Obscenity trials are silly, but when they use google to determine "contemporary community standards," they result in such wonderful quotes:

“We tried to come up with comparison search terms that would embody typical American values,” Mr. Walters said. “What is more American than apple pie?” But according to the search service, he said, “people are at least as interested in group sex and orgies as they are in apple pie.”

LOLAMAZING Oh, the internets!

While Eric and I were brainstorming models for society:

(4:06:46 AM) Sharmin: the natural way to get a system that doesn't fuck shit up is to give people lots of negative rights and very few, if any positive ones
(4:07:09 AM) Eric Liu: negative right =? need definition
(4:07:14 AM) Sharmin: we will not come in and fuck your shit up
(4:07:18 AM) Sharmin: but at the same time neither will we give you things
(4:07:32 AM) Eric Liu: oh ok
(4:07:38 AM) Sharmin: so you have a right to be by yourself in the corner
(4:07:39 AM) Sharmin: but not a right to have a corner provided to you
(4:07:44 AM) Eric Liu: so shit just naturally runs its course and we hope that natural = better
(4:07:56 AM) Sharmin: unless you go and take other people's shit... which is when you bring down righteous smackdown
(4:08:07 AM) Eric Liu: lol
(4:08:07 AM) Sharmin: SMACKDOWN
(4:08:14 AM) Sharmin: my society
(4:08:16 AM) Sharmin: it is IDEAL
(4:08:16 AM) Sharmin: :)
(4:08:23 AM) Eric Liu: mine too
(4:08:28 AM) Eric Liu: different ideals :p
(4:08:32 AM) Sharmin: well if we're making ideal societies
(4:08:50 AM) Sharmin: mine also has lots of hot bisexual womenz
(4:09:04 AM) Eric Liu: hahaha
(4:09:31 AM) Eric Liu: i think hot bisexual womens would also be a strong addition to my world

Challenging the conventional wisdom. Read it- it's long but very thoughtful and interesting.

McCain apparently never worried about AIDS.
EPIC FAIL.

Re: Medellin v. Texas, i.e. the decision that says that Texas can ignore international treaties and give Mexican citizens the death penalty if it wants to without telling Mexico about it first, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the decision that says that the Bush administration cannot always deny suspected terrorists of their rights, Orin Kerr says the following:

Reading over Chief Justice Roberts' Medellin opinion, it reminds me a lot of Justice Stevens' majority opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006. ... Of course, the people who like both Hamdan and Medellin could probably meet  in a phone booth. (And Justice Kennedy is already in the phone booth.)  But the two decisions seem pretty similar to me.

LOL <3, except I think Justice Kennedy is kind of very silly.

Livejournal is pretty hilarious.

Oh noes it is the attack of the bisexuals!

p.s. entirely unrelated, Justin Long, aka Mac, is dating Drew Barrymore. *giggle*

This reminds me of my Bible class two terms ago. Only my class came with an awesome professor and not as much snark.

You should still read it, though. And if you're at MIT, you should take The Bible. It is most excellent.

It was an important part of my childhood. YAY.

I've just watched the Republican New Hampshire debates...

Thoughts:

• In general: TOO MUCH WAFFLING KIDS, GET TO THE POINT.
• Huckabee is very eloquent. He's an excellent politician- even when he's saying silly things he sounds good.
• McCain needs to get his act together re: immigration. He and Guiliani have very similar stances, and both have come under attack, but while McCain implodes, Guiliani says things like, come on kids, (1)it's pretty close to impossible to deport 12 million illegal immigrants, and (2) sometimes we have to be humane and not do shit like deport schoolchildren.
• Fred Thompson seems rather irrelevant.
• Ron Paul seems a bit insane at times.
  
• While his point about US foreign policy causing terrorism is at least partly true, it's things like the "Israel is cool, bitches" part of the foreign policy, not the "we like to kill the chillunz!" part.
  
• The reason health insurance is so expensive is not only inflation. Despite his tendency to rattle on about basic economics, he doesn't seemed to have covered the "Reasons for Market Failure" part of the textbook. And he's a doctor too.
• I'm not sure how I feel about Mitt Romney. On one hand, I kind of like his idea of "take less money from peeps, and then tell them to plx be spending that money on health insurance." It seems slightly more efficient. On the other hand, I think he may <3 such nonsense as Guantanamo.
• I really need to know where all of these peeps stand on civil liberties. And the general power of the executive. I'm going to be severely disappointed if the only person who actually agrees with me (vaguely) is Ron Paul.

But quite good overall. Not quite A+++ would watch again, but a good use of time. Now to watch the Democrats, and not kill myself listening to Edwards talk...

So, QuizLaw noted that Huckabee won the Republican Iowa caucus, and commented that "Somewhere in America, Chuck Norris is touching himself." They then followed up with the Democratic caucus results, which Obama won, and commented that "Somewhere in America, Obama Girl is touching herself."

