Reinhold Niebuhr.

Have any of you read any Reinhold Niebuhr? Ever since reading this piece sometime last year, I have been somewhat interested in reading some of his works....but never quite got the juices going enough to dive in. I found all of the things he said in the article, which I seriously suggest you take a look at, to be spot-on and rich, and I wondered if I should pull myself away from the practical aspects of law and policy, and dive into a richer intellectual history. I know he's a theologian first, which sort of sets me on edge about this whole thing, which is why I wanted to see...if by sheer chance...any of you had spent any time in his works.

Thanks. Peace Out. Now time to bury my misery in the non-stop, you couldn't possibly believe how busy and frantic I am, workaholic life that I've created for myself despite the fact that I hate work.

Angus.

Yes. Once again, for those of you who have known me for the past 12 years, I am once again talking about Angus - the movie about the fat kid who punches Dawson's stupid Steve face and gets the girl. I bring this up, only because I was taking a procrastination break in the library (you might think I am using this term incorrectly, since the grammar would imply that I was taking a break from procrastination. But you're wrong. I did.) ...and during this procrastination break, I was going through IMDB typing in all of the obscure old movies that radically shaped my childhood (Airborne, The Skateboard Kid II, The Peanut Butter Solution, Kid Colter, The Dog Who Stopped the War...among others...) ...and as usual I ended up on Angus. And then I went to the message boards at the bottom, and I found this posting, which I found particularly interesting and familiar. (The first sentence is particularly familiar.)

I talked with a friend today and he laughed at me because I said that Angus was one of my favourite movies...he thinks it's stupid. I can live with that, but there's one thing I'd like to know. The thing is: he was one of those rather popular guys at school, had many friends, never had problems with girls, he was never an outsider. I, however, was. Is it because of this that I am able to identify with Angus and that I love this movie? Does he think that it's stupid because he never had to go through all this?

Note: I was 12 or 13 when Angus came out. That puts me squarely in chubby Michigan Asian with braces and greasy slicked back hair with an undercut/bowl through South Carolina skater kid with middle part bowl and undercut (nicknamed Ning Chink).

The Answer is yes. Fuck all you Dawsons out there.


D

Update.

Things have been shitty for the last week so I didn't really feel like posting anything, so I'll just give you a quick update.

1) I accepted my offer at the law firm today. I will now be a BigLaw corporate associate, altering my life path in a variety of ways.

2) Boston is cold as balls. I needed to get out of the city and spend some (more) time by myself, so I rented a Subaru Outback station wagon and drove up to New Hampshire's White Mountains with a book on tape. The weather was incredibly shitty with temperatures in the 50s on a grey, rainy, foggy day. The mountains were hidden in a shroud of low clouds and fog. I didn't even see the mountains. Just the white clouds that enveloped the entire view. Then I drove home.

3) I spent my entire fall break in the library working on my research assistant paper, and got next to nothing done despite 5-7 hours a day of sitting alone in an empty library.

4) I started watching football. I lack any particular team loyalties, given my lack of geographical permanence. (Bengals? Lions? Panthers? Rams? Patriots?) As a result, just for the sheer joy of watching football being played well, I've basically been watching the Pats and the Colts in their run up to this weekend's SuperGame. Man.

5) I got Metroid 3: Corruption for the Wii, and my buddy is addicted to the game. So I spent some of my break alternating between drinking beer and watching video games, and playing them myself.

6) And yes, the BoSox won the fucking World Series. Thank god it took place late at night on Sunday, in Colorado, and that I was able to avoid massive throngs of annoying people. I don't mind the exuberance and excitement of local sports (ie. I think it would be great if the Pats, Boston College, and the Celtics all lived up to grand expectations)....but I find Sox fans to be particularly annoying people. So all my wishing and hoping that the Rockies would rip a hole in the Sox and lose the other in the wash was for naught. I actually decided that since I don't watch baseball and have no baseball loyalties, I will define my baseball fanhood as an anti-Sox fan rather than as an allegiance to any team. Suck it Boston.

