Fear and Love

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the site for all things related to Un. It's time for another not-so-regularly scheduled update after a period of illness. I'm feeling much better, though I'm not fully 100%.
During my sickness, I've had some time on my hands. I was surfing the web and I stumbled onto a blog. The post asked a question that many people have asked (in many forms): "When do you resign yourself to being single?" That is, when do the risks of falling in love (the heartache, the rejection, the pain, etc) outweigh the benefits? How many times do you crash and burn before you put away the wings?
So, thanks to that question and a lot of time on my hands, I have decided to make a stab at an answer. I have no qualifications as an expert on this topic, which makes me perfect. God forbid if someone takes this post seriously. My regular readers, or even those who stumbled onto this blog by some unforseen circumstance or by mistake, please excuse me for this Dr. Phil meets Bartlett's Book of Quotations post.

Those of you who have been in multiple bad relationships, you probably have the "I hate love" mentality. It's best expressed by the following quote by Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Anasazi Boys:

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

Of course, after such an experience, one probably doesn't want to go though those crappy emotions again. It's quite understandable. Wouldn't it be nice if all relationships were guaranteed to be perfect? That everything about it would be just the way we wanted it? No risk of broken hearts. No risk of being hurt. Sorry to tell you this, but it's just not possible. Inherent in all relationships, especially those involving love, means taking those risks:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable
-C.S. Lewis

If you don't become vulnerable and accept the risk, your heart will never be broken by another person, but you destroy it yourself. It leads to a kind of apathy to relate to other people. One will lose the capacity to risk one's self in the hope of achieving any kind of meaningful relationship with another person. Risk is unescapable. If one person changes, the other person will change. How much is not known, but the other person will change.
It's so easy to say "I love you," but so hard to show it. People can buy flowers and dinners, but in other ways, it's nearly impossible to do.
Anything that can be seen as exposing the inner self--the hopes, the dreams, the more personal details--are seen as a sign of weakness that can be used. This stems from two types of fear that the psychoanalyst Otto Rank termed "life fear" and "death fear." The first is a fear of being an individual, the fear of being abandoned. A person with the fear throws themself so much into the relationshp, trying so hard to please the other person by being a reflection of the other person, that they lose a sense of they they really are. The second fear is the fear of losing one's independence, the complete opposite of the first. People with this fear have secret back doors installed in their relationship so they can run away if things become too serious.
Love requires courage. Courage requires being fully committed, but being all too aware that things might be possibly wrong. We might be wrong in pursuing this. This doubt is healthy. Being absolutely convinced is dangerous and unhealthy. It requires quieting the doubts of others and personal, unconscious doubts as well. That is real courage. To pursue something in spite of doubt.

When do the risks outweigh taking risks? Never. Not being capable of love is abnormal. To purposely hide yourself from love for fear of being hurt is abnormal. With love, you have to take the risks that come along with it. You have to risk being vulnerable. As Jalal ad-Din Rumi said, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."


Well, that was a little too...well...philosophical. More regular posts will come later. That's all for now.

Weekend Update

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the site for all things related to Un. This blog has not been updated since Friday. I was going to update it on Saturday, but I was sick and I felt like a ton of bricks was dropped on my head.

Damn. I hate being sick. I haven't had a cold this bad (I think it is a cold) since...well...three years ago. That's how long my immune system has resisted the nearly 200 different types of rhinoviruses that can cause the common cold. Despite being sick, I still retain the "demon editor from hell" that prevents me from making too many grammatical and spelling mistakes. Not that it really matters to you...
I went shopping on Saturday. I made the mistake of driving through campus an hour before the game started. Not a very good idea. I have to admit, there are many enterprising people living in the area. Lots of advertising for cheap parking spaces. In fact, five whole dollars less than what the parking department (and the competitors) charge.
It's pretty cool that they broadcasted the game at an unnamed grocery store that I shopped at for food. It's pretty amusing to hear the announcer scream "Julian Wright leaps up and denies a..." and then immediately hear "Price check on a gallon of Roberts 2% milk." It's even better when you hear the fans at Allen Fieldhouse scream when they revert back to the game. Priceless.

God...I feel lousy. I did the laundry today. In order to get to the washing machine, I have to walk down some stairs. Barely made it without getting dizzy and falling into a nearby wall. In addition to the usual symptoms of a cold, I have a fever that comes and goes plus a pounding headache.

Damn. Looks like I won't be mobbed by women tomorrow...as if that ever happened once in my life. Stay away.

That's all for now.

Unprofessional Responsibility

It's that time of the day again...I get to let you know what I'm thinking of at this moment. It's time for a public service announcement that might do you some good.

For all of those readers who are thinking about going to law school or in law school, the following should be an important lesson in how not to act. Hey, it's a good lesson for everyone, especially if you have a job and you use e-mail. Not that I'm assuming you use it for e-mailing dirty jokes to your co-workers. Anyways...I digress.
The following should be an enlightening lesson on the proper use of e-mail, as well as other topics like business etiquette and professional responsibility.
You're a newly minted lawyer for the state of Massachusetts. You go to a law firm and you have a good first interview. Then comes the call from the interviewer that she will be making a little less than expected (due to the hire of a second lawyer), but he was happy to have hired her. He also made the usual arrangements like making new stationary...etc. She said that may have to give it more thought.
After some more thought, she decides to decline the offer. According to her words in a newspaper article (after the mess became a story), she declined the offer because the reduced salary ''might have been realistic for other people to survive on, but I like nicer things. I like the finer things in life." Of course. She calls herself a ''trust fund baby" in the article. Her reason for responding to the job listing because ''I wanted to establish somewhat of a career for myself," she said. ''No one wants to be living off daddy." Her father is a lawyer. So she declines with the following e-mail:

"Dear Attorney [BLANK]: At this time, I am writing to inform you that I will not be accepting your offer. After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living in light of the work I would be doing for you. I have decided instead to work for myself, and reap 100% of the benefits that I (sic) sew. Thank you for the interviews."

After that, things went downhill. The reply:

"[BLANK] - Given that you had two interviews, were offered and accepted the job (indeed, you had a definite start date), I am surprised that you chose an e-mail and a 9:30 p.m. voicemail message to convey this information to me. It smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional.
Indeed, I did rely upon your acceptance by ordering (sic) stationary and business cards with your name, reformatting a computer and setting up both internal and external e-mails for you here at the office. While I do not quarrel with your reasoning, I am extremely disappointed in the way this played out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors."

The counterpunch and where things go worse:

"A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so. Again, thank you."

The retort to the retort:

"Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really
want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?"

The final e-mail and where the prelude to nuclear holocaust begins:

"bla bla bla."

If that wasn't enough, the attorney sends the exchange to a lawyer friend who asks if he can send this to other people. Not good. Not very professional. Neither side did very well.

Then again, this episode isn't as bad as this guy who made a total drunken fool out of himself while a summer associate. Not to insult the legal profession or law schools, but that commonly happens on a Thursday night or a Friday Night or a....you get the picture.

