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The Bee-log Habit
Sitting in Tryst (a coffee shop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C.—used to have a cool website but I can't find it now) reading blogs seems like a good time to mention those for whom the blogging never stops:
Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don't keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, like Mr. Wiggins, quietly so as not to call attention to their habit.
Who needs work, friends, or any other diversions when there's blogging to be done? I mean, I'm sure I'd be enjoying my summer job a lot more if I'd never heard of blogging before. Damn this evil habit! ;-) Could it be that blogs are just another harsh technological mistress?
Perhaps what's most remarkable about this article is its obsession with making money. The writer seems completely flummoxed by the fact that people spend time blogging and get no money for it:
Mr. Wiggins has missed deadline after deadline at Searcher, an online periodical for which he is a paid contributor.
Barbara Quint, the editor of the magazine, said she did all she could to get him to deliver his columns on time. Then she discovered that Mr. Wiggins was busily posting articles to his blog instead of sending her the ones he had promised, she said. "Here he is working all night on something read by five second cousins and a dog, and I'm willing to pay him," she said.
Ms. Quint has grown more understanding of his reasons, if not entirely sympathetic. "The Web's illusion of immortality is sometimes more attractive than actual cash," she said.
Gasp! People are doing something they enjoy rather than something that pays them money!?!? What is the world coming to!?
Anthony at Gates of the Mountains has a great response to this article:
Very true, yet isn't one of the addicting facets of blogs the fact that one person's unlived life is the next person's thrilling adventure?
Am I living if I look around and tell you that the coffee shop is packed and one of the barristas is wearing a bright green t-shirt that says "Ithaca is COLD"? An older male patron is painting with watercolors and a young woman has taken a seat at his table and begun reading what look like coursepacks for college or graduate classes. They appear to be strangers, but they're willing to share. A woman has appeared at our table dressed in full biking gear, helmet and gloves and all. There's something about the smell of a biker that is not offensive, even if it is distinctive. People tend to sit in close proximity here. Next to me is a man who seems to have walked into the coffee shop w/a "venti" coffee from Starbucks. He ordered a water and is reading the paper. Some might call that rude, but perhaps he also ordered food? Tryst doesn't seem to mind. It takes all kinds. Even those of us with unlived lives that will nevertheless be blogged.
Posted 10:28 AM | meta-blogging
TiVo Home Media Trial
The Memorial Day weekend has given us a chance to catch up on a little televisual entertainment, and while playing with the TiVo we discovered that TiVo is currently offering a free trial of its "home media option"—the feature that allows you to stream your mp3s and photos from your computer to your tv via a wireless network. It also lets you schedule recordings via the web if you've forgotten to set your TiVo to record your favorite show (I've never felt a need for this feature, but there it is). Before trying it out, I didn't think the Home Media Option was really necessary, but now that I can sit on my couch and use the TiVo remote to thumb through every one of the thousands of mp3s and photos on my computer, I'm starting to think $100 isn't a bad price.
Cool things you should be able to do with this but currently can't:
- Stream your photos/music to any TiVo you choose. Then you could share your photos/music w/your family and friends.
- Watch photo slideshows while listening to your favorite mix of mp3s. Currently, you can either look at photos or listen to your mp3s, you can't do both at the same time. Lame.
- Stream your iMovies or any other video on your computer to your tv. I'm guessing there are hacks to enable this, but I can't see what TiVo (or anyone else) would have to lose by making this possible right out of the box. (Perhaps worries that this will encourage people to download divX movies and stream them to their tvs?)
Times like this I realize that while the mac may be the most cruel of techno-mistresses, any technology can make you its impoverished plaything if you're not careful. I mean, one thing leads to another. You get cable and then you find new shows you must see. You're not around to see them all and you can't manage tapes in the vcr, so you get a tivo. Tivo saves lots of televisual entertainment, so you watch more and realize you need a better tv. And a sound system. And a home media option. And some home theater seating. And, and and....
It Has Us
What is The Meatrix? Just a little food for thought on this big barbecue weekend. Now pass me another burger, will you? (Hormone- and anti-biotic free, and from a family farm, please. Thanks. More info here.)
Posted 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | life generally
Morgan Spurlock Supersized Me
I saw "Supersize Me" last night. Loved it. In some ways, it sort of seemed like Fast Food Nation lite, but if it's taking some of the core bits of that book's message to a larger audience, then that's fine with me.*
I have no deep thoughts on the film, but it was incredible to see how shocked the medical professionals involved were when they saw how destructive McDonald's food was to Spurlock's body. It certainly should make viewers think again before condemning the lawsuits charging fast food corporations with some culpability for the skyrocketing health care costs related to massive consumption of fast food. Speaking of which, the movie features an interview with GW's very own John Banzhaf, one of the leaders in the legal attack on fast food. He takes a lot of flack, and he'll probably take more now that everyone's seen him eating a meal at McD's with Spurlock. (It also probably wouldn't hurt if he cleaned up his office, but that's another story.)
In addition to the scene where Spurlock pukes after eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Supersize Meal, another highlight was the slimy lawyer interview (not Banzhaf; I don't remember his name).
"Why are you suing the fast food companies?" Spurlock asked.
The attorney gives him a shit-eating grin like, "you want me to lie?" and says: "You mean, you want some reason other than financial compensation? You want some higher moral purpose here?" The camera cuts away.
It's really no wonder people hate lawyers...
* Note: If you haven't yet read Fast Food Nation, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not only about how bad fast food is for us, but it's also about how the fast-food model has revolutionized (for the worse) agricultural production and decimated traditional agricultural labor markets. It touches on how these developments affect many other areas of life, including education and international relations. It's a great, great book.
Beginning/Ending Congratulations
Congratulations to Scoplaw, who has chosen to attend law school at Georgetown. The decision of where to go to school can be a tough one, and Scoplaw has been refreshingly candid about his decision-making process. Here's hoping he finds what he's looking for there!
On the other side of the congrats coin, congratulations to Scheherazade who gave notice at her law firm last week. Coincidentally, I spent part of last weekend at a 24-hour poker marathon held in celebration of two people who recently quit the same Washington law firm. One of them quit to take a clerkship, the other isn't sure what he's going to do next; both were sure that their firm wasn't where they wanted to be any longer, and both seemed thrilled to be finished with it. Still, I doubt any of these former associates sent a scathing farewell email like this:
Gee, I sure wish I was on the firm track; it sounds like so much fun!
Posted 08:55 AM | Comments (1) | law general
Happy Memorial Day Weekend
The weather here in D.C. is gorgeous—sunny and cool, with the promise of more to come. It rained last night, so the city seems fresh and clean and sparkly. It's a great weekend for outdoor plans.
The big event in D.C. this weekend is the dedication of the WWII Memorial on the Mall. Yesterday on my way home from work I noticed lots of veterans and their families on the train—you could tell because many wore items of clothing (hats, jackets, etc.) with identifiers of company, or branch of service, or rank, etc. Although the memorial has received a lot of criticism, this should still be a very memorable and meaningful weekend for those veterans who are able to come to the dedication. "The greatest generation" seems a bit hyperbolic, but I'm certainly thankful for the sacrifices and dedication of so many (American and otherwise) in the first half of the 20th century. I wonder what the vets coming to Washington this weekend think of the world they live in today.
Posted 06:49 AM | Comments (5) | life generally
Washingtonienne
Yeah, you know it already, but apparently the vixen behind the Capital Hill blog scandal is no longer anonymous — she is Jessica Cutler and she worked for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine.
She's, um, been fired.
Posted 05:43 AM | Comments (2) | general politics
Acceleration
The pace of work is beginning to accelerate. Monday was advisements again—the only time I'm allowed to go behind the bar in a courtroom until I pass the bar. (Ok, there are other exceptions to that rule, but for now, that's all I can do.) We only had one taker, and he had questions I couldn't answer. It's so sad to be so unhelpful. Other than that, more research, phone calls, and a visit to the juvenile detention center to interview a client.
