American U. Slowness

Waiting waiting wating to hear from American University: Washinton College of Law -- the only school I haven't heard from yet, and one I supposedly should have no trouble getting into. Thanks to the directions Liable provided, I learned that LSAC estimates my chances of admission at 95-98 percent. Add to that the fact that I applied nearly two months ago, and I gotta wonder: Why have I heard nothing? Today I see American's website says:

So far we have received more than 8,100 applications. Our committee is currently reviewing applications that were received by mid- December. Although we review files in the order in which they were received and completed, not everyone who applied early will have received a decision yet. Our committee is holding some files for further comparison with more of the applicant pool. If your file is one that we have decided to hold for further review you will receive a letter from our office within the next 2 weeks notifying you of this update.

To clarify, their FAQ says:

Decisions are made on a weekly basis January- May. Files are reviewed in the order applications were received and completed. Not all applicants who applied early in the process will receive the first decisions. If your academic record places you towards the middle of our applicant pool, our admissions committee may hold your file to compare it with more of our applicants.

I interpret this information to mean that my academic record must place me "towards the middle of [their] applicant pool," which I'm thinking is not a good place to be in a year like this. It's looking more and more like GW will be the place. And that's a good thing. I'm ready to make the decision and move on, but I'd really like to hear more about financial aid options first. To those of you who have chosen a school and accepted an offer of admission, congratulations. I envy you, but I hope to join you soon!

Posted 02:55 PM | Comments (2) | law school

Ideas of Safety

From High and Mighty by Keith Bradsher comes this insight into a key difference between the U.S. and Europe and Asia:

Nissan has found that drivers in Europe and Asia typically have very different attitudes toward vehicle safety from American drivers. Europeans and Asians tend to associate safety with a nimble vehicle with excellent brakes that can swerve or stop quickly so as to avoid an accident entirely, said Jerry P. Hirshberg, Nissan's recently retired president of North American design. Americans tend to have less confidence in their driving skills and assume that crashes are inevitable, so they have gravitated instead to tanklike vehicles that will protect occupants even if they plow into another vehicle. Buyers of sport utilities seem to be especially American in this regard, Hirshberg added (107).

Of course, Nissan's findings are well supported by the different cars driven by Americans vs. Euros and Asians. In the U.S., we drive tanks; in most of the rest of the world they drive safe, little anti-tanks. Now apply this difference to foreign policy and we get:

[People] in Europe and Asia typically have very different attitudes toward [national and global] safety from American people. Europeans and Asians tend to associate safety with a nimble [foreign policy] with excellent brakes that can swerve or stop quickly so as to avoid an accident entirely. Americans tend to have less confidence in their [diplomatic] skills and assume that crashes are inevitable, so they have gravitated instead to tanklike [policies] that will protect [them] even if [the country] plows into another [country]. The Bush Administration seems to be especially American in this regard.

Hence, the problem we face today: The U.S. just wants to plow through (using bombs as its plow) any obstacle to its vision of the world, while the rest of the world is saying, "Hey, why don't we avoid this problem instead of just trying to minimize the number of deaths on our side?" It's the difference between a world governed by force and violence (the SUV/American imperialist camp), vs. a world governed by preventive diplomacy and cooperation (the anti-tank/international and multilateral camp).

This is why Bradsher's book is so great -- the problems he identifies with SUVs are really metaphors for a vast number of the other problems we face today. The same selfish, anti-social, and wasteful people who buy SUVs also support selfish, anti-social, and wasteful policies with regard to foreign policy, education, health care, and all other social services. We don't live in a nicely divided world where our choice of transportation has zero to do with out position on home schooling, but that's the fantasy we really wish were true. (I don't have time at the moment to explain how/why SUV owners relate to home schooling, but if you don't see the connection, let me know and I'll give the explanation a try.)

Posted 10:25 AM | Comments (6) | ai books

Lone Star Smarts

Texas Tech Student Announces 'United White Persons College Fund'

Why am I not surprised this is coming from Texas?

Posted 09:46 AM | Comments (2) | general politics

Google Maps

Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid (ok, I am), but the idea of Google's growing power does trouble me. Today, Scripting News discusses what might be going on with Google and provides a few good links on the subject. Jason Kottke says Google has developed the most extensive and detailed map of the web; it's making money by selling access to this map. Maps can be powerful things. As a private company, Google can "tweak" its search methods to change the look of the map, leading to the question: What happens when the map begins to precede the territory? And just as important: How will we know?

