Life in Moo Town
BJ's and Jaime's
Went to a bar/restaurant called BJ's with the crew. We ordered this gigantic cookie covered in a pile of ice cream. There were 6 of us. We just barely-sorta-finished. Then we went to Jaime's house to play Cranium and Catch Phrase and just generally regress to our former selves from more carefree days. Stayed until almost 3AM. Jaime is leaving for Florida in the morning. Very sad. Who knows when we'll all get together again? Those in the working world apparently don't get winter break. The rest of us will try to go skiing together before New Year's. Maybe we'll organize a party too. Next year in Times Square...that'll be something to talk about in years to come. One thing at a time though...
Thanksgiving Back in the Sunshine State
On Tuesday I ditched contracts class and took an hour and a half trainride out to JFK to catch my flight at 5 back to San Jose. Long day of traveling. took me about 10 hours from my apartment to my house. On the other hand, I'm very grateful when I think back to the old days when people would go from New York to California in covered wagons. By comparison 10 hours is very reasonable. Hung out with my high school friends on Wednesday after going shopping in the morning. I got a new suit and a wool overcoat and had lunch with my dad and sister at Freshchoice. So nice to find salad bars again. There is a serious shortage of vegetables in my diet out East. I was a little out of it 'cause I woke up at 6 due to jet lag. Didn't help that my house was freezing either. Anyway, back to my friends. We went to the elephant bar for bizarre tropical drinks and appetizers at 9 and I was shocked when the place closed at 10. Nothing in Manhattan closes that early. Bars are open until all hours of the morning. I guess that's one good thing about NY. You can get food 24 hours a day pretty much. When the bar closed we went to Sara's house and shmoozed for another few hours. It was really good to see my friends again. It's so rare that we all get together. Thanksgiving day was about as much of a disaster as I expected. My parents fight all the time and my dad decided to leave to get away from it all a couple hour before the guests arrived. The odd part was that he didn't come back. Apparently he went to a movie theater and stayed there. Not having my whole family together for Thanksgiving was really not cool but I can't blame him too much. Since he wasn't there I had to carve the turkey. Lotta pressure there. My cousins, two of my aunts, one of my uncles, my uncle's father and caretaker, and my mom and sister all waiting. Yikes. I'd never carved a turkey before but in my life of cooking I've picked up a few tricks along the way and it turned out all right. The dark meat was a little tricky but the white went fine. Played some card games with my cousins and sister after dinner. Nice to have time with my cousins too. One lives in Santa Barbara now and the other is in Berkeley/Oakland so I don't see them much. Today I had my dad fix my computer, which had been acting strange and then hung out with my sister and an aunt from San Diego in the afternoon. I'm going out with my friends again tonight before some of them have to go back to Florida. I'll enjoy us all being together while it lasts.
An Un-Civil Procedure
Got up at noon again. Ate some cereal for breakfast. Read a chapter of civ pro. Went to the gym. Came home and then went to Butler to read civ pro. Came home for dinner. Went to Butler to read civ pro again. Butler closed. Went home to read civ pro. Now I am blogging. Guess what I'm gonna do in a minute though? Yup. Still one more civ pro chapter left. But then I will be all caught up. Which puts me in prime position to get behind again when I fly to California Tuesday and miss two days of class. *sigh* There's no end to the reading.
Law Revue
Woke up at noonish. No hangover or anything. The resiliency of my body amazes me time and again. Got a slow start somehow...didn't begin reading until about 2. Managed to drag myself to Butler library. It started raining as I left. Got wet. IT was about 45 degrees out to. I could see my breath. I don't actually mind the weather though. We'll see how long that lasts. Studied a few hours and got hungry. Had some computer problems too. Ordered chinese delivery to reward myself for getting through supplemental jurisdiction and half of removal. Went to see the Law Revue show at 8. It's a musical performance put on by the law students. I went with low expectations but it was actually a lot of fun. Went to study at Starbucks afterwards with a friend. Had a peppermint hot chocolate. I love mint. Got kicked out of starbucks at midnight when it closed. Friend went home. I went to Drapkin. There were a couple other people there studying. They left pretty quick though. Had the whole lounge to myself. Finished off removal and started Erie Doctrine. Decided enough was enough around 1:30AM. Gonna crash now and keep civ proing in the morning. Assuming I can wake up. Got a lot of territory to cover still by Monday.
