Law school is the one thing I've ever said I'd never do. While I (obviously) got over that particular commitment, I have never felt entirely at home in the law school environment. Most of my peers want more practicality; I'd like more theory. My peers think law is the best, most effective way to structure human relationships; I am frequently suspicious of the law and its tendency to serve as an instrument for imposing one's will on others. Most of my peers are bright and interesting and socially adept; I'm bright and interesting and, let's face it, awkward beyond belief.

What the frak.

So it turns out I'm partial to "freak" and "freaking" (pronounced "frick" and "frickin'"). My wife was somewhat more tickled by "feck," as borrowed from the TV comedy Father Ted. With George Carlin's recent death, it seems like everyone has swearing on the brain... so I wasn't entirely surprised to see that CNN finally picked up on how Battlestar Galactica's "frak" has infiltrated the language as a "pseudo-swear."

I got a kick out of this. On a related note, now that the Republicans can't criticize Obama's inexperience without undercutting McCain's hail-Mary VP pick, can we possibly focus on the important stuff--like McCain's ludicrous, broken position on technology issues? Or the rampant authoritarianism plaguing both party platforms?

And as glad as I was to see Hillary get the boot, and while I think Biden and Palin are both interesting strategic choices, I can't decide which VP pick, in the event of a resignation, impeachment, or assassination, would be more disastrous.

Right, on with the funny.

As a teenager, I plowed through just about every book then written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Though I would be hard pressed, over a decade later, to recall any of those works in great detail, one of their less impressive projects, the Darksword books, included a passage that has, for some reason, stuck with me over the years. A young man is asked to explain why he was admitted early to an institution of some prestige:

Just look at that "Media Consumption" sidebar over there, under "Anxiously Anticipating." Embarrassing. It's longer than the entry summaries! Or, it was until I kicked the frontpage postcount to 10 to cover my shame...

How can one man be expected to enjoy so many games?

Well, I guess I'll just have to do my best. d^_^b

A while back, an old friend of mine called to say that his brother's baby had been born. I responded, reflexively, "Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook!"

I was immediately angry with myself. Some of you will remember that I tried Facebook out several months ago in order to contact an old friend from high school, a pursuit I felt justified a discrete sip of the social networking kool-aid. So when did "getting in touch" become "no need to get in touch?"

Every summer for several years now, my mother-in-law's extended family has gathered at Bear Lake for a few days of fun at the lake. We've stayed at various places, but last summer reservations were made, a full year in advance, for this years festivities to occur at a lakeside condominium.

Right, so I'm generally more of an action figures, comic books, video games, Linux computing, philosophy, and law geek... with a dash of other academia thrown in for good measure. But man, these photos of the large hadron collider have me totally geeking out. It reminds me of the time I toured the Grand Coulee Dam--it's like walking into an engineer's version of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

And best of all, it exists solely for scientific research.

Sometimes it's just awesome to be a human. When we aren't fighting, we build the coolest stuff.