Video Game Final Exam Pump Up Music

For some reason or another, each semester of law school thus far has ended with me stumbling upon a different piece of video game music that I've used to get psyched for my exams.  I listen to it on my way to the exam room; I listen to it again as soon as the exam is over so I can avoid overhearing everyone doing post-mortems while turning in NYU's exam attendance cards.

This has been completely unintentionally, and I only realized this semester that it has been exclusively game music I've used to clear my head.

Fall 2008:  "Wily's Stage" from Mega Man 2.



Spring 2009:  "The Next Door" from Street Fighter IV.



Fall 2009:  "Halo" from Halo.



Spring 2010:  "Suicide Mission" from Mass Effect 2.



Fall 2010:  "Prophecy" from Secret of Mana.



Of course, now that I've figured this out, I'll invariably dig some awful Katy Perry song for my sixth and final semester of law school...

The DREAM Act: President Obama's Compromise Fail

The ability to compromise is an essential part of good governance, so on the surface, President Obama's conciliatory nature has all the hallmarks of being a good statesmen.  However, it isn't news to state that the President's partners on the other side simply do not negotiate in good faith.  Not on health care.  Not on the deficit.  Not on DADT.

The result: President Obama compromises with himself.  Then compromises some more.  Then gets beaten over the head on all sides for being "spineless."  That's problematic by itself, but the President's openness to compromise has become less about being spineless as politically stupid.  Yes, yes, the presidency should be about the pursuit of the greater good, and, thus, somehow above partisan politics.  However, while President Clinton mastered the art of triangulation, the Obama Administration's strategy seems to be to pursue long-term big ticket items that end up alienating everyone.

This week's example: yesterday's failed DREAM Act.  The Obama Administration teed up immigration reform two years ago by "deporting almost 800,000 illegal immigrants" in an effort "to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul."  Thus, the Democratic president was actually tougher on immigration than the Republican, and his reward was three Republican votes in the Senate.  Perhaps President Obama can write the entire effort off as a good try, but as a result of his actions, he's appeased absolutely no one:

"The administration is in a pickle of epic proportions," Noorani [head of the National Immigration Forum] said. "They are going to feel incredible pressure in the House to increase enforcement, and the record shows they will continue to increase enforcement of a broken immigration system. On the other hand, candidate Obama will need those same Latinos, Asians and other immigrant voters to come out for him in record numbers. How do they square that circle?"

President Obama will assuredly try to find some sort of compromise.  Har har!

Super Duper Distractions and Strawberry-Flavored Death

In between study fits—searches incident to arrest! facts of independence significance! spendthrift clauses! watchdog media model! stop and frisk!—I have been giving some thought about what sort of self-fulfillment projects I want to pursue next year.

One thing I would really like to do is develop some sort of theme for this blog.  Considering I've anonymized this thing, my scattershot of inane political commentary and giddy infrequent talk of video games adds little to the internet.  Most of my flesh-and-blood friends aren't even reading this anymore.  I persevere largely as a distraction from elective share calculations! job applications! peremptory challenges! sending presents!  the Uniform Probate Code!

So if you're a frequent reader and Google tells me there are a few, what should I write more about next year?  No more angry politics?  Nothing but monthly photography exposes?  I'd appreciate some suggestions, because really, what I'm doing now is pretty much a slightly censored journal digital scrap book, and there's already Facebook for that...

In the meantime, one thing I do want to write about when I have some down time (ha!) is the sci-fi drama Fringe.  While I initially dismissed the show as a J.J. Abrams' X-Files knock-off, it's become far more compelling even absent a cigarette smoking man.  I have tried unsuccessfully to get some friends to check out the show—maybe it's the genre or HBO/AMC-fueled television elitism—but at this point, I am enjoying Fringe more than Chuck. 


The show is currently on hiatus so there's no great impetus for me to rant about it, but Fringe is lowly-rated, getting dumped on the Friday night death slot, and the creators have been knocking it out of the park on cinematic trailers:

Strawberry flavored death, folks, only on Fringe.

Going to need $60 next fall...

Not ashamed to admit this is the best news I've seen in awhile.  Loved the first one, devoted a scary amount of my time last semester to the second one; will find a way to play the third, job or no.

The Sanders Filibuster

I had my head buried in a couple casebooks today, so I completely missed Bernie Sander's epic faux-filibuster today in the Senate:

“How can I get by on one house?” Sanders said. “I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We've got the money, we've got the power, we've got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That's the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks.”

He went at this for over eight hours today, and all I can say is "wow."

As Andrew Leonard points out over at Salon, Republicans constantly threaten the use of the filibuster without standing out and speaking for hours on end like a traditional filibuster requires.  Indeed, the entire practice of the filibuster has become something of an obstructionist joke.  The filibuster is a powerful antidemocratic tool of the minority and it ought to be given the respect it deserves: if a Senator wants to shut down the Senate, there ought to be some physical cost.

So bravo to Senator Sanders!  This stunt was straight out of a great old West Wing episode.  Obviously, his stunt was not designed to stop the Obama tax compromise, but there's something quite honorable about taking to the Senate floor to criticize the direction this country is going for eight hours straight.  It's also superb political theory by a progressive at a time when Democrats seem to have utterly lost their flair for the dramatic.

Provided I have any money in 2012, my first campaign donation goes to Senator Sanders this time.  You know, if I have money...and if I get out of law school alive.

