This sort of thing sounds like a terrible idea. Even as a non-believer myself, I'd never send kinds of mine to such a place - what do people like us need to get all worked up about our kids' faith (or lack thereof) for? I don't know about the Maledictorian , but I did just fine at regular summer camp. Over the years I went to ranch camp, sailing camp, even a week one summer at YMCA surf camp, and the man upstairs never came up. Apparently, all the C in YMCA stands for is "no swearing."
In the end, I didn't need to have dinner surrounded by portraits of notable atheists, and I suspect I would not have taken kindly to Bertrand Russell staring me down as I ate overcooked spaghetti. God is the ultimate authority figure and we won't banish Him by indoctrinating children. Heck, sent to this camp I might have come out a believer, if only out of spite. Instead, my spiritual outlook developed under a kind of benign neglect. It seems to me that if it's terribly important to teach one's children that it's okay not to believe in God the way to do it is to show them how a life lived with any mention of the divine simply omitted works just fine.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Botox in my Milk
Crooked Timber links to an article in The Chronicle about a paper describing how terrorists could kill thousands of people with an attack on the nation's milk supply. My friends that took terrorism and national security classes at Stanford all told me about the exact same scenario, so I guess it's a good idea to publicize it more widely. Doing so certainly isn't providing the terrorists with a road map they couldn't find otherwise.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Genius
Perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone by floating a rumor that Taiwan is acquiring nuclear weapons from North Korea . . . .
-Instapundit
I Hits the Links
I played my first game of golf this afternoon, at a short course near my house that has cheap greens fees after 5. I was thoroughly awful, but I was hitting switch (for those paying attention, this means I shot right-handed. Played with four friends and someone's dad, who was impressed that I was keeping up. "So if you're playing almost as good as us hitting right-handed, you must be pretty good, huh?" he asked. Ha! If only he knew.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Stankowski Reports
A first-year associate provides periodic updates on his life at the firm. My favorite quote:
However, contrary to the old saying, when you ask me if I have finished that 20 page brief that you assigned me ten minutes ago, and I say (in my most nonchalant of voices) "Well, no," and then you yell at me and curse a lot, I am not really "being cut down to size." This is easily demonstrated when I stand up to follow you down the hall as you continue to yell. I am still much taller than you. Also, it is not an insult to tell me that I am "lazier than a bean-picking Mexican." I have seen Mexicans pick beans. They work really hard.
Optimism
This Madisonian Theory blog and its recommendations for incoming students has me felling pretty good right now. Tip 1: get fit. Couldn't be happier to see that advice. Tip 2:read Cryptonomicon, "or even the whole Baroque Cycle." Check. Tip 3: Read Gödel, Escher, Bach. Check. My whole UGrad major was about that stuff.
Am feeling psyched, and even more confident about my decision to scorn The Paper Chase, 1L, and related media.
Also: why doesn't Blogger's spell check recognize the word "blog?"
Am feeling psyched, and even more confident about my decision to scorn The Paper Chase, 1L, and related media.
Also: why doesn't Blogger's spell check recognize the word "blog?"
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Batman
I saw Batman Begins on Saturday in Santa Cruz on my way back down to SD, asnd I really liked it. Yes, I too noticed the curious problem with the microwave generator that people are talking about. For what it's worth, my Scottie-must-have-been-addled-by-his-time-in suspended-animation continuity hack is that the microwaves must only have made water boil becuase it was in metal pipes, under pressure. If you've ever tried to reheat food that came in a foil wrapping, you'll know your microwave doesn't like metal. Lucky for me, I am ignorant of just enough physics to be happy with this explanation.
Of course, it doesn't answer other questions raised by the we've-been-adding-the-airborne-hallucinogen-to-the-water-for-weeks scenario, like why people in Gothan weren't tripping balls every time they took a hot shower or made spagetti, but I'll let that slide too. Batman is a ninja. With those cool spiky armband thingies. Cool.
Of course, it doesn't answer other questions raised by the we've-been-adding-the-airborne-hallucinogen-to-the-water-for-weeks scenario, like why people in Gothan weren't tripping balls every time they took a hot shower or made spagetti, but I'll let that slide too. Batman is a ninja. With those cool spiky armband thingies. Cool.
Spam
The signal-to-noise ration on my email has plummeted since graduation. When I was getting 10+ emails a day that I would need/want to read, I never really noticed how often I tapped the delete key to get to them. Now that school's out and I receive practically no mail, it sure seems like there's a lot more spam. At least my old school account will die soon. Planned obsolescence, baby.
