Du. Dubrov. Dubrovnik.

It's a moderately attractive place.



I didn't have internet for my computer in Dubrovnik, so I'm writing this on TextEdit as I hurdle through the Hungarian countryside on the 15.45 train from Zagreb - Gl. Kol. to Budapest - Kaleti. We are currently stopped at Balatonszentyorgy, which just happens to be my favorite type of orgy. My passport is getting awesomer by the day. The EU has these great stamps that have the country in the upper left, surrounded by EU stars, the point of entry/departure in the bottom middle, and on the upper right, a picture of your mode of transportation. So I have these cute "leaving Slovenia via train" and "entering Hungary via train" stamps now. This, as I see it, is the main advantage of Croatia not being a member of the European Union.

Natalie and I made the trek to Dubrovnik on Monday, training out of Ljubljana early in the morning, walking for twenty minutes through (shockingly gorgeous) Zagreb to the bus station, bussing to the airport, flying fifty-five minutes to Dubrovnik, bussing a half hour to Pile Gate and walking to our hostel, where the lovely Marko greeted and oriented us. We walked the city walls, which is the best thing to do in Dubrovnik, for two reasons. First, the views of the Old City are just gorgeous.



Yes, I count Natalie and myself among the gorgeous views.

Second, it gets you just a little bit out of the tourist hell that is Dubrovnik. Everyone walks the city walls, but not everyone walks them at the same time (largely because not everyone has Marko to tell them that approximately 8 am and 5 pm are the best times to walk them). The streets below, on the other hand, manage to (barely) hold every tourist in Europe at once. There isn't a square inch inside the Old City that isn't devoted to squeezing money out of tourists. This leads to an incredible proliferation of Dubrovnik/Croatia gear, which I don't really mind, especially since I couldn't find a single decent-looking Ljubljana t-shirt in Ljubljana. But it also leads to "fun" offensive gear that makes Manhattan's "New York Fuckin' City" shirts look like something Anne O'Hagen would wear.*

We actually saw a kid wearing the shirt on the left. As you know, I'm not a big fan of criticizing parents, but I could hardly object to the long glare Natalie gave the boy's mother.

Despite the overwhelming tourism, we managed to do cool things. We went to the second oldest synagogue in Europe, founded in 1642 and located on the appropriately named "Ulica Žudioska," i.e., "Jew Street." (Greg, I fully expect you to start writing a song with the chorus, "I'm moving up, I'm moving out, I'm moving to Jew Street: Jew Street, U.S.A!") The synagogue was awfully nice, and it was cool to see some cool historical documents, including parallel orders from the 16th and 20th Centuries ordering the Jews of Dubrovnik to wear self-identifying badges. I guess what constitutes a "cool" historical document is up for debate.

We also did some serious beaching. Here, Natalie informs me in the only way she can that there are fish in the water.

And yesterday we did Adriatic Kayak Tours' "Wine & Cheese Sunset Paddle" from Sv. Jakov's beach around the Old City, out to Lokrum island for a picnic, and back to the beach. My left arm is pathetically sore, and Natalie and I got showed up not only by Jon, a red-bearded Scotsman and experienced kayaker, but also by a younger-side-of-middle-aged British couple. The kayaking was fun, though, and the views were, of course, stunning. My camera was in a dry bag while we were kayaking, so I didn't get any pictures then. But I did take a few on the island, featuring the peacocks that roamed free there, this gorgeous natural lake and cave in the middle of the island, and our guide Vedral(?) in front of the Adriatic.



When we got back to the beach, the sun was just setting over the Old City.

Today has been another travel day. Natalie and I parted ways in Zagreb; she's heading back to Ljubljana for the night before flying into JFK tomorrow, while I head to Budapest to see pretty buildings, eat goulash, and relax in those famous Hungarian baths. I hope to be able to update live from the big city.

UPDATE: Live, from the big city! I hadn't been in Budapest for 25 minutes when I was slammed with a 6000 Forint ($32) fine for failing to get my ticket stamped as I entered the subway (irrespective of lack of signs, subway staff, or sample riders to indicate otherwise). Curse you, Hungary!


*Sorry; little joke for the small groupies there. Anne was our always impeccably-dressed TA.

Nasvidenje, Ljubljana!

