A floating and dreamy stream of consciousness; based on nothing whatsoever than drifting dreams and ideas.

Sometimes when I sit back and let my mind drift off to the warm waters of the stream of consciousness, I wonder what will the world look like in a decade from now; three decades; a century; a millennia.  I think of the great advances in technology and science.  The discovery of new methods of travel in space, jumps in medical technology, international collaboration to deal with the greater threats to the human species vice improving methods of killing each other.

I think watching Halo: Legends and playing plenty of Halo: Reach might have a lot to do with my more wistful thinking as of recent.

Perhaps too the words of Stephen Hawking when he stated several months ago that it was quite possible for humans to begin deep space travel and colonization within two centuries; should we not manage to kill ourselves off by our endless follies.

Yet, on a more tangible level, I wonder what will happen in the next few years as I finish school, search for a job, and settle into a new career.  It bothers me in some sense that I see two scenarios:

The first being that we continue our follies in constantly abusing our only habitable ecosystem through the foolhardy burning of fossil fuels for what we consider indefinitely; not investing in clean technologies; continue to wage wars of conquest and mass murder in the Muslim word; continue to sow the seeds of hate and anger; and continue that headlong sprint to extinction.

The second being that my generation wises up as do the following generations and start to stem the tide of destruction we are visiting upon our planet and our own fellow humans.  That we start to move towards emphasizing the importance of education; whether it resides in science, music, art, or literature.  Just to name a few.  That new steps are taken to protect consumers and the working man.  To reach out and help the poor.  Work to move against the destructive tendencies we have; to rehabilitate minor offenders to become model citizens instead of just tossing them into a prison with other persons hardened by years of prison sentences and forgetting about them; to rehabilitate our veterans returning from war; eliminating nuclear weapons; eliminating the need to arouse needless suspicions about our fellow human and race headlong into dangerous arms races.

I have no desire to see my children be drafted or volunteer to fight in a war that only leads them to death or suffer crippling wounds both seen and unseen so the wealthiest criminals in the world can continue to gorge on their war profits.  I have no desire to see them inherit a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe either.

I'm well aware there are forces of nature that are beyond the scope of human power to prevent; the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of Japan is just but one example of that power.  Near Earth Objects, gamma ray bursts, the big rip, the Yellowstone caldera exploding; all are forces of nature that I and other humans have no control over.  There is no malicious or loving or omnipotent "god" out there controlling the events of the world.  If there is a god, it would reside in the subatomic level, those particles and subparticles that govern how reality unfolds.

But there is no grand plan.  And that's great, because there exists no foretold destiny.  We make our own luck.  But we are very capable of our own destruction as well as our own triumph.

So what do we want?  That hundreds millions of years from now humans have to deal with the crisis of the sun expanding and engulfing the earth or that the Earth is eerily silent before the sun expands into a red giant?

Again, just a floating and dreamy stream of consciousness; based on nothing whatsoever than drifting dreams and ideas.

A true committment to Equal Justice?

After a few days of sitting in on a sexual misconduct case (well, to be more specific, sexual molestation of a child), one idea lodged itself in my mind while sitting on the tram: Do I really have a commitment to my idea of providing equal access to justice and I like to think I do?

It only sits with me because a legal career is two years and a Bar examination away right now. What do I do if placed in the situation where I have to defend a person who is accused of sexual assault or one accused of child molestation. Not to mention rape, murder, etc. Its a big thing I think some law students need to think about besides gunning for a job at a top firm (uh, not one of my goals.), because not everyone is going to get that job at the top firm in Chicago, New York, LA, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, etc, etc.

I know its been running around in my head right now. Lawyers are to advocate for their clients, but as was brought up in my Civ Pro class last semester: is there a line where you can't advocate for your client? As in...the client tells you in not so many words they did x offense.

Maybe I think too much, seeing that I tend to believe that I'm not as "high speed," "Low drag" as many of the other law students at my humble little non Tier 1 school, (more ranting on that...its like the BCS, except with more at stake in the long run. Well, the BCS is bullshit too, and I might as well bash it in the future. Go fuck yourself Nebraska. We don't want you in the goddamn Big Ten. Fuck tournaments, fuck TV money....Universities are there to educate people, not to pay some mouth breathing, greedy, asshole coach who is as interesting as the dog shit I almost stepped in running in West Brunswick yesterday millions of dollars. Hey Unis, you do realize kids leave school with 40-100k in debt with an interest rate around 7-4% and a zero fucking job market...and to even be competitive, you have to drop a 100k to get a graduate degree with the same interest rates in loans. What is wrong with this goddamn picture? Lets not even go into how the NCAA is a house of exploitation, where we demonize some kid because he got $10k under the table while the school, the BCS and the NCAA is racking in millions upon millions of dollars. Ok, rant done.) but what really sticks in my mind is that an idea of equal justice should be on the mind of anyone entering the legal field.

Lets not fool ourselves, the United States for all of its great perks, there is an ugly underside that no one wants to accept. The Katrina disaster in New Orleans should have made that clear to everyone. The news that children go to school without eating at all because their family cannot provide meals; and the reason why for me is immaterial. If the parents have a drug addiction, that's a sign that there's somewhere else our society has failed to care for its citizens; but in a country so wealthy, as many bombastic Americans like to claim, what is wrong with providing free breakfast and lunch to young children in school.

This is where I wish I had bookmarked the page of the study that illustrated data that young children need to have sufficient nutrition in order to learn; specifically protein, which the brain requires. And a quick science lecture there: the basic reason why homo sapiens sapiens was able to be a "thinking" organism was that we included a lot of protein in our diet which permitted the brain to operate at its high capacity. Though, not as much as my laptop.

Still.

And equal justice fits in here somehow. Dealing with social inequality is important. From the many speakers I've heard and the random articles I come upon, providing equal justice to everyone is important. Simply, why should someone who is poor not have access to the same legal mechanisms that the richest can easily afford?

That said, I find it interesting that the media is quick to paint in a negative picture a person who murders a person, robs a store...and somehow focuses on fact that the non offenders are not white (hrm, isn't that just another indication of social inequality in this country at some level?)...but when GinormoBanks that participated in the near collapse of the conservative movement's beloved capitalist market in 2008, there's not demands for hard prison time. No loud screams for punitive justice. I'm sure as soon as the BP machine starts rolling, the rhetoric against them may level out.

But back to equal justice. (Wow, I am a crappy law student, I can't even keep the focus on my blog. Well, it is a blog.) It's something that needs to be considered. And while the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is reinterpreted in different fashions based on the current political climate or the methods used by SCOTUS Justices to interpret the constitution (I'm sorry, that originalist stance is ridiculous. Even Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1803 decision, Marbury v. Madison said that interpretation of the Constitution should not be based soley on an originalist theory), we are still afforded an opportunity to be heard in court. And I don't think your ability to defend yourself or seek justice should be determined soley on your social and economic status.

So even staring mindlessly out of the 55 Tram, thinking of a hypothetical client charged with sexual molestation of a child, I still think that hypothetical client deserves my utmost effort to advocate for them.