Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Learning Empathy by Looking Beyond Disabilities


Excellent article in the NY Times for high school teachers:

The unusual lessons are part of a new effort, called the Pearls Project, to promote tolerance and empathy in a school culture where being different can mean social exile. Ridgewood teachers developed it this year in partnership with Positive Exposure, a nonprofit group in New York City founded by Rick Guidotti, a fashion photographer.

Mr. Guidotti, who has photographed supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer, began snapping pictures of children with genetic disorders in 1997. A year later, Life magazine published his photo essay on albinism, titled “Redefining Beauty.” His work with these subjects has also been displayed in galleries, medical schools and children’s hospitals, as well as at Harvard University and at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

For the Pearls Project, Mr. Guidotti photographed 11 young people, each with a different disability. He also arranged for them to blog about their experiences and answer questions from the Ridgewood students. The subjects are identified only by their first names — Byron, Ashley, Rebecca, et al. — and come from various states.

Continue reading Learning Empathy by Looking Beyond Disabilities

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/nyregion/at-nj-school-learning-not-to-look-away-from-the-disabled.html?_r=1&ref=education

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Importance of Education, from Walt Frazier


Former NY Knicks basketball legend Walt Frazier discusses the importance of education:

"I grew up in very humble beginnings in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm the oldest of nine kids -- seven sisters and one brother, so I often tell people when you grow up in a scenario like that, you either like kids or you hate them. I've had an affinity for kids for a long time. When I came to the Knicks, they were my most ardent supporters. They bought my books, they bought my Clyde sneakers, they attended my camp. So today I feel compelled to give back.

"One of the things I do under my Walt Frazier Youth Foundation is I go into the schools and talk about the importance of education and the abstinence of drugs and alcohol. I go to inner-city schools and I also go to the elite schools. I usually ask the kids, 'How can you improve your relationship with your parents?' Whether it be the inner-city school or the elite school, they say 'communication.' They say, 'My parents don't communicate.' I think you can't motivate people unless you communicate, so you gotta talk to those kids, look in those eyes when they come in, know what they're doing, know their friends, and that's going to be essential for their success.


Continue reading Walt Frazier recognized as a "Fab Father"
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/knicks/post/_/id/5404/walt-frazier-recognized-as-a-fab-father

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Speaking for GAP during Paralegal Week: June 13th CLE Luncheon on Professionalism


I hope everyone in Metro Atlanta joins me for a FUN (I promise) CLE Luncheon for The Georgia Association of Paralegals (GAP):

Instilling Professionalism and Humor in an Adversarial System
Perry Binder, J.D.
DATE: Monday, June 13, 2011
TIME: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm (Lunch, then speaker will begin at 1:00 pm)
LOCATION: Nelson Mullins
Atlantic Station Atlantic Station
201 17th Street NW, Suite 1700
Atlanta, GA 30363

COST: Free

SPONSOR: ParaNet
DEADLINE: June 10, 2011
REGISTRATION: Registration online. Open to the first 40 registrants.
http://www.gaparalegal.org/June13_rsvp.shtml

Former civil litigator turned professor, Perry Binder, offers paralegals a mirror to reflect on unacceptable behavior witnessed in the practice of law. Participants get to “learn by example,” with Perry’s original and hilarious lessons. The ultimate goal of the session is for paralegals to envision living a rewarding professional life, through civility, humor, humility, and stress reduction. Perry uses examples dealing with law or other professions to draw behavioral parallels evidenced by legal professionals.
http://perrybinder.com/ParalegalTopics.htm


Thursday, June 2, 2011

Bad Luck and Hard Times on the Menu at a Bus Terminal in West Virginia




This article in The New York Times resonated with me, as someone who writes about West Virginia and who was a Greyhound ticket agent/baggage handler in New York state's so-called rust belt

Bad Luck and Hard Times on the Menu at a Bus Terminal in West Virginia

by Sabrina Tavernise

WEIRTON, W.Va. — The bus terminal in this old mill town used to be for people who were going places. Greyhound would take them to nearby Pittsburgh and Cleveland and other cities where the steel industry was booming. These days it is a diner where no one goes anywhere and regulars sit for hours smoking cigarettes, playing slot machines and talking about sports. it still has the same name, Bus Terminal, and a painted map with a clock for each time zone. But the promise of travel has long faded and the faces here remain the same, a cast of characters who fill the hours with verbal boxing.

CONTINUE READING:


Thursday, May 26, 2011

"Illegally Funny" in the Classroom article in NSA Speaker Magazine


As a proud member of NSA, the National Speakers Association, I wrote this month's "Humor Me" column in Speaker magazine. Enjoy!

