The milestones keep piling up
and a rambling thought about segregated integrated schools

Leaving law school... moving to DC... Star Wars III... bar exam... wedding... and now I get an invite for my high school 10 year reunion. 2005 is turning into a bit of a whirlwind for me.

As for the reunion, it should fun, but I'm also having some serious thoughts about education and multiculturalism while looking over the current Evite invites and responses.

So far, it's a very white group of alums. And unless I'm mistaken, not a single black person among the handful of non-white folks.

I have always felt that attending city schools was a great experience. I assumed that this made me a more worldly, less prejudiced person. I assumed that the experience made me less prone to consciously or subconsciously fear contact with minorities. Perhaps those were, in fact, real benefits of my years at Allderdice. But that reunion invite/response list also says something else.

Allderdice was segregated from within. Despite an overall healthy mix of black and white with a small sprinkling of other groups (Pittsburgh is an almost 100% white/black town), there were some classes filled mostly by white folks and some classes with a lot less white faces. And socially, there were a few main circles of mostly or all white kids. And a couple groups of mostly or all black kids... these circles barely intermingled. There are numerous explanations and entire books about how this state of affairs came to be. But I'm not really trying to get into the "why" right now. I'm just observing retrospectively.

Its also worth mentioning that there was some violence at Allderdice. Before Mike Tyson made it fashionable, we had an ear-biting incident. One kid that some of my friends knew (but I did not) died from a freak medical condition after being punched in another incident. And there was a major brawl on the first day of school in fall 93. Still, these things seemed like isolated incidents. I never once feared for my safety at Allderdice. Looking back, I now realize that unofficial segregation is the reason I never got worried about violence there -- though it was in my school, it was not in my world.

Its a shame we weren't all together back then. Getting drunk, just being stupid kids, maybe getting high, hanging out, maybe doing some studying, having a good time. Everyone was generally doing the same stuff back then. Except we were all hiding from each other.

I think that's enough for now.

April Fool's Day - Take Two

I'm kind of eager to see how the CMU student newspaper (The Tartan) follows up their brilliant "joke" from last year.

A nice, concise piece on the greater significance of the Schiavo case with regard to the Right's upcoming war on the judiciary:

"Saving America From the Judges"

Star Wars Pre-Party at our place!
(i.e. Mary and Sam's new apartment)

Last weekend, Mary and I hopefully found a place to live in DC. Assuming the landlord doesn't flake out on us in the next day or two, we'll be living in the Cleveland Terrace building in Cleveland Park as of May 10.

And yes, you are correct in assuming that the double "Cleveland" reference is a serious problem for a Pittsburgh person like me. But I'm willing to look past that enormous flaw because it really is a great location: you could almost hit the Metro escalators or the Uptown with a frisbee from the roof of our building.



It's a nice sized studio on the second floor of a three story building on Ordway Street. It has a separate big kitchen and decent closet space. The building is a bit old, but the location and price were right. This turn of events of course begs the question of whether I should still have a blog named Ironcity once I move to DC. Not sure about that right now.

Anyway, the main point here is that I'm psyched for Star Wars III across the street on May 19. Tell your boss now that you're taking the day off from work!

Can she make it to 100,000 miles???

Until this morning, I thought it was "in the bag." Things had been going smoothly since the near-death of my car last summer. And looking at the 98,600 displayed as I left Maryland for Pittsburgh early this morning, I could almost taste 100k.


The Taurus on duty in north-central PA in 2003

The fun started after passing through the Allegheny Tunnel on the Turnpike. First, the transmission went berserk. Though I was cruising at 65 and the road was flat, the engine kept shifting up and down and the car starting jerking as it rapidly sped up and slowed down. I got over into the right lane and slowed down to about 40 and tried to turn on my flashers so nobody would rear end me.

But the flashers were not working. So things were starting to suck at that point. Then I wanted to take a look in my rearview mirror to see if anyone was coming up on my tail. As I did this in my flustered state, I accidentally let the car go a little too far to the right.

When my tires caught the roadside warning rumble strip, the vibration caused my rear view mirror to fall right off the windshield and land on the floor. Transmission, flashers, and my mirror all falling apart over a 30 second span. This felt like something out of a sitcom or comedy. Things were definitely sucking at that point. I limped into the rest plaza that was fortunately only a few miles away.

