I had a dream in which I was at the Supreme Court eating pizza with Justice
Ginsburg in a conference room where the Court was about to hear a lawsuit
I'd brought against the National
Merit Scholarship Corporation. (People
who knew me well in high school will know why I might have wanted to
sue them, or at least had a dream about it, in real life, but
in this dream there was an added affirmative action piece because they were
giving out scholarships they called "merit" scholarships to people who
had lower test scores than mine on account of their membership in certain
minority groups.)
I was telling Justice Ginsburg about how I used to have a long beard, and
how some people might have discriminated against me because of that, but, I
said, "I trimmed it in order to appear before this Court".
My argument was that a scholarship which was awarded based on racial
groups couldn't be called a "merit" scholarship, and I wanted the Court
to say either that NMSC had to give the scholarships based only on test
scores or grades, or that NMSC had to change the scholarships' name.
(This dream had no connection to my real-life dispute with NMSC, and I
don't have any idea about whether the real-life NMSC does anything on
racial grounds or not.)
My lawyer came in and asked me whether I wanted to sit next to him, and
then I realized that this was a polite way of telling me to sit
next to him. He started to talk to Ginsburg about how the case was about how
NMSC would divide up a pizza, and I worried that the fact that I'd already
eaten some of the pizza there would make the other Justices think
unfavorably of me, even though Ginsburg hadn't seemed to mind that I was
sharing it with her. It wasn't obvious whether the pizza was there as a
snack or as an exhibit.
I woke up before the Court heard my lawyer's arguments.
If you run your desktop computer on the floor with the case open,
DON'T accidentally drop pennies off the desk onto the motherboard.
Unnoticed pennies resting on your computer's motherboard may cause
erratic operation.
After much delay, I went off to Berkeley, and visited with Michelle, who
was cleaning. This was fun; we had a very late lunch at a Japanese
restaurant, so late that I got asked whether I realized that what I was
ordering was a lunch special, not a dinner special. I hadn't even
realized that anybody would consider it dinnertime.
I think the exercise ball is probably helping my hands, because they've
been doing a bit better for most of the past day or two, and I've been
pretty scrupulous about using exercise balls recently. Maybe I can try
other various exercises.
Michelle's cousin is apparently a fan of "Biologically Impossible". Maybe
I can get her to send some fan mail to
Peter Peterson.
I borrowed a Ray Lynch CD, "Best of Ray Lynch", from Andy; it has a
remix of "Celestial Soda Pop", along with the original. Interesting.
Berkeley Bowl closes early on Sundays. Berkeley bookstores still have
interesting stuff I want to buy. I need to get a job. Multiplication
is still commutative.
It seems that my mom's presentation in Wales went really well, and also
the international Virginia Woolf conference for 2003 will be held at
Smith. Cool! I'm sure my mom will
be active in putting the conference together.
It's interesting to see that The Wind Done Gone made it into
Cody's: that was awfully quick, considering the ongoing legal battles.
They also have other things of interest, and they're going to have a
reading for Not in Front of the Children, which promises to
be a major rallying work for free speech and youth rights advocates.
I read more of the Feynman Lectures; I finished the Six
Easy Pieces on paper, not understanding much of the relativity
material which rounds out the book.
Various other things are going on.
