Law Students Can be Well, Um, Dumb

A while back I received an email from a law school buddy looking for some friendly alumni advice. Being a good friend, I took the time to respond in proper law school format - the good ol' Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion (IRAC).

ISSUE PRESENTED

If you were friends with a stripper - who you met before she became a stripper - and she asked you to act as security for a private engagement where she would be making $100 an hour, do you think your wife or girlfriend ("gf") would have a valid argument that you shouldn't do it?

RULE

The rule is, husbands and boyfriends are to strippers what paraplegics are to pogo sticks. That is, they should be enjoyed only safely from a distance and no touching is allowed.

ANALYSIS

If you're in something that either one of you thinks of as a committed relationship, then (a) you shouldn't be anything closer than two-arms-length acquaintances with a stripper; (b) if B doesn't apply, she should be so hot that she charges at least $500 an hour; (c) if (a) and (b) are satisfied, you shouldn't be present when & where that stripper friend is stripping; if (a) and (b) are satisfied but not (c), your gf/wife must also be present; (d) what on earth makes you think you're qualified to act as security to a stripper? do you know have a five point exploding heart death grip that I don't know of?; (e) remember, "security" for a stripper at a "private party" is rat's hair's distance away from "pimp"; (f) while some partners around here may disagree with the above-analysis, [firm redacted] could revoke your offer if anything negative sprang from that activity.

CONCLUSION

(a) Apologize immediately & profusely to gf/wife for asking the question in the first place, (b) buy her something big and shiny and (c) promise to not to be such a bonehead in the future.

This might be unfair, but after the North Carolina and Indiana primary results, I'm in a celebratory mood. And what better way to celebrate the demise of Hillary's campaign than with a little Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars?

But She's Really, Really Needs It

David Kahane at NRO has a knock-down metaphor-ladden piece on Hillary that pretty accurately fairly captures the Clintonista dynamic that is being inflicted on us by (who else?) the Clintonistas. How many metaphors? A quorum. A plethora. In short, more than metaphors than China has nipples.

Imperial Presidency

So, what will our country's verdict be about this president: the elitist, alcoholic blue blood scion of a Mayflower family, educated in the best schools of the Northeast and who never worked an honest day in his life; who amalgamated power to the executive branch to a unheard of degree, changing the basic constitutional balance of the nation in the process; whose federal programs were time and again struck down by the Supreme Court but who refused to moderate his vision for a new America; who trampled on constitutional freedoms by rounding up individuals on trumped charges of "national security" and put them into a prison camp with no access to lawyers or rights to appeal; recklessly alienated millions of Europeans, Asians and Africans with a Manichean, "us versus them" foreign policy; ran up the national debt to record levels; and diverted public funds for his own personal gain?

Sounds awful. So will history's verdict be? Good enough to put him on the back of the dime?

Yeah, cheap shot, but I'm talking about liberal demigod and patron saint of the Democratic Party, good ol' Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Anyway, FDR came up in this interesting MSNBC story about a long-forgotten subway station situated under the Waldorf Astoria.





Via: Ace of Spades.

Renovation Update: Major Changes

I stopped by the construction after a long weekend away and was thrilled to see the progress we've made. First, the master bath: they've added a dark grey grout around the quartzite tiles in the outer water closet and have installed the custom-bathroom vanity. They've designed the vanity to match the new doors we're installing in the closets and bedrooms throughout the apartment (hopefully early next week).

After a bit of back and forth with the tiler, and my wife's six trips to different tile and marble retailers throughout New York City (she actually hand picked a dozen tiles from over twenty different lots of marble), the bathroom floor looks great. Since we had had a few misfires with the tiler, my wife and I actually laid out the marble exactly as we wanted them last Thursday night and numbered each tile on strips of blue tape:

Meanwhile, aside from flooring, an overhead light fixture and some painting, the master bedroom is substantially complete:

The main (old) apartment looks rather bare with the furniture moved out and the old floor ripped up. They've delivered our bamboo flooring to be installed this week.

A view from inside the living room out towards the entry hallway and door.