The office is holding a couple of training events in the next couple of days for the interns, all of whom have finally started. Today will also include a neighborhood investigation, searching for witnesses and general info about a case. Oh, and a fun assignment for techno-discovery along the lines of this post from Scheherazade. There could be a future in this for me. I don't have all the techno-expertise necessary to read the metadata in Word documents or recover transcripts of chat sessions, but it's definitely something I'd like to learn.
Menagerie Looks Back
Shelley at The Menagerie recently posted some reflections on her 2L year of law school, including this great big-picture advice:
Right now, thinking about 2L is about the furthest thing from my mind, but I hope to remember to return to sensible advice like this come August when the crazy train starts firing up again.
The Temperature at Which Conservatives Burn?
Congratulations to Michael Moore:
I haven't looked around, but I'll bet the howling on conservative websites right now and in the coming days would drown out D.C.'s infestation of locusts. I guess that would mean the conservatives are drowning out their own roar—ha!
In other Cannes news, another film I'm eager to see is "Tarnation," which may be the most highly-acclaimed feature-length film made entirely with iMovie. If that wasn't amazing enough, it's total budget was only $218.32, and the filmmaker, Jonathan Caouette made it on his boyfriend's iMac—he didn't even use his own machine!
Appropriately enough, the film's auteur is blogging his experience of the film's positive reception.
Posted 07:49 PM | Comments (1) | ai movies
Week In Review #1
With one week of my summer internship under my belt and the second about to begin, things are still too new and the learning curve too steep to have a solid impression of the job. Thus far, I love the people, the office environment (except for the internet access, about which you know I'll say more), and the overall mission of the public defender's office. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortably unqualified to be doing some of the things they've asked me to do, a feeling made worse by the fact that real people with real charges facing real jail-time may be depending on my ability to complete my assignments quickly and well. I rather doubt there will ever be a time this week when a client's fate will really rest in my hands, but the pressure of real consequences for the client remains.
The first week's impressions were mostly big-picture like that, and fell into two main areas:
First, public defenders (at least those in this office) are handicapped when it comes to doing internet research and using technology. I learned that one reason this office likes law student interns is that we generally come with Lexis and/or Westlaw passwords. The office subscribes to a service that aggregates all the state's court decisions, as well as material from federal district and Supreme Court cases, so the attorneys do most of their research through that. However, if they need to venture beyond that database, I guess they either have to pay for a Lexis or Westlaw search, or head for the books somewhere, or hire an intern w/a password to do the research for them. The upside of this for me is that I should get a lot more practice doing online research this summer, and that's good. The downside for everyone is that public defenders may not have access to the best research resources. Everyone I talk to about this seems to think/assume that government agencies have free or very cheap access to Lexis and Westlaw since these services couldn't exist without the cooperation of the government. That assumption is wrong. For-profit legal research is wrong.
Not only does the office not have access to Lexis and Westlaw, but it also has only four intern computers with access to the internet. These computers are old and slow, so research takes forever -- especially on Westlaw, where all the frames and complex code hocus-pocus (most of which exists to make your research follow certain profitable paths and to ensure Westlaw gets paid for your every click) choke the outdated browsers. The machines run Windows 2000 and are all locked down so I can't install Mozilla or update the browser or do anything else that might, potentially, speed up the research process. I haven't yet figured out how to contact the city's tech people, but that's definitely on my priority list. I hope to convince them to install a wireless router so I and the other interns can just bring in our laptops and get some real work done.
Second, I learned that our courts are clogged with ridiculous cases that eat up lots of criminal justice resources (the time of police officers, guards, judges, attorneys, interns, the clients, administrative support staff, etc.) for very little social benefit. A large number of these cases involve repeat offenders who get caught at a young age in cycles of petty crime that have them in and out of jail and court their entire lives. Because our system is more focused on incarceration than rehabilitation, these cycles can be endless, ridiculous and very very sad. I'm sure we, as a society, could do better than this. There are many reasons the criminal justice system continues along this less than satisfactory path, but after one week I'm convinced one of those reasons is simply that most people have no idea what goes on in courtrooms around the country every day. If they knew, they would demand some changes. Obviously I'm being vague here; I hope to return to this theme as the summer progresses.
Other than those two big-picture impressions, the first week was exhausting and exciting with the avalanche of information that came pouring into my head. It was also, in some ways, very long. I leave for work at 7:30 a.m. and don't return home until 6:30 p.m.; 11-hour days are just too long for my taste. I'm getting a lot of great reading done on the train, but still, it's hard to go from a student life where my schedule was full but flexible, to this level of regimentation where I feel like I hardly have a free minute during the week. I've been reminded emphatically why I returned to grad school in 1999 after working only 6 or 8 months in an 8-5 job—the schedule blows. No wonder our country is so screwed up politically; as voters, we allow our "leaders" to get away with murder because we simply don't have time to pay very close attention or the energy to care too much or do anything about it when we see they're incompetent and destroying our world. Such is the nature of the status quo to reinforce itself. I guess this summer I'll find out how easy it may be to become assimilated by that status quo. L tells me she felt the same way when she started working a year ago, but that it took more than 11-13 weeks for her body and mind to accept the program. Have we all taken the blue pill?
So other than the schedule, I'm looking forward to this second week to try to begin putting some of that information in more usable order. The office also has a softball team that I may participate in, and now that I've been fingerprinted (four impressions each for all ten digits!) and submitted my pee test for drugs, I should be able to go to the jail this week to interview clients. Which reminds me of the following humorous exchange:
When I was getting my jail clearance the officer in charge asked me into a small back room and asked me seriously, "Have you ever had any records expunged?"
"No."
"Have you ever had any felony charges dismissed?"
"No."
"Have you ever robbed any banks?"
"Um, no. I think if I had I wouldn't have much interest in doing this job and being here now."
"No, I don't think you would."
Apparently someone with a name very similar to mine is a bank robber. Who knew!? To think, what might have been...
Note: Because it looks like I'll have very little time each day to post about the job or anything else, I plan to simply record a few notes each day and try to reflect on each week over the weekend. Therefore, this will likely be the first of 11-13 "Week In Review" posts (depending on how long I end up working; end date still not firm.)
Posted 05:36 AM | Comments (6) | 1L summer
Adrianna!?
Every time I watch The Sopranos I wonder why. I hate the show. It's got to be about the most depressing hour on television every week. And it's Sunday night, too; could there be a worse night? As if you're not already bummed enough that the weekend is over and you have to go back to work, if you're a Sopranos fan you also have to cope with another heart-wrenching episode, on the edge of your seat for an hour wondering who's gonna stab who in the back (literally and/or metaphorically). But that's also why it's so great—it's probably the most compelling, possibly the best written and acted show on tv. The characters are so well developed by now that I care way too much about what happens to them. Ah, Adrianna! Sure, the writing was on the wall, but that doesn't make it any easier.
Posted 09:24 PM | Comments (4) | tv land
Save us from the innocent and good
On L's recommendation, and because it's small and easy to read on the train, I picked up The Quiet American by Graham Greene last week. Set in 1950s Vietnam, it's a short but complex novel that resonates eerily today. The major theme is neatly summarized in the first chapter by the narrator's response to Vigot upon learning that Pyle is dead: "'God save us always,' I said, 'from the innocent and the good.'"
And why do we need to be saved from the innocent and the good? Perhaps because "innocence" is too often a polite description of what could less charitably be called "stupidity." Take our current president, for example. Many people believe he and his buddies have a sincere desire to do good in the world; supporters argue that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was intended to make the world a better, more peaceful place. That may be true; innocents often have only the best of intentions (not that I would accept the notion that Bush, Cheney, et al, are the least bit innocent, but they do pretend to be "good.") However, good intentions are small consolation to the families of all the people—soldier and civilian—who have died in this war, and great intentions do little to repair our shattered relationships with many countries around the world. If we grant that Bush and Co. thought they were doing good by invading Iraq, it's easy to see why Greene's narrator invokes God's protection from people like them.