I turned off the car and spent a few minutes checking all my fluids -- which is about the only thing I know how to do with a car outside of putting gas in the tank and air in the tires. Everything looked fine and nothing smelled funny under the hood. I got back in the car and started it up again. Everything worked fine (other than the lack of a mirror) and I drove the rest of the way to Pittsburgh.

Bottom line: I have no idea what's going to happen the next time I turn the key in my car. Hopefully this was just some weird fluke thing. But I'm not taking 100k for granted right now!

Stupid American cars.

Mmmmm Mmmmm Good

I always said McDonalds was best...except for the no curly fries part.

Hope that finger wasn't used for pickin:)

Like Being Back in 7th Grade

I dodged a bullet in Trial Advocacy today. This is a class where you basically practice trial techniques based on a single semester-long hypothetical case. The substantive law is simple and unimportant. The point is to get better at the actual trial stuff.

So this means getting called on to do things like cross-examine a classmate pretending to be a witness. And this means if you come to class unprepared you're going to look like a Grade 'A' Dumbass in front of your peers if you're called on. And I came to class TOTALLY unprepared.

Half of us would have to do something today while half would get to wait until next week. As the class period wound down and I had still evaded "capture," I resorted to some old school stalling tactics. You know... asking questions right before the buzzer. The academic equivalent of running out of the clock.

It worked!

Only now should we fully hate Duke

Duke has been quite hate-worthy for years. I won't bother going into that part of the story. However, there had always been the one saving grace for Duke -- the fact that only a complete moron could ever say something bad about Coach K.

But that's over now. Since the start of the NCAA tourney on Thursday, we've been subjected to a surreal onslaught of commercialized Coach K. He's on some NCAA-type ad. He's in the American Express commercial. And he's in two different car commercials. Basically, he's selling everything except diarrhea remedies (borrowing from his AmEx pitch, I can imagine it now: "I don't see myself as a diarrhea sufferer, I see myself as a leader who happens to have diarrhea")

Enough is enough. Down with Duke AND Coach K.

Could not have put it any better myself

(more on the Schiavo nonsense)

Doctor Frist

So what will the medical community think of the senator, considering his recent role in the Schiavo saga AND that he's a doctor by training?

(basically, we now have a medical doctor leading the Senate push for a subpoena for a woman who has been in a permanent or persistent vegetative state for 15 years to "testify" before Congress)

In a way, it makes me think of how the legal community basically said "no thanks, we won't be needing your help" and disbarred Clinton when his second term was ending.

Did you happen to watch Nightline tonight?

they had Michael Schiavo on. I've been following the Schiavo case since before I went to law school and had never seen him speak except for a few hurried words outside of courtrooms. anyway, he was pretty damn good

Compared to watching politicians, talking heads, or my personal circle of friends bickering back and forth over issues from our detached vantage points, it was so nice to see someone with a personal stake who is so 100% on the correct side of an argument calling out the extreme right... and the politicians pandering to them. and personally calling out jeb bush.

i did a quick search and found the transcript, but i'm sure the video is out there if you're interested in this stuff and want to check out a legit and emotional 20 minute "eff you" to a chunk of the conservative agenda

okay, i'll stop blabbering now so I can go to bed. i give the interview an 85% awesome rating

I get the willies every time I cross the Potomac

Fuck Virginia -- that's my general feeling about the Commonwealth of Virginia after attaining a degree in history and 95% of a law school education. If I had to pick an American state to serve as a dictionary poster-child for the word DISGRACE, good old Virginia would certainly top my list.

From hatin' on the slaves (scroll down to Chap. IV. on page 126) to hatin' on the gay and lesbian community, Virginia has always been a trailblazer in the field of legislative and judicial crimes against humanity.

Over the years, I had also learned a bit of the dark history of eugenics in America. And I learned yesterday in my Bioethics class of Virginia's key role in the movement. This leadership even led to congratulatory pats on the back from none other than the Third Reich for progress in "racial cleansing" and reciprocal praise from Virginia to Germany upon learning of Hitler's mass sterilization programs in the 1930s.

After watching a film in class discussing these matters, I could only respond by saying, "Nice work, you've done it again Virginia!"

Your Source of NCAA Basketball Brilliance

I hate this time of year.

No, not March Madness... I love March Madness. What I hate is the four days leading up to the tournament. These are the four days in which I dread filling out my various brackets for whatever pools I plan to enter. You see, my losing streak is at approximately 15 years now.

