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Marathon, Whitman-Walker, and Ads on ai
Hi. I am currently training with the AIDS Marathon Training Program to run the Marine Corps Marathon this October. Participants in the program each raise at least $1700 in donations for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in D.C. The clinic provides comprehensive medical services to the D.C. community, and is especially committed to ending the suffering of all those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Your donation will help ensure the clinic can continue to provide its vital services to the D.C. community. To get an idea of how important those services are, check out this startling fact: D.C. has the highest per-capita incidence of HIV/AIDS in the nation! (More from the CDC.)
If you have ever wished you could do something nice for the Imbroglio (because, well, why wouldn't you wish that?), or if you would like to help out the Whitman-Walker clinic, or both, please make a donation today. Thanks!
About the [nevermind. This has been edited to comply with commercial restrictions]. help me meet my $1700 fundraising goal.
Posted 09:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | marathon meta-blogging
Welcome to ai Version 3.0
And just like that, the imbroglio is all fresh and new. The biggest changes are obviously to the banner and the move back from two to three columns. Long-time readers might recall that the original imbroglio was a rust-colored three-column design, so this is something of a return to the imbroglio's roots. The banner is another story. I've already received feedback that the blue bar behind the title should go all the way to the top of the page. Does anyone else think that would be a better look?
Aesthetics aside, the purpose of this redesign was twofold. First, I was just tired of the old look. It's nice to shake things up once in a while. I wanted something simpler, cleaner, perhaps easier to maintain. To that end the new page is missing several of the sidebar features readers said they weren't even aware of or rarely read. These include the ambivalent bits links blog which was fun for me but for few others, apparently. I'm planning to incorporate links like that elsewhere, or perhaps restart the feature if I find I miss it. Other missing “features” include ambivalent comment (which I'd never fully implemented anyway), the audioscrobbler recently played tracks sidebar, and the ambivalent voices sidebar. Again, some of these may see new life someday, but for now it's nice to have a slightly simpler page. There's obviously still a lot of content packed into this page—too much, some might say. What's here is useful to me, and I hope you find it so, as well.
The other main reason for the redesign was the marathon I'm training for. You may notice that the right column is dominated by a request for support in this endeavor. I have no idea if it will lead to anything, but I figured it was worth a shot. I played with the idea of placing some Google ads on the page to generate marathon money, but then I read here that I probably wouldn't make more than $1-2/week and I decided it just wasn't worth it. My intention is not to offend anyone by asking for money, but to make it easy for anyone who might desire to donate to do so. It's a terrific cause and all donations are tax deductible! I'll be writing more about this as the summer progresses, but anything you can spare will be a great help, both to me in my own fundraising goal, and more importantly, to the important work of the Whitman-Walker Clinic.
I think that's about it other than to note that this redesign took far longer than I expected. The technical work involved is not so great, but I think there's a psychological hump to get over when you're planning to reformat thousands of pages in one fell swoop.
For those of you reading the RSS feed, please click on through and tell me what you think. For those of you viewing the actual page, well, what do you think? Love it? Hate it? All feedback is welcome. I aim to please so if anything does not appear to be working or if anything is hard to read or difficult to understand for some reason, please let me know.
Posted 09:39 PM | Comments (20) | meta-blogging
Redesign in Progress
Just a quick warning that I'm about to update the templates on this site. If things get very funky, this is why.
Change is good, right?
Posted 08:09 PM | meta-blogging
Black Background Blogs
In my ongoing but sporadic and completely self-serving series of polite and humble requests to bloggers everywhere: If your blog has a black background behind light text, can you please please reverse that? The light text on black (or other really dark color) background is very hard to read. If you'd like a black background, why not put that background around all the margins but keep the background on the main column of text light? That's what I've done here at the imbroglio and many other bloggers have done the same. It's just much easier on the eyes and is therefore more reader-friendly. You want to be friends with your readers, don't you?
Thanks.
Other posts in this series:
Posted 07:29 PM | meta-blogging
In Praise of Portable Firefox
Dear Portable Firefox,
I love you. Love. You are the best thing since... since.... USB drives were invented. The best! I'm working in an office that runs something like Windows 2000 or NT (I'm not sure which) and the tech freaks have locked everything down so that I can't even update IE, let alone install Firefox. Until I learned about Portable Firefox, I thought I was just stuck with IE. And then my good friend Jose gave me a tip and everything changed.