Tequila Shots
1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, 4. 5 tequila, 6 tequila, 7 tequila, floor. But I get ahead of myself. I woke up yesterday at 9 when my alarm went off but I promptly silenced it and fell back asleep...for another hour and a half! Oops! A friend called me at 10:22 to ask what room our class was in. I mumbled something and said I'd figure it out later. Only then did I notice class was in 8 minutes, I thought I still had an hour! I threw on clothes and ran to class, only 5 min late. I put on a thug hat to hide my disheveled hair so I looked a little funny. We had a guest speaker who was the cousin of our teacher. He went to Stanford Law and then became a prosecutor. Did lots of cool stuff. After that I went to say goodbye to a friend who is taking a leave of absence from school. Hope he keeps in touch. Nice guy. Then had a civ pro TA meeting. He was late so I went and had pizza at a job strategy workshop next door. Went home, got cleaned up and shaved, then went to a reception for Impact electiion protection volunteers. Had some wine and lots of tasty sushi, guacamole, etc...The dean was running late so I had to leave before he arrived. Oh well. Went to JTS for diner with a bunch of other Jewish grad students. Wasn't terribly exciting. When they started pulling out trivial pursuit I beat a quick retreat. Went home, changed, and headed over to Lenfest for a friend's birthday party. It was fun but there were mandatory tequila shots every few minutes. We went through a LOT of tequila. After partying there for a couple hours we were supposed to go to a club called "Hell" in the meat packing district. However I did some research and discovered it was pretty much a goth style gay club. Not really my scene :-P Most people left for a local club called the Parlour when they figured out they were being duped into going to a gay bar but I decided it was time to go home. Stayed up until 5AM watching rounders and other crap on TV then called it a night.
Law Professor Debates
Went to class slightly on time again this morning. Gotta be a miracle. For lunch I went to a relaxation seminar and learned a little PMR meditation. Interesting, but to be honest, I was there for the pizza. Got a haircut in the afternoon 'cause I had become reatively shaggy. Then went to watch Professors Moglen and Epstein debate the case of Intel v Hamidi. They were both very good debators though the case wasn't that exciting. From there went straight to another debate between two professors, this time over the war in Iraq. Not that exciting either, though again, the professors presented themselves well. What struck me the most was the collegiality of the events. The professors were friendly towards each other and though they made fun on occasion, there was no hostility. Since nearly all my previous debate experience has invloved the Israel/Palestine issue, I'm used to acid spitting contests where the debators clearly disdain their opponents. Interesting to gain a broader taste of the techniques and styles of debates. The evening was spent doing laundry, reading torts, and channel surfing.
Ed McDonald from Good Fellas
Long day but interesting. Was just barely on time to torts this morning. A welcome change from being 10 min late though. Didn't do any reading but also didn't get called on so no harm no foul. Suffered through civ pro. For lunch I had kosher pizza with Koleinu and heard Professor Abraham Bell of Bar-Ilan University talk about the ICJ decision on the Israeli security fence. He paced too much but had good points. I spent an hour talking about the comparisons between the Israel/Palestin fence and the barrier in Kashmir with an Indian LLM student afterwards. Missed contracts but I think it was worth it. After that I spent 2 hours getting my resumes reviewed by career services. Then more free food. I went to a healthcare law panel wit some very distinguished Columbia alums. One was Steve Epstein of Epstein Becker & Green. Yeah, he's a named partner. Biggest healthcare law firm in the country if not the world. Only about 20 of us there so it was neat. Wine and cheese followed (good cookies too). We were interupted by a fire alarm (turned out to be a mistake) then after socializing a bit I went to a Criminal Justice Action Network dinner and had sushi with Ed McDonald who played himself as the federal prosecuter in Good Fellas. I'm a mafia buff so it was quite a thrill. He was an amazing speaker too. I gotta say, I'm not a big sushi fan though. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Raw fish for the chance to talk with a guy who has prosecuted the 5 families, not bad. I'm pretty tired but I haven't started my reading. Or laundry. Or resume revisions. Ugh. These speakers are too hard to turn down. My life is falling apart. Just gotta keep it together for 1 more month....
Palestinian Terrorist Speaker
So I haven't blogged in a while...here's an update. I went to breakfast yesterday with the dean of the law school and Steven D. Gutterman ’95, Executive Vice President of Retail Banking at E*Trade. Not very exciting sadly. Had a senate meeting at lunch. Not very exciting either. I met with my ACS mentor for coffee by Fordham at the starbucks on 67th and Columbus. Talked for 2 hours about stuff. It was ok, but not much came of it.
