Memory, Desire, and Time

I should be reading my Contracts casebook right now. Or I should be sleeping right now. One of the two. Probably both. That sort of dual (or even triple — I have clearly not chosen either to read the casebook or to sleep, but I am blogging) conflict of needs or desires has been frequent for me lately. Some people have told me that people never really wanted to do the things they did not do and that the only real measure of desire is whether one acted upon it.

No. There are weighted factors, requirements for survival, multiple conflicting desires, and limited time. Prioritization, exclusion, and decision may be the hallmarks of an active life, but failing to act is not an accurate indicator of desire. Only small-minded people who never wanted to do more than what they actually did will tell you otherwise. Or they are liars who make Orwellian mush of their past by denying they ever wanted to do what they never did.

What would I have done today with more time and energy? First, after spending four or five hours on Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw researching the memorandum of points and authorities that is due on Friday, I would have actually written it. Second, I would have gone for a walk or a bike ride. Third, I would have read a book for pleasure. Fourth, I would have played the piano, perhaps composed a new piece. There are more things, but I am too tired to think of them and the time is running short.

But what did I actually accomplish? Certainly, the four or five hours of research (I am not sure exactly how long it took). Afterwards, I emailed some of my results to my Study Partner. I squeezed in about forty-five minutes of listening to news via podcast. This evening I took a Civil Procedure midterm (which also required thirty minutes of driving both before and after). Before the midterm I hand-wrote from memory several pages of law that pertains to Civil Procedure. Somehow, I found the time to read half a chapter of a science fiction novel. I loaded my dishwasher and swept my kitchen floor. Early this morning I read through the chapter on summary judgment in my Civil Procedure hornbook. And never forget the numerous, time-consuming tasks of personal maintenance, without which one would hardly be fit for the society of other humans.

It was not an empty day. Now I am exhausted. But what else would I have done if I could? Did I do what I did because I did not want to do what I did not do?

I am highly annoyed by the idea that people only really wanted to do what they actually did. It seems like a pathetic post hoc rationalization designed to minimize regret by paring down remembered desires to conform to what was actually performed. If you want to live fully, then desire fully and regret fully, but never deceive yourself into believing that what you never did, you never wanted to do.

A Lesson in Overdoing It

Go here and check out a little video that, via parody, brilliantly typifies the difference between the design ethos at Apple and whatever it is they do at Microsoft.

Although fictional, this is a perfect example of what I meant in a recent comment below, where I wrote that Windows software is like a 12-year-old showing off bells and whistles that no one cares about.

Power Outage

If you tried and failed to access my blog between 9 PM and 11 PM (or thereabouts) this evening, the problem was a local power outage.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Worms?

Worms for Mac OS X. Bring it on. (And the people who write these things, regardless of platform, need to get a life.) I can still accomplish vastly more (and much more easily) on my Mac than I have ever been able to do on Windows. The Mac provides elegant tools that are perfect for the things I want to do; Windows falls on my desk like a truckload of bricks with a note that says, “You can build a house with this!” Well, yes, the raw materials are there, but they’re not very useful. That’s why my Dell is lying dormant and collecting dust, just waiting for the next exam I need to take while my iBook goes everywhere with me and easily accomplishes everything I need it for.

For instance, here’s something that a Windows machine should be able to do as easily as my Mac did it yesterday. I took my Contracts outline, which was blissfully created in OmniOutliner, and exported it to my desktop as a text file. Then I dragged that file to TextToMP3, which singlehandedly converted the text to speech and left me with a 36 minute audio version of my outline—almost the exact time of my commute. Open iTunes, add it to the Music Library, drag it to my iPod, and go. Easy. (It would be even easier if I set up Automator to take care of the intermediate steps for me.) No vast arrays of settings to adjust; no esoteric option boxes; no crappy Windows software whose unnecessarily complex interface screams to the user, “You’re an ignoramus! I don’t know why you’re trying to use a computer!” (Yes, that’s pretty much the way I feel when I try to use Windows, and I’m nobody’s fool.)

I honestly cannot understand how the Windows operating system has managed to persist in its complete disregard for the user, except to account for it by the bully tactics of Microsoft.

The New Kid

Here’s an entertaining column from the Washington Post recounting Justice Alito’s first day on the Supreme Court.

In his first day on the bench, Alito laughed obligingly at Justice Antonin Scalia’s joke about river discharge. He stroked his chin thoughtfully and rocked in his chair, just as the more senior justices do. The eight questions he asked — on the finer points of the Clean Water Act and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — put him on course to surpass within days the total number of questions Justice Clarence Thomas has asked in 15 years.

Also, note the cute picture of Justice Ginsburg adjusting Justice Alito’s robes for him. It’s the kind of iconic photo that makes the partisan bickering of confirmation look silly: Here’s one of the most liberal Justices on the Court smoothing the robes of the new Justice who, according to the buzz, will tip the Court dramatically to the Right.