I didn't realize how much it sucked doing legal research on IE until I loaded up Portable Firefox and got to work. Tabs make legal research much more efficient for me—I'm always getting a list of search results and it's nice to open the cases I want to look at in new tabs—way better than a bunch of slow IE windows. And even on a USB drive Firefox is faster than IE. Heaven.
Thank you John Haller for creating this, and thank you Jose for the tip!
Now does anyone know where I could find a nice Windows compatible, USB-friendly outliner/database like DevonThink or NoteTaker?
Posted 06:32 PM | Comments (2) | 2L summer mac geek
Blawg Wisdom Needs You
Blawg Wisdom has been updated with a new request for advice about choosing between Loyola and Southwestern law schools. Please head on over and offer any tips you can think of, either about those schools specifically, or making the choice more generally.
Unfortunately, this is the first update to Blawg Wisdom in weeks. I frequently come across posts I think would make good links there but then I forget where I saw them before I have time to post them. Plus, I just don't have the blog-reading time I once did. Bottom line: I can't find all the good “wisdom” about law school on my own.
So: Would anyone like to help keep Blawg Wisdom more up to date? I envision a handful of people posting occasionally when they come across links they think would be helpful to other law students. If I post twice a month, and two or three other post twice a month, the site will be a bit more active and useful for everyone. Ideally we could get volunteers from different places in law school—pre-law, 1L, 2L, 3L, maybe even a recent grad or two. Your interests change as you go through the process so it would be good to have a representative from each step along the way.
Volunteers?
Posted 06:51 AM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
Hosed in Court?
Yesterday I saw a woman show up to court wearing a moderately short skirt and black stockings with the seam up the back of the leg (are these called French stockings?). It made me wonder: Is this supposed to mean anything? Are there rules about stockings? Is it ever appropriate to wear, say, fishnets to court? And what about women attorneys who wear skirts? Are hose required? Is there some code that says bare legs are bad?
This is what I'm reduced to: writing about pantyhose.
But on the subject of court attire, here's another question: What is the meaning of the blue blazer? Is it acceptable for an attorney to wear khakis, a nice shirt and tie, and a blue blazer to court? Or is that not formal enough? Is a suit required?
Posted 06:12 AM | Comments (3) | 2L summer
20 Truths About Criminal Justice
Just quickly: 20 Incontrovertible Truths About Criminal Justice [via Alaskablawg].
Hearsay Exception Movie!
Energy Spatula offers up the very best way to learn about hearsay exceptions—The Hearsay Exception Movie!
The maker of this movie is without a doubt a rockstar. What a great way to study! And he got credit for it, too! My evidence class does not even begin to measure up.
Extra points to anyone who can name the song on which the Hearsay Exception Movie tune is based.
Posted 07:00 AM | Comments (2) | law school
When you don't have time to read or write you make lists
- These tape men are awesome.
- Blawg Review #7 is up and good. Mr. Richey did a great job frontin' for blawg students everywhere. Thanks JR!
- Blawg Review #6 also looked really good, although I still haven't been able to read most of it. Working 40 hrs/week and commuting an additional 10 has a way of seriously cutting down on surf-time.
- This Rojo thing looks like a possibly cool replacement for del.icio.us—sort of like del.icio.us on steroids. Anyone tried it?
- Legal Lies at Stay of Execution is a must-read for law students and future law students, although I haven't yet read it. It has made f/k/a unhappy, but really, I have no idea what they're talking about. Do you think I should read the things I link to?
- At first blush (and again, I haven't read much about it), this fillibuster deal seems like a big fat loser for Democrats because doesn't it basically mean they're going to have to confirm the nominees they previously blocked? Doesn't it give the Republicans almost everything they wanted (up/down votes on nominees) while giving Dems almost nothing? What am I missing?
- I learned a new word yesterday:
asportation |ˌaspərˈtā sh ən| noun Law, rare
the detachment, movement, or carrying away of property, considered an essential component of the crime of larceny.
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from Latin asportation-, from asportare ‘carry away.’
It strikes me as a rather odd word. Doesn't it seem like it should also be a verb? “My car was asportated” is rather simple, but as a noun I guess you'd have to say “Someone has committed asportation of my car.” Strange.
