« July 11, 2004 - July 17, 2004 | Main | July 25, 2004 - July 31, 2004 »
I Got Nothin'
That's what John Stewart always says on "The Daily Show": I got nothin'. Of course, he's always got something. I, on the other hand, really do have nothing. It's a summer Saturday. We had a good week at the public defender's office last week: "My" attorney won an important stage in the main case we've been working on, and I managed to make it through the conclusion of our mock trial exercises without embarrassing myself too badly. The most unanimous feedback was that I look and sound trustworthy, cool, and calm; juries will believe what I say. I hope that's true.
So today is kickback day. Tomorrow is catch-up time: financial aid paperwork, fall interview program (I have to decide whether to even participate), and general housecleaning in preparation for a move. That's right: L. and I are moving next month—heading about 10 blocks away so we can save $300/month. So the fun never stops.
But that's tomorrow. Tonight we're off to try the famed Pizzeria Paradiso, followed by a screening of the latest greatest Hollywood blockbuster, The Bourne Supremacy. I do enjoy Matt Damon in tight shirts, don't you?
Crime Lab Tour
As part of the summer internship, we visited a local crime lab yesterday where I learned the following:
- Forensic specialists can sometimes determine whether a light bulb (like a headlight) was on or off when a car crashed.
- They can sometimes also tell how fast it was going when it crashed.
- They can sometimes recover a serial number after it's been filed off of a gun. When the serial number is punched on the gun, it disturbs the steel molecules below the actual numbers it punches, so even after you've filed off the visible numbers, disturbed (weakened) molecules remain. The forensics people can use muratic acid (I think) to dissolve those weakened molecules, which often gives them a faint trace of the serial number someone tried to obliterate.
- On the door of the gun lab there was an NRA bumper sticker that read, "Charleton Heston Is My President" next to a big NRA logo. We asked if that was a joke. They didn't think our question was funny.
Bottom line: CSI it ain't, but we knew that already, didn't we?
Posted 07:15 AM | Comments (6) | 1L summer
Both Sides?
Goshohmy! That's what one of our clients this summer says when he's surprised by something: Goshohmy! It's really quite a good exclamation, and expresses my surprise that this little post from Monica has generated so many responses, include this latest from Nicole. It started with an offhand comment about Slate, I mentioned Salon, and away we went. So here's a long response to Nicole's excellent long response (you'll have to read what she wrote for this to make sense):
UPDATE: I had the link to Nicole's post wrong. I think it's fixed now.
Like I said, I really don't read Slate. If you say it covers both sides, I'll take your word for it.
But where is "the center" in our country? Is it anywhere near where you'd like to be? If so, you're certainly doing the right thing supporting it. I think (and lots of data supports this) the so-called "center" in our country has shifted dramatically and horribly to the right in the last 30-40 years, so yeah, I'm extremely opposed to that. I think many "politicians who work close to the center" are not so much working as coasting along on the tides of the status quo. Sure they get shit done, but perhaps that's because they only try to do the easy stuff, the stuff nobody cares too much about because, hey, it's close to the center already, no extreme opinions involved, no worries.
And sure conservative issue positions are valid; it would be nice to see some politicians stand up and be conservatives. How about conserving our tax dollars? How about conserving the environment? How about conserving the health of Americans by providing health care for everyone? (By the way, you think 97% of Americans don't want that? Think again. Of course, it all depends on how you phrase your polling question.) What passes for conservatism today is a farce and is in fact among the most profligate agendas ever to hold sway in America. The only thing they want to conserve is their own fat bank accounts, and everyone else can pay the price.
We're living in extremely screwed up times. I'm extremely angry and dismayed about that, and I'm extremely determined to do something about it. I agree that lefties shouldn't insulate themselves from more than half America, but when 99% of the news sources available to me on a daily basis (radio news, newspapers, tv, web) are claiming to give me both sides, I'm not to worried about getting out of touch by reading one or two websites that don't make any such pretense.
