Things I am.

An asshole.

Who had the audacity to think I wasn't an asshole.

And continued to be an asshole.

While calling other people assholes.

The worst kind of asshole.

(don't ask. just accept.)

The Explainer: Why Revolving Doors Save Energy.

Sometimes Slate's "The Explainer" explains random interesting shit...Here's one:

Right now, it's 71 degrees Fahrenheit in the Lantern's Manhattan office and 87 degrees outside. It takes a lot of electricity to cool this entire office building by 16 degrees—but it would take even more if people didn't use the two large revolving doors between the building lobby and the hot sidewalk outside.

Generally speaking, air flows in and out of a building because of differences in air pressure. (In the winter, heated air rises toward the top of a building, and—as long as there are any openings on the ground floor—cold air rushes in to replace it. The opposite happens in the summer, with the cold air flowing out the front doors.) Regular foot traffic in a large office building can result in air leaks of up to 30,000 cubic feet per minute.

How big a difference can using a revolving door make? In 2006, a team of graduate students at MIT conducted an analysis of door use in one building on campus, E25, where they found just 23 percent of visitors used the revolving doors. According to their calculations, the swinging door allowed as much as eight times more air to pass through the building than the revolving door. Applying average Boston weather to their equations, the MIT team found that if everyone used the revolving doors, it would save more than 75,000 kilowatt-hours of energy—about 1.5 percent of the total required to heat and cool the building—and prevent 14.6 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted.* (By way of comparison, the EPA says an average American vehicle emits about six tons of carbon dioxide over a year.) The gains are also big enough that they could easily cover the energy needed to power an automatic revolving door like this one, which has a 250-watt motor.

Bill Kristol.

For some reason I previously had him in my mind as one of those principled, thinking conservatives. I mean, I thought he was one of those folks I disagreed with, but could respectfully disagree with...

But every time I read an editorial by him in the NYTimes, I can't help but think that he's 1) a moron, and 2) not very interesting at all as an editorialist. But I feel like he's actually not stupid...but just writes terrible, infantile columns. Is it just me?

No matter how much they beg...

Never...ever...let them eat after midnight.

After playing with a butterfly paperclip and a rubberband this afternoon while studying wills, I reflected back on one of the greatest movies of the 80s...



Awwww yeah.

HA!!!!!

So this is one of the few times while reading an article that I actually started laughing out loud by myself. This article, Why I Hate Michael Chang, from Slate.com is HILARIOUS. I highly highly suggest you read it...although I wonder if it's funny to non-Chinese people (or more specifically, people who aren't...me.) Here's some of it...

When Chang stalled in the rankings, unable to get over the final hump, he attempted to transform himself from a grinder to a power player. To great fanfare, he had his racket company, Prince, design a stick that was one inch longer than the industry standard. It improved his serving angle but also reminded everyone that Chinese guys had to compensate for genetic shortcomings besides our height. Where did Prince add that inch of length? To the shaft, naturally.

...

As a junior player, I insisted on being as un-Chang-like as possible, hitting one-handed backhands and rushing the net. It worked: Unlike Michael Chang, I lost a lot. My coaches pleaded with me to put two hands on my backhand, stay on the baseline, and stop trying to hit fancy shots. But as long as kids at local tournaments would tell me that I looked like Chang (it had been Bruce Lee, before) or assume I knew him personally (I did not), I refused. The expectations weren't just from white people. When my parents' friends learned that I liked tennis, they invariably said something like, "Wah, maybe you can be the next Chang Depei!" They always used his Chinese name: "cultivated virtue," roughly.

For the record, during my days of varsity tennis (Yep), I bought that exact Michael Chang Prince extra-long racquet for $200 bucks. And yes, that's basically what it's like to be Chinese in this country...extraordinarily stupid things spoken with such unassuming genuineness. (Bruce Lee was indeed a constant figure of reference in my daily life. As an uncle. Which white kids eat up like candy until you inform them that gullible is written on the ceiling. Don't look.)

