Smart People Wait

While perusing the paper today I came across an interesting story. Apparently intelligence and self-control are related. Scientists have known this for some time but they have not known why, until now. Scientists at Yale University have discovered that the anterior prefrontal cortex is the only part of the brain to reflect the intelligence/self-control link. This part of the brain is one of the last to fully mature.

I can't help but want to know more, as I have been known to display superhuman self-control. Not least when it comes to free things...

It's not all bad news

While flicking through yesterday's copy of the Globe and Mail I read an interesting tidbit. There is a lot of talk at the moment of recession but recessions are not all bad. Apparently during recessions traffic accidents decrease, alcohol consumption decreases, smoking decreases, obesity decreases, and deaths from heart disease decrease. I feel I should point out that people probably can't afford to indulge in the kind of behaviour that leads to those sorts of activities and recessions probably encourage people to be more careful.

So to conclude recessions are not all bad, just 99.9% bad.

Combining to drive me demented

Somehow I picked classes that all fall on the same day this semester. They all require me to bring rather heavy "casebooks" to class, as such the law faculty allows students the use of lockers. In some ways law school can be a lot like high school, but I digress. So I availed myself of one, when I asked for one I was asked if I knew how to use a combination lock. I said that I did. However turns out I was wrong. I know how to use UK combination locks but the ones used on the lockers in Canada are quite different. They are like mini-safes and require you to spin the pointer around the right number of times and in the right way and to the right numbers before the lock will open.

Keys would be a lot simpler.

Free News

Thus far my first few days as a Graduate student have been a seemingly endless round of free lunches, mostly pizza, or a barbecue. Today I discovered that I can also get a hold of free newspapers at the Law School. There are limited copies of the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star. Provided I get there early enough I can have my pick.

I mean they had the newspapers in the main library at Glasgow but you couldn't remove them from the library, or even the table they sat on.

Of Irish Descent

Today I started doing a wee bit of reading for my Master's thesis. I know, I am too keen. Anyway, as I expected I stumbled across a few interesting facts. This one was my favourite. The Law Society of Upper Canada was creatd by statute in 1797, and in subsequent years the Law Society sought to make the legal profession into an elite. Records show, however, that a surprising number of applicants were Irish or of Irish descent. This is interesting because in nineteenth century Toronto the Irish were considered and inferior ethnic group. Although the pedant in me wonders what part of Ireland they were from, as they might not have been Irish Irish.

Trust me if you know anything about Irish history, you'll get what I'm on about.

The Early Bird Gets New Facts

Yesterday I went with some friends to see the Toronto Blue Jays play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. One of my friends was keen to go because the first ten thousand fans through the doors would get a free figurine of Joe Carter. We were among the first ten thousand fans and sure enough we each got a Joe Carter figurine. I have to say I had never heard of Joe Carter but he is a baseball legend. It was the bottom of the ninth inning in the 1993 World Series, the Jays were behind and Joe Carter was batting. He hit a walk-off home run, the first person to hit a come from behind home run in Major League history. His hit allowed the Jays to capture back-to-back World Series Championships.

Sadly there were no home runs in the game I saw, but the Jays won all the same.

Rubbing Shoulders with Movie Stars

Right now it's TIFF time. For those of you who don't know what that means, TIFF stands for Toronto International Film Festival. I have it on good authority that there are lots of film stars in Toronto right now but I have yet to see any. However there are some film stars right in my law school. While finding my way around the law library (otherwise known as my second home), I was informed that in the summer months the law school used to be able to make quite a bit of money renting out the law statute and case books to film sets as props. The ones in Toronto's law school featured in the film The Wars of the Roses". However with the advent of these statutes and cases being put online a lot of law firms threw away their hard copies, thus every film studio now owns their own set. Hence the books are no longer rented out.

Of course I am used to such proximity to the stars, after all Gerard Butler went to Glasgow's Law School.