And when I say "losing streak," I don't just mean not winning. I'm talking about absolute bottom-of-the-barrel, dead-last place predictions. I ALWAYS finish behind Mary. But she's a basketball person, so I guess that's okay. On the other hand, I also normally finish behind picks made by a co-worker's pet which is not okay. By the time the tournament progesses to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8 every year, I've already lost every single team.

So I came up with two solutions. One was to merely pick the higher seed in every game. But that's boring. So instead, I decided the way to go was to try for perfection. Perfect failure.



So there it is. My (im)perfect Elite 8. You can bet the house on these eight teams not making it. Damn, I'm a genius.

Family Feud, Western PA Style

There are a lot of disasters and disputes that can bring down a family. Sometimes bonds can be repaired. Sometimes you can mend fences. Most fights are eventually left in the past.

So it breaks my heart to hear about a father and son going at it like this. This is the kind of thing that can never be forgotten. This is the kind of thing that leads to total family destruction.

You just cannot mess around when it comes to season tickets.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!

As I mentioned to Aaron today on the phone, I would REALLY like whoever is in charge to please turn off winter now. We've had enough.

I just got back from the bar [yeah, i guess i'm a loser for post-bar blogging] and its 12 degrees out there. I love snow. I like cold weather. I would never permanently move somewhere that did not have winter. But when mid-March rolls around, I'm pretty much ready to not see 12 degrees for a good long while.


Also -- heard at the bar tonight:

Some story about a girl at another bar pretending to be Ms. Intellectual who put her stamp of brilliance on the end of a conversation with this unintentionally awesome line: "You know, beauty is in the behind of the holder."

Best FatCat Job in America

Owner of a casino or CEO of a credit card company??

I can't decide. Both run giant, generally heartless operations which have about as much likelihood of failing as an American McDonald's restaurant. (seriously -- of its 74 bazillion locations, have you EVER heard of a single McDonald's restaurant going out of business?)

I really think an ape with mid-range ape intelligence should be able to run a credit card company or casino. How fucking hard can it be? In one situation, you mail folks little pieces of plastic with numbers on them. You pay for their purchases. Then these people pay you back, and throw in extra money that you did very little or nothing to earn. In the other situation, you basically provide electricity for a type of video game which induces people to flush extraordinary sums of money down the toilet and straight into your pocket. In both instances, the actual amount of work required could be mostly chalked-up as overhead.

Sure, both do serve some limited purpose in society; one being to allow someone to weather a rough patch in their life or spread their purchasing power over an extended period and the other one being entertainment. Yet the reality of these industries pushes and ultimately breaks the envelope of their social utility. Based on only my own intuition and perception of the world around me, I feel comfortable in proclaiming that both industries almost certainly do more harm and take in more money than merited by the amount of good they do.

Specifically, my thoughts about credit card companies came up while I was at an Elder Law free legal clinic this morning at a local community center. A couple of the folks that came in were decent people buried in credit card debt arising mostly out of standard, everyday living purchases. No big trips to the Tropics, no wasteful spending on pricey fashion tastes, etc.

Regular payments and good credit for decades and then there's a chink in the armor. Someone dies... working conditions change... something happens. Late fees start piling up... interest rates then get jacked up... the interest and penalty-heavy balance eventually exceeds the credit limit (WTF?)... the credit card company assesses an over-the-limit fee for all the crap they've added on that's broken the credit limit (WTF2?). And its all legal. The credit card company has contributed no labor, no creativity, and no thought. It just continues racking up fees and interest that dwarf the principal owed. And it continues collecting from folks who become scared to even answer their phones.

And now they want to make it even harder for people to pull themselves out of such messes with new bankruptcy abuse legislation. Sure, bankruptcy is abused every now and then. But so is alcohol. Yet I don't see any stammering on the Hill for a return to Prohibition, or even a return to the time when not everything, including Sesame Street, was sponsored by Coors Light. No, we only get upset when the supposed victim of abuse is corporate in nature.

Even more bad movies

Caught this on BoingBoing today... super awesome packaging. Be sure to scroll down to the second and third pictures.


And on an entirely unrelated note, I just saw a pretty damn funny sign posted in the window of Wiener World (hot dogs/pizza/junk food diner in downtown) this afternoon:

"Jared doesn't eat here"

FIRM EVIDENCE!

I have no sympathy for the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, Syria's lack of interest in peace with Israel, or Syria's complete lack of democracy.

However, forgive me if I'm not ready to swallow Condoleeza Rice's claim that "there is firm evidence that the Syrian-based group Islamic Jihad carried out" the suicide bombing Friday in Tel Aviv without some serious independent confirmation. In fact, I would even venture to say that such a claim coming from the Bush administration would tend to make most Middle Easterners think there was NOT a Syrian connection.