Today was even busier. I was really tired and out of it for some reason. I must be waking up n the night multiple times and not remembering in the morning. It was nearly impossible to concentrate in class. I had lunch with professor Suchman who does environmental law. She may be able to put me in touch with some people at the UN who can get me a job this summer. I'll cross my fingers. After class I went to the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 110th and Amsterdam for a discussion of an article written by professor Tribe at Harvard. There were about 5 of us there from ACS. I got a tasty chocolate pastry thing and some peppermint tea. Then it was off to Lenfest Cafe for a PILF mixer. I found only 1 person who had worked for the UN. She didn't sound optimistic about my chances. Left the mixer at 5 to go hear an ex-terrorist speak. He grew up learning the Holocaust never happened and that Jews are evil. Then he became a Palestinian terrorist. Was involved in some bombings. Got thrown in prison. Now he is a pro-Israel speaker. I still found him creepy and scary. He had a violent aura about him. It isn't everyday you meet people you realize are capable of murder. Not a guy I would want to hang out with in spite of his current pro-Israel, anti-terror views. Good speaker though.After that it was about 8 and I had to go to Journal of Gender and Law to proof some article and eat pizza. Now its time to write up resumes and maybe get to homework before midnight. Rough day.
A Thought on Leadership
A good leader sees the world as it is and also sees it as it could be according to a vision for change. A leader with a vision but no conception of reality will be unrealistic and ineffective. A leader well grounded in reality but with no vision for the future will be incapable of achieving progress.
Any Polisci Majors Out There?
If you study polisci, you are probably aware of the theories in international relations regarding balance of powers where you never end up with one superpower for too long, a group of smaller powers always forms a coalition to balance the power. Someone should write a paper on the application of this theory to internal politics. Particularly the American 2-party political system. I'm sure some research would reveal striking similarities between voting trends and the interactions of super powers. I don't have time for this, but I'm sure it would make a good doctoral thesis for someone with the appropriate resources. Would that be you?
More Insight Today
Another big score with the New York Times. I noticed there was an article on Jeffrey Sachs and I was curious since I heard him speak a while back at an EarthWatch conference. After reading the article I think he's my new hero. Basically he's trying to eliminate world hunger. And I believe he's smart enough and resourceful enough to do it. Fortunately he's a Columbia professor now (we stole him from Harvard) so I may be able to track him down and speak to him about it sometime. Hopping onboard a crusade would be good for me I think. At the very least it would give me something to do besides curse the GOP.
Insight on Happiness
I was reading an article in the New York Times about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a muscular degeneration disease resulting eventually in complete paralysis. Dr. Bach, who treats A.L.S. patients, claims that his patients on ventilators rank their level of life satisfaction an average of 5.1 out of a possible 7, as compared with healthy people who rank their satisfaction at 5.5 on average. Bach was quoted as saying, "Happiness is reality divided by expectations." I think he hit the nail on the head. I must admit that I would probably rank my happiness significantly below a 5.1 on his scale. Do I really believe I am worse off than a paralytic? Of course not. My reality is very good. The problem is my expectations, which are unreasonably high. Presumably the expectations of those suffering from A.L.S. are fairly low. Thus a paradox may be reached where a healthy, successful, ivy-league law student is less satisfied with his life than a paralytic with a terminal disease. Interesting, no? I always knew ambition would wind up being a curse. The solution is obviously to lower my expectations but that is much easier said than done.
Jews and Republicans Make Strange Bedfellows
Before I start this rant, I'd like to point something out about the current spin in the press. Conservative talking heads claim that Bush is the most popular president in the history of the country because he got the most votes ever. This is misleading (duh). By that measure, Bush is also the most UN-popular president ever since the most people in history turned out to vote against him. High voter turn out and population growth provided the perfect medium for conservative spin doctors. When there are just more bodies running around the country than there have ever been, and more of them turn out to vote than ever before, Bush could have gotten more votes than any candidate in a previous election and still lost (as Kerry did I believe). Clearly the total number of votes cast is meaningless in the context of popularity. The way this picture is painted is just spin. A more accurate comparison of popularity is the percent of the vote won. Bush's 51% is nothing special. IN fact, Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. If he really was the most popular president ever, and the country really wasn't divided, one would expect him to have won 70-80% of the vote, regardless of the total number of votes. Anyone who isn't blind can see the red-state/blue-state regional divide on a map and can see that the election was extremely close in many states, as well as overall (a 3% narrow victory is not a mandate). The truth is that the country is more divided than ever.
