How could I have missed this article from Bloomberg news in March (also reprinted here in Private Wealth magazine)? The Gladiator School of Rome offers the perfect team-building experience:
Gruppo Storico Romano, historically located on the Via Appia Antica near the spot where Kirk Douglas found himself crucified in Stanley Kubrick’s film “Spartacus,” also offers customers a fully equipped Roman Legion, including catapults, battering rams and a complete line of siege towers. They’ve done battle-for-pay in Shanghai and Hong Kong and are scheduled to march north on Bulgaria this summer. * * * Gladiator training remains the company’s core business. A 2-hour lesson with padded wood swords for kids costs 20 euros ($28). Adults pay 30 euros and the pain is real. For anyone who would like to get a feel for this at the office, duct-tape 40 pounds of cast-iron skillets to your body and run while a co- worker in culottes tries to skewer you with an array of giant shish-kebab sticks strapped to a rod of rebar.
If, after two hours of this, you find that you’re enjoying yourself, it’s time to sign up for professional certification, a 40-hour seminar in Ancient Roman history and combat, along with 3 years of further intensive training in spears, pikes and axes. Everybody enjoys the fortifying lunch of jug wine and pasta shells stuffed with sheep intestines served at a nearby catacomb.
Nero’s luxury gladiator course runs 500 euros and takes place amid roaring marble lions and prancing bronze unicorns in the aromatic garden at the Rome Cavalieri Hilton. The hotel’s scampi carpaccio is excellent, its cellar offers a rare 1958 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo ....
I don't think my Dean would go for it for the next faculty off-site, but to get out some frustrations, the pikes and axes do have a certain attraction. I'll mention it anyway.
image source here
I just returned from the SEALS conference which was great and I wish I could have stayed longer. And I wanted to share this sign from the conference hotel.
I was wondering what you're supposed to do if you don't have a bicycle to walk with. Do they escort you from the property for failing to walk with a bicycle?
Hmm . . . whether to blog about the Greek debt rollover or alcohol and television? . . . Alcohol and television win for the moment. Who knew that a Google search for “red cocktails” would turn up dozens of hits, including an entire Food & Wine slide show, that includes the Sherry Cocktail (above right?)?
Why, you might ask, would someone need such information? HEL-LO! The True Blood season premiere was Sunday night, which required red, and festive, food and drink. I made the above-mentioned sherry cocktail and a very tasty Raspberry Smash from Bon Appétit. Photos of both are below.
A few thoughts on the show, sufficiently lacking in spoilers that I am not putting it below the fold. First, Jason’s biceps are even larger this season than last. And he’s not any smarter. Jason fans appear pleased.
Second, shape shifters are just boring. Even fairies are more interesting than shape shifters.
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Some time back, I posted ten tips on “How To Act Busy And Important.” Luckily, a university campus provides innumerable opportunities to observe people acting busy and important. So, during a rare moment when I wasn’t busy doing something important, I updated the list. Here is a new “top ten” list, incorporating a few items from the last list and adding some new tips on how to make sure you convey to others the full extent of your busyness and importance.
1. Pepper job candidates with questions about how their paper – on, for example, free speech in public schools – relates to your well-known theories (on limited liability companies). This is especially effective with entry levels.
2. Reviews of job candidates are an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your importance to colleagues. Give harshly negative reviews of all candidates who fail to cite your work, on the grounds that they don’t know the relevant background literature (See number one for guidance on what constitutes relevance.) Make sure to include citations to your scholarship for the benefit of the appointments committee. Better yet, send an SSRN link.
3. Similarly, give glowing written reviews of candidates who do cite your work. For example:
Ms. __ is the best candidate we have interviewed all year, either entry-level or lateral. We should certainly make her an offer as soon as possible. I was most impressed with her command of the existing literature. For example, she gives due prominence to my 1987 Harvard Law Review article on this topic.
4. Talk on one of those Bluetooth ear thingies for your cell phone at all times while in the building. The exception to this is faculty meetings or workshops, when it is acceptable not to talk on the phone, though you should continue to wear the earpiece. If anyone asks, say that you didn’t even notice – you spend so much time wearing it “for conference calls” that it’s like a part of your body.
5. Refer to research assistants as your “staff.” (Some may wish to use “my peeps” instead.) Make them bring you lattes -- decaf . . . skinny . . . low foam.
6. Refer all faculty workshop invitations to your agent.
7. Always use your mobile device to check and respond to email during small committee meetings with colleagues, but make sure to never reply to emails from members of that committee. (HT: David Levine).
8. In fact, never respond to emails from anyone. Use a permanent out-of-office reply telling recipients that you are giving endowed lectures in Europe. It doesn’t matter that said recipients may see you in the building later that day.
9. If you burp, sneeze, or say something important to the local media (like “fraud is bad”), make sure that your school’s website reports on each instance, thwarting attempts to highlight colleagues’ scholarly accomplishments.
10. Treat attempts to schedule committee meetings as an opportunity to demonstrate your many contributions to the institution. When prompted by the chair for a list of available meeting times, do the opposite: list every event on your calendar.
In both law and other disciplines, the subject of co-authoring gets a lot of attention. Who co-authors with whom and how many times? How many degrees of separation do people have from Cass Sunstein? How do we evaluate co-authored work for hiring and tenure purposes?