In general, shouldn't the Bush administration be self-enforcing a moratorium on its use of the word "evidence?" I think pretty much anything involving foreign affairs, that word, and cabinet level or higher officials is bound to fail the laugh test at this point.

[And as a side note, I think its pretty funny that the Voice of America has a web presence that is so out of step with internet news/blogs/etc that they include links to "Drudge report" and "Listen to Drudge report" for their no-name correspondent Michael Drudge - this confused the crap out of me for a moment while I considered why the VOA would employ the services of Matt Drudge]

The End of Humanity

The recent stories about the local effect of a massive gamma ray event half-way across the galaxy got me thinking about extinctions. First, I was wondering about non-Earth-based causes, and then any causes. So I decided to come up with as many possibilities as I could think of for the end of human civilization. And I divided them into three categories: self-inflicted, not-our-fault, and someone else's fault:

"Whoops! We killed ourselves..."

1) Catastrophic spasm of warfare

Likelihood - This once seemed possible back in the 1950s and 60s when we were out designing and testing outrageous 50+ megaton nuclear devices which made Hiroshima look like a hand grenade by comparison. However, unless we find an even more powerful form of weapon and a plethora of supremely ignorant world leaders, complete extinction by way of conventional, nuclear, chemical, or other explosive weaponry seems impossible - assuming we make it to Inauguration Day in January 2009.

Prevention - just a little bit of intelligence

2) Biological terrorism / experimentation gone awry

Likelihood - Perhaps slightly greater than warfare, but still an incredible long shot. I imagine an airborne super-strain of something like Ebola with long concurrent incubation and contagion periods could wipe out millions (or billions?). But would it really get everyone? Even in the movie 12 Monkeys, a few people survived whatever agent was released in the world's airports.

Prevention - intelligent disaster response - or the presence of at least a handful of people in the world who are naturally immune to any given disease or virus

3) Wild physicist-created debacle:
    Artificial black hole, matter/anti-matter disaster, etc.

Likelihood - Not much, even though some people believe scientists might actually create harmless mini-black holes in modern day particle accelerators. The possibility of something bad happening seems pretty remote.

Prevention - the hope that science fiction remains just that


Extinction by way of Mother Nature or Extra-Terrestrial causes

1) Emergence of a true plague

Likelihood - Even less than that of biological terrorism or experimentation gone awry.

Remedy - same as above

2) Episode of extreme volcanism

Likelihood - I have no clue, but I'm sure it would look pretty cool for any astronauts in orbit.

Remedy - none, other than the presence of a self-sufficient colony on the Moon, Mars, or other world

3) Asteroid or comet impact

Likelihood - Significant - though decreasing every day; this will probably become a near impossibility within a hundred years or so. Modern tracking of such bodies constantly becomes more accurate while technology available to divert or destroy potential threats constantly improves as the decades pass. The 21st century may be the solar system's last chance to wipe out humanity, dinosaur-style.

Remedy - identification of potential threats, tracking, and diversion or destruction of objects

4) Collision with small black hole passing through solar system

Likelihood - Almost zero, though over a few billion years, not entirely impossible.

Remedy - none, other than the presence of a self-sufficient colony on Mars or other world

5) Supernova in our galactic neighborhood

Likelihood - Much greater than black hole, and assuming we survive the next couple hundred years, also more likely than an asteroid or comet impact. Some scientists believe one of the five great mass extinctions on Earth might have been triggered by such an event outside our solar system. A nearby star going supernova, or a star much further away with its axis of rotation (and therefore its "beam" of explosive energy) aimed at us by chance, would do the trick. Over a couple billion years, this might really happen.

Remedy - We would need to be able to rapidly repair any damage to the planet's atmosphere. Or if Earth was doomed, there would have to be interstellar colonization already taking place. This would require travel in self-sufficient, long term multi-generational space craft or by wormhole or other exotic faster than light travel.

6) Final expansion of the Sun

Likelihood - A 100% certainty - if humanity and its descendants are still around the solar system in about five billion years when the Sun goes through its final stages of expansion.

Remedy - none, unless interstellar colonization takes place


Someone else did it

1) Alien attack or accidental alien biological infection

Likelihood/remedy - ???

2) Actual act of God / supernatural being

Likelihood - who knows / Remedy - definitely none