From: Happy hour invitations I once sent; redacted

Associates in overindulgence—

This week I bring you a little tribute to some pals who are particularly enthusiastic about being invited to happy hour. It’s fictional; all similarities to real people are purely coincidental. Inspired by a joke from a while ago. Um... things get kind of intense here. I got a little into this one.

The following is best enjoyed with some background music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF43b38k0Mw&list=PLYKYvzEOROHiHdF01o5lsmKWdQkIJbW40

From The [] Files

On a cold, bitter day in February, the wind was biting my cheeks like a teething golden doodle puppy. It was the sort of day you wanted to ignore, wrapped tight in the embrace of some sweet scotch, a slow smoke, and a fast woman—not necessarily in that order.

I unfurled my collar against the chill. There would be no scotch—not yet, anyway. There would be no smoke but the hot breath I left in my wake to fade into the cold [] night behind me; no women but the anonymous passers-by biting their lips at me from under umbrellas. I was on the job—and not just any job. This one promised to take me down the darkest alleys, through the sleaziest dives, and into the most seductive hospitalities in town. It was exactly my kind of gig.

Defense Part II: Game Theory and the Modern Paradigm

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

The Cold War was an interesting time. The international relations landscape was bipolar. That is, the USA and USSR were the centers of their respective spheres of power (two poles), and the rest of the world (except the irrelevant 3^rd world)  was to take a side.

Bipolar dynamics are usually considered to be very stable. You have two primary powers keeping each other in check to some extent—neither can get too powerful, but no new powers are likely to grow to their level. The Cold War was a strange scenario because it combined this stable model with a lot of instability, due thanks in large part to the scariness nuclear weapons presented. Nuclear deterrence theory is widely misunderstood, and I’m not the one who should educate the masses… so naturally, here I go.

Defense Part I: Spending

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

Especially following the State of the Union address, I’ve been thinking a lot about our defense spending situation. Of course, the whole point of this blog is to argue through things with some degree of measure and reason, and the State of the Union doesn’t do that at all, regardless of the president or his political leanings. The SOTU is designed to inspire, reassure, and galvanize. Nobody should treat anything President Obama said during the address as an argument for any policy point, whether for the sake of supporting or for impeaching that position. It’s just propaganda. I don’t mean this to sound pessimistic—it’s just the nature of the beast. Nobody, in an hour and a half, can make a statement sufficiently comprehensive to be considered a thorough argument of all the issues confronting our nation.

But that doesn’t mean important things weren’t discussed, and our defense spending really is one of the most controversial debates raging at this moment. Balancing our collective budget is politically a hot button issue, and most agree that some amount of revenue increase partnered with some amount of spending cuts will be necessary to accomplish that goal. The trick is finding out where defense spending fits into that equation, and I think the issue presents some unique problems.

Football and Agency Costs

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

The football season is over, and I’m sure we’ll see plenty of personnel changes before next season rolls around. In light of potential head coach firings, some interesting parallels between corporate law and football have been rolling around in my mind recently.

Football is played at notoriously sub-optimal levels. Bill Barnwell over at Grantland is a great guy to read if you don’t believe me. At virtually every level of the game—from personnel decisions and player contracts to real-time game strategy—huge mistakes are regularly made. Part of the reason for this is that most football fans (and even football front offices) think about certain aspects of the game in the wrong way.

I’ll note that, as a general rule, front offices are usually extremely sophisticated actors with a lot of proprietary means of analyzing the best courses of action. So they often deserve the benefit of the doubt. But the fact remains that the NFL is fraught with poor decision making, and coaches are often faulted for all the wrong things. So I’m breaking out my slingshot and going after this Goliath.

Sentimentality

[Editor's Note: In a romantic mood. This is outdated, but I was thinking of it again recently and decided to dig it up. If nothing else, it offers some relief for today's earlier post.]

I was silly at the Verizon Store. [She] and my dad were teasing my about my phone dilemma—the apparent attachment I had developed to my now-obsolete cell, whose imminent loss I bemoaned unabashedly and whose inadequate replacement I condemned unforgivingly. “It’s just a phone,” she said, and I’m sure to her that’s true, but she has an iPhone. Or, to get to the problem’s marrow, she upgraded. She can’t possibly understand, because my new phone sucks. I hate it already. The interface is awful, it’s uncomfortably shaped, the spacebar on the keyboard doesn’t work right, and nothing functions as smoothly as it should. And I paid to have this instead of my old phone, which I loved.

We joked in the car that my previous phone was the one that first held her number, that first called and texted her. It was on that phone that we first flirted, planned, fell in love. It was on that phone that she texted me, “Je pense a toi et c’est terrible,” on that phone that I invited her over the first night we kissed, on that phone that I repeatedly surprised myself to find the memory filled up, quicker and quicker each time, with sweet nothings. I wasn’t serious at first, but even as I pronounced the joke the sentimentality hit me.