- I have a strong preference against links that open in new windows. I have a variety of options when I click a link—open in new window, new tab, or in the same window—but web authors who set their links with a “new window” target play a power game in which they attempt to manipulate the choice I make on that click. Don't these hatas know I will always win!?
Posted 07:04 AM | Comments (11) | lists meta-blogging
Trial Question Peccadillos
I got to watch an interesting jury trial yesterday. Voir dire (jury selection) was especially fascinating and I may say more about that later. But one thing I noticed as the trial went on was that the prosecutor tended to greatly overuse the phrases “Did you have occasion to...” or “Did there come a point in time when...” For example, she'd ask a witness: “On or about May 25th, 2005, did you have occasion to look inside your closet?” Or: “Did there come a point in time when you spoke with Joe Smith?”
Why would an attorney ever want to frame questions this way? It just sounds stupid when instead you could just say “On or about May 25th did you look inside your closet?” and “Did you speak with Joe Smith around that time?”
I wonder how many cliche phrases like this lawyers end up using without thinking about it and just because they've heard other lawyers speak this way and think it makes them sound more lawyerly.
Here's a little related lesson from my private book of language peccadillos: “point in time” is almost always a useless and redundant construction. Next time you're tempted to use it (either when writing or speaking), see if dropping two of the three words would really change the meaning of what you're saying or make it less clear. Chances are, simply saying “point” or “time” alone will say everything you want to say. Thus: Did you look in your closet at that point in time? becomes, either: Did you look in your closet at that point? or Did you look in your closet at that time?
Simpler and more concise is almost always better.
(We all have our little hangups, ok?)
Posted 11:28 AM | Comments (6) | 2L summer
Effects ripple outward
Following up on my comments from the other day, Evan Schaeffer has offered a more complete explanation of the changes he's making to his blog in the comments here. One of the things he's changing is he's getting rid of what was my favorite part of the his site—the weekly law student blog roundup. Someone needs to take that over. It was not just a great weekend read, it was a public service. Who's in?
Posted 06:27 AM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
Neutral Factfinders?
Judges should never apologize to the prosecution after delivering a verdict of “not guilty.”
Discuss.
Posted 09:14 PM | Comments (4) | 2L summer
Law-Related Things That Suck: When Lawyers and Law Students Stop Blogging
According to this podcast, the comments there, and this post, Notes from the (Legal) Underground is no more. Instead, it's going to be called Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground and “is going to come to an abrupt halt.” It's unclear what this means. Evan has promised to explain, but for now it seems that the Legal Underground as we've known and loved it is no more.
Why? Evan has apparently seen evidence that becoming a popular blogger can actually hurt a lawyer's business. That news is itself almost as sad as hearing that the Legal Underground may no longer be the fun and happening place we've all come to know and love. It makes me wonder: What the heck do people want from lawyers, anyway? Lawyers are criticized for being stuffy, bloodthirsty sharks. Then, if they show a more human or friendly side, they get criticized (via lost business) for not being stuffy bloodthirsty sharks? I just don't get it.
Along with all the talk recently of why law students shouldn't blog summer jobs, the bad news about law blogging just keeps rolling in. Oh, and now this: Blonde Justice notes that Soupie's BBQ Daycare has gone fishing for the summer.
I guess it's good that I've started my job and don't have much time to read (or write) blogs anymore, huh?
Posted 06:57 AM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
Mistake? Really?
Just really quickly: I just saw this story that Muslims are skeptical over the Newsweek back-track on the Koran story—the one Newsweek ran last week saying that U.S. soldiers at Gitmo had abused the holy book.
It would be shocking to think that Newsweek has somehow been convinced by the U.S. gov't to retract the story, but hey, I'm pretty used to being shocked. How about you?
Posted 07:06 AM | Comments (6) | general politics
Blawg the summer job? Take II
My summer job starts today. I've thought a bit about all the commentary generated by my post last week about blawgging a summer job, but I'm still not sure what to say about it. Thanks to a fat link from Professor Kerr (that Conspiracy is a flow machine!) lots of people read the post and many chimed in either in the comments or on their own sites (or in comments on other sites). The response was nearly universal: Don't do it. While I understand where much of this is coming from and agree to some extent, I agree w/Cathy that law student and associate blawgs have a positive role to play in destroying the “black box” around the law. For example, I think the Public Defender Law Clerk is a great example of how this can be done. If he/she is hurting clients or his/her own future somehow, I'm missing something.