To sum up with very obvious lessons to be learned
1. Do not put anything in an e-mail that you do not want others to know about.
2. Business etiquette is a good thing. This means being polite in e-mail.
3. It is a good thing to act calm and rational about such matters.
4. E-mail spreads faster than most communicable diseases.
5. Lawyers have a bad reputation as being slimy. Please don't reinforce that stereotype.


That's all for now.

Thinking

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Or at least stuff that this blogger finds interesting.

I spend a lot of time thinking. You do this a lot when you have several hours to kill between classes and you've already solved the New York Times crossword puzzle in seven minutes and pretty much every other crossword puzzle you can get your hands on. That and you've read the local newspapers, the USA Today, and the Times. And you've done that all before your first class at 8:30 in the morning.
I don't know. It's kind of nice to just sit in a chair and let your mind wander. I've spent many hours in my own little mental fantasy world, which might explain for a lot of things. OK, to be honest, a whole lot of things. But I can change, if I have to, I guess. Maybe not.

I've just come up with the most obvious thing ever. It's one of those things that you finally realize, thinking its the most profound thing ever, but everyone else you know came up with that idea years ago. You're always the last one to find out.
You'll rarely (I hesitate to use the word "never" as "never" could possibly happen) find me ultra-happy. The "what controlled substance have you been taking" type of happy. To put in more cliched terms, the "walking on sunshine," "flying higher than a kite" kind of happy. It's a rare thing. Even rarer, if this happiness is based upon love. You'll rarely find me talking about "really great girl I met" or "dating" or any sort of thing involving relationships.
On a related note, I find it amusingly disturbing that I find it amusing when I think about what it would be like if I were in such a mood. Not that mental illness runs amok in the familial gene pool, but it could be a possibility. Or I just have an odd mind in my head. On another related-yet-unrelated note, it could mean that I'm a genius, as those with superior intellect or talent in an area like music (think Mozart or Van Gogh[yes, Van Gogh is a painter]), tend to exhibit odd quirks. They also tend to have other less-desirable tendencies (depression and the particularly nasty habit of self-extermination [not that I have such tendencies]) which lead to cut their chances at reproduction short.
In other words, I don't need alcohol or drugs to exhibit strange behavior. My mind has the ability to act unpredictably, sometimes at unopportune times. Though when it does happen, the results can be creative, like comedic genius. I could just be manic and I need a trigger to set it off. I digress.
Sorry for another digression. I've lived a life where I've never gotten into trouble of any sort. At least with the law or figures of authority. I now have the urge to raise a commotion or a few ears. Must be the manic side of my mind. I digressed again.
If you ever happen to find me in such a state of over-the-top euphoria, something is terribly wrong. Most likely, I have been taken over by an alien-implanted device. It would be best to have a conversation. If, by any chance, the euphoria is love-related (i.e. "finding a nice girl"), then you can safely assume that the end of the world is coming. Or that's at least what I've been thinking about.

On a totally unrelated topic, something to think about. Economists have written an insightful article on the economics of prostitution. Nothing says "I love you" on Valentines Day than saying "Honey, you're a low cost provider for sex, at least when compared to a prostitute." This is, of course, not my personal opinion, but the opinion of the economists who wrote this article available in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format.

That's all for now.

Dick Cheney

Forget the usual introduction, but some more stuff on Dick Cheney, thanks to the Smoking Gun website.
The White House may be good at keeping secrets, but not good enough. Sooner or later, someone finds out. With the Cheney hunting accident, one would expect that there would be a police report. Well, The Smoking Gun obtained the official police report on the incident. In addition to the police report on the hunting accident, there are other documents involving the VP like his two DWI convictions.
Or you could just click on this link and have the work done for you.

Valentines Day Stuff

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only site (that I know of at this moment) on the Internet devoted to all thing Un. At least all the stuff that the blogger finds interesting and wishes to share with you.

Love is infectious, but not as much as a cold. I'm feeling particularly lazy today, as it is Valentines Day and as mentioned earlier, I have a cold. I'm single, so this way too overcommercialized holiday has no real appeal to me at this moment. In all honesty, my opinion of this day will not change later in life, even if I have a significant other in my life. Then again, if that ever occurs, I probably would buy flowers or a nice gift or something...I think. Which is probably one of the more honest statements you'll read on this blog. Not that this blog is based upon lies. I'm a pretty honest person.
There are many romantic songs a person can play on Valentines Day. A person can't do wrong with a little Luther Vandross, Barry White, or some other soulful singers. But, after a while, even these classics can get a little stale. So the following is a list of songs (you probably have never heard and in no particular order):

1. "This Strange Effect" Hooverphonics, Blue Wonder Powder Milk
2. "All To Myself" Philosopher Kings, The Philosopher Kings
3. "Charms" Philosopher Kings, The Philosopher Kings
4. "Skin Against Skin" DJ Krush(featuring Deborah Anderson), Milight
5. "I Love You" Sara McLachlan, Surfacing
6. "Gorecki" Lamb, Lamb
7. "Lullaby" Lamb, Fear of Fours
8. "Still Waiting" Big Sugar, 500 Pounds
9. "Temple" Beverly Klass, III


And for those who are bitter about this day, some anti-Valentines Day stuff. If you have a sense of humor or a sense of bitterness, this might somewhat cheer you up, if it is at all possible.
1. Anti-Valentines Day Cards from Worth1000, one of the best sites devoted to the joys of Photoshop
2. A Party Menu for Lonely, Bitter People who dislike Valentines Day
3. A song for those who hate Valentines Day
4. A song for those who hate love in general


That's all for now.

No Relations to Aaron Burr...

Greetings and welcome to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site for all things related to Un. Ah...nothing like history in the making. It's been a while since we've had vice presidents shooting at other people while in office. Think Aaron Burr killing Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, 200 years ago. There might have been other Vice Presidents behaving badly, but newspaper coverage was notoriously bad back then. Politicians paid newspapers to keep these things hush-hush...not that I'm trying to insult ethics in newspapers.

Well, now you can add Dick Cheney to this list as he accidentally shot one of his hunting companions while hunting for quail. The incident, according to the story, happened as follows. Items within brackets were added in by the blogger for context:

She [Katharine Armstrong] said Whittington went to retrieve a bird he shot. Cheney and the third hunter, whom she would not identify, walked to another spot and discovered a second covey of quail.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," said Armstrong, who was in the car.
"The vice president didn't see him," she said. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

The victim of this accident, Mr. Harry Whittington, is a 78 year old lawyer in Austin, Texas, is reported to be in stable condition. All the members of the hunting party were wearing the requisite bright-orange hunting vests.
Not that I find this particularly interesting(actually, I do), but this incident was not reported by the Vice-President's office for nearly 24 hours. It wasn't known until a local newspaper reported this incident on their website.
Some other interesting things that may be noted about this incident and the people involved.
1. The ranch is owned by a longtime friend of VP Cheney and President G.W. Bush. Katharine is the daughter of Tobin Armstrong, a politically connected rancher who has been a guest at the White House and spent 48 years as director of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Her mother is Anne Armstrong, who was a Halliburton director when that corporation hired Cheney.
2. Mr. Whittington is a regular, too, but it was supposedly the first time the two men hunted together.
3. Mr. Whittington has long been active in Texas Republican politics. He's been appointed to several state boards, including when then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission. Note the irony about the last statement. Member of the Texas Funeral Service Commission.
One can see the many humorous possibilities one can milk from this story (From BoingBoing.com):

1) *Are* lawyers in season right now?
2) Was the lawyer at least a ]4-point?
3) Was Cheney within his permit limit?
4) Was the Cheney aide misquoted about the lawyer's hunting suit having a target on the back, or that he'd bought it at Target a while back?
5) Will Disney adapt this into a cartoon about a baby lawyer having to adjust to living in the wild without his parent?
6) Is this what you should expect if you don't contribute enough to a political reelection fund in the future?
One more: Or is this the administration's new plan for tort reform, No Lawyer Left Behind?

