Picture Update

Outside the law school at night

High up in the foothills surrounding Tucson

Cacti, Cacti, everywhere

A good shot of Wildcat Stadium

My workspace

Those rainy days in... Tucson?

Here is a look at the Tucson sky at about 4:30 this afternoon.  It rained on me for most of the day.  This was nothing like the intense monsoon of two weeks ago; it was just ordinary, Portland-esque rain.  As a matter of fact, I would bet that it has rained much more here in Tucson, since I've been here, than it has in Portland.  Of course, this is the "rainy season"and in November when it is raining every day up in the Willamette Valley, it will be a balmy 75 degrees here with clear blue skies.  

I had my first day of classes today.  I love my professors.  My Con Law prof, Glennon, is a brilliant lecturer and funny as hell.  My contracts prof, Washburn, is a bit of a nerd, but also funny and a really nice guy.  I like the work in the library to prepare for classes, though you should ask me if I still feel that way come November.  The workload itself is definitely heavier than it was for undergraduate but I don't think it will be unmanageable.

The Way Back Machine

As I type, there is a furious freshman block party going on outside of my building.  I live in La Aldea, the graduate student dormitories,  part of a quad with three undergraduate dorms.  

It has all the ingredients of a good party, minus the libations.  There is even a DJ, bumping some admittedly dated tracks from the likes of Sean Paul and Shakira.  I took a break from the U.S. Constitution to join a couple of beach volleyball games with my roommates.  There are a hundred or more eighteen and nineteen year olds down there, eating Panda Express and drinking lemonade, playing volleyball, or simply chatting on the grass.

The freshman have been slowly but surely filling up the surrounding dorms as the week has progressed.  It is interesting to watch and talk with them, flush with freedom, trying to find their place in a whole new world.  It makes me think back to my first days as an undergraduate, uncertain and trying much too hard to be the epitome of a COLLEGE GUY.  I invite you to think back to your first days as an undergraduate and to contemplate how far you have come since then.

Cheers,

Andy

P.S.  This picture is for you, Analicia.

Picture update

desert beauty

Looking down the main drag on campus

A wildcat family

How incredibly beautiful is the place where I go to school?

Developing Relationships

This was going to be a picture update but this was the only pic I could get to load today before the Blogger picture uploader broke.  There will be pics in the near future, and I got some amazing shots.  I understand why so many people retire here.  I am not sure that it quite matches up to Portland, but living in Tucson is good for the soul.

I have been developing some great friendships with some amazing people here.  I am sure that some of these relationships will last the rest of my life.  The BRIDGE program gave me a built in group of people that I identified with; these people are in the same place for the same reason that I am.  It is easy to strike up conversations and make connections.  It is important that we are all law students; human beings want to be around people that are like them.  We want to be around people in which we see a little bit of ourselves.  I know what you're thinking...Did Andy just say that all people are narcissists?  Of course that is not what I am saying.  I think it is more that we want to be around people that we understand.  Naturally we gravitate toward people who share the same characteristics as we do because we can understand them more easily.  We don't like to be confused. 

 The great thing (and the intense, crazy thing) about law school is that everyone here IS so alike.  Sure, we all have different interests, different hometowns, and different favorite ice cream flavors.  We are, however, all BIG Type-A personalities thrust into a small space, working toward the same goals, with an element of competition thrown in as a spice.  Naturally, this leads to some entertaining fireworks displays and little battles are sometimes fought between people who have a lot more in common than they like to admit.  At the same time, intense, long-lasting friendships are formed between people who have similar goals and ambitions.  The loves established here are so deep, and the rivalries are so fierce, because we all understand each other well, and this understanding magnifies and deepens relationships.

Okay, that's it!  Before I go though, I want to give a big birthday shout out to my mom (August 15), Kaleena (August 16), and Stephanie (August 17)!

*Author's note:  All of my theories on relationships (much like Freud's) are untestable hypotheses and may not hold up under any kind of scrutiny.

