Amateur Hobotics

Wait; whoa. There's a new SCOTUS justice? I looked away for five minutes, and there is another new one? And... whoa, she's never sat as a judge before. But (from Yahoo News) "While her loyalty to Bush is unquestioned, Democrats publicly and Republicans privately wondered about her qualifications for the high court." Good, then. Nice to see we're putting qualified people on the bench. (Allow me to hop off my soapbox.)

This past week has been pretty good. School is heating up, and the stress is on. I'm coming home for Thanksgiving (join me, please: YAAAAAAY!), which should be just great. And I have an environmental studies/geography midterm on the 17th, a Franz Ferdinand concert to go to on the 18th, followed by a law paper on the 31st, and, in November, a political science paper. All in all, a busy month! It should be a party.

I have been carrying on more or less as usual. We talked about genocide today in international law, which gave me a complex and nearly made me lose my lunch because it sort of highlighted how cold the law can be sometimes, and how cold human beings can be to each other. "No, sorry, we don't think we're obligated to intervene yet. Only 200 000 dead, folks! Call us when you're at a million, and we are so on the case!" So... that was fun.

And then I had cross-country practice. We're doing actual hills workouts this year, which is good for us but terrifically painful, much like angry broccoli with boxing gloves. There was only one person at practice today, apart from me and Jacob, so I am thinking it is Motivational E-mail time. If we're going to bother organizing this (as much as that term can ever apply to me and to Jacob) then the runner-beans had better make it worthwhile.

After cross-country, I had political science. Ian sat with me and Katherine, Emily having gone to Rosh Hashanah services. Hey, we needed a brunette to be a complete blonde-brunette-redhead trio. Ian, as well as having brown hair, is intriguing because he is so socially inept. He seems to have friends in aerospace engineering, but we all know that most engineering students are robots. Or, since Ian is "Hobo Ian" because (last year) he was rather scruffy, his engineering student friends are Hobots. That not-at-all-laboured joke is hilarious to me, Katherine, Emily, and Chris (she's at Trent this year), which gives you a sense of just how huge our brains are, that we can think deep thoughts and still have that kind of space left for convoluted in-jokes.

My heavens. Katherine is having an awakening in feminist economics on the phone with Emily in the other room, defending the Marilyn Waring article on economics we had to read this week for public affairs. I never thought I would see the day! I think she has overcome her fear of feminism, realizing that it is more a fear of crunchy people with hairy legs and protest placards. What a good day this is turning into! I think the highlight of it was the revelation that some economists view the family as a kind of mini-corporation, where "toleration of inefficient personnel" is a real drag, y'all. Like, I hate babies. They're just so useless! And lazy! Why would anybody have them when it's more advantageous just to work hard enough to pay for a good old folks' home, where the caretakers may not love you, but know CPR? Honestly. People are so obstinate in not conforming to the rational economic model of the family, aren't they?

Ahem. Go about your business, I'm just feeling a bit loopy. Must go, Jon Stewart's on.