Steven Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project gave a talk at the faculty today as part of the Talking Animals, Law and Philosophy series that Raffael organises. I usually go for these talks because I am a supportive friend and supportive of the cause; but I don't usually leave feeling as if I had missed an opportunity to do something meaningful with ( Read more... )

I ought not be surprised by the petulance and ungraciousness that human nature is sometimes capable of; after all, I am old enough to know that the world is full of people with ugly personalities, and even people who don't fall into that category are imperfect. Such is the truth of being human, of life ( Read more... )

Today was one of the most disastrous days that I have had in a long time. Everything and anything that was capable of going wrong went right ahead and messed up, exploding in my face and leaving me wondering one simple thing: Why? I am back in my room in Cambridge and I am still unable to fully process how wrong everything went today. By ' ( Read more... )

I had a lot of fun today with the Jurisprudence people, discussing the third instalment of the Kramer-Simmonds debate at the Granta. The debate is essentially about whether a wicked regime has prudential reasons to adhere to the rule of law. We split ourselves into two camps (one for Kramer, the other for Simmonds). I was the jduge of the debate, ( Read more... )

I have been wanting to write, but I could find neither the time nor the energy to do so. The worst part is, I don't even know what I have done over the past week. Time simply sort of went by with complete nonchalance, leaving me with little to show for at the end of it.

Let's do this chronologically then:

27 March, SundayI went to London to ( Read more... )

Today was a horribly unproductive day. I read a grand total of two cases and that was it. In my defence, Yong Pung How judgments are really, really painful to read: the reasoning is so sparse that it's almost non-existent, and whatever reasoning there is is so elementary and basic that I feel my brain cells dying as I read on. I would provide ( Read more... )

A few things happened.

First, I gave a presentation in front of some other law PhD students at a PhD seminar for PhD students. It was meant to be practice for the real presentation, which I realised is happening next Friday. I was freaking out about this, of course. I really, really, really hate speaking in front of a group of people; I never ( Read more... )

I should really put some of these entries private but I've become too much of an exhibitionist for that, apparently ( Read more... )

I should have written yesterday but I was too exhausted. I am quite exhausted now and I have to wake up at 7am after deciding to persist with the Wittgenstein Tractatus lectures despite being completely lost and confused today (yesterday), so I really ought to go to bed; but there are things that I want to write about. I will be using headings so ( Read more... )

Some highlights:

1. I have 24-hour access to the law library. This is really amazing. I was initially shocked to discover that the library doesn't open on Sundays and closes at 5pm on Saturdays, but this ceased to matter when I found out that PhD students get 24-hour access to the library. Yes. I'm going to park myself there this weekend and start ( Read more... )