Little Green River

Not sure what I think. On the one hand, this is a very good score. With it and my GPA, I at least stand a chance at getting in to most any law school (though for the very top schools it would help if I like cured a major disease or something in the next three months or so). It’s also one point higher than Nelson’s score, achieving that goal. :p

On the other hand, though, I studied my butt off the two weeks before the test and took a ton of practice exams. By the end of it I was finishing scoring in the 175-177 range. The real test felt much more difficult than any of my practice exams (which is weird, since the practice exams *were* real LSATs), so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to not score that high. But I thought I could. So I can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

So now what? Now I 1.) continue getting my things in order so I can apply to schools in August/September and 2.) figure out if it’s worth applying to Yale/Harvard.

Oh, and 3.) cure a major disease in the next three months.

Apparently, last year Minnesota passed a law making it mandatory for parents’ health insurance to cover their (unmarried) kids up until age 25. Thus, as far as I can tell, I’m not uninsured! Hooray!

If you’re not from MN and don’t have a job with benefits yet (?), it’s worth checking to see if your state has a similar law. I saw that Utah has you covered until age 26…there’s probably others.

Weirdest thing: a gum company paid this guy’s travel expenses in order to make this video. Yet there’s only a tiny mention of the gum at the very end, plus a link on the Vimeo page. I guess that’s something–I hadn’t heard of the gum, and now I have. But is that worth an all-expenses-paid round-the-world trip to however many countries? Maybe…

Perhaps the folks in the marketing department also got warm charitable fuzzies for funding such a cool video art project.

[Edit: Hat tip to Gavin for linking me to this.]

This basically made Nelson and I keel over last night. I even made an animated LJ userpic based on it. Kate Beaton’s livejournal is my new favorite sort-of-a-webcomic. If you’re not already subscribed, you really should. Mr. Darcy compels you!

Interesting article about an obscenity defense lawyer who is using the comparative popularity of various Google search terms to make the case that his client’s porn met the “community standards” test and thus wasn’t obscene. Turns out, surprise surprise, that the residents of Pensacola, FL search more often for “orgy” than for “apple pie”! (Popularity of “Mom”, “baseball” still being calculated.)

While a nice tactic, and one I wish would get some traction, it may not do the job. There’s nothing in Miller that says that a community’s standards must be ones that most community members actually follow. Hypocrisy might not be a defense if the courts decide that it is only the whited outsides of the sepulchers–the “standard” of the local gossips–that counts.

Perhaps eight years of Bush have warped my standards for presidential speeches. But, my God, this man is smart! First Obama gives a ridiculously insightful speech on race in America, now a speech on religion and politics at the Call to Renewal Conference. Really, go read. Obama is more eloquent and clear on the separation–and confluence–of church and state than any summary I could make.

I am just astounded at Obama’s ability to make ideas I believe are true–even hard truths, ideas that aren’t supposed to be acceptable arguments outside a college classroom–pronounceable in the political sphere. Normally these sorts of ideas would be cut to pieces in the soundbite news cycle. To some extent, they still are, but the parts the media picks out are usually representative enough that right-wing attacks come off as petty. Obama makes the speech of the decade on race: commentators rant about him “throwing his grandmother under the bus.” Now, Obama talks about the separation of church and state: Dobson whines (with no apparent sense of irony) that Obama is distorting the Bible for political purposes and that by mentioning Dobson in the same sentence as Al Sharpton, Obama is calling him racist. Really? Is that the best you can do?

To those who argue that Obama is nothing but pretty speeches, I would argue that there is more meaningful content in these than in any of Bush’s State of the Union addresses. Blabbering about “freedom” and “turrists” in order to excite neocon “clash of civilisations” fantasies does not qualify as an interesting or productive idea for the country.

Obama’s speeches are elevating the political discourse in this country, especially at those times that the media airs the whole thing, not just snippets. Mud-slinging will always be a presence in politics, but I do think the era of its postmodern, simulated dominance is coming to an end. However much I tend to agree with them, Obama’s arguments are not infallible–there are well-reasoned, well-phrased debates to be had. I’m just waiting for conservatives to rise to his standard and make them.

Scripps posted the speech that class president, senior class speaker, and future president of the United States Ashley Peters gave at graduation on Sunday. Seriously. She’s the best public speaker I’ve ever seen–all the faculty now know not to go after her, lest they be utterly upstaged.

American Airlines, like basically all airlines right now, has issues. As a result, they think that, only a few weeks or months since a wave of airlines started charging people for their *second* checked bag (GRAH ANGER GRAH), charging people to check any bags at all is acceptable. So far, this news along with other AA cuts has sent the airline’s stock down 24%. I hope it plummets further, before other airlines think this is actually a good idea and copycat it. Is it at all possible for every passenger on a flight to fit a carryon suitcase into the overhead compartment? No! Except for short-term business travelers and the like, you may as well just add the $15 onto every AA ticket price.

It seems like airlines have been doing their gosh-darned best over the last year or so to make flying as unpleasant an experience as possible. A customer satisfaction survey just released found that we are the most dissatisfied with air travel since 2001. Randomly canceling tons of flights, providing crappy service, and raising fares probably all have something to do with this.

Don’t get me wrong–I am more than willing to put the blame for this predicament on the shoulders of decisionmakers at the top airlines. They’ve made plenty of lousy decisions and customer-hating policies. But there are definitely factors more or less out of the airlines’ control. The TSA being the #1 most hated government agency, for one (though the airlines are capable of lobbying for less idiotic security policies–they apparently just don’t). Oil prices are another. (Do hybrid planes exist? Can we buy some?)

Which got me thinking: what if air travel just isn’t worth being in business anymore? As American Airlines chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey mentioned in the article:

The airline industry as it is constituted today was not built to withstand oil prices at $125 a barrel, and certainly not when record fuel expenses are coupled with a weak U.S. economy.

Most firms that are incapable of turning a profit in the mass market either go away, or become high-end niche businesses. What if that happened to air travel? Flying, after all, is one of the most wasteful-per-capita means of transportation out there–you burn more gas per person than you would roadtripping all that distance. With oil prices as they are, eco-friendliness correlates with profits–or vice-versa. The rich and business travelers who need to get places fast would still have airlines to serve them. But how would the rest of us get around this big-ass country of ours?

There’s the problem. What alternatives does the middle class have to air travel for long-distance mass transit? Amtrak goes almost nowhere, except maybe on the East Coast. While the overall Amtrak experience has been quite enjoyable in my experience, it’s expensive as heck and you run the risk of MAJOR delays if the schedule gets messed up and you have to compete with commodity trains for rail space. Greyhound buses exist, but they’re not only uncomfortable, they’re also gas-dependent and in many cases fares cost the same or more than comparable flights. Chinatown buses are useful and cheap as heck, but they also are pretty much limited to East Coast departures and destinations.

In short: we don’t really have an alternative. As much as we loathe them, we need the airlines to stay afloat. For now. Where’s my goddamn high-speed transcontinental maglev train?