Hail to Old KU

I love my alma mater. I'll admit it and say it proudly. During my stay at the University of Kansas, I came to appreciate the stately elegance of the campus, enjoy its rich history, and be entertained by the cultural heritage of being a Jayhawk. I was a regular visitor to the secret places on campus (like the chancellor's cemetery, the prairie acre, and the fountained, statuary-laden courtyard at the Anthropology museum), and knew the school song by heart. I even would take after-midnight walks on campus just so I could revel in the beauty of the campanile lit against the sky without the interruption of the crowded throng normally present during the daytime.

I'm starting to recognize that KU holds a place in my heart that will not likely be eclipsed by my new home at my current law school. While I was proud to be a Jayhawk, I'm at best indifferent to being an Ichabod. Worse, I'm starting to be a little bit embarrassed about my status as an Ichabod.

Case in point: Last night, I attended a scholarship recognition ceremony. Every student who received scholarship funds to attend the law school was invited. So were the generous individuals who donated sums of money (both large and small) so that law students could study without worrying about whether they would be able to meet their next tuition payment. Many of the donors were alumni, influential lawyers in the Midwest, and representatives of prestigious firms. (My personal thanks are extended to Michaud, Cordry, Michaud, Hutton & Hutton for their generous donation which paid for my tuition in full).

The law school rented one of the most lavishly appointed rooms at the University, hired several photographers to document the occasion, created a presentation ceremony where each scholarship recipient would be united with the donor to shake hands, congratulate/thank each other, and have the moment documented. As if that weren't enough, the law school had certificates printed up to present to the recipients and donors to commemorate the evening. They had even paid to have the event catered with a free bar and dessert buffet by one of the finest catering services in the Topeka area.

Though virtually all of the donors showed up, as did the president of the University, the professors of the law school, and most of the board of regents, most of my peers snubbed the event. Many of the donors appeared to be angry that the recipients of their awards had chosen not to show up to the affair, particularly in light of the fact that some had driven from relatively distant locations to attend and meet the student(s) their money had aided.

One man, Elton Sloane, contributed a large sum of money that paid for three scholarships for law students. Of the three students, only one managed to make it to an event publicized well in advance and to which we'd all received personalized printed invitations. This in itself didn't make the evening remarkable, as the donors to recipients ratio was probably less than 1 - 3. What made Mr. Sloane's case heartbreaking is that he had traveled a good distance to meet the students he sponsored. Because of his advanced age (Mr. Sloane was 91) and his mobility issues (he could only walk with a walker and with personal help), he brought his daughter (herself an old woman). The closest they could park to the event was more than 100 yards from the building. Finding Mr. Sloan an unlocked handicapped accessible entrance was difficult. Finding an elevator so that he could make it to the 2nd floor of the building was also difficult. Once he was in the reception hall, only 1 of his 3 students showed up. And then to make it worse, the law school spelled his name wrong on the complimentary booklet and certificate.

The donors, including Mr. Sloane, were clearly incensed at the recipients' lack of respect. Two donors fumed out of the event as it started when their students had failed to show up. Mr. Sloane began his slow and arduous descent to his car within seconds of the ending of the ceremony (it was clear that he stayed only because it was the polite thing for him to do, even though he was disgusted). Many of the donors had given several hundred thousand dollars to the law school and were making complaints to the Dean immediately following the event. Ouch.

If our lack of professionalism couldn't be inferred from the scarce showing of scholarship recipients, an elderly couple (I didn't catch their names) by whom I sat were 'scandalized' by the 'whorish' dress that one girl wore (which even I will admit was far, far too short to be appropriate at an upscale event). While the donors held their applause to the end of the ceremony, or gave brief claps when a faculty member was the donor of some award money, the response from students was a disinterested buzz of unrelated conversation punctuated by raucous hoots and whoops more appropriate to Monday-night football.

Here's a hint for my decorum-challenged law-school peers: Yelling "Yeah, baby!" and "(insert girl's name) is HOT!" as an attractive 1L walks down the aisle to greet her scholarship donor and get her picture taken is not appropriate. As a general rule, if the action is appropriate for the stereotypical construction workers on break to do, it is likely not appropriate for a function where people wear suits and ties.

The event ended uncomfortably. Most of the donors seemed a bit put off. Some of the donors seemed angry and upset at the students' unprofessionalism. Some complained to the dean, and others just walked out without saying a word to anyone. All I know is that I'm a little disappointed and ashamed to be associated with a student body so inconsiderate to the MASSIVE generosities of people who could have used their large contributions to make their own lives more comfortable instead.

