Uh. This is kinda scary.

Did anyone else see this NYTimes story? It's the one about the wave of bankruptcies striking at retail chains.

For some reason the fact that a wave of bankruptcies is going to take down Linens N' Things is oddly frightening. I'm not that disturbed the shuttering of Zales diamond dealers, or Sharper Image...but...there's just something about Linens N' Things going down that makes me nervous.

I can't say that I had any particular affinity for the store, or that I even really shopped there...but those are the types of stores that make up the landscape of American Suburbia. Forget the anti-corporatist, anti-consumerist bent for just a moment...because for better or worse, that's what our communities look like all over the country. The idea of big, empty and isolated Big Box stores, dead shopping centers, and empty spaces in malls is...eesh.

Let me just sum up off the top of my head:

• Oil is hovering around $100 a barrel. In 2000, it was $22. And when oil prices go up, the price of everything goes up. Every one of those big rigs will be paying 5 times as much to drive across country. Every boat in our extraordinarily liberalized trade patterns will experienced skyrocketing energy prices. The cost of fertilizer (manufactured from natural gas) goes up, and thus the price of corn, grain, rice, soy, and all crops experience increased costs. The cost of grain needed to feed animals for meat goes up then too. And then we're back full circle when the food needs to be transported. Food riots have begun in the developing world. We are now facing a food crisis.
  
• So lets meander slightly from oil, and look to our own transportation and city planning. The entire infrastructure of America after 1950 was premised on oil costs being cheaper than water. So we built highways, roads, and made it the American dream to all own our own houses, and all drive our own cars to get anywhere. We took advantage of the low costs of oil to expand our economies to seek greater efficiencies within and outside of our borders. It doesn't make sense to ship a T-shirt from China to South Carolina...unless of course oil is 20 bucks a barrel. (I don't mean any of this as a condemnation...it's just sorta scary now looking back and seeing the hole we've dug.) So this is our way of life.
  
• But now there's another problem. These houses are starting to disappear. Low to moderate income families are beginning to be swallowed alive by mortgages they can't afford, and defaults are sweeping across the country. The suburbs are beginning to lose their shimmer...and they may even grow into slums as the cities have begun to reattract the propertied classes. (The link is to an article in the Atlantic dissecting the implication sof the sub-prime crisis on suburban communities which I thought was...well, lets just say very worth reading, if slightly gloomy.)
• (I'm not sure how I got here...I was just going to write like 5 sentences of all the things going wrong at once...and now I'm paragraphs deep.)
• So in the midst of this oil turmoil (heh) shaking the very foundation of our economy, a wave of losses hits the investment banks. JP Morgan, UBS, Citi, Wachovia, Bank of America. The Titans of the Financial System, that is to say, the entirety of our financial system...suddenly have no idea what's going on, what's going to happen, and how to stop it. Chain reactions begin to whiplash across the financial system. Then one of the largest investment banks in the world suddenly decides to implode, losing 10 billion dollars in 6 hours. Bear Stearns, having almost a perfect 85-year history, suddenly disappears. (Note: As these banks wrote down their assets, they had to get money from somewhere to stay alive. Guess where they got lots of that from? Yep. China. Now having direct state-ownership over a large swath of Wall Street.)
• And it's spreading. Maybe it will stop. Maybe it won't. But oil prices remain high. Food prices remain high. The effects of the subprime meltdown continue to unwind with new losses everyday. (GE? UPS?)
  
• And now, Linens N' Things is probably going to file for bankruptcy.
  

But then again, everything could be just fine. I don't have any idea. I think I know just enough to be legitimately scared.

P.S. - I'll buy a beer for anyone who actually made it this far. And actually read that garbage. Not just this sentence.

Advice to a Stupid Asshole.

So I was riding my bike down the street with my tax return paperwork in my pocket in order to mail it out today. When I got home to pick up my W-2s, I discovered that all of my paperwork had blown out of my pocket at some point and into the street.

Thus, my SSN, my address, phone number, and financial information is all floating around in an envelope somewhere in Cambridge. I'm a little bit concerned about what the information can be used for, particularly identity theft.

Anyone have any idea about what I can/should do? Do I just have to start tracking my credit history much more closely? Or what?

I'm sick of being a bicyclist in Boston. I'm ready for a motorcycle or a car. Jesus.

Edit: The Liquor Store found it. Phew!

P.S. Stupid Nike+ Website is not letting me post the cool little graphic, so I just have to do it by hand. 3.7 miles, 32:21, 8:44 per mile, 586 calories, squiggly line. Huzzah!

I love blue skies and sunny days.

This is the sort of blog post that people make fun of the most...because of it's mundanity, lack of content, and degree of self-absorption exuded because how could we possibly think anyone would care? (I don't, but I continue...)

The one thing that Boston makes me really appreciate is Spring. I think I used to take blue skies, sunbeams, and weather above 60 degrees for granted. Now...when I wake up and see blue skies and sun, all I want to do is walk around doing nothing, run errands, smoke cigars outside, take a long run, ignore my studies, and waste lots and lots of time instead of studying.

So that's exactly what I did. I got up, went shopping at my local hippie grocery store, bought some fruit, coffee, pastrami, a bagel, and some smoked whitefish (my new favorite bagel spread learned from my Jewish friends...) and promptly came home and sat in my backyard smoking a left over cigar from the Bachelor party in DC (a nice Davidoff).
After that, I thought...what better way to waste time than to take a run? So...I walked 30 minutes to school to get my running shoes, then walked another 15 minutes to the Charles River,
and took a nice leisurely run, nicely captured by this little box....

Then...I came home and decided to shower, do laundry, blog, and eat some more whitefish instead of doing my work...Plus, I'll be going out tonight, so I basically have an hour to work...despite the crushing pressure of exams.

And that's my life.

P.S. I found this picture of CARVED CRAYONS on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Joey, I think you must a little slow on the uptake if this hasn't appeared yet. (His name is Pete Goldlust)

Game Theory and Single Men.

I've generally resisted posting news articles and other reading material, being under the impression that no one actually reads any of it. (With the exception of RS who will read the political and economic stuff just so he can respond in full force in comments.) For no good reason, I thought this article was sorta interesting, so I decided to post it. I don't necessarily buy it, but it's definitely something I thought was interesting to mull over...

The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn't there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?

Actually, no—and here's why. Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no. The structure of the proposal is not, "I choose you." It is, "Will you choose me?" A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked.

Obviously, this is simplified—in contemporary life, both sides get plenty of chances to be selective. But as a rough-and-ready model, it's not bad, and it contains a solution to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox.

