Extended 'Gloom'; Aptly Named

Los Angeles County may not have made the record for the wettest winter ever measured but it sure has made transiting into June Gloom that much more easier. The clouds have stayed with us through nearly a half-year and another fortnight of 'melancholy' mornings is hardly a mood-killer. June is also the month of the annual commencement ceremonies which not surprisingly seem to have been quite well-synchronised to occur on the second Friday of the month around college campuses in the United States. While the likes of Harvard and Yale get undue and fond attention in national media owing to the preponderance of their alumni in the network news and reporting business, Caltech was nonetheless summarily mentioned this year in the Los Angeles Times as part of the latter's feature on Kristen Zortman, a senior who graduated this year in engineering and applied sciences but earned her stripes as Caltech's premier athlete.

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Aptly Named

As part of the course on Law and Technology I took this quarter, I had the opportunity to read unusual and very insightful opinions handed down by various appeals courts and the Supreme Court of the United States over a period of two hundred years. The language in these opinions through the years also reflected how United States gradually shed its Anglo-Saxon influences and assumed a far more independent philosophical identity. I was introduced to and impressed by some of the more distinctive judges whose opinions were nothing less than works of stellar literary character -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Learned Hand, Michael Boudin, Richard Posner to name a few. But most of all, I was impressed by the names -- Learned Hand who served in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, his cousin Noble Hand who also served on the Second Circuit, John Minor Wisdom who serves presently on the Fifth Circuit. While on names, there is also Thomas Saving who is no judge but is a Social Security Trustee and Keith Slaughter at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Kristen Zortman -- Nerd Jock

Law 134: Law and Technology

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Learned Hand

Richard Posner

December 2004 - March 2005

October 2004 - November 2004

July 2004 - September 2004

May 2004 - June 2004

April 2004

January 2004 - March 2004

October 2003 - January 2004