So, this is it. My last night in the beautiful city of Ljubljana. It hasn't quite hit me yet that I'm leaving the place I just spent two months, and I may never return. I'll return. I think I'll return. Exploring with Natalie and getting her reactions to everything in the city has made me see the place with new eyes. It's really a gorgeous town with solidly friendly, relaxed people, good wine and good food (Natalie has called both last night's mushroom soup and this morning's hot chocolate "the best thing [she's] ever tasted"), and plenty of nooks and crannies. We went to Metelkova Mesto again last night, and Natalie agreed with me that it's just about the coolest thing ever. We can't believe we haven't seen a movie about it, yet...it really feels like a sort of fantasy alternative artists' commune—sort of like the one in Berlin in Passing Strange—but it's all real.

Today Natalie and I went up to the castle. Just this week they finally opened the tower, which had been under renovation since last October. The tower looks oddly cheap from far away, as though they put up cardboard instead of stone, but up close it's all a lovely marble. We got a great 360° view of the city, which maximized the red-roofiness of it all and let us see Ljubljana's most important landmarks from above.

And Natalie and I took the requisite "we don't feel like asking these Norwegian tourists to take our picture" picture.

My glasses look extremely professorial. Tonight I'll say goodbye to my roommates, although Roberto may drag himself out of bed to say goodbye early tomorrow morning. Then Natalie and I take the 8:15 train to Zagreb, grab a quick breakfast there, walk to the bus terminal, go to the airport, fly to Dubrovnik, and check into our hostel. I hope this all works as planned. If so, by this time tomorrow I will be in one of the most beautiful places in the world. And I can stop linking everyone to this picture and provide a few snapshots of my own.

I'll miss this place. I'll miss its cheap, flavorless beer. I'll miss the random stuff market. I'll miss the not-quite-car-free cobblestone streets. I'll miss the crummy waiter service accompanied by a willingness to let you sit at a restaurant for as long as you want. I'll miss the guy selling magazines to make a buck in every tourist-filled area of town. I'll miss the phrase "dober dan." Roberto, I think I'm going to miss you most of all.

I'll check in with y'all from EuroTour 2009.

Drunk Driving: Relatively Harmless

If we're ever going to get laws passed prohibiting cellphone use while driving, I think that has to become the new rallying cry. "If you're at the legal limit, go ahead and drive! A .08 BAC is no worse than chatting on a hands-free set with grandma! That's totally legal, so how bad could drunk driving possibly be!?"

Seriously. It's great that my BFFs at the NHTSA (I got tons of data for my seat belt paper from them) have finally released research showing the dangers of talking while driving, but it's been obvious for years that cellphone conversations in the car are dangerous, and the danger has nothing to do with your hands. It's all in your head, baby. We learned that in Brian Scholl's cog sci class in 2004, and I don't think the research was all that cutting-edge then.

My fellow Americans, look to your left. Look to your right. Now do that another forty-one times with new neighbors. One of those people will die in a motor vehicle accident. Wouldn't it be nice to lower that number just a bit? Doesn't everyone deserve the right to waste away from cancer of some-organ-you-never-knew-you-had at age ninety seven? I think so. (If you are not one of my fellow Americans, you can attempt to infer the number of requisite head turns from this.)

I know, it would be extremely inconvenient never to talk on a cellphone in the car. You know what else is inconvenient? Being stuck somewhere at 3 am with nobody sober to drive, a completely incompetent taxi service, and a house only four miles away. But pretty much everyone knows that driving in that situation is just not acceptable. Certainly they all would if they had seen my award-winning fourth grade safety poster: "Drink and Drive? You won't be alive!" Unfortunately my fifth grade effort—"Don't fall for drugs," with a picture of a blindfolded girl plummeting onto upturned syringes—lost to Mona (then Bonnie) Weiss's poster about not petting wild animals. There are some losses I may never accept, but I'll gladly that concede Mona deserved that victory.

Oh, and I think I'm going to TA an undergrad class next year. I'm getting pretty excited about it, even though it's going to be a huge time suck and will prevent me from taking a class I wanted. I really need to try teaching at some point, so this should be a good way to accomplish that.

Natalie comes tomorrow! Yay! And it's also my last day at the court, which will be spent entirely on my paper for school.

Here's the YouTube video of the week. Video's pretty much safe for work. Audio's not. Enjoy trying not to sing the song to yourself in public.