Finally, they've started work on the pre-existing bathroom by ripping out the shower doors, full length glass mirrors (cracked since the day we moved in) and old medicine cabinet (never fully opened, another broken relic that we had been living with for years).

The biggest difference that we've noticed is the greater sense of space and flow. From a bare 600 square foot single bedroom, we now have sufficient space where one person can stand in one end of the apartment and have no idea what's going on in the opposite end of the apartment. As a guy, I am really looking forward to the greater amount of elbow room (although as a father, perhaps I shouldn't be too excited that I won't be able to tell what's going on down the hall...).

Those Wall Street Money Brokers

The New York Post reports today that Senator Hillary Clinton announced that she knows who’s to blame for our current economic woes: Wall Street money brokers. Get the full quote here:

"I stood up to Wall Street, calling on them to take responsibility for their role in the home mortgage crisis ... Why don't we hold these Wall Street money brokers responsible for their role in this recession?" [emphasis added].

Hmmmmm.

The former first lady (two times) and the junior senator represents the Empire State, where the financial services sector (“Wall Street”) accounts for 20% of the state’s total revenue. She is a former partner of the Rose Law Firm - a firm whose practice includes complex commercial business transactions and whose website boasts the Coolidgesque mission statement: “The needs of business are our primary concern.” She has sat on the board of Fortune 500 companies such as Wal-Mart. Her husband has partnered with perhaps a half dozen private equity shops, investment funds and consulting firms. Her daughter is a former McKinsey consultant and now works at the hedge fund Avenue Capital. Where I work, we call all of those professional and familial contacts with the financial system “institutional knowledge”.

The point being, she’s well positioned to know that there is no such thing as a money broker. Stock broker? Check. Mortgage broker? Sure. Insurance broker? Yeah, why not.

But there simply aren’t any money brokers on Wall Street. There aren’t any on Main Street, either. No one with an ounce of financial acumen uses the term "money broker."

Now let me think. When did we last hear about money brokers?


So we have a would-be president shucking her way through the cornfields of Indiana, tellin’ them farmers who to blame for their troubles (nevermind that corn is up 60% since 2005). Maybe we can find a better image to illustrate the point.

Well, I'm certainly glad that problem has been solved. Now where is my passport and suitcase?

Final point: lest you think I'm being a little over-sensitive, Hillary chose her words very carefully here. How carefully? Carefully enough that her campaign put out a correction last night when she was originally misquoted as saying "money grubbers" instead of "money brokers."

Morning views from the terrace

The new (temporary) apartment has a beautiful terrace with eastern, western and southern views. The morning sunlight really draws you out of bed in the morning.

Moving Out

We've hit another milestone in the story of our apartment renovation. Work has progressed in the studio to the point that the contractors want to start work in the main apartment. With that milestone, we've had to pack up seven years of accumulated stuff and move out of the one-bedroom for a month. We moved out on Friday (big thanks to our family who helped lug boxes downstairs and let us borrow their cars).

The amazing thing is, even after crating 30 boxes or so of stuff, there's still a fair amount of furniture that we've decided to leave behind (the contractors will just have to work around it all).



The other striking thing is, now that we've removed our books, clothes, plants, rugs, chairs and sofas, the imperfections in the apartment that we've been living with for years now really stand out. For example, we suffered water damage to our floors over a year ago; with the rugs rolled up and out of the way, its pretty obvious how much we've needed to redo the floors:

We've been living, too, with broken closet doors for who-knows-how-long. I don't think it has bothered me so much in the past. But looking at them in these photos, I've pretty excited to think we'll be installing new paneled doors that actually stay closed.

This week we should be in for some dramatic improvements. We'll be ripping a hole through the wall to connect the apartments; adding floors; and installing the glass for the master shower. I'll try to drop by the old apartment mid-week to shoot some new photos to post.

Dartmouth Unbound

Two things happened yesterday that got me a'thinking about current affairs at the College on the Hill. First, there my post yesterday about Dean Zimmerman mangling of the English language in an email to students. Second, there's been the three phone calls over the past two nights (during dinner, no less!) from a push polling firm hired by the College to convince me to back their slate of candidates in an upcoming Association of Alumni (AoA) officers election.

