I finally caught up.

I had Friday and Monday off, so I studied just about non-stop for 4 days, and managed to catch up. I think I read over 200 pages at least. Last night, I decided I needed to push through, so I stayed up until 4:30am or so. This morning I woke up at 9:30 and didn't get going right away, but I did do our practice exam for Contracts. I was pretty beat after pushing so hard the last few days.

But I feel good now because I've been able to review and go through flashcards, etc. I really need to work on creating outlines and reviewing all the black letter law, but most of all, I need to work on practice exam questions. Now that I've finished all my reading for this week, I can spend the week reviewing (except for our big memo due Friday), and maybe also manage to find time to create some decent comprehensive outlines.

I'm probably going to attend at least part of the AIPLA conference later this month. That should be pretty interesting. I'm also starting to look for opportunities to work in patent law firms next summer... Hopefully I can find something that will give me good experience; then I can find a good position the following summer.

For those of you who aren't aware, your second summer job in law school basically determines where you're going to work when you graduate. It's pretty crazy.

I think I need to get less sleep, but a sustainable amount. Maybe about 5 hours a night is a good goal. I think I'll do that and see how it goes for a while...

I think that maybe part of what Joichi is getting at in talking about "emergent democracy" relates to the transaction costs of democratic organization.

There is a lot of economic theory about how transaction costs affect markets and interests in property, etc.

One of the problems with democracy, or grass-roots organization in general, is that it takes too much work just to communicate. This is why, for instance, when pollution affects a large number of people a little bit, they don't organize to stop it; the transaction costs of organization are higher for each person than the cost of the small bit of pollution they receive.

But if we reduce transaction costs through media like blogs, maybe these sorts of groups will start to spontaneously organize and start to solve these sorts of market problems. I think, though, that the costs have to be reduced to almost zero for this to happen. Even the cost of waiting 5 minutes to dial up an ISP is too long. Maybe with broadband, even searching for the right website is too long. But if people could just type in a word or two and find the right tool for organizing, something very interesting might begin to happen... hmm.

It will be extremely cool once we finally have this technology.

I just had to post this quote though. Classic.

"You could see this leading to displays everywhere, the sides of trucks with live displays on them - like Times Square but moving," Robert Wisnieff, senior manager of IBM Corp.'s Advanced Display Technology Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "Imagine the traffic accidents."

From Canada.com

So...

Thank God (literally), my Torts Professor is Jewish. He decided to take Yom Kippur off tomorrow, giving me one more uninterrupted day to study this weekend. I will finally have time tomorrow to study for my Econ class. I haven't read almost any of the text for it yet, and we've done 6 chapters. I have to get through them all tomorrow. But, you can do a lot in 16 hours, so I'm pretty optimistic.

I've read almost 100 pages of Property already this weekend, and caught up on most of the concepts I was starting to lose track of. We've been doing joint tenancies and the landlord-tenant stuff. There's a lot to learn, and especially with the landlord-tenant issues, there are quite a few unsettled areas of law.

I received my first graded paper back from our writing class, with an abysmal grade. Fortunately, everyone else's grade was horrible too. I also missed some facts of the case that were posted late in the week, which really hurt me. Next time, everything will be set for me to rock the house.

I felt very under the weather last week, probably due to too much coffee, not enough water, and very little sleep. I've been sleeping 8 hours a night since Friday, and feel pretty great today. I have to remember to keep chugging gatorade when I get a chance, to offset the coffee. ;)

On another note, my friend Chris has come to DC and is taking over my work at the Department of the Interior, for the most part, which is great. I'm still working there part-time, but I can rest a bit easier knowing they have someone they can rely on while I'm learning about exceptions to obscure rules about leases.

I studied at home in my office all day today, and it was nice since I could see my wife (Yuki) every once in a while. Unfortunately, I managed to delete the first episodes of Alias and The Practice from the videotape somehow, so I'm scouring torrent sites for them now. I found Alias, but if anyone knows where to find the season premiere of The Practice, let me know. There should be an explicit exception in the copyright law for irate spouses. I'll work on that... ;)

Welp, back to studying. ;)