Posted 02:00 PM | meta-blogging

Oh, So That's It

Caring for Your Introvert explains a lot of life's mysteries.

Posted 08:50 AM | Comments (1) | life generally

Mafia

The hot new game for your next party.

Posted 08:41 AM | life generally

Presidentialities

The ever-measured and dependable Professor Cooper notes that Washington Democrats are supposedly mounting a new, concerted effort to question President Bush's credibility. It sounds like a great idea, especially when you look at this list of, um, "contradictions" between what Bush says and what he does. Why would anyone believe anything this guy says? Oh, but the list is missing some major, um, contradictions about foreign policy. For example, Bush says almost daily he wants to make peace by making war. Huh? He also says nearly as often that he wants to support the UN by undermining it. But the Dems refuse to challenge the Prez on foreign policy, and that's a serious mistake.

Meanwhile, the field of Democratic presidential candidates includes a couple of candidates who aren't afraid to say that Bush's foreign policy is just plain awful. Check out David Corn's summary of what Howard Dean and other candidates said at a recent Democratic National Committee gathering. Dean was especially (and thankfully) blunt:

He hit the podium with a sharp declaration: "What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?" He then blasted the party's leaders for not challenging President Bush on whether there should be any new tax cuts; for obsessing over a patients' bill of rights rather than "standing up" for providing health care insurance for all; and for going along with Bush's "Leave No Child Behind" education legislation, which he claimed would leave behind "every student, every teacher and every school board." After this machine-gun opening, he paused and said, "I'm Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Cue the applause? Actually, applause lights were not needed. Many in the crowd jumped up and cheered.

Yes! It's like a dream come true! Finally, a progressive in a position to get serious media attention who's not afraid to say what he really thinks. Since Bush was elected, I've played with this idea for a short story that features exactly such a figure -- someone who comes from nowhere saying things so shocking, outrageous, yet truthful, that people's heads spin around, they wake from their comas, and suddenly everyone's saying: "You know, he's right! We need national health care?now!" Could Dean really be this person? And if he is, will the tactic actually work? I don't know, but the experiment of consistent progressive candidness in public is one that I'd like to see tried. I really think that if more Democrats would stand up unflinchingly for Democratic values, the Democrats could win back both houses of Congress and the White House. So where's the Dean for President office? Sign me up! (Read the full text of Dean's DNC remarks, or check out the Dean for President blog. )

Of course, there are other Democratic candidates in the race, and some of them sound like they have potential. Judging from what I've seen at this point, Kucinich could be one of the better candidates, and to my great surprise, Gephardt is sounding, well, not awful. I'm also really wishing the press could treat Sharpton as more than a comedy side-show. Maybe he has no chance to get elected, but he could have a chance to move the Democrats in some positive directions if the press would shut up with their "he's funny but completely unelectable" stuff. I also wish we could something about Carol Mosely-Braun other than that the only reason she's running is to be a "first." I'm pretty sure she's got more to say than that.

Posted 08:06 AM | Comments (2) | general politics

Nostalgia

I used to work right next door to where this picture was taken. [Link via Scripting News] On alternating days my "office" was either a bicycle seat in which I'd ride 20-120 miles, or the driver's seat of a 15-passenger van in which I'd drive 40-250 miles. I guess you could say I worked in a big "office" park -- perhaps the world's largest -- known to most of you as Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and lots of beautiful country in between. Since my "office" was mobile, I got to work in lots of other cool places, as well; for example, I had some swell times in and around Camden, Maine.

It all sounds great, doesn't it? And it was. There are books that list "dream jobs," and the job I had was often listed in those books -- it probably still is. Leaving that job was in many ways one of the hardest things I've ever done. Ask my friends. Every year I'd say I was finished. The next year I'd be back saying "just a few more trips." It was like a drug -- a whole different kind of "tripping out." But for lots of reasons, I finally broke the habit. That was three years ago. Now I'm going to law school.

Moments like this make me wonder if I should seek professional help.

Posted 06:33 AM | Comments (2) | life generally

SUV Factoid

I finally got to take a look at High and Mighty SUVs -- the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way by Keith Bradsher. As I slowly work my way through the book (very slowly -- reading time will have to come after many other more pressing things), I'll try to mention the most mentionable bits.

Here's one for starters:

The Sierra Club likes to point out that driving a full-size SUV for a year instead of a midsize car burns as much extra energy as leaving a refrigerator door open for six years. SUVs also spew up to 5.5 times as much smog-causing gases per mile as cars.