.....

There isn't a worse way of spending a fall break than this...

I'm not done with the last post...BUT.

FYI For ALL VERIZON FOLKS:

I think Verizon has recently decided to give out Verizon customer informations to all of their divisions and affiliates for advertising purposes. The idea seems to be cell phone advertising. I never received a letter about this, but it appears they have been sent out.

You can opt out if you call this number within 30 days.

800-333-9956

No need to thank me. Just doin' my duty. Ok, ok, ok. *Bow*

I want a vote. REALLY.

I just ran across this image. Before any discussion, could you all please just tell me what way you see the dancer spinning? Just a simple clock-wise or counter clockwise will do. (You will have to click on it. This thing has been driving me CRAZY.)

Oh Jesus Christ. Watch This.

Seriously. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.







Edit: This is in supplement to M's comment...Jesus.

Good Reads: Revived!

If you've been following since my earlier posting days over a year ago, you know that I used to post pieces that I had read and that had some significant impact on me. Or at least I thought were pretty awesome. Or at the very least I found meaningful enough that I honestly believed other people should read it too. I sorta stopped doing that, but I just read this random piece in the NY Times and it really left me quite surprised and thoughtful... So, as always, I genuinely and hopefully encourage you to read, but as is the case, I expect you not to.

On Thursday, the novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Moments after the announcement, the literary world embarked on a time-honored post-Nobel tradition: assessing — and sometimes sniffing at — the work of the prizewinner. One of the most pointed criticisms of Ms. Lessing came from Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic, who told The Associated Press, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable.” He went on to add that the prize is “pure political correctness.” Interestingly, Ms. Lessing had some strong thoughts about political correctness, thoughts she expressed in this adapted article, which appeared on the Op-Ed page on June 26, 1992.

Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer
Doris Lessing

WHILE we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness.

The first point: language. It is not a new thought that Communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest.

The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use. “The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation...” Words confined to the left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read whole articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but the writers did not know it. But there is an aspect of this heritage that is much harder to see.

Even five, six years ago, Izvestia, Pravda and a thousand other Communist papers were written in a language that seemed designed to fill up as much space as possible without actually saying anything. Because, of course, it was dangerous to take up positions that might have to be defended. Now all these newspapers have rediscovered the use of language. But the heritage of dead and empty language these days is to be found in academia, and particularly in some areas of sociology and psychology.

A young friend of mine from North Yemen saved up every bit of money he could to travel to Britain to study that branch of sociology that teaches how to spread Western expertise to benighted natives. I asked to see his study material and he showed me a thick tome, written so badly and in such ugly, empty jargon it was hard to follow. There were several hundred pages, and the ideas in it could easily have been put in 10 pages.

Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism — as Swift, for one, tells us — but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had their roots in German academia. And now that has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world.

It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language.

The second point is linked with the first. Powerful ideas affecting our behavior can be visible only in brief sentences, even a phrase — a catch phrase. All writers are asked this question by interviewers: “Do you think a writer should...?” “Ought writers to...?” The question always has to do with a political stance, and note that the assumption behind the words is that all writers should do the same thing, whatever it is. The phrases “Should a writer...?” “Ought writers to...?” have a long history that seems unknown to the people who so casually use them. Another is “commitment,” so much in vogue not long ago. Is so and so a committed writer?

A successor to “commitment” is “raising consciousness.” This is double-edged. The people whose consciousness is being raised may be given information they most desperately lack and need, may be given moral support they need. But the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. “Raising consciousness,” like “commitment,” like “political correctness,” is a continuation of that old bully, the party line.

A very common way of thinking in literary criticism is not seen as a consequence of Communism, but it is. Every writer has the experience of being told that a novel, a story, is “about” something or other. I wrote a story, “The Fifth Child,” which was at once pigeonholed as being about the Palestinian problem, genetic research, feminism, anti-Semitism and so on.