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group "strong bidders" and the second "weak bidders." Your first thought might be that the "strong bidders"—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here. (Be warned: "Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions" is not for everyone, and I certainly won't claim to have a handle on all the math.) But you can also see how this works intuitively if you just consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it's the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.

This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

Patron.

Given the recent bent of my lifestyle, you would think that what I have written above is pronounced Puh-Trone, as in Patron Tequila.

You would be mistaken.

Actually, the word refers to me and should be pronounced Pay-trin, as yes, I have given my vast student loan fortune to the arts and have commissioned my first painting from an up and coming young artist. The working title, thus far, is "Perambula" and it will be delivered to my home sometime quite soon.
(Actually, it's a friend of mine from high school who I recently found on facebook and engaged in a long exchange of mama jokes culminating in "hey dude, how much would you charge me for a painting?" and him saying "uh, 100 bucks?" and then i said "cool. do that." and then he said "that's what your mama said." and then I said "Oohhhhhh! do the painting.")

I'm pretty excited about it actually. Super excited even.

Edit: I haven't given up yet!

Feedback Requested.

I need a professional name, although it may already be too late. Any thoughts? I sorta feel bad throwing my actual name under the bus. I went with my actual name...

Y. Mama
Yo M. Ma
Yo M.
Yo Mama


(P.S. - This past weekend was so fucking awesome.)

Yes, Sarah, I do realize I have now posted my full name on the blog. I will delete this post soon enough.

Edit: Deleted.

Bitch Ass!

Is NOT what I am. I have been challenged by my SF buddy to a "Most Miles in 30 days" challenge. I will prevail. Because I am not a bitchass.

Surprising, but True.

The pre-marinated frozen mahi-mahi from Trader Joe's is actually quite tasty. It's also cheap, easy to make, and quite healthy. I'm definitely going back to the frozen meat and fish section of TJs.

Just thought I'd share, as I eat it for dinner at 2 am while reading an assignment about the Value Added Tax.

New Toy!

So, given the fact that I ran a grand total of like, 3 times, I decided to get a new set of running shoes (since my old ones hurt).

After I saw my buddy's Nike+ system in San Francisco, I couldn't help but run out immediately and get my own. So expect to see random things like THIS posted on my blog from now on.

I consider this particular run pretty impressive given my size, weight, and smoking history.

Spring Break Thus Far.

As I mentioned in my last lengthy post: California is beautiful.

And I mean really beautiful. It's just so damned green it almost glows. And the rolling mountains and hills constantly in the background, the electric blue oceans...not a cloud in the sky. It has truly been astounding to me. I am very very seriously considering moving my life out here because it is just so incredible.

As for the activities, it has been pretty laid back and chill.

Day 1: We woke up and figured it was a good day for a big hearty breakfast, so we went to some brunch type joint and loaded up on high fats, high-glycemic carbs, and proteins. Mmm... Then we went lifting weights for an hour, and then taking a 3-mile run in an area referred to as "The Dish."
Yes. We went for a run there. After that we went to a famous butcher and picked up these black steaks with some sort of tar-black marinade that is so famous it has it's own wikipedia entry, bought a 15 dollar hibachi grill, and sat outside in the sun grilling 1.5 pounds of steak and drinking IPAs. And then we took a walk down to a Cuban restaurant, ordered up some Chimay White on draft, and went to the lounge in the back where we purchased and smoked cigars, drank Chimay, and ultimately sipped Laphraoig until we got so piss drunk we came home and passed the fuck out.

Day 2: I wanted to see more. So we drove down Route 1, which is a mountainous highway on the coast (seriously spectacular...)
...no seriously... that's where the highway is....on a sunny day until we hit the Montana d'Oro state park, which is a series of mountains by the ocean. We took a 4-mile hike up the mountain to the highest peak, froze our asses off because the temperature was definitely 20 degrees cooler up top, and then sauntered our way down to the bluffs, which were themselves incredible. After we had essentially worked our legs to the core, we hopped in the VW, turned up the Top 40 pop, and headed off to San Luis Obispo where I got a fresh seared ahi tuna salad, a local beach ale, a coffee chaser, and hit the road back to SF.

Day 3: Woke up and hit up a diner, where I got the world's least satisfying order of huevos rancheros ever. Then....Napa! We drove up to wine country...Napa, Yountsville, and Sonoma. We couldn't really find a good place to go, so we played it safe and hit up Robert Mondavi's plantation, went through a 3 wine-tasting, basked in the beautiful sunny day with a mountain backdrop, and then decided to stop off at an Outlet center to pick up some clothes, and then headed off towards Sonoma for a few more wine-tastings, and an incredible prix fixe dinner at the General's Daughter.
And now I'm back in Palo Alto watching TV and blogging.

And I assure you, despite the description.....it was all thoroughly hetero.

California...

IS GORGEOUS.

Oh my god, how I hate thee Boston.

San Francisco

First, the textbook chapter on China is now complete...almost 80 pages of Chinese Financial System Goodness. If you ever wanted to know everything about the Chinese Financial System, give me a buzz and I'll gladly send it over to inflict you with it.

Second, I'm heading out to San Francisco for my spring break. Actually, I'll be at Stanford...but Potato Paloalto, right?

Otherwise, I have nothing particularly new to report. I plan to go out to Cali, relax, maybe see wine country, maybe see some ocean, visit Nik and Patrick, leave behind all the stress and bullshit of my life and just disappear 3,000 miles into another world.

Also, since it's SPRIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG BREAAAAAAAAK!!!!!!, that means I get to read a book finally. I've chosen two for this trip:

1) In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.) by Michael Pollan
--This is Michael Pollan's follow-up to the Omnivore's Dilemma...a book I found thoroughly educational, enjoyable, enlightening, appetizing, and simply lovely. This seems like it's going to be just the same, and I'm truly very excited.

2) The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
--I've heard so many good things about the trilogy of Richard Ford books, namely Independence Day, which won the Pulitzer awhile back (The third one is....Lay of the Land I believe.) In any case, it's supposed to be good. So this is my novel. And if I love it, there's TWO MORE waiting! (Plus, if I don't read it, I will always imagine it's about Ray Barone.)

Since I have the moment I would also like to mention the music I'm newly digging...
--Bird and the Bee's new EP - One Too Many Hearts (Excellent!)
--Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
--Everyday Visuals - Things Will Look Up (still excellent!)

And......bye!

Jeremiah Wright.

So this whole Obama-Wright problem?

I do however, find these media curve surveys to be interesting. Not surprising, of course, yet still saddening all the same. If you haven't seen one of these before, I suggest you do so....

Gaping.