Transcript of the kind of one-sided conversation that happens every day in a parallel universe: Oh, honey, have you seen the keys to the Explorer? I feel the need to work off some more of my utter disregard for the wellbeing of everyone else on the planet. Oh, thanks, I'll see you in a few hours after I've enlarged the hole in the ozone layer enough to satisfy my pathological tendencies toward genocide. Yeah, love you, too. Bye bye.

Posted 06:15 PM | ai books

Limitless Possibilities

I want this job:

"You get sent on a crazy adventure and you get to write about it," she said. "How cool is that?"

What a cool little niche industry: freelance blogging. If a movie needs a blog, how about a book? Hmmmm.... TV series need blogs; imagine all the "Friends" fans (or whatever) who would love to read a daily/weekly insider's look at the shooting of the show. Plus, it would create a great record of these things that could then be quickly turned into a best-selling book (with added bonus content of interviews with the actors and things they didn't want to put online while the show/even was happening). It would be awesome for "reality" TV shows like "Joe Millionaire" or "Survivor" -- fans would eat it up!

But freelance blogging could be much more important than that. For example, every political campaign needs a blog, for sure, but the pay for the blogger would have to be given w/no strings attached or else it would just become propaganda. That's the trick: How getting someone to write stuff that's honest while still earning a living. Hmm...

I bet we're going to see a lot more experiments along these lines. Maybe law school isn't the best thing I could do next, after all....

Posted 06:11 PM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging

Define "Relevant"

The rhetoric of "relevance" coming from the Bush administration is getting really tired. The most recent example came from President Bush in a speech to U.S. governors:

"It's an interesting moment for the Security Council and the United Nations. It's a moment to determine for this body, that we hope succeeds, to determine whether or not it is going to be relevant, as the world confronts the threats to the 21st century. Is it going to be a body that means what it says? We certainly hope it does," Bush said.

Does the administration really think its schoolyard bully tactics are effective? Who defines "relevant"? What does that mean? Why does the administration need to resort to vague, veiled threats like this? Of special note is the continuing pattern in Bush's speech -- his "hope" that the UN "succeeds" came as an afterthought. Listen to every statement Bush makes about the UN and you'll find that his main point is to goad, bully, and threaten, while his supportive remarks always appear in subclauses and parentheses. The global resistance to the Bush administration's agenda of war demonstrates utter failure of the administration's weak attempts to wrap that agenda in a cloak of good intentions. Yet, as the UK's Independent argues, the UN must respond to the Bush administration's repeated challenges to be "relevant." The UN must show the world that it will not be bullied into doing whatever the U.S. demands.

Over the next three weeks, therefore, the member countries of the UN, and especially those that are members of the Security Council, face a historic duty. They must decide how to respond to President Bush's challenge, issued repeatedly in recent weeks, to make the UN "relevant". They should ignore cheap insults accusing opponents of war of wanting the UN to be as ineffective as the League of Nations: Saddam is not Hitler and Kim Jong Il is not Mussolini. The test of the UN's relevance cannot be the extent to which it comes into line with US policy. On the contrary, the test must be the extent to which it encourages US policy to come into line with the concept of international law. That is why those opponents of the war who accuse the UN of simply being a puppet of the US are as mistaken as Mr Bush. The UN may be imperfect, but it does embody the idea of international law. Last year, the US dismissed the idea of restoring UN inspectors to Iraq as a waste of time. Now, the inspection regime has opened up the possibility of an alternative way in which the law-abiding world can restrain the threat from Saddam.

But Saddam is only the threat du jour; beyond the immediate crisis, the "law-abiding world" must address the larger problem of the continued proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. And as Jonathan Schell puts it in his recent Nation cover story, while we confront this proliferation, we must remember that:

Nuclear [and other WMD] proliferation, when considered as the global emergency that it is, has never been, is not now and never will be stoppable by military force; on the contrary, force can only exacerbate the problem.

Schell's arguments in support of this claim are very compelling and highly recommended.

Posted 07:34 AM | general politics

Virtual March

If you've watched the growing war protests and thought, "Hey, there might be somthing to that," then here's your chance to "march" from the comfort of the chair you're now sitting in: Join the Virtual March on Washington, next Wednesday, February 26th. MoveOn.org and the Win Without War coalition are organizing us to ask Congress to stop the Bush administration's rush to war, and to Let the Inspections Work:

With your help, on February 26th, every Senate office will receive a call EVERY MINUTE from a constituent, as they receive a simultaneous crush of faxes and email. In New York and Washington D.C., "antiwar rooms" will highlight the progress of the day for national media. Local media will visit the "antiwar room" online, to monitor this constituent march throughout the day.