Well, in other news, this is related to the protests about the cartoons. But first, I would like to preface this with a few statements. Most followers of religion, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or whatever belief known in this world, are not violent radicals. They are nice, honest, kind people that you would want to have as friends or neighbors or future spouses. The extremists, those who twist and distort religion and use it for violent means, are not representative of adherents of religion.
Anyways, this imam in England, chose the wrong words and perpetuated the myth that followers of Islam are violent radicals. Basically, to sum up his statements, he praised the suicide bombers as they brought attention to Muslims and their acts were good.

One thing you should not say to a police officer, most likely armed with a weapon: "You ain't the only one with a Glock. If it wasn't for your gun and your badge, I'd kick your ass." Add to this the fact that you've been given probation for a weapons conviction. Not smart at all. Well, if you're a famous Chicago Bears football player, it's something you would say. Go figure.

Yeah. KU plays Oklahoma State in men's college basketball. Go Hawks.


That's all for now.

Stand Up Comedy

Greetings and welcome to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site to all things related to Un. It's like the huckster tourist trap located in the middle of nowhere, but the really crappy postcards and gifts.

Have you ever done anything on an impulse, just because you wanted to do it? Well, I did. And it involved stand up comedy.
People have told me that I have a pretty good sense of humor. I'm a funny guy with a rapid wit and an acid tongue. People at the law school think my articles for the Brief-Brief (www.ku.edu/~ bbrief) a riot, only because I make fun of the law, law school, and followers of Intelligent Design. Nothing is held back...well...some stuff is held back. If I said everything I wanted to say, it might not be suitable for publication.
When I do get on a roll, I write and say the most outlandish stuff. There is no need for me to get drunk to say crazy stuff. You know, the stuff you want to say, but you don't, only because it would be "politically incorrect." It's like the fine line between being a fool and being creative. If you can't tell the difference, you might as well throw everything you've got into it. Hey, if you do crash and burn, it will be in a blaze of glory or infamy. People will watch a person who sets themself on fire, no matter how bad the situation ends up.

So, it seemed natural that with my love of comedy, the most ideal situation came up. There was a chance, no matter how remote, for me to win a standup comedy competition. If I did win, I would advance to the finals. Winning that meant a gig at The Improv (located in KC) and being the warmup act to a famous comedian performing at KU in April. Not too bad. The only catch...it was on Friday night at 7:00 PM. I found out about it that afternoon. At best, I had oh...four, five hours to prepare something. Plus, I never performed an actual standup comedy routine before. First time ever. OK, I did perform impressions during Pub Night last year, but that was different.
There's a good thing about being a law school student. They train you welll in spouting out a bunch of stuff in little time. It's how lawyers win cases. You can always find something to say, even if you have no chance in hell to win.

So I go up. I managed to make fun of myself and got a bunch of laughs from the audience. I guess the politically incorrect jokes about Asian stereotypes do work, especially if the audience consists mainly of college students.

EXAMPLE: Everyone I know says, "I know why I'm single. It's because everyone says that I'm a nice guy. I'm so kind, intelligent, and loyal. It makes me sound like a dog. I'm not a damn dog! To add insult to injury, I take an online test and it says I'm a f****** Labrador Retriever. I hate Labrador Retrievers! They're way too chewy."

Nobody expected that one. It's a nice buildup to the "chewy" punchline. Add in some other jokes about being an Asian sellout (You know what the call an Asian who eats Minute Rice? An Uncle Bens) and being pitifully single and you've got a winner. And I pulled all of this stuff off the top of my head. Well, not really. I did think of these jokes earlier, but I never got the chance to actually perform them.
It went pretty well. I did have time management issues, which meant I went over the time limit. Hey, as I said, once I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll. I probably should have cut out the last minute or so when I rambled about law school. But other than for that, I think I held my own as a newbie. I didn't win. The top three performers got to go to the finals. I wasn't in the top three. It would have been nice to make it into the top three, but that's the way life goes. I didn't go in with the expectation of winning, but it would have been nice. Not that it really matters. I just wanted to have fun.

Not that I'll be able to perform the "politically incorrect" version of any stand up routine on Pub Night. You have to keep everything politically correct, PG or lower. Don't want to piss off the alumni or the nice people receiving the profits. Oh well. I probably can come up with not-so-offensive jokes. Or I'll just do impressions just like last year with some new ones added in. And some humor tossed in. I'm sure that Woody Allen can talk about adoption again. I guess I'll have to find some other way of feeding the stand-up comedy bug.


That's all for now.

Technology

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site of nearly all things related to Un.
I am having a really lousy time with technology. At least when it comes to the University of Kansas' e-mail access. Put simply, I hate it. The list of things that have went wrong with technology:
1. I can't send e-mail to the Brief-Brief e-mail address for some reason. The messages keep bouncing back. They're "undeliverable." I tried six times to send one e-mail on both Outlook Exchange and Webmail. Nothing worked at all. Thankfully, the editor saved a copy of the articles I emailed to him.
2. I can't get Outlook Exchange to work properly. Not that it's ever worked properly (actually functioning without lag or error messages or whatever is wrong with Outlook at any give time), but that's a different story. I type in the web address and the page does not exist. Can't find the server. But the nice people working at the library have no problems getting on. Is it just me?
3. Webmail doesn't recognize that I exist. I changed my password (due to the University's new "Secure Password" initiative) yesterday. It should be working by now considering that the webpage said it would take a half-hour. Does not work. Access denied. Over and over again. Last time I checked, 30 minutes and nearly 18 hours is not the same thing. Unless you're in the G. W. Bush administration where everything is relative and redefined. I'm now an "Intruder" and access is now denied for "an hour." That might mean what...a week?
4. I can get e-mail access through the KYou Portal, a website with a bad pun for a name. Ha Ha. KU...K-You? Get it? Not very clever. I wonder how much it cost to come up with that name? Probably less than their new logo which a person with Photoshop could whip up in an hour and for a lot less. I digress.
However, KYou is buggy also. It takes forever to load, gives me error messages, and doesn't recognize commands like "delete mail" or "move mail" if you click on the little icons. Not that the icons are supposed to mean anything and by clicking on them, they're supposed to work. I guess the web designers put them there for decoration. You know, to make the site look pretty.
I had to sign off by clicking on "sign off" (Which functioned correctly the first time unlike the other icons and buttons on the site. I guess they recognized that people want to get off the site and not be trapped there forever, clicking on icons in vain) and logon again just to read three e-mails. Wow, no wonder why KU wants website people so much. They need them to get their webiste running or crawling...

