I volunteered today at St. Vincent de Paul. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it’s a thrift store. I spent most of the day sorting through clothes and things that were donated. Don’t worry, mom, they had us wear latex gloves in case there were gross things.

I started law school this week at Saint Louis University. They’re big on philanthropy, so a group of 19 of us went and volunteered. We were able to get through a lot, and the people who work there were definitely happy to have us. My work consisted of grabbing a bag of donations and sorting it into giant bins - one for women’s tops, one for men’s tops, one for women’s bottoms, etc. I got kind of annoyed with one of the other volunteers because he wasn’t doing it right. He would just grab something and stick it in the closest bin. I’m sure I accidentally put something in the wrong bin at some point, but he was just being careless.

I think everyone should donate their gently used clothes, especially guys. I’ve never really thought about it before today, but I realized that more women donate than men. It makes sense. I wear my clothes until they’re completely worn out. HA! Get it? worn out? Anyway…we had the women’s clothing piled up about eight feet in the air, but the men’s didn’t even come up to my waist. Also, don’t donate things that are broken or have giant holes. The biggest surprise of the day was that people donate used underwear! How do I know it was used? Just think about it and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

More later…

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Hello all. It’s been about a year since I’ve posted anything on this blog, and I want to explain why. I enjoyed blogging in the past, but after doing PPP for about two years, blogging became more like a chore. I was frustrated because I felt that my opportunities at PPP were few and far between due to an unfair page rank system, which was not the fault of PPP. It reached a point that I no longer enjoyed learning about new things and discussing them on here, so I stopped. I focused on my wedding, my family, my friends, my students, and my classes. Now, almost a year later, I’ve decided to start blogging again. I may do PPP again, eventually, but for now, I’m just going to enjoy sharing.

More later…

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There has been a lot of news about Sarah Palin, the Republican Nominee for Vice President, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter. I’m glad that Obama has come out to say that he doesn’t think it should be an issue because, after all, his mom was an unwed teenager when she was pregnant with him. I hope this is a trend that continues. I think that the election should focus on the candidates and leave out their families. For example, when talking about Joe Biden, it shouldn’t matter that he will be deployed to Iraq in October. Whatever he does with the military as Vice President should be done for the good of the troops, not because his son is in the National Guard.

I found this at the Indiana Business Journal’s website. I think it raises some extremely good points. Send this to any Hoosier that you think might be able to help.

Please Copy this Column
Chris Katterjohn—IBJ Commentary
August 4-10, 2008

(In defense to ‘60’s radical Abbie Hoffman and his 1971 cult paperback “Steal This Book,” I hereby relinquish our copyright to this column and give you permission to copy it. I’ll tell you what to do with this later.)

Silly me, I thought Mitch Daniels had really shaken things up and done a great job in his first four years as governor. To hear his Democratic opponents in the upcoming election tell it, you’d think he had provided uninspired leadership and ignored the big issues of economic development,
jobs and education.

I couldn’t disagree more.

A word to the wise for Jill Long Thompson and her running mate Dennis Oxley: Don’t challenge Daniels on the economic-development front. You’ll get drubbed.

A column I wrote last spring enumerated many of his administration’s accomplishments in this area, as well as multiple outside accolades and high rankings that independent sources have given the state because of them. I won’t recap the long list here but I’ll add to it. Last month, Standard and Poor’s
raised Indiana’s general debt ratings to AAA—its highest rating and a first in the state’s history. This rating reflects an improving economy and the fiscal strength of our government.

I could go on and on about the current administration’s success in every area, from leasing the toll road, to making government more efficient, to improving education and to making health insurance more accessible to the state’s lower-income families. But I won’t.

Daniels has accomplished this and much more by employing his own strengths and by surrounding himself with high-energy, creative and intelligent people. Those people have found ideas and ways to implement them that have set our state on nothing short of a revolutionary course.

I hope the Indiana public is wise enough to see this and not be swayed by Thompson’s and Oxley’s campaign rhetoric that would lead them to believe otherwise. But, I worry.

I worry that the public is not well-enough informed. Granted, all of us are feeling pressure on our pocket-books, but that is certainly not the fault of the current administration in the Indiana statehouse.

Granted, some Hoosiers are losing their jobs and the unemployment rate is climbing, but that’s not Daniels’ fault, either. In fact, he’s been busy adding jobs in record numbers to try to compensate for that.

I also worry about the Obama factor. I’ve seen so many young people jazzed up about this year’s election because of Barack Obama. They see him in a New Age kind of dude, one who is different, young-ish and idealistic—The Anti-Bush.

My guess is that those newly organized voters will turn out in record numbers at voting booths across the nation and here in Indiana.

That’s awesome. I just hope in their fervor they don’t disregard the statewide races, pull the Democratic lever in one motion, and exit the voting booth without giving due consideration to Daniels and his accomplishments.

I feel certain that a close study of his administration’s track record and a comparison of his credentials and those of his team with the backgrounds with the backgrounds of the Democratic challengers will yield a lot more votes for Daniels.

How could it not?

And what if Obama ends up selecting Sen. Evan Bayh for his running mate, as some have suggested he will? This could energize a whole other group of Democratic straight-ticketers—one that may be big enough to have an impact.

So here’s where you and Abbie Hoffman come in. Please—I urge you—copy this column and hand it out to anyone you think needs it, be they a supercharged young Obama supporter or a Hoosier who loves Evan Bayh and is enthralled by the notion of the favorite son.

There is a lot at stake.

