Saying goodbye to my friends

Just a quick note to acknowledge the friends I have made here and who I am probably not going to see in the near future: Kristina, Christin, Gregor, Marine, Zsuzsi, David, Flora, Lea and Alice.

Most of this group of friends stopped by Friday night after our last exam to have a drink and blow off some steam. It was a great time and I am really going to miss all of them.

Why you should care about the death of Mike Connell

This legitimately scares me. I heard about this guy on Democracy Now about a month or so ago in a story about possible vote fraud in Ohio during the 2000 and 2004 presidential election. At the time, ironically the eve of this year's elections, Amy Goodman reported that Mike Connell was testifying in Ohio about the possible fraud in previous elections. He had been named by a conservative Republican McCain supporter, Stephen Spoonamore, as the architect of an electronic plan to subvert the presidential election. It seems that Connell had been subpoenaed and refused to testify, with some reports claiming that Karl Rove had directly threatened Connell's wife with federal prosecution by the Justice Department if Connell testified.

To be honest I didn't pay much attention when I first heard this news. But when I read today that he died in a plane accident, it just seemed a little too convenient. Who was this guy?

Mike Connell was a media consultant who operated websites for President Bush and the chief architect of GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com -- the primary email account used by Karl Rove during his tenure as Senior White House Advisor. He died in a plane crash on Friday the 19th of December.

According to Spoonamore, a computer security expert who worked for the government and large companies figuring out how people steal money...or votes. In any case, he described a process called “Man in the Middle” that Connell allegedly constructed. This happened in Ohio in 2004. I'd write it in my own words but what's the point when Amy already did it on this show and there is already a website that includes the docs in the lawsuit, specifically Spoonamore's affidavit:

It involves shunting the data that comes from the website for the Secretary of State—I mean, the election returns—taking those election returns as they come to the website in real-time and shunting them to a computer somewhere else. What happened in 2004 was the election returns from Ken Blackwell’s website were shunted to a computer in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under the control of a very partisan private company to which Connell was connected. The data was shunted to this strange computer in Chattanooga and then directed back to the Secretary of State’s website. As Connell—I mean, sorry, as Spoonamore has said, the only purpose of doing this Man in the Middle thing is to commit crime.

In any case, as Connell is now dead, Spoonamore's allegations are simply allegations. Plus, as Rebecca Abrahams points out here the family is not suggesting that any foul play is involved. One is left to wonder whether the suit will go on, which is perhaps more important than whether foul play was involved. Although I have to say that I am happy that he didn't have polonium poisioning, the guy did ask for protective custody. Don't you have to wonder what's up here?

If you want to read, hear or know more, take a look at Democracy Now for December 22nd or in general the BradBlog.

Studying Law in France: over or just in need of a name change?

When I started this it was just a way to blow off some steam and keep a sort of diary so I wouldn't forget everything that I did here. Without Sheridan here to talk to everyday, sometimes several times a day about whatever happened in my life, I needed an outlet. As was astutely pointed out by Alice, most of my posts were in the form of a complaint, mostly about some bureaucratic nuance with which I wasn't familiar. I also posted about all of my friends and their visits and what a great time I had with them. As Mariah pointed out, however, most of those posts were short and picture filled, instead of being lengthy written pieces.

What do I do now? I have this blog I am at least for the most part committed to and enjoy writing but I am no longer studying law in France. I haven't been writing for a while and I am sure my thin readership has died off. Maybe I should kill this one and start another...maybe an anonymous one with guest bloggers that could talk about whatever they wanted without worrying about repercussions.

Why I haven't been writing very much.
Three things have happened recently that have limited the amount of posting I have been doing: 1) Sheridan's here so I am happy now; 2) the things that have bothered me have been too private to share; 3) I have been in exams.

While 1 and 3 make a lot of sense and while maybe 2 would make a lot of sense for anyone, I typically don't have any problem sharing what's going on in my life. Of course there are limits but the blog puts this issue in a different light. For example, if I am unhappy about Dauphine, I have talked about it and never thought about impacting negatively it's "reputation". In fact, I have never thought twice about whether or not my criticizing SLU Law would impact it's reputation because I figure SLU's reputation has little to do with my comments.

Interestingly, that is not the attitude here. For example, students in my Masters program don't even want to fill out teacher evaluations because at least in part they fear that someone might read them one day and take criticism of their professor as a reason that their program wasn't high quality. I guess teacher evaluations have been part of my academic culture for so long that I don't give them a second thought. As I understand them, they are for internal purposes only, forclosing the possibility that someone outside of the institution would read them. Plus, while the degree to which professors pay attention to them varies from professor to professor and from school to school, it is clear that they get read and that some changes are made. If nothing else, professors are aware that there are some complaints.

Here, without evaluations (and with applause at the end of the class, even with the least inspiring professor) I don't know how they could ever even figure out that thre are problems. There is nothing saying that they would change their comportement but it seems that they might if given the opportunity at least to know that there is a problem.

It's just one example of how something that I think could be a public criticism (the building is old, the desks are outdated, and there aren't enough outlets) wouldn't have anything to do with the quality of the professors, students and for me, the program. As I have said before, there are some really good professors here, some decent ones and some that should hang 'em up or never should have put 'em on. Same goes for the students. In any case, that's just like everywhere else, at least everywhere else I have ever been.

The concern about having something to say that you would like to say anonymously moves me towards shutting this one down and starting another blog where I would be freer to criticize in the way I wanted to.

But how do you invite people to read an anonymous blog? Maybe the rotating blogger strategy without any bloggers individually named? I have a feeling that my style is pretty transparently my style and I wouldn't want to change it. In any case, it's an open question.

