don't you know by now {you can't turn back}

Oh my god.

I wrote a sort of current event review paper thing for polisci about this study published that says that not only is there a strong correlation between winners of elections and physical attributes, but consistently in head-to-head fictional matchups, women were rated less competent.

( Said quickiepaper with more info on the study )

This goes on the message board thingie for the class, and somebody actually wrote a response piece (as we're required to do). I say again, oh my god. You've just got to read it.

( ' I think the biggest factor is that women, for the most part, have things to do that are more important to them.' )

Thank you for an excellent essay? No, sir. You do not get the privledge of thanking me for writing an excellent essay because you know what? Not only do your arguments make no sense, as they're organized in some kind of crazyland kind of way, they're wrong. And I could appreciate your arguments if they were at least, you know, decent, but they're not. I see where you're trying to go with the societal stigma against the working woman, but you didn't get there.

And the worst part is that this is one of the best essays I've seen posted on there. (Admittedly, I've not nearly read them all, and a moment ago I just flipped open to one that's actually good, but still.) Such is the caliber of my honors college political science class. Le sigh.

Something I was just thinking about.

All this talk about Sarah Palin raising a child with special needs. Umm, he's not even one yet. I highly doubt she's done anything different for Trig than she had to do for her other kids when they were that age. That's not to diminish the work it's going to take as he gets older, but I'm pretty sure the special needs bit hasn't exactly factored into his raising thus far. So though I understand we've got to make it sound like she's got experience at doing something besides cutting funding for rape victims (btw, paper I wrote about that? 100%, baby!), I think we can stop talking about it like she's got all this experience in taking care of special needs kids.

Another random thought. What's with the Denver Broncos sending people to the Houston Texans? First Kubiak, who was Elway's backup QB until 1991 and then offensive coordinator for the Broncos later, goes off and becomes the Texans' head coach. And then what does Kubiak do? Hire the DB head coach (who was first his coach and then his old boss) Mike Shanahan's son as his offensive coordinator. And here I was wondering how the Texans managed to beat us in the preseason.

Back to politics. During the debate--

McCain: During the Depression era, we had a thing called the home ownership loan corporation.

Did anyone else's mind jump to his use of the word "we" there and immediately use it as confirmation of the fact that McCain is, in fact, incapable of dying? I have a feeling Colbert's going to pick up on that one as good for a few dozen dinosaur jokes.

And--
SCHIEFFER: The question was, what are you going to cut?
MCCAIN: Energy -- well, first -- second of all, energy independence.
Umm, what?

Edit: and to connect the two a little bit more, here's politics + football.

MCCAIN: Well, if you'll turn on the television, as I -- I watched the Arizona Cardinals defeat the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.
OBAMA: Congratulations.



And hooray for fall break being this weekend, as I'm going to go hear Obama speak again on Saturday and possibly Jill Biden on Friday (depending on where she's talking, as the schedule hasn't been released yet). I really wish McCain and/or Palin would swing by, though; I'm an equal opportunity political speech listener, and I'd like to hear what the other side's got to say.

I've been crazy tired since probably 9 or so, so I'm not sure why I'm still awake. Probably going to try to go up to the election office and vote tomorrow (or Friday), so I've got to actually be coherent enough to, you know, read names and issues (because there are quite a few of the latter on the ballot this time around; I've got a list but I've yet to go through and look at them and decide what I like and what I don't) and such.

OMG beautiful weather today. Downright chilly most of the morning--add the windchill from bike riding and I was goosebumpy through all of my polisci class. Which is interesting. The class, not the goosebumps. It's one of those ones where all the material is interesting, but you come out of it looking over your notes and wondering what exactly there is in there to be tested on. Plus, the teacher's still trying to pretend she's from Oklahoma. Seriously. I recorded part of her lecture today, so I'm going to go though that and pick out some of the strikingly not-Oklahomian bits to share.

I'm in the top floor lobby atm, and not only did (in the few minutes it took for me to run back to my room, pop a bag of popcorn, and come back) somebody take my spot in the cushy chair alcove, now two other people (boyfriend and girlfriend, I'm assuming) have come into the same alcove to powow. Idk what they're doing--the girl padded in in her pajamas, bringing two bottles of water (vodka?) and the guy came off the elevator, and now they're just talking. Nothing wrong with that, I mean, but don't you have rooms? And at 11pm?