I also found much of the bandwagoning on the “don't blawg your summer job!” meme depressing for some reason. Although I know it was well intentioned, some of it was patronizing and failed to address the harder aspects of the issue, choosing instead to fall back on a blanket and simplistic “don't!” I understand that lawyers are risk averse when it comes to controlling information because that's part of their job; however, line-drawing is also something good lawyers must do all the time and much of the responses seemed to avoid that task.
That said, I do appreciate all the input and I'm still actually mulling it over. These are just some of the thoughts I've had about this and I'll be thinking more about this as the summer continues. As I said in that original post, I didn't write about anything last year that came even close to raising model rules issues (at least I don't think I did), and I don't plan to this year. I'll write what I can and we'll see where it goes....
Happy Birthday Blonde Justice (and more!)
Happy Birthday to Blonde Justice (the blawg), which is one whole year old today!:
Blondie is probably watching the big Survivor finale right now, and I'm headed there soon, too. (The magic of Tivo means I generally start watching about 20-30 minutes into a network program so that I can then skip through the commercials.) What big surprises are in store? It's supposed to be television like you've never seen it before! Oh my gosh, I can hardly wait!
Really, after such a great season of the Amazing Race, Survivor has had a hard time keeping up. It's gotten better recently, so tonight could be good, but I'm not holding my breath.
It's been quiet around here recently as I worked on a little freelance project which is now mostly finished. Work starts tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it, but it's also been nice having a bit of freedom the last few days. More on all that soon.
Posted 08:38 PM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging tv land
Bad Prosecutor, No Consequences
Several moons ago Blonde Justice asked for stories about prosecutors behaving badly. I promised a story “about a prosecutor who suppressed and lied about evidence, was caught red-handed doing it, but managed to get a guy executed despite these crimes, and now sits as a trial court judge in a nearby U.S. city.” Well, I wasn't kidding. I finally dug out a few of my notes on the incredible case of Wilbert Lee Evans. Justice Marshall summarized the relevant facts pretty well in his dissent from the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari to reconsider Evan's death sentence:
Evans v. Virginia, 471 U.S. 1025 (1985) (some internal citations omitted).
That opinion goes on to describe how Virginia law at the time of Evans' original conviction said that “when a capital defendant's right to a fair and impartial jury is violated during the sentencing phase of trial, a death sentence must be commuted to life imprisonment.” This was because the law also said that only the jury that heard the guilt or innocence phase of the trial could impose punishment, but since the jury was tainted by some sort of error in the first phase, it could not effectively change the punishment, and therefore the only fair solution in death penalty cases was to commute the sentence to life. However, the law changed on March 28, 1983 “to allow for resentencing by a different jury after a death sentence was set aside.” Coincidentally, the prosecutor who knew he had committed fraud in the original Evans trial in 1981 decided on that very day—March 28, 1983—to admit to his crime. This means that not only did this prosecutor willfully and knowingly deceive a judge and jury in order to convict Evans, but he then kept his fraud secret until the very day when his admission would no longer be able to save Evans life. Can you say bad, bloodthirsty, evil prosecutor? I can.
Here's how Justice Marshall dispassionately describes this:
Um, why wasn't this prosecutor disbarred?
The story only gets more awful from there. Much of it is summarized in Marshall's 1990 dissent to the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari to consider staying Evans' execution. Evans v. Muncy, 498 U.S. 927 (1990). The short story is that during the nine years Evans was in prison, he was a model inmate and even acted heroically to help stop a prison riot. “According to uncontested affidavits presented by guards taken hostage during the uprising, Evans took decisive steps to calm the riot, saving the lives of several hostages, and preventing the rape of one of the nurses.” This was rather important in light of the fact that his death penalty was based on the jury's finding of “future dangerousness.” A guy who steps in to stop a riot doesn't sound too dangerous, does he?
(Tangent: This pro-death group provides a PDF file of a story about Evans' actions in the riot. The group's point is that Evans can't be a hero because he killed a man. That story is interesting for the added detail it provides about Evans' case, but my point here is just to draw attention to the irony of the pro-death site using an animated image of the scales of justice going up and down constantly. They're right: So long as the state is killing people, those scales of justice will never balance.)
