patchmonkey.net

So, I taught my second class last night. We started going over the basics of Constitutional Law and the the structure of the US government. I liked some of the questions that were put forth:

• What is a “conflict of laws?”
• How come Bush does all these things that aren’t in the Constitution?
• Why are there no social protections in the U.S. Constitution?
• How does a bill become a law?

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Japan, whose constitution was written by the U.S. after WWII, has all these wonderful social welfare and social service protection in the constitution. The U.S. doesn’t have any, and it always keeps messing stuff up. We have an imperial president who pisses on the Constitution, and oftentimes, no one knows what law to use!

At least one thing is clear:

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I think this is pretty impressive. I’ve been thinking about joining it - it’s not that expensive…

Tribewanted is a project to recruit 5,000 people from around the world who want to live on an island with 100 other people for a couple of weeks and build a community.

The goal: to build a sustainable eco-community and keep at bay developers with dreams of massive hotel complexes.

Memberships — Nomad ($220), Hunter ($440) and Warrior ($660) — entitle members to seven, 14 or 21 days on the palm-fringed 200-acre oasis, 100 at a time. Fees cover food, lodging and local airport transfer.

This is not for the five-star hotel crowd. The tribe will be roughing it, especially the early arrivals, who will have only tents and basic shower and toilet facilities.

“The first job for the tribe,” [co-founder Ben] Keene said, “is to build for those who come later,” working alongside paid Fijian laborers to build beach huts. There’s no electricity, but solar energy will provide Internet access.

Supposedly about 400 people, ages 18-67, have already joined. The LA Times has more.

Ever.

I haven’t uploaded pictures from the past few weeks, but when I do, they’ll be here: My Flickr. Look in the Niigata, End of Semester and “Japan Phone Cam” sets for the most recent pictures.

It’s been an exciting past few weeks (actually, I don’t know when I last updated about the activities here). First off, finals went off with out a hitch, but that’s stupid. I hate finals. I wish school was more about learning and less about testing.

Unfortunately, the end of finals means that most of the people in the program, especially the ones that didn’t suck a lot, went home - and my life is a bit different. It’s no longer class every night and playtime every day.

No, I got a job. I work from 9:30-5:30 at a law office here - apparently a famous one for patent and trademark work. On Mondays, I’ll be teaching Introduction to American Law - I’m most excited (many of you know that I’ve been thinking that I’d really like to become a professor or something, so being able to teach an actual class about law is quite wonderful. Wednesday nights I have regular classes - in order to keep my visa, I need to take at least one class at Temple Law, so I’m taking Conflicts of Law, which was something I was going to take in the USA, so I hope it will be interesting.

I also made it back to Niigata, which I may have already mentioned, courtesy of Pinky-san and his wife and their children and friends. I did a little bit of hiking, a lot of eating and drinking, and a bit of rice planting in the rain.

I also had the rare opportunity to get an ear infection. Huzzah!

This is fabulous. I kind of wish I had the time to do this while I’m still here. Making a pilgrammage to 88 temples is a very famous and ancient tradition here in Japan, and this man wrote about his experience doing it.

I’m kind of jealous. I don’t like travelling alone, and I think I’d be pretty miserable if I did end up doing this alone. But would I really want to do it with someone else? I dunno. I have a feeling that sometime soon I’m going to do the pilgrammage to all the shrines to the seven lucky gods in Kamakura. Not because I have to, but because I want to pay my respects and because it’s interesting. It’s not quite 88 temples, but it will be quite a day.

Nick in Japan: not because it is easy…

Without a doubt, this journey was my greatest physical accomplishment. There has never been a time where I demanded more from my body. For those who do not know Shikoku (and Japan), the island is really a never ending mountain range.

And now, the continuing series of “people who think that I’m actor/director Jerry Levine.” He starred in Teen Wolf as well as many other movies of the 1980’s and 1990’s and is now a fairly successful director of television shows.

hi jerry, just wanted to say that i thought you we’re quality as styles in teenwolf. its still one of my best movies ever! (everybody’s going surfing!)

from chris
london
england

p.s if you have time to email me back it’l great to hear from you.
XXXXX@hotmail.com

Back in Niigata

Originally uploaded by patchmonkey.

My PC notebook hasn’t been working right, so I planned to get a MacBook when you came out with it. Smaller, lighter, and CoreDuo.

But WTF is up with the integrated graphics? And the huge price premium on the black one?

I guess I can wait a couple more weeks - I don’t want something as big as the 15″ MacBook Pro…but I like my discrete graphics!

Thanks,

Jerry Levine

This is going to be a short series explaining some things in Japan that are very interesting.

Convenience Stores
Otherwise known as “conbini,” these are like your 7-11 or Wawa, but with one big difference. They are literally everywhere, provide all sorts of services, and actually have good food. For example, you can get all sorts of lunches and dinners there, pay your taxes or your phone bill, buy plane tickets or Disney passes, among other things.

Lunch Time
Lunch time is much nicer here. While there are lunch specials in the states, here in Japan there are serious specials. You can go to restaurants that would cost about $75/person at dinner time, and often the same meal is under $10 at lunchtime. FABULOUS!

CNN’s Jack Cafferty, today.

CNN’s WOLF BLITZER: …[some wisdom] from Jack Cafferty in New York.

CNN’s JACK CAFFERTY: I don’t know about wisdom but you’ll get a bit of outrage. We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He’s vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9-11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the war on terror, President Bush says.

Why don’t you go find Osama Bin Laden and seal the country’s borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and he declared the government’s doing nothing wrong and all of this is just fine.

Is it? Is it legal?

Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn’t have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again.

A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it’s not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.

We’re in some serious trouble here boys and girls.

Here’s the question.

“Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or permission?”

If it doesn’t it sure as hell ought to.