Which reminds me: Lots of news outlets claim to give us "both sides" of issues, as if that's all there was. What about side 3, 4, 5 and so on? Very few stories have only two sides; you suggest Salon is extreme, I suggest it's just a 3rd side, and sometimes a 4th or more. What's so bad about that?
And since you asked what purposes so-called "extremism" serves, let me ask you: Whose interests does your dismissal of so-called extremism serve? The interests of the status quo, it seems to me. And like I said, if that's cool with you, then by all means, carry on— digest a steady diet of Slate and other mainstream news sources, support "centrist" politicians, etc. But if you'd like anything about our society and our world to change very much at all, you might want to think again about how you define "extreme" and where you draw the line about what you'll listen to, read, watch, etc.
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune. —Noam Chomsky
But, and so, ok. We're on the same side, really, I think, and I do understand your point that if the only things you say sound so whacky people think you're a freak or a lunatic then you'll never get anything done. That's true. But what if we think of it this way: There's a limited range of acceptable debate in our society. Right now, that range is about an inch wide, and everything outside of that little inch-wide band of acceptability sounds like it's from Neptune. In order for us to have a healthy, happy, productive and prosperous society, that range of debate needs to be much wider. For now, let's aim for doubling it to two inches. How do we do that? I'm not sure, but I bet if more of us are constantly making noises that sound like they're from Neptune, that range of acceptable debate will start to expand. So do you want to spend your life working w/in an inch of acceptability, or would you like to hope for more?
Posted 09:17 PM | general politics
That Journals Thing
DG has rounded up a number of blawgers who deserve congratulations for recently winning spots on their respective law reviews, herself included. So:
Congratulations, everyone!
I'm sure there are many more blawgers out there who have made it on their journals this season, or who will be notified soon that they have. Congratulations to them, as well.
The journal is a big deal for many law students, and while I previously mocked our journal competition, I did enjoy the exercise. That's partly why I was thrilled to learn last Sunday that I did manage to earn a spot on the American Intellectual Property Law Association's quarterly journal. It's not our law review, but it ain't nothin', either. I'm told that this is a great compromise as far as the four journals at GW go because, although a position on the AIPLA journal may not carry the prestige of one on the law review or one of the other journals, it also (reportedly) doesn't require as much time or stress. According to an email from the journal, my workload will consist of three major tasks:
- Preemption Check. For each article that we consider for publication, we ensure that the subject matter has not been "preempted," i.e. already published. Each article must address a novel issue or take a new twist on something already out there.
- Compile collection. For each article, our staff is responsible for verifying that the material cited by the author actually exists. We retrieve a hard copy of each source cited and highlight the area referenced by the author. This is to avoid plagiarism and to ensure that we only publish articles grounded in fact.
- Blue Booking. The article must be BB perfect. In those instances were several blue-booking methods are acceptable, we must ensure that we chose those methods that conform to previous AIPLA issues to ensure consistency.
Posted 08:37 AM | Comments (7) | 2L law school
Laramie Learns Ignorance
Web serendipity: Via a link on Scripting News to a cool photo of Arizona lightning, I just stumbled upon Learn Ignorance, a photoblog featuring daily shots of Laramie, Wyoming and environs. Nice!
Yeah, I'm probably biased about how nice this is. I did a lot of my growing up in Laramie, and got my undergrad degree there, plus it's just fairly rare to stumble upon anything from Wyoming—online or off. Last I checked, it was the least populated state in the nation (more cattle than people, I believe), spent more per capita on education than any other state, and its sole university is the highest (elevation-wise) in the nation at around 7,230 feet. Wyoming is a special place in many ways, one that very few people seem to know much about (it's somewhere near the heart of flyover country), so it's great to see such a neat site coming from there. I'm not sure about the name; are we supposed to learn about what we're ignorant of, or is it really encouraging us to be more ignorant?
