Half of babies born in rich world will to 100. That’s going to be hell on social security. New York City’s PS22 Chorus is really surprisingly great. I especially love their version of The Cure’s Pictures of You. I guess Ashton Kutcher does, too, which means I am cool or a tool, and I am not asking you to decide which. Meanwhile, thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on. I never would have thought to put a hyphen in bumblebee anyway, so I’m not going to be a crybaby about it, and neither is my pot belly.

And just so you know, information really is beautiful — just look at where all our money goes. So basically, um, we give most of our public money to the military industrial complex and the banking/financial sector. These appear to be incredibly efficient means to transfer public dollars into private hands. OMG I love this country!

Speaking of which, whatever you think of President Obama’s Nobel Price, you have to agree with the U.S. State Department that we’re making progress when the world is throwing accolades at our leaders instead of shoes.

Also, They Might Be Giants are making music for kids and they performed and talked about it on Science Friday a while back. I did not know the sun was no longer a mass of incandescent gas, but now I do. This information makes me a little sad, but I think I will survive.

Oh, and also also, a year ago today I moved to Chicago. sigh

We had our first real spring-like day yesterday in Chicago with temperatures in the mid-70s. It was beautiful, except apparently not for the ten people who got shot and the one who was stabbed. Apparently, the warm weather makes people violent.

That’s really not cool.

Something that is cool: this group of musicians playing “Kids” by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches.

The above links are proof that there is bad crazy and there is good crazy in this world. Something about that is reassuring.  

This city has absolutely the worst roads I have ever driven on. Potholes everywhere, and once they start, they don’t seem to get filled until they’re deep and wide enough to swallow your wheel whole. Oh, the city pretends to fill them, but the “patches” last for about an hour.

So it’s great that we’ve got the El for an alternative to driving, right? Except, well, you might get stabbed and no one will even try to help you.

!?

Save live trees. Wipe with recycled ones.

–Sierra Blogging Post

I also like “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Not very popular, though. Probably more important in drought-stricken areas like CA than IL, anyway…

President Obama is doing all these infrastructure improvements so at least we’ll have plenty of beautiful bridges to jump off of.

â��an unemployed person being interviewed on WBEZ’s 848

Still here, just busy. I’ve been having a little fun helping out at PD Stuff here and here, while also applying for jobs, searching for jobs, trying to network, oh, and don’t forget getting ready for company. And “testing” my new iPhone. Wow.

Oh, and trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be under construction in the next few weeks, not that it should matter to most readers (the two of you) — I will try not to break the RSS feed. The rough idea is to try to integrate the tumbroglio with the imbroglio, so that everything in my flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, and Google Reader shared items will all appear here seamlessly. No more “bits” in the right column, no more separate place for tweets, just a regular flow of whatever I’m posting wherever it may be. That’s the idea, anyway. Who knows if it’s possible, or rather, if I’m capable of making it so. We’ll see.

But first, it’s gluttony week! Perfect for a nation whose economy is in the toilet because of too much credit, too much borrowing, and basically overconsumption. But that’s a crap way to look at it. Forget I said that and if I don’t get back for a bit, Happy Turkey!

Jason Kottke’s musing about timeline twins and the subsequent comments is some fun mind candy for a Sunday morning. As one of the comments says, “The fact that it’s been 32 years since I first heard The Ramones is mind-blowing to me.” It’s only been 22 years for me, but still. Wow.

Several comments (here and here) discuss whether “we” (meaning thirty- or forty-somethings and younger) have changed the way we relate to popular culture compared to our parents. “Imagine still listening to the music of your youth?” one writes. “These days we evolve and move on. And are in fact terrified of hanging on for too long to any one moment in history.”

That is both a fascinating and terrifying possibility. The first thought that springs to mind is that “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” I think it’s true that we have become much more of a transient culture than that of previous generations; we do live through the moment, then move on to the next w/little thought about what has come before. How else could we get into the current financial crisis other than by paying no attention to the long-term, to the lessons of the past, and living only in the now?

The thing is, I find myself looking back constantly. Sometimes the urge is stronger than at others, but I have two big boxes of cassettes — yeah, cassettes — that I keep because they have music I don’t have in any other format and which I don’t want to forget. I dream of digitizing all (or most) of these cassettes so that I can listen again whenever I want and with ease to the music of my youth. Does that make me a weirdo? Am I out of touch w/”my generation”? Hmph.

It’s all fun to think about, though. I love this one: “Mathew Broderick lip synching The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” (1964) in the parade in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) would be like someone lip synching Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” in a movie in 2008.”

Damn.

One of the “benefits” of being a member of the ABA (I’m pretty sure my membership has expired, but whatever) is their weekly email of legal news headlines. Today’s email brought great news about the legal job market. For example, Jenner & Block asked 10 partners to leave, a PR firm is advising law firms on how to write layoff memos, another firm is rumored to have laid off 80 associates in the last nine months, some talking head says the legal economy is going to be twice as bad as the most extreme predictions, and law students are being advised to have backup plans (and backup backup plans) b/c they are heading into “a grim hiring market.”

Yeah.

So this is the context in which I just quit my job and am now looking for a law job in a state where I do not yet have a license to practice. If you always suspected I was utterly brilliant, wonder no more! I am obviously a genius!

The good news is that I’ve never found that the “news” or advice from the ABA has been very relevant to me as law student or lawyer. Like the law school I attended, the ABA is focused largely on BigLaw, and BigLaw is not where I have any interest in being. I’m going to be fine.

Oops! Gotta run! I’m late for my shift at Starbucks!

Golden Gate University Law School Professor Peter Keane is featured on today’s edition of This I Believe on NPR. The good professor was the chief assistant public defender in San Francisco for 20 years and he believes that “everyone, no matter what they have done, deserves to have one person on their side.”

Me, too, Professor Keane, me too.

It’s a great essay. I highly recommend it. Professor Keane makes a good case for the layman who asks of public defenders: “How can you defend those people?” It reminds me of one of the best answers I’ve ever heard to that question, which comes from Blonde Justice, with some further interesting discussion of the question itself. Also highly recommended.

Perhaps these discussions resonate with me at the moment because, well, right now, I don’t defend those people. Currently I am unemployed. For personal reasons I have moved to Chicago and am now searching for a job. I would like nothing more than to continue to be a public defender, so if any reader out there has any connections, however tenuous, with anyone in the Chicago criminal defense community, please let me know!

Didn’t it used to cost less than a quarter to send a letter? The only good thing about the constantly rising price of postage is that we get stamps like these:
Remember: �Named must your fear be before banish it you can.� Deep man, yeah.