But there’s been less rumination, it seems, on the co-authoring relationship itself. In other words, scholarly collaborations are clearly relationships, but of what sort? It seems to me that there are a few possibilities:
1. The Marriage
Some co-authoring relationships are a lot like a marriage. Your co-authors really know you in a way that no one else does. They know your strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else. And there’s no hiding – if you don’t actually understand Priest-Klein or endogeneity, your co-author will figure that out over time. And, hopefully, love (or, at least, tolerate) you anyway.
Some of the classic co-author pairs within law might be characterized as a marriage, if by “marriage” we mean a relationship of some duration and success: Schwartz & Scott or Landes & Posner, for example. And what about Easterbrook & Fischel? Is that a marriage or a tumultuous – but highly productive – affair? (See Category 2)
Though the norm within law is that married partners retain their birth names, some adopt the family name upon marriage.
2. The Tumultuous Affair
At first, it’s all wonderful – no one, NO ONE, works as fast, is as smart, has the technical skills, matches the theoretical depth . . . whatever . . . of your new co-author. Every day is a joy, each small insight a breakthrough . . . until it isn’t anymore.
Not all relationships become marriages, of course. Some are more like affairs. Serious, at least at the time, they often create beautiful music together. But, for whatever reason, it doesn’t last. Don’t you re-read some of your favorite articles and wonder why they had to split up? Why they never reunited? Don’t you want a view of the cathedral after hell freezes over?
3. The One Night Stand
Yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But with the clarity of a new day, you realized that this just wasn’t going to work out – indeed, probably never should have started -- and made a hasty exit. Perhaps one of you considers two weeks more than enough time from insight to publication while the other is still turning her student note into a full-blown page-turner. Or you realize only after you begin working that what appeared a common ground is actually an insurmountable difference in world view: “oh, you meant to suggest that drastic power differentials between employer and employed were a system problem rather than a bargaining opportunity?” or “When you said empirical I thought you meant we would describe Justice Ginsburg’s views in six recent opinions.”
The reasons ultimately don’t matter. If both of you have good judgment and discipline, then you each figured this out independently on the flight home after the inebriated conference dinner that initially spawned this ill-conceived partnership. The less said about it the better and, hopefully, everyone moves on with egos unscathed and no sunk costs beyond an outline or précis. If everyone is not exhibiting her most adult-like behavior, then that planned multi-volume treatise or NSF proposal may have to become a 500-word op ed or a single-author piece accompanied by a response before being abandoned altogether.
Oh, and that “it’s not you, it’s me” speech never fooled anyone.
4. The Blind Date
Also known as the “Set-Up.” You have a friend who has a friend. Said friend thinks you’d work well together. If your friend has good judgment – meaning she has correctly pegged both you and her other friend as not crazy, undisciplined, or otherwise impossible to work with – then this could turn out to be a great Affair, or maybe even a Marriage. If not, it becomes another One Night Stand from which you must manage a gracious exit.
Of course, the odds are against you. Why are both of you still single and in need of a Set Up if you’re such great catches?
5. The Lone Warrior
Yes, you know who you are. You don’t need no stinkin’ co-authors. You can do it all by yourself. Mr. Solo Author Published Twice Last Year in the Yale Law Journal Guy.
Clever ideas – check. Clear writing ability – double check. Empirical skills – so friggin’ checked. A deep understanding of the theoretical foundations of the U.S. political and constitutional system – giant, shiny checks all over that.
Sure, sure. It’s discipline driven. Legal historians and philosophers don’t co-author, period. People in the sciences need 2900 co-authors because they’re just lame. And scaredy-cats.
You, by contrast, are forever a proud free agent.
Because life really is better than fiction. The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran Tim Pawlenty's announcement that he is running for President alongside obituaries in yesterday's paper. Not a good sign.
H/T The Blotter Blog
As if the UCC itself didn't provide a sufficient buzz, now comes ... UCC coffee!
(Hat tip to Bob Lawless at Credit Slips.)
No, not the heavy metal band.
A friend sent along yesterday the case of In re Gary Ronald Perez, 30 F.3d 1209 (9th Cir., 1994). An appeal from an order approving a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, the case is primarily interesting (at least to me) for this paragraph in Judge Zilly’s dissenting opinion:
I write also to disapprove of the sexist reference in the first sentence of Judge Kozinski's opinion. The term "iron maiden" refers to "a medieval instrument of torture fashioned as a box in the shape of a woman, large enough to hold a human being, and studded with sharp spikes on the inside." Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd Ed., Unabridged (1987). The use of the term unnecessarily perpetuates the misogynistic nomenclature of medieval torturers.
The first sentence of Judge Kozinski’s opinion reads: “In this appeal from an order approving a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, we confront the iron maiden of bankruptcy reorganizations--the dreaded cram-down.”
I will leave it to others with more expertise in either etymology, torture devices, feminist theory, or bankruptcy to opine whether the term “iron maiden” has misogynistic origins and whether Kozinski’s use of the phrase is sexist, though Zilly’s characterization of the device as medieval appears incorrect. Wikipedia (which, of course, is always reliable) and several other websites suggest that the iron maiden is actually of much more recent origin and that the “maiden” in question is likely the Virgin Mary. Either way, the exchange sure made my bankruptcy reading for the day more engaging.
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