So it hit me this morning; there's going to be an election for something and someone cares enough to hire a professional political consulting firm to influence this election. Who would be bankrolling the push polling? Well, I am. That is, I would be, if I bothered to give any money to Dartmouth College when they call for their perpetual appeals for donations to the student fund (usually when I’m only half-way through my first Gin Rickey for the night).

The point is someone cares enough about this election to spend millions of dollars of other peoples' money (OPM TM) to stay in power. And like a wave it hit me. Everything about that phone call radiated the festering smugness, insecurity and unabashed self importance that only grows in the stilted womb of the Ivy Tower.

I'm not sure I care one way or another who controls the AoA. Since there seems to be a growing bias against legacy admissions at Dartmouth, I have little self-interest in staying connected to the institution; why should I donate my hard earned $$ to subsidize a sorority of post-modernists, deconstructionists and technocrats in New Hampshire if it won't help my daughter's chances of admission?

But my instinct tells me that, if someone is spending millions of dollars of OPM TM to stay in power, they’re probably doing something wrong. And so I’m voting for the insurgents.

Renovation Update: Bathroom Grout

Floor tile issues aside, the mater bath is coming along nicely. The edging tiles have come in from Italy and the contractors have started to add grout. We selected a pure-white grout for the interior room - I think the effect is quite striking:

Renovation Update: Bedroom Moulding

While we work out our concerns with the bathroom tile, the contractors decided to put up the wood (unpainted) moulding in the master bedroom. Tomorrow they should be ready to re-tile the bathroom floor, continue the moulding through the hallway and install the first doors.

When Deans Speak

I don't usually go in for pointing out grammatical mistakes or typos in other people's emails. After all, we're dealing with an electronic medium, spur of the moment writing, relaxed proofing standards, etc... But when (a) the author in question is an administrator of an Ivy League school, (b) that Ivy League school is my alma mater and (c) she's a representative of the administration actively seeking to disenfranchise alumni from our traditional involvement in campus affairs, well then, all bets are off.

So anyway, when Dartmouth Dean of First Year Students Gail Zimmerman emailed the student body about some campus incident or another (see the background details here), she included this embarrassing nugget (emphasis added):

Whether that ability exists or not, it would not likely stop her emails from reaching your inbox given the dearth and ready availability of other free email systems such as hotmail, gmail, and yahoo.

Dean Zimmerman is an administrator who insists that Dartmouth students use diffuse constructions like "First Year Students" instead of "Freshmen." I guess she's too busy harnessing the power of language to build a new social order to bother consulting a dictionary.

Via the Dartmouth Review.

New York's Bridges

The Gothamist reports today that over the next two years, six of New York City's major bridges will turn 100 years old. The City has formed a commission to coordinate the celebrations.

UWS Spring: Trees by the Water

I took a walk with the family yesterday down to the 79th Street Boat Basin. The trees along Riverside Park where in full bloom. What a beautiful day in the UWS.

Apartment Renovation Update

Our guys haven't ignored the rest of the apartment while work in the master bath progresses. They've been getting ready to lay down new bamboo flooring by working the floors with a strong citrus-flavored anti-adhesive to get rid up the remnants of the original par quet.

They're also finishing the framing and surfacing of the bedroom walls and walk-in closet.

My wife's been looking for a mini-chandelier for the closet. Chandelier in the closet? Well. we are planning on decorating the apartment mostly contemporary / modern, so the wife thinks a classical crystal - frilly chandelier in the closet might add a bit of humor into the mix.

It's tough to appreciate the detail from these photographs, but the contractors are doing a great job plastering and smoothing out the new walls in the bedroom:

Master Bath Update

The tiling work is probably 85% done in the master bath. As with any project, we've encountered a few snafu's along the way. Neither we nor our architect or contractors realized we needed to order 1/2 inch edging tiles (the ceramic equivalent to moulding) for the shower stall. We've placed a rush order for those pieces but the shower can't be finished until that additional shipment arrives from Italy (in 3 weeks!).