Stop, Facebook. You're Embarrassing Us Both.

My Facebook homepage brings shame upon me and shame upon Facebook.

Me first (as always): That right-hand column of the homepage, where pictures, videos, notes appear totally remembers who's stuff you've clicked on and continues to promote that person's postings. Some of this I don't really mind: Dani, a girl I knew in high school, has a lot of hot male friends who are half-naked in many of her pictures, and I'm not embarrassed to say her photo albums get more than their fair share of clicks. But for some of my frequent clickees, I'd prefer they not dominate the entire right column with pictures posted two months ago that just got another comment. If Facebook at some point starts keeping track of profile views, I'm doomed. I'll start getting messages like, "Dearest Facebook user: We'd tell you to ask out Joe Schmo already, but we're pretty sure from his click patterns that he's gay. Sorry! Maybe we can suggest a date with Jack Sprat, who's clicked on you a substantial but not obsessive number of times." At which point I'm switching back to Friendster.

Facebook next: I haven't read Facebook's privacy policy in a while, but I think I'd know if they told me they'd be actively dipping into my gmail address book. And they most definitely are. At first that friend suggestion box in the upper right was pretty innocuous. I figured there was some algorithm where they looked at percentage of friends shared with another person and suggested them. And then my real estate agent showed up. This is the guy who found me and Amy our Hell's Kitchen apartment in early 2006. We have zero Facebook friends in common. We have zero real friends in common. We haven't had any contact in years. But his email address is in my address book, and there he is. I thought maybe it was a fluke, but recently a researcher I once contacted through my gmail account showed up. Unless Facebook has other reasons for suspecting I might be interested in research on children of gay parents (and I suppose it might), it's digging through my stuff.

I'm generally not a big privacy person—I think the world would be better if we all knew how weird other people are—but the crazy thing about privacy violations is that they're always just one step away from dangerous. Watch it, Facebook.

Songs In My Head

Sorry, fun law post fans. We're on another sappy personal post today. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME.

The summer after my freshman year of college, for some reason I don't remember, I decided to see a therapist in Westchester. There were two things I liked about him: He thought the problems I had in my high school relationship were pretty mundane and not evidence of any larger issues, and his mannerisms reminded me of my friend Cat's dad Bob, who tends to crack me up. There were two things I didn't like about him: While it was nice that he thought I wasn't messed up, he tended to err on the side of not taking me especially seriously, and he spent most of our sessions trying to convey to me how big of a deal he was in the world of psychology. I cared a lot, as you might imagine. Anyway, one of the ways he proposed to demonstrate I was an easy case for him was that I tell him about a song stuck in my head, and he would tell me what it meant. Party tricks at the shrink's office! Woohoo!

Shockingly enough, I actually did have a line running through my head at the time. It was half from Fiddler on the Roof and half from La Cage aux Folles: "Here in Anatevka, we live life—how shall I put it?—on an angle." He told me it was my own personal commentary on the weirdness of Westchester (I think he actually started his sentence with "Well, that's easy..."). If you're still picturing 18 year old me accurately, you see me fanning myself with excitement, batting my eyelashes and exclaiming, "Why, doctor! You have the most marvelous insight into my little mind!" In other words, his party trick did absolutely nothing for me, not least because the songs in my head when I was 18 didn't bear a great relationship to my emotional state.

But they totally do now. It's scary.

Allow me to lead you through the last week and a half...in musical theater! I recommend listening to the YouTube links but not necessarily watching them. Some of the actors are better than others.

The beginning of last week was all Stephen Sondheim's The Miller's Son (lyrics). It's almost certainly my favorite Sondheim song, and the all-time greatest artistic defense of slutdom.

There was no music on Thursday.

Starting Friday, as things got better and I got into "anticipating nostalgia" mode, I switched over to Bill Finn's phenomenal ballad When the Earth Stopped Turning (lyrics). He wrote the song after the death of his mother, and it is explicitly about dying, but it really works beautifully for any expected parting of people. Plus, I think it operates as the perfect defense against anyone who thinks cuss words are always inappropriate or uncreative. (I highly recommend downloading the Carolee Carmello recording of this one instead of listening to the YouTube video. It's available on iTunes.)