Far above the golden valley,
Glorious to view,
Stands our noble Alma Mater,
Tow'ring towards the blue.

Lift the chorous ever onward,
Crimson and the Blue.
Hail to thee, our Alma Mater,
Hail to old KU.

Far above the distant humming
Of the busy town.
Rear'd against the dome of heaven,
Looks she proudly down.

Greet we then our foster mother,
Noble friend so true,
We will ever sing her praises:
Hail to old KU.

Curiosities

I'm always curious about the goings-on in my friends' lives. I understand that due to my generally reserved nature I tend to fall outside the traditional lines of communication, and it's sometimes easy to forget that I don't know things.

I'm always scared that I'm forgettable. As much as friends tell me that this isn't the case, I always find that I fade into the background wherever I go and that people will fail to notice that I am present. A Constitutional law professor of mine at KU prided herself on her ability to learn students names and remember them from year to year. She even bragged to the class on the first day when she promised to learn our names that she had seen a former student in a grocery store recently and had recalled his name even though it had been almost half a decade since he had taken her class. I took two courses from her, in consecutive semesters, in the same room, where I sat in the same seat, and never varied my appearance drastically. She never learned my name.

As an undergrad, I found that my little circle of friends always seemed to be doing things without me. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, I was psyched to see it with the gang, but they all somehow they scheduled a time to see it, went around and got people's money, bought and picked up the tickets in advance, and prepared a carpooling system before anyone realized that they had neglected to inform me of the trip. I found out about it when my roommates were putting on their coats to leave and one asked me whether I was going.

The years may change, but I am always afraid that I'm out-of-the-loop still. Little inconsequentials reinforce that notion, like when I found out that a friend might be leaving our law school to guest study at another school down south. Everybody else apparently knew, but I was left out. I know it was an accident, but I'm not very good at handling accidents.

Other friends start serious relationships with people, and I'm the last to know. I know I'm not the most social guy in the world, but I'm surely not so bad as to be cut off from what must surely be an important part of someone's life.

These sorts of things make me very nervous that the social landscape around me is far more foreign than I realize, due to my inattention or ignorance.

There's one surefire way to waken this low-level, background anxiety. Have a friend surf the internet during class and have her be looking at wedding dresses for most of a class period. Scary.

Miracle car

As much as I love the idea of my previous love (see prior post) and the fact that she can defrost her windshield in seconds with the push of a button, an old college roommate of mine reminded me this morning that the less flashy models can have a stable and dependable charm to them that more than makes up for the absence of the smooth curves and sleek stylings.

Some kids in high school built their own car. I know my high school never did anything like that. The closest class we had was the gender restricted class "Car Care for girls." (yes, we actually had a class that only girls could take where they taught all of the 'helpless little girls' how to change a tire, deal with buying car insurance, and check their oil." I tried to enroll for the course under the theory that I didn't know these things either, and the administration denied my request, with the explicit (written) instruction that if I wanted to know these things I should have my Father teach me how to care for automobiles. Yay, Kansas, where blatant sexism can still exist in public schools without apology or lawsuit. I wonder now if they still have that class.

Anyway, these high school kids built a car with decent power and that gets about 50 miles per gallon of fuel. And what's more, the fuel is made from soybeans.

But GM can't manufacture a car that gets 35 mpg to save it's life. Literally. How come?

EDIT/UPDATE: I did a quick bit of research, and what do you know? My old high school DOES still offer their girls only car care class. Page 24, under "Industrial Technology" lists the course as current as of this last year's curriculum. That surely can't be Constitutional.

When spring is in the air, a young man's thoughts turn to...

Love

You'd think I'd learn from the first one

Let me reiterate, eating a whole onion for dinner = a bad idea. Even (and especially) if you had a second one that looked like it was going to get slimy soon.

It's just a simple word. Why fear it?

Environmental law is rarely my friend. Alternatives which I believe are truly the most efficient solution to serious problems are rarely given what I would view as a fair hearing due to some of the biases of American politics.

Take for example our recent discussion of the Clean Water Act and non-point source polluters. A non-point source of pollution, to put it colloquially, is something which you cannot discretely point to. I can identify a pipe coming out of a factory, the exhaust port on a car, or the flow coming out of the municipal sewage plant. Identifying where pollution comes from when it seeps off of 80 miles of farmland is much more difficult and so merits being called a non-point source.

