Links!

From Kazu and beyond, check out the stuff by Chris Harding and the boys over at Ghostbot.

Semiotic Confusion

One of those piss-people-off-woth-your-political-speech companies is selling this shirt, as advertized on Instapundit:

The message, I suppose, is: "The ACLU is an enemy of the state. They are bad. REal bad. Like, commie bad." The reasoning behind this is pretty simplistic, too. ACLU is enemy of the state, leftist. Commies also leftist enemies. Ergo, ACLU = commies!

Maybe I don't get it, but that doesn't seem like a very cutting criticism. I mean, the whole point of a civil liberties group is to work against state power. You say to them, "but you work against the government!" and they'll reply, "Well, yeah. Duh." And here's where the whole Soviet thing breaks down. The whole problem with the USSR was that it had way too much state control over its citizens' lives. I mean, if you were an enemy of the Soviet state, that made you one of the good guys. "ACLU = Solzhenitsyn" is pretty bad, as attacks go.

UPDATE: img tag fixed

A Libertarian Paradox

Right now Congress is investigating steroid use in the NFL. I suspect that it is rampant and widespread, I know that I don't care, and I think that shouldn't be any of Congress' business. On the one hand, I shoud be upset with all the over-reaching and moral posturing (especially since, you know, there's a war on). On the other, I should be elated that Congress is for the moment amusing itself with something trivial and can't cause any real damage.

From the Department of No Sympathy

Jeremy Blachman went to Harvard for three years but doesn't actually know any law. On the upside, he does have a book deal.

Ghost of Law School Yet to Come?

Shit man. Am I really going to be People You Meet at Law School #7: The Frat Boy? One positive indicator: am not pretty, fat.

I Love Marginal Revolution, part 2

They point me towards this NYT article about the relative complexity of television narrative structures over time. As a longtime fan of "24", "Alias," and "The West Wing," this is really cool stuff.

MR adds visuals and pulls out the graf that cross-cuts the culture wars like a seasoned potato:

Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over ''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand Theft Auto over Quake.

Finally, salt to taste with cheeky intergenerational warfare:

Ever notice that old tv shows and movies are boring? Why should this be? Were people more easily entertained thirty years ago? Were they dumber? Why yes, they were.

Delicious!

The Straight Dope on SymSys

I just got off the phone with an admitted student choosing between Stanford and Brown who wanted the inside story on what the Symbolic Systems program is like. I told her the program was just about perfect for me, because it gives you so many different perspectives on the kind of questions I think are interesting: what is meaning and how might it work, or what makes something a mind? Intellectually, this is fantastically exciting stuff.

It was funny how poorly the metrics she was asking about tracked my preferences. She was worried about classes being large, impersonal lectures, which I love if the professor is a good speaker. Some of my favorite classes have been big lectures, because they were taught by people like John Perry or Eric Roberts. Can you go get to to know the professor during office hours? Certainly, but for some reason once you're there it doesn't seem all that important.

Finally, she asked what I thought of Brown, to try to get a feel for its reputation. You know, like on the streets. I danced around the point, carefully avoiding using the word "nonserious." She'd said word on the street back East was that Stanford kids weren't all that intellectual outside of class. That's about right, too. I had no idea cross-country rumors could be so accurate. More disturbing, though, was the idea that there are places where college kids actually DO sit around having midnight discussion about Aristotle. Does nobody think of the children?

The Night Watch

James was supposed to come back from Russia last night, so the Prank crew stayed over at his place so that we could capture his raetion on video. We stayed up all night drinking beer and watching Old School, but he never showed. Now, I am very sleepy.

Returning

Just got back. Spent the evening in the company of a charming, attractive woman, but we parted ways without incident and, it seemed, with a feeling of mutual disappointment about that. Instead, walked home in the rain for twenty minutes. I know I'm old school, but aren't I taking that a bit far?

Anti-Humor

I think that this is some of the funniest stuff ever written. This is probably because I am a bad person.

