IkematsuSosuke wrote:today sucks!
Aye aye, cap'n! :hehe:
Aye aye, cap'n! :hehe:
Got Something You Want To Say?
Started by ahochaude · 23 Nov 2003 · 35,048 replies
General Discussion
Aye aye, cap'n! :hehe:
just received this mail from a friend
and it hurts to be true :mrgreen: :beaten:
THE PHILIPPINES IS.................
50. where the most happening places is not where the party is, instead
it's where the gang wars happen, where naked women strip and where the
people overthrow a president.
49. where even Doctors, Lawyers and Engineers are unemployed.
48. where every family has its own drama story..
47. where mountains like Makiling and Banahaw are considered as holy
places.
46. where everything can be forged.
45. where the school is considered the second home and the mall
considered as third.
44. where Starbucks coffee is more expensive than gas.
43. where every street has a basketball court and every town only has
one public school.
42. where all kinds of animals are edible?????
41. where people speak all kinds of languages and still call it
Tagalog.
40. where students pay more money than they will earn afterwards.
39. where Call Center employees earn more money than teachers and
nurses
38. where driving 4kms can take as much as 4 hours.
37. where flyovers bring you from the freeway to the side streets.
36. where the tourist spots is where Filipinos cannot afford to go.
35. where the personal computer is mainly used for games and
friendster.
34. where most 13-year-olds are alcoholic.
33. where colonial mentality is dishonestly denied!
32. where 4am is not considered bed time yet.
31. where PEOPLE CAN PAY TO DEFY THE LAW!!!!
30. where everything is spoofed?
29. where even the poverty stricken get to wear Ralph Lauren and Tommy
Hilfiger (sobrang peke naman ng itsura)
28. where honking of car horns i s a way of life.
27. where being called a bum is never offensive.
26. where flood waters take up more than 90 percent of the streets
during the rainy season.
25. where everyone has a relative abroad who keeps them alive.
24. where crossing the street involves running for your dear life.
(EDSA!EDSA!)
23. where wearing your national colors make you "baduy"
22. where billiards is a sport, and darts is a bar game.
21. where even the poverty stricken have the latest cellphones. (nakaw
kasi eh)
20. where insurance does not work.
19. where water can only be classified as tap and dirty... clean water
is for sale (35pesos/gallon) - 40 pesos na po un iba 3 for 100!
18. where the church governs the people and where the government makes
the people pray for miracles. (AMEN TO THAT)
17. where University of the Philippines is where all the weird people
go. Ateneo is where all the nerds go. La Salle is where all the chinese
go. College of Saint Benilde is where all the stupid chinese go...
16. where (most people think that) fastfood is a diet meal
15. where traffic signs are merely suggestions not regulations
14. where all the trees in the city are below 6 ft.
13. where being held up is normal, it happens to everyone..
12. where kids dream of becoming pilots, doctors and basketball
players.
11. where rodents are normal house pets.
10. where the definition of traffic is the 'non-movement' of vehicles.
9. where the fighter planes of the 1940's are used for military
engagements and the new fighter planes are displayed in museums.
8. where being an hour late is still considered as punctual.
7. where cigarettes and alcohol are a necessity, and where the lottery
is a commodity.
6. where soap operas tell the realities of life and where the news
provides the drama.
5. where every foreigner is American & is addressed JOE!!!!
4. where actors make the rules and where politicians provide the
entertainment (kung gusto mo mapikon, watch the news)
3. where people can get away with stealing billions and trillions of
pesos; but not for a thousand or a hundred
2. where AMERICA is considered HEAVEN... and GOING THERE IS A
FULFILLMENT OF ONE'S LIFE LONG DREAMS!!!!
1. where everyone wants to leave the country!!!!!!
and it hurts to be true :mrgreen: :beaten:
THE PHILIPPINES IS.................
50. where the most happening places is not where the party is, instead
it's where the gang wars happen, where naked women strip and where the
people overthrow a president.
49. where even Doctors, Lawyers and Engineers are unemployed.
