weekend o' fun

It's homecoming here in Madison and this weekend should be a treat.

It starts with the homecoming parade tonight followed by fireworks.

Tomorrow is the homecoming game against Indiana where I will get to participate in the annual "cane toss." The cane toss is a law school tradition where third-year law students throw canes over one of the goal posts at Camp Randall. Tradition has it that if you catch the cane after throwing it over, you will win your first case as a lawyer. Of course, if you miss...

To finish off the weekend, I just found out I won tickets to see Josh Rouse at the Annex, a great little venue in Madison. I won the tickets through madison.com. I caught my first Josh Rouse show in Nashville in 2003, where he was living at the the time. He puts on a great show, so it should be fun.

Wish me luck in catching the cane...I've heard it is harder than it looks.

why I should/should not be playing more poker

why law students should be playing more poker...

Harvard Law Prof Charles Nesson says so. It makes sense. Learning to read the opposing player/lawyer's hand is certainly part of good poker playing/lawyering. I also tend to agree with this article that poker is not a game of chance. If it was, you would not see the same people at the World Series of Poker every year. However, I still don't think poker should be shown on ESPN. A sport? Hardly.

why law students should not be playing more poker...

student loans. That is, of course, unless you are so good that you rarely lose. In that case, not only could you help your financial situation out by playing cards, you are also probably going to be a good enough lawyer that those student loans will be paid off rather quickly.

so come on congress, help us law students out and make online gambling legal again. most of you were once law students as well, so throw us a bone.

Generation Z?

Apparently marketing folks are planning ahead for the next generation. Hard to imagine that the next generation will take ipods and wireless internet for granted the same way my generation takes computers for granted and the one before me took the television set for granted.

On a more important note, what comes after Generation Z? Do we start back at A? That would be strange because it would seem like going backwards. I'm wondering if maybe we could use symbols, like Generation @ or Generation ^.

I am also having a bit of an identity crisis, as I was under the impression I was part of Generation X for so long and according to the article, you had to be born by 1977 to be in GenX. This puts me squarely in Generation Y, which means I need to exist under a whole different set of assumptions.

"There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope."

A sad statement from a former general.

What do you do when you create a mess and can't fix it? Naturally, you wish you had never created the mess in the first place (although I question if that's true for our current government). You try to keep the mess from getting more out of hand, but at what cost? If you "cut and run" you have to the face the consequences of the mess you created, but is there a reasonable alternative? It's hard to ask others to help you control your mess, so in many ways that option is off the table.

I fail to see a good option, but am afraid the administration will keep trying to find one until the next election to avoid admitting failure. Once again, political power will trump human life.

"Sanchez, who retired in 2006, said it was his duty to obey orders and not object publicly when he was on active duty, but now that he is retired he has an obligation to speak out." If it's not his duty to object publicly while on active duty, whose duty is it? I would think the one person with authority to object would be a general who is on the ground watching the administration make this mess. Anytime anyone else has objected, Bush has called upon the generals to offer an assessment and they have always tried to spin things positively.

I'm glad the general has offered the American people a true assessment now, but where was this rhetoric before? Then again, if he had offered this assessment while he was general, the administration would have sent a different general in. Hanging on to the White House is much more important that facing facts.

Funny and sad...

If anyone hasn't seen this yet, I thought I would bring it to your attention. It's a post to craigslist.com looking for a husband and a man's response telling her why her post is ridiculous.

The exchange is funny and sad. The post is incredibly superficial and in some way, reflects on our consumeristic culture. The fact that love is talked about as a commodity for exchange says something about how much economic thinking pervades our society. The response is equally sad, but in a more sarcastic manner.

If nothing else, they are worth a laugh. I just hope they aren't serious.