The "quiet American" of the book's title is Pyle, a young, "innocent" American sent to Vietnam on an "economic" mission. Describing Pyle in Vietnam, the narrator gives would could also be a fair description of G.W. Bush as President:
Of course, Pyle the "innocent" doesn't care if he's out of place—he has big plans to do "good"! While in Vietnam, Pyle secretly works to prop up a local "gang" leader to be a "third force" to combat the Communists. Of course, Pyle's efforts have horrific effects right from the beginning, and although Greene wrote the book in 1955 and couldn't have known he was being so prophetic, the disaster that is Pyle's plan to involve American forces and ideas in Vietnam foreshadows the much larger disaster that American involvement in the region would become in the next 20 years. It also eerily foreshadows current events, with U.S. forces again meddling where they're not wanted.
That's the simple, superficial stuff that resonated with me as I read, but there's much more to this novel. It's so prescient because it's so smart about colonialism. Academics probably call it a postcolonial novel because it's already cynically critical of the "new" colonialism we see today (e.g. in Afghanistan and now Iraq and countless other countries where the U.S. and other wealthy (mostly Western) nations have propped up warlords in the hope of making them puppets). It's somewhat in the tradition of Heart of Darkness, but as L said it doesn't dehumanize the colonized people like Conrad does. Instead, it problematizes that kind of colonist tendency-to-dehumanize by having its narrator struggle over his own relationship with the Vietnamese people with whom he lives, as well as the Vietnamese woman with whom he falls in love. In fact, one of the subplots is a contest between the narrator and Pyle over Phuong, a Vietnamese woman whom both the men "love." L could provide a fascinating account of how this relationship struggle symbolizes the colonial/post-colonial relationship with the colonized, but I'll let her explain that for you, if she so desires.
(I've been trying to get L to start her own blog so she can at least share her brilliant readings of books and movies with the world, but so far, no dice. Unless she has a blog and she's just not telling me, which is always possible....)
UPDATE: In a short article entitled "History's Fools," Jack Beatty echoes the gist of what I've said above, comparing our current crop of neo-conservatives (esp. Paul Wolfowitz) with the type of "innocent" we see in Pyle, the so-called "quiet American":
It's possible the so-called "innocence" of people like Wolfowitz could more accurately be described as willful ignorance verging on sociopathy, but the result is the same when people like this get a bit of power: danger for the rest of the world.
Posted 05:51 PM | Comments (3) | ai books election 2004
Winer Weighs In
Although I haven't had time to try to follow it, I assume the debate about Movable Type's new licensing scheme has kind of settled down. It also looks like Six Apart is still tweaking that scheme to try to make people happy, which is a good thing. Meanwhile, without specifically naming Six Apart or Movable Type, Dave Winer of Scripting News weighed in with this:
I couldn't agree more. Granted, I think the blogging software Winer is most closely associated with—Radio Userland—only allows each user to create one weblog, but who's counting?
I know almost no one reading this cares about it one bit. I'm sure there's some great interesting stuff to read on a totally different topic if you follow links from here.
Posted 09:23 PM | meta-blogging
Tough Enough
I almost cried in court yesterday. I was watching a sentencing hearing. I knew nothing about the defendant, the victim, or the families on either side, but I felt incredible sympathy all of them. I'm obviously not tough enough for this job.
Posted 05:48 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer
Necessity
My first little "project" of the summer internship has been to research whether the necessity defense could pass the "smile test" to get a misdemeanor case to the jury. I'm being vague because it just seems like a good idea, but suffice to say the necessity defense (aka "choice of evils" if you're a Model Penal Code (MPC) type) is only successful in a very narrow range of circumstances.
Aside from learning a bit more about necessity, I've also learned that the "research memos" I wrote for my legal writing class were much more works of art than real work products. Where I spent weeks or days developing those memos, when my boss asked for a memo on the necessity defense she was thinking of a project that should have taken me a couple of hours, an afternoon at most. Steep. Learning. Curve.
Meanwhile, check out Steven's 1L review over at Half-Cocked.
Posted 05:51 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer
First Voire Dire
Yesterday I watched voire dire (jury selection) for the first time. It was a fairly simple DUI appeal but interesting nonetheless. The prosecution asked very obvious questions to which it seemed highly unlikely anyone would give a "yes" answer. One question was: "Are you sensible of any bias or prejudice against the defendant or the state?" How many people are going to raise their hands and say "yeah, I really hate people like the defendant" or "I think the state should always lose!" Perhaps not many people feel that way, but even fewer would be likely to admit it in open court.
The defense attorney asked an interesting (possibly standard) question: "How many people here know that, as of now, my client is not guilty?" Only about half the potential jurors raised their hand. So much for presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Posted 05:27 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
What can I say?
My head is spinning. I know nothing, but I'm learning a lot already. On Day One of my summer internship I learned that I'll be working with the attorney who has the felony docket, which includes robbery, rape, and murder, but recently has included a lot of "paper" cases, including embezzling, forgery, and uttering (attempting to actually use forged documents). I'd never heard of the crime of uttering before, so that was perhaps my first lesson.
Many of the other lessons so far have been in the realm of criminal procedure, which I sorely wish I'd already taken. I learned what "advisements" are (initial hearings where the accused is advised of charges and rights to defense in open court), and watched some preliminary hearings. It's one thing to have a vague understanding of the major steps in the criminal defense process, and another thing to understand the subtleties and strategies required to represent a client to the best of your abilities at each stage. But while the learning curve in the next few weeks is going to be steep, I imagine CrimPro will much easier when I finally do take it. (Maybe I should rearrange my schedule to take it in the fall rather than the spring....)
Other than that, it's hard to get used to the idea of having people's lives in your hands. Reading a case file means reading about a real and unresolved issue that you may help resolve. It's intimidating, but watching the attorneys at work in court (which I did for about two hours yesterday) reminded me that these are just normal people who sometimes forget what they meant to ask witnesses and stumble through cross examinations, just like I did in mock trial and certainly will again if I'm ever in their shoes. Ok, not just like, but still. They're human. They do the best they can for their clients. I can do that, too. I hope.
Posted 05:41 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
Beginning Advice
I start work today. I'm excited to finally begin getting some "hands-on" legal experience, but it's bittersweet as well because who wants to go to work? Summer should be about books to read, trails to hike, great roads and trails to bike, and I hope it still will be, but those things will now have to squeeze in sometime before 7:30 a.m. or after 6:30 p.m., or on weekends. But that's how "normal" people live, isn't it? I realize I've led a charmed life in that I haven't had to report to a real "9-5" job since 1999. In fact, I probably haven't spent much more than two years of my life thus far obligated to a real 9-5 schedule. That doesn't mean I haven't been working, but my work—leading bike tours, laying out newspapers, teaching English classes—has generally been time-flexible, project-oriented, and not necessarily tied to an office. For the next 13-14 weeks, that will change. It should be interesting.
I'm lucky to begin with a nice bit of advice from a rising GW 3L who spent last summer working the same job I'll be doing this summer. In an email he advises:
make sure that when you talk to clients you realize (1) they are all crazy, more or less, (2) they are all lying to you, more or less, and (3) you must treat them with respect if you want to get anywhere with them, notwithstanding (1) and (2). and also (4) that you probably wont get anywhere with them.
Sounds great: I know nothing. I'm good at asking questions. I'm used to being lied to. I plan to get nowhere with anyone. Ready, set, go!
MT Options
After the weekend's furor over Movable Type's new licensing plan, the dust seems to be settling a little. For now I plan to stick with MT, and will probably buy the individual license.
Meanwhile, the furor has encouraged a lot of discussion around the web of alternatives to MT. This can only be a good thing, because it gives exposure to other developers and even if MT remains the preeminent blogging platform, it will have to stay on its toes to remain competitive. New options I've found (many from this mefi thread) which I may consider sometime in the mythical future when I have time for such things include:
Nucleus CMS eXtreme Edition
WordPress and TextPattern, both of which I mentioned before.