A benefit of writing

I had my first day of the BRIDGE orientation program today.  They had a mock class about a hypothetical "first case in the world."  During the lecture, the professor digressed and spent a little time talking about the importance of writing skills to the lawyer's profession.  He said, "We think fast and we talk fast.  Writing deepens thought by forcing us to slow down."  Something to think about.  Maybe writing isn't just a rote regurgitation of the things going on in our heads.  Maybe it can help us expand our ability to express ourselves and even our knowledge of ourselves.

Also, my good friend Analicia just started a blog.  You can check it out by clicking on the link to the left.

Talk to you soon.

Update and photos for family and friends

closet shot

The bathroom sink

I think I got the extra-tall shower

Towels!

Making do with what I have.  I present to you... my nightstand!

The bed.  Now with sheets!

My view

Bookshelf and workstation

Second closet shot.  It's bigger than it looks

A desert garden

More desert greenery

The science and engineering library

Wildcat Stadium off in the distance

A very pink private school across from the campus

The main library

First things first, I want to shout out to all my wonderful family and friends back in Oregon; I miss you already!  That being said, I like Tucson very much.

The last 36 hours have been hectic.  My parents brought me to the airport on Saturday morning and after eating breakfast at the Rose City Grill, they said goodbye to me.  My last few days in Oregon were good ones.  I spent a lot of time with the people I love.  

The flight to Tucson only took about four hours.  My layover in Phoenix was short, and on the connecting flight I got to talk golf with an electrician from Vancouver, B.C.  Upon my arrival, I had to do the normal move-in stuff and then I just wanted to nap on my bare mattress.  Two suitcases really can't hold very much and my room looked pretty sparse once I got everything unloaded.  I had no sheets and no pillows.  After dozing off for a few minutes, I got to meet my two roommates.  One, Lance, is 22-year old Chinese man who has only been stateside for two weeks.  His English is mediocre but he seems nice (And yes, Dad, he actually did cook me dinner last night.  Authentic Chinese food.  Not a deep friend egg roll in sight).  The other, Ben, is... well, he didn't stay very long and he spent the night at a hotel with his parents but... the best way I can describe him is to imagine the nerdiest looking guy you can think of and then take just a shade off of that only because he wasn't wearing a pocket protector.  

After meeting these guys, I took a tour of the campus and took some pictures.  I love the U of A campus.  The architecture is a little like OSU except everything is on a grand scale.  It is HUGE.  After my impromptu campus tour, I had dinner with Lance and then went out for drinks with a  2L who I spent some time with when I took my campus tour last March.  She is a unique and multi-layered woman, and I had a blast with her.  We started talking to three locals while at the bar (a really cool spot) and I got to learn a little about Tucson while talking with them about Portland beers.  

Today, I took the shuttle over to Target and bought some things for the apartment.  I took some pics of my slightly less sad-looking room.  That's it so far.  Today I have to read over a case and go check out some bicycles at the shop down the road. 

Cheers,

Andy

Last day in Oregon

What a great last day in Oregon!  I woke up and ate at my favorite Corvallis breakfast place with one of my best friends, and got to take one last road trip in my car.  A first year associate at a Portland law firm bought me lunch and I got to pick his brain about law school.  I met another one of my best friends at Cruiser's for a burger and a ginormous chocolate ice cream cone.  She got me a birthday present and we bonded telling stories about our parents.  Then I came home and packed before YET ANOTHER best friend of mine came by to exchange birthday gifts (his b-day was July 23).  We watched Dr. Horrible and he confessed that he bought a PS3 (kind of an inside thing).  Then I dropped in on two of the coolest old people at my parent's condominium complex for some cocktails and conversation.  I sat out under the beautiful Portland sky, in sixty-five degree weather, drinking premium vodka on the rocks with lime, and trading stories with people 50 years my senior.  It was awesome.  I couldn't be happier right now.  Good night and good luck.

Stay tuned for updates from Tucson!