For now, however, I am just going to wrap up the events of the last few weeks, including some great times with all the great friends I have made in the last three months.

Jason and Robyn

This post is long overdue because my close friends Jason and Robyn Roemer visited for Thanksgiving and, in spite of their mild mannered appearance, we had a full week of drinking, eating, and bullshitting about everything under the sun. That's why I love them though; we always do too much of each of these. Usually Robyn grows tired of Jason and me or has to work or something like that but this time, she was all in. Here they are when they got off the plane at Charles de Gaulle.
As has been my tradition, I take all of my guests to Paradies(not a typo, at least on my part), the best crepe stand in Paris. Kristina, Christin and Zsuzsi came along for the culinary delights also. Sadly, we ate inside above the kitchen which increased the price and made it hard for us not to smell the grilled onions being prepared in advance. Still, as always, Paradies was good and the company was great.
Here they are at La Place Vendome engaging in a rare public display of affection. Robyn does not care for them, which means Jason is SOL. I love them, but since I have been living out of the country basically for the 6 months without Sheridan, they are not frequent. Common almost everywhere else, they seem to be shunned in the U.S. Now that Sheridan is here, we are practicing.
We walked all over the city and here, instead of paying the outrageous sum of 120 euros to see Leonard Cohen in concert, we just went by to see if LC would come out and perform for free. Seriously, 120 euro? I love Leonard Cohen but that's just crazy talk.
Here is the increasingly disappointing Champs Elysees at night dressed up for the holidays.

These are all pictures from an exposition at the Pompidou Center: who knew chairs could be so interesting? To obtain a seat in this Ron Arad chair Jason is sitting in here I had to menace a small child; not that I minded.
Leaving the Corsican restaurant where we ate Thanksgiving Dinner. It was fantastic. Did you know that they serve wolf in France?
We left the restaurant and come back around my house. We decided to stop at le 50 for a drink. I had passed by there several times and always wanted to go in but never felt quite comfortable enough. Armed with Jason and Robyn, I entered. We sat there, listened to Jeff Buckley, talked to the owner/barman and drank three more bottles of wine before close. Then we came home and had a few more. Unsurprisingly, we got into an argument about somethings I didn't quite know were controversial. The picture shows Jason reposing just before the debate got serious. I mean, who doesn't want to hike the Appalachians? Anyway, what's Thanksgiving without too much booze and a rousing, ugly, personal debate in which too much personal information is shared among friends?

The next day we went to the Catacombs. Basically, the space was created when a French leader wanted to build some new monuments. They dug up all materials from here and the empty space sat there for a while. Then, a bunch of people died from some sort of plague like malady and it turned out that they didn't have enough space in the cemeteries to bury all of the newly deceased french citizens. So, they dug 'em up and moved them to the Catacombs. Now we have this great tourist site with the bones of 6 million people.
When Jason saw this he literally recoiled with fear. I thought that was just a figure of speech but now I have seen it.


As mentioned, mostly we ate great food and drank too much good wine. The last night was no different. We sent to the Bistro St. Marthe in the 10th where I live, an arrondissement that gets a bad rap in my book and had a fantastic meal for a decent price. Even though I am opposed to eating meat, I have to admit that Jason's lamb looked pretty good.
Here's dessert, something I am definitively not opposed to. One quick thing about the quality restaurants in Paris. I am pretty sure you could go into any restaurant and get a high quality meal for a decent price. I know for a fact that you can't do that in St. Louis, even though I think there are some good ones. Here, though, I think explications about the quality of food and wine is just plain higher and there are tons of restaurants. If they don't provide quality food, they would certainly go out of business. A corollary to this is the grocery store. I shop primarily at ED, which is a low end discount store. Even there though, the quality is higher than at Schnucks is in general and the prices are low. A 2 euro bottle of wine from ED is reliably good (granted I am no wine expert), the cheese is excellent, and the bread is good.
Jason and Robyn about to leave---why can't he open his eyes?
There we go!
And they are off.

I had a fantastic time and this post doesn't do justice to how I feel about their visit. To have two good friends drop their work (they are gainfully employed, unlike myself) and come to visit me for a week is one thing. To be easy to travel with, smart, funny, patient with my tiny studio and flexible with my class schedule is another. We ate like kings and drank like upper class fishes. It was great and I loved every minute of it.

being disrespectful in France and being disrespectful in America

Is it more disrespectful for students not to pay attention because they are surfing the net or g-chatting or students not to pay attention because they are somewhat loudly directly talking to each other during class?

As anyone in law school at SLU knows, if a videographer were to enter a classroom during a lecture he would have to work very hard to find one computer screen where a student was only taking notes. I do this in class; almost everyone I know does it. I move back and forth between surfing the net and taking notes. I know that this is disrespectful to the prof and hurts my ability to learn the material. I didn't do it during first year but since then I can't imagine making it through a class without wi-fi.

Here, however, people just openly talk to each other during class. Sure, they sort of whisper but overall the dynamic is the professor is talking to all of us while there are also at least 2 if not 5 individual conversations going on that every student can hear. They are talking loudly enough that their conversations interfere with understanding even when the prof speaks in English. Of course, it varies from prof to prof but in general, the profs don't say anything. Instead, the profs talk louder and so do the students.

This is probably my own bias but I think that using my laptop in class generally only distracts me but talking loudly in class distracts everyone. I acknowledge that other students can be distracted by me surfing the net in class and that some are. This seems different and more disrespectful.

Any thoughts? I know there are a handful of current and former academics who read this as well as some law students. Just wondering.