Pivot
blosxom (free, open source)
b2evolution (free, open source)
WebGUI (appears to be more general CMS than dedicated blogging platform, but I'm sure it could work)
PHPX (free, open source)
rb.log (free, open source)
Discloser (free, open source)
Exscribe (still in infancy, it seems)
dixit.net
Absolut Engine
e107
Many of the above are packages released under the GPL, which sounds great after reading Mark Pilgrim's convincing argument in its favor. But like I said, I have neither the time nor really the burning desire to make a big switch now. If I start any new blogs from here on out, they might use another package, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Posted 05:47 AM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging
Remodeling Postponed
I had big plans to do a little housecleaning and remodeling here at ai before I started my summer job, but the time has slipped away and I guess the housekeeping will have to wait. For now, "ai Quick & Dirty" (right column) has become "ambivalent bits," or "ambits" for short. The booklist should be updated a little, and a new countdown is up. Nothing too exciting so far, but I do hope to introduce a fun new feature sometime in the next few weeks, depending on how that tricky balancing act of work and play goes.
Just for the record: According to this tracker, yesterday ended a streak of 25 straight days on which ai received 100 or more page views. That may not sound like much, but it's a record for this humble blog, and its author thanks you for stopping by.
Posted 09:10 PM | Comments (4) | meta-blogging
More MT 3.0
People are still talking about the MT 3.0 upgrade and new licensing scheme. Luke notes that it might spell the end for many group blogs. That would be a sad loss; I wonder if Six Apart even thought about that. He also points to this note at Tech Dirt that sums up the pricing problems fairly well:
In case I wasn't clear enough yesterday, I'll reiterate that I'm happy to pay for MT. I paid when I first discovered it because I loved it, and I'll pay again (probably) for a license for the new version. Six Apart has produced a terrific product, and they deserve to be compensated for it, plus the upgrades, speed improvements, etc., are all valuable to me. So I'm not suggesting that Six Apart should not charge, I just wish they'd provide licensing options that would enable users who are willing to pay to continue using MT in the legitimate ways they've been using it for years now.
Also, and maybe this isn't true, but this feels like a shift in blogging from a start-up to a corporate entity. I'm not just talking about Six Apart, but about blogging as a phenomenon, a social space, a new territory. For a while the territory was largely commercial-free—outside the dominant paradigm under which profit drives all decisions. Now, MT has moved into the realm of capital, as has Blogger now that it's been bought by Google and now that Google is going public. Suddenly blogging may become about business, and that shift hasn't proven a positive one for most things web-related
I know the reaction of many, if not most, readers will be that this is a good thing. As a profit-generating business, blogging will grow and flourish, people will have incentive to maintain and continue developing the tools, etc. Whatever. Profit also ensures we always have new movies to watch, but that doesn't mean they're any good. People deserve fair compensation for their work, but money changes things.
UPDATE: It sounds like Six Apart is listening to the critiques of its new licensing scheme and has announced some changes. The best one:
That sounds pretty fair to me and allows users quite a bit of flexibility.
Posted 09:11 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging
MT 3.0
Movable Type, the software that runs this and thousands of other blogs, is no longer going to be free. (See a sample of the discussion here and here, via Scripting News.) See also the posts linked via trackback to the announcement of these changes. Many people are unhappy, for various reasons. I guess I'm one of them.
Six Apart, the company behind MT, claims its new licensing scheme will satisfy 85% of its users. I guess those of us in the other 15% should look elsewhere for a personal publishing platform. That 15% includes people who maintain or "host" more than 10 blogs on their MT installation, or who have more than 9 authors contributing to those blogs. I currently have at least 10 different weblogs running on my installation of MT, about half of which are dormant or experimental and rarely updated. Those blogs have close to a dozen authors, again, most of whom don't post frequently, if ever. To maintain this level of use, I would need to pay $150 at the introductory rate, or $190 at the regular rate. But since most of those blogs/authors were temporary or experiments, if I cut back to just what I really use, I'd still need to pay $70 at the intro rate, or $100 at the regular rate. That's not so bad, but then, what if I want to add a blog or author down the road some time? More money, more hassle.
Or, what if I wanted to start a co-op for law bloggers? Can't do it with MT anymore, I guess. It was probably a silly idea anyway.
As for Six Apart's other options, TypePad Pro offers unlimited blogs and authors, it looks like, but that will cost you $15 per month! That's $180/year. That seems like an awful lot of money to be spending for the life of your blog, doesn't it? Maybe not. Maybe this is just the price we'll have to pay. (Or, for most people, only $60/year for just one blog/author, or $120/year for three blogs and one author.) I don't really think an idea like BlawgCoop could really work even w/TypePad Pro because, although it allows unlimited blogs, the "authors by invitation" thing makes me think different authors can't have their own blog, but can merely post to yours. That's not the idea.
So you see, my objections to charging for MT are not on principle, or because I think it should be free. I've donated to MT and would be happy to pay for the software—even for updates every year or three. I understand developers can't create software for free; they need to eat and have lives, as well. Great. However, the success of MT created a large group of people—dare I say a "generation" of bloggers—with the expectation that, even if the tool would not always be free, it would always allow them to create as many blogs as they wanted with as many authors as they wanted. That was one of the cool features of MT, and it's a feature that's critical because it allows the imagination to run free—knowing I could add a new blog/author at any time with almost zero hassle and no cost has allowed me to experiment in ways that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. It allowed me to at least consider an idea like BlawgCoop, and even if it was a bad idea, a better one might have followed close behind. MT in its current incarnation (pre-3.0) offers more flexibility and choice than 3.0 will, and that's one of the big things I'd be happy to pay for.
If I switch tools, that flexibility, the openness, the opportunity to dream about new ways to use blogs and to experiment with those ideas or even implement them—that will be why. It's not because I don't want to pay, but because I don't want the blogging software I use to stand in the way of what I want to use it for.
A quick survey of other options for people who want more flexibility:
TextPattern
WordPress
iBlog
GeekLog
pMachine
Others?
UPDATE: Jason Kottke is in about the same boat I'm in. He's got a great solution:
It wouldn't cover an idea like BlawgCoop, but it would still give users room to move. See more today on Scripting News.
Posted 07:47 AM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
BlawgCoop.com
Ed note: This entry was written a few weeks ago but never posted b/c of other pressing events (a.k.a. final exams). It discusses an project that will either be abandoned or postponed because of recent changes to Movable Type. Please see the next post.
A week or two ago Buffalo Wings & Vodka migrated from Blogspot to Typepad, which was a welcome change for his readers for several reasons: now we no longer have to see ads on his page, we can subscribe to an RSS feed, the comments work smoothly and are built in to the content management system, and generally the page will probably load faster and more reliably. Plus, the site just looks a lot better, so it's more of a pleasure to read. This seems true across the board for TypePad sites—they look nice.
TypePad also appears to offer additional advantages, I think, although I'm not sure what they are. But the main thing is the reliability. Blogspot blogs are just interminably slow most of the time, and that's if they will even load at all. Was it just me, or have many Blogspot blogs been unreachable recently?
Movable Type shares most of TypePad's many advantages over Blogspot, with one crucial additional advantage: It's free. Ok, it's not free, because you need a host and a domain and all that. Plus you have to set it up and maintain it. But wouldn't it be great if novice bloggers (especially law students, law professors, and practitioners) could get all the advantages of a MT blog without the hassles?
As a reader of blogs, I think it would be really great. So here's the idea: Let's start a "Blawg" Co-Op—a server to host law student and other law-related blogs running on Movable Type.
First, we chip in to register a domain to host the blawgs. Blawgs.com is taken, as is blawg.org, so let's call it "blawgcoop.com" ("blawg co-op," see?). We'll install MT, then open it up to any law student, professor or practitioner (for starters) who would like to run an MT blawg there. Users will get their own password and an account and we'll assist where we can w/setup and basic design issues. Some or all users could have subdomains (myblog.blawgcoop.com), or they could just get their own directory w/in the main domain (blawgcoop.com/myblog). The only thing we'll ask in return is that users contribute equally to maintenance costs (hosting and annual domain registration at an annual cost of around $150/year to start). So if there were ten users, each one would pay $10/year. That's it. If we had 20 users, each one would pay $5/year. And what users would get in return would be far superior to BlogSpot (or Blog City, for that matter) in terms of quality of blogging environment and dependability, and it would also be far cheaper than TypePad.