Cheers,

Andy

Old Flames and Joss Whedon

Yesterday, I went shopping in Woodburn with an ex-girlfriend of mine.  We had a bad break-up and I hadn't seen her in nearly four years.  She looked great and it was good to see that she is doing well but the experience was an awkward one.  We didn't have much in common when we dated and we have even less now.  The conversation was strained and forced.  She DID help me pick out some cool new threads for my ever-growing Tucson wardrobe.

Also, if you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to check out Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.

Goodbyes

I dropped in on my Grandpa Bob and Grandma Janet today for lunch.  After washing down my tuna melt and watermelon with a Rolling Rock, I had to leave for a 2:30 tee time with Cmos.  I hugged them both.  My grandfather is a backslapper when he hugs.  Then I said my goodbyes.  I won't be seeing either of them again until I come back for Christmas, and there was this awkward moment where we didn't really know what to say.  It's hard to tell someone that I love and usually get to see every few weeks, "goodbye" for a significant amount of time.  Finally my grandfather, almost crying, broke through the silence with a, "see you around, dude."  I said, "see you around," got in my car, and left.

I have had this experience with a lot of my friends lately.  There is a moment upon parting where each of us realizes that we won't be seeing each other again soon and then comes the awkward silence followed by some variation of "see you around," "good luck in Arizona," or "Let's do something over winter break..."

Lovin' summer

A friend of mine called me today and reminded me how long it has been since I have written a blog post.  I like blogging.  It is therapeutic.  I want to get back into the habit of doing it.  Today, I will write briefly about how grateful I am for all that I have.  I have wonderful family and friends, am young and healthy, and am about to embark on an incredible adventure (law school/the rest of my life).  I am about as happy as I think it is possible to be.   Reading Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States: 1492-Present has helped me realize just how lucky I am.  It's a great read.  Both worldview-shattering and depressing.  

Well, i am going to turn in.  I promise to write again soon.

Airport Bars

I just got back from a two-day trip to Tucson to visit University of Arizona law school. I will post more on my experiences their later. For this post I want to focus on airport bars. Airport bars are a great place to meet random, interesting people. I figure this is because people at airport bars are travelers and people who travel are, almost uniformly, interesting. Here is a quick rundown of everybody I met in airport bars on the trip and their stories. Also, the airport where I met them is in parenthesis:


Kyle (Portland): A construction manager who travels all over the west coast for his job.

Nathan (Phoenix): A grad student in physics at the University of Arizona who grew up on an organic dairy farm in Wisconsin. He and his girlfriend both graduate in the spring. She is headed to San Diego and he is going to Europe. He worries that their relationship won't survive the separation.

Mel (Tucson): The lead custodian for a weapons company in Tucson. Her mother recently died and she is on the way to Minnesota to bury her.

Meaghan Smith (Tucson): Washington D.C. press secretary for Congressman John Hall.

John Hall (Tucson): The aforementioned congressman from New York's 19th congressional district. He had been in Tucson surveying the border and was getting ready to head back to New York. He was a pop musician before becoming a congressman. He co-founded the band Orleans. He told me the story of how he met his wife. He supports Hillary Clinton in the democratic primary. Learn more about John here.

Larry and Shawntel (Las Vegas): Two Canadians from Ottawa wrapping up a vacation to Sin City. Shawntel is an accountant for a government office there and Larry is a battery salesman. Larry said "eh" multiple times throughout the conversation while Shawntel explained to me her earnest desire to be an American citizen. She wants to live in the "City of Angels." As I had become quite drunk by this point, I couldn't keep myself from cracking up over their accents and Shawntel's flawed vision of what life is like in America.

Brittany (Las Vegas): A beautiful fashion design major from a school in Orlando, she used to work on a cruise ship and spent two months living on a couch in Hawaii. She shot tequila and drank "White Russians" with me and we lost track of time. We made a mad dash to our gate and just barely made it onto the plane before they closed the doors. We were sitting on opposite ends of the airplane but she convinced the guy sitting next to her to trade his aisle seat for my middle seat several rows back because she "reeeeeeeeealy [wanted] to sit with her boyfriend." We told each other alcohol-fueled stories for the duration of the plane ride. She was awesome.