48. where every family has its own drama story..
47. where mountains like Makiling and Banahaw are considered as holy
places.
46. where everything can be forged.
45. where the school is considered the second home and the mall
considered as third.
44. where Starbucks coffee is more expensive than gas.
43. where every street has a basketball court and every town only has
one public school.
42. where all kinds of animals are edible?????
41. where people speak all kinds of languages and still call it
Tagalog.
40. where students pay more money than they will earn afterwards.
39. where Call Center employees earn more money than teachers and
nurses
38. where driving 4kms can take as much as 4 hours.
37. where flyovers bring you from the freeway to the side streets.
36. where the tourist spots is where Filipinos cannot afford to go.
35. where the personal computer is mainly used for games and
friendster.
34. where most 13-year-olds are alcoholic.
33. where colonial mentality is dishonestly denied!
32. where 4am is not considered bed time yet.
31. where PEOPLE CAN PAY TO DEFY THE LAW!!!!
30. where everything is spoofed?
29. where even the poverty stricken get to wear Ralph Lauren and Tommy
Hilfiger (sobrang peke naman ng itsura)
28. where honking of car horns i s a way of life.
27. where being called a bum is never offensive.
26. where flood waters take up more than 90 percent of the streets
during the rainy season.
25. where everyone has a relative abroad who keeps them alive.
24. where crossing the street involves running for your dear life.
(EDSA!EDSA!)
23. where wearing your national colors make you "baduy"
22. where billiards is a sport, and darts is a bar game.
21. where even the poverty stricken have the latest cellphones. (nakaw
kasi eh)
20. where insurance does not work.
19. where water can only be classified as tap and dirty... clean water
is for sale (35pesos/gallon) - 40 pesos na po un iba 3 for 100!
18. where the church governs the people and where the government makes
the people pray for miracles. (AMEN TO THAT)
17. where University of the Philippines is where all the weird people
go. Ateneo is where all the nerds go. La Salle is where all the chinese
go. College of Saint Benilde is where all the stupid chinese go...
16. where (most people think that) fastfood is a diet meal
15. where traffic signs are merely suggestions not regulations
14. where all the trees in the city are below 6 ft.
13. where being held up is normal, it happens to everyone..
12. where kids dream of becoming pilots, doctors and basketball
players.
11. where rodents are normal house pets.
10. where the definition of traffic is the 'non-movement' of vehicles.
9. where the fighter planes of the 1940's are used for military
engagements and the new fighter planes are displayed in museums.
8. where being an hour late is still considered as punctual.
7. where cigarettes and alcohol are a necessity, and where the lottery
is a commodity.
6. where soap operas tell the realities of life and where the news
provides the drama.
5. where every foreigner is American & is addressed JOE!!!!
4. where actors make the rules and where politicians provide the
entertainment (kung gusto mo mapikon, watch the news)
3. where people can get away with stealing billions and trillions of
pesos; but not for a thousand or a hundred
2. where AMERICA is considered HEAVEN... and GOING THERE IS A
FULFILLMENT OF ONE'S LIFE LONG DREAMS!!!!
1. where everyone wants to leave the country!!!!!!
Thats pretty funny, kinda like the top ten of david letterman. :hehe:
reality bites :notell: ...... ouch!! :hehe:
Mr.ChoyBoi wrote:Thats pretty funny, kinda like the top ten of david letterman. :hehe:
hehehe, I like jay leno better :hehe: :hehe:
I like jay leno's headlines, now that is funny stuff... :hehe:
Mr.ChoyBoi wrote:I like jay leno's headlines, now that is funny stuff... :hehe:
yup, and he also has really funny people doing those weird antics on the streets, lol
eltinator wrote:
hehehe, I like jay leno better :hehe: :hehe:
i like the old guy rather than the chin guy :beaten: :mrgreen:
ehh, Letterman's humor is more intelligent and acerbic, IMO. I think Leno's humor is more dumb/stand-up kinda humor. I'm glad he's finally stepping down from the job as Tonight Show host, but then they said not until 2009 or so, lol. I was like, well, thanks for the advanced notice then. Yeah, you're stepping down...in FIVE years! And I don't understand why they won't give the position to Letterman, I mean that's the only job the guy has wanted for his whole life and yet they refuse to give him the job, don't understand why, he's a way better and more entertaining host than Conan O'Brian. I just don't like his show or him that much for some reason. The only late night show I'll actually watch, if at all, is the Late show.