A journalist from France walked into my living room and before she had even sat down said, “Of course ‘The Fifth Child’ is about AIDS.”

An effective conversation stopper, I assure you. But what is interesting is the habit of mind that has to analyze a literary work like this. If you say, “Had I wanted to write about AIDS or the Palestinian problem I would have written a pamphlet,” you tend to get baffled stares. That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary.

The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.

The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

A professor friend describes how when students kept walking out of classes on genetics and boycotting visiting lecturers whose points of view did not coincide with their ideology, he invited them to his study for discussion and for viewing a video of the actual facts. Half a dozen youngsters in their uniform of jeans and T-shirts filed in, sat down, kept silent while he reasoned with them, kept their eyes down while he ran the video and then, as one person, marched out. A demonstration — they might very well have been shocked to hear — which was a mirror of Communist behavior, an acting out, a visual representation of the closed minds of young Communist activists.

Again and again in Britain we see in town councils or in school counselors or headmistresses or headmasters or teachers being hounded by groups and cabals of witch hunters, using the most dirty and often cruel tactics. They claim their victims are racist or in some way reactionary. Again and again an appeal to higher authorities has proved the campaign was unfair.

I am sure that millions of people, the rug of Communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma.

P.S. - Has anyone read anything by her? I'm intrigued...

P.P.S. - This is Harold Bloom. The guy who shat over her Nobel win.

Oh, C'mon!

The Netherlands have banned mushrooms after a mentally ill girl killed herself while taking them.

Well that just sucks.

It's not like I ever planned on doing mushrooms in the future, but I mean...you want the option right? Wanna do a bunch of illegal drugs? Go to Amsterdam!

So Pretty! And Yummy (except actually disgusting like eating feet.)

...dammit.

Sweet Ass!

He's done it! He's done it! Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize!


....Oh. And the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Or UNDSFLKJDY)

This is actually called the Altman Acoustic Panel, but I'm sure it wouldn't mind if we called it UNDSFLKJDY.

So yes. I actually quite thrilled that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the very likely chance that the situation is as dire as we all think it is, I don't think there will be a more monumental contribution made to humanity. Of course, Al Gore's success exists only in negative counterfactual...so if things go well and we successfully ward off climactic pandemonium, half the world will bitch that Global Warming was a hoax. And if things go badly, then well...environmentalists were right (shrug) Now grab your shotgun so we can find off the browns who lost their homes and crops to the simultaneous flooddroughtmonphoon.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how much of an impact this will make on anything. I am expecting some sort of outcry from the conservative ranks about how disreputable the Nobel Prize is, and how the Nobel Prize doesn't understand science. And how the Republican Party does. Not the Nobel Committee. That's going to be great.

Just purely for effect...I surfed over to Fox News Webpage to see what they had to say...and Oh My God....THIS is someone's primary news source?!

The Red boxes all indicate the same "WTF" feeling I get when I look at CNN. The Lime green boxes intrigue me. They aren't being outright Rush Limbaughey with their politics, but they're definitely trying to sow division...and their attack on the Democrats is much more subtle than I would imagined given the ham-anded antics of Bill-bo Douchebaggins O'Reilly and Sean "I'm so awful I don't have a nickname" Hannity. Anyway. Peace.

Passing the Time.

Your mother is a whore.


Discuss.

Of course I'm going to mention it...

For anyone who has been reading this collection of verbal diarrhea and malformed opinions I call my blog, you know that I am constantly bitching about guns in this country and the idiocy of American gun laws.

Just to be sure I don't pass up on an easy opportunity to continue bitching about the pro-gun jackass lobby, 14-year old high school kid was apparently able to just get upset and walk into school with a gun in each hand and shoot up the school.

