When I arrived at Kinsolving today, there was a guy and a girl standing outside with signs that says “FREE HUG”. Lots of people took them up on the offer. I got them in a group hug. It was a pleasure to see sights like these because I think what this world needs is love.

About a month ago, my HIS 356P (The US in the Civil Rights Era) professor assigned a paper assignment that counted toward 25% of the grade. I chose the one over MLK vs. Malcolm X (I will post the paper when I finish it). It has taken me two weeks to read the items related to the paper and another two weeks to actually write the paper. Just a few hours ago, I got the following message from the class’s listserv:

Did Prof. Greene ever give us a prompt for either paper? If so can someone send it to me/give the jist of it to me? If not does she just expect us to write a 5 page essay about Malcom X and Martin Luther King or what? If you get this and you know anything about it pleeeeease write me back.Thanks,
xxxxx

I took a look at his Facebook profile, and it says a few interesting things about him. I will reserve all the judgments I make to myself, but I will give him one word: godspeed. If you want to know what my reply was, I merely asked him to take a look at the class’s home page and noted that the paper was assigned around midterm time.

Whenever I ride around campus, I make sure that everybody around me is safe, even if it means slowing down a bit and going the long way to follow the road signs (after all, a bike is considered to be a vehicle in UT). Unfortunately, some people do not do that — they ride like only they are on the road and are, in essence, in a rush. Today, I saw the benefit of slowing down at someone’s expense. It was a green light at an intersection where the bike lane goes away. In the front of me was another biker, and on the left was a bus. While I waited to be behind the bus (which, by the way, is a great place to hang out at during the winter), the guy went straight forward. Eventually, he got sideswiped by the bus. Although he was all right, I was a bit shaken.

So the moral of the story is this: It is important to hold paramount the safety of yourself and others. The selfless sacrifice of a few seconds could mean saving your life.

Indeed, the competition for Battle of the Buildings was very fierce. During Capture the Flag, people hid in the most unlikely of places around each other’s buildings and there was some damage to a building in the process. Consequently, that event was canceled. We also had another game called “Bounty Hunter” (a.k.a. “Murder”). That ended without notice at all and took me by surprise.

Those were the two things that did not show up on tonight’s scoreboard, and that is where the once-dominant building holds some of its dissent in the way the game was scored. Even more unimaginable was what happened in Penny Wars. In summary: Every building has a jug. A penny = +1 pt, anything else = negative points (e.g. $1 bill = -100 points). One person put in a $50 bill, and another put a $100 bill. That landed them in the last place despite the honorary title of raising the most money.

Repeating what I did last year, I put in $10 in pennies into my building jug and two $1 bills in everybody else’s. For that, someone is mad at me (allegedly for exacerbating the problem). So, I’m letting you readers decide what I did wrong.

Update:Murder was canceled because of the reactions from people who got “killed.” I heard that the person in charge of the event (who is a rep in the building that lost) gave up the event. There is also a Facebook group over this. As a veteran and mentor, I would like to put on the record that I am shocked and appalled at this.

Over the past half-month, I have gone through a good bit of stuff. Here is just a small sampling of them:

I. Trip to Topeka
I went to Topeka with the University of Texas Solar Vehicles Team to a get-together of all the solar car teams interested in competing in the 2008 race. We turned a race that was doubtful to happen to something that will definitely happen through our enthusiasm. If you think we are going to build those pancakes again, think again — we have put forth these new rules:

• Upright seating, strobe lights, external emergency disconnects, and daytime running lights are now required for all cars.
• For teams that are able to afford the more expensive gallium-arsenide cells, they are limited to an array size of 6m². However, teams using the regular cells are still allowed 8m².

These rules slow down the cars, make things more of an engineering challenge, and emphasize safety, which is most paramount.

II. Battle of the Buildings
Battle of the Buildings is a Whitis Court tradition where the Residence Hall Council (RHC) puts on a series of events to make the buildings compete against each other. Not only did we have our own versions of Project Runway and Iron Chef, we also had a talent show and some field days. One year brought on so many changes! On the bright side, more residents participated in the program and were very competitive and all the buildings broke a building’s dominance. However, the breaking of this dominance was the result of some changes in the way the events were scored. I was not involved in the scoring process, but I think that the changes took more factors into account and gave buildings with fewer residents a fighting chance. In any case, the results stand thus:

1. LLB
2. LLC
3. LLF (my building!)

III. Heck Week
Last week was another one of those weeks where I have three tests crammed in one week. To compound that, I had two back-to-back tests on Friday. My matricies class troubles me.

IV. Faith in Crises
In politics, I have always seen the attempt to legislate morality as attempts to trap the other party. Well, this time, it looks like the party of “family values” has fallen in their own trap. First, there is Mark Foley, who resigned because of sexually explicit emails to male Congressional pages (reference). To add to this mess, a pastor who strongly condemned homosexuality was retroactively caught for having gay sex and drugs over the past three years (reference).

I will admit that for a few brief moments, I would gloat at the revealing of this hypocrisy. However, I am saddened that we do not have strong-willed people to guide us, that people have fallen to their weakness of will. I am quite sure that the news has shaken the faith of a few. For those people, I have this: Remember that God is perfect and humans are not. There are unfortunate instances where religion will be invoked as rhetorical devices. Your best defense against those would be your convictions and living by them. Embrace and practice what you think is right and reject what you think is wrong.