Compliance with the strictures of the Clean Water Act (which regulates almost exclusively point sources) is relatively high. More than 90% of municipalities are in compliance and over 95% of industrial point sources are in compliance. Yet, over 1/3 of the nation’s waters are heavily polluted, and in several instances to such a degree that they are virtually sterile. Why?

Non-point source polluters are the main problem. Nitrates from animal wastes run off from large farming ventures. Nitrates (from fertilizers) and sulfates (from pesticides) run off from fields into the local rivers and lakes. The professor today asked us to consider how we might go about solving the problem of non-point source pollutants.

Two words: Nationalize Agriculture.

People need to realize that our ability to exercise our freedom in not a right, but a privilege given to us by the government. Before government (in the state of nature) we all had freedom to do what we liked, but when we discovered that such a life was ‘red in tooth and nail’ (via Hobbes and to a lesser extent Locke), we abdicated our autonomy to a Sovereign who would adjudge disputes and create laws to govern us.

Rights are not absolute. “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins” is a phrase used to describe this concept in some philosophical circles, but a better way to put it would be to say that ‘to the extent to which the exercise of my rights does not impede yours, I am free.”

Developing land to suit my selfish gain of material wealth is fine, to the extent that it infringes on the rights of no other beings. Unfortunately for free-market types, such cannot be said to be the case in virtually any sphere of life. When I pollute the water, I make that water undrinkable. People downstream can no longer fish the waters. They cannot swim in the waters. The smells that emanate from the rivers drive down property values for miles. Contact with polluted waters can lead to infections and death. And if consequences to humans weren’t enough, it amounts to wholesale killing of entire species and the ruination of numerous habitats.

If private land development cannot be exercised in a way which simultaneously respects the rights of others, it is not a right the government (an entity whose sole purpose is the protection of its members from aggressors, both internal and external) is bound to respect. Such polluters have declared war against the State, and as such the Sovereign is in his right to dissolve their rights in a manner to end their rebellion.

Another student today remarked that controls could be put in place, commenting that ‘if corporations couldn’t be trusted to have some ethics, big brother should step in and show them how to do it right.’ I agree, only let’s be honest and take him to his natural conclusion.

I wish people could think about government run industry in a way that did not bring to mind the coerced farm policy of Stalin’s Russia. Even our mother country, Great Britain, has turned over several industries to the government in the interest of serving the public in a more efficient and equitable manner.

Nationalized Agriculture. Think about it.

Why it is good to check your assumptions first

Today is a friend's birthday. Normally, I have one class with her on Tuesdays, and it is in the afternoon. I assumed I would see her this afternoon in class, so I spent my 2.5 hour break in between classes making cookies as a birthday present instead of preparing for tax law (thus necessitating that I skip tax law as I am pretty sure I will be called on today). After slaving in front of the stove with several versions of a new type of cookie (vanilla cookie with caramel, chocolate, and coconut) to try to get it right, I bring a plate of them and a personalized card to class only to discover that she has taken her birthday off from the elf's playful wrath. Sigh. I should have asked her if she'd be there when I saw her this morning.

And MS? Your hair did not in the least look poofy. It looked delightful. I'm sure K-$ will tell you the same thing.

Political Confession

I tend to be a fairly mathematical sort of person. While I am almost incapable of handling even basic college calculus, I am quite adept at using particular fields of applied mathematics to model personal behaviours. Social Choice Theory and Game Theory are fundamental tools in my arsenal for dealing with the world.

As a young child, I used to do long-division problems just for the sheer mechanical thrill of it. Sometimes in law school, I still find myself writing out a thirty or forty digit string and dividing it all by seven or something. When I was first introduced (as a college Junior) to systematic numerical modeling of human actions in the form of utility calculus, I was hooked. I now find myself in my boring law classes sketching utility matrices and decision trees far more than long-division problems.

The basic idea behind social choice theory is that when a person is presented with a chance to make a decision, they will make the decision that they believe will make them happiest. If given the option of going to work (and making money) or staying home and playing video games, the person will invariably choose the option that they feel will garner them the most overall happiness. Some individuals will value package 1 more (the disutility of work + the happiness you could buy with your paycheck) over package 2 (the utility of playing video games – the disutility of running out of money to pay your bills). Some people will prefer the reverse. However the individual values different states of existence, he or she will perform actions which seem aimed to bring about those states.