I was looking through Tourfilter to see what upcoming shows are coming through Boston. List after list of stupid indie band names, and washed out acts that don't deserve any real attention (I will not be going to see the Pretenders, Nada Surf, or the B-52's).

As I was scrolling through.....SUDDENLY....I see something called Bjorkestra. My head tilted back slightly and I stared at the name, suspicious. So I googled it, and found a MySpace page. And then I hit play on the little mp3 player.

...and I began gaping uncontrollably at my computer in the library.

It's not sublime or fantastic. But it is definitely an 18-piece (and very skilled) jazz band covering Bjork. And it is definitely interesting. And they are coming to Boston.

I've included a video of Hyperballad for the one (maybe two?) of you who have reached level 5 approval in my books because you listen to Bjork.

Krugman.

I thought Krugman's column today made an interesting point about the creation of an alternate financing system and the economic equivalence of asset backed securities and bank loans in 1930. I had never really considered the point, but he being Paul Krugman super economist (seriously), I take his economic analysis fairly seriously. I've pasted it below in case you were interested.

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market crash of 1929 wasn’t the defining moment of the Great Depression. What turned an ordinary recession into a civilization-threatening slump was the wave of bank runs that swept across America in 1930 and 1931...

Banks exist because they help reconcile the conflicting desires of savers and borrowers. Savers want freedom — access to their money on short notice. Borrowers want commitment: they don’t want to risk facing sudden demands for repayment.

Normally, banks satisfy both desires: depositors have access to their funds whenever they want, yet most of the money placed in a bank’s care is used to make long-term loans. The reason this works is that withdrawals are usually more or less matched by new deposits, so that a bank only needs a modest cash reserve to make good on its promises.

But sometimes — often based on nothing more than a rumor — banks face runs, in which many people try to withdraw their money at the same time. And a bank that faces a run by depositors, lacking the cash to meet their demands, may go bust even if the rumor was false.

Worse yet, bank runs can be contagious. If depositors at one bank lose their money, depositors at other banks are likely to get nervous, too, setting off a chain reaction. And there can be wider economic effects: as the surviving banks try to raise cash by calling in loans, there can be a vicious circle in which bank runs cause a credit crunch, which leads to more business failures, which leads to more financial troubles at banks, and so on.

That, in brief, is what happened in 1930-1931, making the Great Depression the disaster it was. So Congress tried to make sure it would never happen again by creating a system of regulations and guarantees that provided a safety net for the financial system.

And we all lived happily for a while — but not for ever after.

Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a “shadow banking system” that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.

For example, in the old system, savers had federally insured deposits in tightly regulated savings banks, and banks used that money to make home loans. Over time, however, this was partly replaced by a system in which savers put their money in funds that bought asset-backed commercial paper from special investment vehicles that bought collateralized debt obligations created from securitized mortgages — with nary a regulator in sight.

As the years went by, the shadow banking system took over more and more of the banking business, because the unregulated players in this system seemed to offer better deals than conventional banks. Meanwhile, those who worried about the fact that this brave new world of finance lacked a safety net were dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned.

In fact, however, we were partying like it was 1929 — and now it’s 1930.

The financial crisis currently under way is basically an updated version of the wave of bank runs that swept the nation three generations ago. People aren’t pulling cash out of banks to put it in their mattresses — but they’re doing the modern equivalent, pulling their money out of the shadow banking system and putting it into Treasury bills. And the result, now as then, is a vicious circle of financial
contraction.

I remember sitting around the dinner table that one night with all those finance professors and the SEC guy as they were lobbing a variety of hypotheticals at him about regulatory postures and outcomes. Two stuck in my mind in particular, both lobbed by the prof I'm working for, the director of the international finance program here at HLS. The first was about how the SEC had taken supervisory jurisdiction over Bear Stearns, and what would happen to the credibility of the SEC if Bear Stearns were to collapse. This was a week before the Bear Stearns implosion. (This is not relevant except to say that the market clearly wasn't expecting such a precipitous implosion at the time...)

The second asked what type of regulatory adjustments the SEC would make if, say, our economy were to suffer a market catastrophe on par with the start of the Great Depression in 1929. Startled at what seemed like an outlandish hypothetical, akin to a 1L asking a Con Law prof about the separation of powers in the face of all out nuclear war, I looked around the table to see if anyone had a professorial half-smile, or look of purely academic interest in their face awaiting an answer to the question. But there wasn't. The question was asked, received, and answered as if the situational presented a perfectly reasonable possibility.

I don't know that it's fair to read anything into that moment, but for a split second in mid-bite of froufy doof salmon, I got chills.

Whoa.

OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME. JOEY, I HAVE UNCOVERED THE SUPER AWESOME.




(suck it slav boy)

Quote of the Day

"The Dalai [Lama] is a wolf in monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast," Zhang Qiling the head of the Tibetan government.

Indeed.

DA's Visit.

(The picture will be removed on request because you are the most internet paranoid motherfucker I have ever encountered in my entire life, but just to be clear: my blog is unfindable by search engines and the public and you're a horrible loser if you raise a stink about it. jackass.)

I really should suppose I should comment on DA's spring break trip. But I am also currently sitting in the 11th circle of hell (law student), so I will keep it short.

• Picking up DA in this Benz and managing to fit 2 suitcases and 2 bookbags in the car = Awesome.
• Being called "fag" approximately 30 times every 6 hours = slightly less awesome.
• Introducing DA to like 30 new people and making sure that every single person is made aware that he is 30 years old = super awesome.
  
• Legal Seafoods and 3 cups of chowder in a span of 24 hours = So awesome.
• Skiing on an enormous mountain and taking 20 minutes to get to the bottom = sublime. Except for the burning burning pain in my thighs. oh god the pain.
• Being better than Joey and measuring awesome = you guessed it.

Actually, I'm not going to catalog all of the things we did because now that I think about it....we ended up doing a ton of cool stuff from going to a party near Fenway, eating huge meals after a long day of skiing, recording a video of DA playing "Talk Dirty to Me" on Guitar Hero while he was singing the wrong lyrics, listening to him bitch about being tired and old for a 3 hour car drive, and drinking large amounts of beer. It was, of course, one of the most supremely stressed days I've had this year...which he had the privilege of watching me viciously unleash upon my LLM partner. (I admit, it is pretty awesome to scream at an LLM about how much he sucks as a human being, listen calmly to his sob stories about how his life is falling apart, and pause just long enough to take a breath before telling him that his problems are not my problems.) Also, don't let him convince you that "Gaysian" is a good nickname, or that it's even remotely clever.

Cheers dude.

A Month, A Milestone.