Just for fun check
http://attenuation.net/files/iq.htm it is likey a hoax, though some of my southern friends said it is probably accurate.
Now for my real rant.
I heard yesterday that 76% of Orthodox Jews voted for Bush. This is as alarming as it is stupid. I believe it is symptomatic of the yeshiva culture and shtetle-style life. When you don't expand your world view and interact with other people and cultures you can become very selfish and focussed only on your own agenda. Many Jews voted for Bush because they think he will be better for Israel. Putting asside the fact that Kerry would have probably been just as tough on Palestinian terorism, lets remember that the economies of America and Israel are closely tied. Democrats have historically been much better for the economy than republicans. The best thing for Israel is a strong American economy (the recession in Israel is causing many Jews to leave the holy land for places with jobs). Is Bush really going to be good for Israel? A large portion of the Israeli economy is tied to the California tech industry. Bush has been particularly terrible for high-tech companies and there will definitely be a damper on the biotech market with him in office. Now some more issues. It reflects very poorly on Jews as citizens of America to vote, not based on what they think will be best for America, but rather what will be best for Israel. This sort of phenomenon is what has led anti-semites in the past to accuse Jews of having no loyalty to their countries or countrymen. Of course, I don't believe this is true, but the appearance is bad. Just like orthodox Jews disapprove of eating veggie burgers with cheese because those who don't know better might take it the wrong way, I think the appearances rule applies here. Probably the worst things I've heard since moving to NY from Jews ave been arguments along the lines of: "my grandparent came to this country after the holocaust with nothing and built fortunes, if they could do it, so could the [insert blacks, mexicans, inner city dwelling socially disadvantaged, or any other section of the population with problems]. MY grandparents didn't get help so why should we [the orthodox Jewish population] help any of them? We'll look after our own in spite of the fact that we're wealthy and pouring millions of dollars into synagogue beautification projects while people in the third world are starving." As far as I'm concerned, these socially conservative Jews have completely missed the point of the torah. If there really is a God, and he cares about our actions on Earth, and he has any semblance of rationality, I'm SURE he/she/it cares more about how we treat our neighbors and the less fortunate than how anal we are about observing rituals. The way that many Jews have moved from siding with republicans on foreign policy issues, to supporting them on domestic policy as well is disgraceful. Finally, I'd like to remind my loyal readers that the fundamentalist evangelical christian right is NOT our friend. Today they attack enemies of Israel, it is true. But they do it out of faith and ignorance, not rationality. Tomorrow, it could just as easily be any other group that is targeted. Maybe even Jews. Lets not forget that they'd still like to see us all converted to prevent us from going to hell. That idea led to the Spanish inquisition once. Religious extremism must be abhorred in every form, even if a temporary alliance might be politically convenient.
New Zealand Supreme Court Justice
I missed torts this morning because my alarm didn't go off. Oops. I'm a week behind now. Did some civ pro reading. Went to my other classes. For lunch I went to hear Sir Kenneth Keith. He's a Justice of the New Zealand Supreme Court. He's also been nominated to the International Court of Justice. I asked im what he thought of the ICJ Wall decision. He said he supported it, though he didn't know any of the history. Great. Just what we need. After class I had a contracts TA session, then Westlaw training, then a civ pro TA session. Then I went to a meeting on stress management (with more pizza). Got home and worked on my funding apps and blue book citation exercise. Rough evening. Especially since I kept taking breaks to watch the news. I won't go into that again though...
It's the End of the World as We Know it...
That song has been going through my head all day. Ever since I learned in the middle of civ pro that Kerry had conceded. It's a truly dark day. The republicans solidly control all of America now. The house, the senate, the executive and the judiciary. I predict that Scalia will be appointed to Chief Justice when Rehnquist dies (which will be very soon I think) and over the next 4 years we'll see another 2-4 Thomas types added to the court. Don't forget that federal judges are appointed for life. It will take decades to repair this damage. Good bye Roe v Wade. Good bye rights for the LGBT community. Good bye separation of church and state. Good bye evolution in the public schools of the South. Speaking of long term damage, lets not forget the steady roll back we are seeing of bipartisan environmental legislation passed during the '90s. The damage Bush will do to the environment in his 8 years may well be irreparable. Oh, lets not forget the deficit. If we keep this up, we'll be 10 trillion dollars in the hole by the time Bush is done. With the way redistricting works and incumbents are favored by our political system it will be EXTREMELY difficult for Democrats to regain any sort of power in the forseeable future. I'm thinking the decade is a lost cause. Furthermore, the Democratic party has been shattered. There are no leaders left. Everyone has come to the realization that we really do hold the minority view, the majority of Americans prefer faith and "values" to sound policy. I'd be surprised if the democratic party doesn't either completely restructure or go extinct. Who would have thought the 21st century would start so terribly? That reason and sound policy could take a back seat to evangelical Christianity? I just don't know what to do anymore. We're all doomed.