Colonialism

I was reading something for my history of Africa class a couple of weeks ago about the evils of colonialism and it made me think of this Eddie Izzard bit. Enjoy!

Spring Break Law School visits, part I: Lewis and Clark

I visited Lewis and Clark Law School on Friday. Thursday night, we celebrated Joe's birthday and the end of finals in Corvallis with a little drinking and a lot of Warcraft III. Alex and I went in on a "White-Russian experience" for Joe. We brought together Kahlua Especial, Ciroc Vodka, and rbst-free 1% milk to make some damn tasty White Russians. After I sobered up, I left for Portland but I didn't get home until about 1:30 AM.

When I arrived at Lewis and Clark at 8:45 AM, I was still feeling the effects of my late night. Luckily, they had a nice breakfast prepared for us where I was able to fill up on black tea. During the reception breakfast, the dean of the law school sold us on L&C for about 30 minutes and, I must admit, he was very persuasive. His main points were the strength of the law faculty as well as their willingness to engage with students, the collegial atmosphere, the beautiful and dynamic legal setting, the top-ranked environmental law program, and the emerging focus on international law. He is an accomplished litigator who has argued many cases and it showed. He was impressive.

After the breakfast, the prospective students (about 150 of us) separated into two sections. One went to a mock Criminal Law class and another went to some tax law thing. I went to the Criminal Law class, so I don't know very much about what the other group did but I think I got the better deal. The mock-class was amazing. I realize that L&C probably broke out their most likable professor and a particularly sexy topic for this the preview day and that most classes won't be as much fun as this one. Even so, if law school is ANYTHING like that Crim Law class, I will have a blast. We discussed cannibalism on the high seas and Professor John Perry was bright, witty, and engaging. The hour allotted for the class passed in what felt like a heartbeat.

Next, we split up into several small groups and toured the law school campus. Everything was so beautiful. Looking at the law school, I got the impression that it is an organic extension of the beautiful natural environment that surrounds it. All of the buildings were aesthetically impressive, inside and out, particularly the Legal Research Center where the reception was held. It has these huge two-story windows that show a spectacular view of the adjacent Tryon Creek State Park. It is funny; I was so focused on mingling with the people around me and the dean's speech that I didn't even look out the windows during the reception. Walking above the reception area during the tour, however, on an open sort of bridge/walkway on the second floor of the Legal Research Center, I finally got a glimpse of what was outside those windows. My jaw dropped. "My God, look at that!" I exclaimed. I think the others in my tour group thought it a little weird that I was just noticing the view for the first time.

After the tour, I attended an hour-long forum on the law school curriculum with three instructors in one of the classrooms. The people to my immediate left and right were a girl from Dallas who taught grade school in Texas for three years after graduating University of Texas at Austin and another from Massachusetts who worked for AmeriCorps as a sort of park ranger/tour guide in Cape Cod after graduating Michigan State University. They were fun to talk with and this brings me to another point about the whole experience. I don't think I have ever been surrounded by so many interesting, engaging, attractive people. I talked with a lot of the other students and, almost universally, they were amazing.

Next, we went to a lunch where one instructor was placed at each table. Perry's class was such a hit that many students clamored to sit with him. Luckily, I was one of the first ones through the food line and I was able to get a spot at his table. He was just as engaging in this more personal setting and he did his level best to sell us on the school. During lunch, the dean reappeared and introduced each of the more than forty faculty members who were eating with us. Then, as dessert was served, the dean invited us to move around and talk with any of the faculty that interested us. I left an interesting discussion Perry was having about one of his foreign policy law classes and went over to a legal writing professor and then to an adjunct who was actually a Lewis and Clark graduate and teaches classes on environmental justice.