With your help, every Senate office switchboard will be lit up all day with our antiwar messages. This will be a powerful reminder of the breadth and depth of opposition to a war in Iraq.

Sign up now to make your call Wednesday...

Posted 07:12 AM | general politics

Um...

The latest fashion. No comment, really. [Link via Scripting News]

Posted 10:25 PM | Comments (2) | life generally

First Strikes

Today's Tom Toles cartoon is very smart. You might be able to see it at Ucomics, but since they've gone to this crappy subscription service, I won't bother to link to it because you'll probably have to pay to see it. Instead, I'll describe it to you: Bush is giving a speech to the UN, saying, "It is unacceptable to ignore a threat until it's too late! Or close your eyes and hope it goes away! If you wait 'til you have a smoking gun, you've waited too long..." Meanwhile, a head in the audience whispers to another: "What 'til he discovers we slipped him a copy of the Kyoto treaty." Finally, the little cartoonist that appears in the bottom right corner of every Toles' panel says: "If you wait 'til he gets the irony, you've waited too long."

Too funny. This would make a great plank in the anti-war platform. As we try to prevent a war on Iraq, we should also make the case for a war against two very real threats to national security: poverty and pollution. Those are first strikes I could support.

Posted 10:19 PM | general politics

Pattern Recognition

Speaking of paranoia and conspiracy, I just finished reading William Gibson's latest, Pattern Recognition, thanks to my Valentine, who thoughtfully gifted me a copy for that day. I'm a huge Gibson fan; Neuromancer blew the top right off my head. How could you not be a fan of the book that envisioned an Internet on steroids before the Internet even existed? Ok, so ARPANET began in 1969, but even by 1984 when Neuromancer was published the "net" was nothing like what we know today. Sure, it's the job of Sci-Fi to be ahead of its time; part of what makes sci-fi fun is its ability to play with future worlds and show us the possible places we might go and things we might do. But Gibson brought a vibrant subgenre?cyberpunk?to the wider public, and it's hard to underestimate the impact of that subgenre on the sci-fi of the last 20 years. [1] Would there have been a "Matrix" if there had not first been a Neuromancer? Hard to say. And I'll shut up about this before I get further out of my depth as a sci-fi expert. I know if I start getting into claims about who was first with what idea or who inspired what, I'll be treading on super-thin ice in about one more step.

And but so anyway, as the title suggests, Gibson's new book deals with paranoia, conspiracy, the stories behind what we think we see. The novel focuses on Cayce Pollard and her quest to find the maker and the meaning of "the footage," a mysterious series of film clips that appear randomly on the Web. At the moment Cayce finally begins to see the patterns (or some of them) converge, Gibson writes:

There must always be room for conicidence, Win [Cayce's father] had maintained. When there's not, you're probably well into apophenia, each thing then perceived as part of an overarching pattern of consipracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, he'd believed, you stood all too real a chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect. But which he always, [Cayce] knew, took for granted was there (293-4).

Win's advice is perfect for this time we're living in. Is every bad thing that happens somehow connected to terrorism? Probably not?some of them may be coincidences. More specifically, does the fact that Saddam Hussien is a brutal despot mean he is also closely?or even loosely?connected with Al Queda and terrorism? Possibly, but again, these bad things may not go together. Finally, is the war on Iraq all about oil? Probably not; the reasons people claim for going to war are "invariably less symmetrical, less perfect" than that. The world is a complex place with forces and patterns and trends and histories converging and diverging all the time. How we read these convergences will make all the difference to our future.

With that in mind, I'll leave you with one of the best lines in the book. Cayce has met up with Stella, a Russian woman. While reminiscing about Russia's recent transition from the soviet to the capitalist model, Stella says:

Now we say that everything Lenin taught us of communism was false, and everything he taught us of capitalism was true (303).

We're all vaguely but often almost viscerally familiar with the patterns behind the first half of Stella's sentence (communism = evil), but why do so many of us give so little attention to the patterns that give rise to the second half?

Footnote:
[1] For a quick into to cyberpunk, this list contains the most notorious examples. I've read the top 10 and recommend them all. (In fact, I like Neal Stephenson better than Gibson, but I don't think I'm supposed to say that, so don't tell.)

Posted 08:51 AM | ai books general politics