Prof: “If you were Ms. Marvin’s lawyer, how would you argue this agreement is more about a quasi-marital relationship and against the position that this sort of agreement is essentially a prostitution contract?”

Student: “Well no prostitute in their right mind would work only for a single client for seven years.”

Note: This will probably be the end of my Quote From a Law Professor series, as I finish my law school career in 7 days. Hope you’ve enjoyed them!

An interesting NY Times story notes that Sigmund Freud’s theories of how the unconscious mind works are gaining traction in the humanities, even though psychologists themselves are dismissing Freud’s ideas in record numbers.

… the American Psychoanalytic Association has found that while psychoanalysis — or what purports to be psychoanalysis — is alive and well in literature, film, history and just about every other subject in the humanities, psychology departments and textbooks treat it as “desiccated and dead,” a historical artifact instead of “an ongoing movement and a living, evolving process.”

…

The primary reason it became marginalized, Ms. Eagly, said, is that while most disciplines in psychology began putting greater emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically, “psychoanalysts haven’t developed the same evidence-based grounding.” As a result, most psychology departments don’t pay as much attention to psychoanalysis.

…

The humanities and social sciences have welcomed psychoanalysis without caveats. But the report complains of the wide gulf between the academic’s and the psychoanalyst’s approach and vocabulary, which has made their respective applications of Freud’s theories virtually unrecognizable to each other.

Scholars in the liberal arts have tended to use Freud as a springboard to examine issues and ideas never dreamt of in his philosophy — like gender studies, post-colonial studies, French postmodernism, Queer theory and so on.

“American clinical psychoanalysis, and analysis as represented in academe, are at risk to become two ships that pass in the night,” the report said. As an example, the report points to a course on psychoanalysis and colonialism, two terms most clinically based analysts would never have imagined in a single sentence.

“I honestly couldn’t understand what they’re talking about,” said Prudence Gourguechon, the psychoanalytic association’s incoming president, referring to those kinds of courses.

To Mr. Lilienfeld, much of postmodern theorizing has harmed psychoanalysis, saying it has “rendered claims even more fuzzy and more difficult to assess.”

I could rant for ages about this story, but I’ll leave it at this statement: You have to wonder what people who design these courses are thinking by adopting a theorist rejected by his own field.

Let’s talk about this campagin spot for a second. It’s great that Mike Huckabee is embracing the internet in unique ways, and it’s great that he got an unconventional celebrity endorsement.

With that out of the way…huh? Let’s discount the fact that Norris has obviously drank the Huckabee Kool-Aid (since Huckabee’s record, for instance, doesn’t resemble a conservative’s at all) and figure out what this is going to accomplish for him. I mean, is any voter over 35 going to understand why “there’s no chin behind Chuck Norris’s beard, only another fist?” Shit, does anyone under 25 know that Chuck Norris is actually famous for something other than a funny internet meme?

I don’t know if this rubs me the wrong way because it’s hokey, because it’s Huckabee, or something else, but…wow. Just wow.

Alan Moore on The Simpsons:

The greatest half-time show ever:

And, of course, the Fifth Doctor meets the Tenth Doctor:

There. That should help tide you over.

“It was actually easier for me to become a vegetarian, you know, quit meat, than to quit pot.  Because your friends never show up at your house with a sack of beef and say ‘Twist up a link, bro!  Star Trek’s on!  We’re gonna get full of sausages and laugh!’”

- Brian Posehn

I just got back from a free preview of the 2-hour Battlestar Galactica episode “Razor” set to air the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I highly recommend it. There were some parts where the plot seemed like it was going to devolve into a terrible piece of fan fiction (though one of those parts made me squeal like the little fanboy I am), but it did hold my attention, and drew quite a few chuckles.

To be fair, it was largely a blending of other good episodes with some points of overlap. But it was still quite enjoyable. And the last few minutes will set the scene for a major plot point in the upcoming final season.

So mark your calendars. 11/24 at 9 PM on SciFi. Because if you don’t watch, the Cylons win.

“We’re only human, after all.”

Gina Inverres, aka Cylon Humanoid Model Number Six

Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia has decided that there’s apparently only one rational way to deal with the drought plaguing his state: pray for rain:

What to do when the rain won’t come? If you’re Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray.

The governor will host a prayer service next week to ask for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast.

“The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power,” Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said on Wednesday.

Perdue’s office has sent out invitations to leaders from several faiths for the service, set for Tuesday.

Perdue has several times mentioned the need for prayer - along with water conservation - as the state’s drought crisis has worsened. Over the summer, he participated in day of prayer for agriculture at a gathering of the Georgia Farm Bureau in Macon, Ga.

There are all sorts of different obvious comments that come to mind upon reading this, but frankly, I think that this Calvin and Hobbes strip says it all:

“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.”
– Bill Watterson

“So you put your witness on the stand and ask ‘What was stolen from your home, Mrs. Garabaldi?’  She says ‘I don’t remember.  You could throw a quick leading question at her to job her memory.  But she’s gone deaf with fear.  So you show her a 15-year-old copy of the national Enquirer.  She still doesn’t remember because now she’s gone blind with fear.  So you tell your second chair to go across the street to the cafe and buy a plate of fettucine alfredo.  You put it under her nose.  She smells it.  Now she says ‘Oh yes!  I remember.  It was my pasta maker.’  Who gets the pasta.  The jury?  No, it’s not evidence.  But the rule is that opposing counsel gets a taste.”