Arbitrary Aardvark

Here's an actual post:
http://www.cheerleadersfortruth.com/
Via volokh, this seems to be a clever parody of something, possibly swift boat veterans.
At the risk of giving away the joke, it's about bush, was a he really a harvard cheerleader?
The eerie paralells between jfk and jfk - kennedy and kerry - crop up again.
I'm reading "the search for kennedy."
It turns out the kennedy legend of john being a pt boat hero were mostly manufactured by his dad's press agent. His boat got run over by a japanese ship. Instead of going down with the ship, he swam to shore, after saving a wounded crew member. Ok, he's a good swimmer.
So the 1960 contest for the democratic nomination is not one between john kennedy and evil genius lbj. It is between evil genius joe kennedy senio and evil genius lbj, and at some point they cut a deal and join forces, so they can defeat evil genius nixon.
There is a hint, on p 400 something, that Joe wrote his memoirs, but they were not published because they would be embarrasing to John. That's from a book in 1974. So, were the joe kennedy memoirs ever published? Are they still around? Could they be published now?
A few months ago, maybe last winter, a friend of mine died. It was known he had left some kind of book or diary. I spent some time persuading his nephew to allow web publication of that material. I don't have a url, but it's been posted privately on a discussion board we are on.
Some chapters written by my friend, others by his boyfriend, who had died a couple years earlier, who i knew, but not as well.
A lost robert heinlein novel was found in a box in a garage last year. It's not that good, from what I hear - there are reasons novels get lost. But it has meaning to those of us who scarf up every drop of heinlein we can find - www.heinleinsociety.org and also to those of us who see a connection between his ideas and those of ayn rand.
So, finding and publishing joe kennedy's memoirs - that would help make my mark.
Buried treasure. Maybe it's already been done. I haven't even googled for it.
So i'm still, slowly and casually, reseaching lbj's presidential years, following the model of Robert Caro. In a caro bio, you don't start with your subject. you find your subject's enemy, find out who his grandfather was, and tell that story, in 50 pages or so.
So a bio of johnson's presdiential years would include material on john kennedy, joe kennedy, john fitzgerald. the book i'm reading tells part of that story, tells it well, ands my bath water is hot, so i'll wrap this up. -30-.

Why I don't post here much lately:

This blog is on semi-hiatus.
By that I mean, I just don't post here much.
I used to have a reader, maybe only the one, but a good one.
If I'd gotten comments working, I might have had more feedback.
Right now, I am depressed. Maybe that's just from not enough sleep.
But I've been dealing with depression at least since i was 17,
and probably longer.
Self medication is not an option right now, and I haven't found a shrink to work with
(what with being broke) or a drug that helps.
I should be all cheered up right now, because I had a great call from a close friend ..
oh, ok that's why i don't post here much lately...
al my current writing is about me, and how depressed I am, and this isn't the blog for that. I do that blogging at myspace.com, arbitraryaardvark, for a few of my myfriends.
This blog was supposed to be about ideas, memes floating around in the blogosphere.
Another reason is that my access to computers is a little iffy - i might lose the dsl and have a wait before i get cable or - the horror! - have to get by on dialup for a little while.
Another reason is that my energy level is low.
Another reason is that I have pressing concerns in the so-called real world.
Among other things, I need a job.
So, on the off chance anyone is reading this and has an opening for a slightly used lawyer,
who used to be a pretty good dishwasher and a so-so headwaiter and an ok janitor,
I am available. I am in indianapolis. Willing to relocate, given a living wage that makes relocation feasible.
Ordinarily, I have a strong work ethic, lousy people skills, and am organizationally challenged.
Right now the work ethic comes and goes - give me work to do, and I think it would come back;
here, no work, few prospects, it is hard to get started. I am going to go read in the bath and maybe go back to bed.

blog: 4 letter word?