Reply to Jobs
Paul Andrws, a columnist for the Seattle Times, replies to Jobs' address (which, in fairness, he calls "a moving life statement," adds a tongue-in-cheek fourth story to Jobs' commencement address. It begins:
As they say, read the whole thing.
There's a fourth story about me that I decided to omit from this talk. It has to do with the many people in my life whom I've cheated, abused and otherwise screwed on my rise to fame and riches.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Neal Stephenson Agrees With Me
about Star Wars:
From a piece he wrote for the New York Times.
Likewise, many have been underwhelmed by the performance of Hayden Christensen, who plays Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Only if you've seen the "Clone Wars" cartoons will you understand that Anakin is a seriously damaged veteran, a poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder. But since none of that background is actually supplied by the Episode III script, Mr. Christensen has been given an impossible acting task. He's trying to swim in air.
In sum, very little of the new film makes sense, taken as a freestanding narrative. What's interesting about this is how little it matters.
From a piece he wrote for the New York Times.
Steve Jobs: You're All Gonna Die!
Yes, he actually did say that at commissioning, but it wasn't completely morbid. Jobs told three stories about his own life, stories that I'll agree with the media in calling "surprisingly candid." It was not at all what I expected from a media-darling celebrity captain of industry. His anecdotes look like unusual choices for a graduation ceremony: dropping out of college, being fired from his own company, being diagnosed with terminal cancer. But once you got past that the message was damn good: you can't see how the future will play out, so stick with your instincts, and don't worry about connecting the dots until after the fact.
Jobs' ruminations on mortality rubbed some of my fellow graduates the wrong way, but I thought the message came through. Of course, literally living every day as if it were your last isn't such a great plan, but living every day mindful of your limited time here is a darn good idea. Maybe we need all that death talk to shake us out of adolescent complacency.
The complete text can be found here.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Jobs' ruminations on mortality rubbed some of my fellow graduates the wrong way, but I thought the message came through. Of course, literally living every day as if it were your last isn't such a great plan, but living every day mindful of your limited time here is a darn good idea. Maybe we need all that death talk to shake us out of adolescent complacency.
The complete text can be found here.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
The Study of Seduction
Just got a link off LSD to a new blog, Legal Seduction. It's by an incoming 1L who's decided to take a systematic approach to improving his game. As one who habitually muddles through both dating and life in general, I find this kind of thing incredibly interesting. I'm putting a link up under Law Students, but maybe we should tentatively pencil it in under Awesomeness.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Home At Last
Back from a post-graduation mini-vacation. Much to say. Only just got wireless up and running, using my AirPort express to bridge the signal to a linksys wireless router. Apple said it couldn't be done. Well it can. It's just very, very slow.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
David Kennedy on America's "Mercenary Army"
Professor Kennedy, about whom I've blogged before, was the faculty speaker at the Senior Luncheon today. Excellent choice. He talked about graduating in general, and the real world vs. the academic world in a very engaging way, and everyone was smiling and laughing.
His main point, or his main serious point, that he eventually came around to is that he's concerned that America today has a "mercenary army." He was careful to distinguish between the character of the men and women in uniform, "these are not the hated Hessians that George III hired," and what actually concerned him, the amount of civic participation involved in deploying the armed forces. In short, he's worried that the unprecedented power and lethality of the American armed forces can be deployed without burdening or even inconveniencing the general American public. He spoke about how citizenship used to be partially defined in terms of an obligation to defend the population, but that most people never feel this obligation, and that makes us insufficiently involved in where great violence can be inflicted in our names by a professional military. Like any other speech in the circumstances, it ended with a call for the graduating seniors to go out and change the world, take on civic responsibility, and so on, but it was an interesting and unexpected twist to hear a humanities professor at a bastion of liberal thought say, in effect, "Go join the army. It's your duty."
Now on one hand it's tempting to dismiss Kennedy's comparisons to World War II America, where we were involved in a total war against vicious ideologies supported by powerful industrial nations. Today's vicious ideologies are, thankfully, far less well endowed and equipped than Nazism, fascism, and Soviet communism. Islamic totalitarianism doesn't pose an existential threat to America, and maybe it's okay for a minority to really worry about the fight, when that fight has to do with making sure that a fairly limited set of Very Bad Things don't happen. Maybe these concerns would evaporate in the face of an enemy that demanded full mobilization. But assuming that Kennedy is on to something, and that it's problematic for most people to barely feel the costs of military action, how could that be fixed?