I am quite annoyed currently with the network stuff here. They're all "don't go over your weekly bandwidth or you'll drop down to dial up speeds!1!one!!" Umm, that's what I'm getting anyway. (And still managed to get within 400mb of the limit a few days ago, LOL). It's horrible. The inconsistency is the worst part--I'll be going 80 bytes per second for a while, and then it'll jump up to over 1mb/sec for a while, then back down to where it usually hangs out at 20-30kb/s. No idea how I got the killer speed, no idea what made it go the snail speed--all on Megaupload at pretty much the same time of day, so that's not it. And it's not even the wireless--this is on the wired connection. The wireless is more consistently fast (300kb/s ish in the basement lobby) if you're actually in the wireless zone--I can pick up the wireless from my room since this lobby has it, but the connection is spotty so it's not as quick.

[Edit: later, 1:20 am ish? I'm getting between 750k/s and 1mb/s back in the room on the wired. *sigh*]

Food here still doesn't make me happy. Omlette bar days do, because they've got whole eggs that I can separate myself (LOL at how I have to do it) in the hall that's practically in my building and a bucket o' egg white in the one that's on the way to most of my classes. But due to my scheduling, I rarely get down there for breakfast, which is sad. Most other days, the only thing I can count on is the salad bar (which tends to suck at the one near my classes--wilted lettuce, still-frozen vegetables, etc.; I only hit that one on T/Th for lunch, though, as other times I'm either in class during the meal times or near the closer one) and I have to bring my own fat free italian down because they only have one fat free dressing (raspberry--it's good, but you get tired of it quickly because it's a pretty flat flavor). There's a grill with burgers and stuff every day, and then some random fried meat substance most of the time for the main course (pork fritters today, etc.), and then one random thing that's usually not something I'll eat.

Even with the good weather today, the gym has not become any more tolerable. If there's more than one other person on the tiny row of treadmills, it's too loud to hear whatever episode of something I've put on my MP3 player (I wrap the velcro arm band around the handlebar thing to sort of prop up the screen so I can see it, though I've got to keep adjusting it the entire time because it tends to flop around because I can't quite get it to velcro on tightly enough), and you can never hear/see the TV. The latter mostly because my glasses are too wide for my face, idk how, and I can't get the ear pieces to sort of go back inwards, so if my face gets at all sweaty, they start sliding down.

Speaking of TV. O HELLZ YES, DENVER BRONCOS. Thank you for Monday night, sirs. But OMG, I didn't realize that we let Elam go. The new kicker's not bad (by that I mean he didn't miss last night), but IL Jason Elam. He's 38 and still the best kicker in the league. Plus, he's been playing pretty much my entire Denver-watching career, so he's one of the names that I still know from the Elway days. I read an article talking about how that's the exact reason that all the Denver fans are up in arms about his leaving, which is prolly true. Doesn't hurt that he kicks ass, though.

Re: mock trial. So, turns out that the pre-law fraternity is trying to start up a group. Which is good--takes the pressure off of me having to try to do so (as that almost definitely wouldn't have gotten done this year, now that I've looked at how many hoops you have to jump through). Nobody on the team's got MT experience at this level, though--two of us did it in HS (I think I actually beat her in State two years ago--definitely in rankings, if not also in a physical match) and we were talking after the intro meeting about co-captaining it. Which would be cool. I've pretty much got to join the pre-law frat to captain it, though, it's seeming, as the team's being done through them rather than as a separate club. Which is pricey. And I still don't have my bank card that they were supposed to send me (the form got turned in the 2nd of September, and I already had the account, all they had to do was print me up a card). Nor do I have my Public Speaking book that I ordered more than two weeks ago (totally could have done without it, too, as I know people in that class that I could have borrowed the book from to write my "Teach a chapter of the book to the class" speech, but it was only $6 or so including shipping, so whatever). That one's ticking me off. It's getting negative shipping feedback, LOL (as though most of the delay was probably the post office, the shipping confirmation they sent me says that they didn't ship it for some 5 days after I paid, which is not speedy).

Battery is low on the computer. Must go back now. Final note? Need to find out why I'm so sick pretty much since I moved in here. Dining hall food, methinks, but it's gotten to the point where I'm actually throwing up more days than not because I'm so nauseous.