adamwitt.org

Well, my blog is becoming a bi-yearly publication, so here is the summer 2008 edition. Things seem to be going pretty well, as I’m splitting my time this summer between Chicago and Southern Wisconsin. It’s not been the most productive summer, but it has been worthwhile nonetheless. I spent a week in Las Vegas to attend a friend’s wedding and had a great time, in spite of the fact that I don’t really gamble. I’m attending another wedding this week that promises to be less fun, as the bride and groom recently alienated the best man. It’s long and somewhat complicated, however it’s not entirely unexpected.

This weekend I’ll be back in my home town of Edgerton where I will be driving a mini-car in the Tobacco Heritage Days Parade on Sunday. I’ll also be at the Fulton Lodge F&AM Fish Fry on Friday afternoon. Beyond that, I’m also seeing some family that’s visiting from out of town and going to a few weekend parties.

I’ll probably write an update on the results of the weekend, however it might be just in time for the Winter ‘08-Spring ‘09 edition.

Well, I said that I would post more often, and since my last post was sometime in January, this is it. Apparently, referring to buying a decanter for my Glenlivet as getting a gift for my favorite 12 year old is a sure way to draw dirty looks during the holiday season. Well, you can’t win them all. I just finished my second semester of law school, and now I’m enjoying the passage from 1L to 2L. It’s a strangely wonderful feeling, largely because the path was laden with so few wonderful feelings. All I can say is that it hurt so good. Law school involves a peculiar variety of masochism in that almost every day is a trial by fire. Hardly a day goes past in which either the professor grills you to divine your understanding, or that you live in mortal fear of the same. It does get a little better as time passes, but the fundamental fears still are the same. Also, it’s important to note that a loss of that fear is nothing to want. The fear of being embarrassed in front of your fellow students and the professor is what can drive you to maintain a level of quality in your studies. But enough about that topic… (more…)

Well, the Chicago Bears are headed to the Super Bowl and it shows. The entire city is awash in blue and orange as the faithful celebrate the first time the Bears are headed
to the bowl since 1985. I feel a little like a pilgrim in an unholy land, but there are a few other Packers fans around here, so I don’t entirely feel left out. I don’t think I really have anything better to write, so I think I’ll hold off for now. I mainly just wanted to post some photos I shot this Friday. I’m planning on doing some sort of photologue on my experiences in the city over the next few months. Check back here for updates in the near future, as I plan on adding more commentary on the whole law school experience also.

It’s official, I have found a place in Chicago near Loyola (and the Red Line) that is only about 30 minutes away from the loop. I’ll post some more details soon, but I will be trading my room in Madison overlooking Camp Randall Stadium for the bustling metropolis (almost) overlooking the lake.

It’s been a while since I’ve added a new update to my personal site. For those of you who don’t know, a very large Uninterupterable power supply that I was lifting slipped from my hands and landed on my toe on Halloween, so I got to spend the evening in the emergency room as opposed to spending it dressed as the Bishop of Oxford. Other than that, things have been well. My toe is healing nicely, and I’m getting ready to move. Madison is a wonderful city, however I think a change of scenery is about due. Unfortunately, most of my friends are still right here in the southern Wisconsin area, so I’ll still be visiting fairly often for business and pleasure. I just got back from a Shrine ceremonial (where we induct new members into the Shriners) and I’m a little tired. I’m still planning on posting a few comments about last semester, but that will have to wait for another day. There are a few classes I would like to suggest, and a few I’d like to pan.

And with that, goodnight

And here I am.  I said I would put something here, but as things piled up at the end of the semester, I took quite a long hiatus from writing here.  For those who don’t know, I graduated this spring, and I am going to law school next year.  I’m looking forward to it, but I’ll present the details later.

What I wanted to focus this posting on was how the end of the semester went.  I will probably write a full length article on this at some point, but this was one of my most eye opening semesters.  I took classes not because they were directly applicable to my major, but because they filled a credit hole that I had.  Although I wasn’t exceedingly excited by my class lineup, I think I learned more that I can actually apply to the world around me this semester than any previous semester.  A deeper understanding of literature and the arts can deepen the enjoyment that one experiences when they interact with it.  In the next couple of weeks, I’ll post more information on the classes and professors that made all the difference.  I have a new job now, so I am still easing into the schedule.  Expect more posts more frequently soon.  I’ve been in a little rut lately, but I’m enjoying the summer here in Madison.

Ah, the end of the semester is soon at hand. I had my last class with Professor Bender today, and his lecture really made me think of how I’ve actually grown fond of his style of teaching. It isn’t a far jump, but he really made Victorian Poetry an engaging topic. I still have one paper left to hand in and some finals to prepare for, all while counting down to graduation, so I’ll be fairly occupied with that for the next week. After I have most of my university work out of the way, I’ll post a semester and, dare I say, undergraduate wrap up exploring the highlights of my experiences and my predictions for the future.

I can’t believe that the end of my undergraduate career is here at last, however it is a welcome state. I enjoy being a student, but I think it’s time to move on… to Grad School! Well, someday I’ll have to get a real job and a real career, but I think I’ll just continue to ignore the subject for a few more years.

Good luck to everyone who is taking finals this coming week, and congratulations to everyone graduating.