A man walks past a bar and sees a sign which says "PERFORM THE THREE FEATS AND WIN A MILLION DOLLARS!" Thinking that a million dollars sounds like a great idea, he goes inside and asks the bartender what the deal is.

"First," says the bartender, "you have to chug this entire bottle of vodka. Second, there's a crocodile in the back room with a bad tooth. You have to pull it. Third, there's an eighty-five year old woman in the back who's never had sex. You have to have sex with her."

The guy think it over and says "okay, sure. You have a deal!" He grabs the bottle of vodka and, with little effort due to the fact that he's basically a professional alcoholic anyway, downs it. Then he slams the empty bottle down and goes into the back room. There's a lot of screaming, some growling, and various crashing sounds. Finally a silence falls upon the bar. Minutes pass, then an hour. Finally the bartender sends a barmaid back to see what's going on. A few minutes later, she comes back out.

"What's he doing?" asks the bartender.

"What's left of him is back there in the croc pen," she says, her horrified face pale with shock. "His clothes are tossed in the corner. I think he tried to fuck the croc. The croc...the croc ate him."

"Oh, Jesus," whispers the bartender. "Jesus."

Nobody says a word.

How Many Guatamalans Could You Fit in the Trunk of a Cadillac?

Just saw a Daily Show episode about the controversial maid service at Harvard. Hilarious. Dennis Miller was the guest, and he was on fire too. You can see both clips at the DS site if you act soon, although in my experience they're always a bit choppy.

Also, this just in: Guinness is Delicious.

Rush Editorial

Today the Daily ran an editorial criticizing the Rush process at Stanford. Specifically, they think it takes too long, making unreasonable demands on rushees' time. This is all kinds of wrong. First of all, Greek organizations are subject to collective responsibility - if one of our member screws up, we can all get in trouble. It takes a while to find out whether someone can be trusted with membership in that environment. But more broadly, Rush is (a) not all that much time (at least for the rushees; the real time burden is setting that stuff up), and (b) a lot of fun. I went out every night freshman year, just because there was free food and fun stuff to do.

Edit: Man, I just cannot spell "responsibility" to save my life!

Update: The Daily publishes my letter in response.

Non Grata

Edit: Man, Blogger was tripping balls this afternoon.

Non Grata

Inspired by today's comic over at Control Alt Delete, I rolled down to the library to pick up a copy of A Game of Thrones. Erem loves the series, and has been trying to get me to read it all year. But when I got to the library, I was informed that I no longer had the privilege of using its facilities. It turns out that if you aren't registered and taking classes, you have to pay a special fee to check out books. Freeloading slackers like me are emphatically Not Welcome. It was cheaper just to buy them from Amazon, which is what I wound up doing. Every time I go there, I'm struck by how cool their book recommendation algorithm is.

Luckily, the trip wasn't a total waste, because skateboarding is a uniquely enjoyable means of conveyance.

On the subject of total wastes, the rest of the day will be devoted to the Prank.

Paul Bremer Talk

Went to go see Ambassador Bremer speak yesterday about the occupation and reconstruction in Iraq. He didn't say all that much that was news to me; it seemed like a very political speech and he stuck to his talking points pretty closely. The Daily story I've linked to above is a pretty accurate account. Someone did manage to get him to talk about the decision to disband the Iraqi army, though. His perspective was that at the war's end there were no organized units even remaining. The army was composed of a (bloated, with 12,000 generals) Baathist officer corps who we naturally didn't want, and around 350,000 Shia conscripts who deserted in droves throughout the course of the war. Re-constituting the army, he argues, would have meant enforcing Saddam's discriminatory conscription regime, not the best PR move, to say the least.