And as the article suggests, Michael Chang definitely DID become sort bizarre iconic figure in our lives. Thinking back though, it is KINDA crazy. In that tournament, he trashed a young Pete Sampras in straight sets then went onto defeat fuckin' Ivan Lendl in his prime, and THEN beat Stefan Edberg in the finals, becoming the first American to win the French Open in 34 years. And he was 17. What the fuck was I doing at 17? Yes, playing guitar in Euphoria on a ratty stage in Spartanburg.

I just checked this out on Wikipedia, and damn...this is quite an impressive feat:

Everything seemed to be going to form when Lendl comfortably took the first two sets 6–4, 6–4 and then broke Chang's serve in the opening game of the third set. But Chang broke back immediately and went on to claim the third set 6–3. Part way through the fourth set, Chang experienced a severe attack of leg cramps. Fighting to stay in the match, Chang resorted to some novel tactics. For a period, he began taking all speed out of the match by playing "moon balls", causing Lendl, who was known to be one of the calmest players, to lose his rhythm. He began to swear at the umpire and the crowd, especially after losing a key point in the fifth set when Chang shocked him by delivering an under-arm serve. Chang later explained, "I was trying to break his concentration. I would do anything to stay out there." (That underhanded serve achieved cult status among amateurs and, at least in Chang's hometown area of Southern California, it was not unheard of to see juniors emulate the swing in desperation while trying to come back from behind in a match during the 1990s.)

Barely able to stand, and screaming with pain after many of his shots, Chang continued to battle on. Despite being on the verge of physical breakdown, he fought his way to a 5–3 lead in the fifth set with two match points on Lendl's serve. Aiming to break Lendl's concentration one more time, Chang stood well inside the baseline, almost at the T-line in the centre of the court while waiting to receive Lendl's serve (normally an almost suicidal position when facing an opponent's serve). The tactic worked as Lendl produced a double-fault to give Chang the victory, 4–6, 4–6, 6–3, 6–3, 6–3 in four hours and 37 minutes. Chang sank to his knees and broke down in tears at the conclusion of the match. Seven days later, he became the youngest male champion in Grand Slam history.

For those of you who inexplicably made it this far, here's some footage: Seriously though, read the article...it'll somehow teach you a lot about me.

Respectful Requests.

1) That the term "Slugfest" be forever expunged from human vocabulary, unless used synonymously with the phrases "Shitshow" or "Hell." For example, "Man, have you seen Gigli? What a Slugfest."

Or

Person 1: What do you mean Good Eats is a good show? That show fuckin' SUCKS man.
Person 2: [Glaring] A slugfest awaits you.

2) Propagators and accomplices of bar examinations die in a fire.



Pictured below, although it may not look like it to the uninitiated, is a work of art. Rajma, Dahi, Green Mango Pickle, and Basmati Rice. (For the whites: Dahi is a kidney bean "curry," a north Indian traditional dish, and Dahi is yogurt or "curd" in South India.) And yes, you can, and often do mix them all together. And it's fantastic. (Props to ILYIAWWMWBJ for making this for me.)


And yes, it's sitting atop my Bar Bri schedule.

heh heh. The Google.

I dunno if you're familiar with "The Google," but if you're not, take a look at this YouTube clip, which is 20 seconds long. Just suck it up. I can't help laughing, and I actually don't hate Bush in that moment...I just find him amusing. Well, at least until I realize that we've made him the most powerful human being on earth. Hm.



And, just to add to that, if you haven't yet learned that John McCain doesn't know how to use the computer, here's a clip of that admission. (He also notes that his favorite movie is !Viva Zapata! (1952)).



And the real point? The Onion:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—The popular search engine Google announced plans Friday to launch a new site, TheGoogle.com, to appeal to older adults not able to navigate the original website's single text field and two clearly marked buttons.