Anyone want to take bets against me for how long it will be for the next act of random, preventable gun violence by a civilian? I'll give you 2 to 1 odds that it will happen within 30 days, and if it's a kid, I get 2 to 1. Anyone? Small bets welcome. Even betting in kind (read: beer) is perfectly acceptable.

Jesus Ruvs You

I know (proudly) that I am one of the most racist anti-Asian person many of you know. And as much as my blanket intolerance for Asians is a joke, there's a kernel of uneasiness I have always had with the Asian-American community. I have always thought that it stemmed from having a divergent world view or different attitudes about how to approach life, relationships, and work. I admit freely that my values have always been far more "white" than Asian, even though, as you all know, you've also probably never met anyone as anti-White as me. (And that's totally not a joke.)

Anyhow, that's not really what this post is about. This post is about a trend that I have noticed a lot over the past 8 years, but did not realize was nearly as widespread and pervasive as it truly is. What's the trend? ...Asian Evangelical Christians.

Times have changed. The Reverend Peter Gomes, Minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church, says, “There are probably more evangelicals [on Harvard’s campus today] than at any time since the seventeenth century.” The Ivy League’s desire for diversity opened new doors for religious students. Evangelical groups today sponsor campus-wide forums, Bible studies, and debates about the relevance of faith to everything from science to international affairs.

In part, this can be attributed to the growing number of Asian-American students. On many Ivy League campuses, they have come to dominate evangelical groups. At Yale, 90 percent of the Campus Crusade for Christ members are Asian American; in the 1980s, the same chapter was 100 percent white. In fact, the growing presence of Asian-Americans on elite campuses may be the single largest demographic factor in evangelicalism’s ascent at places like Yale and Harvard.

Now THAT is very interesting. Aside from the fact that Asians dominate admissions to top-tier schools (I play the Asians-are-good-card when it suits me), I now have an entirely different and legitimate reason to shun the vast majority Asians: the whole Jesus Thing. This also gives me especially good reason to be anti-Korean (a sentiment which I've always vocalized somewhat arbitrarily)... because they seem to be the most fanatically evangelical Christians.

Strictly speaking, this is not relevant. But a new theory denying the Jew Jesus and the Black Jesus has emerged...

A new twist on an old favorite!

Has anyone else noticed this trend? I had always assumed it had something to do with seeking white acceptance (with White Christians no less, the most accepting tolerant people except for radical Islamists), but with such high numbers and such a strong trend, it seems like it has to be more than that. Personally I've always felt that Jesus has been a fairly hostile force in my life...with the exception of my near-marriage into a Pastor's family (which is of course, another story entirely). Jesus just didn't seem like he wanted anything to do with us slants.

I feel like I have much more to say about this but I don't feel like engaging in any more mental masturbation on the topic while I sit in my library.

Pensive.

About what, you might ask? What could possibly make Jay, stupid mama-joke laugh at "that's what she said" Jay, pensive?

Well, not much to be honest. Basically, while I was perusing the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the London Review of Books this evening after my long work session in the Hahvahd library, I came across this clip of Britney Spears. Somehow. In between black and white comics.

Anyhow, I watched this clip in between sips of a 1990 Bordeaux that was simply transcendant. Orchestral even...a symphony of delicate flavors. A cello of black currant complimented nicely by the brassy trumpety mouthfeel with just the slightest flute of lavender. Divine.
(By this I mean I came home, opened a bag of Rold Gold Sourdought pretzels, cracked a Mich Light, and surfed over to the Superficial.)

Anyway, I do find this video very disturbing. I mean, I don't really know what Britney Spears is doing in this parking lot or how unannounced it is, or how all the cameramen knew where to be...but it is absolutely insane how there's just this cloud of photographers swarming around you in dense packs just eager to exploit your flaws, expose your bad side, and generally invade your privacy. Now I'm not saying that the paparazzi should lay off, or that celebrities deserve their privacy...(because honestly, you're an star because you like attention)...but it is very unsettling to actually see what it's like for them everyday.