So, if I haven't bragged enough about it yet, I am now officially smoke-free for over 1 month. Although I officially quit on February 10 and today is March 12, I figure with the leap day plus one, I can safely call this the one month marker. We'll call it 30 days for purposes of an updated calculation.

• 300 cigarettes unsmoked. That's 25 packs of cigarettes!
  
• 120 dollars saved. That's 60 nights with RS's mother!
  
• And, if myth has merit, I have regained somewhere between 45 to 54 hours of my life back. That's 2 days in a nursing home!
• My lung function is supposed to start improving at this point too. That's an extra 10 decibels on my next "that's what she said!"
  
• Giggity.

I also stopped chewing the gum. I carry it around with me just in case I get overcome with an urge, and I can pop a piece in my mouth. I haven't really been paying attention, but I've probably had less than 5 pieces in the last 14 days...including the last 7 days or so when I haven't used it at all.

On top of that, I am definitely mired in the...

• heaviest drinking...
• most stressed...
• emotionally trainwrecked...
  
• and hedonistic....

...periods of my life. And I haven't smoked a cigarette. That's pretty damn cool.

Monday Night.

I really haven't had much to say recently because I've been cooped up in the library all day, except for my birthday party...so I figured I'd report on today's events.

So I basically had a real Harvard moment last night, and I don't think I was very good at it. I get this random email from my professor's assistant last week asking, "Professor Jackson would like to invite you to dinner after the presentation on Monday with the general counsel of the SEC."

My first reaction was "hell no."

After a moment, I hit back space to delete the words "Hell no" from the reply-email and pondered, "isn't this the sort of thing I'm supposed to be doing here?" So ignore the email, and go back to work while I thought it over. After thinking for awhile, I figured that this was sort of a big class dinner thing. There were only 15 of us, so we were all probably going to the dinner. So I look at the email again, and it's addressed to me, and it says "Hi Jay." Hm.

Eventually, I suck it up and decide to accept. It's time for me to grow a pair and do the things that adults are expected to do.

So, I show up last night and it's just me and one other student. And it takes place in here:
...which is a place I have no business being in. I have not the slightest understanding of why I have been invited. I don't really understand finance. I'm sort of a fraud. I don't have a great econ background, I only took securities regulation for 13 days and NEVER learned a thing about the trading markets. I always get confused when I hear the word broker-dealer. I took one single finance class last spring, from which ALL of my knowledge springs. ONE. ONE! Yeah, so I think it's fascinating and I learn more every day...but I am really not someone who can earnestly consider myself even remotely expert. I'm informed, and I'm curious. That's the line. I just understand enough to survive my classes and maybe read half of the business pages. What am I doing here?!?!

As I walk into the room, my heart drops, a brick tears its way through the seat of my pants, and I begin numbly dreading the next two hours of my life. It appears that the financial illuminati of Harvard Law School have all congregated in one room: the former Dean of the law school and former director of Time Warner, an infamous shareholder agitator, a German finance professors, Harvard Business School professor, the directors of all of the corporate and finance departments in the law school, the general counsel of the SEC, former Presidents of the Law Review, and at least 6 former Supreme Court clerks. And there were only about 10 people in the room total, so I could not safely hide in the corner. Suckage. Cocktails at 7. Dinner at 7:30. Discomfort forever.

So I drank wine. And I drank more wine. And I ate the froufy foods. And I sat there, non-contributing as these people zinged back and forth discussing the most complex high finance concepts from subprime to the financial bubbles to IFRS and GAAP to the 1929 crash, and on and on and on. It was fascinating, but I knew I had nothing to contribute, and calmly ate my food. Fork in left hand. Cut romaine leaf in two pieces. Stab lettuce and julienned pepper with left hand. Raise fork. Place knife carefully on top right of plate. Pass fork to right hand. Raise to mouth. Transfer fork back to left hand to pin down slippery piece of endive. Eat super slowly. Smile at finance jokes.

Ultimately, it turned out well enough. I got to witness the dialogue between academia and the government about very important issues. I got to see the inside of the faculty club. I got to be the only minority in the room. I got a free gourmet meal that apparently was 70 dollars a plate. I managed to avoid making a fool of myself, even if I did come off a bit timid. And, I got to walk out the door, and promptly go out drinking with a friend until 3 am on Monday night. I consider it a success.

What a week.

This week has been a total bitch. I'm not going to go into details, but it was entirely too stressful to be a birthday week. I will say, my actual birthday was quite fantastic, with all those nice facebook wall posts from people you never speak to anymore, various gifts received in the mail, musical theatre with law students, and late night drinks and desserts. (I actually ate 3 full desserts on my birthday, none of which were planned.)

I'm currently totally fucking exhausted. I did my birthday celebration last night at a bar down the street, which happened to simultaneously coincide with
1) Duke v. Carolina
2) Celtics Game
3) Saturday Night
4) Harvard's MPRE Post-Party with Free Drink Tickets

As could be surmised, I ended up totally fucking trashed and I'm not entirely clear on what happened last night, except that I have a surprising number of friends who will show up and drink on a Saturday night from all different groups of folks. Warm and fuzzy feeling, as I finally belong here.

...and I woke up so fucking hung over I have not done any work all day...and have decided to go to bed before Midnight for the first time, probably, in 5 years.

DA: I am looking forward to your visit. I am totally not looking for preparing for it tomorrow and Tuesday.

Laziness.

My laziness thus far has made this the worst week of the semester. It includes:

• Writing 2 very large research papers
  
• Writing 1 response paper
• Being on call
  
• Reading 4 articles on Tax
• Organizing the mass subcite on saturday
  
• MPRE this Saturday
• Attending the school Parody performance
  
• Excessive personal turmoil
• My Birthday
• Meeting with my Professor about the project I agreed to do but have not touched in 4 months
• Normal Schoolwork
• No Cigarettes.

Despite the fun, I was in such a huff both nights that I decided that I should just go out drinking excessively, thus losing Monday and Tuesday evening. (Note: I drank to excess Friday and Saturday.)

And that's all. I'll be sure to report back soon as soon as I find another lull that I pretend I have the luxury to indulge.

(DA...what's the deal? Did you pick a place?)

Arab Wal-Mart

If you have a couple of spare moments, I suggest you check out this article about a Wal-Mart that hopened in Dearborn, MI, which has a huge middle eastern population...

It's about a Wal-Mart that is aimed predominantly at middle easterners...and it's a legitimately interesting one and a half minutes well-spent...

Reshuffling.

