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Dennis Jansen

January 8th, 2009

More gunner drammy

Oh, Law School Discussion…how I’ve missed thee. I know I’ve written about gunners before but can we just acknowledge this ridiculousness? The topic of the thread is: “How To Respond To People Calling You a Gunner?”

Gunner: Last semester I amply and vastly participated in class and I could decipher my classmates’ opinion of said participation. How best to respond to these (to put it generously) rather immature individuals?

The first response (by “Stole Your Nose!“) was rather good: Continue reading “More gunner drammy” »

July 3rd, 2008

Cap em!

It’s called LSD for a reason.

I finally started a thread at Law School Discussion. I asked what people thought of the Joe Horn case, in which a Texan (Horn) capped two burglars who were robbing his neighbor’s house.

Horn even told the 911 Operator that he was going to kill the robbers –

This sums up what happened:

Operator: Mr. Horn, do not go out the house.

Horn: I’m sorry. This ain’t right, buddy.

Operator: You’re going to get yourself shot if you go outside that house with that gun. I don’t care what you think. Stay in the house.

Horn: You wanna make a bet? I’m gonna kill ‘em.

The discussion on LSD has been interesting, but a bit disturbing too.

All of the participants are law students or future law students. Some of the law students have looked up statutes to support their arguments, but others have basically said, “Good. Thank good these illegals got shot. They had it coming. If you’re stupid enough to rob someone, you’re stupid enough to get capped. So what if a private citizen has more authority to kill someone than a cop? GOOD. Let the neighborhood watch dispense the death penalty.”

I also love how you can’t kill someone who punches you and walks away, or someone who has raped a child, but you can (in theory) kill someone who has stolen a bag of chips from the grocery store.

I’m curious how a professor would deal with that type of logic in class.

July 1st, 2008

Verk it!

“He would need to do serious gymwork once he started his job, days away now. It was no good spending eight hours at the office, ten hours, then going straight home. He would need to burn things off, test his body, direct himself inward, working on his strength, stamina, agility, sanity. He would need an offsetting discipline, a form of controlled behavior, voluntary, that kept him from shambling into the house and hating everybody.” – Don DeLillo (from Falling Man)

My schedule has been (fairly) lawless this summer. The goal for July is to reign in my sleep schedule and step up my workouts.

Freshman year I was 160lbs and worked out religiously. I graduated at just over 200lbs and yeah, that’s not a good look. I can’t make up for three years of neglect in one month, but I can start in the right direction.

The plan is to move from treadmilling to outdoor running. I want to improve my endurance without the guilt-inducing dreadmill dictating the pace for me.

I hope the newly earned endurance will correlate with better grades. Some professors say that marathoners are among their best students. I’ve also seen students (like Jessie, from Boy in Suit) express regret that they didn’t work out more. I’m toying with the idea of a marathon…but I’ll be happy with just maintaining the running schedule during the Minnesota Winter. Yikes.

Other things:

  • I received my lease for Gamma eta Gamma. Excitement ensued.
  • UMN received my last deposit and transcript. Joy y hallelujah señor. All is right with the world into the financial aid letter comes at the end of July.
  • The diploma arrived and I was underwhelmed. The sum of a $170,000 education: a bootleg laserjet job. It looked like the MS Word diplomas that were doled out at elementary school graduation. I told my mother that she could keep the diploma. I didn’t want it. I tried my best not to sound bitter (not about my diploma, it’s not that serious, but about the whole undergrad experience) but think mom was sort of disappointed that I wasn’t excited. Womp.
  • To underscore my alumni-ness, my canecard (student card) stopped working, so I had to get an alumni card. The alumni cards are sort of drained of all color…grey and peach. Eh.
  • I finally figured out the RSS thing. I now have a RSS feed of law-student blogs on my Windows Vista Sidebar. Nerdage. I know.  Oh, and just because I don’t comment doesn’t mean I don’t read… especially on blogs that use blogger (like Thanks but No Thanks) and require a google account to comment. WordPress all the way!
  • The drama on LSD is just ridiculous. They have an affirmative action board that vacillates between ignorant and annoying.
  • Another thing I noticed on LSD is that a lot of posters link to their Law School Numbers accounts. Law School Numbers is a site where people post their admissions stats (GPA, LSAT, Extra Currics, etc.) the schools they applied to, and whether or not they got in. I simply don’t understand how it is not incredibly tacky (if you have good scores) or outright embarrassing (if you have bad scores) to share that information through that site and then link it on LSD. This one girl had a 152 and got rejected from, well, some less-than-prestigious schools. Why on earth would she want to advertise that? What am I missing here?
  • And finally, my gopher gear arrived and I’ve been obnoxious about wearing it everywhere.