I can only say that I can access my other non-KU e-mail accounts very easily, unlike the KU account. Go figure.

That's all for now.

Random Website Links

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site devoted to all things related to Un.

It's time for random website links that I found amusing.


A judge tells Congress in a legal opinion to stick the new backruptcy law where the Chapter 7 don't shine. He found the new laws to be anti-consumer and pro-big business, which isn't so surprising. Credit card and other financial services companies had complained for years that their costs were increased by people who ran up debts knowing that they could file for bankruptcy and avoid repayment.
Supporters (credit card companies and financial service companies) say the new law was good since Americans would save money on interest rates. It would stop the "bad customers" from making a mockery of the bankruptcy process. Then again, credit card companies like people who don't pay on time because they make most of their money by charging late fees and high interest to the late-paying customers. Where else can you charge up to 24.99% and get away with it? Oh, payday loans.
Yes, there are people who abuse the bankruptcy process, but they are a small minority of the people who make use of it. Anyways...I digress.
A zinger of a quote from his opinion:

"Apparently, it is not the individual consumers of this country that make the donations to the members of Congress that allow them to be elected and re-elected and re-elected and re-elected."

You can read the opinion here:
http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/020506_bankrupt.pdf

After the "scandal" (which means "event that leads to public uproar that leads to business as usual--lie, cheat, steal") in Washington DC over lobbyists like Abramoff, one might (in a delusional state of mind) think that Congress would clean up their act. Not exactly. It's business as usual because very few people want to lose free trips to exotic locales or a round or two at a premium Scottish golf course. It's not like people are going to vote them out of office.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3646212.html

Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court says there are no politics involved on the Supreme Court. In theory, that would be the case, but in real life...theory doesn't work the way one would hope. Can anybody say 5 to 4?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_go_su_co/breyer_chicago

President G. W. Bush didn't pitch the plan of privatizing Social Security. Why bother when you will get tossed into a lake of fire? What you do is downplay everything by proposing "bipartisan proposals" and then slippping his own proposal into the budget. It's that old sleight of hand trick that magicians use: "look at this hand while the other hand does something else...like pull out the hidden rabbit in my sleeve."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11235990/site/newsweek/from/RSS

That's all for now.

Tell Me Sweet Little Lies...

"Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
(Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies)"
-Fleetwood Mac, Tell Me Lies

"By the time you swear you're his, shivering and sighing--
And he vows his passion is infinite, undying--
Lady make a note of this:
One of you is lying."
-Dorothy Parker


Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the site for all things related to Un or at least stuff that I find interesting. Either one is a valid description of this site for all menaingful intents and purposes. This post is a quasi-return to the semi-philosophical/random thoughts post I had when I first started this blog. Go figure.

Today's post is all about lying, but first, I must preface this with a "little" expository blurb on honesty. My mind works in a strange way, but it makes some sense when everything is written out, or so I hope. One can never be too sure with such things, even when such things are nicely planned out. This might sound like some sort of Dr. Phil-ish post, so please forgive me. Yeah. The opinions expressed in this post are solely the opinions of this blogger and not meant to be taken as actual advice. To begin...the following.

I. Honest Americans
Americans find immense pride in having an honest reputation. For some reason, all of the great leaders in American history were honest. George Washington (according to Parson Weems, a well-known exaggerator of the truth/story teller) was so honest, he could never tell a lie. Hence, the fabricated tale about a little George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. Go figure. The most famous "historical story" about Washington was a lie spread by a liar. OK, not a liar...forget it. Who can forget Abraham Lincoln, our esteemed 16th President? He earned the nickname of "Honest Abe," though his detractors called him "Butcher"(after several nasty Civil War battles like The Wilderness) and "The Great Northern Ape." Then again, nobody wants to be a country whose great leaders were liars, cheaters, and low-down scum. Wait, the founders of the United States were rebels. What's up with that? I digress.
Anyways, today, there seems to be a lack of honest leaders. For example, one can bring up Richard Nixon, or "Tricky Dick." That nickname is wrong on so many levels. "Tricky Dick"? Sounds like something from a porno movie. To add in a little equal-opportunity President bashing, one can also add in Bill Clinton, who had the title of "Slick Willy," another pornographic sounding, yet apt nickname. Monica Lewinsky might call him something else, but that's for another post.

II. The Value of Honesty in Relationships
It sounds so obvious, but it must be said. Honesty plays an important role in the formation of relationships, as well as keeping them stable. Some might disagree and say that deception plays a large role in the formation of relationships, as people stretch the truth when describing themselves and what they do. Or at least lying well enough to get someone naked into their bed. ("Honest, I really love you.") Anyways, as it has been said, honesty in a relationship leads to trust. Logically, if people are honest with eachother, it builds a certain level of trust. Once a certain level of trust has been reached, the relationship will generally stay stable, unless some deep, dark secret rears its ugly head, like that one time in Cancun where you got drunk...you know what I am getting at, I hope. Well, to get to the point, trust is the glue that keeps relationships together. Without trust, things fall apart into a million little pieces. We all know where Mr. Frey went wrong with his "truthful" memoir or lack of truth memoir. It's a lousy metaphor, but it works well enough in this section.
Once a relationship is stable and both sides agreee and other factors fall into place, a serious but casual relationship can evolve into a more serious "till death do us part" type deal. Implicit in the vows of "love, honor, and cherish" is honesty and trust. After all, without the honesty and trust, "till death do us part" might involve a loaded .357 magnum or some other nasty means of death. Which leads to a most strange aspect of relationships: why people lie in relationships.

III. Tell Me Sweet Little Lies
We have all told lies to people. Some people have told more lies than others. If lies were like icing, most people would be able to frost a wedding cake. Not just any ordinary wedding cake(is there such a thing as an "ordinary" wedding cake), but a muli-tiered, extravagant confection replete with many decorations. One that would make any person "ooh" and "aah" at the mere sight of it. Lying is not limited to humans of course. Our closest genetic match, the chimpanzee, is quite adept at deception. It's an evolutionary thing, or so scientists have speculated:

"If we speculate about the evolution of communication, it is evident that a very important stage in this evolution occurs when the organism gradually ceases to respond quite 'automatically' to the mood signs of another and becomes able to recognize the sign as a signal: that is, to recognize that the other individual's and its own signals are only signals, which can be trusted, distrusted, falsified, denied, amplified, corrected, and so forth" (Bateson 1955:40).

Then again, if deception is part of the evolution of communication and if it is, one could argue, hardwired into animals, then why do people tell the truth to perfect strangers like people we meet on the street, let alone shrinks during therapy sessions?
One could argue that we don't per se, love them like those we care about. To use "love" in such a way means to define it in a certain way also. One can "love" their girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband, etc. in one way, but "love" another person in a similar, but different way. This also requires a different definition for "care" between the two classes. One does not have the same emotional and physical attachment with strangers than with those we care for. We could care less about what they think, well most of the times.
For instance, if one gets very drunk in a noisy bar, one might blab about secrets that they have never told anyone. The next morning, one hopes that everyone else was as equally drunk because they recognize what they have done. But while under the stupor of alcohol, one does not really think about what they are saying. In a crowded room, one might say the most shocking things, but since one is in a crowded room, all the conversations blend together. One will, most likely, never see the person again. If one does happen to meet that stranger again, it is highly unlikely anyone will remember anything.
Basically, when things are going down the tubes and when a person is under pressure, the person under pressure will lie. They are willing to lie because it appears to be the only solution to the sticky problem. We lie more to the people we love because we supposedly do not want to hurt them by telling them the truth. A lie that makes them feel better doesn't seem to be bad. Why bother telling them the truth when it could cause serious problems? But there lies the problem.

