I stumbled on this vignette this morning and thought it simply too good not to share:

“Anyone shot by a gun is first shot by a word and

anyone shot by a word is first shot by a thought”

- Henri Nouwen

It was used in the context of how people just with thoughts and words do far more damage than a bullet ever could do. I suppose the NRA could use this as a talking point!

But it is something to think about. I guess it is Good Friday, what better day to wax philosophical?

When it comes to Intra-Texas college rivalries, I can honestly say I don’t have a dog in the fight. If anything, after moving from State College, PA to Austin, TX, I was a little biased against the pervasive bloated burnt orange bovine that sits pretty in the middle of the Texas state capitol. So that would suggest that if anything, I should be giving the Aggies from College Station a bit of deference. And I do and did. Until this. You see I never understood all those jokes people made about Aggies being a few cards short of a full deck, a la this joke:

Did you hear about the aggie that got locked out of his car?
     He spent two hours trying to get his wife and kids out!

 But then I saw this and had to take a picture with my trusty camera phone:

A clue: look at the A & M sign next to the model name of the car. I’ve wiped out the license plate to protect the, err innocent?

I think the hardest thing for most evening students is reconciling the fact that our social life effectively gets flushed down the toilet the day we walk into law school. I particularly am amazed by those in my cohort that juggle the family life, law school and a full-time job. I tip my hat to you oh masters-of-your-own-universe.  Anytime I grumble about being a slave to my schedule I remember that one of my classmate’s youngest kids asked my classmate’s wife ‘who’s that man that stayed at the house on weekends’ because for more than a few semesters he left home before his child got up and got home after she was put to bed.

So it is with great reluctance that I submit myself back to demands of the lawschool schedule after a blissful spring break. I reckon I was supposed to study, get ahead of the reading, perhaps even outline. I was having none of that. I took a vacation, if only in my head. And let me tell you dear reader, yes both of you, that was the only way to go.

Year 3 of 4 has been hard in a different way. Oddly enough, this semester, I only started to gripe about class well past the half-way point. What’s really been poking away at me is seeing the full-time class that started 3 months after I did, get ready to graduate and here I’ll be trudging away for another year.

All I can do from using my textbooks as kindling is remembering that 1) I choose to do this 2) Nobody made me do this 3) Deep down I love this stuff and 4) Short term pain for long term gain.

The other thing that keeps me sane is re-reading my statement of purpose (S.O.P.) for law school. Mine was pretty awesome if I do say so myself (and I do). It wasn’t so much an S.O.P. as it was a mission statement, a manifesto of what and why. And so I am, in the end, terribly pleased that I was made to write one as a condition for admission. Nothing clarifies something like having to think about it. I was and am clear why I’m here.

So what’s our take home here:

a) Prospective law student- Caveat Emptor- Buyer Beware. You better be sure you want this because if you don’t you will die the slow death!

and

b) Don’t listen to anyone else – they give you Spring Break for a reason and it’s not to dive into even more silly law school work. Your sanity and your loved ones are far more important. Spend it doing what you want with whom you want. I did and look at me – heck I’m not even bitter!

Quadros locuta est- Causa finita est!

” I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, was the oft-repeated phrase I heard as a child. Whether it be a word of caution from a parent, an older sibling or a friend that was looking out for my general well-being. I mostly associate the phrase with discourses between Junior, the protagonist from the movie ‘Problem Child’, and his arch-nemesis Trixie. Trixie would say repeatedly to Junior: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” to which Junior aptly responded ” I wouldn’t do a lot of things if I were you, like go out in public!”