Illegally Funny

I never dreamed of being a college professor. Does anybody? When my third-grade teacher asked us about our dream job, Molly said astronaut. Evan: actor. Perry: Obtain a terminal degree and lecture on legal morasses.

Continue reading by clicking .jpg to the left (enlarge article by clicking .jpg again)

Perry

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Oprah's Inspiring Fourth-grade Teacher, Mary Duncan


As Oprah winds down 25 years, she recalls her inspiring moments:

One of the defining moments of my life came in fourth grade—the year I was a student in Mrs. Duncan's class at Wharton Elementary School in Nashville. For the first time, I wasn't afraid to be smart, and she often stayed after school to work with me. I thought I would one day become a fourth-grade teacher.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Top-20-Moments/3

Reunion: Oprah's Favorite Teacher was on the Show - Includes Video http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/10-Memorable-Oprah-Show-Reunions/2

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Race to Nowhere Movie Review


This documentary is an interesting response to Waiting for Superman. Excellent movie review in Slate...

By the end of this school year, about half a million people will have watched the documentary Race to Nowhere. This stealth juggernaut can't be seen on TV, in any multiplex, or on DVD. But since the fall of last year, it's been shown almost 2,000 times in school auditoriums and community centers across the country—mostly to parents beset with the fear that they're blowing the raising of their kids. The emotional discussions following the screenings—part catharsis, part call to action, part finger-pointing—are excellent introductions to the contentious debate about what we want from our kids and from the people who educate them.

First-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles, 49, a Northern California lawyer and mother of three, was moved to pick up a camera when her children started suffering from school-related headaches, stomachaches, and panic attacks. What she produced is a wide-ranging polemic against our current education system that is artless, occasionally overwrought, and undeniably powerful. It confirms—and stokes—the unease many parents have about how miserable much of childhood seems today. It also sets up Abeles as the anti-Amy Chua. In
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua's thesis is that if you let up, your kid will become a coddled American slacker. Abeles offers the antithesis. She argues that part of America's greatness is born of our misfits and dreamers, that our gift to our children is time to engage in "aimless" play.

Continue Reading Battle Hymn of the Anti-Tiger Mother

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Inspirational community college students swap ideas

California is nearly broke, the educational system is struggling and the economy remains wobbly.

But a large group of energetic and idealistic young college students gathered this weekend in San Jose to strengthen the one thing they can count on: one another.

In a competition of inspirational ideas for boosting graduation rates, teams of students from California's community colleges swapped strategies that ranged from peer counseling to a massive textbook exchange. The winners got grants worth up to $7,500 and one year of professional advice from the group Mobilize.org, supported by the Knight Foundation.

Continue Reading: Inspirational community college students swap ideas

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Top 10 Spelling Errors in Law Papers

As students finish another semester with a flurry of papers, here's my list of mistakes that students (and attorneys) make all of the time

1- File a mew (new) motion
2- Going to trail (trial)
3- Singing (Signing) an Agreement
4- The Compliant (Complaint)
5- Tired (Tried) to flee the scene
6- Breech (breach) of contract
7- Statue (statute) of limitations
8- Legal principals (principles)
9- The principle point (principal)

10-Recover principle (principal), court costs, and interest

Honorable Mention…
A faulty (faculty) member – maybe the student got this one right

Painful Mention...
An attorney filed a Motion in court asking the judge for more time due to his upcoming back disk surgery; however, he mistakenly placed an unfortunate "c" where the "s" should be in the word "Disk."

This entry was originally posted in July 2010

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Amanda Knox case update

Here's an article from Italy which gives an update on the case, as provided by Seattle reporter Candace Dempsey:

The ‘collapse’ of the charges at the appeal court.
By Giangavino Sulas

April 2011, Perugia.
The scientific proof, finally entrusted to experts nominated by the appeals court and not just to the police, is deteriorating and opens up disturbing questions about the procedures used. The witnesses, who when they were not drug addicts (like Hekuran Kokomani and Antonio Curatolo), have problems of deafness, of physical as well as mental health serious enough to be hospitalized in the psychiatric department. (That is the case with Nara Capezzali).

This is the Perugia appeals court for the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher. Before the bar are two suspects and on the bench a good three prosecutors (a public prosecutor and two deputy prosecutors). A number worthy of a Cosa Nostra super trial. Evidently there are a few problems. And the problems unfailingly emerge.