For all the talk of the dignity of the citizen-soldier, from a policy perspective it's hard to argue with results. If a professional, all-volunteer force fights better, it looks like lunacy to advocate compulsory service for domestic policy reasons. The first responsibility of armies is to win. And looking forward towards increasing use of automation, it actually looks like the human costs of war will be borne by ever-fewer living, breathing, and voting Americans.
In what other ways, then, could costs be shared? Have military expenditures earmarked on everyone's taxes? Require everyone to serve a limited term in support roles? I'm worried that if this is actually a problem, potential solutions aren't very apparent.
Update: Welocme Mudville readers. You can find a full transcript of Kenndey's remarks that day here. There are still valid criticisms of the column: it's not a good idea to change the structure of the military to achieve social goals, and as some have pointed out, an all-volunteer force can be a check on adventurism (Marginal Revolution makes that point here). But the hysterical "he's a crazy leftist who hates America" criticisms splashed all over the place don't look to me like they hold water.
His main point, or his main serious point, that he eventually came around to is that he's concerned that America today has a "mercenary army." He was careful to distinguish between the character of the men and women in uniform, "these are not the hated Hessians that George III hired," and what actually concerned him, the amount of civic participation involved in deploying the armed forces. In short, he's worried that the unprecedented power and lethality of the American armed forces can be deployed without burdening or even inconveniencing the general American public. He spoke about how citizenship used to be partially defined in terms of an obligation to defend the population, but that most people never feel this obligation, and that makes us insufficiently involved in where great violence can be inflicted in our names by a professional military. Like any other speech in the circumstances, it ended with a call for the graduating seniors to go out and change the world, take on civic responsibility, and so on, but it was an interesting and unexpected twist to hear a humanities professor at a bastion of liberal thought say, in effect, "Go join the army. It's your duty."
Now on one hand it's tempting to dismiss Kennedy's comparisons to World War II America, where we were involved in a total war against vicious ideologies supported by powerful industrial nations. Today's vicious ideologies are, thankfully, far less well endowed and equipped than Nazism, fascism, and Soviet communism. Islamic totalitarianism doesn't pose an existential threat to America, and maybe it's okay for a minority to really worry about the fight, when that fight has to do with making sure that a fairly limited set of Very Bad Things don't happen. Maybe these concerns would evaporate in the face of an enemy that demanded full mobilization. But assuming that Kennedy is on to something, and that it's problematic for most people to barely feel the costs of military action, how could that be fixed?
For all the talk of the dignity of the citizen-soldier, from a policy perspective it's hard to argue with results. If a professional, all-volunteer force fights better, it looks like lunacy to advocate compulsory service for domestic policy reasons. The first responsibility of armies is to win. And looking forward towards increasing use of automation, it actually looks like the human costs of war will be borne by ever-fewer living, breathing, and voting Americans.
In what other ways, then, could costs be shared? Have military expenditures earmarked on everyone's taxes? Require everyone to serve a limited term in support roles? I'm worried that if this is actually a problem, potential solutions aren't very apparent.
Update: Welocme Mudville readers. You can find a full transcript of Kenndey's remarks that day here. There are still valid criticisms of the column: it's not a good idea to change the structure of the military to achieve social goals, and as some have pointed out, an all-volunteer force can be a check on adventurism (Marginal Revolution makes that point here). But the hysterical "he's a crazy leftist who hates America" criticisms splashed all over the place don't look to me like they hold water.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Graduating: Time Doesn't Always Fly
Everyone always says that college just whips by, and after four years you'll be left wondering where all the time went. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't feel that way. I feel like I can look back on my four years of undergrad and say that I've done good work here; I've lived well. My undergraduate experience seems full, complete. It brings me great satisfaction to be able to say that.
I hope that I can keep this up, so that when I'm old I can feel this way about the rest of my life too, and not just college. I think I need to make mysleft something to that effect to hang on my wall.
I hope that I can keep this up, so that when I'm old I can feel this way about the rest of my life too, and not just college. I think I need to make mysleft something to that effect to hang on my wall.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Friday, June 03, 2005
Star Wars Marathon, Blink
So we were originally scheduled to have a big Star Wars mega-marathon today, watching all six episodes "back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back," as Colin's email had it. But we didn't get started until after 10:30, so after Episode 2 we wouldn't make the 3:00 showing of 3, and we couldn't go to the 5:00 show or we'd miss dinner, so now we have to wait until 7. Which means that so far today all I've done is watched the first two movies, which I though were horrible. An interesting thing happened though: I enjoyed them a lot more this time around. I sat through The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones back to back, and was happy and entertained the whole time.
