This post is incredibly off topic....

Care to order a pizza and watch the finale of the X-Files with me?

Bruce Schneier said it best recently (seriously you should read the whole essay):
"[I]f we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable"

Shakespeare said “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows", I don't enjoy allying myself with the ACLU, after all these are the people who champion the first amendment then urge their directors not to openly criticize them. But, I read through their petition and urge you to either sign it, or send letters of your own to your congressmen and to the FCC commissioners urging them to push back the veil on what the NSA has done.

A brief introduction

This is a short event blog covering my journey to Chile in June 2006 as part of the American University Washington College of Law Summer Law Program In Chile. In it I will discuss the preparation, events, impressions and minutia of my sojourn.

But first a brief introduction.
Born to a hoosier navy officer and a chilean debutante, my childhood was an endless stream of changing settings and instability as we traveled from navy base to navy base. My Dad had the stubborn notion that I would not be taught spanish, or much else about Chilean culture. Which really didn't prepare me for a year and half I spent in Chile as a teenager.

I have returned to Chile a few times since then, but always to visit with family and do little else. In a way I feel like a native there and it makes it difficult to be detached like a tourist.

So this trip I have two goals beyond passing my law school courses: 1.) I want to reconnect with my family tree and archive the memories and experiences of los viejos. and 2.) Finally I want to be a "tourist" in Chile and integrate what I don't know about Chilean culture into my fragmented identity.