After lunch, we had a couple more short sessions with law school employees, one with career services and another with financial aid. Then we went to a student organization fair and, in addition to sampling some tasty vegan cupcakes at the animal law table, I met a charming, pretty girl who is a grad student at Oregon State. When I asked her the other schools she is considering, she reeled off some impressive names. She also said something interesting that resonated with my own experience. "I had pretty much written off Lewis and Clark before today but now I have to reconsider," she said. I feel the same way. Though L&C gave me a nice scholarship and would probably be the best option for me if I stayed in Oregon, I had subconsciously eliminated the school from serious consideration in favor of the more "prestigious" schools to which I have been admitted. I almost didn't even attend the preview day. That is no longer the case. The Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark is now, for all intents and purposes, my top choice, though I am reserving final judgment until after I attend the other preview days I have this week and until I get letters from Loyola, Washington and Lee, and Vanderbilt.

My Dad raised an interesting point about another possible benefit of choosing Lewis and Clark I hadn't thought of. I have been wait-listed at Cornell and UCLA, both top 15 law schools, as well as William and Mary, a prestigious school in Virginia that has a legal philosophy that aligns with my own conception of a lawyer's social duty. If I accept Lewis and Clark's offer with the caveat that I will attend either of those schools if they eventually accept me, it will be a much easier transition than if I had already made housing plans in another city. I had written off the schools that wait-listed me because of probable logistical difficulties of waiting around for those schools to make a final decision but choosing Lewis and Clark would bring the possibility of those dream schools back into play.

After the preview day ended and most of the prospective students left, I headed for the Boley law library and, to see what it would feel like, I just sat and read for about an hour. It was a pleasant experience with so much beauty, both natural and man-made, surrounding me.

L & C put on a great show. They have vaulted themselves to first place in my informal ranking-system and worked my excitement and anticipation for law school to a fever-pitch.

Trailblazers basketball

I am home in Portland tonight. I watched the Blazer game over at Dane's on his huge plasma-screen television. It was a great game. Portland beat arguably the best team in the league, the Los Angeles Lakers, 119-111. I haven't seen the Blazers' offense clicking this well since their 13-game winning streak. Alex went to the game with his dad and I'm jealous. With James Jones and Brandon Roy back, if Jarret Jack keeps playing as well as he did tonight, I don't think a playoff push is out of the question.

Dane's a good guy. I've known him since grade school. He's one of my oldest friends. I think he is bored. He is living in his big apartment, soon to be all by himself, once Justin moves out, and all he does is work and work out at the gym. I know he misses his girlfriend. She is in Australia for three months on a study abroad program. I know he is happy that she went on the trip and is having so much fun but I think he also wishes he still had that person to share his life with. And who can blame him? Carly's awesome.

I'm back

After a week long hiatus, I'm back and blogging. Last week was mentally exhausting. I spent most of my free time working on a fifteen page midterm for my "History of American Thought" class.

I am the only one in the class. Originally there were four of us. The two other guys in the class dropped the course because they couldn't hack it. The lone female of our small group had a death in her immediate family and had to drop out of school for a term. That just leaves me.

I've never been in a class this small. It basically amounts to a guided independent study with an adviser. It is tough. Dr. Sklansky, the instructor, assigns a ton of reading for a three-credit course. What is more,as the only student, I can't get away with not doing the reading for a day. That being said, this might be my favorite class I have taken at OSU. "Great Figures: Jesus" with Marcus Borg, and "The History of Sexuality" with Robert Nye were both awesome but this one is right up there. Dr. Sklansky got his Ph.D. from Columbia and is a brilliant man. He is pithy and insightful. He makes the hard concepts we study easy to understand. Also, we usually just skip the classroom entirely and meet for lunch somewhere to have a dialogue about the reading. The class material is very interesting to me and I see so many parallels between the problems this country was having at the end of the nineteenth-century and the problems we are having today. That might be why I went a little above and beyond on the midterm.