Nothing I'm writing here is really all that interesting, I'm sure. Basically I think that I've been sort of a mess, and I'm in a very fruitful process of fixing it. I really was just going to write a couple of sentences about how I'm reconstructing and remolding my life, but it just sorta kept going, so now there's just a sewer of consciousness that follows...I figure you'll only read if you cared anyway...

So the stark reality is that my life has been all confused and disorderly for awhile now. I am not going to go into any details, but things have been very difficult for the past few months, and I have not been happy. More than not being happy, I refused to recognize much of my own unhappiness and simply never took a moment to be even the slightest bit introspective about what was happening in my life. On the surface, I drank a lot, smoked a lot of cigarettes, ate a lot of crappy food, didn't sleep, and did not do my work. I no longer sought understanding of my courses, but merely did my readings without a second though. My life felt entirely undisciplined, and it was very unrewarding.

I am not quite the person that I want to be, and the person that I was when I was most myself, and most happy just to be me. I have lost track of myself at times and have once again gone adrift. I float by on a patchwork of fleeting desires and instinctive impulses without foundation or principle. I want to be clear though, that this is nothing dreary or existential. Despite the fact that I was living entirely on the surface, the presence of good friends and a vibrant social life for the first time at Harvard has actually made me quite happy. For the first time, Harvard introduced me to a life where I did not feel like I knew any good people. And I'm glad that now I do.

One thing I am very happy about is that I am rediscovering the essential acts of living. More than anything else, understanding the value of simple acts of living was the most important lesson I learned in India. These are the moments in my life when I feel like I am in total control. When I am entirely on my own time and in my own space. And I feel entirely satisfied.

I love taking time to slowly and deliberately clean my home. I love sweeping the corners, wiping the counters, and arranging the pots and pans. I love to go grocery shopping in the local market down the street and coming home loaded down with apples, asparagus, shallots, shiitakes, fresh baby greens, clementines, garlic, and string beans (that's what I got this wednesday). I like to wash and clean fresh vegetables and whip them into a never fully-satisfying but always-healthy meals. I love chopping garlic into little pieces and throwing them into a sizzling pan of olive oil. I love washing my clothes, with the exception of my terrifying basement, and folding them and hanging them up. I love buying potted plants and flowers and placing them around the apartment. (incidentally, I have the blackest thumb ever. my apartment is where plants come to die.)

When I get into these moments and these moods, it's so bizarre, but my movements slow down. I walk through the grocery store without any urgency. I pick up an apple and examine it slowly, and calmly place it into my basket. I don't throw anything, and I don't drop anything into a bag. I walk back from the grocery with deliberation and careful slow steps. I wait at stop lights and don't charge into the street to beat the oncoming traffic. I watch other people on the streets, peer into the cars of people driving by, and catch glimpses of people in their homes. I become very quiet. I take out my headphones and just listen to what's around me. I act like an old man. But in these moments, I am always content. I am always thankful. I become entirely grossed in the deliberate acts of living, and it's wonderful.

This must have been the boringest thing I've ever posted here...when all I really needed to say is I like being a traditional housewife to myself. I don't even know where I was going with all of this anymore...oh well.

I do think that giving up meat for about a month, and then giving up cigarettes for the past 3 weeks have definitely had an impact on me. I feel different now. I no longer feel weak. I no longer feel like a wretch who is entirely consumed by vice. In fact, I feel proud of myself and I have faith in myself. And I think it has been awhile since I've honestly been able to feel like I'm on the right track. So....yeah.

Now it's time to go to the gym. I would continue to ramble, but I'm not even sure what I was writing about in the first place. Basically, I think I'm doing well and finding some peace. And I'm thankful for it. And I thought I'd share that with you.

Redistribution.

A thought that gave me pause today, concerning the redistribution of wealth, is that inter-familial transfers of wealth is exceedingly rare except in emergencies or times of special need. That is, generally rich siblings do not redistribute their wealth to their poorer siblings.

Now, it's possible to take this thought and run wild and be annoying with it and use it as some justification for an extreme interpretation of political policy...but I'm just going to ignore that aspect of it and note that it is something really worth considering if you're generally against income redistribution.

(Note: Progressive taxation is not the same thing as redistribution, unless you want to be annoying about it...at which case you're annoying and I'm not listening.)

God.

If you didn't follow the link that....someone posted...I forgot who, then I highly, highly, highly suggest you go now.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Yes. It is as good as it sounds. Here are some random sentence excerpts from much longer and funnier posts...hopefully to prod you into taking a look.

#75: Threatening to move to Canada.

"Note: Canadian white people threaten to move to Europe.
Note: Europeans are unable to threaten to move anywhere."

#71: Being the only white person around

In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person....

The arrival of the “other white people” to either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.

#67: Standing still at concerts

If you find yourself invited to a concert with a white person, do NOT expect to dance. Prepare yourself for three hours of standing reasonably still. It is also advised to get a beer or (if legal) a cigarette so you have something to do with your hands. Although it is acceptable to occasionally raise one hand and point just above the stage.

#62: Knowing what's good for poor people

#58: Japan

#11: Asian Girls

".... Should white guy / asian girl marry, they produce hybirds that are aestically pleasing, but are very annoying...."

Working from Home.

I am working from home all day today. I am not leaving my house.

Can anyone remember why?

Falling Slowly.

They won the Oscar! That's great!

For those of you who have seen it, I have included the clip below for you to revisit the feeling you had when you first saw it. For those of you who have NOT seen it, you suck...and don't talk to me until you have. And for those of you who HAVE seen it and do NOT like it, well you have your own category there...



And stop posting anonymously. You wouldn't be on this blog unless you were some sort of friend of mine...so I simply don't get why any of you would do that...what's wrong with yoU?

Sneezes.

I watched a movie last night, which was not bad, but it was also not utterly fantastic: Two Days in Paris. I was struck by the movie though, in many ways...and I do really like Julie Delpy...So I included the closing lines of the movie, which really moved me.

“It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one...we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well.

There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses.”

Cigarettes.

I have been cigarette free since 8:00 pm February 10, making this exactly 10 days without smoking. If my math is correct, that is:

• 100 cigarettes unsmoked.
• 40 dollars saved.
• Assuming the rules of thumb are correct, I have regained somewhere between 15 to 18 hours of my life back.
  

On the other hand, quitting smoking has left me:

• Incredibly fatigued everyday...
  
• Entirely unable to concentrate on ANYTHING except distracting myself.
• Eating a lot more.
• Most certainly gaining weight.
• Chewing tons and tons of gum.
• Craving sweets.
  

But then again, I just got my tooth whitening trays today and I am excited about finally having white teeth! And I smell better.

McCain and the Lovely Lobbyist.

Damn. Let's see how the conservatives deal with this one...

