The Elevated City

Take Chances

2008-02-10T01:08:00.000-06:00

Nothing makes you pine for the fjords like the ultimate romantic comedy.

Here's to chances taken, opportunities engaged, and all in the hope that you might find that special someone someday.

And ah, so much so to the U.K.

Law School Applications Update 1

2008-02-09T02:26:00.000-06:00

The first law school applications have been sent.

I have now sent applications to:

Northwestern University
Lewis and Clark Law School
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Applications remaining to be sent:

George Washington University
University of Hawai'i
DePaul University
Loyola University
Boston University
University of Colorado

Edwards Drops Out, Obama Drops In

2008-01-30T11:08:00.000-06:00

So John Edwards has finally left the race. It's kind of sad that leading into Super Tuesday, only two candidates remain in the running for the Democratic nomination for President; compare this to the original eight main candidates (Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama, Richardson) that were in the running up until now. I've already seen three of my favored candidates (Biden, Richardson, Kucinich) drop out, however, for most of them I know that they would be great in an international relations position in a Democratic administration, especially should Obama take the mantle that he definitely deserves.

We are now less than a week from Super Tuesday, when 24 states will be casting their primaries, including my own of Illinois, which is solidly Obama. I foresee Edwards' dropout from the race as a great boon to Obama, due to the natural charisma of either candidate as well as their focus on more progressive policies. While Edwards has a lot of class warfare populism on his side, I think that would translate well into the desire of reforming American society and the hope that Obama proclaims.

Clinton, meanwhile, has been attacked for her less than noble treatment of other candidates, an effort left by the wayside by her opponent to an extent, and even the invitation of Bill aboard the sinking campaign ship has brought some negative light that has dimmed her own performance.

And it seems that the national media actually cares about the Democratic results in Michigan and Florida, results that the online community have ignored because, well, the two states had their delegates pulled for moving their primary before Super Tuesday. Both contests that Clinton performed well in, only because the other candidates went, "We're going to follow the rules and pull our names from the ballot in order to encourage the states to keep to party rules". It's kind of hard not to win a state where you keep your name on just for the sake of saying you won. Despite the fact that even with a 55% win of all votes, Clinton still faced 40% of voters claiming "uncommitted", a clear nod to Obama and Edwards.

I am now a supporter of Obama, through and through. While before, I posted about my apprehension about his candidacy, I see now the common thread of unity that has been a constant, integral part of his campaign. Obama has worked up an energy unheard of by the other candidates in any of the presidential races. He has made my generation feel emboldened that we can make a difference, that change is an option and leaving the nation to rot in the status quo should not be the choice we make.

It is for these reasons, among many, that I am endorsing him. I hope that when the primary comes for you, you too will make the right decision and vote Obama for your choice as Democratic candidate for the President of the United States.

White Sox Vs Cubs

2007-12-21T11:49:00.001-06:00

Why is the Crosstown Classic between the White Sox and the Cubs scheduled for two weekends in a row? That type of scheduling doesn't make sense. It's at least a month separate, so the rivalry can die down and simmer for a bit, letting the tension grow as it gets closer to the other. This current setup leaves nothing to look forward to at the end of summer.

LSAT!

2007-12-21T00:54:00.000-06:00

Dear Brian Larson,

Your December 01, 2007 LSAT score is 159. The percentile rank is 78.

A copy of your LSAT Score Report will be available in the LSAT section of the MY DOCS folder in your Online Services account at www.lsac.org. Other test related documents (in accordance with LSAC disclosure policies) may also be available in the folder.

Law School Admission Council

159! I got a 159! I was shooting for the 155-160 range! HOLY MOTHERFREAKING COW! THIS IS AMAZING!

Twitter

2007-12-20T14:55:00.000-06:00

Because I have a Facebook account and its status form, I do not have a desire to use Twitter.

D&D Character Entry

2007-12-17T11:47:00.000-06:00

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Paladin/Sorcerer (2nd/1st Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-10

Dexterity-14

Constitution-14

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-12

Charisma-

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test an opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin's special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.

Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

On Failed Initiatives and Successes

2007-12-01T13:19:00.000-06:00

So apparently in the process of studying for the LSAT, I got my deadline applications mixed up, and have now missed the deadline for sending in my material for the JET program.

Dang.

Oh well! This now means working on applications for law school instead! More time for that! :)

By the way, I took the LSAT today, and just got done with it. Thanks to some help from a friend, I was able to more confidently complete the games section, finishing 3 instead of struggling through 2 and part of a third! That really psyched me up when I finished that part!

Now time for movies, food, and/or celebratory drinking.

Flagger

2007-11-15T22:17:00.000-06:00

Okay, I've just thought of the next great social networking website.

Working name for it is Flagger.

The basic premise came to me last night when I was trying to figure out the availabilities of people for just hanging out. Back when I was living in a dormitory at Miami, this was pretty easy to do; just look out the door, see which other ones are open and what people's body language is.

Now, inside an apartment, let alone an apartment where I can't even leave my door open for people to stop on by because it opens to the outside directly, that's not possible. My friends and I are strewn across miles of area, which makes it hard to just drop by, something that works a lot better for my personality than calling people up and seeing if they want to do something, and only get shot down.

Enter Flagger.

Flagger is a "contact manager" website, where you and your friends sign up, and have three basic settings (with corresponding color flags of green, yellow, and red): available, interruptible, and busy.

At a glance, you can see who's up for doing something right now, shoot them a line, and instantly have someone to hang out with, all without having to look up your phone directory and call down the list.

Flagger could then be customized further with renaming the flags (similar to Google Chat's status settings) contact information listed such as AIM, phone number, email address, and street address, and whatever else was desired, so that after you found someone to hang out with, you could click on the corresponding messaging service, it would launch the program needed, and bam, hangout time.

The beauty of all this (messaging service aside) is that it would require nothing more than an Internet connection, allowing someone to access this wherever they had access, such as the public library, their iPhone on lunch break, or at work. Easily accessible with no necessarily installed software, allowing everyone to use it equally.

In addition, that lack of software would mean that unlike an AIM away message, that if someone kept their computer shut off to save energy (money and environment there), or if they used a laptop in a location without an Internet connection, they could still have their status listed. This would allow people to be environmentally and economically conscious without sacrificing their ability to get in contact with people.

Flagger would probably be paid for through discrete mini-advertising, similar to Facebook, Google, Freerice.com, and so on, although that would be determined later.

What do you all think of this Web 2.0 venture?

Infinity Mileage

2007-11-05T17:10:00.001-06:00

I finally purchased myself the Threadless Infinity MPG Tshirt, so expect to see me sporting this in just a bit over a week.

Dang it feels good to be a biker.

Inventory Management

2007-11-05T10:10:00.000-06:00

Probably the most annoying thing right now that's preventing me from accomplishing anything really significant at work is my lack of programming training in specific, web-oriented languages, namely Javascript, and to a lesser extent, CSS.

Our inventory management software at work is a mess, and I've been going over my HTML/XHTML and CSS O'Reilly books, trying to get myself back into the webpage coding mindset, which only helps as much as the time I devote to working on this, which is sadly lacking as the LSAT approaches and my studying time for that decreases. However, I've finally started slicing apart the code of the old management website, and realized that Javascript plays a much higher role in the application of the site than I had thought.

The main issue is that I want to be able to populate the "option" code in the HTML with elements from a database file (namely users, computer types, and so on), which I forgot is not how it works.

Another solution I am considering is creating an executable in Visual Basic or C++ that will let us do the exact same thing as the current page, but I fear that would cut down in usability, as it would not be easily accessible from any IT-affiliated terminal; as the inventory management is currently accessible via a secure hyperlink, only those with IT credentials can access the inventory, but can do it from anywhere (helpful if we've forgotten to log the serial number off a new machine).

In addition, I'd like to set up a database that will let me trackback via links (similar to Mac OS X's Finder) between computer names, types, serial numbers, rooms, and so on, enabling the manager to quickly find out exactly what type of monitor, printer, laptop/desktop, and who is using what computer in what room.