With that contextual yet random bit of early 90s film trivia behind us, I must vent about this world’s obsession with the belief that riding a motorcycle is the world’s greatest death wish. After many years of procrastinating, I took and successfully passed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course in, well, Motorcycle safety. Having done so, I felt that I was now better suited to get in gear and get a motorbike for the occasional daily ride and largely weekend pursuit. I live, work and go to school all in an area that is no greater than 6 miles wide. When gas was at its insane high last summer, switching to a sport tourer would have cut my gas consumption into half and, since I drive such short distances, reduce the amount of wear and tear on my vehicle. But whenever I tell people I’m scouring Craig’s list for a sport tourer or the like, I get this look of amazement like I’m asking them to source an eightball of cocaine (btw I only discovered what an eightball was in the past two weeks courtesy of all the substance abuse info I’m getting in my professional responsibility class).

I think the high point of it all ( or is it the low point?) was when someone, as they puffed their cigarette (that’s right -the cancer stick that has no proven upside!) decided to berate me about what a poor choice I was going to make by getting a motorcycle and how simply dangerous it was. Imagine that, someone smoking a cigarrette, telling me I’m crazy because I want a motorcycle!

Rings a bit of kettle calling the tea-pot black huh?

So I guess the next time someone comments about my impending two-wheeled motor purchase and says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, I should take a cue from Junior and say “I wouldn’t do a lot of things if I were you but then again, I’m not you.”

Have you ever wondered what made a hot-spot hot? Or how in the blink of an eye it’s not that way anymore. Adverse selection, ladies and gentlemen. And God bless the chaps at Agoraphilia for explaining it so well.

It seems that once ‘hot’ people see other ‘hot’ people or know that they will see such folks at a club then they are more likely to go there and then there’s this rapid escalation to a point where lots of ‘hotties’ are about. But in the same vein the entire thing can unravel just as quickly if on any given day pickings are slim when a new ‘hottie’ shows up.

For more on Adverse selection, in the curious subcontext of BDSM clubs, please check out http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2009/02/adverse-selection-in-bdsm-clubs.html

So all you math, economics, finance and science majors that learned adverse selection as part of your box of analytical tools to understand whatever it is you were studying- all is not lost. You can actually do more with your degree than you planned. You now can analyze partner selections in BDSM clubs. Your momma certainly would be proud!

I love old time radio. And when I mean old time radio I mean radio in the Orson Wells reading War of the Worlds sense. Or with that news flash, telegraph pole beeping – “This just in, we interrupt this radio broadcast to bring you….” sense. So this morning I was quite saddened to hear that Paul Harvey, the king of radio news(in my book) past away. The advantage that radio has over television is that we are forced to listen. There is no other way receive that form of communication. TV and particularly TV news is sensationalistic sensory overload. And between the remarkably attractive (I’m not complaining about this part) news reporter with the ultra glossy lipstick telling me the world is about to end as she winks through her Palin-esque glasses, and the editing that would make a Hype Williams music video seem tame, the basis for the story is lost to me.

It is sad more people don’t listen to the radio. When I grew up, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, I would hear the English broadcasts of Radio Tehran or the BBC World Servic and of course the pervasive, Voice of America. The Soviets called it, ‘Capitalist Propaganda’. The Iranians “inspiration from the Infidels!”. I just called it the VOA. But there’s definitely something to radio quite like reading that forces you to participate the television simply won’t.

Paul Harvey would have been excellent trial lawyer. His deliberate speech with his undulating tones would have swayed any jury. And I think more than anyone else, he mastered the power of the pause. One could almost hear him thinking in his head while we heard dead silence contemplating his finale , ‘wait for it, waaait for it……wait for it’ and then it hit us, “And that my friends is the rest of the story!”

Holocaust deniers are not my brand of vodka. They prove the scariest point of fanaticism: that despite ample (and often indisputable) evidence to the contrary they hold their beliefs to be true. But should we criminalize people who are just, for want of a better word, stupid?

The reason I’ve resurrected from the dead on this blog, is the whole morass with the formerly ex-communicated-now on Catholic parole- British Bishop Richard Williamson. You can get the background of the story here.

Long story short, Williamson once espoused (and has done a poor job recanting) that he felt the Holocaust was overblown, barely happened, etc. Was he silly to deny probably the most well documented systematic atrocity in the past 100years. Surely he was/is. But should he go to jail for it?