a comment i made on heidi bond's blog.
Blogs are strange that way. For most of us, there isn't enough of an audience to make it worth keeping up unless we write for that audience of one. A few superbloggers like heidi tony and will attain critical mass where they have regular readers and steady positive feedback. But they aren't wholly private either.I've had text from my work-related blog wind up quoted in an influential newsletter, generating a peeved call from opposing counsel.
Yesterday I got email with well-intentioned advice from a stranger who had read my myspace blog, where I mostly whine about my miserable life, because i find writing about it helps me work through things and get on with life.
I knew of a guy, jim bell of seattle, who went to jail after writing an academic treatise about killing people, that he had posted to the net."assasination politics" was a rather interesting elaboration of robin hanson's ideas about idea futures. the formal charges weren't about what he wrote, but what he wrote seems to have kicked off the investigation that resulted in his being jailed.
I agree with you that your blog here reflects well on your character and reputation capital ('wuffie' as cory doctorow of eff and boing-boing puts it in 'down and out in the magic kingdom, www.craphound.com/down.)It provides for icebreakers about chickens.
If asked, i could tell you the story of a woman who became an ostrich lawyer.
I do not know if there is a lot of chicken-related litigation, but you could own that niche. Perhaps if you asked your readers to send you interesting cases about chickens, you could build an open source restatement of chicken law, and professor froomkin would be likely to cite it in a footnote, and your professional reputation would be assured.
Does anybody have a good online treatise about cow law? In McIntyre v. Ohio, Justice Ginsburg, concurring, said, "In for a calf is not in for a cow", and I've spent years battling with the "reform" community about what that means, but lacked a good source of cow quotes.

bartleby and i.
There is a classic story, Bartleby the Scrivener. It might be by Melville or one of those cats.
It is about a clerk in a law office, london i think [wall st?], before computers and typewriters,
who does less and less and eventually nothing, but won't leave.

*curiously i found the text on www.bartleby.com, which has great books online, a public domain repository. i'm all into those.

When I first read it, I wasn't sure quite what to make of it, comedy, horror, suspense?
Knowing a bit more now, it's a classic decription of clinical depression.
That's my situation.
I was brought up in a neo-victorian environment of high expectations, marked as a failure, a B student in household of A students, back when that meant something. Random beatings, well-intentioned, created leaned helplessness, while, since backtalk was verboten, i learned to suppress my rage, turning it inward, and became adept at being a passive-agressive brat.
This is a recipe for depression and introversion, probaby building on a genetic aspect. It was the 60s. Johnson was the tyrant in charge. Dad's home was his castle.
I was not diagnosed with major depression until I was 40, so my early years were painful, setting high goals, failing wildly. Drugs eased the pain and made life bearable, but didn't add to my coping skills. I limped along. Had a girlfriend for a few years and got through law school on the basis of that emotional support, now gone. Never made a go of it as a lawyer, it's more of an expensive hobby. Worked hard at a warehouse job, bought a house in the ghetto. Came into some family money which gave me the freedom to go crazier, lose everything over about 5 years. So at 44 i'm lost, drifting, in crisis.

I've been staying for 2 months with a guy whose condition is a lot like mine, and it gives me insight I've lacked, about what a bad roommate I've been during my more depressed times.
He won't get out of bed to work, so he's lost his job. he wont clean up after himself or the dogs, so there's a bug problem. The leaking pipe in the basement goes unfixed. And it seems like this month's rent won't get paid, but like bartleby he won't leave. The funny thing is he's the closest thing I have to a friend in real life right now; my other friends are on the computer or far away.

I need to kick him out, because the horror the horror, of the bugs and the dog smell, and that my being angry at him about these things is not healthy for me right now.
It is the age old problem - I can't stand people, people aren't comfortable around me,
without them i'm so lonely i can't stand it.
So if I were to re-read Bartleby, I would have a deeper understanding - of Bartleby, and of his co workers not understanding. But I don't have time to read. I'd stopped reading the morning paper. Stopped having it delivered because it just piled up on the porch.
I'm too busy not working. Like Bartleby.

Crescat Sententia: August 26, 2004 Archives baude on posner. in which it is revealed baude worked for posner, didn't know that part. see also bond, heidi.
as for me, i was offered a job in the real world today, and hope to turn it down.
waiting on callback from other place.

why i am a baudeholic:
And remember: once you read one sentence, even this one, you'll be driven to read more and more until your eyes give out!