He gave the midterm to me on Thursday the 7th and I worked on it throughout the week. I just kept writing. And writing. It was supposed to be due Thursday the 14th but, if I don't turn it in, what is he going to do? Also, how can the paper be considered late if there is no one to actually turn it in ON TIME. So, I got an extension to Friday at 5 which turned into an extension to Friday at midnight. I put the finishing touches on the paper around 11 and then played "drinking hockey" with my roommates and assorted other friends.

The focus of the essay was the labor/capital conflict of the Gilded Age and the rise of Pragmatist Philosophy in the United States. Here is a sample, copied and pasted for your viewing pleasure:



In what ways, and how satisfactorily or persuasively, did the Pragmatism of Peirce, James, Dewey, and Holmes respond to the social and ideological conflict over industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century? Consider the character, scope, and significance of the Pragmatist response to the crisis of the Gilded Age with reference to the alternative responses represented by the readings in the first half of the course. Your answer should describe the broad parameters of the Pragmatist approach as well as the more specific ideas of individual thinkers.



Less than a half century after the Civil War tore the country apart, The United States of America was teetering on the brink of another war with the potential to be even more destructive. This new conflict had nothing to do with states’ rights and everything to do with class. In the years after the Civil War, the rise of industrialization and the laissez faire Social Darwinist logic of political economy, according to Alan Trachtenberg, “produced new monied dynasties: a ruling stratum of inherited wealth, position, and power.” In contrast to these ultra-wealthy capitalists, the industrialization of America also created a huge, new American working class of wage laborers who performed work for long hours at low pay that was often “dirty, backbreaking, and frustrating,” and were crammed into “slum tenements.” The disproportionate levels of power and wealth between capitalists and working-class wage laborers forced the working men and women to band together into labor unions such as the Knights of Labor. The Knights, who were fundamentally opposed to the free labor system, blew up in size in the 1880s. The primary method that unions used to stand up to big industrial business was the strike. The tens of thousands of strikes in the peak years of 1877, 1886, and 1892-93 serve to show how unstable the situation was.

Into this great societal upheaval stepped the Pragmatist philosophers. In a world which seemed increasingly hemmed in by large forces such as the economic laws of political economists or the natural human rights presented by Rationalist philosophers, Pragmatism rejected these fixed systems and first principles. In many ways, this revolt against all forms of dogma was a response to the crisis of belief that came with the class struggle between labor and capital. Pragmatism tried to avoid the labor/capital dualism entirely and move the terrain of the conflict to a discussion of individual and social welfare. Ultimately, Pragmatism was able to advance a progressive ideology that helped the working poor while avoiding radical class revolution.

Labor thinkers in the late nineteenth-century presented a dualism in which working-class laborers and capitalists were fundamentally opposed. Henry George traced the powerlessness of the workers and unequal distribution of wealth to the private ownership of land. The dualism for him was between wealthy landowners and the people who worked the land. The landowners could extort the people who worked their land with unfair rents. His solution was the radical conversion of land from private property to common property. Thorstein Veblen articulated a class conflict between a working class of manual laborers and a “leisure class” of capitalists who exploited the laborers to acquire great wealth and were exalted for doing so. The Knights of Labor, the most influential labor organization of the 1880s, declared in their manifesto, “an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wage-system of labor and republican system of government.”

Capitalist apologists, on the other hand, exalted the fixed systems of social Darwinism and classical, free-market economics. Responding to unrest among poverty-stricken farmers, J. Laurence Laughlin argued that it was only the stupid and unfortunate farmers who were having trouble. He argued that wherever men “of executive ability” farmed on good soil, there was prosperity. William Graham Sumner argued that the rich earned their wealth through hard work and self-denial while the poor lacked wealth because they were “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.” Andrew Carnegie claimed that free-market economics led to progress so profound that the poor of the Gilded Age were better off than the rich of a century before. Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller wrote, “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest, the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”

Pragmatism was a rejection of the kind of “natural law” advocated by Rockefeller. Additionally, though the Pragmatists were sympathetic to the plight of working class, they rejected the labor/capital dualism suggested by the leading minds of the labor movement. The leading Pragmatist philosophers wanted to move the focus of the entire conflict away from class struggle toward the advancement of the social welfare using Pragmatic method.