"The Google will have all the same information currently found on regular Google, but with the added features of not stealing your credit-card numbers or giving your computer all kinds of viruses," said Rick Tillich, The Google project director. "All you have to do to turn the website on is put the little blinking line thing in the cyberspace window at the top of the screen, type 'thegoogle.com,' and press 'return'—although it will also recognize http.wwwthegoogle.com, google.aol, and 'THEGOOGLE' typed into a Word document."

Tillich added that he hopes the site will soon replace Yahoo Internet Website.com as the most popular search engine for users over 55.

No, Fuck YOU! I AM studying.

Christopher Hitchens is Hilarious.

If you don't know who Chris Hitchens is, he's an intellectual or writer of sorts who contributes quite frequently to Slate.com, and most recently wrote God is Not Great, which I find to be one of the more amusing book titles in recent years. You can try to categorize him, but I find it exceedingly difficult to put any useful labels on him except to say that he's clearly intelligent, scathing, and (probably not delibrately) funny.

His most recent piece in Slate is a one-pager, and reads like a blogpost. The title? How Blind Salamanders Make Nonsense of Creationists' Claims. That's funny.

Here are some snippets that tend to illustrate his funniness:

• The creationists (to give them their proper name and to deny them their annoying annexation of the word intelligent)...

• Hold it right there, says Ann Coulter in her ridiculous book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. "The interesting question is not: How did a primitive eye become a complex eye? The interesting question is: How did the 'light-sensitive cells' come to exist in the first place?"

• It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.

OK, so it's not like...laugh out loud funny when presented this way...because to so casually and with utter certainty call all creationists utter morons in a national publication is amusing to me. Even with the Ann Coulter comment, he's not really saying anything substantive about the book, but he just thought he'd toss in "ridiculous." Funny.

I have also decided, after noticing his observation, that I will not use the phrase "Intelligent Design" anymore. Any suggestions for replacements? Poof!-Lifeists? Whizbang Worldism? Claymanism? WutzSaientz? It's Not True Because I Don't Like It...ism?

But seriously, Creationists? Please stop this nonsense. If we're not expected to believe in your God, then let's not pretend we're supposed to believe in anything else resembling ONLY religion.

UM.

HOLY SHIT. Did I just get duped into some sort of illusion trick, or is Senuti the single greatest program of ALL TIME!? Did it just singlehandedly disembowel any DRM?

Am I able to just plug in OTHER people's iPods into my computer and upload any of their music?

P.S. Hsien and anyone else....Should I read the Watchmen graphic novel? I stumbled across the trailer on Hsien's blog and it turns out there's just this intense, fanatical following...how long is it? Is it the type of thing I would give a shit about?

Sweet (i)Tunes Man....

So, I spent the last two days reloading my iTunes with a vengeance, meaning I went through ALL of my 3 or 4 enormobinders of CDs and various spindles, loading them into my iTunes piece by piece...and it has been quite a pleasure.

On my previous library, I was slightly more selective with what CDs I really thought I would listen to...but not this time: Hell no! This time with feeling!

Thus, my iTunes library now (sometimes inexplicably) contains:

• Metallica - Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning (oh yeah!)
  
• Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (both versions, 1955 and 1981)
• 33 separate cds of Bjork material (albums, singles, b-sides, live releases)
• 5 System of a Down Albums.
• Squarepusher and Aphex Twin
• At least 15 albums friends have given me that I still haven't listened to (Band of Horses, S, Panda and Angel, The Black Heart Procession, Coco Rosie, Out Hud, Magnetic Fields??)
• Hum. Yes, HUM. Fuckin' HUM!
  
• All my old recently left behind Beatles albums, although somehow I've lost Revolver. Fuck.
• And tons and tons of Smashing Pumpkins B-Sides, many of which totally outrock anything I've heard in years.
  
• CDs from my bands in high school and college in all their permutations (Euphoria: albums 1,2, 3. Makeshift: Demo. Underscore: Album) (It turns out that my perception was correct the whole time - because we did, in fact, fucking rock!)
  

And everyone suck it, Yes I am doing this instead of studying for the bar.

