Funny Business

I'm increasingly late to these fun link parties (i.e.: when someone finds something so insane or cool happens that everyone links to it and sends it to you in email), but it's better late than never in the case of Paul Kelly Tripplehorn Jr., the brilliant Washington intern who wrote such a horrible breakup email [pdf]—both humanly and grammatically—that he ended up losing his job. See Life, Law, Libido for more insight on the issue (also a follow-up here, plus a bonus link to the most hilarious thank-you letter [pdf] I've read in a long time. (And that's saying something; as a recovering business writing teacher, I used to teach students how to write interview thank-you letters, so I've read quite a few in my day.) To fully appreciate the letter, don't miss the recipient's interpretation of it at the end of LLL's post. What's funny about this is that, after having read so many letters like this, I know people send crap like this all the time; maybe not quite this bad, but bad. Perhaps that's something to think about that the next time you get worried about your competition in law school (or just about any other field, for that matter).

All this hilarity and horror comes via DG who, despite being "busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest," * is still somehow able to offer up daily posts that never fail to entertain and inform. She recently checked out the Dean for America and to me her comments demonstrate what I've been thinking more and more: Dean is looking like the best candidate to beat Yubbledew because Dean's not just some lefty wacko. Instead, he is (or he is selling himself as) a pragmatist who doesn't want a revolution, just a few changes here and there so people will have health care, a quality education, and a safe world. But who knows. Someone told me the other day that Dean is "losing his luster," so we'll see.

Posted 06:35 AM | Comments (4) | life generally

Denial and Deception

So now that you've seen the weapons of mass destruction Google trick a zillion times in your email and on various websites, here's the next big serendipitous indictment of Yubbledew and Co. on the whole war in Iraq issue:

1. Go to the official White House transcript of the 2003 State of the Union Address
2. Read the banner at the top: "Iraq Denial and Deception."
3. Read the speech.
4. Read the banner.
5. Vote to impeach Bush.

Ha! It would be funny if it weren't so scary. [Link via Buzzflash.]

Posted 03:01 PM | general politics

Windoze Security = Swiss Cheese

Heard about the most recent Windoze security hole? [Thanks to Famous P. for the link!] It sounds like a doozy:

"This is one of the worst Windows vulnerabilities ever," said Marc Maiffret, an executive at eEye Digital Security Inc. of Aliso Viejo, Calif., whose researchers discovered similarly dangerous flaws in at least three earlier versions of Windows. .... Maiffret said that inside vulnerable corporations, "until they have this patch installed, it will be Swiss cheese — anybody can walk in and out of their servers."

Gee, GW's decision to require all students to use Windoze laptops is looking better all the time. Famous P. suggested I send this story to the GW computer people to show them what a stupid computer policy they've got, and I was only barely able to restrain myself from doing exactly that. And that's nothing; now our "national security" is being entrusted to M$:

The announcement [of the Windows security flaw] came one day after the Department of Homeland Security announced that it awarded a five-year, $90-million contract for Microsoft to supply all its most important desktop and server software for about 140,000 computers inside the new federal agency.

Beautiful.Tell me again why people buy Windows? ;-)

(Ok, to be fair, it's likely that if 99.9% of the world's computers used Unix or Linux or the Mac OS, security flaws and viruses and whatnot would be more common on those platforms, too, but that seems more like an additional argument for diversity in computing than anything else.)

I know. I've got to get over this stupid computer policy. I'm working on it. As Bob (as in "What About Bob") would say: "I'm baby-steppin! I'm doin' the work!"

Posted 10:06 AM | law school mac geek

Primaries and Presidents

Yesterday's Human Rights Campaign Presidential Forum was a bit anti-climactic. I'd been hoping to see some sparks fly between some of the more conservative and progressive candidates, but it was not to be. The forum was highly structured, with only one candidate appearing on stage at a time so that there was no dialogue between the candidates. Each candidate gave an opening statement, answered two questions (and whatever additional related questions moderator Sam Donaldson decided to put to them), and gave a closing statement. To control things further, the candidates knew the questions in advance so they had prepared answers to make them look as good as possible. You can see the archived webcast of the forum here, but the bottom line was that what the candidates had to say was fairly empty—for the most part they just rehashed statements you can find on their websites. What was important about yesterday's forum is that it happened at all. The fact that the HRC could get seven presidential candidates (all except Edwards and Graham) to speak at their event—even in such tightly controlled conditions—shows that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues have come out of the closet, so to speak, and are finally legitimate topics for national public debate.