If Meredith’s bra clasp, on which the prosecutor maintains is revealed the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito, is now rusted and no longer capable of being analyzed by the experts entrusted by the appeals court, and if the only witness who claims to have seen Amanda and Raffaele together the night of the crime has changed versions, advancing a “vision” of the previous night, what remains against Raffaele Sollecito, the young man from Puglia?

And what remains against Amanda if, always according to the experts, the amount of biological material found on on the knife, the presumed crime weapon, is a level too low to be able to reveal the genetic code? Recall that this is the biological material from which the forensic analyst extracted the DNA of Meredith (on the tip of the blade) and of Amanda (on the handle.)

On the blade there is no trace of bleach
The experts added as well another particular: there was no trace of bleach on that knife. Then it had never been washed to clean the traces as maintained by the forensic police. The only proofs against the two young people have been cleaned away, but Amanda and Raffaele remain in prison after three and a half years. The young man of Puglia has celebrated his fourth consecutive birthday in a cell.

March 26, 2001 was the day for Antonio Curatolo, the homeless man who, since he decided to follow the way of Christ (he defines himself as a Christian anarchist but admitted to make regular use of heroin and other drugs) spends his days and his nights on a Piazza Grimana bench, in front of the University for Foreigners. He appeared before the court because the lawyer Luca Maori, Sollecito’s defense lawyer, discovered a few too many holes in the testimony given by the homeless man to prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, six months after the crime.

Curatolo–who in the last few years in Perugia helped police resolve two heinous crimes thanks to his timely presence on the spot where they occurred–went to court to reveal that on the night of November 1st, 2007 he had noted, from 9:30 p.m until 11:30 p.m., Amanda and Raffaele in Piazza Grimana speaking animatedly. And he tied his memory to the presence of the shuttle buses that at that hour carry young people to the various discos outside of Perugia.

Testimony that destroyed the alibis of the two young people, who’ve always said that they spent the night of Nov. 1 watching a movie together. But there was something wrong with seeing buses on that night. In fact, the owners of the various discos, from Giorgio Brughini, father of Marco Materazzi, to the director of “siae di Perugia,” came to court to say that on the night of November 1, the night after Halloween, all their businesses were closed and the buses stayed in the garage. A solid blow to the prosecution, which quickly removed the tramp. And Curatolo had come into court accompanied by a prison guard.

The homeless man and the experts

He’s serving a sentence of one year and a half in prison for selling cocaine. And in November he can expect another trial for drug dealing.

Before the appeals court judges overturned his deposition: “It was Oct. 31 when I saw Amanda and Raffaele. I remember all the kids were in costume.” Clear reference to the night of Halloween. End of testimony. Curatolo has gone back to prison.

He’s not going to solve the third murder in Perugia. Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, professors at Sapienza University in Rome, are the experts chosen by appeals court judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman when he decided to reopen the investigation and to appoint non-partisan experts because of too many obscurities in the courtroom.

In the first trial, independent experts had inexplicably been rejected.

The two experts should determine whether forensic science can verify what the police verified and whether the (police) forensic expert, when looking at the hook and the knife, applied the cautious protocols established for this analysis and if they can identify contamination.

For the knife, they seem already to have reached a conclusion. After taking samples from different points of the blade, they found an insufficient quantity of biological material. Insufficient to obtain genetic profiles for testing. Then how could they get the DNA of Amanda and Meredith?

The prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is quick to point out: “We knew that very little material was available and that the lab test done by the police was unique because it used up all there was.”

Then why did the court order new tests? In reality, the two experts rejected the work of the police, saying “on that knife there was never enough to get biological material to get DNA profiles.”

This is the truth that emerges from the sensational and shocking new report.

The bra clasp: The only bit of evidence said to link Raffaele Sollecito to the crime is too rusty to test.

Chain of errors.
And the discovery made on the second finding is even more astonishing. When the experts received the bra clasp of Meredith, they found it covered with rust. “Could not be tested,” they ruled.

But where and how it was this important piece of evidence preserved? How is it possible that nobody thought to keep it sealed in a vacuum bag? The history of this clasp after Raffaele Sollecito’s three and a half years in prison really is unique. On the afternoon of November 2, 2007, it was found under the body of Meredith by medical examiner Luca

All of a sudden, someone remembered the hook. They rushed to recover in a house that had, in the meantime, undergone two searches. They found it and, surprise, there was the DNA of Raffaele.

Now there’s just rust.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2011/04/03/new-revelations-no-evidence-against-amanda-knox-and-raffaele-sollecito/