Personally, I don't care at all...but it definitely is going to be interesting to watch. And unless I'm entirely tone deaf, this is gonna be quite a slap in the face.

Good Reads: Krugman's Column.

I haven't really posted any columns lately, mostly because I don't find most of them to be particularly noteworthy. Even Paul Krugman's stuff sometimes leans a bit too hysterically left for me to really connect with it in any meaningful way. In any case, nothing Krugman says in this piece is particularly new, but I think it fairly encapsulates a worldview that I share, and I just thought I'd pass it on.

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.

But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.

Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.

America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses.

Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city.

Mainly, however, excuses for poverty involve the assertion that the United States is a land of opportunity, a place where people can start out poor, work hard and become rich.

But the fact of the matter is that Horatio Alger stories are rare, and stories of people trapped by their parents’ poverty are all too common. According to one recent estimate, American children born to parents in the bottom fourth of the income distribution have almost a 50 percent chance of staying there — and almost a two-thirds chance of remaining stuck if they’re black.

That’s not surprising. Growing up in poverty puts you at a disadvantage at every step.

I’d bracket those new studies on brain development in early childhood with a study from the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked a group of students who were in eighth grade in 1988. The study found, roughly speaking, that in modern America parental status trumps ability: students who did very well on a standardized test but came from low-status families were slightly less likely to get through college than students who tested poorly but had well-off parents.

None of this is inevitable.

Poverty rates are much lower in most European countries than in the United States, mainly because of government programs that help the poor and unlucky.

And governments that set their minds to it can reduce poverty. In Britain, the Labor government that came into office in 1997 made reducing poverty a priority — and despite some setbacks, its program of income subsidies and other aid has achieved a great deal. Child poverty, in particular, has been cut in half by the measure that corresponds most closely to the U.S. definition.

At the moment it’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in this country. To their credit — and to the credit of John Edwards, who goaded them into it — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing new initiatives against poverty. But their proposals are modest in scope and far from central to their campaigns.

I’m not blaming them for that; if a progressive wins this election, it will be by promising to ease the anxiety of the middle class rather than aiding the poor. And for a variety of reasons, health care, not poverty, should be the first priority of a Democratic administration.

But ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.

Obamania Spans the Globe.

I thought this was cute. Not in the way that short curly haired girls think pugs are cute, but in a "Enthusiastic Japanese People are cute" sort of way...

The article, in short, is about a little Japanese town named...

....you guessed it...Obama.

And so Obama sprang into action, its desire to escape the countryside’s anonymity interwoven with Senator Barack Obama's run for the White House. A support group was formed. Primary day events were held. And “Go Obama!” posters were put up.

On Monday, as expectations ran high here that Mr. Obama would sweep Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii, Obama, population 32,000, was making plans to buttress its support. Businessmen were getting ready with “I love Obama” T-shirts, a theme song called “Obama Is a Wonderful World” and sweet bean cakes with Mr. Obama’s face on them. City Hall was going to send a daruma doll with “victory” written across its chest, a traditional good-luck charm in Japanese elections.

Classy.

IM Conversation for Today with my Friend whose name starts with a B:

B: Hi.
Jay: What's up B's-Nutz?
B: Uh, hey...Monsieur Lee. Lets do Chinatown tonight.
Jay: Well if we're doing that, then I'm definitely only eating a leafy green salad for lunch.
Jay: And, if I am going to make puns about you, you should do better than "Monsieur Lee." Like, get a "Lee-fy "green salad.

B: ha good asian insertion there

Jay: thats what she said

(Jay is subsequently elected King.)

One Simple Call...

And my Omaha Steaks Fantastic Feast will be delivering on Tuesday the 26th.

Say it.

Say it bitch.

Yes. Form those words.

"Your life is better than mine..."

Yes. Those words are almost as delicious as the steaks I will be eating in one week from now.

Does Obama Have an Asian Problem?

...is the headline Time is using for an article suggesting, not very subtly, that Asians hate black people, and thus Barack Obama.

Awesome.

....notably, Hillary Clinton's campaign once refused a Chinese Language newspaper from San Francisco saying that they would not allow foreign press. hehe.

Uno Wins it!

Beagles prevail!

(Long time supporter of beagles here. Just ask AJ.)
I love how intensely this story is covered, both because it's awesome and because it's awesome. (Joey, you really might want to consider posting about this because well...it's awesome.)


Now THAT's a cute picture.

Suhweet!

In addition to the whole smoking thing, I've decided to add some incentive and continue this path of getting better (which includes having not had anything to drink for the longest period in 2 years)...Thus, luckily the Gods smiled upon me and Harvard is offering dental whitening for a very low subsidized rate through Valentines Day...and I happened to snag an appointment tomorrow morning at 11:30 am.

In case you're slow, she's dancing a jig.

P.S. - No judgment when all of these things start to fall apart.

29 hours in...

It has been 29 hours since my last cigarette.

Methinks the Nicotine gum actually works...which is very surprising. I was very very dubious about it. Turns out I WAS addicted to nicotine. Can you believe that?

And ladies....watch out. This Asian is (supposed to be) experiencing better skin, fingers, hair, teeth, smells, sense of smell, and endurance. Though I suppose the accompanying weight gain isn't gonna be all that helpful, considering I just ate homemade tuna melt....

In any case, Nicorette is sorta weird. You can't just sit around and chew the gum. You actually chew the gum until it starts to tingle in your mouth, at which point you are supposed to just park the gum somewhere between your cheek and your gums, where it gets absorbed into your bloodstream. Then, when the gum stops tingling, you chew it some more until it starts to tingle, and repeat. It's mildly heartburny, and it's sorta weird just having nicotine all up in my mouth and my throat. But I am definitely surprised at how I'm sorta ok not smoking a cigarette right now. I also like that I get to chew it while I'm sitting in my law and public health class discussing paternalism and the legitimacy of regulation of second hand smoke.
I also find it helps to puff on an unlit cigarette while I'm just chillin in my apartment. All of this makes me sound sorta pathetic...and I'm sure that updates on my not smoking is not all that interesting to you, but it's not like I have anything else to blog about.

...except my epic awesome weekend, although I'm not all that sure you're interested in hearing about THAT either...except, suffice it to say, at least for now, that
1) I blacked out for the first time ever. And somehow managed to RECORD IT on my computer.
2) I paid 25 bucks cover to get into a club. And danced danced danced.
3) I was piss drunk from Friday 10 pm through Sunday 4 am.
4) I played full court basketball in jeans and a T-shirt, entirely drunk, and scored a quarter of the team's baskets.
5) I somehow paid 150-200 dollars for alcohol in a single night.
6) Over the course of these epic 30 hours before i passed out, I ate one large large bowl of Ramen (10 minutes before the basketball game), 35 pork dumplings (20 minutes after the basketball game), and 6 oranges (only god knows).