And this week's bounty:


Cucumbers
Beets and Beets Greens
Carrots
Spring Onions
Zucchini
Green Beans

The Cucumbers were sliced and eaten raw with lemon juice and chaat masala (SOOO GOOD.)

First Product: Stir-Fried Green Beans and Onions with Crispy Fried Thick-Cut Bacon.

Baked Zucchini Sticks with Sour Cream and "Awesome" Dip (sour cream, garlic salt, onion powder, Lipton onion soup mix, ground parmagiana reggiano, cheddar, scallions)

HAHAHAHA.

I really want to see The Dark Knight. I mean, like, I REALLY want to see it.

The funny part? Apparently Katie Holmes turned this movie down to make "Mad Money." Hahahahaha. Yes. Funny.
Admit it. That's funny. (I watched the first hour of it in San Francisco...don't ask why or how. Just laugh.)

This morning.

When I woke up this morning in inexplicable agony, I thought I must have ruptured my spleen or appendix. No matter what it was, it definitely felt like internal bleeding.

Nope. Apparently that's what Gas feels like. I had no idea gas sucked that bad.

Update: A few simple questions.

Update 2: Looking at the math here, the amount of money I have lost purely through the albums I have potentially lost because of iTunes (i.e., songs I downloaded onto my iPod but can't reupload into my computer...or keep on my iPod because any new additions require deletion...) it may actually be more cost-effective for me to buy a new iPod than to rebuy all of this music I lost. Yes, fucker, I know it's my fault, but it's still annoying. I am henceforth continuing to buy CDs, because at the very least, I can share it. Fuckin' iTunes.


Update:
My hard drive has completely failed - they cannot recover any data. I have lost hundreds of photos and my entire iTunes library, none of which I backed up. Everything. Gone. I admit that part is my fault, but after not being able to use Time Machine when I initially tried, I gave up and figured I'd back it up later. Despite my own fault, I find it irritating all the same. Oh, and then my car got towed, I had to chase it around town, and pay about 100 bucks to recover it. Oh, plus the cost of the ticket which I found on the windshield after I retrieved it. Oh, and I failed another practice section today on the bar.

See the follow pictures for how I feel about the situation (aka objective fact):


Did my computer just crash? Is it refusing to turn on? Is it freezing instead of booting up? Is this something that happened without any reason out of the blue? Did I have to make a freakin' appointment at the Macstore? Do I now hate Macs?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES.

Suck it Justin Long.

How I study for the bar.

Exhibit A:

A friend thought buying a marble slab/cold stone for home use would be conducive to effective bar study and precipitous weight loss. Embedded in this rich vanilla are bits of toffee, semi-sweet chocolate, and sprinkles, soon to be dumped into a waffle cone.

Exhibit B:

A Montecristo Cuban cigar (gift from a classmate), Whitbread Pale Ale, and 720 Flash cards (so far)...

P.S. I also stopped reading my Evidence CMR to watch Obama's NAACP speech: Fantastic. Suck it Jesse.

Libertarianism and Markets.

Edit: Sorry for this constant political ranting, but some reason I can't get it out of my system. Increasingly, I find myself constantly having moments in everyday where I'm like "THAT! Right there! yet ANOTHER reason 'they' are wrong!" And it drives me batty. Sorry.

Edit 2: Speaking of Paul Krugman, he lays out the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac situation with immense clarity here. No politics here, this is the rational, sober economist speaking.

I haven't totally fleshed it out, but I'm going to write my objection simply, and see if there's anyone that can help steer me through this. (I'm assumingly that only TK and RS, as the two resident conservatives, would be interested in pushing back, but please, anyone feel free...)

Libertarian and free market ideas have inherent philosophical value grounded in individual autonomy and freedom, which in turn allows everyone to define and pursue their own happiness as they see fit - limited of course by the freedom of others, the harm principle. I agree these are nice ideas.

But if this is going to be your political philosophy and you wish to institute it within a society, you MUST ADMIT that a necessary and inevitable consequence is that some people are going to get fucked over without fault or personal culpability. (And that the harm principle is not self-enforcing. At all. But we'll put this to the side.)

