Mental Monday #2

The guy who works at my parking lot is back again. This makes me inordinately happy. I have no idea what his name is, or anything about him, and his English is spotty at best (he's Somalian), but he'd become a regular part of my day in the last two years. Every morning that I went into school, he'd be there, cheerfully helping people find parking spaces as the lot filled up, and if you were willing to leave him your keys he'd even double park you once the lot was full.

And then near the end of last spring, he was replaced by a parking ticket machine. Drop your coins in and go. And that made me sad.

But now I'm back, and there he is! Wooot! Maybe the parking lot owners realized that what they saved on his salary was lost by the fact that they now had about 20 cars less on the lot every day.

Funny, the people who become part of your world without you knowing anything about them. I remember when I was at Queen's, there were these two very elderly Chinese ladies who lived in or near the ghetto. I knew absolutely nothing about them except that they were about Daniel's height and looked older than the moon and wandered about together wearing these pajama-like blue suits. And then somewhere in the late 90's, they both died in a housefire. And everybody at Queen's was shocked and saddened, even though I doubt anybody who didn't live next door to them ever spoke a word to them.

Well. Must prepare for my second (also, my last) class of the week :)

Damn.

Haven't written about this before, not sure why. A local teenage girl went missing twelve days ago, her photograph plastered all over stores and public buildings, and everybody was hoping for a happy ending even though it was getting increasingly unlikely as the days went be. Well, unfortunately, she's been found: Body of missing Ottawa teen Teague found.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

Today's lesson at the Law Review editorial meeting was: niggly little grammar & spelling issues? Really count.

We had two articles to evaluate. One not terribly well organized, not all that original a thesis, etc etc but hey, it was in French, and we need French content. The other with a relevant topic, good ideas, etc but frigging ILLEGIBLE.

Guess which one got serious consideration before being semi-reluctantly turned down. And which one was turned down almost unanimously, with scathing criticism and a joking suggestion to the Guy In Charge Of Refusals to tack on a "...and please don't ever darken our door with another submission" to the author.

It made such a huge difference. I tried, really tried, to look at the content over the form. To think about what the author was saying, and not how they were saying it. To evaluate the merits of the legal/socio-political arguments being set forth. And I failed, miserably, because the inconsistent capitalisations ("scientific" in one sentence, "Scientific" in the next), vague short forms ("the legislation," "the statute," and "the proposed law" - referring to three distinct laws), the typos ("low" instead of "law", "saving" instead of "saying") the general absolute freaking mess of it all... it was all just too overwhelming to wade through.

I think they had good arguments. But I can't really say for sure. And apparently, neither could anyone else at the meeting.

***
I must say I'm a little disappointed in myself here. I would've thought I'd come out as a raving pinko commie no-goodnik. Instead I'm located somewhere around Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark, below centrist John Kerry's impressive chin, and to the left of Hilary Clinton in terms of social permissiveness. Huh.

You are a Social Moderate (50% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (20% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Wallace v. UGG

I love it when judges know that what they're saying will be attacked in the future, and try to head off such attacks within the present decision. For example, re. the obligation to not show "bad faith" when terminating employees (eg humiliate them, accuse them of theft without proof, refuse letters of reference, lay them off during sick leave, lay them off after assuring them that their job is secure, etc), Supreme Court Justice Iacobucci had this to say in a landmark case:

I note that there may be those who would say that this approach imposes an onerous obligation on employers. I would respond simply by saying that I fail to see how it can be onerous to treat people fairly, reasonably, and decently at a time of trauma and despair. In my view, the reasonable person would expect such treatment. So should the law.
Wallace v. United Grain Growers Ltd., [1997] 3 S.C.R. 701, Iacobucci J