Do you steal from your children's piggy banks to buy books?
No, didn't have kids, too busy reading.
Have you lost literally dozens of friends who died as a direct result of over-reading?
Yes.
Have you ...lost your driver's license?
Yes.
Has your doctor told you to either stop reading or die?
Nope, don't have a doctor.
Do you buy your books at different stores so the clerks won't say, "You back again?"?
Yes.
Do you hide books in the garage and tell Irene you're going to get something there, in order to sneak a chapter?
Not irene specificly.
Have you ever been threatened with end-stage cirrosis of the eyes?
My mom is there. the glasses, the heavier glasses, the laser surgery, the glasses, the heavier glasses, the reading by magnifying glass.
If so, let's talk! Maybe you ought to get a sponsor in RA (Readers Anonymous) that you can call in the middle of the night when you get the urge to read.
Maybe.
once you read one sentence, even this one, you'll be driven to read more and more until your eyes give out!
I figure, by the time the singularity rolls around in 2012, I can get new eyes.

Myspace.com
This is a test of the nifty 'blog this' button on my google toolbar.
What i'm supposed to be doing instead is looking up info for my roommate to be a lilly test subject, so he could pay the rent, but one thing leads to another.

Why someone would need to embalm 25 bodies, pass a licensing examination, and complete a specified 60-credit program of undergraduate training for the required funeral director's license just to sell a box remains unclear to me. volokh
I had a hunch this might be an www.ij.org case; it is.

Back to “The Matrix”
First example: how technology will bring us to the world of The Matrix.
The matrix is a video online world that is so realistic that if one’s “avatar” (one’s electronic self, the player in the video world) is killed, one dies of shock. The current video online worlds, in which you create and manipulate your avatar by means of a computer screen and a mouse or joystick, are insufficiently realistic to cause many deaths; I know of only one, described in a great article by James Meek: ‘In October 2002 a 24-year-old man, Kim Kyung-jae, died of a DVT-like illness after playing an online game, Mu, virtually nonstop for three and a half days. “I told him not to spend so much time on the internet,” his mother told the BBC. “He just said, ‘Yes, Mum’, but kept on playing.” (According to Lance Stites of NCsoft the company has taken steps to encourage players to keep the distinction between real and virtual worlds clear. Now, messages appear periodically on screen reminding subscribers to “stretch your legs and see the sunshine once in a while”.)’ But already there is a video game in which you wear a headset that enables you to manipulate your avatar by brain waves. More matrix-like still is a technology under development whereby chips implanted in the brains of paralyzed people will enable them to operate computers by thought alone: they ‘will have a cable sticking out of their heads to connect them to computers, making them look something like characters in “The Matrix.”’ Implants.
Even in the current, primitive stage of online video world technology, literally millions of people are participating, many obsessively; the use of real money to purchase game money with which to buy equipment, clothing, and other assets in the video world is already a big business. A few years hence, people will be interacting in the video world by brainwaves alone, and in that “no hands” context they may forget who and where they are. The social consequences could be immense, and the political as well if government obtains control of the chips implanted in people’s brains to enable them to play and of the signals communicated to those chips. It will take many years to create a video online world as complex as that of The Matrix, where millions of avatars interact in a stunningly realistic simulation of a 20th century big city. But short of that, people will find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the actual and virtual worlds in which they participate.
The law is slowly beginning to notice the video online world phenomenon; there is even a recent case in China in which an online player sued the video game company for allowing a hacker to steal the player’s virtual possessions!
The big question--what if any social controls should be placed on the evolution of video online worlds--is baffling and as far as I am aware has attracted little attention.
posted by [ Richard Posner ] on [ Aug 25 04 at 3:58 PM ] to [ ] [ 1 comment ] [ post diffusion: No trackbacks + technorati ]
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(i haven't read crescat lately, but i have a hunch baude will already have blogged about this.)
update: shockingly, no. well, i'm off to kill time at the grocery store - i'm bugbombing my house, the $250 rental with no hot water - don't tell the zoning thugs.

http://www.sinfest.net/d/20040823.html
i've been feeling a litte stressed lately.
part of what helps is i'm exploring some new creative outlets,
stripcreator,
personal blogging over in the myspace universe,
and now digital photography.
photo will go here shortly.