The Black Angel in Iowa City's northside Oakland cemetery.

As many fundamentalist Christians eagerly point out, popular holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, and Easter combine American pop culture with the occult and paganism, and in fact, their modern incarnations are almost completely un-Christian.  It’s for this reason that some Christian sects oppose celebrating Halloween or even Christmas–at least in the modern American fashion.  Maybe, then, Halloween is one of the most interesting times of year because it’s when the mysterious becomes an overt feature of our lives without the religious overtones.

For those of us who love history, Halloween makes it fun to revisit local lore.  The best ghost stories combine the unexplained with local history to generate myths that add color to life here in Iowa.  I always think of the era when white settlers seized Iowa from Native Americans, then overran and settled it, as a much more dramatic time, a period where people relied more on luck and their own abilities to survive.  The people who built Iowa had to deal with the elements; with their own mental and physical malladies; and with each other without the benefits of modern technology or medicine to do it.  There are so many stories of Iowans building impressive monuments by hand, driving themselves to theatric suicides, or otherwise producing human accomplishments we wouldn’t consider today.

Part of what makes history so interesting is the fact that a lot of these things would just simply not happen today.  For instance, in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, where I went to college, deputized citizens and vigilantes shot and killed two people for peeping into a girls’ dorm.  That sort of thing would never happen today, but with a little imagination and evolution over time, it could turn into a terrifying ghost story.

Anyway, I’ve done some digging and turned up haunted places in Eastern Iowa that you can easily visit this Halloween season for yourself.

Continue Reading »

I just looked into my crystal ball, and have 4 predictions to share:

1) John McCain Will Lose Embarrassingly to Obama: 349-189

The deck has been stacked against John McCain for weeks now, and we can definitely chalk up some of the obstacles in his path to bad timing - the housing slump, the stock market mini-crash, the failing war in Afghanistan, and the president’s approval rating, to name a few.

There are additional, significant reasons why John McCain will lose in a landslide, however, that are entirely of his own making - the reckless fashion in which he chose an embarrassingly unlettered running mate (read: he didn’t have the guts to  pick Joe Lieberman), his decision to base the core of his campaign’s message on personalities and side shows instead of ideas, the manner in which he abandoned his more centrist positions to pander to the Republican base, the ridiculous “suspension” of his campaign to “solve” the economic crisis, and the general intellectual dishonesty and viciousness he and his staff have exhibited towards Obama for months.

The reason I say McCain will lose “embarrassingly” is not because he is only going to muster 189 electoral college votes, but because he has run a bottom-feeder campaign based on scare tactics and dishonesty. And I’m not the only one noticing this - today in Indiana, for example, dozens of employees at a call center walked off the job after refusing to read a misleading McCain robocall script accusing Obama of “coddling criminals,” voting against “protecting children from danger,” being “dangerously weak on crime,” and a variety of other attacks.

What has become crystal clear to anyone being truly honest about this year’s election is that John McCain is utterly desperate and will now say or do anything to get elected. He has abandoned respectability and has permanently damaged his brand. A hard-fought race is desirable, but McCain should keep in mind from here on in that this election is already over no matter how much hate he spews between now and Tuesday. Obama has run a vastly superior campaign and Obama-Biden is a vastly superior ticket (note: I was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter). Checkmate.

Key states Obama will take to win 349 electoral votes: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida. If polls continue to slide for McCain as Americans reject his tactics, watch for Obama to make serious plays for North Carolina, Indiana, and West Virginia, possibly pushing his total as high as 380.

2) Democrats Will Increase Their Senate Lead to 59

Continue Reading »

Dear University of Iowa parking office:

The Myrtle parking lot is an outrage of a magnitude that…well, seems pretty typical at Iowa. ‘Let’s make it easier for students to pay by allowing payment with credit card’…oh wait that doesn’t work yet, so essentially there are two coin meters for EVERY parking space in the lot. And there is no option to pay for partial hours; so since I am only at BLB for one hour and 10 minutes for PR three days a week, I get to pay for two hours each day. Basically, highway robbery. I die a little inside with every quarter I feed those pay stations. Oh, and after charging me for two full hours when I only need an hour and ten, be sure to keep that nickel because I only have quarters. Continue Reading »

James Surowiecki's book, Wisdom of Crowds, captures the logic underlying prediction markets.

