August 31, 2006
And the Verdict Is . . .
My post in July about trying to figure out if I should attend law school (To Law, or Not to Law) received much more attention that I expected. There were over a hundred very intelligent comments and much great career advice. In addition, the Instapundit himself weighed in after I asked his advice, and the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog considered my conundrum as well.
So after all of that, after meeting with yet another professor, spending a weekend with a friend who is a rising third year student, talking to some family friends, having a beer with a JD who's now a PhD candidate, etc, my decision is . . .
[drumroll]
. . . this Marine will not be going to law school.
I could offer you some well-reasoned and craftily-put statement as to how I determined that the ends did not justify the means, or that the cost was too prohibitive, or that the benefits weren't that great and so forth.
But the truth of the matter is that my gut tells me not to go to law school.
I have some other adventures in the works instead. I'll keep those to myself for now.
Thanks to all who commented and offered advice. There's no way I can answer all of your comments but I read and considered each, and really appreciate the time you took to make them.
On a final note: I should mention that I didn't take the LSAT. I made my decision about three weeks ago, before it was time to register for the test.
Written by Chester at 9:04 PM | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
August 30, 2006
A brief plug for my alma mater
Given that Duke University is in the headlines so much these days, I've frequently considered doing a post or two about the ole alma mater. But I find that I'd rather not get bogged down in the details of the controversy, and that there's little I have to say that hasn't been said elsewhere already.
But I would like to pause for a moment to point out one very positive thing about Duke University: the Sunday services in Duke Chapel are truly phenomenal. Not only is the Duke Chapel beautiful, but the music is excellent, and the preaching is simply superb. Dean Samuel Wells has been there for about a year. I've been going all summer since moving back to Durham and have truly been impressed.
But don't take my word for it: the Chapel webcasts each of its services. This past Sunday Dean Wells spoke to a nearly overflowing crowd since students have returned to campus. His sermons are works of art. See the general Chapel site here and if you'd like to view the webcast, go here. His remarks start around the 44:30 mark. There's also a downloadable PDF of the sermon.
Now back to regular programming. Thanks for that moment to shine a little light on Dear Old Duke.
Written by Chester at 2:05 PM | Link | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
November 21, 2005
Congressman Murtha and Strategic Forecasting
On Rep. Murtha: I watched him on Meet the Press this weekend. I think he's a stand-up guy. He seemed cut from the same cloth as many other senior field-grade Marine leaders I've observed. Very blunt, calls things like he sees them, sees a problem, or what he percieves to be indecision or lack of commitment and wants to call attention to it. I don't think he has any ulterior political motives, and I doubt that he is a pawn of the Democratic leadership, though we've seen them try to use him to their own purposes. I don't think he wants to simply tarnish the President.
Having said all that, I disagree with his prescriptions.
Continue reading "Congressman Murtha and Strategic Forecasting"
Written by Chester at 10:18 PM | Link | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
September 23, 2005
Open Post
Comment here. Link here. Got something on your mind?
Let's discuss.
I'll start. Here's something a little off the beaten path: [h-t: ZenPundit]: Virtual plague spreading like wildfire in World of Warcraft:
Players of Blizzard's incredibly popular World of Warcraft are reporting the outbreak of a virtual plague that is spreading across major cities in the virtual land of Azeroth, infecting player characters at an alarming rate.When I first see things like this I'm immediately reminded of how many little subcultures there are out there that I know absolutely nothing about. I had the same feeling reading Speed Tribes : Days and Night's with Japan's Next Generation, though that was several years ago.The trouble started when Blizzard programmers added a new instance, which is a separate area connected to the outside world that players can enter and attempt unique quests. One of these instances, Zul'Grub, contained the god of blood, Hakkar. Hakkar was a powerful foe that could cast spells of his own, including a spell called Corrupted Blood. This spell did a large amount of damage to any player within the vicinity of the casting, and the effects lingered on after the spell was over.
What happened next was something Blizzard did not expect. Some of the players who had gone into the instance emerged back into the main world of Azeroth, and started spreading the Corrupted Blood disease to others who they came into close contact with. The infection soon spread into many of the cities and towns in the virtual world. Since the disease was intended to be a danger to powerful players, it tended to kill those less than level 50 almost instantly.
Game masters (GMs) tried to quarantine certain players from moving into new areas, but they kept escaping the quarantine and moving on to infect other people. A patch was issued to try and mitigate the damage, but it did not have the desired effect. According to a Blizzard poster on the WoW forums:
It appears that the hotfix remedy concocted to combat the recent Azerothian outbreak has not yielded desired results. At this time, our medical staff is continuing to develop an effective cure. We look forward to ensuring the health and vitality of the citizens of Azeroth in the near future.The most interesting thing about this "outbreak" is perhaps the reaction it has provoked among WoW players. Instead of being angry about the deleterious effects of a bug, many are treating this as an exciting and unprecedented event in the WoW universe. It would be even more interesting if epidemiologists in the real world found that this event was worthy of studying as a kind of controlled experiment in disease propagation.