eltinator wrote:
yup, and he also has really funny people doing those weird antics on the streets, lol
Or jaywalking, thats funny how people dont know the common stuff we learn in school... :hehe:
Mr.ChoyBoi wrote:
Or jaywalking, thats funny how people dont know the common stuff we learn in school... :hehe:
yea, but some of that is probably staged. I mean, how can someone really be that dumb right
I always wonder, we have a show down here called "street smarts" and its the same exact thing. I never bother to watch that stuff cause it looks too fake for me.
this is quite long but good:
Here's something to be proud about: A Pinoy wiz kid made history graduating
at only 19 years old, the youngest graduate ever in Harvard Law School,
receiving the J.D. magna cum laude along with the Brudney Prize for his
thesis on shareholder voting in corporate law.
After graduating from eighth grade, he skipped high school and at only 13
years old, he ventured to take up his undergraduate course. In a matter of
two years, he earned his bachelor of science in computer science and
mathematics, and graduated summa cum laude.
As a budding lawyer, he says, "In the end, I think we must hang our hopes
for peaceful coexistence on the power of ideas to convince; of ideals in
thought to inspire and in practice to prove themselves true. Along the
way, however, we must not forget that there are things worth fighting
for..."
----------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from K.A.D. Camara's website:
At the age of 19, this June 2004, Kiwi Alejandro Danao Camara made history
by becoming the youngest graduate in the history of the Harvard Law School,
receiving the J.D. magna cum laude along with the Brudney Prize for his
thesis on shareholder voting in corporate law.
Camara was born in Manila and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and Honolulu,
Hawaii. He attended the Punahou School through the eighth grade. At
thirteen he left to begin his undergraduate work in computer science and
mathematics, receiving the bachelor of science summa cum laude two years
later. While in college, he also received the Jose Rizal Certificate of
Achievement from the Republic of the Philippines.
In 2001, he enrolled at the Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Camara
continued his involvement in student government, serving in his last year
as Chairman of the Student Affairs Committee of the Harvard Graduate
Council, the student government for Harvard¹s 10 graduate schools. He also
competed for and served on the executive board of the Harvard-Radcliffe
Ballroom Dance Team, and was a member of the Federalist Society. In his
first year, he and a group of classmates received the Dean Clark Memorial
Prize in Civil Procedure for their musical rendition of Burnham v. Superior
Court. Later, he was appointed to the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law &
Economics, to a Fellowship in the Program on Corporate Governance, and to a
Think Tank Fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The following is a question and answer interview with Camara.
HFC: What were some of the challenges you encountered at Harvard Law
School?
CAMARA: The snow.
HFC: What tips can you give to students attending an Ivy League school?
CAMARA: Four tips:
First, get to know the people. My best memories of law school involve
having dinner with my colleagues. More than once, we would spend the night
debating some point of law, politics or current events outside the law
library until sunrise. You will find that the people you meet bring to the
table not only great intelligence, but also a wonderful diversity of
interests and backgrounds. My law school class alone, for example,
contained students with doctorates in fields ranging from chemistry to
economics; former speechwriters and staff members to senators and attorneys
general; and former Army rangers.
Second, take advantage of the resources of the university outside your own
field. I studied computer science as an undergraduate, and enjoyed the
opportunity to keep up by going to talks and seminars at Harvard's
department of engineering and applied sciences. My interest in law and
economics was encouraged by sitting in on seminars at the economics and
philosophy departments. It is important for anyone, but particularly for a
lawyer, to become conversant in the languages of neighboring disciplines.
