it's when the weather starts to turn cold and the squirrels start to become frighteningly fat and the bugs finally die off, but best of all it's when apples and pumpkins are in season. If you're anything like us - which you probably are not - you recently purchased a peck of apples at the farmers' market along with a couple pumpkins, a jug of cider, and any other miscellaneous produce you couldn't resist. Or you went apple picking and came home with a peck of apples and no plan for what you are going to do with them.  You may also be wandering around the market thinking all the good fresh produce is gone - tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, blueberries are all out of season now. Raspberries may be around for a few more weeks, but we are entering the season when apples are pretty much the only food that can be eaten out of hand at the market.  So most people think the good produce season is winding down and there's nothing left but weird, inedible, decorative fluff. WRONG! Squashes, pumpkins, cabbage and all other sorts of unappreciated deliciousness are here. We love these foods because they are cheap, nutritious (depending on how you prepare them), and can't be beat for comfort on a blustery fall day. Therefore, we give you Fall Foodie Fun! (A side note for those of you who may not know recipe conventions: T=tablespoon, t=teaspoon, c=cup.)

After last month's summer music review, a number of readers wrote in with some very personal stories of how pop music has changed their lives. Jennifer from Minneapolis made a touching attempt at a poem that described how Neil Diamond helped her get through puberty without having a breakdown.  "Kelly" from Brooklyn credits her ringtone version of Mims' "This Is Why I'm Hot," which contains the lyrics "I'm hot 'cuz I'm fly/You ain't 'cuz you not," with subconsciously teaching her enough about logical reasoning to help boost her LSAT score 5 points and catapult her into our very own Law School. 

The first ever Environmental Law & Policy Program Conference had lofty aspirations: it sought to populate the environmental agenda of the next presidential administration. Michigan Law Professor David Uhlmann, the program's director, said the conference aimed to discuss ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, develop renewable energy, reduce oil reliance and create a sustainable future for the planet.

Dear Editor,

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. That's what Oscar Wilde would say about MLawLive. There was (and continues to be) no central clearinghouse for information on news, events and deadlines at Michigan Law School, and MLawLive has done more to hurt than help that problem. The site suffers from an attempt to integrate various legacy systems, rather than starting anew. It also suffers from a classic problem in design: the "we can do it ourselves" mentality that dismisses the talent and value that is added by people who do graphic and information design for a living. In 1968, Melvin Conway said that organizations that design systems are constrained to produce designs that are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. Designers have fought against this unnecessary bureaucracy and hierarchy of design to produce elegant and beautiful systems for years. This isn't something you can do yourself after reading a book on HTML 4.

"MLawLive is essential to student life at the Law School."

"What?! Screw that! No it's not!"

I've grounded this article in the context of the preceding fake argument. MLawLive ("MLL") is the recently developed web-based student portal that has caused a whole lot of griping among students. The questions to be answered are: (1) What is MLaw Live? (2) What is it designed to replace/augment? and (3) Who cares? Points two and three are pretty self-explanatory, so let's focus on point one.

Justice Anthony Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court in the same year I arrived in America, and as I listened to him speak on September 12th I realized that we have more in common than I could have imagined. For the last twenty years we have both been on a quest for intellectual enlightenment that has led us to strange and new places. But unlike me Justice Kennedy is now one of the most powerful people in the country. The room in which he was slated to speak, 100 HH, was full well before he was to come on. The last time there was such a buzz around a speaker coming to the Law School was when the notorious Larry Flynt of Hustler fame came last spring. The students came out in full force, with two overflow rooms being utilized to allow everyone to hear the talk.

For second-year law students, OCI-week activities consist mainly of interviews, firm research, and happy hour schmoozefests on the Skadden credit card. This year, though, a number of my 2L classmates spent their OCI free time helping The Generation Project conduct what was quite possibly the first successful front porch campaign since Grover Cleveland.

Kicking It Old School planned to cover a different topic this in this installment (something about prior attempts to persuade the law school community of the wisdom of keeping a shark in the library's lightwell), but when, while researching, we found this in the November 11, 1981 issue of the RG, we changed our plan:

When Fekkak Mamdouh (known to friends and co-workers as Mamdouh) started working at Windows on the World, he had no idea that the tragedy of 9/11 would change his life so dramatically. The restaurant on top of the World Trade Center was, at the turn of the millennium, the highest grossing restaurant in the nation, and one of a very small number of restaurants where workers were members of a union, receiving decent pay and benefits in a service industry notoriously under-compensated and under-protected (only 1% of restaurant workers belong to a union). On 9/11, not only were almost a hundred employees killed, but 300 Windows on the World employees were displaced from a job that had almost no equivalent in terms of pay, benefits, and security. In the following months, over 13,000 restaurant workers were displaced city-wide. A local union leader contacted both Mamdouh and Saru Jayaraman, a graduate of Yale Law School, to help the restaurant workers, beginning with those from Windows on the World where the former owner had refused to rehire many of his old employees. After weeks of demonstrations in front of the new restaurant, the owner rehired many of his old employees. But this was just the beginning. The events following 9/11 gave birth to the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) of New York, and a new era of workers' rights in New York City was born.

When Kroger and Meijer have you down with their industrial, mass produced ho-humness, try exploring some of the local groceries; they have variety, quality, and some great deals if you know where to look.

Shut my mouth and call me Susan - y'all actually sent in questions (relatively) unbidden!

See, the one thing I'm most often asked in regards to this column is whether people actually write in, or if I just make the questions up whenever it suits me. (Actually, that question is probably tied with "do you seriously put this on your resume?", but whatever.) Let's put this one to bed, shall we?

It was a big summer for crappy pop music. While most of you were cruising around listening to your iPods and compact discs, I was listening to the radio so you didn't have to.  Granted, this review may contain information that might have been more useful at the beginning of the summer, but no matter.  

Every article I've ever read about the law school summer has reflected on the jobs available as ones of extreme cushiness and dubious amounts of work. It gives many folks outside the legal profession the impression that every summer associateship is one of extreme "baller"tude, where debauched law students take their ridonkulous salaries and make it rain (a la Fat Joe) for a few months before eventually embarking on a career path that allows them to make it rain (a la John Grisham) on a more permanent basis. Since no one on CNN/MSNBC/WSTFU seems to care enough about those working in the public sector to write all that much about them, this misconception generally goes uncorrected.

I have to tell y'all, law school (or really, the RG) is totally impeding my ability to read the news with any degree of enjoyment. (Cue sad music.) Whereas before, if a friend sent me an article about wombat rapists, picnic-table banging, or castration as a sentence reducer, I could easily delight in the vagaries of the Wonderful World of Sex and the Law; now, I'm plagued by two recurring complaints.

For anyone living under a rock - yes, Sub-3 counts - Eliot Spitzer, (newly former) governor of New York, was recently discovered, via federal wiretap, to be patronizing some seriously expensive (like, more than a week's salary in NYC Biglaw expensive) prostitutes. When the prostitution ring got busted, so did he, and Albany still has a touch of the vapors to prove it.