For more than you ever wanted to know about Wyoming, check out its FedStats Page. Fun facts about Wyoming as compared to D.C. and U.S. averages:
- Percent of population claiming to be "white": 92.1% WY; 30.8% D.C.; 75.1% U.S.
- Median home value: $96,600 WY; $157,200 D.C.; $119,600 U.S.
- Average commute time (minutes): 17.8 WY, 29.7 D.C., 25.5 U.S.
- Median income: $37,892 WY; $40,127 D.C.; $41,194 U.S. Think about that. A good number of people in this country make $60-80k/year, others make over $100k, and still others make millions each year. If $40k is the average, then that means a lot of people are making much less than that.
- Percent of persons below the poverty line: 11.4% WY, 20.2% D.C., 12.4% U.S.
- Persons per square mile: 5.1 WY, 9,316.4 D.C., 79.6 U.S.
Posted 06:28 AM | Comments (7) | life generally
Bad Novel Beginnings: BLFC
We have another winner in the world's premier bad writing contest:
And the winner of 2004 is Dave Zobel who submitted the following:
The ellipses must have clinched it, I'm thinking.
The rest of the honorable mentions and runners up and winners in various categories are all well worth reading. There's so much terrific badness there I can't imagine how the judges choose the winner every year.
Inside Survivor Vanuatu
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from an email forward from a friend of a friend who is working in the South Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, where the next version of "Survivor" (Survivor 9) is being filmed. It's a good reminder that almost nothing on tv—perhaps especially "reality" tv—is what it seems.
The big news for Americans in Vanuatu these days is about the “Survivor” show. The series that will air in September is currently being shot here, and everyone is excited about it. Since we are Americans, people ask us a lot of questions, as if we were experts on all things American. We have practically no answers at all for the local people, since we have never even seen the show, but we can at least share a little bit with you of how things are going.
When we first heard that the show would be on location here, we tried to guess exactly where it would be filmed. There are some very rugged, very remote areas in Vanuatu, and we each had our favorite candidate for the locale: the ash plain on Ambrym, the crater lakes of Gaua, the rocky cliffs of Futuna. It turns out that the shoot is on our island, just down the road! We have friends at the villages which own the chosen sites, and we drive past them every time we go to the capital city for shopping. We think that perhaps the show tends to exaggerate the wildness of the sites chosen. (The alternate explanation is that Onesua is a lot more remote than we thought!) During the two months of shooting, the cast and crew will spend five days on Tanna, where the volcano scenes will be shot. The rest of the film will apparently be from Efate Island, where we live, and two little offshore islands, where we have visited.
The places where the actual shooting is being done are not untouched jungle; they are village gardens in the fallow phase of slash and burn agriculture. Of course, they look like jungle to Americans, since the bush just grows up wild. When you see the show it will probably give you a good idea of what our area looks like, but you should remember that you are seeing the Pacific equivalent of stubble in a wheat field.
There have been some hard feelings created. Villages still mostly run on a gift economy; you ask a favor and it tends to be granted, but you incur an obligation in return. America does not share this approach, and evidently the Survivor folks didn’t really bother too much to adapt. They struck deals with the local villages, including paying them not to fish on the reefs and not to sail their canoes from the offshore islands to Efate. They didn’t want the film to have Ni-Vanuatu in the background, going about their daily business, so the agreements were signed and that was that. American contracts do not allow a lot of flexibility, and the villagers don’t understand that. “Survivor” evidently tried to benefit local businesses by contracting food supplies with them, but when the first delivery was late, they cancelled. All supplies are now being imported, even eggs and vegetables, and the local people are not earning the income that they had expected, but they are still required to keep from fishing or going to market.