The following conversation ensued:

Sharmin: CHUCK NORRIS SUPPORTS HUCKABEE
Eric: maybe i should support huckabee then. chuck norris is the shit
Eric: (not really)
Sharmin: I can't believe huckabee thought his endorsement would be helpful
Sharmin: and I can't believe that it probably was
Eric: you need ninjas on your team, it's that simple. obama should get ninja support.
Sharmin: obama girl apparently has ninja powerz, according to her latest youtube video
Eric: orly
Sharmin: she beats up hillary clinton aides. Also, she has breasts. who needs ninja power when you have breasts?
Eric: linky. i like breasts :p
Sharmin: obama girl intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU
Sharmin: and the ninja episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENCRu-2d35g
Sharmin: (er warning, they're kind of highly lame)
Sharmin: she's got a crush on obama.
Eric: dude i would plow that
Eric: damn, breasts like whoa
Eric: holy fuck, those videos are terrible
Eric: anyway this girl makes me want to vote for obama that much more
Eric: he needs groupies. oprah is not a groupie, but this girl is hot
Sharmin: :)
Sharmin: she's touching herself
Sharmin: if you vote for obama
Sharmin: she'll do it more.
Eric: wwwwin

I want somebody to write me Supreme Court fanfiction where Ginsburg and Scalia meet at Harvard and then have an affair that starts in the seventies and continues, on and off, until today . For material, see this lovely piece. A quote from the article:

Beyond the law, Ginsburg and Scalia seek each other out.

"I have always enjoyed Nino," Ginsburg said in an interview, echoing her comment at the hearing: "No matter how overworked and tired I feel, he can always say things that make me laugh. He can also say things I find provocative, even irritating."

For his part, Scalia says he likes his colleague "because she is an intelligent woman and a nice woman and a considerate woman — all the qualities that you like in a person."

Guys, she calls him Nino in court, too.♥

Bhuttos-- :(
What a sad day.

Also, see this lovely piece about commas. And the right to bear arms.

Holy crap, EPIC FAIL.

Zombies! Tee hee.

Oh noes! (casting spoilers etc)

David Brown is <3:

David Brown: Sometimes, I think my foray into writing is doomed
David Brown: like this sentence:
David Brown: Sincerely the door moved a couple of centimeters touching upon a latch
David Brown: it doesn't make any sense. Yet i wrote it
Sharmin: LOL
Sharmin: it's pretty absurd
David Brown: i know
Sharmin: anthropomorphic doors
Sharmin: tenderly touching latches
David Brown: it's like two sentences I was writing had sex and out popped their deformed freak-baby

In a discussion about our freshmen and whether lolcat is overrated:

Eric:Apparently those two [Tom and Fred] browse 4chan.
Sharmin: What! I don't understand 4chan. What is it's purpose?
Eric: I think you have to be on 4chan to understand 4chan.
Sharmin: I mean, I know it's a forum, but what the fuck does it do? Is it just a random entirely inexplicable part of the internet?
Eric: So, it's like this. If AnandTech is of order epsilon, then 4chan is of order epsilon squared. So... [waves hands] you just neglect! Unless you're one of those terms that hangs out at epsilon squared, like those two.

So, this post is going to consist of an awesome thing my math lecturer said today. There are two versions of the introduction- one for people who have knowledge of Linear Algebra, and one for those who don't. (Incidentally, this is the lecturer that claims he was "was almost as adorable [at the age of three] as I am now, hard as that may be to believe.")

Math Heavy Intro:
So we're learning about infinite dimensional vector spaces in linear algebra (as opposed to finite dimension vector spaces like lines and planes through the origin), and one example that came up in class was the vector space of all real functions defined on x=0 to x=1 such that f(0)=f(1)=0. We defined f(x).g(x) as the integral of f(x)g(x) over this interval, and then started talking about how the dot product is only zero if f(x) is zero, but then came up with a counterexample of f(x)=0 except for at a single point, where it was non-zero. At this point we decided to exclude functions with point discontinuities.

De-Mathed Intro:
We're doing some math-y stuff in Linear Algebra. We defined some cool properties for equations that also exist for matrices, and were happy when they worked, but then found weird counter examples. They made us sad.

The Steven Johnson Explanation of this sad fact:

So this is the problem with infinite-dimensional vector spaces. They work fine as long as you're reasonable and have well behaved functions, but you can always construct perverse counterexamples for which they don't work.  These never come up in real life, but this is what mathematicians like to do, come up with these weird contrived examples.

Well, in this class we're not going to be perverse. We're going to follow the Google model: Don't be evil.

He is the greatest thing EVER.

Also, you should look at the links. They are filled with silly pictures of him.

To: Adam Goldstein
Subject: O.o

Scalia has nine children. NINE.

Meep.

-Shar

To: Sharmin Karim
Subject: Re: O.o

I hope we someday have a Supreme Court of Scalia Spawn.

-Adam

Erik Fogg is adorable. In a bad-ass, war-bloggy, knowledgeable way.

Edit:
Speaking of debaters who are awesome, here is Dan Rauch's blog. It contains the most awesome captions for entirely serious political blog entries, such as this one about the Republican presidential debates featuring Ron Paul with the caption "Don't. Use. Meth." Or this wondrous entry on the logic of having a drinking age of 21.