Kevin Sylvester, Where Is Your Wisdom Now?

Kevin Sylvester is, in my opinion, the best sportscaster in all of radio and television. I admit that I don't have an extensive knowledge of sportscasters, but the reason I say that he's the best is because he's the only one I don't have the urge to turn off when the sports news comes up. I'm not one of those people who is crazy about sports. Anyway, Kevin (who is on leave from the CBC for a year at U of T as a Massey College Fellow), is a serious cyclist. One of his major irritations is people who ride their bikes on the sidewalk. In Toronto, only idiots and children ride their bikes on the sidewalk.

Now, I'm not one of those stuck up Toronto-is-the-centre-of-the-world people. I like Ottawa. I'm enjoying myself here. But I have to say that there are a lot of adults riding bikes on the sidewalks here. Who thinks it's a good idea to ride a bike in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic, like on or near a university campus with more than 31,000 students (http://www.report.uottawa.ca/2005/en/facts_figures/)?

I've almost been run over like, once a day since I got here three weeks ago, trying to avoid bikes coming in both directions. I don't ride a bike in Toronto becaue I am sort of afraid of the cars (whereas I only rode a bike when I was in Italy and the drivers are crazier there but know how to deal with bikes). There's not that much traffic in Ottawa! If you're too afraid to ride with the cars, please get off the sidewalks. It's called a sidewalk because it's that part on the SIDE of the road where you WALK.

Idiots.

I Love Katherine Barber (even with a "K")

It doesn't matter to me if I sound like a nerd. I did get in to law school, after all, and that must mean something. So I don't care if I sound like a nerd when I say: dictionaries are wonderful things. I myself am partial to the Canadian Oxford and if you don't know who Katherine is, you can google her.

A list of the words I've looked up in the past 24 or so hours, pretty much in the order I found them:

Fiat: 1 formal authorization. 2 a decree or order. [Latin, 'let it be done']. I love this word for so many reasons (but I never fail to forget its definition)!

Vitiate: 1 impair the quality or efficiency of; corrupt, debase, contaminate. 2 make invalid or ineffectual. I looked this one up to confirm that the first 't' was pronounced "sh". I was right.

Blandishment: flattery; cajolery. Who knew? McLachlin J, that's who!

Buss: n. a kiss * v.tr. kiss. Is a kiss by any other name still a kiss?

Oleomargarine: N. American dated = Margarine. Apparently there once was (and probably still is) a Canadian Statute that dealt with oleomargarine productions somewhere in Atlantic Canada.

Lodestar: 1 a star that a ship etc. is steered by, esp. the pole star. 2 a a guiding principle. b and object of pursuit.

If I ever want to become a judge, I must absolutely start work now on my own collection of obscure-ish words. But welcome to this, the first ever post of Interesting Words I've Found In Case Law, a collection of other people's obscure-ish words.

What a law degree may get you these days...

I listened to The Rain Song on the way home from FTX. It was raining.

I stopped to buy coffee at the convenience store. The clerk, once it was established that I was a law student, told me that he too had a law degree.

I momentarily wanted to kill myself. A job in a convenience store is not one of the legal careers I have hitherto considered. And, frankly, a law degree to work in a convenience store seems a little bit like overkill.

The moment passed. I presume the fellow was working in the convenience store because his law credentials are not recognized in Ontario/Canada. I have been told already, by one professor or another, to never make assumptions. For the sake of my sanity I am going to assume that he got his law degree in some foreign jurisdiction, but when I see him again I promise to ask him where he got his law degree from.