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November 6, 2007

Why lawyers are protesters in Pakistan ::
legal — tagged , , , and
8:23 am

Slate has a good piece explaining why we’re seeing attorneys at the center of the protests against Musharraf’s recent imposition of Marshall Law. Sure, there’s the whole point that they were the only remaining group who could muster the power to get together after Musharraf took power in 1999 and chased all the opposition parties out of the country; and yes, the courts made for a convenient place for the lawyers to gather. But there’s a historical and cultural context in which all of this occurred:

Lawyers and the law have played a central role in politics since the beginning of Pakistan’s history. The founder of the country, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a barrister—he mounted a series of successful arguments for how the 1947 separation from India would take place; at heart, Partition was a legal arrangement.

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And throughout the decades of Pakistan’s existence, lawyers have fought for the development of legislative and judicial institutions in opposition to military dictatorship and the existing bureaucratic rule.

October 10, 2007

Skeleton Ed, the reunion tour. ::
music — tagged , and
9:36 am

One show only, at the Seventh Street Entry in Minneapolis. Sorry I missed this.

Concert-going creating potential border security problem? ::
legal — tagged , , and
9:29 am

Brian over at False 45th has a nice review of The National’s recent show up in Montreal. I’m sorry I missed it, and having seen The National at last year’s Pitchfork festival, I understand, at least partially, what I was missing out on. But, unrelated to the show itself is Brian’s increasingly tense and interrogatory interactions with the border guards:

One last note, I think the border agents are becoming increasingly suspicious of my brief three-hour trips to Montreal. The questions are getting more and more detailed and are being asked with an increasingly surly tone. On the way in, I was asked what I did for a living, what company I work for and where they were located. Then the agent quickly mixed in, “Do you have $10,000 in the car?” On the way back, the border agent asked me where the concert was, what street the club was located on, what were the cross streets and what roads I took to get to and from the club.

Brian’s story implies that US Immigration maintains a database of each citizen’s border crossing activities. It’s probably keyed by the the car’s license plate. The government’s doing this is probably not a problem on its own, though it does raise a civil libertarian flag—mostly because it suggests that although border guards are able to collect extensive information on when and how often a person crosses the US border, that by itself isn’t enough to warrant increased suspicion, and potentially raises a lot of false positives. To my mind, making brief trips to Canada every month or so does seem a little out of the ordinary, but on its own I’m not the sort of behavior that suggests nefarious activity. Yet the increased suspicion of the border guard, implied by his pressing questions, seem to suggest that such border-crossing jaunts are treated like that. Yet, Brian’s activity is really very ambiguous, and has a completely innocent explanation. If the guards had a little more information, they’d know that.

October 2, 2007

First Youtube post: Thomas Edison on a fixed-gear bike ::
bikes — tagged , , , , and
4:15 pm

The title speaks for itself. Oh, and welcome a new category, simply entitled bikes.

September 28, 2007

Legal photos: law library at the University of Coimbra in Portugal ::
legal photos — tagged
9:42 am


Sala de Revistas (Faculty of Law – University of Coimbra), originally uploaded by Renata e Guilherme.

Remember when I posted legal photos to this site on at least a semi-regular basis? I thought I’d give that a try again. This picture was taken on at University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Law. Seems like a nice work space.

September 5, 2007

!: more music ::
music — tagged , , and
11:15 am

So, another music list. It’s been a pretty music-intensive summer for me, and the end result has been a nice expansion of my music collection. With that, a few notes on the list below. First, there has been a lot of interesting electronica coming out this year, and the minimalist sounds of The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime has been some of the best of that crop of music. In the more familiar genres, Band of Horses’s “Is There A Ghost” totally rocks; my palms sweat a little when I think about the release of their new album in a month. You can hear the new track yourself on the band’s MySpace page. “Sun A.M.” mysteriously showed up on my iPod a few months ago and its catchy Swedish pop melody has worked its way into my heart. And finally, no mix of mine would be complete without some song from Spoon.

Oh, and the exclamation point title doesn’t have that much meaning. I just found it floated the song list to the top of my iTunes playlists.

August 31, 2007

Distance: a song list ::
music — tagged , , and
6:58 am

I need to get back into posting more regularly. So with that being a priority, here’s a song list we’ve been listening to this summer, entitled Distance. Sorry, no commentary on the individual tracks, which I know I’ve set something of a precedent for doing; I thought it more important just to get this post out the door. Ok, I need to continue looking for work.