But now that the first-quarter money race is over, the top candidates are really starting to look toward the primaries. According to Politics1, Presidential politics will start getting at least a little hot on January 13 when the District of Columbia holds its "Presidential Preference Primary." That's followed on Jan. 19 by the Iowa Caucuses, followed on the 27th by the New Hampshire Primary. (I've heard rumors that some people in New Hampshire are angry at DC for trying to steal the title of "nation's first primary," so some New Hampshire-ites have vowed to vote against anyone who campaigns in DC. I hope that's just a rumor, 'cause that's just nuts.)

But since I'm actually living in a suburb of DC, I'm supposed to be interested in the Maryland Presidential Primary on March 2, which appears to be "super Tuesday." The Maryland process for getting a candidate on the ballot looks a little sketchy. According to the Maryland Secretary of State, the ballot is up to him or her, in conjunction with the state and national media:

The Office of the Secretary of State is responsible for designating the people whose names appear on the ballot for each primary election. This is done when the Secretary has determined that the candidate's candidacy is generally advocated or recognized in the news media throughout the United States or in Maryland and in accordance with party rules.

Wow, sounds democratic, doesn't it? Not.

Meanwhile, factions of the Democratic party are going on about some huge battle between the left and right wings of the party, which to me only highlights how successful the Repubs have been in shifting the terms of debate to their end of the spectrum. The only candidate to mention this "division in the party" at yesterday's candidate forum was Lieberman, which isn't really surprising since he would definitely be one of those in the right wing. But this little battle could be troublesome for someone like Dean, who is rising in the polls primarily because he's doing a better job than anyone else of straddling this little divide. Although Dean's image as too liberal is fading, he'll still have to work hard to sell his definition of "center" to the nation as a whole. Steve Snyder, in a letter to Salon, does a beautiful (if highly cynical) job encapsulating the challenge facing the "democratic wing of the democratic party" in politics today. Snyder writes:

What we Democrats fail to realize is that at some fundamental level the triumph of popular conservatism in our politics represents the interaction of basic human nature with the changed reality of life in our advanced society. Ultimately, the Republicans win -- and continue to win -- because the rhetoric of "serve yourself" beats "let's work together" in all but truly dire times. Let's face it: Community is hassle. You have to deal with disagreeable neighbors and you can't always do what you want. And the Republicans understand this. Their rhetoric is always based on the idea that you shouldn't have to be bothered by anything unpleasant: Taxes are annoying, so get rid of them. Zoning ordinances, environmental laws, nagging labor unions, affirmative action to rectify past injustices -- all are a drag.

This rhetoric proves even more appealing when the circumstances that necessitate living in a community recede into the past. Most of the people who bother to vote today grew up in middle-class suburbs and segued fairly smoothly into their careers, homes and money. In fact, most of those likely to vote have never known really hard times. Americans once lived their entire lives with the knowledge that they were only a drought away from starvation. For them, accommodating the demands of annoying neighbors wasn't just a lofty idea; it was a survival strategy.

But today -- as the Republicans recognize -- those most likely to vote have reached a level of affluence that evokes the illusion they can buy their way out of the inconvenience of community altogether. That leaves the Democrats to make the rather joyless argument that "we're all in it together," which, unfortunately, will necessitate paying some taxes and doing the hard work of learning to live with one another.

In the end, the Republicans will keep winning because they champion what we secretly desire: a world where we can have all the goodies with none of the larger responsibilities. Their policies are an adolescent's wet dream, and, sadly, we are a politically immature nation.

I think Snyder's got the issue right—it's a self-centered worldview that sees society as the enemy vs. a bigger picture worldview that sees society as the whole point of existence. The "we're all in it together" ethos underlies the most biting critiques of recent U.S. foreign policy, but it also lines up behind critiques of "globalization" and "free trade" schemes that sacrifice human needs for balanced budgets and corporate profits. And yeah, that's a hard sell to people who see so many short-term benefits from the "server yourself" way of doing things. But that doesn't make those benefits last any longer.