The widely-accepted progenitor of pragmatism is Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce, according to William James, first articulated the Pragmatist philosophy in his essay “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Peirce was skeptical of a priori fixed systems such as political economy but had great faith in human intelligence if it was employed in the right way. The right way, for Peirce, was through the use of scientific method. He specifically attacked political economy in the essay, “Evolutionary Love.” He wrote, “The economists accuse those to whom the enunciation of their atrocious villainies communicates a thrill of horror of being sentimentalists. It may be so: I willingly confess to having some tincture to sentimentalism in me, God be thanked!” Peirce wanted see scientific method applied to philosophy and economics in service of sentimentalism. Peirce’s work paved the way for the development of the social sciences by others, such as his colleague and friend, James.

James has been called the “founder of modern psychology.” His version of Pragmatism, though he claimed it came from Peirce, was much less concerned with realizing objective truth. James’s solution to class conflict was to change the way we, as individuals, conceptualize it. James had great faith in the human ability to control our own lives. He wrote that habit is, “the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.” Logically, it follows that by changing our habits we can change society. He wrote, “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.”

In addition to changing their habits to improve their lives, James asserted that individuals can choose the truths that work best for them. “Purely objective truth,” he wrote, “truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatever, is nowhere to be found.” James articulated pragmatic method as, “the attitude of looking away from first things, principle, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.” Thus, people can ignore the principles which had a negative impact on their lives and only accept as true that which experience teaches us “is better for us to believe.” For the people of the Gilded Age, this meant they were not bound by principles thrown at them by ivory tower intellectuals. They were free to choose their own truth.

John Dewey inherited James’s pragmatist aversion to dogma surrounding labor and capital, but focused on societal welfare instead of the individual. Dewey applied pragmatic method to the “social organism.” He was a great proponent of democracy because he felt that it was the best form of government yet constructed for expressing the will of the social organism. He rejected all forms of dualism, including the labor/capital dualism suggested by the radical segments of the labor movement. Though he rejected some of the more radical precepts of the labor movement, he argued that America needed to move toward “industrial democracy”, as well as civil and political, though he admitted that he did not know what an industrial democracy would look like. In order to investigate ways achieve a better society, he attempted to mobilize pragmatist philosophers. He wrote, “Faith in the power of intelligence to imagine a future which is the projection of the desirable in the present, and to invent the instrumentalities of its realization, is our salvation. And it is a faith which must be nurtured and made articulate: surely a sufficiently large task for our philosophy.”

Like Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes promoted a philosophy for improving society to cope with the problems of the Gilded Age. Unlike Peirce, James, and Dewey, Holmes was concerned strictly with the legal framework of society and did not even consider himself a Pragmatist. His rejection of legal formalism, however, and advocacy of a new method of jurisprudence which would come to be called “legal realism,” caused many people to lump him with the early Pragmatist thinkers. Holmes discounted the idea that judges could take the facts of a case and logically reason their way to a conclusion. Instead, he argued that judges looked at history and used their own subjective experience to make judgments. He wrote, " The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed." If judges don’t logically deduce their decisions from set principles, it follows that much of the law within the American common law tradition is judge-made law. As such, Holmes contended, judges have a duty to “weigh considerations of social advantage” when making their decisions. Taking into account the labor/capital conflict of the Gilded Age, he advised legal professionals to study economics, history, and philosophy in order to better fulfill their social duty.

Holmes and the Pragmatist philosophers successfully avoided class revolution by shifting the discussion of Gilded Age problems away from class conflict and toward individual and social welfare. The historian R. Jeffrey Lustig has argued that this shift was an evasion that actually preserved the status quo. While it is true that the Pragmatists ignored politically-charged, activist segments of the labor movement who advocated action to overthrow the capitalist system, Pragmatist philosophy paved the way for the Progressive movement which cured many of the ills of the Gilded Age without a full-blown class war.




