Beaneball

Want to know why Hampshire is actually the best college in the country? Because our President goes to the Drag Ball with his husband as Queens Elizabeth I and II, that's why.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Personal at 23:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've finally updated the NBA Heavyweights toy over in the right sidebar. The current top heavyweight is Boston, with a tremendous 9-1 record. Phoenix is the current beltholder, and has a 3-1 record. The next heavyweight championship bout is tomorrow, Thursday night, on TNT, against San Antonio (who came into the year holding the belt, but have just a 3-2 record in championship matches). This promises to be a knockdown, drag-out fight as the two teams play for the coveted Beaneball NBA Heavyweight Championship Belt.

Phoenix, by the way, comes in having won three straight, while the Spurs have lost the same number in a row, getting beat twice by good teams (New Orleans and Utah) and once by a terrible team (Seattle).

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Basketball, The Blog at 20:27 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I found out today that my readership has doubled. (Hi Daniel!)

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Personal at 10:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've undertaken a slight re-design involving adding a new left sidebar, adding some color, and cleaning up the backend to make it a little bit more readable for me (I'm bad at CSS, good at table-tags). Plus I kind of like the effect of the background grey bleeding through as "borders." That was unintentional, but I left it because I thought it looked kind of neat.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in The Blog at 23:32 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

There's an elementary school across the street from my apartment. Usually, it's quiet: I hardly ever even see children coming and going, probably because I leave too late to see them and I get home way too late to see them. But today, on which I don't have school, there's apparently something going on over there. There are two security-type guys hanging out on the sidewalk near a black Towncar with heavily tinted windows. I'd suspect mobbery, but there's also a woman with them dressed in classic "Director of Somethingorother for the Whoever Campaign" fashion. The men have fairly sharp suits and the classic visible earpieces that are the hallmark of security guys everywhere. I'm guessing Freddy Ferrer is visiting, though there was just a furor over another school visit he made. Apparently, New York City regulations don't allow candidates for office to go campaigning at public schools, so the candidates have to walk a fine line of going to a school reputedly for other purposes while still obviously doing the "make yourself visible" thing. It's possible that it's Bloomberg himself over there, but I don't know if he'd visit with so little pomp. In all likelihood, it's some minor political celebrity who I haven't even heard of. Still, up here in sleepy Inwood, it's an interesting variation on the normal course of things.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Personal at 09:58 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