Social choice theory steps in to try to understand how individuals make decisions with other individuals. Suppose that I wish to go out to eat with a friend, and we have the opportunity to eat at a Chinese buffet or a burger joint. I prefer option A, and she prefers option B. How do we come to a decision now?

Kenneth Arrow is an economist and theorist who won a Nobel prize for his proof of what has come to be known as “Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.” Arrow’s theorem says that there are absolutely no ways for the individuals to make a choice that satisfies all of the following criteria:

-That the social choice (the final choice of the group) is complete and transitive (takes into account all options and ranks those options in a single ordering)
-Pareto Optimality (Unanimous preferences of individuals should amount to the social choice)
-Free of irrelevant alternatives (The social choice should not be affected by non-options)
-Free from dictatorship

Social choice theory applies to politics in a stellar fashion. When trying to aggregate the individual preferences of voters into a single social choice, we must keep in mind Arrow’s theorem. There are absolutely zero ways for the individual voters to come to a social choice without violating one of the above criteria.

It is invariably the position of most Americans that democracy is the best possible political system, and that the truth of that statement is somehow self-obvious. Perhaps it is simply that I have never been particularly affected by much of the socialization I was to have picked up as a child, but the sublime feeling that such was the case stuck to me nearly as well as the existence of God or all of the moral intuitions that people claim to have that I never did.

Among the criteria, freedom from irrelevant alternatives seems to be one that is certainly a good criterion to keep. When I go to a restaurant for only a drink and am offered coffee, tea, or water, I might announce to the waitress, “Bring me a tea, and if you don’t have tea, then coffee, and if you are out of coffee, bring me water.” In choice theory terms, I have said tea>coffee>water. If the waitress says to me, “I’m terribly sorry, but we are completely out of bagels,” my response as to my beverage ranking should not change. If I now replied that in light of the bagel situation (which I had not ordered), I preferred water over coffee, and coffee over tea, you might think I was slightly unhinged. Likewise, if my ranking was Tea>Coffee>Water, and the waitress told me that they had no water for me, I would still be expected to order tea. If I changed my order to Coffee, something would seem unreasonable about that, since my first choice was still available.

Similarly, the Pareto optimality seems to be a good criterion to hold onto. When ordering a pizza and every single person wants the pizza to have sausage, if we order a pizza without sausage, then something seems amiss.

The criterion about completeness and transitivity is a necessity for a coherent social choice. A social choice is not simply a final outcome. When asked about which beverage I prefer, “Tea” is not a social choice. Tea>Coffee>Water is a social choice. Completeness simply means that all options are represented in the social choice ranking (tea, coffee, AND water are all there). The transitivity criterion means that I can place the complete list of options into a single ranking where each one is preferred to others below it on a straight line.

Transitivity is so basic that it is arguably not possible to conceive of ranked non-transitive lists. Try to imagine that you prefer apples to bananas and bananas to lemons. Simple, right? Now imagine that at the same time, you prefer lemons to apples. To do so turns your preference into one of those M.C. Escher stairways that always appears to go up, but comes back to its own first step while ascending.

Dictatorship is widely seen as a bad thing, and so we probably would desire to keep a social choice system that avoids that option.

Majority-rule democracy results in a violation of the completeness and transitivity criterion. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Our beloved system of social choice allows for social choices which are, in actuality, not able to be comprehended due to their circularity.

Imagine three voters, A, B, and C.

A prefers option X to Y, and option Y to Z.
B prefers option Y to Z, and option Z to X.
C prefers option Z to X, and option X to Y.

There are clear majorities to support each of the following positions X>Y, Y>Z, Z>X, which are mutually incompatible as a transitive ordering.

In any social choice situation (any election) where there are 3 or more candidates or options (if policies), and more than 1 voter, intransitivities are possible.

Because one of Arrow’s four criteria must be violated to arrive at social choices, we must decide which of the criteria we are willing to violate. Democracy has made the decision that, of the four criteria, the first is the best one to violate.

I disagree.

A political system which allows for non-rational social choices – choices which are not even possible to think coherently – cannot be the best option.

I would violate fourth option without hesitation. I’m living proof that freedom and the left are not bedmates of necessity.

[stands up and addresses the circle]
My name is [Academian], and I’m an unapologetic Statist seeking his Hobbesian Leviathan and Sovereign.

Tip of the day:

If you value the lining of your stomach, don't eat an entire onion for dinner. Even if you've had it for a while, and you're worried that it'll go bad soon and don't want to waste it, just let it be.