Ravings from a Man in an Old White House

My cousin likes to send me links to sites he comes across. The latest has the potential to cost my employer thousands of dollars in lost productivity. It’s called NationStates. Just now I almost hit my face really hard to kill a bug. No worries - my head dodged. Anyway, this NationState thing is cool. It was designed by Max Barry to sell his book, Jennifer Government. I am somewhat tempted to buy the thing, but I’m behind in my reading as it is, so I probably won’t. Yet. . .

The game is not all that involved, and you can experiment with different ideologies. The game uses three axes to determine your UN category: civil rights, economy, and political freedoms. At one point mine was an “Inoffensive Liberal Democracy.” I think that means the same thing as “Mostly Harmless.” A few days ago, it was an anarchy. Today it’s a “Corporate Bordello.” Among other things this means, “Poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.”

There are UN resolutions, and people seem to go to great lengths to get more votes on these. I’m not sure why, but they do.

I don’t know how into the UN stuff I can get, but the weird Issue choices are enough to keep me coming back. Some of the results are frustrating. One of my first was campaign finance reform. I said no, so my government is now said to be corrupt. Screw that. Some of the choices are frustrating, too. A recent Issue forced me to choose between letting people protest some nonsense by riding bicycles in the middle of the street during rush hour or banning protests. I allowed the protests, but I really hate bicycles in the street. Like I said, frustrating.

The frustration is all part of the fun. Anyone who enjoyed the Sim games, Sim City, Sim Tower, Sim Farm, Sims, the thing with the ants, etc., would like this game. It’s the kind of game you can’t win or lose. You just experiment. Unlike the Sim games, you probably won’t spend hours at a time on it. That’s the dangerous part for someone with a job at a small company and a computer. Engrossing games aren’t feasible for someone in a small office, because you will get interrupted and other people will use your computer. You can spend a few minutes at a time on NationStates, however, several times a day.

Reuters published an article with the angle that science is fighting for its life against a hostility to it. I’ll bet just about all of my friends will disagree with me, but I think the article is crap. First of all, the nucleus of the hostility is not in Washington. There is no geographical nucleus. Christian fundamentalism is at its center. The bloody District of Columbia is not a hotbed of fundamentalism. The fact that the president of Stanford thinks that politicians are at the base of this is perplexing. I thought everyone understood this.

This intelligent design question is, frankly, getting out of hand. Intelligent design does not necessarily say that the evolution is wrong. It can be anything from creationism (I take that to mean Genesis taken literally) to the idea that God held a thumb on the scale during evolution. It is not certainly not science. It is a way of reconciling religion and science. It belongs in theology or philosophy, not science. Moreover, and more importantly, this is not where the battle between religion and science is centered. The evolution question is a sideshow at this point.

The evolution of man questions from a CBS poll are alarming at first, but if the question was worded anything like the article, it may not be so troubling. A lot of people would over-think “present form” and think that means that humanity’s current form is God’s work, as opposed to what the question is supposed to mean: was man created, fully formed, with no biological development. I would like the people who answer yes to that question to explain why I have nipples, but I digress.

The question I have is this: why does it matter if I believe in evolution or big bang? I am not a scientist. If I believe that man was created by magic, what do you care. As long as I don’t try to force schools to teach it, no problem right? Would my ability to represent my clients be harmed by a belief that the universe is actually located in a little girl’s snow globe and will end when the flakes settle?

Undoubtedly, if anyone ever reads this blog, someone will point back to the article and say that the problem is that kids aren’t even bothering to learn basic science because of the hostility to it. Bullshit. There are a few kids like that, but they’re probably close to retarded anyway. The problem is that grade schools and high schools do a poor job of teaching science and math to students who don’t just do it. If you’re behind in 4th grade math, you’ll be behind in 8th grade math, too. The science and math teachers explain that there are objectively true answers. To many kids, that means that if they are getting it, they must be stupid or bad at math and science. They give up, if for no other reason, to get away from the shame. That is where the hostility to science really comes from. I think the science community should focus on that rather than letting the wacky, I mean fundamentalist, Christians drag them into stupid fights.

I found this sad article about how Saddam’s Iraq hoodwinked several Advanced Industrial Democracies. Saddam is not the only bad guy. Others include Norm Coleman, who is alleged to have picked on a random antiwar member of Britain’s Parliament. Bastards.

Don’t try to play Sudoku when you are paying more attention to the TV, the Sudoku suffers.

