Neanderpundit

I was accused of being very “Lawyerlike” because I was always looking to try to get out of trouble on some sort of technicality.

Sometimes, especially among my teachers, it worked.

If you have similar memories you will want to read “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”. . it isn’t all perfectly rational, but it’s a damned good facsimile therof.

This sort of thing is why I think I have always enjoyed the company of lawyers- or at least a certain type of lawyer. A lawyer who is a rational person, interested in what is just and moral, and not an ambulance chaser, is the kind of person with whom I can have the most reasoned debate, and that is because of a few simple things:

1:They stick to the topic. Most people, when trying to make a point, will scatter it with so many irrelevancies that it makes the whole conversation disjointed and fragmented. if you want to argue your position, take one point, make it, either prove it right or wrong, and move on to the next, don’t tangentialize.

2: They answer. You ask them a question, and they answer it. They will answer to the best of their ability; they may answer in an evasive way or in a way that does not betray too much about their position, but they won’t evade and try to avoid answering qn honest question

3: They learn. If you make a point to a rational person, and he disagrees, and you can convince him of the veracity of your point, he will not fail to change his mind on the subject.

In ‘The Paper Chase” (The 1973 version) Professor Kingsfield says something very profound: “You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer” Of course this is at a time when the law still made a certain amount of sense; in many respects, I fear, it no longer does. And a lot of the Law these days seems to be about reassigning blame. Science should also be like this, but these days Science is as much about belief as it is about anything, and it has become a religion which requires a specific set of beliefs of it’s followers.

But for those men and women who were trained to think rationally, in whatever discipline, I have the greatest respect, and I will take their counsel above all others.

in a massive pile of filth, and you see forklifts driving by toting transfer ladles of molten aluminum, a ton of it at a time, at eye level, and you see it slopping around, you start to wonder if you need to find another line of work. Thankfully, this is something that doesn’t happen that often.

Good to go back to a job in a diecast or foundry once in a while, remember my roots, keep in touch with the shit that happens close to the bone.

Damn, though. These drivers all think they’re Helio Castroneves. Instead, they are more the equivalent of the ever inappropriately named Scott Speed.

The most regular, least hipster guy i know has not one but two granfors bruks axes.bleagh.