***UPDATE***

Brian Beutler at TPM explains why the Filibernie wasn't an actual Filibuster.  It also serves as a short explanation for a lot that's wrong with the Senate.

Five Sixths*

For the sake of my mental health, I haven't much of a job at all using this blog as a chronicle of my day-to-day life in law school, but for the Google junkies out there who do some NYU-specific searching someday, I consider the five-sixths mark of law school as being worthy of some comment.

Of course, I still have three exams and a paper standing between me and an appointment with my parents' couch, enough status updates on Facebook and general sentiments around school this week suggests that the end of physical classes marks the symbolic end of the term.  Works for me.  And with Wednesday night's criminal procedure wrap-up, I won't be in another class until the end of January.

Previously, I have been reluctant to refer to my professors by name here on the internets (for fear of something or other), but I'll think I break with that tradition for once.  I simply have to acknowledge Professor Andrew Schaffer's rousing speech about the positive value of legal education.  As he directed his words to the third years, I even felt a tingle go up my spine. Goosebumps, folks, goosebumps!

Though a number of my friends subsequently suggested his underlying sentiment was "sad," he speech was incredibly (if perhaps only momentarily) inspiring to me.  I am almost compelled to acquire an illicit copy from one of the student's secretly-recording lectures.  I only had time to slam down this paraphrased bit of wisdom:

Many of you who will be leaving law school next year will be leaving with less self-esteem than you came in with, but that will come back. Someday you'll get back that feeling you had when you opened that envelope with your acceptance to law school. 

Place your bets now! He intimated that law school is, in his view, a gauntlet thrown down in order to humble the type-As who found their way inside.  He also implored anyone entering the "noble profession" on the law to consider government work, which could only make me smile before I remembered the stack of rejection letters from our friendly federal government.

To prospective students at NYU looking for a criminal procedure course, I suppose I would highly recommend Prof. Schaffer.  Truthfully, I didn't always love his course the way some more prosecutorial-minded might.  Too much reading.  Abstract hypotheticals.  But I think the man's long history in (and ample stories from) actual practice had a good deal of value.  The other professors teaching criminal procedure at NYU are perfectly sufficient, but criminal procedure seems to beg for something more than an academic's viewpoint.  Prof. Schaffer certainly provides that, even if he can be impossible to follow and throw entirely too much at you.

But even if I would have held some sort of malicious grudge against the man after a semester of scatterbrained Fourth Amendment confusion, his final speech was moving.  He ended things on an aspirational note, and these days, that is worth quite a bit to me.

Beyond Prof. Schaffer, however, I have to admit I pretty much fell in love with Professor Melanie Leslie.  I'm not sure any other professor I've been aware of during my time at NYU has been so universally applauded by students I've spoken to about her.  Maybe I somehow simply found trusts and estates (she also teaches property) to be intrinsically interesting, but I think she was a big part of making me interested in the subject.  Charming, sarcastic, easy-going, and, for once, someone who actual taught some practical application of the law.

Interestingly, she isn't even on the full-time NYU faculty, instead visiting from Cardozo Law School.  If NYU Law had a clue, the school would steal her away pronto and stop throwing Village penthouses at big names from the "peer schools" to the north.  She even managed to teach me more property within the scope of her course than I actually learned in actual property law.

Professor Melanie Leslie.  Highly recommended.

Professor Andrew Schaffer.  Has the rhetoric to make law school not seem like a giant waste of money...for a few minutes at least.

Me?  Five-sixths of the way through law school, give or take an exam or two or three.

New Years' Resolution Preemptive Strike

I usually do not do New Years' resolutions.  I am reasonably certain the odds of embracing some sort of dramatic life change, cold turkey, in the middle of winter is generally a waste of time, but with stickK, maybe this year is the year?

In class today, we were discussing paternalism and how best to coerce nudge society toward certain behaviors.  One of the key rationales for paternalism is a general individual lack of willpower, but stickK changes the incentive structure:

We all need help to reach our goals - whether it's incentives, or support from others. Years of economic and behavioral research show that people who put stakes - either their money or their reputation - on the table are far more likely to actually achieve a goal they set for themselves. 

So if anyone is reading this, and has some particularly attainable challenge for me to pursue next year, let me know.  Act as a referee, find me a charity to donate to if I fail, and let's change me for the better!

Divided America

The United States has never lived up to its egalitarian ideals, but two bits of info today hit at just how divided the country is becoming (and I do not mean politically).  Last night, FED Chairman Bernanke conceded that the income gap in this country is a "very bad development": 

It's creating two societies. And it's based very much, I think, on educational differences. The unemployment rate we've been talking about. If you're a college graduate, unemployment is five percent. If you're a high school graduate, it's ten percent or more. It's a very big difference. It leads to an unequal society and a society which doesn't have the cohesion that we'd like to see.

Education as the magic bullet, eh?  Conveniently, a rash of reports out today are discussing how the high school graduates and the higher-educated are now diverging on how they approach marriage.  More accurately, middle-income Americans are losing faith in the value of the institution:

“The family lives of today’s high-school graduates are beginning to resemble those of high school dropouts,” the authors write. “With all the attendant problems of economic stress, partner conflict, single parenting and troubled children.”

These changes cannot possibly be viewed in a good light.  Of course, before I could give the issue too much weight, a friend took issue with CNN's ill-defined use of the term "Middle America," wondering whether CNN was properly distinguishing between the middle of the country and, as it meant to, middle-income citizens.  Maybe there isn't much difference?