I realized that I was neglecting my weblog (I hate the words blog, blogger, and the like) and I thought it was time I broke my neglect. Generally I try to avoid making entries for the sake of making entries, simply because the world is already inundated enough with mindless chatter, and I don’t want to contribute.

Last weekend was Bockfest at Capital Brewery in Middleton (right outside of Madison for the uninitiated) and I managed to spend almost the entire weekend in my room writing papers and dealing with a massive stack of paperwork that I’ve been neglecting. I think I’m through the worst of it, but I still have some various accounting tasks to get out of the way. Lately, Ive been spending most of my time with classwork and catching up on my periodical reading. I love The Economist, however weighing in at approximately 100 pages per issue, I’ve been having problems setting aside enough time to wade my way through it before a new issue comes out. This leaves me with no time to even begin on the Atlantic, but thankfully it’s a monthly.

Speaking of which, I wonder what a lot of other people read. In the last week I’ve heard quite a few criticisms of the president, and while I think he could be doing things differently, I don’t harbor the virulent hate that a seemingly large swath of our society is burning with. (more…)

I’ve been following the whole Danish cartoon news story for a few days now, and I think it’s really telling of what is wrong with the world today. If you are in the dark, the San Francisco Gate has a pretty good summary of the whole thing here:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=2796

First of all, I think that this should be a wake up call to the entire “Islamic Community.” I use the quotation marks because I want to emphasize that the community is probably not the homogeneous, lock-step hoard that it is normally depicted as. There are many differing and concurring opinions within the community, however the loudest ones seem to always be regarded as the most prominent. This should be a time in which the people who are so deeply offended by the set of cartoons (most of which seem fairly benign, other than they portray the face of The Prophet, which is generally not done out of respect) to take a look at themselves and question why these cartoons were created in the first place. It’s amazing that Al-Riyadh can publish any number of anti-semitic cartoons or articles, and there is no outcry, but when their religion is poked, there is no shortage of outrage.

I believe the great irony to be that one of these cartoons is considered offensive because it can be construed to make the religion of Islam as needlessly reactionary and violent. Many of the people who claim that this is an unfair portrayal met it with needless reaction and violence, leaving at least four people dead.

With this in mind, I am growing weary of the argument that people in Western nations are in no position to criticize the Middle Eastern world. The normal argument is that The West has plenty of skeletons in its own collective closet, and therefore it should not be casting stones. The problem with this argument is that it seeks to compare things out of their respective historical contexts. Many people look to the Dark Ages as being an unforgivable evil that mares our minds to this day. Others seek to look at events such as the Holocaust as being sufficient to void the moral authority of the entire West. I do not subscribe to these arguments, because by that same logic, nobody has the right to criticize anything due to some sort of pre-ordained original sin. Such arguments only serve to impede genuine progress towards improving the world that one lives in.

The fastest way to debunk the whole moral equivalence between the Western dark ages and the regimes that oppress their people in the name of Islam, as well as the lack of civil, intellectual discourse in many Middle Eastern nations, is that they occurred at different times. While the West is far from perfect, it has moved away from much of the oppressive quackery in which a tyrannical church controlled the minds of the faithful while autocratic kings ruled their destinies. The West has made leaps and bounds in the areas of human civil rights as well as the free exchange of ideas without fear of government persecution. This is not the case in many corners of the Middle East.

It is important to note that the West is far from perfect, and human civilizations make human mistakes. However, we should not simply be slaves to history, wherein we claim that since we have sinned in the past, we can never strive to be anything better in the future. This is why the much of the Citizenry of the Middle East needs to stop resting on their laurels (we’re all impressed that they invented zero, and made contributions to the sciences and safeguarded a treasury of human knowledge) and take a good long look at themselves. I think it is a long shot, as well as a dishonest pot-shot, to compare western decadence with the abysmal human rights record of nations on par with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Until the population at large of these nations is ready to confront their own demons instead of simply trying to play them off as being not as bad as someone else’s past, they will continue to be haunted by failure and stagnation. It is about time that these people grow up and join the rest of the world, rather than retreating in to their own private fiefdoms of ignorance and intolerance.

I had my first Political Science discussion today, and one of the things she covered in her syllabus was “Maintaining Boundaries with the T.A.” which sort of made sense at first, because she mentioned that she wanted to retain a professional relationship with her students, but then it took a turn for the strange.  Apparently, she has had problems during previous semesters with people hugging her and patting her in various ways.  Who the hell actually hugs/molests their TA?  I can’t even remember the last time I shook hands with one.  Has anyone else experienced a similar request from other professors or TAs?

Honestly, it was one of the weirdest things to ever come up in class.  The rest of the class took it in the same light as I did; her request was greeted with confusion and giggles.  Otherwise it seemed like a perfectly normal class.

Another notable point she made was her love/hate relationship with Madison.  She explained that she noticed that while Madison was very open minded and accepting of people who were generally outside of the “norm” and people who were very liberal in their views, people who have conservative views are rarely treated with the same level of open mindedness and acceptance.  I got a kick out of that, because I’ve never had an instructor here at Madison ever admit to the hypocritical manner that people with the wrong type of alternative views are treated.

I think I’m going to enjoy having an outlet for debate.