Nicorette.

I just dropped 50 bucks for a box of Nicotine gum. I'm not even really sure there was any particular reason I decided to quit smoking today...but here goes nothin! Now is as good a time as any...

My chronology as a smoker....

• My first taste of sweet sweet tobacco was after 7th grade. My neighbor Adam Beger in Detroit Michigan had a Swisher Sweet, and we smoked it in a construction lot together. It was cheap, super sweet, and was almost like candy.

• Soon after, I somehow stumbled upon a Jewel Sweet. And I went back to smoke for a second time. These are slightly classier Swisher Sweets, but they have wooden tips. I smoked it in the garage that summer after 7th grade. It was delicious.
• On the way home from Northwood Middle School when I was 13, my buddy Whitford and I walked home from school on the last day of classes. We were little skater punks. I had a mohawk, an Alien Workshop skateboard, Bullhead jeans, Etnies shoes, and a wallet chain. Near the corner of Enoree and Old Spartanburg road, Whitford and I noticed an almost full pack of Basic cigarettes sitting at the mouth of a sewer. I stashed those babies under my dresser in a Ziploc bag, and we smoked that pack of cigarettes over the course of the entire summer. Every couple of weeks or so one of us would ask the other whether we should start a "Basic Fire"...and then we'd go run off into the woods and smoke. Looking back on those days, neither of us ever inhaled. We simply puffed.
  
• When I was 15 and my brother had just turned 18, I looked in my brother's Ford Probe in the center console and found a pack of Marlboro Lights, which I guess he was experimenting with since he just turned 18. It was with those cigarettes that I inhaled tobacco smoke into my lungs for the first time ever. One by one I would steal them out of his car and smoke them out my bedroom window. It burned something fierce. It was painful, it was horrible, it wreaked havoc on my lungs those first few cigarettes. And I stuck it out. I fought HARD to smoke.
  

• Since we're involving a Ford Probe story, I crashed that awesome little thing into an 82 year old couple. As I slammed into the Buick Park Avenue with the Probe, and bounced violently off the airbag listening to Smashing Pumpkins "Love" on the stereo, I was smoking a Camel Menthol Light. I quickly dropped the cigarette, and also hid the pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights I had hidden in the trunk.
  
• I smoked all the way from the time I was 15 until I got to college. I made myself fake IDs, I used people's sisters and brothers, and just managed to get cigarettes all through high school. I requested a non-smoking roommate. So did my roommate. We both filled the halls with so much tobacco smoke you would not believe it.
• A week after arriving at Duke, a knock came at my door. I, with a cigarette in my mouth, went to the door. With smoke filling the falls and ash dropping onto my shirt, I took a flyer asking people to come out for the Rowing team. I smiled, tapped my ash into my ashtray, and said I'd be there.
• I smoked a lot that year, until October 10, 2000 when I decided to quit smoking for my mother's birthday. I lasted 6 months, when one cigarette became two, and two became ten a day. And I began to train, 25 hours of intense rowing, cardio, 13 mile runs, and sprints....with a cigarette before and after every practice.
  
• I reached my peak sometime over the next 3 years. I smoked about a pack of day. My brands changed from month to month. Winston Select Lights, Camel Lights, Turkish Gold, Camel Red Lights, and finally, the big Kahuna, my lovely Parliament lights. I smoked in my apartment in Central, I smoked in my dorm room, I smoked in the house at Burch, I smoked at band practice (with my band mates), I smoked at concerts...everywhere I went, all my buddies smoked, and it was fantastic. I love smoking. I really really do.
  

But, I think it's time. I was smoking up until Yesterday right before I went to the gym, and maybe......just maybe, this is the beginning of the end. Wish me luck.

By the end of tonight...

....I will have been drunk for 30 hours straight.

Details to come.......urrrrrgh.

Obama and the Law.

I just read this piece on Slate and Obama's view of constitutional law. It's quite short, so those of you with an interest in Constitutional law may just want to glance over it.

Here's one paragraph, which struck me as incredible because Tribe, Minow, Katyal, and Sunstein are friggin' GIANTS of Constitutional law, practice, and the Supreme Court.

As Harvard law professor Martha Minow puts it, "He has at his fingertips the whole historical context of the moments in which our Constitution has been stretched, or has been in jeopardy, and when presidents have tried to bring it back. This isn't an afterthought for him: 'Oh, I'll go consult my lawyers.' "

For Minow, this was driven home by an exercise in speechwriting. She and fellow Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal, and University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein were supposed to work up a draft of a big speech for Obama about law and democracy. The four of them—titans, all—labored over multiple drafts, which they sent back and forth among themselves. Then they and other law professors arrived at Obama's office. After apologizing because he hadn't reviewed their version, he reeled off four points he thought the speech should make. And Minow says they were better than what her quartet had come up with—not just more politically resonant but better conceived.

That's awesome.

Oh, and I got a haircut. (sigh....)

America the Beautiful

I am trying very hard to remember what news story compelled me to suddenly look up a video of Hitler speaking on YouTube....but here I am. Let's not bother reading into this...(wait, just remembered. It was an NYTimes Op-Ed I just read....)

But it IS interesting to have all this distance and just watch Hitler speak. It's surreal. I think by the 15th Sieg Heil, I was almost convinced.





Here's a Disney Classic you should just watch if you've never seen it...Nothing like good ol' propaganda for children by Disney...This is a classic.



That cartoon led me to THESE...which are so startling racist that I'm honestly surprised. Which I shouldn't be. But at every turn......jesus.


This one is called "Bugs bunny nips the nips" (No, RS, Japanese people, not nipples, sorry)

..........

My Omaha Steaks arrived January 24 and were delivered, according to UPS.

That was the Day I left for Paris.

I am PISSED. I WANT AN EXPLANATION NOW.

Awesome. And Cute.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Super Duper Tuesday.

I voted!



Then promptly stopped at the bake sale table and bought a doughnut and cupcake for a dollar to reward my belief in democracy.

Note: I almost wrote in "Fat Alf Kid" instead, but I think his views on the
Alternative Minimum Tax and heavy-handed regulation of
private pools of capital make him a hard sell in the general election.

Among the more pointless posts ever: The NY Times

Note: Having randomly typed this post for the last 15 minutes, I see no reason for you to actually read it. You can read the pointless and stupid query at the very bottom though.

