I woke up one morning about a year ago with a funny question in my head: Is Facebook evil?  After some introspection I decided that the answer to this question was no—but I did end up taking a break from Facebook for a few months.  But as the true purpose of Facebook—i.e., gathering user information to enhance targeted and contextual advertising—becomes more and more manifest, I find that same question on my mind more and more.

Sure, Facebook has its share of advantages.  I use it to stay in contact with friends in places I used to live.  It’s a simple way to keep up with family in other parts of the country.  I even have a friend from Nigeria who, thanks to Facebook, found several members of her family that had been assumed dead for fifteen years.  But as great as these things are, it’s a little uncomfortable to know that the information we’re sharing with one another we are also sharing with whoever cares to pay for it.  And Facebook continues to move down the road to sharing more and more information.

Plus, many of the ways we use Facebook may not be particularly healthy.  There’s a seemingly constant need to be on Facebook to keep abreast of friends’ postings and status messages.  But is it really worth it?  My experience has been that the ratio of postings that are actually interesting to those that are just mundane details of acquaintances’ lives heavily weighs on the mundane side.  There’s even evidence that social networking sites propagate class and racial division.

At the end of the day, I’m still not sold on the idea that Facebook is evil.  However, the privacy issue does concern me.  In a world where personal information is becoming a very valuable commodity, protecting that information is just good sense.  I won’t be leaving Facebook, but you can bet that I’ll be more vigilant about what I post in the future.

I’ve started a new blog dedicated to my quest to simplify my life my eliminating physical and mental clutter.  You can follow my journey here.

I’m in Niamey. Things are going well, but I’ll be here a couple more days becquse my passport is at the Beninese Consulate and I won’t be able to pick it up until Monday. Sarah is coming up here from Benin to meet me because of the delay, and we might just scrap Benin altogether and go thru Burkina Faso to Northern Ghana. We’ll make those plans tomorrow.

I’ve see lots of things here so far, most notably the giraffes north of Niamey. Truly magnificent. The people here have been very welcoming, and I haven’t had any problems beyond delays in travel and so forth.

I’m writing this on a French keyboard in an internet café, and I’m about outof time. Love to my family, and I’ll try to keep you posted as I move along.

I leave Tucson today. This morning The New York Times online posted an article about Niger in its feature spot.  Scary, but that’s taking place in the north.  I’ll be in the south, in and around the capital, and only for a day or two before I go to Benin.

I leave for Africa Tuesday, December 16.  This entry is a brief description and basic itinerary of my trip.  For your convenience, I’ve included links to Wikipedia articles and other postings about some of the locations I’ll visit.  Read what interests you—ignore what doesn’t.

Here’s how it’ll go.  I leave Phoenix at 6 a.m. on the 16th, and after changing planes in New York and Casablanca, I’ll arrive in Niamey, Niger, in the early-morning hours of the 18th.  I’ll probably be there a day or two, but I’ll leave shortly for Cotonou, Benin, which, according to Lonely Planet, is a 14-hour trip by bus.  Once in Cotonou, I’ll meet my research partner and travel companion, Sarah, and we’ll spend a couple of days making our way west along the coast.  We’ll stop in Lomé, Togo, and Accra, Ghana, and probably other places as well.

Click on picture for a larger image.

While we’re in Accra, we may meet with one or more of the justices on the Ghanaian Supreme Court.  A group of them was in Tucson earlier this year to speak at the law school, and it seems that this would be a good opportunity for the law school to “outreach” and follow up with them.  Sarah and I will be in Accra around Christmastime, tho, so it may not really be feasible.  We’re still working on this.

A burgeoning circumstance merits an additional word about our stay in Accra.  Wednesday, December 10, the Ghanaian voting commission announced the results of Ghana’s presidential election:  inconclusive.  That is, no candidate got a majority of the votes, so there is going to be a runoff election between the top two candidates on Dec. 28.  We don’t anticipate any trouble, as Ghana is a relatively stable and peaceful place.  NPR ran a story on Tuesday haling Ghana as a model of democracy, with voter turnout as high as 90% on election day, compared to some some 61% in the United States.  Ballots are counted in the public eye, and, most importantly for my consideration, the process is typically peaceful.  Still, it’s good to be cognizant of the election, and Sarah and I will definitely be alert for fishy situations.  By the 28th, we plan to have left the capital, and our stay will be registered with the American Embassy in Ghana.

Once we leave Accra, we’ll head north to the parks in the Black Volta region along the border with Burkina Faso.  Our mission:  to interview NGOs and native Ghanaians about the effects of the creation of national parks and forest reserves on the indigenous peoples there.  We hope that our brief research trip will be of some use to the academic community, but we’re not holding our breath.  No matter—whether the world learns anything from our trip or not, I’m confident that we’ll learn plenty.

Once finished in Ghana, we’ll move north into Burkina Faso.  We’ll probably spend a day or two as tourists in Ouagadougou, the capital, then Sarah and I will part ways, and I’ll head back to Niamey.  I’ll return to the United States on January 9.

Because telephone calls to the United States will be unreasonably expensive, and because Internet cafés can be found in any major city, I anticipate that all of my communication home will be thru some Internet medium:  by blog, e-mail, Facebook, etc.  Please feel free to visit this blog again, as I will try to post an entry or two while I’m actually in Africa, and I will definitely post an entry (with pictures!) when I get back to the States.