Peace and Love,

Andy

Paul Janka - Casanova or Scoundrel?

It's my first instinct that this guy is just pursuing his passion (namely women) and shouldn't be condemned for it. The host of the show seems to think otherwise. If you have any thoughts on the issue, drop a comment and weigh in.

Creepy Nursery Rhymes

I found myself humming in the shower yesterday, as I do from time to time. I was humming the nursery rhyme, "Rock-a-bye baby." I had never really paid attention to the lyrics before but yesterday I noticed that it is a SCARY song. Even the melody is unsettling. In my mind's eye, I can picture Andrea Yates humming this tune as she drowned each of her five children. This realization inspired me to do some research on some other songs that my mother used to rock me to sleep with as a babe. And now, without further ado, the panel (of one) presents, the Five Creepiest Nursery Rhymes of All Time.



5.

Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home.
Your house is on fire, your children are gone.
All except one, her name is Nan.
She crept under a frying pan.

In Medieval England, farmers would burn old hop (used in brewing beer) vines after harvest to clear the fields for the next crop. This rhyme was sung to warn the ladybugs that were still hanging out on the vines gobbling aphids for dinner. The ladybugs' children (larvae) could get away from the flames, but the pupae were fastened to the plants and thus could not escape. Lyrics about the burning of children (be they bugs or not) earn "Ladybug, Ladybug" a spot on the list.


4.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

This song may refer to King Louis XVI of France (Jack), who was beheaded, and his wife, Marie-Antoinette (Jill) who lost her own head soon after.


3.

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

According to wikipedia, this old nursery rhyme is said to have been written by a young pilgrim who came to America aboard the Mayflower. He observed how native-American women rocked their babies in birch-bark cradles, which were suspended from the branches of trees, allowing the wind to rock the baby to sleep. The branches holding the cradles, however, sometimes had a habit of breaking, causing the cradle to fall and the baby in it to get hurt.


2.

London Bridge Is falling down,
Falling down, Falling down.
London Bridge Is falling down,
My fair lady.

Take a key and lock her up,
Lock her up, Lock her up.
Take a key and lock her up,
My fair lady.

One theory about the lyrics to this song is that they refer to an old English practice of burying a dead virgin in the foundations of the bridge to ensure its strength through magical means. Morbid, no?


1.

Ring around the rosies,
A pocketful of posies.
ashes, ashes.
We all fall down.

A popular interpretation of this daycare classic connects it with the Great Plague of London in 1665. A rosy rash was the first sign of infection. Posies were carried around because of their supposed protective properties. The word 'ashes' is a corruption of the sound of the sneezing that was a symptom of the plague. Finally, 'all falling down' was exactly what everyone did. On the playground we always got right back up again. Those unlucky souls who were the subject of this poem, however, did not.

Good morning, good morning

I have not been up this early in awhile. I know you're thinking, "It's 9:50, what are you talking about?" but I'm serious. I climbed out of bed before 8 and I cannot honestly remember the last time I have done that. It's a byproduct of the wicked case of Senioritis I have come down with, I think. Saturday night, my roommate Chris Czupryk, who is sleeping peacefully in the next room as I write this, downloaded and burned the sequel to Super Smash Bros. Melee, his favorite game of all time. Various people (Chris C, Cmos, Smokey the Bear, Derrick D, Joe TFK, Ralph, and Myself) played what amounted to a marathon session of the game over a day and a half.

Because of a combination of the Smash Bros. marathon and my own formidable procrastinating skills, I didn't do any fighting on the school front yesterday. Thus, the early wake-up call.

As you politically minded folks may already know, 22 states of the union have their primary elections tomorrow. It is entirely possible that, by tomorrow evening, we may know the last two horses in the race for the oval office. A post might be coming your way tomorrow night if I'm not overly depressed.

Peace and Love.

Cake or Death?

One more thing before I hit the sack. CAKE OR DEATH?