Germany makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust and is seeking to arrest Williams on a charge of committing a hate crime. More on that here.

At first blush most of us wouldn’t flinch when we read that. But it irks me so. It’s a CRIME to deny something happened? Wait a minute. He didn’t incite someone to harm, he didn’t inflict harm, all he’s doing is saying something didn’t happen and thinks it to be true. And that’s supposed to be criminal? Methinks not.

That’s very scary. The reason why that’s scary is because if that law were to be okay, then the EU could come up with a rule that said it was a crime to think Californian wines are better than those from Bordeaux. Not mislabelling bottles, not breaking a bottle of Bordeaux over someone’s head, just denying that Bordeaux is better than a Napa valley vintage.

I am petrified at the prospect that a government would regulate an idea or even speech when there is no inducement to cause harm or violence. I don’t like what Williamson has said. I don’t like those who espouse racist or bigoted beliefs but when a government tries to control someone’s thoughts and words especially when those words do not manifest into untoward action, I cannot muster support for such encroachment on civil liberties.

I was looking up the NALP (National Association for Law Placement) rules about OCI on google and stumbled rather fortuitously on a blog written by a hiring partner at a law firm.

It’s called Hiring Partner’s Office and it doles out succinct and thankfully very candid advice about on-campus recruitment, what the hiring partner thinks and navigating the curious world of legal employ.

Worth a read methinks.

You can find it at http://hiringpartneradvice.blogspot.com/

Now you know.

From a conversation between arguably the two prettiest girls in my class:

“there must be some sort of special lawyer cancer.  it fills up the cavity where your soul used to be.”

- _ – _ -

What, me jaded?

With all the mess that’s been going on with Lehman Brothers suddenly having the market value of snails on toast and Fannie & Freddie Mac falling deeper into the mortgage meltdown morass, I drifted away to thoughts of a radio show.

Once upon a time in a galaxy not too far away, I accidentally turned to KPFT for the news. Now those that aren’t familiar with Pacifica Radio, should know that KPFT out here in Houston is so liberal that it would make Dennis Kucinich a smidge uncomfortable. So on this morning when I’m driving up the street, a call-in radio show host posits the idea that in this country, we are all too eager to privatize profits and socialize loss. So basically when things go well, few stand to benefit but when things go wrong, the ills are passed on to the masses to absorb.

That’s a fair reflection methinks. With all the bailouts – it’s hard to believe that it’s not true. The question is, wherein lies the end?

So dear reader, just think about it, are we just left with a system that privatizes profit and socializes loss? And why is Mr. John Q. Taxpayer left holding the bag?

So we’re being capitalists when we make money but communists when we fail?

Privatizing profit & socializing loss.

Them be fighting words.

I found a wonderful article that speaks of the motivations behind some of the above thinking and why failure and success must be privatized. It’s an article by Joseph Rowlands in The Free Radical. I copy it in it’s entirety lest such words be lost to vacuum of the web. (All copyrights rest with author and/or publisher)

http://www.freeradical.co.nz/content/60/Socialising.php

Socialising & Privatising by Joseph Rowlands

I went to a lecture the other day and one of the speakers called himself an “egalitarian libertarian.” That’s a very interesting mix, so he described what it means. He’s an egalitarian, so he believes that too much inequality is bad, and he generally supports a “safety net.” Which means he accepts the principle of the welfare state. But then he said he believed that other than that, people should be given the maximum freedom they can.

His view was based on a belief that people should be able to make the most of their lives. And to do that, they need the liberty to do what they want. Well, we can all support that notion. But he also believes they should have the financial means to do it as well. Little details like who’s going to fork over the financial means weren’t too much of a problem for him. Politics follows ethics, of course.

And you can see how his view of things is very similar to the standard Democratic Party line. They also believe in freedom in social affairs, and a safety net for the poor. Fortunately they don’t call themselves “libertarians” yet.