IV. Truth or Consequences: Conclusion
The main problem with telling a lie is obvious. People can and will find out the truth. Once your "loved one" discovers the deception, even bigger problems happen. The easiest person to deceive is yourself. Once you deceive yourself that telling a lie is the best solution, it becomes easier to tell that lie to the one you love. But "love" is so easy to redefine to suit one's mood.
If one has to resort to lying to keep a relationship together, it's very likely that the relationship really isn't a real relationship but a giant sham based upon deception. Such relationships are not the best ones to be stuck in. Tell the same lie you decieve yourself with to another person and that person will recognize how foolish it seems. Of course, it's easy to say this but hard to put into practice.
The next time you think it's a good time to lie to save a relationship, think hard about that decision. It may sound good, but it may hurt you later. Your "relationship" might be temporarily saved for a while, but once the truth is found out, the resulting breakup might be even worse.

Reference:
Bateson, Gregory (1955). "A Theory of Play and Fantasy." In Psychiatric Research Reports (Vol. 2), pp. 39-51


That's all for now.

The Bush "Science Initiative"

Greetings and welcome to The Un-Zone, the site for all things related to Un. Well, at least stuff that this blogger finds interesting.

President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union speech, talked about the "American Competitiveness Initiative." One of the goals of this initiative was "giving our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science." Children will learn more math and science courses to make America competitive with other nations that score higher than the US in tests, which normally means nearly everyone else that takes the particular test.
What does that mean for children in the United States when it comes to more rigorous math and science courses? Let's take a look at the facts and see...

One would expect that people in NASA would have a basic grounding in sound science like astronomy, cosmology, etc. But not in the George W. Bush administration. A presidential appointee to NASA had the following background in science: NONE WHAT SO EVER. But he did have the following credentials to his name according to The New York Times:

intern in the 'war room' of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

Remember Mr. "Blame Everyone" Brown, the head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency? No experience, but he was a good friend of the President. That's enough experience. Take a look at what he has to say about the Big Bang Model, one of the basic things learned in an astronomy course (quoted from The New York Times):

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

And this is what me might expect as science? American children will be competitive by learning this stuff? Last time I checked an AP Test, Intelligent Design wasn't part of it. Unless of course, the College Board decides to bow down to the wishes of the President.

President G.W. Bush is a big proponent of Intelligent Design. No big surprise. Supporters of Intelligent Design now believe that they are the intellectual heirs of Gallileo. The same Gallileo who was condemned by the Catholic Church for his support of the heliocentric universe. At this moment, what are the odds that Intelligent Design will be part of the science initiative? Then again, Gallileo, unlike the Intelligent Design proponents, had at least two things going for him. One, he was correct in his views. Two, and more importantly, he performed ACTUAL EXPERIMENTS to test his hypotheses. That included using telescopes and using actual mathematics. Oh, I remember another thing going for Gallileo. He was well-esteemed by his peers and he had a better reputation. He was not a rogue scientist to his peers, but to the Church that believed in the now shown to be wrong ideas of Aristotle. Nothing like the distortion of history to suit facts. But then again, "hard facts" never really mattered to followers of Intelligent Design.

This could be what the new science initiative could look like if President George W. Bush gets his ways. Then again, he might actually stick with actual science and not Intelligent Design or any other weird idea. Consider what's been said in this post while you read the following quote from Donald Tighe:

The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said.

Really? I'm not too sure. That's all for now.

Super Bowl Commercials and Sports

Greetings and welcome to the Un-Zone, the site for all things Un.

The KU-Oklahoma basketball game. Wow. They didn't choke horribly for once on national television. Like the Big Monday game vs. Missouri or the Maui Invitational games. The much improved Jayhawks showed up for once. I'm just hoping they bring the A-level performance during the rest of the season. If they make it(most likely...I think) to March Madness, I hope they don't go and repeat the "Bucknell Bomb" and lose in the first round.

The Super Bowl was slow during the first half, but gained some level of excitement in the second half. That's all I can say about the game. The pregame stuff bored me. The "Jerome Bettis was born in Detroit and might retire" stories got really tiring and boring. Just like nearly every one of the Super Bowl commercials. Even the Bud Light commercials weren't as funny this year. Sucky commercials.

One last thing. If you ever have any empty whiskey bottles and have some level of technical expertise, an interesting modification job one can do. A whiskey bottle computer. Go figure.
http://www.metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/whiskypc/index_eng

That's all for now. Got to go to Payment Systems. Fun.

Same Old Run Around

Greetings and welcome to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site to all things Un plus other stuff this blogger finds of particular interest at the time the post is written.

I wrote an article for the Brief-Brief today in about an hour. It's about how law school and cults share eerily similar behavior. Not that law school is like a cult or anything. If you don't include similarities like long lectures, a lexicon that makes little sense to others, and a large portion of a day spent in one building, etc. Of course, it's meant to be satire. Last year for the February issue, I wrote an article all about Valentine's Day-related cases. I've now progressed in my writing in a strange way.
An unrelated question by the way: How in the world do you have an electric bill of 76 cents? Unless it's some sort of mistake, I don't see how. If you do know, please enlighten me.
And now to the point of this post after a random question, a poem/song. It's a look at the "right track" that people want their kids/themselves to follow. The "do this and do that to get ahead and forget about doing anything else" school that drives people crazy because it's not really right for them. If I only had some skills in composing music. I think this would make for a nice little ditty with some piano and a guitar. Oh well. A person can dream. Enjoy.


"Same Old Run Around"

When you were young you heard people say
The same old message told in a million ways
Go study hard, no time to play
You’ve got to have a four point oh GPA
Follow this track and don’t go astray
Take these classes, in the end it will pay
In lots of money when your hair is gray
Giving a hundred percent is not OK

It’s the same old run around
Dreams are lost and never found
While you look at the sky and touch the ground
Do it all in a single bound
Cause dreams will leave without a sound
Another victim of the run around

You’re dreaming that you’re in a different place
Than stuck in a cubicle called your office space
Your life is moving at an ever-quickening pace
Another discontented soul in the human race
You remember graduating and you’re feeling glad
Dreaming of the memories that you had
That crazy party, that wild drinking game
Your so-called life will never be the same

It’s the same old run around
Dreams are lost and never found
While you look at the sky and touch the ground
Do it all in a single bound
Cause dreams will leave without a sound
Another victim of the run around

It’s the same old run around
You dreams were lost and were never found
Fell from the sky and hit the ground
Did it all in a single bound
And all your dreams left without a sound
In the vicious cycle of the run around

CSI: Wild West and Other Stuff

Greetings and welcome to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated and official site to all things related to Un.