I am a camp counselor for the next two weeks, although I have today and tomorrow off because I have to fly to a conference in Texas. I won’t say what camp because I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I just want to let you know that you should be weary of the camps you send your kids to. When the kids started checking in on Sunday, they were asking what cabin they were supposed to sleep in. None of the counselors had been given a list of cabin assignments, so we asked the camp director. He said that it didn’t matter because they would all be sleeping in whichever cabin and bed they wanted to by the end of camp. Okay, it’s a little unorthodox, but I can deal with that. So I said, well, which are for the boys and which are for the girls? Surely they’re not sleeping in the same cabins. They’re juniors and seniors in high school, and this man is surely smart enough to know that hormonal teenagers should not be living in coed cabins. He said that it didn’t matter! They could all share whatever cabins however they wanted!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Luckily, I was there and I rounded up the other counselors and I told them this just was not acceptable. The orange cabin is for the boys and the green cabin is for the girls. If I am responsible for these kids, they won’t be sleeping together under my watch. I don’t really feel like getting in trouble because some high school girl got pregnant at camp. Also, it increases the odds of rape and other things. Maybe some of you don’t mind if your kids get pregnant at summer camp. As the counselor, I do. I’m just surprised that the camp director seems to be indifferent.

Over the past few years, I’ve been hearing a lot of people change how they refer to the founders of the United States. In order to be politically correct, people are now referring to our Founding Fathers as our “Framers.” If we call them our fathers, it’s offensive because it excludes women. I think this is going to a bit of an extreme. There aren’t any women who are included among the “framers,” so I think that Founding Fathers is acceptable. What do you all think?

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about Retired Gen. Wesley Clark challenging John McCain’s military leadership. General Clark said that McCain was not qualified to be President of the United States because he had never led troops during war time - he had only served during war time.

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility…He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, “I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not.” CNN.com

This logic makes no sense to me. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan…none of these men led troops during war time. Why should we hold Sen. McCain to a higher standard?

When asked for a response, Barack Obama said that he would never question anyone’s patriotism. That is what we in communication call a “Red Herring Fallacy.” It sounds like it answers the question, but it actually has nothing to do with it. Sen. Obama was asked to comment on Gen. Clark’s remarks on John McCain’s military background and leadership abilities, but instead he talked about patriotism, which is not the same thing!

I recently wrote a paper for a class about electronic voting, and I learned some interesting things. For example, in Fairfax County, VA, in 2003, a programming error in the electronic voting machines caused them to mysteriously subtract 100 votes from one particular candidate’s totals. Also, in San Bernardino County, CA in 2001, a programming error caused the computer to look for votes in the wrong portion of the ballot in 33 local elections, which meant that no votes registered on those ballots for that election. Furthermore, in Volusia County, FL in 2000, an electronic voting machine gave Al Gore a final vote count of negative 16,022 votes. Finally, the 2003 election in Boone County, IA, had the electronic vote-counting equipment showing that more than 140,000 votes had been cast in the Nov. 4 municipal elections. The county has only 50,000 residents and less than half of them were eligible to vote in this election.

The largest problem of electronic voting is that it is not auditable because it does not involve a paper ballot. In the event of a recount, the state or national Board of Elections (depending on the type of office the election is concerning) will not be able to conduct a full count of all voter-verified paper ballots in public view, because these ballots will not exist. They will be lost in the technological realm. We will have no way of ensuring that our election is accurate, and we have elected the individual who is taking office.

It is necessary to audit an election so that the public can be certain that the voting technology is accurate. In other fields, computer systems are routinely audited on a continuous basis, either proving that the systems are accurate, or identifying the inaccuracies that need corrected. The audit is important because it allows for the discovery of mistakes in our voting machines, thereby improving the machines for future elections. Furthermore, if the audit proves the machines are working properly, it provides peace-of-mind that one’s votes have been appropriately counted. This is where another benefit comes into play. Paper ballots allow for peace-of-mind regarding election viability.

My two main panels were accepted for presentation at the annual convention for the National Communication Association! YAY! One of the panels is presenting about the relationship between a speech/debate team and a speech tutoring center. I was asked to be on this panel because I have eight years of experience competing in speech, two years as a speech tutor, and one year as an undergraduate speech instructor. My other panel is examining how the Holocaust is communicated in present-day.

Now for the problem: The convention is in San Diego. Driving from Ohio is pretty much out of the question. I’m looking for someone who I can share a hotel room with, but the airfare is a problem on my limited budget. I have some options, but none are very cheap. I live in between Cincinnati and Columbus, so I could fly out of Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, South Bend, or Fort Wayne. Here are the fares:

Columbus: $364.00 on Continental
Dayton: $332.00 on AirTran
Cincinnati: $628.99 on Delta
Indianapolis: $260.00 on AirTran
South Bend: $328.00 on United
Fort Wayne: $498.00 on Delta

Clearly, Cincinnati is out, which is a shame because it is the closest. Fort Wayne is also out of the question, and Columbus is pretty muuch out, too. That leaves Indianapolis, South Bend, and Dayton. Indy and Dayton are on the same airline, so I would go with the cheaper one, which is Indy. Therefore, it’s between Indianapolis and South Bend. They’re both about 2 hours away from my parents’ house. The difference is $70, which is a pretty decent amount, but I don’t really know very much about AirTran. In this day and age, I don’t want to take a risk. Do any of you know anything about AirTran? Help!

I was dropping my entrecards today and I saw this great post at newyorktraveler.net. It’s has great tips for when you travel. I definitely agree with number 2, interact with the passengers. I went to Tennessee with my mom and grandmother last fall and it really got on my nerves that no one was talking! Especially when being the driver, I need some good conversation. One of my favorite times during that trip was learning about my grandmother’s childhood.