People in my blogroll who use BlogSpot who I'd love to see on a better platform include:
Mixtape Marathon
L-cubed
Half-Cocked
So Sue Me
Musclehead
a mi parecer
Jeremy Blachman
Naked Furniture
Althouse
Tbagged
Undeniable Dilemma
Screaming Bean
Veritable Cornucopia
See, there's over a dozen candidates right there, plus all the new "blawgs" coming online all the time—if they started up at BlawgCoop, they'd automatically connected to the community of existing law bloggers. So what do you think? Is anyone interested in such a "service"? Would anyone like to set up an MT-powered blog and pay something like $10/year or less?
Of course, a new option I just learned about for people wanting to switch to a more stable and reliable system and have their own domain is bloghosts. Their plans start at $3/month, plus annual domain registration fees ($20-$30), so again it begins to add up, but you would get your own custom domain, which is certainly worth a bit more.
Possible drawbacks to the whole "blawgcoop" plan include scalability—if the "service" attracted a lot of users, costs would go up as bandwidth and disk space increased. But then, if everyone's sharing those costs, they wouldn't be too high for anyone. Theoretically the cost per user could vary depending on bandwidth/disk space, but that would only come into play if one user started using dramatically more than everyone else. Also, support would have to be limited so it didn't become a huge time drag on anyone, but perhaps support responsibilities could be shared as well among users w/varying levels of expertise. I'm sure there are other drawbacks, like security weaknesses I'm not aware of perhaps.
On the plus side, another potentially fun thing we could start with the "service" is an optional group blog to which all users would be invited to post. Welcome to the BlawgCoop. You will be assimilated. ;-)
Posted 07:46 AM | Comments (2) | law general meta-blogging
Ani Live
I saw Ani DiFranco last night at the 9:30 Club. Great show, as usual. This was the fourth time I've seen her live since '96 (gulp! time flies!) and she never fails to play a great show. She doesn't seem to play very long (just a bit over an hour for the last two shows with only one, one-song encore), but she plays hard.
She's touring in support of her new album, Educated Guess, so she played quite a few songs from that album (the title track and "Origami" are the only ones I recognized; I don't have the album yet), as well as quite a few from the last album, Evolve, including the title track, "Phase," and "Serpentine." She also played some older faves, including "Firedoor," "Untouchable Face," "As Is" (with a super-funky arrangement—her electric guitarist, "Tony," was awesome), and "Angry Anymore" among others. Most of these were sing-alongs with the crowd shouting the lyrics so loudly in the small venue that they almost drowned Ani out. She played radical variations on some of them, and I wondered if one reason for that is to thwart the sing-alongs. I would guess she'd do this esp. on "Untouchable Face"; when I first heard her play the song live (at a show at the Berkeley High School, I believe), before she played it she actually asked the audience not to shout the chorus at her since it's not really fun to be at the front of the room while hundreds of people shout "F-you" at the top of their lungs. But that may have nothing to do with it; maybe she mixes up the arrangements just to keep the songs fun and fresh. Whatever the case, it was an awesome show. If she's coming near you this summer, don't miss it!
Posted 07:38 AM | Comments (5) | life generally
Pre-Law School Summer Reading
Along with the handful of requests from people wondering about GW in particular, I've also received a handful of requests for advice on pre-1L-summer reading and preparation in general. All I can offer are my own impressions of what was helpful or might have been helpful; many others have been down this road before and if you look around you'll find terrific insights on these topics on other blogs. That aside, I'd say that as far as preparation goes, I wish I'd spent the summer before 1L working in some sort of legal position—volunteering for a judge or an attorney or a nonprofit, or even working in the mail room at a firm or temping at a legal copying service or something. Anything that gets you thinking about the practice of law and in a position to at least observe the profession at work should be a good way to spend the summer. Of course, a law-related summer job isn't necessary; I'm just saying that if I had it to do over again, I would have tried a little harder to get one. It will give you a taste of what you're getting into, and it won't look bad on your resume when you're trying to get that first summer job after your first year of law school.
Other than that, there's the reading. About a year ago I was thinking about books I might read in preparation (and here). In those posts and comments you'll find a very short survey of the most likely suspects. I did end up reading Law School Confidential, and once I got to school it seemed like a very high percentage of my peers had read it too. I guess I'd recommend it as a general primer, but the study schedule it suggests is just insane.
I also worked my way through most of Getting to Maybe and I found it to be indispensable. It's both an exam preparation book and a way to think about law more generally, so it's something you can read at any time. I found it a bit hard to read before I'd started class because it seemed too abstract, but once I'd started school it was hard to find time to read it, and you should really read it before your finals. If I had it to do over again, I'd try to get through more of it before school started, then I'd finish it in bits as the semester progressed.
But while those books are useful, they're not necessarily fun summer reading. For that, I turned to Brush with the Law by Robert Byrnes and Jaime Marquart , and the infamous One L by Scott Turow. What follows is a review/comparison of the books that I wrote upon finishing them but never posted.
The first, Brush with the Law, is a rather new entry in the field of law school accounts. (Note: It was slowly being serialized here, but it looks like all that's available now is the last installment.) The book offers parallel accounts of the authors' experiences at Stanford and Harvard, respectively. In a nutshell, Byrnes was a bike-riding crackhead who never went to class and did just fine at Stanford [note: I'm not sure his drug of choice was actually specified, but it sounds pretty cracklike], while Marquart began as a sort of sincere straight-arrow at Harvard, attending every class and trying to dot every "i," but gradually became a gambling-addicted slacker who never went to class and, you guessed it, still did just fine at Harvard. Their stories are at once hilarious, insightful, and strangely deflating, like a confirmation of many of my worst fears about law school. Rather than participate in the mythical account of law school as "America's most demanding post-graduate curriculum" (that's really the title of a book), Byrnes and Marquart describe two of the United States' most prestigious law schools as little more than empty facades behind which mostly wealthy, self-aggrandizing students and professors play out their fantasies of what law school is supposed to be. Meanwhile, the "smarter than you" bad boys are learning to laugh at the whole grand show. And while it's refreshing to see law school cut down to human proportion like this, it's also disappointing and dispiriting because it raises again one of the main questions that makes law school seem like such a bad deal, namely: If law school is such a big joke, then why do students have to spend so much damned money, not to mention three years of their lives, to practice law? (I'll leave that question hanging for the moment to spare you a rant against the cartel that is the ABA.)
I then picked up the infamous One L, which, as I mentioned before, struck me as melodramatic in the extreme. As strange as it sounds, I'm glad to have read these books together—they're like antidotes for each other. For every instance in which Turow tries to mystify, aggrandize, or otherwise inflate some aspect of the law school experience, Byrnes and Marquart offer an anecdote to mock, belittle, and otherwise eviscerate the same aspect of law school (probably along with a few others at the same time, for good measure). Jeremy Blachman offers the best summation I've seen for One L when he writes:
The best aspect of One L for me was its historical value. I found myself thinking again and again that little has changed since 1975. One of the first points where I noticed this was in Turow's notes about coming to terms with "legal thinking," which he at first finds "nasty" (86), but later seems to realize is valuable once he accepts that "there were no answers" (101). I fear humanity is doomed if we don't start learning the difference between "nastiness" and "critical thinking," but again, that's another rant for another day.
One thing that has changed in the last 33 years is the value of a dollar:
Can you say "inflation"? The same poll also showed that 80% of students at Harvard in 1975 said they'd prefer something other than corporate law practice (BigLaw), i.e.: "public interest work, political work, work on behalf of the poor" (95). Have those numbers changed, or has it just become
harder than ever to follow that path?
Apparently, law students thought school was already pretty expensive in 1975, so students wanted to know why their classes were so big. According to one of Turow's professors, schools adopted the Socratic method because it enabled a professor to effectively teach 140 students at a time, and this made a legal education "cheap" (122). Perhaps this is true, but if so, the cost savings were never passed on to students. (Cue silent rant against ABA Cartel, take II.)