Ever since the conservative criticism of Harriet Miers began, I’ve been thinking that her nomination to replace Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor could have been a ploy. This is the thrust of the theory: President Bush nominated her to make Republican Senators more amenable to his “real” nominee. In other words, it’s a rope-a-dope; conservative Senators will wear themselves out beating her up, then support the next nominee. That nominee will be revealed, I believe, late next week or early the following week. Right now, I don’t really buy into my little theory, but if the President picks Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, I will go to my grave suspecting it’s true. That is because many conservatives contend that the Attorney General is not conservative enough to be on the Court. In the unlikely event that my theory is correct, the nomination will probably not have the desired effect. At this point, Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) probably think they get to decide who the next justice is.

According to this story, Kroger might be purchasing Albertsons, who purchased American Stores, who purchased Jewel Tea Company. The Kroger purchase would create a grocery giant. Having gone to school in Bloomington-Normal, I’m wondering who is going to take the extra stores there. I believe there is a total of six Krogers and Jewels, and I doubt the new company would be able to keep them all. Would that lead to a new player in B-N?

The other interesting aspect is the idea of splitting off the drugstore unit. How would that work with the combo stores? Most of the Jewel stores have Oscos attached. Wouldn’t pulling off the drugstore unit poison whoever picks up the rest of the company, you know the parts that are losing money?

The weirdest idea is splitting off Jewel from the rest. Tesco, a UK retailer, may want to pick it up, the article says, but that seems counter to the recent supermarket merger trend. In other industries, merger trends are cyclical (otherwise we would only have one company by this point). The difference for supermarkets, and other retailers, is WalMart. That company is so damned big and efficient that the others can’t keep up piecemeal (or at least that has been the prevailing wisdom). More locally, I wonder if placing Jewel within a smaller company would help Dominick’s, which has suffered lately, and was for sale itself recently.

Lately, I have been working on a trial our office has this week. About a week and a half ago I received a call from the opposing lawyer. He announced that he was going to take a deposition of my client the next week. Luckily, I knew that was very important, so I got a hold of my boss, who was out of town, and got the thing scheduled. It would be held exactly one week ahead of the trial.

A deposition, for those who don’t know, is kind of like holding a court session in a conference room with no judge. Attoneys as a witness questions and a court reporter takes down what is said. In most places, the testimony can be used at trial as long as it is relevant. In Illinois, we have two kinds, discovery depositions and evidence depositions. The former are for finding out things, the second for recording potential trial testimony. Ours was a discovery deposition.

We decided that we would depose the other party as long as we were at his attorney’s office, so I spent many hours preparing exhibits to use at the deposition. When the day came, my boss and I went down to the other attorney’s office, met with our client, and negotiated with opposing counsel. by the time the first deposition started, it was probably 4:30 or so. Around that time, it started to dawn on me that it may have been a good idea to have snuck out for lunch earlier in the day. I ended up analyzing some documents the other side turned over instead of watching our client get deposed.

I did get to watch my boss question the other party, when I wasn’t running out of the room to make copies of new exhibits, that is. All the while, I had that wierd headache you get when you haven’t really eaten, your tired, and no one has caffeine to give you. There was a funny moment - one I hope my boss missed - where I was staring at something at the table without a thought in my head and the other attorney nudged me and told me to wake up. In the end, we may have used half the exhibits I prepared.

It’s interesting what you learn in obvious learning situations. You would expect that I learned how to do a deposition. I’m not totally sure I did. I did learn that you aren’t going to be perfect. Obviously, you will do better the better prepared you are. One of the problems with lawyers who represent middle class people is that you can’t afford to be really, really prepared. You can only spend so much time that you can’t bill preparing. You get yourself fluent in the facts and accept it. Also, you will look like an ass sometimes. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes you have to make yourself look like an ass because the client wants you to ask certain things. They maybe stupid and irrational, but you have to do it anyway.

This trial is coming up in a couple of days, so I am sure I will have some kind of update soon.

Hello dear readers,

I have been putting this first post off because I have no idea how to start a blog. Well, that’s one reason. I’m also still not sure I know what kind of blog I’m starting. I suppose that might be a difficult question for a lot of people, but I have another problem: I’m a lawyer. Most of you (if there are any of you) may not know it, but many lawyers have blawgs instead of blogs. “Blawgs” are law-related weblogs. I don’t know how much legal posting is necessary to be considered a blawg, but I think I want to stay below the threshold percentage. It might be hard; after all, you write what you know, and being a lawyer is something I know - kind of. I’m a new lawyer. I am going to try to post a law post and a politics post before I go to bed. Oddly, I suspect the blawgish post might be more interesting.