It was disappointing that several students took Bremer as a proxy for the administration and took up Q&A time trying to score points with snarling questions about the justification for the war. As I see it, Bremer was sent there to do a specific job, reconstruction, that had to be done whether or not the war was a good idea in the first place. I would have liked to hear more about that. Also, they said "only two more questions" when my buddy Erem was third in line. He was going to ask whether looking forwards, humanitarian concerns by themselves could be sufficient grounds for war (this would be a precedent Erem and I both support). Bremer would probably have given the same "there's no cookie-cutter response to these situations that you can apply in every case" answer he used a couple of other times, but we might have gotten a real answer if the question lacked the traditional accusatory tone. Oh well.

Busy Day

Wake up for water polo at eleven. Lunch. Sleep on the air mattress until it's deflated (it has a small hole somewhere). Be at James' by three to begin work on the Prank, IM soccer practice at five. Dinner, trivia night at the Rose and Crown, back for IM volleyball at eleven. Midnight lifting session.

Camping

Went on two camping trips this weekend, to Half Moon Bay and up to Tilden Park. It seems like camping is just a big excuse to go somewhere and play with fire all weekend. This is awesome.

Was back in town for about three hours on Saturday, just enough time to clean up and meet the family for lunch. My mom brought me copy of Freakonomics, which demonstrates remarkable awareness of my tastes. I wonder, does she read this thing?

Review Redeemed

A back page guide to what the Review considers the best eight courses taught this spring calls my buddy Brandon Burr a "dynamic, entertaining, and knowledgeable" lecturer. And at this scale, personal > political.

More Hard-Hitting Reporting from the Review

The Stanford Review the campus conservative publication really outdo themselves this issue, taking on IHUM, the University's mandatory humanities series. This is like elementary school kids editorialiszing about homework, or protesting short recess periods. And yet, even having decided on such a softball of an assignment, the staff stands around and watches the pitch sail by. They don't like IHUM because it doesn't introduce students to the intellectual foundations of Western thought and culture. To a certain extent, I agree; I think a lot of students leave Stanford without any sense of where the West is coming from. Which only makes it more frsutrating when the authors fail to make even the most cursory arguments for why it's important for students to understand that tradition. There's the line between inspiring debate and mere agit-prop, and the Review, as usual, falls far behind it.

As a libertarian/independent, I've long had beef with the Review simply because of the enormous opportunity cost. Stanford's only going to get one conservative voice, and it's depressing to see it filled month after month with the same sophomoric drivel.

A Righteous Dubbing

My roommate shall henceforth be know as Big 'Nilla, after the ice cream sandwich brand. Details omitted to protect the guilty.

Bonding

Last night a rushee told me he'd been flipping through the profiles on the SigEp group on the facebook, and he'd remembered me because I'd listed my political orientation as "Libertarian." And just like that, we were co-conspirators.

Google Maps

I am here.

MTV Comes to Rush

So an MTV producer and camera crew show up at our rush event tonight. We're in the middle fo doing boat races with potstickers, which is fun but not exactly compelling television. We have this conversation:

Producer: Where can we find like a crazy frat party?
SigEp: Well, this is Rush, so all fraternity events are dry.
P: So no parties?
S: Not for two weeks.

Apparently they're making some project about social life at elite colleges that they want to show to high school kids. In the end we sent them off to pub night, where there should have been debauchery aplenty. It's too bad they didn't show up Tuesday, when Sigma Nu was holding their "throw stuff off our third floor balcony" event.

Springtime

Lawprof bloggers are excited about spring, with its warm weather and student elections. Me, I spend all afternoon napping out in the sun on our air mattress. Am now sunburned.

Regarding student elections, I started a facebook group called "Don't Vote, it Only Encourages Them." I invited a few of my friends, and then in a fit of ambition, everyone named David at the school. After that I got bored, which seesm fitting. Here's our logo, which I stole from somewhere. It should resonate well with current and former Stanford students alike.

I Acquire a Suffix

Today on Axess:

Program Status: Complete

Degree Checkout Status: Awarded:  Your degree has been officially conferred.

Booyah.