Well there I go, hijacking the open thread already. Bad Chester!
Link away and post away!
UPDATE: Until I figure out how to get trackbacks to display inside the post body, you'll have to click on the "trackback" link for this post to see them. If anyone knows how to do this, I'd love a quick email about it. Thanks!
UPDATE 2: Anatomy of an anti-war puff piece attempts to dissect an AP article covering today's protests in DC.
One thought about all this: the decreasing costs of satellite imagery in real-time could make such fiskings pretty easy in the near future: one could simply click over to Google Earth, download imagery from DC during the protests and then examine it closely to estimate the crowd sizes. If I had this capability, I'd post screen captures from the imagery here and then we could all see with our own eyes how many protestors are there.
Written by Chester at 11:45 PM | Link | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
June 1, 2005
Thunder and Lightning Silent and Invisible; "Blogosphere Supports Real Democracy in Iran Campaign"
I'm saving my next map for when there's some news. No news about Thunder or Lightning in Baghdad for two full days now.
Instead, check out A Daily Briefing on Iran over at Regime Change Iran. RCI is starting a new campaign to publish as much news about Iran as possible in the weeks leading up to the Iranian election. Here's a blurb from RCI:
The next few weeks in Iran may prove critical to the efforts of the pro-democracy forces there.I've joined the campaign (and will post the button shortly) and will be posting a weekly roundup from RCI on Sundays. I encourage all to participate, as I've been a proponent of changing regimes via awareness myself as well.On June 17th, Iran has scheduled its Presidential elections and as the LA Times said recently:
It was already one of the most important elections in the world this year. It now also promises to be one of the most watched.This time the world will see for itself that the elections in Iran are a fraud. The regime permits only those candidates that support the present regime to run. As Amir Taheri says, the outcome of the election is certain. The Supreme Leader of Iran will remain in complete control, the Presidency is meaningless. But the regime needs a high voter turnout to fool the world community that they are the legitimate representatives of the people.This is why the people of Iran are boycotting the election as they did in the last Parliamentary election. They want a real democracy. But this time the world media will be watching. We need to make sure the world is watching.
Those of us in the blogosphere need to publish the news on Iran in order to help Iranians searching for news know that we support their efforts to replace the existing regime with a real democracy. This is why we ask you to publish our campaign logo on your blog.
Why republish the news? Because the regime is blocking access to most major news sites and the blogosphere is a means to frustrate their efforts. It is also important for the people of Iran to know that people around the world are standing with them in their struggle. This support has proved invaluable to others that successfully overthrew their oppressive regimes in other places around the world, such as Georgia, the Ukraine, Lebanon and elsewhere.
This struggle will likely not end on June 17, but has the opportunity to pick up steam over the coming weeks and months. There will almost certainly be a run off election and a few weeks later a major anniverserary of a bloodly crackdown of pro-democracy forces there. There has never been a more volitatle situation in the Islamic Republic that that it faces this summer. Now is the time to act.
Written by Chester at 12:05 AM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2) | Print Article
May 16, 2005
Tuesday Reading
Steven Vincent recently posted an update of his travels in Iraq over at In the Red Zone.
The warriors over at I Should Have Stayed Home... leave us hanging on a ghost story: Ghost Story (part 1). I just love that blog. Be sure to check out the pics of the Iraqi police officer graduation on the main page.
Modern Tribalist looks to be an interesting read.
Chrenkoff plans to watch the new Star Wars film but still has words for George Lucas.
UPDATE: Speaking of Lucas, if you haven't caught Darth Vader's blog, you must go there immediately: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. Pure unadulterated genius.
Written by Chester at 11:07 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
April 26, 2005
Wednesday Reading
From the foreign press:
-U.S. and North Korea 'On a Collision Course' from Joong Ang Daily, South Korea.
-Is China Scapegoating Japan to Vent Its Own Anti-Americanism? from Le Figaro (the newspaper, not the Bugs Bunny cartoon)
-Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Votes that rebound The Egyptian Al-Ahram wonders if democratic Arab states will align with US interests.
Update: Here's some great stuff to feed your blogging jones:
-Cella's Review considers "the peculiar quality that distinguishes most contemporary social criticism in whatever medium it is conveyed." In this case, film. Great stuff.
-GeoPoliticalReview: China's Arabic Lesson
-New Sisyphus: CAIR Loses Another One: The Department of Justice Rolls On
-Two Russian responses to Putin's state of the union address:
The Russian Dilettante's Weblog and
SiberianLight: Putin's State of the Nation address
By Dawn's Early Light: India Moves Towards US? Dawn's Early Light has had some great posts dealing with the US-India relationship (find links to the others in the one above).
Far Outliers offers thoughts on Japan's recent apology.
Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day: What follows democracy? (in Germany, that is . . .)
Written by Chester at 9:55 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
