Bad Glacier

I think I’ve finally figured out the trick to efficient blog reading. In Bloglines, I’ve always had my blogs organized into groups based on the blog’s topic or the blogger’s occupation. I had the political blogs, the pre-law blogs, the blawgs, etc. all organized in separate groups.

Recently, I started organizing my blogs by priority. Some blogs I read whenever there’s a new post. Some blogs I read regularly, but I don’t have to check them every day. Others I read only when I have enough free time. These each get their own group. I also have a group for blogs with partial feeds, where only the headline or a short excerpt from the post gets aggregated. These are just a pain in the ass, so they get their own category in my aggregator, so I can visit the site when enough posts get built up to make it worth my while.

This way, I can look at my aggregator and instantly know if there are any blogs I should check, depending on how much free time I have. I can work my way through the higher-priority blogs first, and I never feel like I’m unfairly ignoring anyone.

I suppose if I was really hardcore, I could make priority groups for each of my original categories (”political” or “blawgs” or whatever), but I don’t yet have enough blogs aggregated to make this worthwhile.

Book 8: Franny & Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

Book 9: The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Franny & Zooey is actually made up of two related stories smashed together into a short book. Franny and Zooey are two members of the Glass family, all of whom seem to be too damned smart and too damned witty for their own damned good. The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old sick of the “phonies” he sees everywhere, around New York after he fails out of school. It’s one of the better descriptions of adolescent angst I’ve read (not that I’ve read many of those). And it has nothing (well, almost nothing) to do with baseball. Not that I thought it did before I read it. That’s just silly. Hey, shut up! I don’t come to your blog and mock you!

Well, maybe I will now, jerk.

Both Franny and Holden are learning to deal with the ego, phoniness, and urge to conform they hate in others but still find in themselves. The books follow the different paths Franny and Holden take while trying to come to grips with these problems. They’re both quick reads, so it’s hard to say much about them without giving away something significant, so I won’t. They’re good books. Read them sometime.

Sometimes, when I’m driving, I recognize a car pulled over by a Highway Patrolman as one that passed me a few miles back. Whenever this happens, I immediately break into my victory celebration, complete with maniacal laughing and fist-pumping. Then I call up someone I know to gloat.

Does this make me a bad person?

foxes is no longer gallivanting about the country and has now embarked upon a new challenge: summarizing Michigan’s Preview Weekend. In what promises to be an improvement over my account, he’s creating an “epic multi-part primer” sacrificing coherence for personality, anecdotes, and other funness (with some names changed, of course).

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 here.
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Jeremy writes funny about Harvard’s Admitted Students Weekend.

Also, it looks like he got a book deal for Anonymous Lawyer. Awesome.

Book : A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

Here’s a quote:

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Yeah, it’s that kind of book. It’s a war book. Not really pro-war–it does strip away all the accompanying romantic notions of loyalty, honor, patriotism, and sacrifice–but it’s not really anti-war, either. It’s more anti-world. It’s a love book too, but still anti-world.

And yeah, that’s all you’re getting out of me. If anyone else out there hasn’t read Hemingway by now, I’d definitely recommend it. Good stuff.

The Supreme Court, by William Rehnquist (yeah, the Chief Justice!)

This book calls itself a history of the Supreme Court, but that’s not quite right. There is a good amount of history in the book, but it’s only one of three main topics covered. The Chief Justice only discusses the Court from Chief Justice Marshall (early 1800s) through the Warren Court (late 1960s) to avoid cases he worked on as a Justice, but he also writes about his experience clerking for Justice Jackson and spends several chapters describing the inner workings of the Court. So it’s not really a history, not really a memoir, and not really an insider’s account of the Court, but it has elements of all these.

The book uses influential Justices and important cases to show how the Court, despite its missteps along the way, has managed to take and retain its place as a full-fledged branch of government, despite repeated attempts by the other branches to control or intimidate the Court. Rehnquist’s writing is clear and interesting. Throughout the book, the Chief Justice aims the discussion of cases at the “interested, informed layman,” so it isn’t difficult to keep up.

The chapters discussing his clerkship talk a lot about the decision-making process and the personalities of the Justices on the Court at the time, but they have a different feel from the rest of the book. You feel like you learn something about Rehnquist’s personality as you read them, unlike the more objective historical chapters. This same split occurs when he describes the working of the current Court. At some points, he talks about the process he uses to come to a decision and write an opinion, and at other points he just dryly reports the days and times the Court considers certiorari petitions. It’s inevitable, I guess; the personal part of the book is not large enough to be published on its own, and it would be tough to reach the book’s intended audience without including some personality along with the historical parts.

As it is, the book is a good one for future law students. It exposes you, on a fairly shallow level, to some important cases and keeps your attention with the opinions, anecdotes, and observations of the current Chief Justice.

Next up: The Brethren, as recommended by chicken magazine

Well, maybe not the best ever, but it’s gotta be in the top ten.

At one point Friday night, I was told, “You would be so offensive if you were louder.”

