There’s this largely libertarian blog I check out once in a while – largely because it’s got one of the coolest names. Samizdat was the clandestine copying and publishing of government-surpressed literature in the old Soviet-bloc. Techniques of copying included making several copies of banned literature using carbon paper to printing in semi-professional underground printing presses. Based on my previous post on Pramoedya Ananta Toer, you already know how I feel about this kind of thing… 

But over at samizdata.net , I saw one of the pettiest, meanest exchanges I have ever seen. And it’s reconfirmed to me the fact that we lawyers (and lawyer-to-be) are horrible people. Just horrible, horrible people:

Brother: “Hey, you know that guy Mark who used to bully you at school a bit, you know, the one that went off to run a music shop?”

Me: “Er, yes, but it is a long time ago”.

Brother: “I bankrupted him this morning.”

My brother is a civil litigator.

At least the poster acknowledges that it’s “not very noble for me to share this.” But I’m sort of kind of disturbed by the fact that a part of me smiled on the civil litigator punchline.