Speeding towards T-town

Given that my partners in crime here have been so "serious" of late, I'll borrow this space for a few personal ruminations after having been more or less off-blog the last week. Like Ethan (in June) and Kaimi (in July), I had to pack out and move to my new school recently.  Instead of taking the 95 down the coast, I figured we'd enjoy the drive down Route 17 until we got to Charleston, SC.  What a jackass move.  The roads were slow, and I must have stopped through every town in Va, NC, SC, and Georgia!

We were almost out of Virginia en route to NC when I got pulled over for speeding (my main non-personality vice).  The kindly officer asked me if I was in law school.  I said, actually, I'm about to start teaching at a law school (I'm guessing he saw a teacher's manual to a casebook in my backseat).  He said, well, I guess you know why I pulled you over.  He informed me that Virginia has draconian speeding laws; had I been going just a few miles faster I would have been required to appear before a magistrate judge and spend the night in jail.  Jiminy Crickets.  Of course, he recognized that I wasn't driving dangerously (there was nary a car on the road at that point and I wasn't swerving or anything), so I got off with a mere 225 dollar ticket.   This was probably my only speeding ticket in memory, and while I think the penalties are a bit severe, I know that I have nothing to complain about.  If legislatures think speeding is the near-equivalent to crystal meth trafficking, then so be it.  That's democracy.  I happen to think that it would be better if we could adopt more pre-commitment strategies to avoid speeding.  My own strategy is to drive a weak-engined Civic, btw. But that's hardly sufficient it seems.  (Parenthetically, Ed Cheng (Brooklyn) has an interesting paper on speeding and Napster and structural impediments to law-breaking.)

More vivid reminders of speed's dangers were posted along South Carolina's roads, which in construction zones, posted photos of little girls saying, Please don't kill my daddy; he works on this road, or Let 'em work, let 'em live.   The best one was a sign that said something like, since 1988 28 people have died on this road.  Drive carefully. (Or maybe, don't be a statistic.)

I find these incredibly powerful semiotic gestures, and I wonder why I never saw this kind of state moralizing (I say that with respect not derision) in the North or even in California, let alone federal roads.  Maybe that will be a new PrawfsBlawg cause, after adoption and organ donation...and now cancer-reduction.

Anyway, Charleston SC is a glorious place to spend a night or twelve, eat pralines, and go on mule-drawn carriage rides.  We spent less than 16 hours there, but it made me want to go back soon.  We missed Savannah on the way down, but I gather it's not too far away and worth its own trip.  And T-town is growing on me by the nano-second.  As I write, I'm sitting in my study overlooking a pastoral golf course.  The home I'm renting for the year lends insights into the American dream, and its allure.  I'm paying less in rent now for a 2400 sq. foot home than I did for my 1BR in apt in Dupont Circle.  Everything else in TLH seems about the same price as big city living--restaurants, movie rentals,  upscale groceries are all the same.  And so are Target, Walmart and CVS.  You'd think that there'd be lower prices when the real estate is lower-priced; but my quick perusal of gas prices belies that.  It seems gas prices are higher in the poorer parts of town here.  Maybe that's because there's a higher likelihood of robbery, but it seems weird still.

As for Prawfs business, this week augurs the arrival of Brooks Holland, another junior crimprof who was a former public defender in New York and who now teaches at Gonzaga, in Washington (state).  I want to thank Bernie Meyler and Ekow Yankah for their posts the last few weeks. Hope to see you back soon.