I have a couple of theories about why this might be. First, I understand the Byzantine plot beforehand, and can pay more attention to the little clues about what's going on, and less trying to figure out who the hell is on what side. If nothing else, this makes the battles more enjoyable. It certainly makes some of the more strained conversations believable when you understand what the characters are getting at.
What really surprised me, though, was that those god-awful love scenes didn't look so bad anymore. I think that this is because I stopped holding Padme and Anakin to regular standards of human behavior. Hayden Christensen's lines still set my teeth on edge, but it seems like they should. He's playing an adolescent ex-slave warrior space monk prodigy. That kind of thing would certainly have had me saying some weird shit at seventeen. After Revenge of the Sith, you don't just know in some abstract way that this kid with the funny haircut is supposed to become Darth Vader, you've seen it from the inside. You understand it. It's his destiny man, in a very literal cinematic way, and you expect him to act funny.
I've heard that Lucas intended to create a new myth for our time, and on reflection the movies do a lot better considered in that light. Think about the Odyssey, for example. The little jaunt to the island of the lotus-eaters would be pretty crap as a stand-alone story; it's much better in the context of the entire narrative. Ditto for Star Wars. I feel like, as with any good myth, we're supposed to know the basics of the story ahead of time. They're supposed to be just understood as part of the culture. Well, as a full-bore geek, Star Wars is certainly part of my culture, and I've found that once you've got the whole thing in there, each individual movie is actually a pretty good "telling" (what in Linguistics we'd call a "token") of that part of the larger myth.
Anyway, while we wait for dinner I've been reading Blink, at a rate of about a hundred pages an hour. A lot of it is stuff I've heard before, either in descriptions of the book or in CogSci classes, and I've read enough synopses that by this time the whole "thin-slicing" idea doesn't even seem all that weird. What I really want, is to hear some music by this Kenna character.
I have a couple of theories about why this might be. First, I understand the Byzantine plot beforehand, and can pay more attention to the little clues about what's going on, and less trying to figure out who the hell is on what side. If nothing else, this makes the battles more enjoyable. It certainly makes some of the more strained conversations believable when you understand what the characters are getting at.
What really surprised me, though, was that those god-awful love scenes didn't look so bad anymore. I think that this is because I stopped holding Padme and Anakin to regular standards of human behavior. Hayden Christensen's lines still set my teeth on edge, but it seems like they should. He's playing an adolescent ex-slave warrior space monk prodigy. That kind of thing would certainly have had me saying some weird shit at seventeen. After Revenge of the Sith, you don't just know in some abstract way that this kid with the funny haircut is supposed to become Darth Vader, you've seen it from the inside. You understand it. It's his destiny man, in a very literal cinematic way, and you expect him to act funny.
I've heard that Lucas intended to create a new myth for our time, and on reflection the movies do a lot better considered in that light. Think about the Odyssey, for example. The little jaunt to the island of the lotus-eaters would be pretty crap as a stand-alone story; it's much better in the context of the entire narrative. Ditto for Star Wars. I feel like, as with any good myth, we're supposed to know the basics of the story ahead of time. They're supposed to be just understood as part of the culture. Well, as a full-bore geek, Star Wars is certainly part of my culture, and I've found that once you've got the whole thing in there, each individual movie is actually a pretty good "telling" (what in Linguistics we'd call a "token") of that part of the larger myth.
Anyway, while we wait for dinner I've been reading Blink, at a rate of about a hundred pages an hour. A lot of it is stuff I've heard before, either in descriptions of the book or in CogSci classes, and I've read enough synopses that by this time the whole "thin-slicing" idea doesn't even seem all that weird. What I really want, is to hear some music by this Kenna character.
So You CAN Play Water Polo In Boston
One of my best friends from high school played polo for MIT, and will be staying in the Boston area next year. Turns out there are club teams one can join, so I can keep playing back East. I'm so happy I could fart.
RSS Feed Bag
I just downloaded the NetNewsWire RSS feeder and started playing around with it. It's pretty cool, though I'm not sure if the formatting is ideal. I like browsing from one blog post right down to another, without popping each one open at the subject line. But it'll be good for keeping track of who's posted, at least.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
I'm Poor
Between traveling this month, a nasty speeding ticket, and my housing deposit, I seem to have run completely out of money. I have here my VIsa bill and chscking account statement, and one of them is distressingly larger than the other. My roommates all joke that we should just go donate at the California Cryobank. Their ad in the daily says they'll pay you $600 a month, and as Big Nilla says, "Dude, out of everybody on this earth, I would want your sperm."
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