SL674

~ Laura

I have about 15 minutes before I have to drive Ian to his film camp – an hour round trip at 8:15. Then I’ll get him at 2:15 – another hour round trip. I had been driving Steve to the train station at 6:45, so Jonah could use the beater car during the day, but I stopped. If Jonah wants the car, he has to get up and do the morning drop off. He failed to respond to his alarm clock this morning (how can he let it buzz for 30 minutes straight?), so he’ll be biking it to his college application class at the high school.

Maybe he can catch some Pokemon on the way to school.

OK. Who downloaded that app? Fess up.

Alright, what did I read so far this morning?

Does reading make you happier? 

I spend a few hours playing with College Abacus yesterday. Semi-useful.

RBG needs to shut up.

Published by Laura

21 thoughts on “SL674”

  1. On request, I downloaded the app. I’m not sure about letting a ten-year old use my phone to make throwing motions.

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  2. They change. Our 22-year-old is out the door, dressed like a grown-up, on her way to the salt mines downtown at 7:45 am every morning. Quite amazing.

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  4. We do that set of drives (one hour, round trip) everyday for school for the younger one, so the summer is less driving for him. On the other hand, we’re driving an hour each way for the older’s volunteer work at a science camp, so it’s washing out.

    I do get to share the driving with the other parent, though. It is much more distressing when one has the 7:30-8:30 followed by the 2:30-3:30 (which sometimes stretches to 4).

    Glad you found the will to let J sleep through the buzzer and learn the consequences. I hope to continue to find that for myself (the current is the one where the older wants a 1 hour ride each way, through city traffic, to participate in a teen board). We’re not going to do driving, but we can imagine grandparents agreeing, and have to decide whether we’re willing to let them do it.

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    1. bj said:

      “We do that set of drives (one hour, round trip) everyday for school for the younger one, so the summer is less driving for him. On the other hand, we’re driving an hour each way for the older’s volunteer work at a science camp, so it’s washing out.”

      Our normal drives are 35 minutes one way out into the country for therapeutic riding and 20 minutes maximum across town for everything else–but we don’t have any film camps that I know of…

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    1. The phrase, ‘there’s no fool like an old fool’ is usually applied to some geezer with a popsie, but it can have wider application. What can she have been thinking???

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  7. Charles Pierce continues to be a national treasure:

    “Because anyone who thinks that RBG’s honest assessment of the vulgar talking yam is on a par with A.) Antonin Scalia’s hunting trips with Dick Cheney, or B.) the majority in Bush v. Gore including one justice (Scalia) whose son got a job with the administration that poppa helped install and another (Thomas) whose wife did, too, needs to seriously examine their consciences more than they did. …
    “Leave aside the historic reality that the Court always has been politicized, sometimes garishly so, but we are now at the end of a 30-year process in which a well-financed conservative infrastructure restructured the federal court system from top to bottom, seeding it with reliable judges who supported dubious interpretations of laws to which their ideological sponsors were unfriendly.”

    http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46677/ruth-bader-ginsburg-donald-trump/

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    1. The conscience examination would have to start with those who promulgated the Judicial Canon of Ethics, which prohibits some activities but not others.

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    2. Doug,

      How does that stuff square with the vote split on Kelo?

      So you don’t have to look it up:

      The majority was: Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer

      The dissenters were: O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas.

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  8. a half an hour each way for the older’s volunteering. We’ve found that’s our limit, a half an hour. Longer than that, and it becomes unbearable.

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  9. Code of Conduct for United States Judges: “This Code applies to United States circuit judges, district judges, Court of International Trade judges, Court of Federal Claims judges, bankruptcy judges, and magistrate judges. Certain provisions of this Code apply to special masters and commissioners as indicated in the “Compliance” section. The Tax Court, Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces have adopted this Code.”

    No supreme court judges in the list

    Of course, the topic is debated. Note also that the code of conduct is self-enforcing — only a judge covered by the rules can ask for a ruling.