And then today, as I moved into the first stages of actual nostalgia, I came to Jerry Herman's Song on the Sand (you can catch all the lyrics by listening, but whatever). I've actually never loved Song on the Sand. I can't help but think of the Forbidden Broadway where Robert Goulet mumbles "I sing la da da da, da da da, when I don't know the words..." But I guess any song that can into my head via the route of under my skin gets some points.

So, our "fifth roommate" came late last night. I haven't seen her yet, but I'm intimidated by her awesome Pasta del Capitano toothbrush. All I have is some little Colgate thing. But nothing can overtake my huge, clunky, I-can't-possibly-need-this Intuition razor. If only I could get this worked up about the paper I have to finish by Friday afternoon.

EDIT: Just met her. She seems really sweet. I need dinner and wine. So much wine.

Ah Have Always Depended...

Yesterday, Roberto and I headed up to Šmarna Gora, a large hill about 10 km northwest of central Ljubljana. We spent a full hour waiting for the number 8 bus, the only one that goes out there, before a young guy informed us that it doesn't run on Sundays. Moral of the story: Ask the young guys. Old ladies and bus drivers will just misinform you. So we caught an overpriced cab out to Šmarna Gora. (Yes, it is fun to say! No, you are not crazy if you walk the streets pretending to hex people by looking at them sideways for three seconds and then spitting out "Šmarna Gora!" At least I hope not.) We hiked up the "hill"—2,000 feet is definitely pushing my "hill" limits—and got some gorgeous views of the city and the mountains, including Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak.

I think that's it, at least. They don't exactly have signs pointing it out to you. They do, however, have a cute cafeteria with fried dough and sweet tea, which is much appreciated after the trek. Ah, and I shall post the requisite "We Wuz Here" picture:

As you will recall, we had picked up a cab in Ljubljana because no buses were running, so as we stood at the top of the hill, staring at the mountains, I asked Roberto, "So, how are we going to get back from here?" "I have the number of the company." "Oh, great! And you have your phone with you?" "...." So there we were, miles away from town with no way to get back, and since we're such adventurous people, we went down the hill to the less occupied side, where we found ourselves deep in burbville.

The first thing that struck us was the smell: garbage mixed with cow manure. We got quickly away from the garbage, but the cow manure smell remained, and we soon realized we were next to a large barn filled with (wait for the shocker...!) cows. A dog came running down from the driveway, yapping at us. We walked as fast as we could away from the stench, and the dog backed off, extremely proud of itself for driving away the intruders. We walked along the road that looked most likely to lead to civilization, and after a few blocks, we came upon a few people standing in a driveway, including a woman pushing a stroller.

"Dober dan." "Dan. Do you speak English?" "Eh, a little." Often the answer. We told the woman that we were lost and trying to get back to Ljubljana, and she told us to follow her. We got to her house, where a whole bunch of people were sitting in the driveway. They began to argue in Slovene, and finally the woman's husband (I presume) said, "OK, I will drive you to the bus station!" And he did. He dropped us off at the (functional-on-Sundays) number 1 stop, a few miles away, and actually gave us tokens so we could ride the bus for free.

Yeah, yeah, so he told Roberto he's from "not really Italy" because he's from Calabria, in the far south, and he told me that Miami (where his friends live) is "not really the United States" because there are so many Cubans there, but he was a completely random stranger who just gave us a ride to the station and paid our bus fare. That's pretty amazing. In America, I'd be happy to find people who wouldn't walk away before I could ask to use their phone to call a cab. I remember once asking a random woman at a New York flea market if I could use her cell phone to call my friends who had wandered off. I might as well have told her I wanted to call the Messiah. New Yorkers don't touch other New Yorkers' cell phones.

So that was our fun and exciting adventure yesterday.

On a less fun and exciting note, I found out I didn't make law journal. I'm pretty upset about it...it's something I really wanted to do (and, yes, sure, to have done), and I worked very hard throughout the whole admissions process. I had told people I'd be upset if I didn't make it, and there's no reason to pretend I'm not. I've gone through all sorts of extremely mature thoughts—This sort of thing will keep me humble, and humility is a virtue! Bluebooking is a valuable skill, and this process forced me to learn it! I'll have more time for classwork, and I always wish I had more time for my classes!—but really, I just need a little time to be pissed off. The friends I've been bitching to have been wonderful (about this and about other personal stuff), and they're helping me not to think less of myself because of this.