(And, of course, it is great fun.)
Third, reach out to the faculty. Most of them are quite eager to interact
with students, and conversations with them will be among the most
enlightening of your adventure on the east coast. While I was there, the
law school faculty alone included, besides leaders in their academic
fields, two of our finest constitutional law advocates, the Watergate
special prosecutor, a former solicitor general, a former deputy attorney
general, a former White House counsel, and a former partner at the famous
mergers and acquisitions firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Fourth, defend your ideas. You will find that there is great pressure from
some of your colleagues to conform to certain ideas about what is true and
what is just. Because of the immediate practical impact of what lawyers
do, this pressure is particularly strong at the law school. I am convinced
that you will find your time at university more enriching if, however
unpopular your ideas may be, and whatever may be the personal or
professional costs of dissent, you never yield your commitment to truth in
the face of a heckler¹s veto. You will find it remarkable how many of the
ideas your colleagues hold to and defend over dinner they will not raise in
the classroom for fear, justified or not, that the response will be hisses,
smear campaigns and slander rather than honest, academic debate.
HFC: Were you the only Filipino and/or Asian attending Harvard Law School?
CAMARA: Not at all. Harvard Law School has a fine masters in law program
designed for foreign qualified lawyers. Several graduates of the
University of the Philippines law school earned that degree while I was at
Harvard.
Among the candidates for the doctorate in law admitted in 2003, 15%
identify themselves as Asian. That makes Asians the largest minority
population at the law school. Within the university, there exists both an
active Filipino Club and an active Hawaii Club.
HFC: What have you found to be the greatest flaw in the legal system and
what do you appreciate most about it?
CAMARA: One doesn¹t need law school to conclude that when the legal system
goes wrong, the problem can generally be traced to lawyers. There is a
sense, shared by lawyers and laymen, that what we do is an essentially
technical exercise; that law is engineering without the math or surgery
minus the blood. That is the greatest flaw in our legal system. The law
gives us tools, but cannot tell us how to use them. For our ends we must
turn elsewhere: to theology or moral philosophy. Failing to find our ends
in the law, we lawyers must take responsibility for those ends to which we
put the law to work. We would do better, I think, if we did more to breed
a bar of wise counselors and crusaders for causes than one of tiresome
technicians more akin to Bartleby the Scrivener than to his employer. Or
as Elle Woods put it in the movie Legally Blonde, the law must be reason
moved by passion.
James Harrington wrote of "the empire of laws and not of men." John Adams
took that phrase and wrote it into Article XXX of the Massachusetts
Constitution: "a government of laws and not of men." The great glory of
law is that it has convinced us to submit to it so many of our most
strongly felt disputes for resolution, not by force of arms or majority
vote, but by the calm exercise of reason. It is the duty of lawyers to
ensure that the reason of the law remains worthy of that trust.
HFC: Who do you think is/was the greatest legal mind that influenced the
American jurisprudence system? Why?
CAMARA: In the breadth of their impact, two men come to mind. First, Sir
William Blackstone, professor of law in Oxford University and author of
Commentaries on the Common Laws of England. Blackstone's Commentaries,
published in 1765, were for many years the authoritative text for American
lawyers learning the common law. Today, they remain a staple of first year
reading as the best statement of the English antecedents to our modern law.
Second, Justice Joseph Story who simultaneously served on the Supreme Court
of the United States and on the faculty of the Harvard Law School while
publishing a set of treatises ranging from private international law to
constitutional law. (Story also wrote the opinion in
the Amistad case, which was made into a movie some years ago.)
HFC: Why did you decide to go to law school? And how do you intend to make
an impact in the legal profession? What are your future career plans?
CAMARA: As an undergraduate, I took a course in constitutional law from
Professor Sandy Muir, who was then visiting from Berkeley. It was that
course, combined with a bit of reading (especially Ronald Dworkin and Karl
Llewellyn) that attracted me to the study of law and of social institutions
more broadly. I have found that beginning to read in a field and not
wanting to stop is a very good sign that it is worth studying.