Posted 04:13 PM | election 2004

New Kids on the Block

Hello to FalconRed (a pre-blawger just getting down to that nasty LSAT studying bi'ness), and Household Opera, an academic blogger who's a little less than satisfied with the old academy. Welcome to this blogging thing! And props to both of you for your great reading habits. ;-)

Posted 03:36 PM | Comments (3) |

Car Rental Gotcha

While clearing my desk I ran across the receipt for the car I rented during my recent travels West. The total bill was $423.16 to rent for one week a recent model Chevy Cavalier, 4-dr., automatic, w/air conditioning and cd-player, and unlimited miles. It was a good car, it did the job nicely, and the rental company was fine. The problem is that I reserved the car and made all my travel plans based on the fact that it was supposed to cost $127 for the week. That's right: I was quoted a price of $127, but I ended up paying $423.

SO, this receipt reminds me that I wanted to rant about what a rip-off car rentals are and how there appears to be no such thing as "truth in advertising" when it comes to this crap and why aren't innocent and naive consumers (like myself) protected from this kind of scam!?

But why bother? In a few years I'll be a lawyer, and then, well, let's just say the car rental business better watch out. Paybacks are a bitch.*

*Yeah, I know having a J.D. won't probably enable me to sue the pants off of car rental companies for lying to their customers, but I'm told an active fantasy life is healthy, ok?

Posted 11:57 AM | Comments (2) | life generally

Welcome to Reality

Scroll down to the bottom of this White House transcript of Yubbledew's remarks yesterday about Iraq and you'll find Yubbledew said:

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.

Now read it again. It says Saddam Hussein wouldn't let weapons inspectors into Iraq, and that's why we went to war.

As Joe Conason reminds us, that's an outright fabrication. So either Yubbledew lies so much he simply can't keep all the lies straight, or he lives in a fantasy world, or both. Either way, the question is this: Yesterday on the afternoon and evening news I heard repeated sound bites from the remarks Yubbledew made yesterday and all of them included the first two sentences quoted above; none of them included the rest of the statement. Why not? Why is the press giving Yubbledew a pass here? Why why why?

Grrr...

Posted 05:45 AM | Comments (3) | general politics

Linux, Anyone?

Just in from the fine folks at GW tech support: They explain that I might be able to scrape by with something other than a windoze-based system in some cases, but the here's where the rubber meets the road as far as they're concerned:

The bottom line, however, is that the law school cannot condone any student coming here intending to use anything other than a windows-based machine that meets the minimum specs. Sorry if this message unnecessarily covers familiar ground for you -- I just wanted to be clear about the situation here at GW Law.

Got that? GW cannot condone any intent to use anything other than a windows-based machine. I can't think of a better way to welcome your new students than with rhetoric like that.

So here's the thing: I can maybe make peace with buying a machine that runs Windows, but I'd like a certain kind of machine and I need your help. My requirements would include:

• a non-Intel processor, meaning I suppose something from AMD (Athlon?)
• a machine on which I could run Linux for everything that's not Windoze-only

So I guess what I'm looking for is a small, lightweight laptop with an Athlon processor that ships with a dual OS installed—some wi-fi friendly variant of Linux and Windows XP Pro. Any suggestions?

I'm pretty clueless here, so any help will be appreciated. What's the best (most consumer-friendly) version of Linux, anyway? Thanks.

Posted 01:55 PM | law school

GW's Computing Regime

So when GW says it requires students to have a laptop that runs Windows XP Professional, what do you suppose that means? As I mentioned the other day, I don't want to buy a Windoze pc, and in fact this is one of the more glaring issues I have with attending GW in the first place. I wonder how many other schools are getting so authoritarian in their computing policies.

For the record, GW says you must have a certain Cisco wireless networking card for your computer because GW's network uses Cisco's LEAP encryption. However, it appears Apple's Airport wireless networking cards work fine with LEAP, so long as you follow these directions for using Cisco's LEAP authentication via Airport.

GW uses Extegrity for its exams, so that's definitely Windoze-only and emulators like Virtual PC almost certainly won't work. It also uses SynchronEyes computer lab instruction software for its legal writing and research course. This is another program that appears to take control of your desktop, so it might not work in emulation either.