Meanwhile, security is very tight. The area is patrolled by men wearing camouflage and carrying radios, and they are enforcing a no-go zone, which was quite illegal at first, since they didn’t go through the proper channels of giving advance notice for shipping. Some New Zealander friends of ours, just as obnoxious and confrontational as Americans are, made a point of sailing a flotilla of yachts into the bay in the middle of filming, just to protest the point. ‘Survivor’ responded by getting everything properly announced and publicized, and the yachts went on their way.
Another issue has been the fact that this is an oral culture, where you sit and talk about everything before you even start to get down to business. A local newspaper columnist writes,
“People in Survivors are acting as though they own the place. They should be told this is Vanuatu and not the USA. They have advised the Tourism office that if local media want to get any news or interviews we will have to pay for it. Talk about arrogant.”
The front page of the newspaper of July 3 carried a political cartoon where a crewcut, sunglasses-wearing director says, “In order to win that one million dollars, you “Survivor” contestants must survive 39 days without electricity, running water, hot showers and telephones – completely cut off from the modern world!” In the background, a Ni-Vanuatu woman says, “What’s so special about that? We island women live every day of our lives that way!”
This could give a person a whole new perspective on ‘reality’ TV. What’s ‘real? The carefully edited contests or daily lives? In my opinion, there will be nothing in the contestants’ games as challenging as this whole thing is for the villagers. They try to understand a world where frivolous wastes of wealth exist side-by-side with people who could use those wasted resources, and they try to reflect on a world where cultures clash.
There is some monetary benefit for Vanuatu from the American money being spent here for these two months, and there may be some long-range benefit in increased tourism from the publicity. I’m not sure that it will offset the ill will caused by the filming. Vanuatu is a great place to be an American, since we saved the islands from slavery by stopping the Japanese offensive in World War II. The New Hebrides, as Vanuatu was called then, was a major staging area for the critical battles of the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal, and thousands of US soldiers were stationed here. The old people remember American friendliness, American generosity, and American sacrifice. That is a nice list of values to export! The current generation of Ni-Vanuatu, thanks to “Survivor,” is getting a very different picture. I’m afraid that they see us more like millipedes [a big nuisance in Vanuatu].
Go ahead and watch the show if you like. Maybe it’s fun entertainment. But maybe it would be better to think about the real issues involved, side-by-side with the villagers. The TV producers could have done a lot better job; why not have contests in making cement blocks and building a new clinic? Why not see which contestant can learn the largest local vocabulary or the most intricate traditional dance? Why not compete in teams of illustrators/authors/translators to produce the best textbook for the local primary school? That would be reality TV. I could cheer those heroes.
The Killers Are Killer
Before leaving for vacation a few weeks ago I loaded up the iPod w/some new music, including "Hot Fuss" by The Killers. After listening to the album round and round for a dozen times or more, I just wanted to say: They really do rock.
Thanks to Cinnamon and everyone else for the recommendations.
That is all.
Posted 01:21 PM | Comments (5) | life generally
Grad Union News Good/Bad
Graduate students at American universities have been trying to form unions for more than a decade, largely because universities have shifted more of the undergrad teaching burden from tenured or tenure-track faculty to grad students. Those students have had some success, but it's been a long struggle. Last week there were two major developments in this effort.
The good news: The Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) reached an agreement on a contract with the University of Illinois. (See also News Gazoo story.) As a former member of this union who worked on the campaign for recognition, I couldn't be more pleased. Congratulations, GEO!
The bad news: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled last week that grad students at private institutions can't form unions because they're students, not employees. The logic of this is just ridiculous. Why would being a student preclude me from being an employee? If I take classes from a school, and also work for pay at the school, aren't I both a student and employee? Yes. As an employee in the united states, don't I have a right to form a union? Roughly, Yes:
Witness the power of "an independent federal agency" — it doesn't matter what Congress says the law is because the NLRB can "administer" that law however it sees fit. This is why I'm looking forward to taking Administrative Law this fall—so I can learn the most effective ways to challenge and change decisions of agencies like the NLRB.
Posted 12:43 PM | Comments (2) | general politics
