Weekly Law School Roundup #22

This Week: Vacation Notes from All Over In which your author locates webloggers who wrote about their vacation experiences during the past month or so, and collects their thoughts here in one super-gigantic post, assembled over the course of many days, and at the cost of a great many personal relationships . . .

• Hurricane Charley Brings a Vacation to an Unexpected End U.M. of The Unreasonable Man was kicking back on Ft. Myers Beach until he was forced to evacuate. Says U.M., "I really do hope there is no loss of life or injuries there, but I'm glad that the damn hurricane did hit our little vacation spot with full force so that our evacuation was not in vain. I know that makes me a bad person, at least a little bit, but whatever, that bastard Charley ruined my vacation."
• Vacation Where You Live Why Law plays "be a tourist at home" in the Colorado Springs area, and Law School Barbie reports on some sightseeing in Southern California.
• More from California Bekah of Mixtape Marathon discovers the scenery around Santa Barbara to be "almost utopian":

  There are craggy mountains and cliff-lined beaches. There is a cool breeze instead of stagnant, hot, moist, dripping, oven-air. The days are warm and sunny, but the mornings and evenings are jacket weather (in July!). The highways are scenic. The food is delicious (and calorie free!). The people are affluent.

  If there was a hitch, it was the residents: "Oh, the Botox and the collagen and the Von Deutch tanks…the ill-fitting capris and the brittle bleached hair…the hairy chests and the bling bling…it was all pretty horrifying." (For another account of "people-watching" in California, see this post at Biting Tongue, in which an innocent search for a nude beach has an abrupt and unexpected conclusion.)

[Below the fold: Reports from Honduras, Prague, Greece, Las Vegas and more from Waiting for the Punchline; Class Maledictorian; The Visible Hand; Life, Law, Libido; Falconred; Half-Cocked; and others.]

• How Do You Like Your Bimbos? Fresh and rich, I hope. That's the tagline for Bimbo Bread in Honduras, as reported by Heidi of Waiting for the Punchline. Scroll up and down from that point in the weblog to learn more about Honduras, and don't miss the news about . . . The Virus!
• Reports from Prague Amber of Class Maledictorian corresponds with posts like this one.
• Four Weeks in Europe J. of The Visible Hand sent in reports from England, Greece, Spain, and Italy. He's back home now, but promises to blog some more about his travels.
• More Periodic Posts from Overseas Scott of Life, Law, Libido reports from Galway, Dublin, and London.
• Falconred Reports from Vegas It was just a weekend thing, but where else can you mingle with hackers at DefCon, engage in a discussion with a lawyer about the Blakely decision, and hang out "at the pool with 50 drunk people flinging objects around"? Falconred's thoughts are here (8/3).
• A Secret Vacation, But With a Nice Photo of the Vacationers It's from Half-Cocked, who posts a photo of his vacation-mate on their anniversary before leaving for an undislosed location with "an honest-to-God Tiki bar at the top of a tower on an island in the middle of the pool." (My guess as to the location: Texarkana, Arkansas.)

Finally, in travel news from the law profs: Professor Smith posts about New Orleans; Professor Ribstein posts about Sweden (8/13); and Professor Bogdanski posts from New Jersey.

Comments

[UCL]

I recently posted on my 5-day weekend in Canada, complete with ruminations on 4th Amendment protections (or lack thereof) in the Great White North.

[Evan]

UCL: Funny, I was thinking about this post of yours today. In your post, some Canadian students lying on a beach are searched for alcohol. It had me thinking about the times in high school and college when U.S. police officers conducted similar searches of me and my friends. We didn't know enough to say no; besides, the point was harassment, not collecting evidence. (As you know, the way the rules work, if police officers don't care about having evidence tossed out, there's no disincentive for them not to harass). [One of my "partners in crime"--although there was no crime--went on to join the CIA.]

In the same vein, did you see this interesting post by Federalist No. 84 at Crime & Federalism?

[UCL]

Evan: "if police officers don't care about having evidence tossed out, there's no disincentive for them not to harass"

Unfortunately that is a true statement, even in our beloved constitutional republic. Still, although I sympathize to a degree with Fed84, I doubt most Americans understand how good they really have it when it comes to police intrusion in their daily lives, compared to citizens of other countries (including most western democracies).