    We can debate whether there should be a code of conduct for the supremes,

    http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/does-the-supreme-court-need-a-code-of-conduct

    (So, the debate is whether RBG’s behavior is prudent, not whether it violates a specific set of rules, which don’t apply to her)

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  10. More specifically, “Lower-court judges are required to obey the principles. The Justices follow them, but they are not obligated to obey them. “

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  11. There is no question that RBG is subject only to her conscience and public opinion. We can argue about whether she is obeying the rules. To argue that she is, we would have to distinguish the conduct of Guido Calabresi, who was found to have violated the rules.

    What we can’t do is argue that she is allowed to disobey the rules because other behaviors, which are not prohibited by the rules, are actually worse from some higher moral perspective. That is not a good defense in any forum I know.

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    1. RBG is only governed by moral authority (i.e. her conscience and public opinion), in which case, the moral authority of the behavior is the relevant guide, not the rules that don’t apply to RBG anyway. For example, if you (and by that I mean, us, those doing the moral judging of the behavior), believe that taking favors, like plane rides, from someone who you will shortly be judging in a case is worse than publicly stating your opposition to a political candidate who is unfit to serve then it is relevant to compare the two. It doesn’t matter that there are rules that don’t apply that permit one morally questionable behavior v another. That is, it’s pointless to argue whether she’s violated rules that don’t apply to her anyway (kind of like arguing about whether the chinese government has violated the 1st amendment to the US constitution).

      And, yes, I do believe that Trump is a special case, a dangerous demagogue, a narcissist with no moral compass, and not just a politician I disagree with and judge those speaking up (or not speaking up) about him by different standards than I do, say Paul Ryan, with whom I disagree on almost everything. RBG shouldn’t violate the law or rules of ethics to speak up, but I’m not going to get too upset at her if she speaks up without violating the rules (though I might think it imprudent).

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      1. I don’t agree with that interpretation at all. The Code of Judicial Conduct is a guide for everyone. It represents a consensus view, based on discussion and experience, of what conduct is appropriate or inappropriate for judges at every level. It’s just that Supreme Court Justices are remitted to their consciences and public opinion for enforcement, because it would be inappropriate for a higher authority to attempt to sit in judgment on them. But the judgment the judge is supposed to make is whether her conduct violates the rule, not whether the rule itself is appropriate.

        In contrast, there are other areas, e.g. socializing between Supreme Court Justices and other high officials, or making public statements on matters of public concern outside the prohibitions of the Code of Judicial Conduct, where there is not a consensus as to what behavior is appropriate or not. In those areas, all judges are also remitted to their individual consciences and judgment for guidance as to what the appropriate rule is.

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  12. I’ve now been involved in catching Pokemon and I think that riding (not driving) a car driven through slow traffic is the best way to play the game. You can still catch things pretty easily and it serves as a great distraction for people who might not otherwise be very patient.

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  13. MH said:

    “I’ve now been involved in catching Pokemon and I think that riding (not driving) a car driven through slow traffic is the best way to play the game. You can still catch things pretty easily and it serves as a great distraction for people who might not otherwise be very patient.”

    We’ve been doing evening campus Pokemon-catching walks. Big Girl also needs to put in the walking time in order to hatch her eggs (the one she’s working on requires a 5k walk to hatch!).

    Clever, clever.

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  14. I’ve noticed there are no Pokemon on the highways around us. It would be very sensible for the programmers to have decided not to cause multi-car accidents on highways. I remember the first wave of Pokemon card games, with school principals decreeing cards found on campus would be confiscated. If I have the math right, the first group of card players are now around 30 years old.

    Of course, this is only the first example of augmented reality games. Pretty soon, I’d expect things like My Pretty Pony Rainbowland Adventure, or dungeon crawls. Mayhem will ensue once Hitman or World of Warcraft figures out how to export its gameplay to the streets.

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