So law schools still have large classes, and they still charge rapacious tuition, but do they still serve the status quo? On this point Turow writes at length about a speech he heard Ralph Nader give to the students at Harvard in November of 1975 in which Nader pointed out that the law taught at U.S. law schools is largely the law of "the well-to-do [who] could afford the huge legal fees of prosecuting an appeal, of bringing a case to the stage where it was likely to be reprinted in ... casebooks" (133). Turow's description of this speech alone makes One L worth your time. He writes:
[Nader] talked about the model of a lawyer's work that the steady stream of appellate cases suggests. Weren't we really training to be lawyers who only interview clients and write briefs and argue before courts—the kind of lawyers Legal Methods was teaching us to be? Where were we shown images of lawyers as organizers, determined advocates, rather than the disinterested hired hands of whoever could throw the price? Did we honestly believe, as was sometimes suggested, that the most intriguing legal problems were those presented in cases? Was it really more absorbing to fuss over the details of some company's tax shelters than to face (as our education so seldom asked us to do) the gravest legal problems confronting the society—corporate and government corruption, the bilking of consumers, the dilemma of bringing adequate legal services to the poor? (134)*
Yes, nowhere, no, and no. Sure, the Dean's welcome speech at GW touched on these issues, but the fact that a law school Dean feels he needs to place special emphasis the public service and social justice aspects of a legal career show that those aspects are still tangential to the mainstream of legal education and legal practice. (I doubt many Deans feel the need to remind students that they could work for big law representing corporate interests; that's the default.)
The results of Nader's speech on Turow are a terrific example of this. Turow leaves the speech "feeling high ... full of hot purpose," but "not sure where those feelings could be rightly aimed" (134). Then, in a typically melodramatic turn, Turow aims all his "hot purpose" at agonizing over whether to join his fellow students in trying to censure one of their professors for being an ass in class. Um, Scott, I'm pretty sure that's not what Nader had in mind. What's more, if legal thinking is "nasty" at all, it's not because it asks its practitioners to think critically about the world, but because—thanks to "law and economics"—it too often encourages them to dehumanize situations and events, and to reduce questions of justice and equity to naked economic equations.
That said, I can't condemn law school as an evil tool of wealth and privilege that hasn't changed at all. For example, I'm pretty sure most law schools today have much more robust clinical programs than they did in 1975. Besides, according to Brush With the Law, none of this matters because it's all just a big joke, anyway, and the key to getting the most out of it and getting on with your life is to never take it too seriously. That's good advice, regardless of what you hope to do with your JD.
* This is what I was trying to get at when I mentioned my frustration in my first Torts class when my professor spent an hour discussing the merits of the "sausage beater" case. Our culture gives plenty of attention to pro sports and other tangential issues as it is; meanwhile, countless injustices never get press or time in court (or appearances in casebooks). PTorts could have chosen many different cases to introduce us to the subject; why did he choose this case?
Posted 06:33 AM | Comments (1) | law school
Thinking About GW?
I've received several emails in recent months from people thinking about attending GW. They often have similar questions, and some other readers who haven't asked may wonder about the same things, so although I'm guessing this comes too late for most since most people have probably made their choices for this fall, below is the most recent wondering-student email (in italics) and my responses.
As a general preface I'll say that whether a school is good for you really depends on what you want out of your law school experience and what you hope to do w/your JD. Know before you go, if you can! Also, visiting your top schools in person before you make your final choice is vital; you need to feel comfortable with a place and the best way to see if you do is to spend some time there in the flesh. I've not made much of a secret of the fact that I haven't loved GW, but I try not to be too negative about it b/c I hated it when I visited in person and decided to come anyway—mainly for the rank and location—so I got pretty much what I deserved. Which reminds me, rank can be a really poor way to choose a school if you care at all about being happy. Go where you think you'll enjoy your three years! GW has provided about what I expected, and it's grown on me a bit; it's a fine place, excellent for many students. Don't decide not to go just because I haven't loved it.
Finally, many other wise people listed in the ai blogroll have given great advice for choosing schools—surf around and do some searches for "advice" on their sites and I'm know you'll come up with some excellent wisdom nuggets.
Without further ado, the wondering-student email and my quick responses:
Hello,
I'm a soon-to be 1L. A friend of mine--who's also going to law school--directed me to your web site. I've enjoyed reading your thoughts on this and that and hoped you might take the time to answer a couple of questions for me. (I tried askastudent@gw...but got no response. Guess I should write at a time other than finals.)
1) How is the general environment? Do people charge after grades and study constantly? Or will I have time to catch up on TV?
I found the environment at GW to be about as competitive as you make it, which means if you want to be watching tv, it doesn't have to be competitive at all. I slacked all year and never really suffered. 80-90% of your fellow students are likely to be very nice and willing to help if you ask (allowing you to borrow notes, recommending the best hornbook that works for them or even letting you borrow theirs, pointing you to other resources and info, etc). Check out Dubitante's law school study group curve—I think a lot of people at GW see things this way when it comes down to study time.
On the other hand, I knew people who got so stressed they became sick, unable to sleep, very very unhappy. Why, I don't know, but they were basically competing against themselves and perhaps a handful of other people who were "gunning" for the straight-A or A+ grades. Unless you're just astoundingly brilliant or find the whole read, memorize, regurgitate (w/analysis) evaluation method very easy, you will have to work very hard to get top grades, but that's probably true at most schools.
2) Is the career planning/placement office helpful? I'm fairly clueless about what I want to do in the future and how to get there.
The career office has been helpful in the sense of the people being nice and available to respond to questions, but I'm looking at public interest career options and they're really only mediocre when it comes to helping in that area. Don't get me wrong; they're great people and they try, but there's only so much they can do. If you want to work for a firm, I get the idea that helping you get the firm job is the reason the career office exists, so you should be fine. They did offer 3-4 ok sessions throughout the year on the subject of "what can you do with a JD" so they can be helpful that way. If you're clueless about your future, you may not want to go to law school. If you're determined to go for whatever reason, I'd definitely at least visit the "Career Boot Camp" at Decision Books.com. It will at least give you a hint of what you should be looking for in a legal career, and will also help you start learning what your options are. I also highly recommend NALP's "Official Guide to Legal Specialties." I read it basically cover to cover before I passed in on to another law student who was as clueless as I am. It's a great introduction to the major "fields" of law and should help you narrow your career choices a bit.
3) Is a car necessary? I averaged about one accident per year of driving when I had a car, and that was in a rural area.
Car not necessary, especially if you live downtown or on the blue or orange Metro lines — GW is at the Foggy Bottom metro stop). If you live on the red line, Farragut North is about a 5-10 minute walk from the law school. Many students live in Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, Adams Morgan, or in Virginia near the Rosslyn, Courthouse, or Clarendon stops. Plan to pay at least $700 if you live with a roommate, or probably $1000-1200 minimum to live alone. The cost blows. But getting back to your question: The public transportation is very good. I share a car w/my girlfriend, but we really only use it to get groceries and dog food. Even that's not necessary since there are grocery stores at several metro stops, but it's a luxury we've decided to maintain for the sake of convenience. Many GW students don't have cars and they do just fine.
One more piece of advice I tell all who will listen: Despite what the computer "support" people tell you, you *can* use a Mac at GW. They won't help you support it, but I can help with many of your questions and I simply haven't had many problems using mine. The only thing you can't do w/a Mac at GW that you can do w/a Windoze machine is print to the network printers from your laptop (that's easy to work around), and take finals. The finals thing is kind of a big deal, so I have an old used Windoze laptop I use for that, but otherwise, my nearly 3-yr-old iBook got me through the first year w/ease, and w/much less hassle and headache than a lot of of my colleagues had w/their Dells.
Good luck with your choice! Let me know if you end up at GW so I can say hello and answer any more questions you might have with your first year.
UPDATE: Oops. This post edited to remove my name, which I had cut and pasted from the email I sent to the inquiring student. As I said, I'm not trying to remain anonymous, only to remain below the "google radar." Thanks to Sam for pointing out the error. I guess that's what I get for trying to convert an email into a blog post.