If you find that outcome acceptable, I can absolutely accept that. You value freedom and autonomy over human suffering. It's not right or wrong: it's an expression of values. I personally disagree with it, sure, but it's honest and it's coherent. I just don't see how it can be otherwise without being willfully blind, or blinded by false ideologies.

The obvious rejoinder, of course, is "the market will take care of it," which to me, albeit having only an economics minor, is a signal that the speaker simply doesn't understand free markets at all.

Markets fail. All the time. In a multitude of situations. Economic models all deal with market failures by saying "see? this is a market failure: to fix this glitch, the government must do X, Y, and Z." All you need to do is spend 15 minutes reading Paul Krugman to witness one of the most respected international economists alive being absolutely flabbergasted by what passes as "economics" under the current administration. (not to mention...uh..."science")

So that's my only rule in discussing this issue: No bald invocations of the markets as a solution without an explanation of some sort of mechanics. If you do, I'm going to respond with my equally valid rejoinder: Because God said so.

....

A Newsweek poll released Friday showed that 12 percent of those polled believed Obama was sworn in as a U.S. senator on a Quran, and 26 percent believed that he was raised as a Muslim.

Shell Game.

I'm not sure how I got so worked up about this...but by the end of writing this, I was foaming at the mouth and had to curb myself a bit...hm.

So I just wrapped up reading The Shell Game (pictured below), which I described earlier the Da Vinci Code except it was about oil politics rather than the Holy Grail, and thus interesting for that reason alone.
In any case, I admit a general ignorance of Middle Eastern politics. I know the basics and a smattering of interesting details, which I must have picked up purely to fight with people with viewpoints I found irritating (yea, I'm a winner...) but I never understood the big picture. For example, I never understood the links between the House of Saud, the flow of petro-dollars, fostering Wahabbism and radicalism, nor have I understood the pan-Arab fear of Iran. This book, despite all of its sensationalized moments and oversimplifications, really sheds a LOT of light on how these things connect together, and ultimately how they foster terrorism. And in turn, how the US is implicated. Reading this book was breathtaking to me: There were moments where pieces would suddenly fall into place, light bulbs would flash above my head, and my brow would furrow as I muttered "oh my god" in the airport. Equally, there were moments where everything would the exact same except I would mutter "god we're fucked and I hate everyone." It's an upsetting book. But I do think you should read it, because I think it will change the way you see things forever. (Yes, you can ignore some of the conspiracy theory aspects of it...it's not that difficult.) I also want to declare once and for all, that if anyone wants to pretend we have historically been involved in the Middle East for ANY significant reason other than oil, I think you're stupid. End of discussion.

What this boils down to is that the Middle East has been on my mind for the past few weeks (instead of the bar, of course). Between reading The Shell Game and continuing to take in news about Iraq, Iran, the rising price of oil, and continuing to follow unfolding events in the energy sector (shame on Obama by the way), I now increasingly believe that our current struggles with the Middle East are truly existential crises. Terrorism is a symptom, not an independent threat. Which makes our current foreign policy truly stupid. (Except of course, for nuclear weapons, specifically the existence of a nuclear and destabilized Pakistan, and the remnants of a collapsed nuclear super power with no incentive to keep that shit under guard.)

The Big Question: How is it that it has been 7 years since 9/11, that terrorism has been the keystone of our foreign policy, and Not ONCE, NOT ONCE, NOT ONCE, has our President asked "Why are there terrorists? Where does terrorism come from? What are the causes of terrorism?" The only politicians that have spoken about it are those on the "fringe" like Kucinich or Ron Paul. WHAT THE FUCK!?!

Does no one else find this void startling? Normally when a question like this comes up, we can heartily call up some sort of bastard jingoist slogan to cover our asses. But that doesn't work here. We don't have easy, prepackaged responses to this question. Why? Because the question was NEVER put into public discourse. It was never even asked! I would blame the politicians, but I think this is a failure far beyond politics. Wait wait..no no...they DID talk about it.