If anyone has any suggestions on pre-existing software (so I don't have to write it from the ground up), that would be great. Otherwise, it looks like it's going to be a bunch of late-night coding with some caffeine :)

Recycling and the Market

2007-09-11T12:29:00.000-05:00

Something occurred to me the other day when I was discussing the merits of recycling (and why I had stored an aluminum can I was drinking a beverage out of in my pants pocket rather than throwing it out in the garbage can a few feet away) with a friend at a picnic, and that was the dually-beneficial nature of recycling for both the environment and for the free market.

Now, I recycle, first and foremost, because I wish to reduce my impact on the environment by promoting a sustainable growth situation for our culture and our industry. However, when one recycles, one is also encouraging greater ownership potential and lower costs for items in the same swoop! Here's how it works:

We only have a limited amount of certain resources, be they trees, aluminum, water, or petroleum (turned into plastics), even those that are renewable. The problem with renewable resources is that they require a greater period of time to make up for the resources removed during that timeframe than it takes to introduce the brand new materials into the market. So in essence, were we to theoretically suddenly remove all trees on the planet for paper needs, and not recycle during the time period between the next time a tree had grown to appropriate paper harvesting age, we would be experiencing a diminishing stock of that resource, something that still happens even though we don't log every tree in the world.

Here's where recycling comes into play; Company A wants X number of Y resource, which is available either by harvesting deposits that reduce the total (Z) amount of Y resource, or by reclaiming that resource through recycling, which would otherwise go to waste. Simplifying this as a zero-sum game, they can choose one path or the other.

If they choose the harvesting deposits option, X number of Y resource is now lost, no longer able to be used, and thereby reducing the total amount of Y by X due to whatever originally drove A's desire.

However, were A to reclaim the amount of resource needed through recycling, Z would stay constant, or with little loss, thereby allowing for greater usage of that resource. This would allow for increased competition in the marketplace, as due to the higher availability of that resource, overall costs of initially purchasing that resource would be lower than through regular deposit harvesting, thereby allowing for lower-priced goods on the market (or higher wages for employees, or whatever the company wishes to spend its greater profit on) for the consumer, which means that more consumers can purchase more of that product, allowing for more widespread purchasing potential, which means even higher revenue for that company.

So while the cost of recycling may deter some companies from using that route, it overall is beneficial for all groups involved, from the community who no longer has to deal with large amounts of waste (and can then create jobs to help sort the recycling), the business that can more effectively spread around its purchases, and the consumer who will have more options available at more affordable prices.

Communitarianism and capitalism, combined. Who could have thought?

This I Believe

2007-08-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

I was reading another of NPR's "This I Believe" series, this time of a charity worker's opinions regarding the naming conventions for her baby that you can read here.

The naming process she and her husband decided upon was a listing of the traits they found most important. Through this, they would

In deciding on the first two traits, strangely enough, she and I were completely in tune. For those of you who don't want to bother reading the article, those traits, in that order, were "honesty" and "charity".

For my third, I decided to settle on "industrious/innovative". Something that I am certainly not, but I value because those traits can lead one to want to better things, that end up not being just for oneself, but for everyone around.

For their third trait, however, they had decided upon the ability to laugh at oneself. I heartily recommend you read the last paragraph in that article to see why.

And I completely agreed.

A Petroleum Conundrum

2007-08-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

As some of you were previously aware, BP has decided to raise the amount of toxins it directly dumps into Lake Michigan in order to increase the amount of Canadian heavy oil that it can process at its Indiana facility. I previously blogged about this dire problem of increasing industrial rampages against the environment, and the destruction of the public commons at my old Livejournal blog, emphasizing the fact that the public good means little for BP's drive towards greater profits of a failing industry whose time has come.

Already, efforts are under way to encourage BP to not continue this drive towards an increased, mercury-based, poisoning of one of the world's largest fresh water supplies. These have come from groups like the EPA proposing alternative methods to clean the region by BP, Mayor Daley of Chicago threatening a state lawsuit, Indiana Governor Daniels reviewing pollution laws, and even local action by Environment Illinois to increase public education about the matter.