There’s been a lot of controversy over Obama allegedly saying he wants to spread peoples’ wealth around.  Something about class warfare or whatever.  It’s all over my head.  I don’t grasp the subtleties of Obama’s tax plan (nor do most people), but I do know that I’m going to make about $80 off the backs of other hardworking Americans when Obama wins the election.  It might not be too late for you to profit from Obama’s victory too.

Intrade.com is a “prediction market” where people around the country bid real money on the likelihood that an event will happen in real life, such as the Democrats gaining 60 seats in the Senate or the Republicans being raptured into heaven on the eve of the apocalypse.  It’s similar to a futures market, except here you’re bidding on events rather than commodities.  You buy “contracts,” paying a price equivalent to how likely you think something will happen.  If the event doesn’t happen, your contract will be worth zero points, but if the event does happen then your contract is worth 100 points.  Each point is worth a dime of real money.

Continue Reading »

I’ve pondered possible blog topics for the past three weeks, and the best I can come up with (not related to the Global Credit Crisis, how much I hate school, or how poorly I function without caffeine) is a link from BBC Health News. Bear with me. This low-point can’t last forever.

We’ve heard or read the claims: having a little color on your face is good for you! Using a tanning bed is healthier than going to the beach! Sun exposure helps clear up blemishes!

Well, surprise, scientists have done a gazillion more studies and found that, actually UV exposure, from the sun or from a tanning bed is BAD. According to a study published in the Journal of Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research, exposure to UV radiation is the “most avoidable” cause of skin cancer.

Advocates are calling for the government to ban children using of tanning beds and advertising claiming that tanning beds are safer than natural sun exposure. They also want to get the word out that burning is the worst thing you can do for your skin’s health and dramatically increases melanoma risks.

None of this is surprising. But it does remind us all that an few minutes in the tanning bed every few days or weeks, while probably good for the law student’s psyche, is terrible for our health. We’re all probably doing enough that is bad for our health (caffeine, sleep deprivation, oreos for dinner, wine for dessert) that we’ve got to do what we can. Use sunscreen.

During the summer before my first year of law school, I read every book I could find on how to succeed when I got here.  I figured that I should get it right the first time since I have no practical skills, I’ve never hit a golf ball in my life, and I have a terrible time interacting with adults.  

I burned through several books, including Acing Your First Year of Law School, Getting to Maybe, and Starting off Right in Law School.  Although each of these books takes a different approach, they all have one thing in common: they emphasize working your ass off.  Starting off Right, for example, suggests that you read each of the day’s assigned cases twice before thoroughly briefing each of them.  Getting to Maybe, while it was a useful description of the test-taking process, inflated the 3.5 hour law school essay exam into a science worthy of its own liberal arts college department.  The first week of school didn’t help.  Highly esteemed law faculty actually stood in front of lecture halls and told us that to correctly brief cases and prepare for exams, we have to record things like each case’s procedural posture and standard of review– information was never even relevant in Civil Procedure.

All of this advice scared the crap out of me.  For my entire first semester, I read every case once, then read each one again while “book briefing,” using a different color highlighter for each part of the case.  Then, after all of that, I went back through a third time and fully briefed each case.  By the end of first semester I was a law zombie.   If only I’d read this book before coming here.

Continue Reading »

Workers fighting to keep floodwaters out of a residential neighborhood in Cedar Rapids.

Even though the First Floor is on a de facto summer hiatus, I had some thoughts on the flooding.  Thesis: if you or someone you care about lost a home or business in the 2008 flooding, you should consider supporting political candidates who strongly support controlling greenhouse gas emissions, because global warming caused at least a few people to lose their property.

I’m sure most people, even those who are concerned about the environment, have the same initial response.  It’s true that global warming was not the “but-for cause” of the floods in the sense that there would have been no flooding at all but for global warming.  We cannot know whether the floods would have happened without climate change, but we do have serious scientific evidence that global warming dangerously increased the amount of rainfall in Iowa this year and is creating all sorts of meteorological problems.

So assume for the sake of argument that you owned a one-story house in Cedar Rapids on the very edge of the 500-year floodplain.  Your home took an inch of water, destroying your furniture, walls, and carpeting.  Now think back to first-year torts.  Is global warming “legally” responsible?  Yes.

Continue Reading »