a thaumaturgical compendium

Faculty at MIT and the University of Minnesota are oliciting signatures for a nationwide statement of the academic community opposed to a US invasion of Iraq. Faculty, students, and staff are invited to read and add their names to this petition at http://www.noiraqattack.org/

The language of the petition makes clear why we should not attack: if we are to violate international law, and allow the deaths of our own citizens and others, we must first have clear evidence that there is an imminent danger.

It’s always hard to tell how much students bring away from a discussion, but I was pretty happy with our attempt to dissect the first chapter of Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda. I was impressed by the way the discussion leaders guided the questions (as I was last week!), and the participants really seemed to have thought about the contents. Almost everyone in the class contributed something significant to the discussion. As I’ve mentioned to the rest of the faculty, we seem to have lucked out on the quality of our grad students this year. Now, if I can just try to get more of them interested in my research areas :).

OK, just put together a lecture for this afternoon. It’s a general overview of the relationship of the law and the net, and a very brief overview of libel. Hopefully enough to get folks interested at least. Here’s the overheads.

This was to be the weekend for putting the “finishing touches” on the two papers for Maastricht. Unfortunately, they both will need more touching. Hopefully I can find some time to get them finished off tomorrow.

In the mean time, I need to put together a lecture for my 491 class tomorrow and get the responses from the grad students graded. Ugh! Jamie said I should just cancel classes tomorrow :). Somehow, I don’t think that would be a viable solution.

I wish I had run into “Blogosphere: the Emerging Media Ecosystem” before I wrote the two AIR papers. I’m working it in now, but it turns out Hiler covers a lot of ground I had worked through. I’ll have to remember to assign his essay to the 491 students next year.

Looks like I got passed over for the MacArthur Fellowship again this year. What’s a guy gotta do? :)

This freaks me out.