But none of the evidence in Evans' favor mattered. Viriginia killed Evans on October 17, 1990. It apparently did a great job of it, too:
But that's not the end of the story. The very best part of this whole horrible tale of American justice in action is that the intentionally fraudulent prosecutor was not disbarred. In fact, I don't think he was disciplined at all. In fact, he now sits as a judge hearing criminal cases in the same jurisdiction where he committed his horrible crimes.
So there you have it: A true and chilling tale of a very very bad prosecutor who suffered no consequences for his egregious behavior. I've seen him in court and I secretly suspect he is an emotionally broken man because he's being devoured from the inside by guilt from what he's done, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part.
Posted 03:17 PM | Comments (5) | crimlaw
Call Me Killjoy
I was just going through old email and noticed an announcement for a GW end-of-year party that was apparently last Friday at a local bar. I'm sure I wouldn't have gone even if I'd known about it—I was sleeping off a 24-hour paper-writing binge at the time. It's only worth mentioning because apparently the student government sponsored the event and paid for the first $3000 in drinks.
Does any other "profession" enable alcoholism the way law does?
Don't get me wrong. I'm a big beer fan and free drinks are really the best kind, but this just strikes me as, well, not the greatest idea. I mean, it's great that the student government organizes and sponsors the party, but why do they need to buy drinks? Law students who want to drink to celebrate the end of the year are going to drink regardless of whether someone else is buying, so if the student government has an extra $3000 to throw around, why not create a summer grant for a needy public interest law student or something?
Yeah, I'm obsessed with funding public interest law students.
Posted 02:40 PM | Comments (5) | law school
Beyond Red v. Blue
The Pew Research Center has just released its latest typology of America's political divisions. You can take the survey yourself to see where you fit in the nine different categories Pew has devised. I'm fairly sure most of you can guess where the survey pegs me:
Yeah, more or less. And just in case you missed it, let's repeat:
Hope springs eternal.
Posted 08:15 PM | Comments (1) | general politics
Blawgging Summer Jobs: Discuss
As spring transitions into summer, the time has come for most law students to prepare for their summer jobs. If you're a law student with a blog, you're probably wondering how much you'll be able to say about your job on your blog. No? Well, I am. And since my class in “professional responsibility” didn't address blogging at all (I can't imagine why), I'd love to hear from lawyers, other law students, professors, whomever, about the ethics and boundaries of blawgging a summer job.
As I see it there are at least two main levels of concern for the summer job blawgger. First, there's the concern about professional responsibility and confidentiality: How much can I say about what I'm doing without violating my professional duties? Generally, Model Rule 1.6 says that you can't “reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by” several different exceptions that probably won't apply to most law students in summer jobs. This obviously means you shouldn't blawg about anything you learned in confidence, but if what you say would not be “revealing” then it's ok, right? I take that to mean that if the information is otherwise publicly available, it's ok to blawg. Unfortunately, it turns out that often very little of what happens in a law office is otherwise publicly available.
The other main level of concern is more prudential: How will what I write reflect on me as a future lawyer and how will it affect my career chances in the future—either with my current summer employer, or with others who might find my blawg in the future? The answer to this seems to depend on the person and the type of work involved. If you're working in a “white shoe” firm somewhere, you probably want to say next to nothing about what you're doing. Nobody wants any light shed on those smoky backroom deals. (Joke!) If you're working in a political advocacy/policy position, you might be able to say a lot more about what you're doing because part of your job is to spread the word about your employer's agenda.
Since I'm working at a public defender's office again this summer, I'm specifically interested in hearing thoughts on what I can talk about in that context. I said almost nothing last year about the different cases I saw in court or worked on, but instead talked mostly about my own impressions of learning the basics of criminal defense. On the other hand, Public Defender Law Clerk has been writing more detailed anecdotes about the cases that run through the jurisdiction he/she is working in. Monica has also written some excellent and detailed posts about working in a PD's office (like this one, where she won a trial!). I don't think any of these posts cross any lines of confidentiality, but I could be wrong. Any other opinions out there?