Election Protection
What a long couple of days. After spending a night bussing out to Pennsylvania to arrive before the polls opened, we were held up getting our poll assignments and equipment at the large church where we were supposed to be processed. By the time my group was sent out it was 8AM or so and the polls were already open. I was in a group of 3 with 2 other CLS law students. We were assigned another church as our polling site, but there were already 3 election protection groups there. Apparently there were so many of us volunteering in Philadelphia that the whole city was already covered. We drove around a few more polling places until we found one that had a single group working there. It was an elementary school in a very nice and almost entirely African-American neighborhood. The city was actually very pretty, lots of stone or red brick houses and big trees. It was a welcome change from Manhattan, that's for sure. We handed out voter's bills of rights to people coming to vote and assisted them if they had minor problems (very few did). The only thing that really went wrong at the poll was that there seemed to be increased police patrolling in the area, and one police car circled the block over a dozen times, ticketing the cars of voters each time. It is illegal for the police to hang out within 100 feet of a polling place unless there is a disturbance as it constitutes voter intimidation. I got pretty pissed off watching the fat, white, stereotypical police officer ticketing the cars of elderly black voters trying to walk with canes up the stairs (a lot of them were really cute, they would take 15 min to get up the flight of 6 stairs, but were determined to get up and vote and didn't want any assistance, they were willing to take their time). I called in a few complaints to our central office about the police harrassment and the officer went away eventually. Whether it was because of my complaints or because he met his quota I don't know. The district attourney came by later and I informed her of the problem. She said that the ticketed people could easily get the tickets thrown out in court and not to worry about it. I worked a 13 hour shift, all outdoors (poll monitors can't come within 10 ft of the poll) so it was a pretty intense day. I did manage to slip off long enough to get a philli cheese steak (which was really good) since there were more than enough of us to cover the site. Other volunteers came to check on us and bring us coffee and food throughout the day, but what we really lacked was news. We had no TV or radio and we wanted to see the election coverage. We made phone calls to friends with TV access and threw around lots of wild speculation. At the end of the day on the bus back we finally started to get the radio coverage. We were exhausted. By the time I got back to Manhattan it was 2AM and I'd gone for 2 days with no sleep, I was running on nerves and caffeine. I got cleaned up and watched the poll numbers come in before going to bed. As I suspected, there won't be a diffinitive outcome for a while. Maybe I should have gone to Ohio instead, looks like they may have needed more help. Oh well, I did what I could. It's in the hands of the vote counters now and I can't say I'm overly optimistic.
Battle at Dawn
I'm getting my game face on. At 3:30AM I'll be getting on a bus to go to Philadelphia and monitor polls. I need to be at the polls at 5:30AM and I feel like I'm going to war. The best estimates seem to indicate the race is tied 48% to 48% in Pennsylvania and I believe whichever way the state goes will probably decide the election. Whoever wins 2/3 of the Eastern swing states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania) will probably win the election. My personal prediction is that Ohio will go for Kerry, Florida will go for Bush, and Pennsylvania will be the deciding factor. I intend to be at ground zero doing what I can to prevent a repeat of the 2000 shananighans. At least if the Democrats lose, I will be able to live with myself for knowing I did all I could to prevent the disaster of 4 more Bush years. I was glued to the TV this afternoon watching the election coverage, it's just too tense to get any work done. So much is at stake. I'm not going to get much sleep for the next 48 hours...
Halloween
I was lame and I stayed home all day, doing work and watching horror flicks alternately. I must have watched a dozen movies in whole or in part. Dusk 'till Dawn III, Exorcist II, Funhouse, Nightmares, Queen of the Damned....Needless to say, they all sucked and weren't even scary. I made some gnocci with red sauce for dinner and spent the evening doing essays for my Earthwatch Fellowship application. We'll see if someone wants to pay me money to go spend a few weeks chasing bats through a Malaysian rainforest. I shouldn't get my hopes up too high. It's really too bad I missed the Halloween parade in the wst village but I guess there's always next year. Oh, and when I was about to go to bed, the people living above me flooded their bathroom and water started coming through the light fixtures in my apartment. Lovely.