I will be serving next year as a law clerk for a judge on the United States
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (the court of appeals for the
southwestern states). Eventually, I hope to become a law professor. If
all else fails, of course, I can always practice law.
HFC: You're obviously gifted having skipped high school and now graduating
magna cum laude at Harvard Law School at such a young age. It¹s
interesting to get the perspective of a great mind on some of humanity¹s
universal challenges. Can you answer the following:
a. Dr. Victor Frankel, a Jewish physician and Nazi camp survivor said
man¹s pursuit is to find meaning in his life. Man can endure any hardship
or suffering if he finds meaning in it, he said. Another Jewish scholar
said that the purpose of life is to make true soul connections with others.
What do you think is the purpose of life?
CAMARA: We say something is good when it fulfills its purpose. A
bookshelf¹s purpose is to hold books, and it's a good bookshelf to the
extent it holds books well. There isn¹t much intuitive traction, at least
for me, on the question what is the purpose of life. It's easier to think
of what makes a life good. We do that best, I think, when we take our
intuitions about good lives (keep promises, be honest, don't steal, defend
liberty) and work out where they lead, balancing them one against another
as they come into conflict, until eventually we come to a more or less
stable system
. We can then use our observation about bookshelves to work backward to
the purpose of life: if we observe lots of good bookshelves and we see that
what they have in common is that they hold books well, that is some
evidence for the proposition that the purpose of bookshelves is to hold
books. The purpose of life is to live a good one; that is, to live a life
that passes muster under our moral judgment (our goodness-o-meter)
operating in reflective equilibrium.
b. Throughout history, power, resources and politics have been the
roots of conflict and war. Is a peaceful coexistence realistically
possible?
CAMARA: Peaceful coexistence is difficult to obtain because men have the
nasty habit of believing that there are things worth fighting for.
Sometimes those things are power, wealth or privilege; but I think more
often they are ideas. The same men who would surrender their wallets to an
armed robber can be stirred to give their lives in the defense of such
ghostly dreams as freedom, self government, and the love of fellows.
We see in the modern world a growing convergence of ideals: toward
democracy, toward constitutionalism, toward capitalism. That is a sign of
our steady approach to peace, or at least to the possibility of peace. In
the end, I think we must hang our hopes for peaceful coexistence on the
power of ideas to convince; of ideals in thought to inspire and in practice
to prove themselves true. Along the way, however, we must not forget that
there are things worth fighting for; and we must not become so caught up in
our search for peace that we hand over not only our wallets, but our
dignity, to the robber in the night.
c. Some say the only thing that is absolute is change itself, which
is a paradox. The cornerstone of all religion, spirituality, or even love
relationships is finding and sustaining this concept of absolutes (or
guarantees) in a chaotic and ever-changing world. How can we successfully
marry this conflict which is perhaps the greatest obstacle to inner peace?
German scholar Eckhart Tolle believes that we can do it by staying in the
present. A postmodern perspective is to celebrate and accept all that is
good and bad in the same way. How do you think we can achieve inner peace?
CAMARA: Let's stick to the German theme. At the end of the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant tells us that, "Happiness, taken by itself, is, for our
reason, far from being the complete good. Reason does not approve
happiness (however inclination may desire it) except in so far as it is
united with worthiness to be happy, that is, with moral conduct." I think
inner peace is what we achieve when we are worthy of happiness. In an
imperfect world, worthiness of happiness doesn¹t necessarily lead there;
but that¹s exactly what we mean when we qualify peace with inner.
Both of your two answer choices take the approach of going with the flow,
of achieving inner peace by giving up the search for the absolute. I
prefer to go with Kant and to challenge the premise. In the exercise of
our reason, we free ourselves from the ever-changing world. We cannot
control the consequences of our morality, but we can control our morality:
on that much, at least, we can insist absolutely. Even if the world denies
us happiness, we can make ourselves worthy of it. In so doing, we achieve
inner peace.
