Happy birthday, William Shakespeare!

[Picture: the Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare.] Today is the day traditionally observed as Shakespeare's birthday. See this Wikipedia article for an overview of Shakespeare's life and work. Generally considered to be the greatest writer in the English language, and one of the greatest writers in world literature. A collection of his works may be found online here. Shakespeare, interestingly enough, isn't simply revered by English teachers, his works have found a warm home in Germany, where his plays are widely translated and he is affectionately referred to as "unser Wilhelm" ("our William").

Justice Thomas discusses the role of faith in his work as a Supreme Court justice

There's an interesting post over at the Religion Clause law blog about a talk that Justice Thomas gave recently where he discussed the role of his religion in his profesional work on the Court. Here's a link to the story: Justice Thomas On Religion and His Court Duties. For what it's worth, I think that Thomas is absolutely right when it comes to the role of faith in the life of a judge.

A.N. Wilson on his return to the Christian faith

Read about it here. Wilson was a well-regarding up and coming Christian writer when he abandoned Chrsitianity twenty years ago. He wrote a very influential book providing an atheist view of Jesus, and a less well-regarded biography of C.S. Lewis. Well, Wilson has slowly returned to the Christian faith. His whole brief story is well worth reading, but I found this passage particularly interesting:

For a few years, I resisted the admission that my atheist-conversion experience had been a bit of middle-aged madness. I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off Thought for the Day when it comes on the radio. I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief “don’t matter”, that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return. When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.

NYT op-ed: time to change the legal profession

Here it is. This is very much well worth reading. The legal profession at almost all levels has been moving in an unsustainable direction for a long time -- it's a bubble, just like every other bubble. The tuition charged by law schools is outrageous, the work-load for young associates is brutal, and the hourly rate for billing is for most legal matters excessive. Is any lawyer -- even a talented New York City big firm lawyer -- worth $1,000 an hour? I have a hard time believing so. If the economic downturn gets people within the profession to shift their paradigms, that will be a very good thing. But law is a small "c" conserative profession, and I am afraid that much more pain will have to come before people are really open to changing the profession for the better.