Generally, it seems that if you're doing cases that play out in public proceedings, you can write about anything that anyone who might have happened to be in court would have learned or observed just by being there and paying attention. This means that it's harder to talk about cases pre-trial, but once there are proceedings in public, there is more that's safe to say. I guess for now the rule I'll be following when I start my job next week is that if I were a reporter on the criminal beat and I could have learned something in that capacity, then it's bloggable. That's still a little vague, but it seems like a good rule of thumb to follow for now.
Posted 01:02 PM | Comments (25) | 2L summer
Help Redesign the Imbroglio!
Dear readers: As I just mentioned, I'm hoping to redesign this site very soon. I'm thinking clean and simple is the way to go, but I'm still not really sure how to accomplish that.
Therefore, I'm asking for your help. Please let me know what bugs you about this page, or what you particularly like, what you don't like, what you never look at, what you look at every day, what you've never understood, what you think is necessary/unnecessary/missing, etc.
In addition to that general call for whatever is on your mind, I have some specific questions:
- Do you ever read or click through the bits? Do you ever wish you could comment or trackback to them? Would you miss them if they were gone? Do you think they are pointless? Are you ambivalent about bits?
- What about the comment sidebar? Do you ever check that out? It actually doesn't work correctly, and I realize that. I see it as more of a way for me to keep track of conversations I'm participating in, but it wouldn't really need to appear on this page to accomplish that goal.
- Have you ever transmogrified ai? By that I mean, have you ever used the little drop-down menu at the upper-right to change the default stylesheet for this page? Again, do you like that “feature”? Would you miss it if it were gone?
- Column widths: Are the widths for the text too wide or too narrow, as far as you're concerned? I am often bothered by columns of text that are on one extreme or the other; I mostly think there's a good balance here with the main column of blog posts and the sidebar, but, well, I could be wrong. Plus, most of you browse via IE and that might make everything look different.
- What do you think of 3-column layouts? If you prefer 2-columns, do you prefer sidebars on left or right?
- Do you read the RSS feed for this page, and if so, how often do you click through to the main page? I'm thinking if the majority of readers are moving to RSS-only, there's not much need to make this page visually interesting, is there?
And be honest. I'm pretty tired of this “look,” so you won't hurt my feelings, I promise.
Posted 11:09 PM | Comments (13) | meta-blogging
Stoopid Style
It's over. It was over sometime late Friday afternoon, actually. “It” here means my second year of law school. Hoo. Ray.
Here's how to finish your second year in stoopid style: First, schedule three finals in two days and make sure you don't study at all before the last 3-4 days before those finals begin. Take your finals and then blissfully retreat from reality for a week. Then, approximately 16 hours before your final 30-page paper is due, start writing it. Stay up all night listening to great music and drinking some diet carbonated and caffeinated beverage, alternating a cup of coffee occasionally for good measure. Pepperidge Farms goldfish are also helpful. Write about something with which you're fairly familiar and basically rehash arguments you've previously made in other papers, combining them in the most gawdawful mismash you can possibly concoct. Finish a few hours before it's due, spell check, shower, turn it in, and pray that it's good enough for a C.
There. You're done. Don't you feel great now?
For me, the answer is, um, well, I sure I wish I wouldn't have waited for the last minute to work on that damned paper, but yeah, done is good.
Since finishing I've felt a little lost. What to do now? The job starts in a week and I've got a long to-do list, so I'm sure I'll be plenty busy. If all goes well, this site will be completely redesigned by the end of the week, but, well, no promises.
But first, here's another little story of my stoopid stylings: I was walking home in my sleep-deprived stupor on Friday after turning in my paper and I met someone I'd met briefly before who was very nice and we said hello and she introduced me to her friend and they were both very friendly and also seemed to know all about the fact that I had finished finals last week and everything and I was thinking, “hmm, she must read my blog.” Then, the next day I realized: “Holy inability to add two plus two, Batman! That was LawRah!” It is also possible that her friend was Idle Grasshopper, but for that I have basically no evidence. So my point here, if you haven't gathered, is that I am stoopid. And I also want to apologize to LawRah for being so clueless. Um, I get it now.
Posted 10:53 PM | Comments (2) | 2L
Flip-Flopper-In-Chief?