Here's something to be proud about: A Pinoy wiz kid made history graduating
at only 19 years old, the youngest graduate ever in Harvard Law School,
receiving the J.D. magna cum laude along with the Brudney Prize for his
thesis on shareholder voting in corporate law.
After graduating from eighth grade, he skipped high school and at only 13
years old, he ventured to take up his undergraduate course. In a matter of
two years, he earned his bachelor of science in computer science and
mathematics, and graduated summa cum laude.
As a budding lawyer, he says, "In the end, I think we must hang our hopes
for peaceful coexistence on the power of ideas to convince; of ideals in
thought to inspire and in practice to prove themselves true. Along the
way, however, we must not forget that there are things worth fighting
for..."
----------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from K.A.D. Camara's website:
At the age of 19, this June 2004, Kiwi Alejandro Danao Camara made history
by becoming the youngest graduate in the history of the Harvard Law School,
receiving the J.D. magna cum laude along with the Brudney Prize for his
thesis on shareholder voting in corporate law.
Camara was born in Manila and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and Honolulu,
Hawaii. He attended the Punahou School through the eighth grade. At
thirteen he left to begin his undergraduate work in computer science and
mathematics, receiving the bachelor of science summa cum laude two years
later. While in college, he also received the Jose Rizal Certificate of
Achievement from the Republic of the Philippines.
In 2001, he enrolled at the Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Camara
continued his involvement in student government, serving in his last year
as Chairman of the Student Affairs Committee of the Harvard Graduate
Council, the student government for Harvard¹s 10 graduate schools. He also
competed for and served on the executive board of the Harvard-Radcliffe
Ballroom Dance Team, and was a member of the Federalist Society. In his
first year, he and a group of classmates received the Dean Clark Memorial
Prize in Civil Procedure for their musical rendition of Burnham v. Superior
Court. Later, he was appointed to the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law &
Economics, to a Fellowship in the Program on Corporate Governance, and to a
Think Tank Fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The following is a question and answer interview with Camara.
HFC: What were some of the challenges you encountered at Harvard Law
School?
CAMARA: The snow.
HFC: What tips can you give to students attending an Ivy League school?
CAMARA: Four tips:
First, get to know the people. My best memories of law school involve
having dinner with my colleagues. More than once, we would spend the night
debating some point of law, politics or current events outside the law
library until sunrise. You will find that the people you meet bring to the
table not only great intelligence, but also a wonderful diversity of
interests and backgrounds. My law school class alone, for example,
contained students with doctorates in fields ranging from chemistry to
economics; former speechwriters and staff members to senators and attorneys
general; and former Army rangers.
Second, take advantage of the resources of the university outside your own
field. I studied computer science as an undergraduate, and enjoyed the
opportunity to keep up by going to talks and seminars at Harvard's
department of engineering and applied sciences. My interest in law and
economics was encouraged by sitting in on seminars at the economics and
philosophy departments. It is important for anyone, but particularly for a
lawyer, to become conversant in the languages of neighboring disciplines.
(And, of course, it is great fun.)
Third, reach out to the faculty. Most of them are quite eager to interact
with students, and conversations with them will be among the most
enlightening of your adventure on the east coast. While I was there, the
law school faculty alone included, besides leaders in their academic
fields, two of our finest constitutional law advocates, the Watergate
special prosecutor, a former solicitor general, a former deputy attorney
general, a former White House counsel, and a former partner at the famous
mergers and acquisitions firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Fourth, defend your ideas. You will find that there is great pressure from
some of your colleagues to conform to certain ideas about what is true and
what is just. Because of the immediate practical impact of what lawyers
do, this pressure is particularly strong at the law school. I am convinced
that you will find your time at university more enriching if, however
unpopular your ideas may be, and whatever may be the personal or
professional costs of dissent, you never yield your commitment to truth in
the face of a heckler¹s veto. You will find it remarkable how many of the
ideas your colleagues hold to and defend over dinner they will not raise in
the classroom for fear, justified or not, that the response will be hisses,
smear campaigns and slander rather than honest, academic debate.