In today's update, it will be about the odd crumbs and detrius that one can find lurking in the corners of the Internet.

Up first, is a case that makes no sense what-so-ever and yet is taught in Evidence class. It also has an interesting local connection, which makes this doubly interesting. It combines the law and colorful local history: Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Hillmon, 145 U.S. 285 (1892). Apparently, Brown said that he was going to Colorado with Hillmon was held admissible to show that he had in fact done so. Basically, if you make a statement about intent, it can be used to circumstantially prove you did what you said. For example, if you say, "I'm going to Paris," you can use that statement to circumstantially prove you went to Paris. There are some problems with this doctrine.
1. People change their minds. I can easily say, "I'm going to Manhattan, KS for a week to make fun of those dumb Wildcats" and go to Las Vegas to play blackjack and Texas Hold-Em. If someone finds out, I can easily claim, "I changed my mind." So much for proving intent.
2. The tough third-party issue. With the Hillmon case, there was no real evidence that Hillmon actually went to Colorado. Is the letter enough proof to show that Hillmon actually went? Depending on the jurisdiction, it may be allowed or it may not be allowed.
Now two researchers are going to use modern tools to solve the problem of the Hillmon case: is the body in the grave really Hillmon or someone else. If it's Hillmon, then the story in the Hillmon case is probably true. Else, you've got another mystery. Who is the dead guy? Where is the crew from CSI when you need them?
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jan/30/gravesite_lawrences_oak_hill_cemetery_might_hold_c/?city_local

You're lost in the middle of the woods. You need a fire and you happen to have a can of Coca Cola and a chocolate bar. What do you do? You make a fire using that can of coke and the chocolate bar. How? Just click on the link below to find out.
http://www.trackertrail.com/survival/fire/cokeandchocolatebar/

President Bust isn't happy that Hamas won. Now that Hamas has won an election and shown the world that democracy is spreading in the Middle East (something that President Bush said was good), they're now the butt of political jokes. One must wonder how they are going to respond to this sort of humor.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/hamas_jokes

Americans aren't buying American cars, but are buying foreign brands like Honda and Toyota. The "Big Three" are wondering why. Now the American public is telling them, quite frankly, why the cars built by the Big Three aren't so great.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10892985/


That's all for now.

State of the Union

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site for all things related to Un, or at least stuff this blog writer finds interesting.

President George W. Bush will present the State of the Union Address on Tuesday. Regular programming will be cancelled so the leader of this country shall tell Congress and the American people how the nation is doing and his plans for the future. I use the term "his" as all previous Presidents were male. Until there is a female president, I shall use "his" unless the premise of Commander in Chief actually becomes true.
He'll most likely talk about the major issues of this time: domestic wiretaps, the war on terrorism, etc. Expect him to talk about how the world is much safer since democracy is now a part of Iraq. The economy is stronger due to tax cuts. America will be safer if we have domestic wiretaps.
As an American citizen, it is my patriotic duty and obligation to warn everyone that accepting everything the President says at face value is not anti-American or unpatriotic. Questioning the status-quo is patriotic. If the Founding Fathers didn't question the legitimacy of being under British rule, there would be no United States of America.
To better facilitate the spread of democratic ideals and a sense of rational patriotism, I offer the following examples of common logical fallacies that people and Presidents use. Thanks to Stephen Downes and his excellent website explaining logical fallacies.

1. Slippery Slope: a faulty use of "if-then" premises that necessarily do not follow from the beginning premise.
EX: If we do not allow for a domestic surveillance program, then it will allow the terrorists to organize. If the terrorists organize, then they will plan another attack. If we do not stop their planning, the America will be attacked just like it did on 9/11.
2. Appeal to Consequence: The author points to the disagreeable consequences of holding a particular belief in order to show that this belief is false
EX: You can't agree that the President's powers can be limited because this will make America a target for terrorist attacks.
3. Prejudical Language: use of loaded emotional words to attach moral goodness to a proposition.
EX: Wireless wiretaps are good because without them, another terrorist attack will happen, just like the attacks on 9/11. (Note the use of terrorist attack and 9/11. The President and Vice President use "9/11" and "terrorist" frequently to lend support to their actions.)
4. Style Over Substance: as the term implies, the argument or arguer is presented in a way to add to the credibility of the argument.
EX: Instead of "domestic surveillance" the phrase "terrorist surveillance" is used. Same program, different name. Nobody wants to go against a "terrorist surveillance" program. And if you make the presenter look like a "friendly and open" person, what have they got to hide? (other than a ruthless personality that will stop at nothing to get what they want)

These are just a few examples of logical fallacies. There is a larger and more complete list of logical fallacies at Stephen Downes' website. Remember to do your patriotic duty: listen carefully and question everything.

That's all for now.


Logical Fallacies
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm

Website Links, Part II

Greetings and welcome back to the Un-Zone, the site for all things Un.

It's time to update and it's the return of website links that I found interesting.

The first up is near and dear to my heart as a law school student at it involves drug dealers or drug users , the number one topic of Criminal Procedure cases. Their turn of bad luck is too funny to believe: a brick of cocaine fell out of a window and landed in front of a police officer who happened to walk by.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060125/NEWS01/601260331/1002/NEWS

With the emphasis on security at airports, one would expect flight attendants to know what items are not allowed onto airplanes. Apparently, one flight attendant decided to bring aboard a grenade. A grenade she thought would make for a cool gift for her son. Thankfully, the grenade was not a live grenade but a dud she bought at an army surplus store. Her common sense was a dud also.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/13711421.htm

The 101 Dumbest moments in Business as decided by CNN. Who wouldn't want to live in a condo that used to be a mental institution?
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/

A professor who ranks "America's Whitest Law Schools." I'm not sure what to make of this. See Chapter Six for the complete rankings.
http://academic.udayton.edu/thewhitestlawschools/2005TWLS/Chapter6/State01.htm

Does it really cost nearly $1,000 to buy a toaster? Does a deep-fat fryer cost $5,500? Apparently the Pentagon thinks so. Despite being able to buy a comparable toaster for only around $800 and the fryer for about $2,000. I guess these products were combat ready, sort of like body armor...
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13163


That's all for now.