On the other hand, I think yesterday’s decision (delivered by Chief Justice Roberts) on the O Centro Espirita case, while probably correct as a matter of law, is deeply troubling from a policy perspective. (Law nerds click here for the full text of the decision.) I’ll try to offer more comments on that one later.

Another Unholy Alliance

Another company that provides electronic communications infrastructure has allegedly fallen in with the efforts of a government to violate the freedom of citizens. Except this time the company is the long-established AT&T and the government is our own. Hurrah.

Film Scores

Since the overwhelming majority of my posts lately have been of the “hammer on the stupidity of humans” genre, I thought it would be nice to throw in something a little more fun.

For ten years now, every February NPR has invited music critic Andy Trudeau to discuss the original scores that have been nominated for Academy Awards. This morning, on Weekend Edition Sunday, Andy was there to kick off this year’s crop of scores, beginning with Alberto Iglesias’ score for The Constant Gardener and John Williams’ score for Memoirs of a Geisha. If you like movies, music, or music and movies, I highly recommend clicking the link and listening. (You will need RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.)

More Muslims Who Can’t Think

From an overview of the cartoon controversy, in the Miami Herald:

It is illegal in Germany — and punishable by prison time — to make statements denying or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. It is also a crime to make ”patently false statements” about the Holocaust, such as minimizing the number of victims. Some Muslims have argued that such laws constitute a double-standard: in the West it’s fine, they argue, to denigrate Muslims, but not Jews.

No! First, the Holocaust is a historical fact. Denying it may denigrate Jews, but denying it is also a denial of reality, which is tantamount to insanity. Also, the purpose for criminalizing the denial of the Holocaust is to help ensure that it will never happen again. Why? Because the Holocaust was genocide. Extermination. Killing. I.e., it was the same thing that Muslims are calling for against Europe and the West.

Second, the rule against making images of Muhammad is strictly limited to practicing Muslims. For the rest of us, Muhammad is simply a historical figure. He existed. He founded the religion of Islam. He was a real person who is subject to study, criticism, and imagery just like any other real person. As I wrote before, if the rest of us believed it wrong to make images of Muhammad, then the rest of us would be Muslims. But we are not, so there is no justifiable reason to hold us to the rules of a religion we do not practice, especially when breaking those rules in itself causes no physical injury.

There is no such double standard in the West. The Muslims who say so are simply paranoid anti-semites in the extreme. Rather, the double standard is squarely in the hands of Islam, where the lack of logic and critical thinking skills allows people to riot, destroy, and kill while criticizing Germany for refusing to let its people forget that they once committed one of the most infamous killings of all time. The German people still suffer the consequences and feel shame for what was done. Now these foolish, adolescent Muslims come along and criticize them for trying to regain their humanity after such a great crime, while simultaneously plotting and committing their own deplorable acts of violence? That is arrogant and hypocritical, to say the least.

The Double Standard of Islam

More cartoon protests today, this time in Nigeria. Sixteen people died and eleven churches were burned.

Meanwhile, back in London, Muslims protested peacefully, with placards.

“Europe lacks respect for others,” stated one placard. “Don’t they teach manners in Denmark?” asked another.

Right. Hey, “peaceful” Muslims: Danish people aren’t killing each other and burning down churches because somebody published cartoons that offend them. Did you catch that? You’re defending people who KILL and DESTROY but saying that a peaceful people have no “manners.” If anybody needs to learn manners (and logic and history and critical thinking skills), it’s the Muslim world, not Europe. Europe has it figured out. If you open up a history book and read about Europe, you’ll see that these are people who spent hundreds of years killing each other and destroying each other’s things. Now they have finally progressed far enough that they can tolerate each other, tolerate dissent, even tolerate satirical cartoons, and you’re saying they have no respect for others? I don’t see any Danes or Europeans killing people or burning down buildings or rioting in the streets because they’re torqued off by political cartoons.

Women and Law School

Over the last few years, the University of Washington School of Law has conducted a study of how men and women experience law school differently. Here’s the bit I found most interesting the first time I read through the summary:

Women are more likely than men to experience a drop in confidence about their intelligence, to consider dropping out of law school and to feel they must set aside their values in order to think like a lawyer.

Why is that? Do women have certain values not shared by men? Do men and women share the same values, but men are simply more willing to alter them (or set them aside)? Is the difference due to biology, social conditioning, or both? Does this have something to do with the intrinsic nature of legal thought or is it a product of the law school environment? Although I suspect some people would be willing simply to chalk this up as another result of the legal profession being the traditional domain of men, I don’t see so easy an answer. But must of all, I want to know what these values are that women are setting aside.