Also, Sam kindly offered to share his experience w/GW if anyone has more questions, and Scott who just graduated (or will formally graduate very soon) is another potential source for great GW info.
Posted 07:36 AM | Comments (3) | law school
National Mall
You can't visit D.C. without spending at least a day on the National Mall visiting all the monuments. Or, avoid the sunburn and all the walking and take a quick virtual tour here.
Posted 06:49 AM | Comments (1) | life generally
DC Touristing
Ed. note: The following post was composed sometime in early March, but I never posted it for some reason. I'm posting it now b/c my family is in town and we're seeing the sights.
One of the benefits of going to school in D.C. is, of course, being in D.C. with all its monuments and museums and national treasures and whatnot. In a small attempt to appreciate some of that cultural/historical goodness, I took a tour of the White House yesterday with a small group from my section at GW. (The first-year class at GW is divided into four large sections of approximately 100 people who take all classes except legal writing together, plus one night section of equal size.) It was fascinating but short; the public is only allowed in a very small part of the building.
Humorous note: It was cool out, so I was wearing a jacket that just happened to have a "Dean for America" sticker on it. I believe I was in the Green Room and I asked one of the guards if she could tell me anything about one of the paintings on the wall. Rather than answering, she looked at my sticker and said, "It's pretty brave of you to wear that in here while George Bush is president." I didn't know what to say. How are you supposed to respond to that? So I just said, "It's a free country last I checked," and tried to smile politely. The guard also smiled and then looked up at the painting and began her well-rehearsed speech about it. Lesson: Be sure to prominently display your support for Democratic candidates if you take a White House tour. The guards enjoy the diversion.
A few ideas for when people visit you in D.C.:
Take them on a tour of the White House. Not very practical because you need a group of at least 10 or more and you have to sign up way in advance.
More practical might be: Tour the capital building! You have to line up in the morning of the day you visit to get tickets, but you need to write your Congressperson in advance of your visit if you want tickets to view the actual Senate or House chambers. I'm told it's well worth it.
Law students and their families might especially enjoy a tour of the Supreme Court. (more info)
And, of course, all those museums. I wouldn't recommend the zoo right now, though. Bad stuff happening there. Tragic, really.
______
Posted while listening to: The Golden Age (Live) from the album "Garage D'Or (Disc 2)" by Cracker
Posted 07:28 AM | Comments (5) | law school life generally
That's that.
The Property final was not so bad as I'd feared. I was still too fuzzy on when and how benefits and burdens of covenants run with the land, and maybe too squishy on the remedies available to a commercial tenant for breach of either express or implied warranties, but you know what? It doesn't matter now. It's done.
One thing though: Prof Property asked a policy question based on the Barry Bonds homerun ball question—should the kayaker who catches the ball get to keep it, or what about others who put work into trying to get it, or should it belong to the batter or the ball park or the baseball team or the government? It was a good question and fun to answer because it called for us to think about what we're protecting via property law, and why we might protect it. These are good questions to ask. But I was thinking as I answered, why is this question based on such a meaningless scenario? In fact, why are nearly all law school cases and hypos (except in crim law) based on such meaningless things as a coffee company's rights? What about a homeless person's rights? What about a single mother's rights? What about the rights of Guantanamo detainees? Why doesn't law school ask students to think about things that matter? By focusing almost entirely on middle class and business interests, law schools end up allowing students to ignore vast swaths of society, and then we wonder why poor and traditionally "underserved" groups don't have more and better legal representation. Broken system.
But more on that another day. I have a week of vacation with the famdamily (my sis arrived last night and my parents arrive today), then the job starts. All fun ahead. Meanwhile below is a list of links I haven't had time to read or comment on, but which are worth a look and which I hope to return to later. Enjoy!
- Professor Smith on law review.
- Dubitante's analysis of the law school study group curve. It sounds exactly correct to me.
- Salon's review of Bruce Sterling's new novel, The Zenith Angle, which sounds like a sci-tech thriller of sorts.
- Salon's article about Morrissey, who has a new album out recently. (I was a huge fan of Bona Drag and Viva Hate, somewhat less of Kill Uncle and Your Arsenal, and then I kind of lost track of what he was doing.)
- The Waddling Kitchen's menu for harried students. I'm not so harried at the moment, but there are some awesome ideas here. If WT ever decides to bail on law, he's definitely got a future in food—cooking it and writing about it so that you want to cook it, too. [link via Buffalo Wings]
- Jeremy on lawyers' self-loathing and on the debt v. public interest dilemma. May I suggest the two are connected? I hope to write something more about this soon. (See also Scheherazade's thoughts on the issue. More humor from Jeremy here. This guy is brilliant.
Posted 08:28 AM | Comments (14) | law school
JD v. MBA v. PhD/MA
Greg over at Law is Fun, who recently finished 2L finals, offers up a detailed comparison of life as an MBA student vs. life as a law student. I know next to nothing about what business grad school is like, but I can tell you how law school differs from my experience in English grad school:
Reading: I've found the reading in law school to be generally much more tedious, especially in CivPro and Contracts, but less so in Crim Law and Constitutional Law. I'm sure that varies by person.
Class: Law school classes are a complete waste of time compared to English grad classes. In my first year of law school, I've spent 15 hours/week in class. A typical week in grad school included about half that. Of course, I was always teaching 6-8 hours/week, as well, but that's another story. My English grad classes were small—8-16 students each—and probably about 50-80% of class time was devoted to class discussion. My law school classes have been very large—100 or more in all but the first semester of CivPro (about 40 students) and my legal writing section (12 students). So far, I've seen almost no discussion in the larger classes; the so-called "Socratic method" is a sick joke that allows law schools to pretend they have a pedagogical model when really they've just become degree factories. (Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)
Assessment: There is simply no comparison here. In English grad school I was evaluated on my class participation (meaning class attendance was basically just assumed; if you weren't there your Prof might be more offended than anything else), my ability to write short (2-10 pages) and long (15-30 pages) papers, and often my ability to present a short paper to the class. In law school I'm evaluated just as Greg says—everything basically rests on how you perform on one final exam. Like the huge class model, I think this method of assessment leaves a lot to be desired in terms of its accuracy, fairness, and value to learning, but there you go.
I might have more to say about this another day. Right now, I've got to do half a dozen practice property questions. At 5 p.m. my first year of law school will be over and I will be glad. Very.
Posted 05:53 AM | Comments (3) | law school
The Damaged Kingdom
Disney is trying to block the release of Michael Moore's new film, "Fahrenheit 911." And why is Disney doing this? Moore's agent claims Disney just wants to protect its relationship with the Bush administration:
"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."
Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.
Yeah, of course Disney denies the accusation. But this move may have been the best thing Moore could hope for, since it's generating tons of free press and "buzz" about the film. Plus, he's made the front page of the NY Times with a quote like this:
and this:
Doesn't Disney care about the poor and working people? Oh yeah, only insofar as they buy tickets to theme parks and movies.
Posted 06:36 AM | Comments (5) | general politics
Discovery & Disclosure
Ok, my first year of law school officially ends tomorrow at 5 p.m. and I have a question for all my dear and beloved readers: Who am I? Do you know? Would you tell me if you did?
I ask b/c Favorable Dicta just posted about being "found out," and DG has disclosed her identity to some friends. Like them, I've taken a few small steps to actively conceal my identity (like not posting under my given name), but for the most part I assume anyone who wants to know who I am could figure it out. Referral logs tell me that at least someone at GW reads ai fairly regularly, and there have been indications that at least a couple of people have made the physical connection. I don't think about it often, but sometimes I wonder. Who reads ai and how many of those readers know me? How many do I know? As I think about starting the summer job, I wonder even more.
So: If you read ai and know me, please say hello. I've only kept my name off of these pages to stay, as the Energy Spatula puts it, "below google radar." I haven't really talked about ai with my classmates because it's simply never come up. One friend asked me once if I had a blog. I said yes, and that was that. She didn't ask any more about it. Perhaps she was just confirming what she already knew.
