Hi there.

Okay, here goes.

I've tumbled into the blogosphere recently, as so many people do. I decided I'd write a bit of my own, even if no one else reads it. I'm using Movable Type, for a few reasons:

1. I wanted to have all of the software within my control -- on my computer or on the server within my home directory structure. As far as I could tell without testing it, that ruled out Blogger.
2. I'm unemployed, so I don't have $40 to drop on software. That rules out Radio.
3. I like Perl, though I'm not very adept with it. With MT I don't really have to be. I will go nowhere near ASP.
4. I like to think I know what I'm doing with web design even though in reality I don't. Maybe I'll learn something along the way.

I mused about titles for a while. There are a lot of clever titles out there among "blawgs," and blogs in general, but most phrases that came into my head that I thought fit with my personality were taken. I thought about taking some ideas from my study of philosophy, but I thought that might come off as too high-brow.

The title I've tentatively chosen is from something that the professor who taught my Constitutional Law and Regulated Industries courses said. There's a saying in law school that a lot of us went to law school because we couldn't hack the math and scientific study that it would take to become a medical doctor. (I think that's off the mark, but that's not the point -- the point is that it's a saying that goes around.) My professor jokingly described law school as "math class for poets." Because I heard the quote second-hand, I'm not sure of the context, but I'm pretty sure that he was putting those words in someone else's mouth.

I actually like the phrase because the law requires rigorous reasoned thinking, but it also requires that we struggle with the question of what we intend laws to accomplish. To the extent that we wrestle with this question, we are mucking about in the "poetic" side of law, the real-life impact of the rules we make and apply.

I'll stop now lest I ramble on forever. I'll write more about this theme and more as time goes on.