I distinctly remember a time in my life when I read every single NYTimes Op-Ed that came into print. It was during college, I was starting to slowly emerge from my cocoon of being totally insulated by an entirely idyllic suburban adolescence, and I was just eager to start learning more about the world.

(Actually, at several points in my life I made entire lists of things that I swore to myself that I would learn about. At the very top of the list, at the end of high school, one of the big lessons of life that seemed unfathomably complicated, opaque, and entirely foreign....was "find[ing] out the difference between Democrats and Republicans, or figuring out what that means." At that point in my life, I was already a pragmatist and figured most people were pragmatists and just sort've had a smattering of ideas based on particular issues. Later, I recall having an experience in the middle of college when my awareness about politics and policy began to sharpen, I remember sending a flabbergasted email to an old high school mentor of mine with a desperately terrified question about how so many people believed so many things that seemed so inherently wrong, and that they were all allied powerfully and representing half of the country. Of course since then, I have grown considerably more sympathetic to conservatives on many of their principles, though I still quite emphatically think they are wrong on the degree to which they embrace their respective ideologies.)

Anyhow, none of this post was really about that stuff. I really just wanted to comment on the effect of TimesSelect. I used to love and wait for the new columns every single day. At the time I guess it was William Safire (the conservative), Thomas Friedman (the simplifier), Paul Krugman (the economist), Dowd (?), David Brooks (another conservative), Bob Herbert (eh), and Nicholas Kristof (bleeding heart white guy who likes asian women), and I guess there were others. In any case, the columns really had an effect on me because they allowed me to see how other people, presumably smart people, had been synthesizing all of the same information and news that I had been seeing at the same time. So when the US invaded Iraq, it was interesting to see how Friedman, who I consider quite credible on the Middle East after reading From Beirut to Jerusalem, was a hawk in favor of the war. And when the Bush tax cuts increased, it was interesting to see how Krugman's polished economic expertise pointed out the effects of the cuts, and also firmly believed it was part of the right-wing's attempt to "starve the beast" and destroy the post-New Deal government without a single veto or political push.
Almost for that reason alone, the NYTimes was my homepage. Internet browser goes up, the Times pops up as my home. There was the beginning of my news day, each and every day. Even in India, when I plugged my crappy little LG phone into my laptop and drowsily surfed the internet for news, the NYTimes and the Columnists kept me plugged into the US political and social climate.

And suddenly upon returning to the US, the NYTimes instituted TimesSelect. The horrible fuckbeast of an idea so that you had to pay for membership to read the columns online. At first I was pretty upset. I mean, apart from scanning headlines and looking at an article here or there, the columns were definitely major players in helping me form models of thought and helping me find my own opinions. So I considered paying for it.

But that pissed me off. Bullshit.

So then I started getting to the columns through Lexis (this was during 1L)...and that just was so irritating that I stopped after 3 days. And then....

Two years passed. The quick and cheap headlines of MSNBC became my homepage. I read more and more Slate for analysis. I surfed over to CNN to make sure no major cities had been leveled during the day. Andrew Sullivan became an increasing influence over my time. ESPN (recently) found a spot in my toolbar. I began to look at more stupid gossip sites. And for two years, I really didn't have anything to do with the NYTimes. I would glance at the site every week or so, get bored, and move on.

And then, in September of 2007, the NYTimes came to its senses and killed the beast. TimesSelect was over, and now all content was totally free. Free! The Columnists were back! Friedman was still there. Krugman was still here! Dowd, Herbert, Brooks, Kristof, and now even Bill Kristol.

...but I think it was too late. I don't care anymore. Two years of being told that their opinions were too good to be freely available made me seek out bloggers and other editorial opinions. Two years of not caring about their opinions made them irrelevant. Now Krugman seems sorta like a partisan hack who talks too much about things he doesn't really have any business pontificating about, like politics, and ignores the very things he knows better than anyone: economics. Bob Herbert's opinions seem entirely predictable. I'm not sure I give a shit what Friedman thinks anymore...

But really, this entire post was supposed to be one sentence...a very meaningless question, but sort of a curiosity for anyone who reads the Times...so I guess I'll just go ahead and ask it:

Does anyone else think that Maureen Dowd's columns just suck? Is there something deeper than the veneer of cartoonish slurs and stylized worlds she portrays? Or is it as empty and unfulfilling to everyone else too? Is she as smug as I think?

At least Bridget Moynihan had a good night...

...as History was robbed by a douchebag.

As you can probably surmise, I am NOT happy that the Pats lost the Super Bowl. Besides the profound sense of disappointment about the loss of a perfect season for the Pats, I am probably equally upset that of ALL the people who could have caused this outcome, it was fucking ELI MANNING that did it. (There is only one other person in the world I would have wanted to win the Super Bowl less, and that is supremo-Douchebag number 1, Philip Rivers.)

In any case, I dread the onslaught of stupid pointless commercials starring Eli Manning that will certainly fill the year. The constant chatter of analysis of how Eli managed this one. More talk about Eli, Eli, Eli......ugh.

I do not like him. Suck.

..............2...girls....1 cup.

Ok.....so this is one of the more interesting things I've seen on Slate in a long time...

It's a collection and analysis of videos of people who were asked to watch "2 girls 1 cup"...and taping their reactions to the video. The reactions are actually pretty hilarious, and fascinating...but they also make you wonder "what the FUCK is this video? What could it possibly be?" I'm gonna suggest you not try to locate the video.

(Why?...after watching the horror unfold in these people's faces, I decided to watch it myself. My reaction: my face was entirely still, my body completely statuesque, my eyes widening, widening, widening until the damn video ended and I could exhale again. Gross.)

I'm not even gonna post the link to that video, because boy...totally not going to be responsible for you seeing it. I do suggest though, that you do follow the link I put up above, because it's a nice way to pass 10 minutes.

Boston Sucks.

Why did it snow, ice, bluster, and then end in a miserable rainy downpour in the beginning of February? Hate this place.

Incidentally, I saw a lot of small birds flying around today looking for a place to stay dry....wtf?! February?

Sign your name, dadgummit!

I have no real explanation for why I feel this way, but I get irritated when people comment without indicating who they are...it's not like anyone else beyond a very small handful of people see this...So, please just do it.

And if not, suck it long and suck it hard.

[insert offensively pornographic picture of someone sucking it long and sucking it hard]

My Tax Professor is AWESOME.

I believe that he will be the most entertaining, hilarious, and exciting law professor I will have in my entire law school career. He is also not a Harvard Prof, but from UCLA. It's fantastic.

Today we learned that the primary beneficiaries of the payroll tax system are Asian women.

And when he said it, he was being funny. and serious.