Well, those aren’t the exact words, but it was something like that.

I’m so proud.

So I’m back from Preview Weekend at the University of Michigan Law School. I visited the University of Virginia back in the fall, but this the first admitted student event I’ve been to. In short, the school was really pretty, the people were fun and interesting, and the food was edible… for the most part.

Also, I met foxes. Ladies, he’s everything you’ve been dreaming.

(Note: this is an insanely long post, so I’m putting the rest below the fold. Good luck.)

Edit: For anyone else looking at Michigan, Taco John posted a good comment. Be sure to check it out.
(more…)

So I don’t have a digital camera. Some may wonder how I can stand such a lame, underpriviliged existence. Sometimes, even I wonder. I think about buying a camera. How many megapixels I would want, how much I could spend…

And then I realize that I don’t need a digital camera. For one thing, I live in Ohio. The only time we get anything worth taking a picture of is in the winter, and no one wants to walk around outside with a camera when it’s that cold outside. Also, I’m lazy. I brought my mom’s digital camera to Michigan’s Preview Weekend with me, and I didn’t take it out of my hotel room once.

Anyways, I’m back from Michigan. It was sweet. I’ll write something later (but no pictures… sorry).

I’m writing this post Wednesday night, but if you’re reading it, I should be at Michigan’s Preview Weekend by now. I’m sure it’s informative, and I’m sure the campus is beautiful, and I’m sure I’m meeting lots of fun, interesting people sick of making awkward small-talk. I’m excited about this visit. My current admissions are, in all probability, the only ones I’ll be getting, so this is the start of the next step in the law school admissions process, the decision stage.

I’ve been lucky enough to get into four schools I would be happy to attend. They’ve all got so much going for them that it feels like, rather than looking for reasons to attend, I’m looking for reasons to cross them off the list. If I get a nice financial aid package somewhere else; if I don’t really like a school or the area it’s in; if there are any brown M&Ms in my backstage dressing room–bam! Cross that school off the list and trash my hotel room.

If it’s good enough for Van Halen, it’s good enough for me.

I’m off to Michigan now. I’ll be back Saturday, and shortly after that I’ll write something up about my visit and my trip to the University of Virginia last fall (I wanted to hold off on talking about UVa until I had something to compare it to). Maybe I’ll even have pictures.

Whee!

On the eve of my visit to Michigan, I checked out Left2Right and find this nice little piece from Professor Don Herzog reminding me of why I’m so excited about this trip.

Cool.

Truthfully, I don’t really have much to say today. I’ve finally caught up on my blawg-reading, and the only thing I managed to remember from it all is that becoming a law professor is incredibly difficult (most of the discussion on this either happened, or is linked to, on The Volokh Conspiracy here).

I’ll admit that when people ask me what my dream job would be, I say, “law professor,” but that’s mostly because I just need to give them some sort of answer. A reply of “Supreme Court Justice” will just get me laughed at, and “lawyer” doesn’t satisfy people without an adjective in front (an adjective other than “rich,” I mean), but I don’t know enough about which areas of law I will enjoy to be able to put one there. Legal academia is specific enough that it satisfies people, but vague enough that I don’t have to commit to an area of law.

Admittedly, it does sound like an enjoyable job, but only in a vague, “I don’t really know much about what law professors do, but I think it would be fun to research things and write about them and teach people about law” kinda way. It’s probably not what I’ll end up doing. Hell, it’s probably not even what I’ll want to do once I get a better grasp of my options.

Accordingly, I’m not going to base my school decision on the number of law professors each one puts out. So I guess all that reading wasn’t really very helpful after all. Hmm.

I just finished reading The Center Holds, by James F. Simon. It’s a look at the Rehnquist Court and how it hasn’t been able to fully realize the goals of Rehnquist, Reagan, Bush (the first), and other conservatives. The book is divided up into sections on race, abortion, criminal cases, and First Amendment law, and in each, Simon describes how Rehnquist was, time after time, unable to pull together a majority of the Court for his most desired postion. The centrist Justices end up carving out narrow exceptions and retaining liberal precedents, rather than overturning decisions and offering sweeping opinions, as the ultra-conservatives seem to want.

In each section, Simon looks at several cases, using drafts of opinions, oral arguments, and conference notes from several retired Justices to examine the process by which the Court arrived at a certain opinion, while working short biographies of the Justices in with the cases to keep things interesting. The legal terms are all well-explained and discussion seems to be aimed at laymen (nothing seemed too confusing to me).

It’s about ten years old, so it’s not quite up to date, but it’s incredibly interesting stuff. I think my Supreme Court obsession is alive and growing.

Book 3: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I liked this book a lot. I’m not big on buying books, but I’ll definitely get this one at some point.

There isn’t really a single protagonist; instead, the story follows the “life” of the city of Macondo and the Buendía family that founded it. Extraordinary, supernatural events are written about as if they were everyday occurrences, making the book feel like a tall tale or a story passed down from generation to generation. The main theme is, of course, solitude, but its variations allow the story to cover all sorts of emotions.

