Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Socialism With a Side of Ice Cream

Today, we all seemed to wake up a little later than normal. We all reached the dining hall about 10 minutes late. However, we still had enough time to enjoy our breakfast. After breakfast, we headed off to class.

During the lecture, we entered the world of socialism through the writings of Marx. Professor Kramnick mainly talked about the ideals of Marx's version of socialism (Professor Kramnick used communism and socialism interchangeably). During our discussion session, we broke down the socialist structure to its bare-bones.

In the afternoon, we had a guest speaker, Alan Mittman, who was an attorney and is now working in Labor Relations at Cornell. We learned an abundance of information concerning economic freedom, such as protection of intellectual property. The main case we learned about was the ice cream controversy of "Haägen-Dazs vs. Frusen-Gläjé." it was interesting learning about different types of protection of property; everything from the wording on a product to the shape of the container. A fun aspect was when Mr. Mittman made us become law firms and decide the final ruling. Interesting enough, Mr. Mittman was talking to Eric, Alex, and I for a little bit and we learned that he lived in El Cerrito when attending UC Berkeley for law. In fact, he lived right next to the Baskin Robins on Moeser and San Pablo Ave. What a coincidence! 

After class, we decided to relax a little in my dorm. Afterwards, we went to dinner. The food seems to be getting better because it seems that there are alumni visiting this week. After dinner, we ended up watching the movie "Stick It," which was about gymnastics.

I can't believe that the three weeks are almost up, but for now, I need to work on my paper.

1 comment:

  1. What a coincidence--I used to live right around the corner from that Baskin Robbins, too. It was back in 1975-76. That was back when a person could afford to buy a cone at Baskin Robbins without bringing financial references.

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