Hello once again boys and girls, I’m going to try to get again on a true cycle of updating this site in time for the Fall. Also, in the Fall, the webcam should be making it’s season debut at my new Austin residence.
Also, the Graduate Poll will be active for about another week- I’m looking at Monday or Tuesday to deactivate it, post results and throw up a new one. The theory will be to have weekly polls. We’ll see.
Now on to real musings. The Texas 11, a name given to the 11 Democrats from the Texas Senate who left the state to break quorum during the second special session. Personally, I’m glad they did it. First off, there are much more pressing issues then redistricting. According to law, we’re supposed to redistrict every ten years as soon as possible after the U.S. Census. Well, they didn’t redistrict in 2001 themselves but let it fall back to the courts- which is perfectly legal. Did the courts do a bad job? I don’t know that one way or another but Texas didn’t seem too concerned about it until U.S. Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (who albeit is from Texas), ‘suggested’ that we redistrict since Texas should have more Republicans.
Now call me crazy, perhaps we should have more Republicans, perhaps not. But polls and “overall voting trends” should not be the indication of how many of anything we should have in a representative democracy. The present districts, which were and are still ruled as being legal, elected the people to office. I say the number of Democrats and Republicans are correct for what they should be by that. Some figures I’ve heard include that four present districts should have fallen Republican, but the Democrats were voted in.
In all cases, alright, maybe redistricting would balance things out a little more. So let’s try to pass it during the 140-day hell that occurs in Austin every other year. Oh okay, that didn’t work. Let’s call a special session to spend a month on that and just that. Wait what? It didn’t work either. Hmm, let’s call another one AND change the Senate Rules so this time it will work. All this while Texas has no state school finance plan (as Robin Hood was wiped off the books with no replacement) and all state agencies are taking budget cuts. Why do the budget cuts matter? Just think about how much it costs to run a special session? I’m not sure the numbers on the Reps, but each senator gets $600/mth and $100 per day the Senate is in Session. Not to mention the costs of running all of the offices that are usually on a skeleton-staff during the off-season. It doesn’t sound like a whole bunch but to keep bringing up session after session to discuss something that obviously isn’t cared about that much.
What do I mean? It’s not an issue to most Texans. I’ve heard figures, albeit I haven’t checked them, that said most Texans are against it. Yet, it continues.
One thing I did get a kick out of though- New Mexico’s governor has put the state police on alert to defend the Texan senators if any Texas police officers or officials cross state lines with the intention of bringing them back.
Anyhow, just suck it up, wait until the next regular session and see if you can get something then Perry.

Well, I learned of my current status in BIOL 1144(b)- the zoology lab. Let’s say I’m not ranked last in the class but not first either. The midterm was as expected but all my quizzes to this point have been A’s except for one. As my TA put it, I “can still salvage” the course. I’m like great. No really. It was both sarcastic and not.
The way The University of Texas works is they will accept transfer credit as long as I score a C or better in a class. No matter the grade, as long as it’s above C, I’ll receive credit (CR) for the course. So, even if I have the lowest C possible, in the end, it’s the same as the highest A.
Lessons Learned:
–7:00 am is way too early for a zoology lecture.
–twice a week is too much lab
–mindless memorization, while pointless overall, has a point when it comes to the grade
–don’t mock an university until you’re done taking all your classes
–don’t settle (like I might) for the lowest needed; grad schools will look at transcripts from ALL universities where I earned credit…
I think that’s all for now on that issue. In other news, it looks like I have a place to live for next year. More details on that to come as they are finalized.

Alright. God may not care all that much about the details of my academic career so I’m going to assume it wasn’t him playing games. I’ll just say it was fate.
Before, I mocked MSU for being just so freaken easy. Well, it’s about time I got bit in the butt on that.
Most of my classes to this point- Psych, Socio, Art, Music, History- all have been pretty simple. I didn’t have to study too much and blazing through there on my way to a perfect 4.0 GPA at the school.
This summer session I’m taking General Zoology. It’s kicking my butt. From the lecture-test, I worked my way to my first non-A grade on an assignment at MSU to probably failing, or close to it, my lab-midterm. Luckily, the lab-midterm only counts for 13.5% of my total grade. The test that I didn’t get an A on counts for 25%.
But yes, it comes back to bite me. MSU is still an easy school. The biology lab is mindless and as Wildman called it, “the worst biology has to offer.” However, while I maintain that the lab is not “academia” (based on the definition of “the academic life, community or world”), I’ll grant that it’s exclusion from academia does not infer that it doesn’t require work- no matter how mindless it is.

auto-destruct dvd (story from the bbc)
pope takin’ a drive (story from zenit)
going postal down under (story from ABC-AU)
I have three sites for you today- one a new twist on the video rental arena, another… well, it’s a messy topic and then lastly, what a slow news day looks like for the Vatican.

::auto-destruct dvd::
The BBC reports that a new type of DVD is being developed- a EZ-D. This is a normal DVD in every respect but one: after a short time period, it self-destructs. In short, there is a chemical coating on the disc that oxides in the presence of air so once you open the air-tight packaging, you have only a certain time window the use the disc. After that time period, the disk becomes black and blocking the optics used to read the disc. The article mentions various uses for such technology, namely video rentals.
I find the idea pretty cool all the way around. About to take a road trip? Want to be able to watch a DVD when you get somewhere but don’t want to worry about having to return the disc or finding a rental location? Pick up one of these DVDs whereever and don’t think twice. After a couple of weeks, the disc will be worthless to the rental location (and yourself) so no blood, no foul. What is even better is the company is going to operate a recycling program to take care of the useless discs.

::pope takin’ a drive::
We all know what slow news days look like in America. The nightly news talks more about some human interest story. The front page of the NY Times talks about the latest new technological advance that won’t help anyone really for another five years. The local news spends just a few more minutes talking to the weatherman about his latest fishing trip. I learned today what a slow news day is like for the Vatican. Usually, there are about six good news stories a day mentioning something concret coming out of the Holy See. Today, we get a story from Zenit, an independent news organization who tracks the Church and the Pope, mentioning how the Pope took a morning drive. Today, a morning drive, tomorrow, maybe a walk across the grounds. Stay turned for Thursday though, we might get word that he slept in since he’s on vacation.
In all seriousness, Zenit does an excellent job and I dearly love my church but sometimes, it just makes me laugh.

::going postal down under::
American postal workers have little to complain about in light of this. In New Zealand, farmers are protesting a new tax on livestock by sending manure- that’s right, cow chips and the like- to their Parliament via the country’s postal service. That’s pretty crappy to begin with but what made me laugh is the reason for the tax.
Coming straight from the article: “…the Government said it would levy farmers to help pay for research into livestock emissions of methane and nitrous oxide.
The gases account for more than half the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
That’s right folks, it’s a fart tax.

I finally got around to getting a better polling system together so it means time for a new poll.
If you know me, I have no idea what I want to do overall. I’m at The University of Texas at Austin studying history but what do I want to do with that? Do I want to do anything with that? I don’t know. Am I ready to know? Maybe not. So thus, instead of asking the obvious what should I do with my life question, I’m just going to ask you what I should do after I complete the BA.
Graduate Programs