Eugenics in America

Greetings and welcome to the Un-Zone, a site on the Information Highway devoted to all things related to Un or at least stuff that this blogger finds interesting enough to post.
The following is a brief history of eugenics in the United States. Personally, I find eugenics to be distasteful, disturbing, and a bunch of pseudo-science nonsense. This post is not meant to be anti-American in any way but a look into a darker period in the history of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence states, "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Despite this noble language, there have been instances in the history of the United States where these words were not applied in practice. One dark period in United States history, however, has not been talked about much. Few people know of this dark blemish in American history, mainly because of its association with Nazi Germany. This topic is the eugenics movement that consumed the United States from the late 1890's to the end of World War II. Even after World War II, the taint of eugenics-like programs still exists today.
Eugenics found its modern roots in England, with the general ideas sketched out by Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Sir Charles Darwin. Basically, he stated that intellectual, moral, and character traits were hereditary and that through a process of selective breeding, these traits could be passed on to offspring. Society was weakening the gene pool by allowing marriages between "good" people and "inferior" people.
Regretfully, this pseudo-science crossed the Atlantic Ocean and spread to the United States. During the 1880's, Alexander Graham Bell studied the deaf population of Martha's Vineyard and concluded that the deaf should not be allowed to marry. In the late 1890's, states enacted laws prohibiting the "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying.
Harry Hamilton Laughlin wrote the "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" in 1922, advocating mandatory sterilization for those who were "socially inadequate." These included epileptics, alcoholics, criminals, blind, deaf, and others. Nazi Germany adopted Laughlin's views and wrote the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health: Breeding the "Aryan Race," enacted in 1933. This law stated the following:

Article I. (1.) Anyone who suffers from an inheritable disease may be surgically sterilized if, in the judgment of medical science, it could be expected that his descendants will suffer from serious inherited mental or physical defects.

The United States, thankfully, did not reach the levels that Nazi Germany reached, but the results were ghastly. The Germans forcefully sterilized hundreds of thousands, killed millions of innocent people, and performed horrible experiments on live humans. In the United States, the state of California for example, sterilized 6,200 people classified as "feeble-minded." Yet, the language used by two well known people living at the time sound so eerily similar that one might believe that they were the same person.
Hitler writes the following in Mein Kampf:

"Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unfit must not perpetuate their sufferings in the bodies of their children....[I]t is a crime and a disgrace to make this affliction the worse by passing it on to innocent creatures out of a merely egoistic yearning."

Compare that statement with this written by United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. in his majority opinion in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927):

"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind..."

According to Westlaw, it has been negatively criticized, but it has not been overturned. It's a highly questionable, although a legitimate ruling by the United States Supreme Court. As a historical sidenote, one justice did dissent to this decision, but he did not write one.
One can easily say that these examples are mere aberrations. Given the historical context, one can easily explain these as a sign of the time that these people were living in. Yes, this may be so, but it does not excuse a Supreme Court justice who is interpreting the law to write such a repulsive decision. One might say that people now are enlightened in the United States and such viewpoints are an aberration today. This assumption, sadly, is not so. Such a viewpoint exists, but couched in more palatable terms.
Take for instance, the Pioneer Fund. Founded in 1937 by a group of men including Harry Hamilton Laughlin, their Charter of Incorporation amended in 1985 states their purpose is for "human race betterment." Some of the research they funded came up with the following results. Children from professional backgrounds did better in their future life than those from a working class background. In South Africa, children of African descent did worse on standardized tests, but made significant improvements when taught in a certain manner. To explain these differences, the Pioneer Fund uses the "Out of Africa" Hypothesis that states that those living near the Equator did not need to specialize much to survive, whereas those living farther away from the Equator specialized by adapting to the changing seasons. Hence those living farther north, i.e. North America and Europe, had better brains and talent. Very enlightened views.
William Shockley, one of the founders of the modern transistor that made the computer revolution possible, was an avid believer of eugenics. He wrote a series of editorial letters to the Palo Alto newspapers claiming that the human race was going downhill because of bad breeding. Mr. Shockley came up with a solution to this problem. He suggested paying money to those with low-intelligence if they volunteered to be sterilized--$1,000 for every IQ point below 100. Of course, since these people were supposedly stupid, the money would be kept in a trust. To make it profitable for others, people who convinced those with low IQs to get sterilized would get a monetary reward. He continued to have these views until he died.
Take for instance Ethnic America written by Thomas Sowell. This book was highly touted by readers on Amazon. This book was considered a "must read" by several well-respected magazines and newspapers. Supposedly, it was a hard look into ethnicity and culture in the United States. This might be so, but some of what he writes is disturbing. This excerpt came from page 213:

"The internal distribution of children among blacks has made the upward movement of the race as a whole more difficult. The general tendency of poor people to have more children than middle-class people has been accentuated among American Negroes. Better educated and higher income blacks have even fewer children than their white counterparts, while low-income blacks have even more children than equally low income whites. Much of the struggle that has brought some blacks up from poverty has had to be repeated in successive generations because successful blacks did not have enough children to reproduce themselves."

Based upon this paragraph, one could make the conclusion that African-Americans would move up on the socioeconomic scale and be much better as a whole if the better-educated and higher income African Americans had more children. This conclusion, of course, is absurd. There are other factors that would help all people do better later in life and selective breeding is not one of them.
To quote Vincent Freeman, played by Ethan Hawke, in Gattaca, "There’s no gene for fate." Let’s just hope nobody takes eugenics seriously in the future.

Website Links

Greetings and welcome to the Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site for all things Un.

It's time for an update and today's update will be about various websites I found interesting in my view.

Today's Dumb Criminal story is about a techno-savvy criminal who wasn't so savvy about what you can't sell on the Internet. Like cocaine. Other foolish things he did include posting up a phone number and making an actual sale to an undercover cop.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/consumer/6311338/detail.html

Osama Bin Laden apparently had some time to read while out somewhere in an unknown region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Maybe the US government should read this book. I wonder if he posted a review on Amazon.com?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060123/od_nm/binladen_book_dc;_ylt=AoaUV37VIvjo_G42J8jnP.Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc-

Roe v. Wade is now 33 years old. Instead of being an important case in Supreme Court history, it is now the de facto litmus test for Supreme Court nominees.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/22/abortion.anniversary.ap/index.html

Ferrofluid sculptures. That's it.
http://www.99express.com/posts/ferrofluid_sculptures.htm

A professor pretends to be a Neo-Nazi to test whether "academic freedom" exists at colleges and other places of higher learning. What could possibly go wrong? He got fired and now he is thinking about writing a book like A Million Little Pieces. Go figure.
http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1137649957316870.xml&coll=1

Single

It's another update to this site today. A few random thoughts that came to my head that I had to put down on this site.

Being a good person--a genuinely nice person--does not lead to immediate success with romance. In fact, it is the most naive thought a person can have. On the surface, it seems rational that a member of the opposite sex will find this attactive. It doesn't work that way, ever. If you're single, the worst adjectives that describe you are not what you think. They're not "fat" or "ugly" or even "moron." Oh no. They're the following: "smart", "nice", and "sweet". Yes, they may seem like good things, but they are not.
It may not sound bad, but to a person who has heard "Let's just be friends" everytime they charm a person to deep friendship, it's like calling that person "radioactive." Sure, it doesn't sound bad, but think about it for a moment. Imagine yourself wanting to buy a dog. Let's say a Golden Retriever. What qualities do you like in this furry companion? Hopefully, you're not thinking "chewy." I digress. Hmm...what about "smart," "nice" and "sweet?" OK, this might be stretching it, but add the following adjectives to the list: "loyal" and "friendly." What are you thinking right now? Maybe "Gee...that sounds like the perfect dog to me!" and not "Gee...that sounds like the perfect person I want to date!" Good luck getting past the "just friends" stage in a relationship.

