New ADR Blog – The HealthCare Neutral ADR Blog

Following Vickie Pynchon’s lead, I’d like to welcome Mr. Richard Webb of The HealthCare Neutral ADR Blog to our merry band of ADR Bloggers. Mr. Webb writes that he will “blog at the intersection of ADR and healthcare law.” In the 10 days or so of his nascent blog, Mr. Webb has already posted quite a bit of useful information, including a series of posts entitled “Why ADR Works in Healthcare.”

Welcome and best of luck!

Judging The ABA Law Student Negotiation Competition

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to judge Region 4 of the ABA Law Student Negotiation Competition, which included law students from Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Puerto Rico. This was my first time participating in one of these events. As I never participated in Moot Court, Mock Trial or any of the other competitions they had when I was in law school, I was unsure what to expect. Suffice it say I was duly impressed with the entire operation.

Click Read On for more…..

Random Thought Friday

I’ve had a weird week and frankly, am not in a mood to post a Friday funny. But I thought I’d drop some randomness on you.

First, tomorrow I am judging the ABA Law Student Division Negotiation Competition. I’ve never participated in an event like this before (as a competitor or judge), so this will be an interesting experience. I’ll blog about it Monday-ish.

Second, I came home yesterday evening to find this guy sitting on my back deck:

Yes, its a bad picture. The wife took the digital camera, so all I had was the lousy cell phone.

He was friendly, playful and absolutely sad and pathetic. He tore through the dog food I gave him like he hadn’t eaten in days. Unfortunately, I am in no position to keep him, so I had to take him to the local animal control shelter. He’ll have his picture put on the internet and his owners (if any) will have 10 days to claim him. After that, he’s up for adoption. Thankfully, the County outsourced the opertaion of the shelter to a private rescue group, so I think he’ll have a good chance to find a good home.

Tertiarally, what is happening to this society when people feel the need to ask permission to perform a practical joke? Has the politics of fear made us all that jumpy? Mr. Kirk Kolenbrander, vice president of the Stick in the Mud Department at MIT says of a famous MIT hoax where the elevators in one building were reprogrammed to stop on random floors:

“That’s clever, but at the same time our society today would say that there are real safety issues if that elevator is needed in an emergency,” says Mr. Kolenbrander. “Our world has a different patience for those issues than it once did.”

I guess if that happened now, people would think it was the work of Al Qaeda. I have one thing to say to Mr. Kolenbrander – Didn’t you listen when you were a kid? You don’t use an elevator in a real emergency. Sheesh. Lighten up, pal.