Anyhoo, I believe at least a couple "blawgers" will (likely?) be in D.C. this summer or fall for summer jobs or for school. If that group includes you, please look me up (email always works) so we can make our plans for legal world domination in person, rather than just virtually. Coffee's always good.
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Posted to the tune of: Dark Center of the Universe from "The Moon & Antarctica" by Modest Mouse
Posted 05:54 AM | Comments (10) | law school meta-blogging
ConLaw Craziness & Notes
ConLaw is over. It was closed-book, no notes, three hours, three essays, and 30 multiple choice questions. If I hit the median, I'll be thrilled.
In celebration of finishing my ConLaw exam, I've posted the notes I used to study for it. At that link you'll also find my CivPro notes. (Click the bullet points to go to the notes themselves, or you can navigate by clicking the curled page corners in the top right, or via the tabbed dividers on the right edge of the pages. All this fancy-shmanciness courtesy of Circus Ponies NoteBook, "The $50 Valet for your iLife." (in my case it was only $10, but who's counting?).) As I explain here, these note come with no warranties, neither express nor implied. The main point of putting them up is just to show how a real outliner (that allows you to collapse and expand your outline as you wish) can help make studying easier. It works well for me, but in online form it might make pages slow to load.
Mac users have lots of choices for OPML-compliant outliners, beginning with OmniOutliner, which I believe comes loaded on all Macs these days. If you'd like to try using a more functional and dynamic outline next fall and you don't use a Mac, I'm sure can find a Windoze outliner that supports OPML somewhere. I guess OneNote can handle it, for starters, so soon the capability will be built into M$ Office. [link via Scripting News] I'm telling you, the expand/collapse feature makes outlines much more useful.
Only one more exam to go: Property. Thanks to all who helped out with my Landlord/Tenant and Covenant questions the other day. I'm going to try to get back into it so I may have more questions for you soon!
Posted 07:46 PM | Comments (2) | law school
Newly Minted JD
Congratulations to Scott at L-Cubed on completing his final final. He are purty much an laywer now! Oh, and happy (one-day-late) birthday, too!
Posted 05:36 AM | Comments (1) | law school
Remote Controlled Teaching
This story about teachers using "clickers" in university and law school class rooms is fascinating:
Although some skeptics dismiss the devices as novelties more suited to a TV game show than a lecture hall, educators who use them say their classrooms come alive as never before. Shy students have no choice but to participate, the instructors say, and the know-it-alls lose their monopoly on the classroom dialogue.
Professor Wilde has her students answer multiple-choice questions to gauge whether she is getting her point across and adjusts her lectures accordingly. "I can instantly see that three-quarters of the class doesn't get it," she said.
. . .The devices look and work much as a television remote does, sending infrared signals to a receiver at the front of the classroom. The receiver is connected to a computer, which tabulates and analyzes the responses. The data can be displayed by an overhead projector, incorporated into a spreadsheet or posted on a class Web site. Responses are anonymous among the students, but not to the teachers, who can identify students by the serial numbers of their clickers.
Doesn't that sound awesome? I'm not sure how these clickers would integrate with discussion; it seems a teacher would have to be well-prepared and very flexible to encourage regular, productive give-and-take of classroom discussion in addition to having time and opportunity to make the clickers useful. But that's just it; if teachers are forced to think a bit more about how they present information, and if students are constantly forced to engage, I bet learning improves. Maybe it's just the tech-fan in me, but I would have loved to try to make use of these things in the English classes I used to teach, and I would have loved to use them as a student in the past year of law school. [link via JD2B, which also links to an abstract of a forthcoming journal article on the subject of using clickers in law classrooms]
Posted 06:24 AM | Comments (2) | law school life generally
Background Checking 1L Summer
Although it's been pretty much all finals all the time around here for a while, I do realize life will go on after Thursday at 5 p.m. when finals are over. In fact, I start work as a public defender intern on the 17th. I haven't had time to give it a great deal of thought, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. On an application for summer funding, my future supervisor described my summer job as follows:
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Filling out paperwork in preparation for the job (mostly for background checks so I can spend my summer in jail), I get this twice:
Yikes. I guess this is when I appreciate the fact that I was always one step ahead of the cops during my youthful crime sprees. Kidding! But I also have to authorize "the release of the following data or records:" employment, including military; bank, savings, loans & investments; credit; education; medical & military medical; selective service (such an unfortunate name when reduced to an acronym, no?); veteran's administration; police & judiciary; arrests/convictions (criminal & traffic); prior polygraph information; birth and citizenship.
I wonder how long it will be before forms like this also require disclosure of any websites, blogs, or discussion fora to which you are a regular contributor. Maybe never, but I do wonder what I'm going be able to say here on ai about whatever it is I'm doing this summer. Speaking of which, this post inaugurates a new ai category: "1L Summer." I hope to populate it with hilarious and breathtakingly compelling anecdotes and observations (or just random notes about my summer experience), if that's possible. Since starting ai I haven't needed to be too concerned about what my employer might have to say about what I write here; I've been unemployed for a year now, and before that I worked for a public university and I didn't worry too much what it thought. Something tells me working at a public defender's office will raise all sorts of fun "can I say that on tv?" questions. We'll see.
Posted 05:58 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer
Meandering Mind
Studying is overrated. In fact, it blows. It's spring and it's time to move. As Transmogriflaw has been posting recently, now is probably the worst time to be inside making outlines. Meanwhile, Scripting News is on vacation in Germany, and it sounds wonderful:
I had the same impression when I biked through Germany years ago, and the Germans I've known have only confirmed that impression: Germany may not be heaven, but they've got a lot of things figured out. A standard 4-6 weeks of paid vacation and health care for all citizens are great places to start on the list of things Germans enjoy that most Americans don't. Quality of life could skyrocket for most Americans if we had more vacation time and fewer worries about health care, don't you think?
Can I go there now, please? Or anywhere but here, really?
Oh no, I can't. As Monica says
And so we have judicial review, justiciability and standing and prudential concerns and mootness and ripeness, federalism, separation of powers, the commerce clause and the negative or dormant commerce clause, executive powers and immunities, and the state action doctrine. And those are just the highlights! Time to stop whining and start studying.
But first, speaking of ConLaw and judicial review, did you hear that Justice Souter was assaulted on Friday night? D.C.: A fun place to live, work, and jog!
______
Posted to the tune of: You May Know Him from "Moon Pix" by Cat Power
Posted 08:59 AM | Comments (2) | law school
Proper Property
Questions for those of you who might know:
- My notes tell me that a landlord can't waive the implied covenant of habitability. However, can a landlord waive the implied covenant of quiet enjoyment?
- What's the simplest way to determine whether a covenant (both benefit and burden) runs with the land? (I'm afraid there is no simple way, so I'll settle for any way since I seem to have missed those lectures almost completely.)
Posted 04:11 PM | Comments (4) | law school
Late Farewell to Invisible Adjunct
Thanks to The Menagerie, I just learned that the Invisible Adjunct ceased blogging over a month ago. As this great article in the Chronicle indicates, the Invisible Adjunct had attracted a huge readership, so it's really a shame to see her go. I certainly understand a choice to leave academia; it sounds like the IA experienced most or all of the negative developments that currently threaten to destroy higher education as we've come to know it in the U.S., so it's hard to question her decision to leave that dysfunctional sinking ship.
Yet, her decision to close down the blog seems like another matter. Not everyone can claim to get 18,000 readers a month on any topic, let alone the relatively obscure topic of the plight of adjuncts in higher education. After all the work she put into it, it certainly would have been nice if the IA could have done something to turn her blog into some sort of positive catalyst for change in academia. Perhaps she could have passed the reins to another adjunct, or passed the domain to a collective of adjuncts who could continue the discussion of issues adjuncts face, as well as perhaps begin organizing adjuncts to start standing up to the almost criminally negligent tenured faculty whose relative professional success only remains possible because of the sacrifices made by adjuncts. Yeah, that would have been nice. But hey, what do I know?
Here's what I know: I wish the Invisible Adjunct all the success in the world in her future endeavors and I hope to see a book about her experiences very soon. I'll definitely buy a copy.
Posted 08:19 AM | meta-blogging