Stranger still, most people (I am assuming this to be true as I have read many articles and books on this topic) want to date/marry a person who is "smart," "nice," "friendly," etc. Yes, looks are important also, but I would like to focus on these three aspects. Some people might add in other adjectives more fit for Prince Charming or Cinderella (post Glass Slipper). And yet, they go into relationships with the total opposite of what they supposedly want.
This might explain the basic premise of the dating ritual: the harder you supposedly are to get, the harder the opposite sex falls for you. After some time, your intended target will find you so irresistable that they will ask you out. Or so it seems in real life. Maybe I am wrong with this line of thought.
One could explain this by saying that people have an intense desire to have what we can't have and to have what we don't have. Sort of like a car nut wanting to own a Porshe 911 or a female wanting to own a 20 carat diamond ring. That sort of thing. Sounds perfectly rational. And yet, this intense desire is irrational. People (supposedly) want a partner who is kind, friendly, smart, etc. and yet get into relationships that do not work. This defeats their intended purpose of finding the ideal mate as falling in love with a non-optimal partner is not the ideal solution to this problem. "Love," using the term loosely, is a powerful force that turns everyone it hits into irrational beings. Our urges are irrational. Which makes them think in a strange fashion by messing up their sense of logic. Kind of like staying with no-good, cheating scum because "they love them." Seeing an episode or two of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich with show this very well. Of course, these people do not learn and fall into the same routine over and over again. And each time after a failed relationship, these people wonder where the nice men and women are.

But does it pay off to be a genuinely nice person? Maybe. It sounds better than "You're going to be lonely and miserable for the rest of your life." Or so it has been said. If you are a genuinely nice person, don't change because you are desperate for a date. Someone, sooner or later will discover there are genuinely nice people. And besides, genuinely nice people will not chew your shoes or shed lots of hair. There is the downside involving the remote control, but that's a problem that can't be helped.


That's all for now.

Back to School...Again

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated website on the Internet devoted to all things Un. Or at least things that I find of interest at any given time while writing stuff for this blog.

It's that time of the year...the beginning of the Spring 2006 semester. The final semester for my second year of law school. It's time to go back to "critically read and analyze" large amounts of "legal knowledge" and during two weeks in May, "compose answers to" or "answer to the best of your ability" questions written by a professor. Basically, read a bunch of cases and statutes, remember them, regurgitate everything onto the pages of a bluebook in three hours, and pray that you remembered everything correctly. Oh for joy.

BA II, Payment Systems, Professional Responsibility, Land Transactions, and International Economic Law. Doesn't that sound like fun? Monday through Friday until 3:00 PM. That will be so much fun. I shall have to temper this exciting legal education with things like "college basketball" and "Pub Night." Speaking of Women in Law Pub Night, I shall return and perform again. Get ready for a surprise. For those who saw me last year, this year should be just as entertaining...I hope.

Anyways, it should be an interesting semester.

That's all for now.

Poetry

Greetings and welcome to the Un-Zone, the irregularly updated site for all things related to Un on the Internet. It's time for an update.
This update is a poem. It's got this bluesy-folkish beat to it. A lot of decent blues songs are about love gone wrong and this poem is about love gone wrong.
It’s a little homage to my career as English major (the use of metaphors and similes) plus a dash of discrete mathematics (logical statements). You'll understand what I am saying once you read it. Kind of humorous in a wry sort of way.
When I write these poems, I start out with little fragments that pop up in my head. Little phrases and sentences that might become a stanza. I generally write these fragments down or I forget them five minutes later. They come at the strangest times: in the middle of the night or even in the middle of a shower. It’s really weird. Maybe it isn’t as strange as I think it is. With this poem, however, I just sat in front of the computer and typed it out. It was a Zen-like moment of pure poetry writing. I’m surprised I came up with all of these metaphors and similes. It's called "Still" To be honest, I like this one.
I hope you indulge me and allow me to post up stuff like this. Enjoy.


STILL
If romance is an adventure
And love is a vast sea
Then I’m a blind captain
Wondering what is happening
Will someone give a map to me
If that special person is land
And love is a vast sea
Then I’ll always be wondering
If others are blundering
Off the edge of the world like me

And I’m still looking
I’m still looking for love
His arrows are stupid
Passed over by Cupid flying above

If romance is a winding road
And love is a journey
Then at the end of the night
I search for a guiding light
Why is a light I can never see
If romance is a marathon
And love is the finish line
Then I have run millions of miles
Without getting many smiles
And I’m not feeling fine

And I’m still running
I’m still running away
My tongue is frozen
The words I have chosen I can’t say

If romance is a tug of war
And love is just a game
Then I’m a guy who is crazy
And whose vision is hazy
A rookie in a professional game
If romance is like hunting
And love is like a gun
Then I’m a hunter admitting
That I have trouble hitting
Targets that are on the run

And I’m still standing
I’m still standing here
Like a deer in the headlights
I’m frozen with fear

If romance is like a cloud
And love is like a plane
Then I’m a pilot who is learning
That crashing and burning
Is an experience full of pain
If romance is like the weather
And love comes in shades of gray
Then a hurricane is growing
And the winds of fate are blowing
My chances with you away

And I’m still flying
I’m still flying low
Flap with all of my strength
For any length, there’s still no place to go

And I’m still looking
And I’m still searching
And I’m still seeking
And I’m still finding
Finding myself—all alone
Finding myself all alone

Random Thoughts

Greetings and welcome back to the Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site for all things related to Un. It's a new year and nothing has changed or so it seems. It could be that things are changing so fast, it seems like nothing has changed at all. Or I am totally clueless about what is going on right now. Oh well.

I watched lots of college football. Penn State v. Florida State was entertaining. Lots of missed field goals. That game should be called the "Crappy Kicker Contest" or "The Wide Everything Game" in homage of Florida State's notorious record of losing games due to missed field goals. Three overtimes. One missed extra point. Four missed field goals. Redeeming yourself after kicking the game winner? Priceless. For everything else there is no consolation, cause you're not a winner and will be harassed on campus when you return and will forever be known as the guy who missed several game winners.
Let's get this straight. USC was overrated and overhyped. Come on..."best college football team ever?" How about Oklahoma winning 47 in a row? USC? 34. Leinart and Bush will trample Texas and win by at least a touchdown? Texas won. Leinart saying that USC was still the better team? You didn't win. Texas had no Heisman winner and little respect. But that doesn't matter if you won the championship game. Better team? Texas.

I made no resolutions this year. Never make them. Don't care for them. That's all.

In about two weeks, law school win begin anew. Whoopee. I can't wait. Note the enthusiam or the lack of it. I sometimes wonder why I am in law school. Not that I don't like law school, but I question why I made that decision in the first place. I sometimes think I should have went into a PhD program or cooking school or something different. It would have been more structured and the grading process would have been less...well...subjective and more objective. You know you screwed up in cooking school if you burn everything to a black char. You know you sucked on an essay if you see lousy grammar and a lack of focus. Law school? You think it was randomly graded. See the November issue of the Brief-Brief. Oh well.

I'm going to write an article for the February edition of the Brief-Brief. I'm not sure what it will be about, but it will probably cement my burgeoning reputation as a funny writer who doesn't care what people think about him and knows way too much. Might as well throw caution to the wind and take the leap off the cliff. You never do anything without giving it your all, right?

That's all for now.