And it's been nice to have Roberto around, who couldn't care less whether I'm on law journal or whether I didn't finish high school. I'm sure if/when I start dating somebody seriously, that person will appreciate my mind (yeah, I know that sounds douchey, but everyone who reads this blog is super-smart, too, so chill), and a large part of our relationship will be an intellectual connection. And there is certainly some element of intellectual connection with Roberto. But there's something very...nice, I guess...about someone liking me just because we share a sort of natural connection and rapport, and it feels nice when we smile at each other. How does the old saying go, "Tell the smart woman she's beautiful and the beautiful woman she's smart?" Something like that? It's an obnoxious saying, but there's more than a little bit of truth there.

Congratulations for making it to the end of the post! As a reward, you get a Wyatt Cenac segment (Cenac is currently edging out John Oliver as my favorite regular Daily Show correspondent) featuring Steve-o* Carter. Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Judgmental
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

*Professor Carter: If by some miracle you've made it to this page, welcome! Yes, I am making fun of your (and your father's) somewhat extreme views on formal address. But I hope you will not confuse my editorializing with actual disrespect. Also, a friend points out that you got the parties who appointed Sotomayor to the different courts backwards. I just used Hamer v. Sidway in a gchat conversation, though, so all is forgiven.

Ljubrication Mentioned (I Think?) In Slate (Sort Of)!

The great Adam Chandler has written an awesome post for Slate's blog, XX Factor. (Motto: What women really think. Conclusion: Adam thinks like a girl. Ooooooh.) He discusses how the Sotomayor hearings and other public combings of prominent people's minds can discourage students from voicing their beliefs. And he is so right. This fall, our Con Law professor made us post on a discussion board once a month (an aspect of the class I generally appreciated), but there were at least a few times when I thought of posting something controversial and realized very quickly that if I said anything verboten in that group of people, it would undoubtedly come back to haunt me later if I were ever publicly vetted for anything (probably in the form of polite but cutting questions from Secretary of Defense Geltzer). When a professor canvassed our class to see if anyone wanted to write a paper on drug legalization with him, one friend warned me that I might not want to apply to jobs with that article as my major academic publication. And, come to think of it, if you search for my full name on Google, one blog post (moderately NSFW) on page four of the results is titled, "These Will Come in Handy at the Confirmation Hearings." The author is talking about the men I photographed, not me, I imagine, but it shows how much we now think of everything we say and do in terms of how it will kick us in the butt 30 years down the road. And how "confirmation hearings" have become the central symbol of this.

And Adam's affirmative action example is spot on. If you want to do a scientific analysis of affirmative action, you'd better hope it comes out in a non-controversial way. And if you're hoping that hard, you're probably not the right person to do the science. We read Richard Sander's law school affirmative action study in a class this year, and while there are certainly valid criticisms to be made about his study (although I didn't find the central Ayres/Brooks contention extremely compelling), did he really need to descend to pariah status? It may be that he now spends so much time defending AA stuff that he's not a credible researcher, but this would seem to be a fallout of the constant berating he gets for an imperfect but pretty good piece of work (you should see how bad econometrics studies can be) on a controversial topic. I'm getting off track here, but the point is that bright students can't explore interesting and under-researched questions because the reputational stakes are so, so high. If you touch affirmative action with anything but the deftest hand, you're not making it anywhere near those confirmation hearings.

I almost forgot! The (possible) mention! Adam writes: "I even read a perfectly innocuous blog post about the writings of several law school classmates that ended with a disclaimer: If anyone mentioned in the post wanted to 'clear it from their record,' it would be taken down." I'm not positive that he was referring to this post (chime in in the comments Adam?), but it seems at least plausible, even though I didn't use the phrase "clear it from their record." Emma's comment on Noorain's link to Adam's post (phew!) hit on truth: the comment about embarrassing Google searches was referring more to the fact that I was talking about the authors' desirability as mates than to the views they were espousing. But even before I decided to write about their singleness I gave the authors nicknames, partially to be cute, but also to break up their first and last names so the post wouldn't show up in searches. But now it is too bad for you, Adam! Your names are together in my post FOREVER. And you're the only Adam Chandler in the world! And this blog is first on every Google search! Well, now I'm just making stuff up. Which means it's time for bed. Goodnight!