So I'm researching this damned DOMA business and I'm reminded that in February 2004 Yubbledew called for a Constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage. He used very strong language to let us know he meant business:
Sounds pretty serious, doesn't it? I guess this should be a major part of his agenda in his second term, then, shouldn't it? But wait, I've heard absolutely nothing about it since last November's presidential election. Have I missed something, or is “the union of a man and a woman” no longer so important? Don't we care anymore about the welfare of children and the stability of society?
If I was cynical I'd say that Karl Rove timed that February 2004 announcement perfectly to get Christian fundamentalists all worked up in a frenzy so that gay marriage would be a big “values” issue in the November election. That would make Yubbledew's call for a Constitutional amendment seem pretty hollow and manipulative, wouldn't it?
Good thing I'm not cynical.
Posted 08:07 PM | Comments (9) | election 2004 general politics
Growl
Why does writing papers always have to be so hard? Discuss.
And while you're busy with that, let me just say that Growl is about the supercoolio-est thing ever. No more must click to Mail.app every time I get the new mail chime—Growl tells me immediately what arrived so I can know it's mostly junk I don't need to worry about (except when it's a comment from you, dear reader, of course!). No more do I have to click to iTunes to remind myself of the name and artist of the currently playing song—Growl tells me that, too. It's slick, unobtrusive, and just works. If you use OS X, you really should try this. It's very very cool.
Someday I won't be procrastinating or writing papers. Really. I know it's going to happen. Soon.
Posted 10:51 PM | Comments (8) | mac geek
TV Daze
Paper writing is hard. Watching tv is easy. Which do you think I've been doing?
But seriously, I've had some serious catching up to do with the idiot box (not that I was really deprived during the semester, but...), and thanks to the wonders of Tivo I've been able to stay on the edge of my seat with all of my favorite shows, including:
The Amazing Race: It's wrong how much I want Rob and Amber to win. They're sort of evil and ruthless, but they have so much fun doing what they do and they're so nice to each other and just so damn good at the whole business that it's hard not to root for them. Still, their competition is tough and also hard not to root for, mostly. For example, it was sad to see Meredith and Gretchen (the oldest couple to ever make it this far) last on the map tonight; they totally deserved to win. They did the incredible thing of taking longer than anyone to do almost everything, yet still they stayed in the race week after week. Uchenna and Joyce also deserve to win—happy, earnest, nice people who have worked well as a team and played completely above board the whole time. Plus, Joyce sacrificed her hair to win, so that's worth something. (Although, I really think she looked great after the hair came off—not that she didn't before, just that it didn't seem like a huge sacrifice, aesthetically-speaking, to me. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was a woman and I had as much beautiful hair as she did....) Finally, Ron and Kelly. What's to say? As L. says, they were clearly set up to be America's Sweethearts (the beauty queen and the former P.O.W. in Iraq), but instead they've turned into America's Breakhearts. Overall I feel sorry for Kelly b/c Ron so consistently takes his stress out on her and it's awful. Kelly can be annoying, too, but how is she supposed to respond? So yeah, Ron's the bad guy there, I think. It's too bad. If they win it will be a little sad just because they are so clearly destined to not be together, whereas the other two remaining teams pretty clearly are. Not that the goal of the race is to reward the happiest couple, but...
America's Next Top Model (ANTM) 4; Yeah, I watch. You wanna make something of it? L. got me into it and at first I resisted, but then I kept catching the end and wondering why one woman was going rather than the others and I just got sucked in. This season I was miffed from the beginning that they dumped Brita so early, and then Rebecca and then Tiffany. I mean, who am I to judge? But Brita didn't even get a chance, Rebecca got knocked for why? And Tiffany, well, I thought she was really going somewhere for a while. Whatever. At this point my money's on Naima, but since I have no money, I'm not risking much by saying that. I'd guess maybe Brittany has a pretty good shot, too, but it seems inevitable that Michelle and Keenyah are going to be taking bows soon. Christina? Dude, who knew botox could take a woman so far?