Hi everybody,

I feel like I haven’t been able to contact you individually as often as I would like in these last few weeks, but I want to keep you updated on what’s going on in my life right now.  So please excuse the newsletter format.

Classes are going well, and are slightly less strenuous than last year.  I’m taking Immigration Law and Evidence, my only two substantive courses (I dropped International Human Rights).  I am also enrolled in the Immigration Law Clinic, which forms the other half of my courseload.  For this clinic, I am paired with another law student, and together we represent an Asian detainee facing removal from the United States.  Her case is somewhat odd since she came to the U.S. as a refugee in the 80s and has been here ever since.  I go to Eloy each Friday to visit her in detention and discuss her case.  I can’t go into more detail, but it’s an interesting and challenging matter. 

The other function of this clinic is to provide advice to clients who seek information on immigration related matters.  The consultations take place weekly, and the problems people have range from undocumented workers whose former employers won’t pay them for work they’ve performed, to refugees seeking to adjust status to lawful permanent resident, to a variety of other legal issues.

I also continue to work at Juvie ten hours a week.  This is keeping me busy with interesting issues of criminal law.  It is essentially the same work I was doing this summer.

As an Ares Fellow for Professor Marcus, I have been helping 1L students with their legal writing.  This mostly involves proofing and editing drafts of their work and giving lectures on things like legal citation.  It’s mostly dry and a little tedious, but it has given me insight into drafting and editing my own work.

In addition to all of this, this is the season for applying for jobs for next summer.  I have already interviewed with several commercial litigation firms in Phoenix, and I’ll start with on-campus interviews for California employers on Friday.  I’m planning to go to D.C. in October for interviews there as well.  I’m essentially looking for any legal job that doesn’t involve criminal law.  I would like to migrate over to either civil transaction/litigation work, or possibly policy work (though policy jobs are more difficult to get).

I’m also thinking of spending a semester abroad.  The UA has an exchange program with several law schools worldwide, but the ones that particularly interest me right now are the Université Jean Moulin in Lyon, France, and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.  Jean Moulin is the world’s leading law school for International and Comparative Law.  I’m going to have to review my graduation requirements and decide whether I want to pursue the International Law certification or not.  In any case, I’m thinking of going in Fall 2009.

As you can see, my life is a bit hectic right now.  I’m enjoying it, but unfortunately it doesn’t leave me with much free time.  Many of you have heard the maxim about law school: “The first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death.”  Well, I can tell you that they’ve at least got the first two right.

I hope you’re all well, and I’ll talk to you soon.

I just got bak from my first camping trip since my November trip to Desemboque.  I went with my coworker and fellow law student Sarah to Rose Canyon in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson.  We had intended for there to be several people going, but as the clouds built up over the Catalinas, our would-be companions grew faint of heart.  In the end, just the two of us went.

Despite the imminent rain, the campground was nearly full.  We had to fight the weather for a long time before we could get a fire started, and even then we couldn’t really get a good blaze going.  But the coals were all we needed to cook our food and stay warm, so our small fire sufficed.  In the night the rain came down pretty hard and managed to insinuate itself into the tent, so I was startled awake in the middle of the night to find my feet soaking wet from the small puddle of water that had accumulated.  Morning found my feet dry, however, and after having a hearty breakfast at the Iron Door, a restaurant near the top of Mt. Lemmon, Sarah and I hiked out to Rose Canyon Lake.  While it had been hazy and wet all morning, by this time the clouds were clearing up, and the sun had shown its face at last.

The high altitude and the moderate temperature made the trip a pleasant contrast to the hot days in the city.  The clouds and rain and pines reminded me of nothing so much as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I went to college.  While I usually like to take lots of photos when I make a trip like this, this time I decided to try to experience my surroundings without worrying about capturing them on film.  It created a subtle difference in the way I appreciated the outing, and, while I think I will take photos on my next excursion, it was refreshing to abstain this time.

I got an e-mail from my friend in Niger with some bad news.  He came down with malaria and is being separated from the Peace Corps.  This throws a wrench in my plans since I no longer have him to guide me on my trip to Africa.  I still plan to go, though, since my ticket is nonrefundable.  I doubt I’ll be going to Niger; more likely I’ll go to Ghana, Benin, and Togo, as well as Senegal, The Gambia, and Morocco.  More details will follow as I make more solid plans.

I’ve started playing the guitar.  I’ve played the piano for years (achieving a sort of notorious mediocrity), but I love the guitar.  I’ve learned the basic chords, I’ve bought a copy of Rise Up Singing, and now I’m crooning away at all hours of day and night.  The calluses on my left fingers are developing nicely!

If I could revisit my childhood, I would choose to take guitar lessons rather than piano lessons.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the piano’s sound and versatility, and I’m held captivated whenever I see someone play.  But for non-musicians like me, the guitar is just more practical.  Its true virtue is in its portability.  I have so few opportunities to play the piano for people simply because there’s never one around.  And you can’t bring a piano with you to a party.  You don’t take a piano camping.  The ability to toss the guitar in the car with you and bring it just about anywhere you care to go is such a great advantage.  After all, what good is an ability to play a musical instrument if you never have the chance to share it?

I still have a long way to go, but I’m literate in the basics now, and I plan to get better.