HFC: Were you the only Filipino and/or Asian attending Harvard Law School?
CAMARA: Not at all. Harvard Law School has a fine masters in law program
designed for foreign qualified lawyers. Several graduates of the
University of the Philippines law school earned that degree while I was at
Harvard.
Among the candidates for the doctorate in law admitted in 2003, 15%
identify themselves as Asian. That makes Asians the largest minority
population at the law school. Within the university, there exists both an
active Filipino Club and an active Hawaii Club.
HFC: What have you found to be the greatest flaw in the legal system and
what do you appreciate most about it?
CAMARA: One doesn¹t need law school to conclude that when the legal system
goes wrong, the problem can generally be traced to lawyers. There is a
sense, shared by lawyers and laymen, that what we do is an essentially
technical exercise; that law is engineering without the math or surgery
minus the blood. That is the greatest flaw in our legal system. The law
gives us tools, but cannot tell us how to use them. For our ends we must
turn elsewhere: to theology or moral philosophy. Failing to find our ends
in the law, we lawyers must take responsibility for those ends to which we
put the law to work. We would do better, I think, if we did more to breed
a bar of wise counselors and crusaders for causes than one of tiresome
technicians more akin to Bartleby the Scrivener than to his employer. Or
as Elle Woods put it in the movie Legally Blonde, the law must be reason
moved by passion.
James Harrington wrote of "the empire of laws and not of men." John Adams
took that phrase and wrote it into Article XXX of the Massachusetts
Constitution: "a government of laws and not of men." The great glory of
law is that it has convinced us to submit to it so many of our most
strongly felt disputes for resolution, not by force of arms or majority
vote, but by the calm exercise of reason. It is the duty of lawyers to
ensure that the reason of the law remains worthy of that trust.
HFC: Who do you think is/was the greatest legal mind that influenced the
American jurisprudence system? Why?
CAMARA: In the breadth of their impact, two men come to mind. First, Sir
William Blackstone, professor of law in Oxford University and author of
Commentaries on the Common Laws of England. Blackstone's Commentaries,
published in 1765, were for many years the authoritative text for American
lawyers learning the common law. Today, they remain a staple of first year
reading as the best statement of the English antecedents to our modern law.
Second, Justice Joseph Story who simultaneously served on the Supreme Court
of the United States and on the faculty of the Harvard Law School while
publishing a set of treatises ranging from private international law to
constitutional law. (Story also wrote the opinion in
the Amistad case, which was made into a movie some years ago.)
HFC: Why did you decide to go to law school? And how do you intend to make
an impact in the legal profession? What are your future career plans?
CAMARA: As an undergraduate, I took a course in constitutional law from
Professor Sandy Muir, who was then visiting from Berkeley. It was that
course, combined with a bit of reading (especially Ronald Dworkin and Karl
Llewellyn) that attracted me to the study of law and of social institutions
more broadly. I have found that beginning to read in a field and not
wanting to stop is a very good sign that it is worth studying.
I will be serving next year as a law clerk for a judge on the United States
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (the court of appeals for the
southwestern states). Eventually, I hope to become a law professor. If
all else fails, of course, I can always practice law.
HFC: You're obviously gifted having skipped high school and now graduating
magna cum laude at Harvard Law School at such a young age. It¹s
interesting to get the perspective of a great mind on some of humanity¹s
universal challenges. Can you answer the following:
a. Dr. Victor Frankel, a Jewish physician and Nazi camp survivor said
man¹s pursuit is to find meaning in his life. Man can endure any hardship
or suffering if he finds meaning in it, he said. Another Jewish scholar
said that the purpose of life is to make true soul connections with others.
What do you think is the purpose of life?
