Sorry for the extended absence. As of today, I am working on a sizable paper for Law and Literature, editing two professional Law Review pieces, revising my own Law Review piece for publication, and trying to keep up on my reading and prepare for finals. Last night we entertained company, tonight is the Barrister's Ball, tomorrow my family will be coming through town, next Thursday they'll be back through town, next Saturday I'm escorting my wife to the Whitney Awards, and then it will well and truly be finals season.

That said... let's talk about video games for a little while. d^_^b

A little under a year ago, I spent a good half hour trying to say something meaningful about the Virginia Tech massacre. I gave up for several reasons. Everyone had already spoken, many expressing themselves more eloquently than I could hope to match. I wasn't personally impacted. I didn't have a "pet theory" to put forward.

So, I'm on a big Rudyard-Kipling-quoting kick this week. I mostly blame Eugene Volokh, the author of my First Amendment casebook. It's a fantastic casebook, and he liberally employs some great epigraphies--including words from the poems of Rudyard Kipling, which happily rest in the public domain.

About five minutes ago, someone added my mug to their collection.

So, I had an amusing clash of worlds today. Actually it may well continue, it's hard to say!

If I may digress momentarily from my usual Law School and Linux rants, I have an allegory I would like to analyze. For anyone unaware, my undergraduate background is in philosophy. One of my favorite courses was philosophy of religion. You have been warned. d^_^b

In The False Gods We Worship, President Spencer W. Kimball notes (of Americans generally and, I suspect, of Latter-day Saints in particular):

Bear with me, I'm going to make a big list of links to a lot of people, including family, friends, acquaintances, and even a few people who probably don't remember me. There is a point to this discussion, which will come later and which I will mark for your convenience if you want to skip the inane listing. Also, do not click the links unless you are really curious. Some of these MySpace pages have so much junk on them your computer will absolutely choke.

Inane listing begins.

So it turns out that everyone uses MySpace.