on the backburner

I'm actually doing work today, because today is the second day I've had consciousness for more than 3 hours at a time.

But while I work through an insane amount of work, inevitably my thoughts are drawn elsewhere, and I think that when I'm done with my due work and start tackling my overdue work, I'll also want to think about:

• Larry Solum's semantic originalism
• The (fallacious?) distinction between public law and private law, especially in the employment law context and laws of public order.
  
• The weakening role of the state vis-a-vis anti-discrimination regulation
• The role of private entities in the enforcement of rights and norms, and how that is not comparable to the imprimatur of state action
• Federalism.

Only academics have other, bigger questions on the backburner as they attend to the smaller tasks at hand, like writing a simple little paper. It is like having a mid-life crisis every semester and asking "but what does it all mean?!" I love it when I get all too big for my britches and try to tackle The Big Questions. It gives me some sense of scope, something to do. I inevitably fail to sustain the project, but it's good to think big every once in a while.