Ugh… I hate being so generic, but I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone reading this. It’s always seemed to me that book reviews are often written for people who have already read the book. They either give things away (I even dislike reading dust jackets–I like to go in blind, or as close to it as possible, when I’m reading), discuss things that won’t make sense until someone is halfway into the book, or are annoyingly vague.

I’m going with the third option, obviously. Anyways, if you haven’t read this book, check it out. Very good.

Book 4: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Wanna guess the theme of this one? (Hint: it’s not fatal diarrhea)

After One Hundred Years of Solitude, this felt kinda weak. It was slow starting and, because of the smaller scope, felt much less epic. It got better as it went on, though, and I don’t regret reading it. The chapters were really long, though. I like to stop reading at a chapter break, so this annoyed me a lot.

Decent book. Just don’t read it after something amazing.

In case you missed it, I recently got a laptop, an IBM ThinkPad T42, and I like it. A lot.

In the hope that it might be useful to someone out there, here are my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the unexpected things about my laptop (compared to the desktops I’ve used in the past).

The screen (15″ with a 1400 x 1050 resolution) is great. It’s well-lit, very sharp, and I don’t think I have any dead pixels. I had a 19″ CRT on my desktop that I liked to run at 1600 x 1200 resolution, but this screen doesn’t feel cramped to me. Of course, I like to have lots of windows open and I dislike scrolling, so if you think you can handle a smaller screen or lower resolution, you probably can. I’d be scared to go under 14″, though.

The little pointing stick thingy is also nice. I don’t like touchpads very much, and this is much easier for me to use. Unfortunately, there are just buttons for left-click, right-click, and scrolling. I use the middle button on my mouse to open links in a new Firefox tab, so I really miss the middle button. I’ll probably buy a mouse to use at home, but the pointing stick works well enough that I don’t think I’ll carry the mouse around with me.

The fingerprint scanner was a neat bonus, but the password-saving software was made for Internet Explorer, so it doesn’t really work for Firefox. Slightly disappointing, but Firefox stores your passwords anyways, so it’s not really a big deal. I wouldn’t recommend paying extra for the option unless you’re really crazy about security and too lazy to type in passwords.

The keyboard is nicer than I expected. I had heard IBM puts some pretty nice keyboards in their notebooks, but I still expected to have a hard time adjusting to it. The lack of a number pad bugs me, and the Fn key (which enables all the laptop specific functions like sleep mode, wireless, screen brightness, etc.) is placed right where I expect the Control key to be, but other than that I haven’t really had problems with the keyboard. This is really something you should try out before you buy a keyboard, though. Especially considering how much you’ll be typing in law school.

I haven’t run it off the battery yet, but it’s got a high-capacity one instead of whatever comes standard. I’m hoping it’ll last through my classes so I don’t have to carry the AC adapter around with me, but this wasn’t that high on my priority list so I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out. I’ll probably have a report on battery life after I get back from vacation.

And it’s got a three-year warranty, so I won’t have to deal with a broken laptop during law school. Nice.

Yuengling beer is made somewhere in Pennsylvania. They sell it down here in the southern tip of Alabama, but not in Ohio. Why is this? Is our hate of Pittsburgh overflowing into the rest of the state? Hmm…

It took ’til halfway through my vacation, but I gots the internets!

I came down to Alabama with seven other college kids, and we’re renting the nicest house I’ve ever stayed in. Because of either the time of year or the temperature (in the 60-70 range–really not that bad), the other owners and renters haven’t come out yet. Apparently this is still winter weather to the locals (we saw a construction worker painting a house in a parka yesterday), so we pretty much have the amazing beach all to ourselves.

Y’know, it’s funny how sitting around all day reading is no longer considered laziness when you do it on a beach.

In what I consider a minor victory, I’ve managed to avoid getting sunburn until the third day of vacation. The SPF 45 put up a fight, but in the end, it couldn’t stop the sun from ruining my pasty white complexion. With any luck, I’ll be in the “peeling grossness” stage by the time I go to visit Michigan.

I’ll have pictures when I get back, once I figure out how to use Flickr or something like that.

The schedule for my law school visits is pretty much set now. Here’s the plan as of right now:

• Michigan’s Preview Weekend - March 17-19
• Columbia’s Admitted Student Program - March 30-31
• Harvard’s Admitted Applicant Program - April 10-11

I don’t think I’m going to Virginia’s program (April 7-8) since I’ve already visited UVa (and liked it a lot), but I’m very susceptible to peer pressure. So if anyone else is going to that, let me know and maybe you’ll convince me.

Oh, and I hope no one takes this as bragging or anything. I realize how lucky I am to have these choices. My only goal here is to find other people going to these events so I don’t feel quite so confused, awkward, and alone on my visits. So if you’re going to any of these events, or if you’re in the area and bored enough to hang out with a complete stranger, lemme know. I’ll even take suggestions for what to do on my visits.