Survivor: Palau: What a crazy season—one tribe never won a single immunity challenge. I was sad last week to see Stephanie voted off, but not surprised. Going into last week's show I thought I woudl be more disappointed if she got the axe, but after watching how she played the situation (or at least how they edited how she played it), I didn't have much sympathy for her. She needed to push a lotharder if she was going to make a power play against Tom, but instead she just “planted the seed” and hoped her sistahs would have the sense to play to win. It's getting old watching “strong” men run the tribes until the end, even if women do win in the end. Wouldn't it have been great if Stephanie would have pulled off a coup and picked off Tom, Ian, and Greg, one by one? That would have put the remaining women in places 1-4; now they're likely to go 4-7. Of course, at some point I imagine the three remaining men are going to turn on each other, and they're going to try to take a woman with them in the hopes they can dominate the challenges against her, and then that woman will win in the final vote. At least, that's the way it generally seems to go. Why do I even watch this show? Oh yeah, it's so much better than writing papers.
Oh, I've also managed to watch three more movies in the last couple of days (yeah, I am working hard):
- Sideways: Great show. I see now why it got so much buzz. Of course, I'm a sucker for any story about a failed or failing outcast writer, but the juxtaposition of the archetypal loser with the guy who seems to have it all but is really the losingest loser of all, well, it was very well done. Once L. told me why I recognized Virginia Madsen all I could think whenever she was on was “candyman candyman candyman,” but other than that, this was a keeper.
- Code 46: Oh man. What an awful awful movie. There's a reason you've never heard of it, so just forget I mentioned it. Once again I got suckered by the sci-fi premise, which was actually fairly interesting. The future world was well-designed in many ways, with its own language melange, good scenes and logical technical advances like viruses that can make you more empathetic, or make you immune to bacteria, etc. But the actual love affair between Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton? No. And the plot? Implausible doesn't even begin to describe it. Come on people! How about a little internal consistency here?
- Starsky and Hutch: It was on HBO, ok? Exactly what you'd expect from Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Exactly.
Posted 11:08 PM | Comments (6) | ai movies tv land
The Stick
I think The Scoplaw has about given up on me, but long ago he hit me with the stick. I was busy, so I let the stick bounce off of me and clatter to the ground where it sat sad and forlorn, probably developing all kinds of complex abandonment issues and other complications that will haunt it for the rest of its days, including the problem of where it can go from here, now that the stick has made many rounds about. Still, I'm very much part of the better late than never stick school, so here goes.
Stick Stuff:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Although it would be a big task, I'd be one or both of the Tropics—of Cancer and Capricorn, by Henry Miller. I read both books while biking through Europe and found them inspirational and liberating in ways that are hard to describe. For a long while I tried to write like Miller, but it never really worked. He had a unique voice—like Kerouac might have been if he'd gotten out more—and a fascinating life.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Too many to count or, unfortunately, remember. Maybe that means the crushes were never really too serious.
The last book you bought is:
I don't think I've bought any books since these. I was in a bookstore yesterday and there were many books that looked great, but I don't want to get my hopes up too high about all the books I'd like to read this summer. There's never as much summer reading time as I think there's going to be...
The last book you read:
Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams. I was preparing for watching the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, but now I'm not sure I want to see it. I just can't get excited about it for some reason.
What are you currently reading?
I just started Galapagos
, by Kurt Vonnegut, but I'm not sure how far I'll get with it. I'm supposedly participating in a book club that is now reading None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer, but I haven't obtained a copy yet. I'd also like to move Gideon's Trumpet up on my reading list—I just studied Gideon v. Wainwright in Crim Pro and it's basically the case that made my future career possible, so it seems like a logical choice.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
This is very hard. There are only about two books I've read more than once, so there are no books that come to mind that I'd just love to read over and over again. That said, if I was shipping out today, I'd probably grab:
- Neuromancer by William Gibson.
- The Portable Thoreau, which is the only thing I think I ever stole—(ssh!) I had a school copy in high school and never gave it back, kind of on purpose. That was me being civilly disobedient.
- Maybe Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, but that might be in competition with Neuromancer for a sci-fi pick.
- I might cheat a little and take the Norton Anthology of American Literature single volume version because it has so many classics that I'd want to have for reference and reminders of America's good intentions, broken promises, and blatant hypocrisy.
- Finally, I'd probably grab Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I really would like to reread that and it would keep me busy for a looong time.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
- Jose, because he leads a fascinating life of travel and adventure and is always reading and/or thinking something interesting.
- Evan, because he also leads a fascinating life, reads a lot, and clearly does not have enough other things to blog about. ;-)
- Steve, because I think he's almost done with finals and there's really no better time than that to pick up the stick.
Posted 08:24 PM | Comments (3) | ai books