August 30, 2007

No Goldwater ::
politics — tagged , and
7:47 am

Slate discusses whether the Republicans lashing out against Larry Craig is consistent with the fundamental principles of conservatism—namely, by asking what Barry Goldwater would have done in the same situation. Looking back to the 1964 campaign for President, when Goldwater decided against attacking Johnson for keeping his aide Walter Jenkins after Jenkins had been arrested for the same behavior in a Washington, D.C. YMCA, Slate argues that Republicans today have drifted far away from their more principled—not to mention personally decent—roots. Goldwater recounted his reasoning for leaving the matter alone:

As Goldwater later wrote, “It was a sad time for Jenkins’ wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow. Winning isn’t everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important.”

I can imagine the sort of personal turmoil this incident has created for the Senator’s family. That his colleagues have either abandoned him or have decided to openly attack him speaks volumes on their current lack of decency.

June 24, 2007

Evidence I’m still here ::
personal — tagged , , , , , and
11:06 am


Langdon Street Geek Week – Freeride Bike Clean!, originally uploaded by SirStan.

So, its been four whole months since I posted here. In that time I devoted myself to my job at the state house, involved got involved in a serious relationship with a girl from Worcester (Massachusetts, not Vermont), drafted more legislation and attended more judiciary committee meetings than I care to think about, found myself unemployed once again, and got involved with a recently-conceived Montpelier bike cooperative. Above you’ll see a picture of me at one of Freeride’s functions, washing my orange Bottecchia fixed gear.

Speaking of my Bottecchia, the bike has served me well over the past few months (after some serious upgrades—it’s quite a different bike from the one it was before). Fixed gear, it turns out, is definitely a new and interesting biking experience, and seems to be an interesting next step after recovering from my broken hip.

I also turned 31 with a small but important amount of fanfare (which came from my new girlfriend) traveled to Central Massachusetts on several weekends, and started the process of finding more work. I’m not sure what the next phase of my life is going to look like, and in the meantime I’ve really enjoyed once again being between things.

February 20, 2007

Ski lift, Vermont ::
vermont — tagged , , , , and
4:30 pm


Ski Lift
Originally uploaded by rbglasson.

Someone posted a bunch of pictures from what looks like a summer vacation to Vermont back in the 1970’s. So great for so many different reasons. Unfortunately, there’s no tags or photo sets, so you have to dig through the set on your own.

February 9, 2007

Litigation ::
legal photos — tagged , , , and
1:11 pm


Litigation
Originally uploaded by vignettes.

I wish I understood the context of this photo, but I have very little to go on. There’s enough information, though, for me to say that it is law-related, if only vaguely.

In any event, I was just looking for an excuse to link to it here.

January 31, 2007

Fake iPod Nano ::
tech — tagged , , , and
12:47 pm


Fake iPod Nano
Originally uploaded by Small Dog Electronics.

Did you know these existed? I didn’t.

Noted by Small Dog Electronics.

January 30, 2007

Executive (dis)order ::
politics — tagged , , and
12:15 pm

I haven’t read the Bush Administration’s executive order that the New York Times reported on this morning (note, it seems not to have been posted yet over at the FR website here it is), but I have to say I’m kind of intrigued by the idea, but for different reasons than the liberal political blogs are dwelling on. Sure, there are many who are saying that it’s another step in politicizing what should be an area of pure regulation that functions well only when it’s based on the best evidence and best practices and not on ideology. And I would agree if I thought there was any possibility of the program working. But look—how many federal regulatory agencies are there out there? (I really have no idea, so it’s not just a rhetorical question.) And how many of them are going to report to the White House? And with all the problems the Bush administration is currently facing, is there any way that any group of humans could handle this new bit of chaos? It just seems too overwhelming a project to manage in any coherent way.

So it makes me wonder if maybe it’s something of a back door strategy on the part of the Bush administration. While everyone is screaming that this is just another attempt to coddle regulated industries, in reality what is happening is the Bush administration is taking down regulations by simply performing an impossible task incompetently.

Incidentally, this is a perfect example of micromanagers are really not effective leaders. They just can’t do the amount of work that is required to in order to exercise the amount of control their pathologies demand.

January 29, 2007

Yes, it will probably still hurt ::
personal — tagged and
12:55 pm

Someone found this site by asking Google “I broke my femur [five] weeks ago, should I still be in pain?” Speaking only from my own experience, I definitely continued to experience some pain five weeks after my accident, especially after spending hours in the same place. Generally I found that maintaining a certain level of activity, however minimal, was key to my own pain management. And also remember that pain is tied intimately to your emotions, and therefore what seems like only a mild discomfort to me might be unbearable for you.

January 25, 2007

Robin’s New Orleans trip ::
photos — tagged , , , , , , and
9:27 pm


our house
Originally uploaded by rho-bin.

My sister just got back from a week-long trip to New Orleans, where she helped with post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. She’s been posting photographs from that trip to a rapidly growing flickr set, which is worth taking a look at.

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