CAMARA: We say something is good when it fulfills its purpose. A
bookshelf¹s purpose is to hold books, and it's a good bookshelf to the
extent it holds books well. There isn¹t much intuitive traction, at least
for me, on the question what is the purpose of life. It's easier to think
of what makes a life good. We do that best, I think, when we take our
intuitions about good lives (keep promises, be honest, don't steal, defend
liberty) and work out where they lead, balancing them one against another
as they come into conflict, until eventually we come to a more or less
stable system
. We can then use our observation about bookshelves to work backward to
the purpose of life: if we observe lots of good bookshelves and we see that
what they have in common is that they hold books well, that is some
evidence for the proposition that the purpose of bookshelves is to hold
books. The purpose of life is to live a good one; that is, to live a life
that passes muster under our moral judgment (our goodness-o-meter)
operating in reflective equilibrium.
b. Throughout history, power, resources and politics have been the
roots of conflict and war. Is a peaceful coexistence realistically
possible?
CAMARA: Peaceful coexistence is difficult to obtain because men have the
nasty habit of believing that there are things worth fighting for.
Sometimes those things are power, wealth or privilege; but I think more
often they are ideas. The same men who would surrender their wallets to an
armed robber can be stirred to give their lives in the defense of such
ghostly dreams as freedom, self government, and the love of fellows.
We see in the modern world a growing convergence of ideals: toward
democracy, toward constitutionalism, toward capitalism. That is a sign of
our steady approach to peace, or at least to the possibility of peace. In
the end, I think we must hang our hopes for peaceful coexistence on the
power of ideas to convince; of ideals in thought to inspire and in practice
to prove themselves true. Along the way, however, we must not forget that
there are things worth fighting for; and we must not become so caught up in
our search for peace that we hand over not only our wallets, but our
dignity, to the robber in the night.
c. Some say the only thing that is absolute is change itself, which
is a paradox. The cornerstone of all religion, spirituality, or even love
relationships is finding and sustaining this concept of absolutes (or
guarantees) in a chaotic and ever-changing world. How can we successfully
marry this conflict which is perhaps the greatest obstacle to inner peace?
German scholar Eckhart Tolle believes that we can do it by staying in the
present. A postmodern perspective is to celebrate and accept all that is
good and bad in the same way. How do you think we can achieve inner peace?
CAMARA: Let's stick to the German theme. At the end of the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant tells us that, "Happiness, taken by itself, is, for our
reason, far from being the complete good. Reason does not approve
happiness (however inclination may desire it) except in so far as it is
united with worthiness to be happy, that is, with moral conduct." I think
inner peace is what we achieve when we are worthy of happiness. In an
imperfect world, worthiness of happiness doesn¹t necessarily lead there;
but that¹s exactly what we mean when we qualify peace with inner.
Both of your two answer choices take the approach of going with the flow,
of achieving inner peace by giving up the search for the absolute. I
prefer to go with Kant and to challenge the premise. In the exercise of
our reason, we free ourselves from the ever-changing world. We cannot
control the consequences of our morality, but we can control our morality:
on that much, at least, we can insist absolutely. Even if the world denies
us happiness, we can make ourselves worthy of it. In so doing, we achieve
inner peace.
arg, school sux
exams start, and havnt studied for maths waaaa
mm i wish i was really smart and knew all their course work without having to study? lol
wish me luck for exams!!!! :sweat:
when are other peeps exams?
exams start, and havnt studied for maths waaaa
mm i wish i was really smart and knew all their course work without having to study? lol
wish me luck for exams!!!! :sweat:
when are other peeps exams?
Not me!! I've passed that long time ago. No exams for me!!! :mrgreen:
ehh. you shouldnt post long entries like that bec. no one will read it
good luck jax!!
my final is around the corner too
:sweat:
lotsa assignments need to be submitted next week also presentations
haizz....
me tensed.... :bleh:
my final is around the corner too
:sweat:
lotsa assignments need to be submitted next week also presentations
haizz....
me tensed.... :bleh:
hehe goodluck, i hate math :beaten:
i luv maths :woot:
:sweat:
I think this thread should be merged with got something to tell thread..because it's quite similar..I mean talking randomly.
I think this thread should be merged with got something to tell thread..because it's quite similar..I mean talking randomly.
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