Search Results for: The Nation

Meet the ‘Vexatious Litigants’: People Who Can’t Stop Going to Court

Rahman, whose wife died a few years ago in a traffic accident, is now primarily devoted to litigating. In what little spare time he has, he reads the Koran, tends to his fruit trees and studies law, making do on a few hours’ sleep a night. As a vexatious litigant, he will now need special leave to begin legal proceedings in NSW, but there is, he claims, still the International Criminal Court to consider. Though he has been declared bankrupt and lost one of his houses, he carries on with tireless, doomed determination.

The British lord chief justice Thomas Bingham observed that the vexatious litigant keeps on when “on any rational and objective assessment, the time has come to stop”. Australian judge Nye Perram identified “the capacity to endure failure beyond the point at which a rational person would abandon the field”.

There are fewer than 100 vexatious litigants in Australia. According to Grant Lester, a forensic psychiatrist who has studied the field extensively, courts are loath to make the declaration in any but the most extreme cases.

“To manage to be made a vexatious litigant, you have to be the crème de la crème,” he says. “Your most sacrosanct right is to have your day in court.”

Sam Bungey in The Monthly.

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Photo: fabliaux, Flickr

The Lonely Diplomats Club

Longreads Pick

A look at the lives of the “micro-ambassadors” of Beijing, diplomats from the world’s smallest nations who have set up Chinese embassies, hoping to woo tourist dollars and direct investment to their home countries

Published: Jul 1, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,595 words)

Oh, the Humanities! A Reading List Pertaining to the English Major

In college, I rearranged my majors and minors, all in the humanities, for years. I loved everything. Finally, I majored in English. It was fate—second-grade me was constantly in trouble for sneaking books under her desk. Majoring in English was both the joy and bane of my life. I struggled with a Faulkner-heavy Southern Lit course, even though Faulkner remains beloved. I groused about Shakespeare. I wrote my senior thesis on Michael Chabon. And I transformed my love for editing into a prestigious position on the college newspaper. My Lit Crit class—a notorious gauntlet at my college—introduced me to Derrida’s jeu and the revelation of feminist theory. I spent my time studying and socializing in the English department suite. I TA’d for the head of the department. When I am nostalgic for college, I am nostalgic for the English suite—for the camaraderie among my fellow students and best friends, my professors and mentors, and the dusty books and teacups and flyers.

A confession: today, I whined to my boyfriend about the great gigs my journalist friends have procured. Daily papers! Grad school! Photography internships! New York City! On my worst days, I feel envy and inferiority. On my best days, I go to the library and check on a huge stack of books, remind myself to be grateful for my temp job and come home to write for Longreads. I remember that I did something right. If I remember that, I will continue to do something right, to do something, write.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Wrong Answer

Longreads Pick

Facing increased pressure to perform on standardized tests, a group of Atlanta teachers begin cheating. “After more than two thousand interviews, the investigators concluded that forty-four schools had cheated and that a ‘culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation has infested the district, allowing cheating—at all levels—to go unchecked for years.’ They wrote that data had been ‘used as an abusive and cruel weapon to embarrass and punish.’ Several teachers had been told that they had a choice: either make targets or be placed on a Performance Development Plan, which was often a precursor to termination.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jul 14, 2014
Length: 35 minutes (8,962 words)

How Teachers Began Cheating On Their Standardized Tests

After more than two thousand interviews, the investigators concluded that forty-four schools had cheated and that a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation has infested the district, allowing cheating—at all levels—to go unchecked for years.” They wrote that data had been “used as an abusive and cruel weapon to embarrass and punish.” Several teachers had been told that they had a choice: either make targets or be placed on a Performance Development Plan, which was often a precursor to termination. At one elementary school, during a faculty meeting, a principal forced a teacher whose students had tested poorly to crawl under the table.

The investigators’ report didn’t conclude that Hall had directed anyone to cheat, but it did recount a number of episodes in which she ignored or minimized evidence that scores had been falsely achieved. In one instance, her staff had ordered an administrator to shred a draft of a report that described cheating at an elementary school.

-Rachel Aviv, in The New Yorker, on how teachers in Atlanta began cheating on their standardized tests.

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More education in the Longreads Archive

Photo: shinealight, Flickr

First Chapter: Dave Eggers’ Novel, ‘Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?’

Dave Eggers | Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? | June 2014 | 23 minutes (5,800 words)

 

BUILDING 52

—I did it. You’re really here. An astronaut. Jesus.
—Who’s that?
—You probably have a headache. From the chloroform.
—What? Where am I? Where is this place? Who the fuck are you?
—You don’t recognize me?
—What? No. What is this? Read more…

State of the #Longreads, 2014

Lately there has been some angst about the state of longform journalism on the Internet. So I thought I’d share some quick data on what we’ve seen within the Longreads community: Read more…

Scout’s Honor

Longreads Pick

“It might have been the Friendliest Place on Earth.” The writer visits a national Jamboree for the Boy Scouts of America.

Source: Oxford American
Published: Jun 11, 2014
Length: 39 minutes (9,820 words)

All You Have Eaten: On Keeping a Perfect Record

Illustration by Jason Polan

Rachel Khong | Lucky Peach | Spring 2014 | 20 minutes (5,009 words)

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Over the course of his or her lifetime, the average person will eat 60,000 pounds of food, the weight of six elephants.

The average American will drink over 3,000 gallons of soda. He will eat about 28 pigs, 2,000 chickens, 5,070 apples, and 2,340 pounds of lettuce. How much of that will he remember, and for how long, and how well? Read more…