But he got me thinking about what that would mean in practice, and why we haven’t had such a thing. You could argue that the Republicans always like to force people to do their bidding in social affairs, where they try to legislate their own religious ethics. But I started thinking about it in a different light, and realized the results of such a system almost require giving up one or the other.

There’s a way of analyzing economic activity. You think about costs and profits. And you decide if each is socialized or privatized. Socialized in this context means to disperse over a large group, whereas privatize means to concentrate onto the person doing the acting.

Generally, socializing costs makes an action more likely to be done, because the full penalty is reduced. Government officials who upgrade to first class when taking flights are a good example. They don’t have to pay the cost themselves, so the cost of the action isn’t a concern.

Privatizing costs makes people more responsible. They have to be careful about losing or wasting money, because they are the ones who ultimately pay.

Privatizing profit allows an incentive to act in a particular way. You benefit from the action if it goes well, so you’re more likely to do it.

Socializing profit kills the incentive. You might still benefit marginally, but it’s usually not worth the effort of doing it.

And now you can think about the combinations of profit and cost.

Communism is a system of socialized costs and profits. You never really benefit from your actions, but at the same time you aren’t hurt by the costs. If you screw around and do nothing, it has essentially the same effect as any action. This makes rational decision-making impossible, because every action leads to the same result.

Privatizing costs and socializing profits is a tough one to enact. Atlas Shrugged had examples of this, where Rearden was supposed to run his factories at a loss so that others could benefit. This is the worst situation for someone to be in. They can never hope to benefit, but they know that they will incur any costs. This is when people shrug. If the government creates laws that have this effect, you’ll find businesses going bankrupt and industries going barren.

The “egalitarian libertarian” above is an example of socializing costs, and privatizing profit. People are allowed to do whatever they want, and costs are essentially covered (or reduced). Whenever this happens, you get irresponsible get-rich-quick schemes that pop up. Poor people lose nothing for gambling their money with bad odds, because they’re guaranteed a minimum condition of living no matter what they do. If they happen to win big, they get to keep the money (minus taxes). The concept of “moral hazard” describes this idea of businesses doing irresponsible, irrational things because they know they can’t lose. A government that says do what you want, and we’ll take care of you, whether to business or to individuals, is always going to encourage reckless behavior.

Privatizing costs and profits is of course the only rational possibility. It leaves incentives, but only for rational behavior. The other three lead to disasters in practice. From reckless behavior, to apathy, to widespread bankruptcies, the outcomes are always undesirable. And each of these outcomes requires further intervention.

The socialized costs and profits kill incentives so the government needs to create new ones. If self-interest isn’t a motivating force, governments turn to fear and violence. Communists resorted to slaughtering their own citizens and secret police in order to try to create “incentives.”

The socialized profits and privatized costs would require literal enslavement of people. Nobody with a choice would ever voluntarily stay in such a situation. Either the government gives up its bad policies, or uses violence to achieve them. Lesser forms of this system happen frequently, though. Profits are still allowed, but are limited. The result is an unwillingness to expand business, to try new ventures, or to take any business risks. Stagnation is the result. This system kills vibrancy in an industry.

And the socialized costs and privatized profits require all kinds of actions to be outlawed. If the system creates reckless behavior, then the government will need to step in and limit the recklessness. It does this by outlawing actions it deems as reckless.

This is why I said the “egalitarian libertarian” would seem to require giving up either the welfare state, or what’s left of the individual liberty. When reckless behavior is encouraged, costs skyrocket. The only solution is to ban reckless behavior. Pretty soon smoking and drinking are illegal, fattening foods are illegal, gambling is illegal, etc.. And the justification for this is simple. If someone else is footing the bill, you have to live by their rules.

The welfare state is incompatible with human liberty, even just the so-called social freedoms. Inevitably every use of force must either perish or multiply. There can be no compromise.