This year’s April Fool from the Googlers. In an April class in 2008 an earnest student explained Google’s radical new product, Google Custom Time–“just click ‘Set custom time’ from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox . . . How does it work? Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality . . .” Some students nodded appreciatively. He was so serious and impressed by Google’s engineering wizardry. I couldn’t let a 20-year old college student walk around in the wide world believing it to be real, but I felt like the Grinch when I explained it was an April Fool’s joke.
Tag: humor
Another Frustrated Federal Judge
This week’s fruit of judicial frustration–and lesson to litigators–is from Judge Sam Sparks of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Judge Sparks ordered counsel to a “kindergarten party” at the federal courthouse in Austin to learn “many exciting and informative lessons” including “[a]n advanced seminar on not wasting the time of a busy federal judge and his staff because you are unable to practice law at the level of a first year law student.” The WSJ Law Blog reports today that Judge Sparks canceled the kindergarten party because the parties were able to settle. I’d settle too if the alternative was judicial core-reaming in open court.
Metaphor Madness
What happens when a trial judge long-frustrated by bitter litigants issues an order approving their settlement? You get this brief order from a Kentucky trial court. (PDF will open in new window.)
The Personal Statement
A friend emailed the link to this piece from McSweeney’s weeks ago. I’ve finally drilled deep enough into my inbox to retrieve it. It’s titled “A Former Investment Banker Analyst Falls Back on Plan B” and is for anyone whose interest in law school just happened to coincide with the recession.