When a cell phone messages or calls, it sends a signal up to a satellite hanging blinkingly above the earth which then redirects back down and to its destination. Imagining those invisible beams of data bouncing between phones, I think there must be some spectrum on which they are visible: staticky webs of criss-crossing signal streams raining down from orbit and wrapping each device in the ephemeral glow of information. They’re white and grey and plain, except for mine and hers; when we text each other a great red signal throws itself into the stratosphere and rebounds explosively back to ground. On the right spectrum, you can see the difference—the cosmic deference satellites and air waves give our love-enriched, ruby text messages and our sanguine phone calls.

Introducing: The Fellatio Coefficient

The Fellatio Coefficient

The Fellatio Coefficient is a mechanism designed to objectively and quantifiably measure one's skill in the art of fellatio. It was designed contemplating the following guidelines and philosophies, which present both the letter and spirit of the rule:

1. Definitions

(a) Attractiveness: The alluring and arousing quality of a fellator, whether physical or otherwise

(b) Fellatio: The act of oral sex on a male, including other acts naturally linked to that act and performed in conjunction with that act, but necessarily excluding intercourse

(c) Fellator: The person performing fellatio (also, the “assessed”)

(b) Orgasm: Sexual climax (also, to “finish,” “ejaculate”)

(e) Recipient: The person receiving fellatio (also, the “assessor”)

(f) Refusal: Indicates a would-be fellator’s unwillingness to perform fellatio. This should not be interpreted as a response to any force or coercion; the fellatio coefficient, law, and morality all oppose sexual assault.

(g) Response: The fellator’s system of permissions and reaction to the recipient’s orgasm

(h) Spontaneity: Willingness and eagerness to independently and of individual accord initiate fellatio under given circumstances

2. On fellatio generally

(a) Users of the fellatio coefficient may consider its importance self-evident. These criteria do not purport to assert or deny the value of oral sex or any other activity, nor to imply its worth in sexual relationships.

(b) Fellatio is an inherently subjective act, enjoyed uniquely between each fellator-recipient couple. It is impossible to discourse on the subject with absolute objectivity, as each recipient’s demands and each fellator’s talents will interact differently with everyone. That said, the fellatio coefficient posits that certain estimations can offer a useful referential tool.

Gun Control

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

Following the Sandy Hook tragedy, there’s been a lot of discussion about gun control, and naturally, the public discourse on the subject has been pretty poor. It never ceases to amaze me how even the most basic of syllogisms seems the farthest place from where people want to start the discussion. Criticism of politicians, the media, etc., aside, I’d like to talk about how we should think about the gun control issue.

It will perhaps serve me first to inoculate against any potential accusation of political bias; in fact, though I’m Republican, I’ve never fired a weapon before (nor owned one), and I really have no objection to harsher gun control (or even a firearms ban). I simply remain unconvinced doing so would be sound policy.

Whenever a highly-publicized tragedy occurs, people get reactionary. Making sweeping policy decisions at these moments isn’t advisable, however, and even sad stories like Sandy Hook deserve a measured response. In fact, the amount of outrage we want to feel over school shootings is itself a symptom of our socialization. Every day, many more people die from, for example, car accidents. We feel no outrage until we know one of them. It’s fallacious to an extent to compare the two—car accidents are the result of necessary daily activity ubiquitously performed and mass shootings aren’t—but keep in mind also that car accidents are just as preventable as mass shootings. We as a society could opt to lower speed limits, raise the age of eligibility for a license, increase the force of highway patrol officers, improve public transportation, and make any number of other adjustments to save lives. We don’t. Why not?

From: Happy hour invitations I once sent; redacted

Co-conspirators in frivolity—

I feel it only appropriate to remind you of two things:

1) It's Thursday, so come to Happy Hour at [-] on [-] at 5:00PM. I actually probably won't be there, but I know my solemn duty to remind everyone.

2) THE RAVENS WON THE SUPERBOWL. Please keep this in mind as you heed the cautionary tale of one who ignores happy hour invitations, only to be accosted by a more relaxed fellow (it's obviously a ripoff of a great man's great poem):

Once upon a Thursday boring, as I sat up, nearly snoring

Over many a teeming legal treatise I was doomed to scour—

While I studied, hardly reading, suddenly there came a pleading,

As if someone gently leading, leading me to times less dour.

‘’Tis frivolity,’ I grumbled, ‘leading me to times less dour –

I won’t go to Happy Hour.’

Coupons

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

A while ago, I was discussing coupons with a friend of mine after we had gone grocery shopping.

“Coupons are such a raw deal,” is something similar to what he said. “They’re like rebates. Stores could just put on a sale so that everyone would capture the benefits of the savings; instead, they limit savings to the people who take the time to cut out coupons.”

It’s an interesting thought. I wonder where coupons come from. I suspect they weren’t born out of advertising for the store offering the discount at all, because they seem less effective than normal sales for that. I suspect they were devised as a means of peddling publications: buy this magazine/newspaper, and you’ll find coupons inside. Then, of course, the magazine/newspaper pays the store offering its coupons.

How do coupons and sales influence business? Here’s how I imagine it:

Awesome Band Names...