Regarding the last link, however, it seems that there is still extreme resistance by the comfortable upper class to ignore problems going on around them, as evidenced by the quote: "One said in disgust, "We don't know what you're talking about.""

Thankfully, it seems that the overall purpose of this local demonstration, to educate and inform the public regarding the hazards that corporations and negligent state officials have in store for their lives, is an overall success:

"People in Naperville are eager to know more," she said. "Sometimes they're just stunted by fear."

First time I've actually had some element of faith in my suburban hometown.

The Fall of the Independent Candidate

2007-08-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

South Carolina today has decided to move forward its primary voting day from February 2nd to January 19th, as this New York Times poliblog states. This is a direct competition to the "importance" of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primaries, two voting days that display some of the wide variety of opinions towards the current frontrunners.

The problem with this is that it gives far too little time for those without the political clout or monetary resources to spread their message to the mainstream. If we, as a political party, are choosing who will represent us without letting the smaller candidates (I'm looking at you, Joe Biden and Ron Paul) campaign as long as their larger brethren in order to actually be a known choice for primary voters, it only further cements control by the oligarchy of the rich and powerful.

The primary season has effectively been running since this January/February, and virtually earlier for the Democratic candidates whose names have been getting hyped over and over again, but really, few, if any of the voters hitting the polls at the beginning of 2008 have even started to pay attention, let alone get any news on the candidates outside of those favored by the MSM (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Guiliani, and perhaps Edwards). The debates have been few and far between among the candidates, taking us by surprise at best (YouTube debates) and flying completely under the radar at worst.

The change for South Carolina means that voters have a scant 5 months to dig up all the information they possibly can on these candidates, as well as for these candidates to publish the points they want these potential voters to discover.

Is this the type of schedule we want to give these small candidates; that they must be prepared to start running a full 21 months before the election even happens to even be heard of? Is this how we want our brightest and best candidates selected?

I'll be over with Biden and Paul's supporters, with the rest of the political blogging community that's been paying attention.

Reading List

2007-08-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

I'm going to set myself up a book list of things I plan on reading, both for enjoyment and for educational interest.

I'd like to sort these by various topic:

Politics:

The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama

From one who would like to support Obama, this book is about the difficulties of modern politics and the lack of cooperation between the polarized sides.

Social Issues

Medicare Meets Mistopheles, by David Hyman

Satirical take on how Medicare has failed (as this book is published by the Cato Institute).
I saw this book hyped on a cable show, can't forget which one now, but I found out he's actually one of the law professors here at U of I, and mentioned I'd been wanting to read the book for a while. Lo and behold, he loans me a copy as I'm finishing up some IT work for his computer!

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

This book details the process of our food and where our food innately comes from.
First found out about this book through the library webcomic, Unshelved, and due to my recent environmental tendencies, became intrigued. It's on my to-do.

Literature

The Poems of Sappho

Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, wrote highly emotional poetry, dealing with her relationships and sexuality.
I first encountered Sappho during my Classical Civilization course that emphasized Greek culture. One of her poems, fragment 52, enraptured me through her use of language to so effortlessly and succinctly capture the feelings of loneliness:

The moon is set. And the Pleiades.

It’s the middle of the night.

Time passes.
I sleep alone.

General Fiction

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Cyberpunk

Transition

2007-08-05T22:37:00.000-05:00

So it seems only fitting that upon my changeover from the life of an undergraduate to that of a working "professional", that I have a similar change in my blog, moving away from the strangely and easily networked nature of Livejournal towards that of Blogger, especially given the events that have been occurring that have totally shown Six Apart's focus as a commercial venture.

Sponsored communities, invasion of freedom of literature and artistic creation, all of these are really treading on my nerves.

So in the interest of having a more mature and responsible blog, especially given the more discussion-worthy topics I had been doing recently in my Livejournal blog, I now reopen The Elevated City, and hope to make a blog worthy of its name.

I Am Entering the Nether...

2006-01-14T14:06:00.000-06:00

And so will shortly begin my ventures within the city of life, the city of elevated wanderings and musings. I shall set forth from the cozy warren of the suburbs and enter a new life of responsibility and friendship. I will be Elevated.