It's been a huge day, really. President Bush nominated a crony with no judicial credentials to sit on the Supreme Court. Let the speculation begin that she's the target the Democrats are supposed to blast away at so that they're too tired and too politically spent to do anything about his real candidate, once Miers gets rejected (as some Republicans, angry that someone who went to a law school ranked lower in the US News list got nominated, cross the line). The UFT and the City agreed to a new contract, though it really sounds like, at first blush, the city got the best of things, extending the work day for what seems like a fairly paltry raise. John Roberts showed up in his robe and ... no gold stripes! CJ Rehnquist, of course, famously added gold stripes to his robe some time back, and there was great debate over whether Roberts would continue this potential new tradition. Though I never said so, I suspected he wouldn't. Everything about his character, as we can glean from his public behavior, points away from ostentatious displays, which certainly describes the stripes. Frankly, the simple black is far more stylish than the garish gold could hope to be. Finally, tomorrow begins Rosh Hashanah, which apparently makes today Erev Rosh Hashanah (I suppose I'm learning some Hebrew?). That means I get two days off from law school, which could allow me to get ahead on the reading in a couple of my classes, which is exciting. **** While I was walking toward the subway today after school, on 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, I spied a small cadre of little Hasidic boys, maybe seven or eight years old. They were all wearing a bright orange sweatshirt with some kind of logo, perhaps from their school or youth group. They were apparently being shepharded by a young man nearby. I couldn't tell how old he was, but I'd figure my age or younger. I had the Everclear bumping on my XClef when I realized that one of the little boys had caught my eye and was trying to ask me a question. I pulled out the left earbud and said, "Sorry?" "Are you Jewish?" the kid asked, displaying a rather strong and, to me, unidentifiable accent. "No, sorry." I'm not sure why I apologized. Am I sorry I'm not Jewish? Was I sorry he thought I was? I realized as I walked away, glancing back at the group as they made their way east, that he and his mates weren't asking everybody this question. They weren't even asking all the white people. I thought it was odd that he thought I might be Jewish, though I did have a friend at Hampshire who assumed I was when he met me. The big question, though: why'd he want to know? Was he going to give me something? Tell me something? As I mentioned, tomorrow begins Rosh Hashanah. Perhaps it's related? I must have a Jewish reader or two out there who can shed some light on this.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in News, Personal at 16:49 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I managed to blow off getting ahead on my law school work last night to see Los Lonely Boys with Austen at the Roseland. To put it the short way: awesome. The brothers play like you'd expect brothers to play in the best of cases. They always looked they were having fun on stage, and it's hard to believe they weren't. Jojo and Henry got together and danced across the stage occasionally, and it seemed like Jojo and Ringo had a little "wink-nudge" rapport going on all night. Most importantly, the fun shows up in their music. This is a band of musicians, not rock stars, and that shows up in their extended improvs, both within songs, including their established hits (like "Heaven"), and in pure-and-simple jams (like when Jojo and Ringo took a break off-stage while Henry solo'd for five minutes or so). The band played a number of songs from their new album ("out sometime in November," according to Ringo), and it was evident that they weren't as comfortable in them as they are in the "old" songs, mostly in the lack of showmanship and jamming. This isn't to say, of course, that the new songs weren't as good or that they didn't play them with the energy and passion they showed elsewhere, just that they took a much more straight-forward approach to these songs. Jojo in particular is a pure showman. He's a bassist, but he acts like a guitarist-singer-frontman. He was the one who started the dancing, the running around the stage, playing over his head, playing with one hand (!), blind, etc. etc. Henry, while not "laid-back" by any means, definitely struck me as the follower in terms of total entertainment spectacle (which is hardly an indictment of anything substantial; nor would it matter if it were, because his guitar work outstrips anything else you could find to say about him). Can I come up with a negative? Not of the band or the show (or even the venue), certainly. Something personal, though? I'll admit something, which will place me squarely in the square category: I'd never been to a show, concert, live musical performance (in which a family member was not playing) before. Los Lonely Boys being (justifiably, as I discovered) known for putting on a fantastic live show, will anything else live up to this? Austen's mom got me tickets to see My Morning Jacket and Kathleen Edwards in October, and while I'm certainly excited about that (I hope Kathleen Edwards plays for like two hours), is MMJ likely to match the energy (not to mention musical prowess) of LLB?

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Personal at 22:42 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I think the site's been cleaned up. There shouldn't be any weird non-entries hanging around, the sidebar is populated, and I've pretty much got my backend configuration the way I want it. For those with RSS readers, you've got the ok to feed a feed to your aggregator now. They shouldn't be changing. By the by: note that one of Serendipity's built-in features is that you can subscribe to certain categories. So if you don't like when I write about books, movies, politics, or whatever, you can just subscribe to the baseball, or A's, category, and just get the articles that you find relevant. The page has a highly-generic look on purpose. My two to-do items are the style of the page (an A's blog ought to have A's colors, right?) and actually making my blogroll have links. If you come to the site any time soon and see weird things going on (the sidebar where it isn't supposed to be, funny colors, wacky rendering, whatever), know that it's because I'm tinkering and figuring out the page layout stuff. If I break something, it ought to be fixed in a matter of minutes. If you come to the site and repeatedly see some kind of issue (like one of those I mentioned above), email me or leave a comment, and I'll try to fix it. Thanks for your patience!

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Personal, The Blog at 14:06 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