...all of them derived from judicial decisions and legal terminology.

1. Spitefence
2. Smuggleplane
3. The Small Fruits
4. The Possession of Booty
5. Lodowick Post
6. The Pernicious Quadrupeds
7. The Saucy Interlopers
8. Lex Marcatoria
9. The Officious Inter-meddlers
10. Fruits and Instrumentalities

Foster Children

<STD: Serious Topic Disclaimer>

In the interest of offering content both didactic and accessible, the following Serious Topic will not include proper source support. This means you shouldn’t believe any of it. If you find the discussion compelling, however, I encourage you to pursue a more demonstrable truth.

Recently, a speaker visited my school to discuss foster care and the way the state and private organizations interact in the allocation of foster children to loving families. The issue I’d like to discuss today is the Establishment Clause conflict that arises between the two.

For simplicity’s sake, we can equate Establishment Clause issues to the conflict between church and state. In fact, the original importance of that idea comes from Thomas Jefferson’s personal correspondence, but the Establishment Clause has been interpreted to form the legal basis for much of the curtailment of state involvement in the religious sphere (and vice versa).

In the specific context of foster children, the problem arises when the state contracts with religiously-affiliated groups in the aid of foster children. I’ll offer a paradigmatic (if simplified) example:

Rules for Spin the Bottle

The following are rules for a game of Spin the Bottle, to be played in adult company. They were composed in contemplation of several important factors:

• Maximizing enjoyment for everyone--not only in the sense of permitting people to kiss other people freely, but also in the sense of providing for a compelling game
• Inclusion (meaning anybody's presence--regardless of attractiveness, kissability, or any other characteristic--offers advantages to the overall gameplay, making everyone a desirable player)
• Comprehensive coverage (beginning-to-end instructions; no loopholes)
• Order of operation (meaning that, while the rules should be read in their entirety first, they are presented more or less in the order they become relevant)
• Prior knowledge (that is, I assume you understand that the basic premise of spin the bottle is as follows: A group of people sit in a circle and take turns spinning an empty bottle. The person toward whom the bottle, once spun, points, receives a kiss from the spinner, and then the next spinner takes a turn, etc.).

From: Happy hour invitations I once sent; redacted

Dearest Collaborators in Thrills of the Legal Variety--

It's Thursday again!

Some of you are doubtless thinking, "What!? I'm only now emerging from a strange, snowy, alcoholic haze that seemed to persist for an entire weekend! I've only just now woken up from a bizarre dream about party cabins, snow bunnies, and wanton bed sharing!" You are doubtless thinking that, unless you are thinking, "But I'm still recovering from the trauma of that Monopoly game and the skiing polar bear's female objectifying!"

If the above sounds like you, you just might be suffering from postskiweekenditis, a degenerative condition that affects many [-] Law students this time of year. Other symptoms include:

-Vomiting and hangover symptoms
-Intense regret of life choices
-Shame
-Burgeoning desire to abandon all ambitious endeavors
-Increased time spent browsing imgur for pictures of hedgehogs, owls, kittens, and puppies
-Bouts of spontaneous weeping and/or combustion
-Dissociative fugue
-Involuntary homicidal designs on an anthropomorphized representation of the Advanced Practice program

From: Happy hour invitations I once sent; redacted

Partners in revelry--

We now interrupt your regularly-scheduled programming to bring you coverage of one of nature's more spectacular phenomena.

As you know, the wild law student's life follows certain immutable cyclical patterns:

• In November and April, the wild law student sequesters itself among the patchwork nestings of its textbooks in anticipation of the exam season.
• In December, the wild law student migrates to the place of its birth. In May, the wild law student follows the migratory route of its primary prey (the greenbacked moolah clam) to more prosperous climes.
• In August, the wild law student returns to its ancestral home in [-], where it celebrates the reunion with others of its kind in a celebratory ritual involving the copious consumption of alcohol.
• On Thursday, the wild law student attends happy hour at [-], on [-] St., at ~5:00PM.

I hereby christen thee...

Welcome to A Measure of Surface.

This will be my pet activity; calling it a project would be an overstatement. I like to write. I write my thoughts when they are keeping me up at night, I write through problems that I have (academic, personal, etc.), and I write for leisure. It is therapy and entertainment.

I intend to fill these electronic pages with those various writings: some of them quite serious, some very much otherwise. Among the contents readers will find: arguments, lists, aphorisms, witticisms, thoughts, measured discourse, commentary, and prose and poetry aimless or otherwise. I hope to be both didactic and entertaining.

It is not my intention to proselytize in any way. I will not solicit followers, and I have made an effort to reduce my contact with the Internet community. The user interface is sparse. Nominally public is exactly what I wish to be. Commenting is freely available to everyone, as reasoned discourse does not eschew criticism. That said, I do not argue on the Internet.

I will also maintain anonymity, to the extent I can. Sufficient biographical information: I am an American law student.

"A Measure of Surface" is a silly name, but it abbreviates well and has already grown on me.

Thank you, enjoy.