Two other notes:
1) When crazy lady comes to yell at Britney, I do like how the photographers come to her defense.
2) It's worth watching just to see the camera guy fall.

I totally forgot...

I was going through my old pictures, and I went into my video files and found my motherload of India pictures...and I just totally forgot what it was like...This is one of my favorite videos of all time. I love this girl. AJ met her. She does too.

(There's sound...and it's probably the best part aside from my retard-laughter.)



All the yelling she's doing? She's calling for the head nurse, Bilji Benny...whom she calls "Benny Sir." She calls me "Jay Uncle" in case you're wondering why on earth she refers to me with 3 syllables. It's also not clear why her first instinct is to run. But run she does.

P.S. - Awesome. I can upload videos straight into my blog. Time for Robot Porn!

Another day of Random Shit.

1) Hum's song "Stars" is now the theme song of a lame Cadillac commercial. In case you don't know the song Stars, and you wish you did, here is the video (which I have never seen for the past 13 years since I fell in love with the song...a song which we still cover to this day...Beach House Whoop whoop!):

The Video is exceptionally lame apparently.

2) This is very very old news...but I finally watched the John Edwards hairstyling video. The music isn't particularly funny, it actually just sorta detracts from the spectacle it is. But, seriously, what the fuck? I'm totally sympathetic with looking perfect before going before the nation and asking to be president, but....the swoopy brushing and compact mirror squinching is a little unsettling...


And that's Saturday!

Modern Marvels: Balls

More than anything else, I just wanted to type the title of tonight's episode into the subject heading. (Harvard Law School has helped me mature. To appreciate the depth and subtlety this universe has to offer. Balls.)

Anyhow, the episode was awesome. So Boo-yah. (No seriously. Watch it.)

Wow...Dude...Wow.

...was the response of two car wash jockeys the second I pulled into the car wash. The reason is because my car has been parked under a tree for the last 2 weeks, and 10,000 birds channeled the soul of Jackson Pollack into their own Autumn Rhythm on my car. I always wondered where Pollack got his title for the piece (other than alcohol), but now I know.

And just to deepen your appreciate for the day, I'm posting two things: 1) CNN's mastery once again, and 2) the joy of friends who look like other people. Enjoy. Happy Thursday!

Edit: I forgot! The reason I got my car washed is because my brother is taking my car away forever! To that end, I got my motorcycle permit at the DMV this afternoon. Whoop whoop!

Super Apologetic for this Question.

But I'm actually very curious, and I'm not really sure where to look up the answer. This is a very specialized, very random question to ask...but I just want to take a shot:

Does anyone know why the ratings agencies like Moody's and S&P gave subprime mortgage bonds such bulletproof ratings? It seems like the crux of this whole massive meltdown is the fact that investment banks, hedge funds, and whoever else believed that the subprime mortgage bonds were high-yield with low-risk. In other words, easy money. So let me rephrase the question in two parts:

1) What made sophisticated financial investors believe that a free lunch was even possible with high-yield mortgage bonds? What was the reasoning that ran through their heads?
2) Why did the rating agencies believe that? What was the logic?

I guess it's the same question...but from my remedial understanding of the problem, I simply don't get it. Does it have to do with the strength of the housing market? Have mortgage loans historically been very safe, and thus had very low rates of default? Were they not aware that the banks were giving subprime mortgages without proper risk assessments, and assuming that the mortgages were approximately equivalent to the mortgages of the past?

I honestly think that this topic is intensely fascinating and I'm utterly thrilled that I happen to have finally understood these issues just as our markets are melting down into goo. (except for the fact that my first job will be taking place in a pool of market goo...i guess...)

Seriously though, it's random, but does anyone know?

Super Pissed.

I was excited to find that our problem set in secured transactions only had 4 problems today.

...Except Problem 2 has five separate subquestions with references to 23 separate statutes.

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!