Meanwhile, the quartzite slabs have gone up on the walls in the water closet area (around the future medicine cabinets and sink). Even covered in white plaster dust and without grout, I think the quartzite was a good choice:

The contractors also did a great job cutting the quartzite down to 4" by 4" squares for the shower floor (shown here, again pre-cleaning and without grout):

The top of the shower bench is looking good:

The third tile element in this master bath is the white marble tiles for the floor. I like the brown-gray veining my wife picked out on this pieces:

These last two photos, however, show another snafu with the tiling. The contractors had to cut the 16" by 16"tiles into rectangles to finish the edge against the wood floor of the hallway. So far so good. But they inexplicably found two or three marble tiles from our batch with no veining and (what looks to us like) distinct yellow discoloration. Now, when you look into the bathroom, it looks like we selected two different types of marble for the floors (see the first horizontal row of darker tiles in the photograph above). While the two-tone marble effect is a common enough choice for many bathrooms, it isn't something we had contemplated. The choice is all the stranger since they used another couple of the "good" tiles (no discoloration, distinct veining) for the sections of the floor that will eventually be hidden under the vanity and closet floor. We're going to ask the contractors to redo that small section if we have enough "good" tiles left in our order.

How the West Was Lost

The Black Lips. These guys rock. Check out their MySpace page for info & tour dates.

I hope it was a nice suit

We have a saying around my office, "You are a professional, act professionally." In other words, it doesn't matter whether you choose to be a lawyer, a journalist, a cab driver or a cashier; YOU should do YOUR job better than I could if I stepped into your shoes for a day.

With that in mind, here's an excerpt from a recent Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision. The facts of the case aren't really important here (the case involves a female physician bringing a Title VII discrimination claim against the Tulane School of Medicine after the medical school denied her tenure). Her attorney's conduct, on the other hand ...

Phipps: . . . so that’s about all I have to say, Your Honor. I don’t have anything other than that. You know, my client lives in Chicago. We communicate occasionally on the phone, she sent me the documents. And um, she’s a doctor. She continues to earn a living, and she’s generally unavailable if you call her because she, she’s sort of a traveling doctor.

Judge: That’s not much of thing you come in here and tell us, I guess.

Phipps: Well, my attitude is, the [district court] judge got it right . . . And as far as whether even Ricks should apply, I don’t think it should.

Judge: What do you do about Morgan?

Phipps: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know Morgan, Your Honor.

Judge: You don’t know Morgan?

Phipps: Nope.

Judge: You haven’t read it?

Phipps: I try not to read that many cases, your Honor. Ricks is the only one I read. Oh, Ledbetter, I read Ledbetter, and I read that one that they brought up last night. I don’t know if that’s not Ledbetter, I can’t remember the name of it. Ricks is the one that I go by; it’s my North star. Either it applies or it doesn’t apply. I don’t think it applies.

Judge: I must say, Morgan is a case that is directly relevant to this case. And for you representing the Plaintiff to get up here—it’s a Supreme Court case—and say you haven’t read it. Where did they teach you that?

Phipps: They didn’t teach me much, Your Honor.

Judge: At Tulane, is it?

Phipps: Loyola.

Judge: Okay. Well, I must say, that may be an all time first.

Phipps: That’s why I wore a suit today, Your Honor.

Via Above the Law and the Legal Profession Blog.

Well, that explains *everything*

Dada-ist provocateur, Yale student and future cultural editor for the New York Times Aliza Shvartz explained this weekend the idea behind her blood laced senior art project:

It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it .... As an intervention into our normative understanding of “the real” and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are “natural” (while all the other potential functions are “unnatural”) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.

Okay. It is now clear to me why I almost failed out of college. For MY senior thesis, I failed to externalize the suburbanist modalities of my personal hagiography by subjecting the "self" to ultracrepidarian fissures.

Meanwhile ... anybody want to wager she doesn't know what "normative" means?

Monday morning around Sherman Square