It may be that buying a windoze laptop is a compromise I have to make to go to law school, but what may be most disturbing about this is the slippery slope fear it creates. What other compromises lay ahead? And are they really worth making? As the clock ticks down to just slightly more than a month until school starts, these questions are no longer academic, and my level of dismay over what should otherwise be a fairly trivial issue suggests that I'm not really ready for this reality.

*sigh*

Posted 12:43 PM | Comments (2) | law general

Fearing Fear Itself

Are you more afraid now than you were in 2000?

The Democratic presidential candidates finally start attacking Bush's credibility for lying to get us into war. Apparently Kerry, Edwards, Lieberman and Gephardt—who both all to give Bush permission to attack Iraq—have finally found a way out of the dilemma they've been in as that pro-war stance made them increasingly unpopular with Democratic voters; now they can just say that the reason they supported the war is that they believed Bush, but now that they know he lied, they can vehemently condemn both Bush and the war. Lucky for them. Will this reduce Dean's lead? As the most "mainstream" candidate who has opposed the Iraq war all along (although he says the invasion of Afghanistan was the right thing to do), Dean was able to distinguish himself on this issue, but that distinction may now become less clear.)

This comes at a time when I'm just baffled that more people aren't just irate about this issue. Why do the same people who got upset that Clinton lied about a blow job (which hurt no one directly besides Clinton, Lewinsky, and Clinton's family) seem so unconcerned about Bush's lies, which have effectively killed thousands of people? Some analysts seem to think the answer is fairly simple: Americans are just scared silly. In fact, it seems we've been whipped into such a frenzy of fear that we'll accept just about anything. For example, in "Trading On Fear", PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber look at how Yubbledew and Co. (the Bush administration and corporate America) have stoked the fears of the average American and then profited from those fears. And in "A Nation of Scared Sheep" Louise Witt looks more closely at the fears driving Americans to give Yubbledew and Co. a pass on the lies it told to get support for an invasion of Iraq. Very simply put, it seems we are being manipulated, and apparently it's working.

First Rampton and Stauber explain how television propaganda was used to sell the Iraq war to the American public, but they also debunk the idea that the crap we see on television is just the networks and studios "giving the people what they want":

Fear is one of the most primitive emotions in the human psyche, and it definitely keeps us watching. If the mere ability to keep people watching were really synonymous with "giving audiences what they want", we would have to conclude that people "want" terrorism. On September 11, Osama bin Laden kept the entire world watching. As much as people hated what they were seeing, the power of their emotions kept them from turning away.

Fear is an awesome force. Its power is obvious since even though we can all say intellectually that fear was what caused the Red Scare or the Salem Witch trials or whatever, we still can't seem to help ourselves when someone tells us to be afraid and to do stupid things because of our fear. It was 1933 when Ike said:

first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Ike may have overstated the case a bit—surely there are some things we should fear besides fear itself—but we really don't have much room for such quibbling at the moment. Yubbledew and Co. are still on the loose trying to salvage and extend their "scare and plunder" methods of governance. Currently they're trying to squirm out of the mess they're in by blaming George Tenent and by asserting that they didn't, technically, lie. "We got the info from Britain, and Britain did put that info in a report, which is all we said. We didn't say it was true, we just said it was a claim made by British intelligence." So why does that make it any better?

I'm sure tomorrow will bring new developments. Meanwhile, the good news is that the most recent polls show that the Yubbledew teflon is cracking. Happy Monday!

Posted 09:25 AM | election 2004 general politics

Sunday Fun

From one Mr. X in today's email:

1. Go to google.com.
2. Type "weapons of mass destruction" in the box (no real quotes necessary).
3. Click on "I'm feeling lucky."
4. Enjoy!

Thanks Mr. X!

But I still can't figure out why Americans seem to just think this is funny. Why don't people get angry about the fact that they were lied to?

But if you prefer to laugh at things that would otherwise make you mad, treat yourself to this joke, which I first heard from a retired Wyoming oil patch worker. A horse's ass and a cowboy hat pretty much sums it up. Here's another good one:

WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - A tragic fire on Monday destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was devastated, as he had not finished coloring the second one.

Poor Yubbledew!

Posted 07:59 AM | Comments (1) |