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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Finals Woes

Finals are steadily approaching and as they get nearer and nearer, students (of course including me) are getting less and less sleep. The library is open till midnight and the computer lab in the TSC (taggert student center) is open 24 hours. I have been taking advantage of those two facts the last two days and will continue to do so. My paper hasn't progressed yet, but I've got just about all of the research done. Plus my professor (thank goodness!) gave us an extension till next Wednesday. Happy, happy day. But I need to get it done before then because the final I'm most worried about is on Wednesday as well. My goal is to have this paper done by Sunday at the latest so I can still have time to study for that final. Plus find a couple hours for my other two which are on Monday and Tuesday. But this one on Wednesday is going to be nasty to study for. We'll have some short answers/fill in the blanks and maybe 3 long essays on the exam. My professor gave us a study guide for the essays the other day and there are 11 potential questions on there. 11! So I'm going to stop writing on blogs and researching and writing my paper.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Supid Paper

School is getting ready to end and that means major papers for me. One got finished yesterday (good riddance), but I've still got a few more. 2 one pagers (those will take about 3 minutes each), 1 three to five pagers (that will be a bit more difficult, maybe an hour or two), and one 10 pager. Ug. I had a topic all ready and articles I was going to look at, but then I realized that I really have not enough interest in the topic to do a research paper on it. The topic was implications for the US if China were to rise to a great economic and military power. At this point in my life, I don't have a whole lot of interest in military affairs. I'm more of a human rights person. That's why I changed my topic to the validity of China's claims on Tibet. I've always liked researching Tibet, but right now I'm just not excited for any of it. The paper is due on Friday and I have only barely begun the research. Sigh. This should prove to be interesting...

Friday, April 20, 2007

House Seat for DC

Yesterday was a great day for citizens of the District of Colombia. The House passed a bill giving DC's representative a voting seat. One problem - it may not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The way the bill would work (as I understand it) is one new seat would go to DC and one new seat would go to Utah to balance out the new Democratic vote. 437 House seats would exist until the 2010 census when the total number would go back to 435 and the seats would just be rearranged according to population like it is every 10 years. (Just FYI, Utah will get a new seat in 2010 if they don't get one with this bill).
So why all the controversy? Why is it going to be hard to pass in the Senate? Frankly, I don't know. Those who oppose the bill are arguing that the Constitution only allows for the states to have representation in Congress. Granted, that is what the Constitution says: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature." But it's not like the Constitution hasn't been radically changed before...
"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand"
Utah has one representative for about every 820,000 people.
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Other persons of course referring to slaves.
So why can't we amend the Constitution to let the District of Colombia have a voting seat? After all, the census estimates 550,521 live in DC as of 2005 while the same year it was estimated that Wyoming had a population of only 509,294. How is it that over 550,000 of citizens of the United States don't have a voice in Congress? Some argue that the founders of this nation didn't intend for DC to have representation because it isn't a state or part of a state (let's ignore the fact that DC wasn't established when the country was founded). But my personal belief is that is was the intention of the founders to make sure everyone had a voice in Congress. That's the whole point of a Representative Democracy. By not giving DC a voting seat we'd be going against one of the most fundamental principles this great nation was founded on.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Blizzard

It's snowing crazy a lot outside right now. And I didn't bring a coat to campus today. Sad stories. So here's a question I just want to throw out there into the void. How is it that guys who are way super tight (as in if they weren't straight they'd be partners tight) don't write each other on missions? I write all of them, they all write me, so how come they don't write each other? Or even have each other's addresses? This just completely confuses me.
Another sad story. Last weekend I went to Trolley Square with my brother, sister, and their spouses. I got a necklace and 2 bracelets that were 50% off (but still it cost $20). The super cute green bracelet broke when I was putting my backpack on, and I lost the black bracelet somewhere at my parent's house, my friend's car, or a random church. So basically I paid $20 for a necklace that is cute, but I would never have paid $20 for.

Monday, April 16, 2007

My latest crack pot idea

Still at work and still nothing to do so more blogging. But here's my latest crack pot idea that I've been trying to make happen. I was going to try to do this summer, but it will probably have to be next. But I REALLY want to go to somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and do some volunteer work there for a month or so. I figure since that's what I want to do with my life I might as well get an early start. The reason it isn't happening this summer is because it's more expensive than I thought. The cheapest program for 4 weeks that I could find is more than $1000 and I'd still have to get a plane ticket. C'est la vive.

Greetings!

Hello to everyone reading this blog. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with this yet, but probably a lot of it will be venting frustrations of a political nature. We'll just see where it goes...