You will notice that things have changed around here. It's a longish story, but suffice it to say that I'm with a new hosting provider and new blog software. Actually, I'm pretty happy for the excuse to move to Serendipity, since it's pretty awesome-seeming so far. I've managed to get an import done of all my old b2evo entries, but there are sure to be some issues, maybe with linking and whatnot, so don't expect old posts to actually work or anything. The new host and new blog software also, of course, account for the significant downtime. They'll, finally, account also for changes in locations of RSS feeds. Sorry about that. I'd advise not changing your subscriptions just yet, because I've still got some monkeying to do behind the scenes before the dust settles for sure. I'll post again to say that things are fairly stable (as stable as they ever can be for an inveterate tinkerer) when that happens. Also, this isn't remotely what the site will look like when I'm done. This is the default template with default sidebars and everything else. Eventually, it'll probably look mostly like what it used to look like, at least as far as color scheme and stuff. Ideally, this will be done by the end of the weekend, but I make no promises that you should try to hold me to.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in The Blog at 23:23 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The new Bitty you see in the sidebar takes the Google News RSS feed for the search term "Oakland A's" and displays all the recent news it can find on the team. It's already paid dividends by showing me the story that Adam Johnson was signed by the A's out of Southern California's Golden Baseball League (the same one Rickey Henderson is playing in and, if I'm remembering correctly, the same team as well) and sent to Sacramento. Johnson's pitched in nine major league games, all with Minnesota, and hasn't really fared that well (ERA over 10, lots of homers and walks, few strikeouts), but his minor league career showed that he might have some talent (0.68 HR/9, 8.17 K/9, if a few too many walks), and he's still just 26. Besides, he must have been showing something to catch the A's attention in San Diego.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 17:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I semi-extensively overhauled the backend of the site - ideally, the front end won't be affected at all (though you may have noticed the ugly green "blog" thing at the left - ideally, that's the start of a tab system that'll contain various sections of an expanded "Beaneball" that's more than just this blog). If your user experience is adversley affected in any way (or if your user experience sucks in the first place), don't hesitate to let me know.

Posted by jason in The Blog at 04:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I finished Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture last night, and I think I have a new purpose in life. Ok, so maybe that's a little strong. The idea of the book is that media companies today are (a) bigger and more consolidated than in the past; and (b) have deeper and longer copyright protection than ever before. The combination of these two things, Lessig claims, will vastly reduce the ability of the citizens of this country to freely produce creative work because large portions of creative work are, in fact, based upon the work of the past. With mammoth corporations zealously protecting their copyright using squads of lawyers, people will have trouble accessing, much less using, culture from the past. Lessig's arguments are convincing and tailored to appeal to both those on the left and the right. He sometimes comes off as the ultimate free marketeer and sometimes as a big-government liberal. Whichever side he's arguing from, though, he makes his case well that big media has successfully lobbied Congress to pass laws that do not fit in America's tradition of "free culture." Many of his points revolve around the fact that the justice system in the United States vastly favors those who can pay lawyers for hours and hours of work, to the point that in many cases, justice can not be served at all. The bullying of alleged file sharers by the RIAA ("You might win if you fight us in court, but it'll cost more money in legal fees than you have, so we'll just settle for taking your entire life's savings.") is one such example. Whether or not I end up working in intellectual property (and the book has definitely pushed me in that direction), there are implications here for any area of law. Will I be able to do what I think is right and still make a living? How often, and to what degree, will I be forced to compromise my own values because they conflict with those of my client? How can I avoid such situations? These aren't questions I have answers to, and I'm not sure anybody else does, either. EDIT: (Cross-posted at Non Compos Mentis)

Posted by jason in Books, Non-Fiction, Personal, Reading at 15:22 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've joined the blog of my Hampshire friend Brady, Non Compos Mentis. We're both going to law school in the fall, so the idea is to compare and contrast our experiences on the blog. Check it out!

Posted by jason in Education, Personal, The Blog at 14:38 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

All of the stats listed in the sidebar have been updated through yesterday's game. I've also changed the Relievers page to only list those pitchers currently on the squad (and, hopefully, pitching out of the bullpen - hence the removal of Kirk Saarloos from the list). Notes from the stats, you ask? Sure. From the ARC reports: Rich Harden, despite missing about a month, is the A's most valuable pitcher so far, with phenom Huston Street not far behind. Street will probably actually lose value as he moves into the closer role because he won't be pitching in the high leverage "jam" situations he was in earlier in the year. Bobby Kielty holds on to the top hitter spot, with Mark Kotsay a fairly distant second. In an indictment of Oakland's offensive "prowess" so far, Jermaine Clark has been Oakland's third most valuable hitter in 2005.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 20:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Today was my final day at school. I feel ambivalent, as usual. I'm happy to be starting law school at Cardozo in the fall, but I'm sad to be leaving behind these people who I've gotten to know well over the past two years. I'm still in the city, of course, and I'll stay in contact, but it won't be the same as seeing them every day. There were a lot of good times, and my biggest sense of dread comes from the idea that this'll end up being the best work experience I ever have, and I've just voluntarily ended it to try to grab the brass ring.

Posted by jason in Personal at 22:52 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)