"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." - George W. Bush, Sept. 2001

(Forgot about that. Sorry. All of this is because they hate freedom.)

Although it's a little bit too late for being brief, I'm not really going to go into what I think about this stuff right now, except to say that I have been thinking very long and hard about economics, politics, and energy...and things are starting to come together.

As an illustration, I'll just use one very very simple example. Oil companies are reaping ENORMOUS record profits as oil prices have been pushed up. Ok. So now what? Let's just stick with the most basic, most indisputable, simple facts.

• Two ex-oil executives in the White House.
• Secret closed door meetings to determine US energy policy.
  
• US companies are the first, and only companies in line for Iraqi oil now.
  
• Invasion of a country with absolutely no link whatsoever to terrorism.
  
• 50 years of military occupation, overthrowing hostile governments, assassinations, propping dictators, feeding arms and military hardware to Iraq to fight Iran, military bases in Saudi Arabia, and two wars in the Gulf in 10 years. (Cost of Iraq alone thus far: 650 billion.)

Simple conclusion: That's not your fucking money. That's not your fucking profit. You didn't fucking earn it. That's a fucking taxpayer subsidized business. We pay for military interventions because we need energy. You, for some reason, are the sole gatekeepers for all of our energy needs. And you want to fleece us through taxation to fund the military interventions, and then fleece us in the market to drive up your profits, and THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT IT? Sickening.

Obama? Tax the shit out of them. Which I will doubly enjoy as I watch them gnash their teeth and feel oh so affronted.

Hold Me Accountable, Please.

I've decided to stop bitching about being a lawyer and take some responsibility for that fact.

I've been a whiny little bitch about this for 3 years now and it's about time it stopped.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Rambo.

This really isn't meant to be funny...because honestly - these ARE the only possible messages that Rambo could possibly be understood to convey.

"You know there won’t be a victory. Everyday your war machines lose ground to a bunch of poorly armed, poorly equipped freedom fighters. The fact is that you underestimated your competition. If you’ve studied your history, you’d know that these people have never given up to anyone. They’d rather DIE than be slaves to an invading army. You can’t defeat a people like that. We tried, we already HAD our Vietnam. Now you’re going to have yours." - Colonel Trautman, Rambo III

1) Rambo movies are awesome.
2) Rambo movies are awesome.
3) Whoever made Rambo is Racist: White people killing 10,000 Asians is a triumph. And not difficult. (Note: In addition, the first "good guy" to get killed was the token Asian mercenary.)

Mousa: God must love crazy people.
Rambo: Why?
Mousa: He make so many of them!

4) Women are useless. Unless, like Asians, you value them for gang rape. White women, however, are good for inspiring violence and then covering their ears and screaming when it starts.
5) God does not exist. And if he does, goes out of his way to punish his followers.

"Sir, do we get to win this time?" -John Rambo

6) Violence is the only solution. (Fact: According to the 1990 Guiness World Records, 'Rambo III is the most violent film with 221 acts of violence, at least 70 explosions, and over 108 characters killed on-screen. However, the body count of the fourth Rambo movie surpassed the record. In comparison, Rambo holds the record with the most kills out of the entire Rambo series, with 236 kills and an average of 3.2 kills per minute.)
7) Burma is not cool.

"This Film is Dedicated to the Gallant People of Afghanistan." - Rambo III

(By the way, that was definitely the most violent movie I have ever seen.)

An explanation.

Big: large, as in size, height, width, or amount: a big house; a big quantity.

Crazian: a crazy asian. especially helpful when discussing bad drivers.

"P1: Hey! That car cut me off!
P2: Oh, it was just another crazian, don't worry."

Crazian (2): a crazy asian who twirls their pens and do happy dances when they fail (fail meaning get lower than 100 on a test)

"Tracey did a dance when she found out she got a 98 on the test because she is a crazian. Neen asked if she did good, and almost got her head bitten off by this pen twirling psycho."