Christmas means many different things to many different people.

To many people, Christmas is a time to be with family, and celebrate, have fun, eat a lot, and have the joy of getting and giving presents.

For other people, the holiday is more related to religion.

So it's not odd that many, many people don't go to any service on Christmas, because for them it is not really a religious holiday. What strikes me as interesting is that people who normally go to Church, would not go on Christmas, which to Christians represents the birth of Christ. There is a whole season of the church calendar devoted to it!

I am one of millions of Americans who have been diagnozed with ADD or ADHD.

A semi-technical definition of ADD/ADHD is:
"Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychiatric diagnosis that interprets divergent personality traits perceived to be distracting as symptoms of a mental disorder. Characteristics sometimes interpreted as symptoms include hyperfocus, hyperactivity, social anxiety, forgetfulness, mood shifts, and disobediance." from wikipedia

According to one poll, more people say yes.

This is an important issue to the president, because previously many people who didn't agree with his views or policies still respected his character. Also, his job approval rating is at 42%.

Now more and more Americans are saying that they don't believe he has been honest with the public. For many people, this has to do with how our country became involved in the war in Iraq. The approval rating for President Bush's handling of Iraq is just 38%.

"Under the Patriot Act, the FBI issues more than 30,000 national security letters allowing the investigations each year, a hundred-fold increase over historic norms"

Even those lawmakers who helped to pass the Patriot Act are now becoming concerned with its usage, specifically how the number of investigations of people have skyrocketed.

After Harriet Miers didn't get the support from the conservatives that she needed, President Bush went looking for someone who would get that support, and found that person in Samuel Alito.

Alito has more experience as a judge than Miers did, considering she wasn't ever one, but perhaps more importantly, Alito has a solidly consevative background.

Accidents happen.

It's part of life, its part of nature. Accidents are not even particularly rare, or avoidable. No matter what flaws we fix in something, there will always be more that we don't see, or can't compensate for. "Accidents, he argues, do not occur so much because of exceptional errors or inexcusable negligence but because a number of quite regular errors pile up, often compounded in an unanticipated way...accidents are best understood as the unexpected consequences of normal behavior; hence they are not only normal, but inevitable." - Watts

So, I definatly had a wacky weekend.

After a very stressful trip to the airport, and sitting around in various airports and planes for ours, I was finally home. But instead of actaully going home, I was picked up from the airport, and my mother, my mothers boyfriend Colin, and her friend Frieda, all piled into the car to go to Lookout Mountain to go hang gliding.

Not every problem that incoming freshman have to deal with is academic in nature.

I can't tell you how many times people have asked me for help with their laundry since we all arrived.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Its just not what most people first think about when they think about the transition into college. I know it wasn't for me. But it can be those little things that end up stressing out new freshmen.

Thanks to my a discussion in my history class, and a blog entry I read by Tech Goddess, I started thinking about inequality in education.

I know I was personally affected by changing education standards by my high school. I went to an academic magnet high school that drew from the whole county. When the program was first started in 1985, there was a quota that had to be meet for a percentage of minority students admitted. It was enforced racial integration basically, because instead of doing a random lottery of teenagers who met the academic requirements for admission, the process was heavily slanted towards those with minority status. Things continued on that way for 17 years, until 2001 when it was decided that this was a discriminatory practice, and was banned.

Sometimes I feel like I'm speaking a foreign language. Or like I've moved to a different country, even though I am from the US. Bryn Mawr has seriously stood what I'm used to on its head.

I'm not from this area of the country, I'm from an area that is not overly well represented "The South". This departure from everything I've ever known was a deliberate one, I wanted to learn about new kinds of people and new cultures and I have. But sometimes people have a hard time understanding me.

I've often been told that I'm rather vague. Check this dude (J. Roberts) out:

"Go ahead and continue not to answer," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told the nominee at one point.

Later, Biden interrupted Roberts and, when criticized by the Judiciary Committee chairman, said, "His answers are misleading, with all due respect."

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! They may be misleading but they are his answers," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman.

I hate to admit it, but I am really fascinated my politics and political blogs. Thats why I added the blog called The Mighty Middle to the aggregator. I really liked the authors writing style, and the fact that I could read it, and learn something while being entertained at the same time.

If you interested in political blogs, one resource to find the is

Excerpt from the Truman Doctrine:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

There are many conflicting values that our society holds dear, two of the those are the right to free speech, and the responsibility we all have to be kind to one another. They are conflicting because in order to be kind and respectful to everyone, its not always possible to speak your mind. The question for me is, which takes precedence, and who gets to decide that?

There are many places to explore such a conflict, something as basic as freedom of speech, and kindness touch nearly every aspect of out lives. However, an example of one place that this applies is the internet. There are many places you can go on the internet that restrict not only those who can contribute to them, or what the topics of such forums might be, but also “hostility”. There are many places where you aren’t even allowed to disagree with an idea. However, on the other hand, the internet could be the ultimate platform for free speech. In life we are restrain from saying many things because we fear what people might think, or do, or say. However, online there is the possibility of almost infinite anonimity.

I know I personally have be totally shocked to hear about the state of chaos where the hurricanes have hit, and how many people have been harmed not from the hurricane, but from the ensuing violence and shortages.

I know at our dorm meeting we talked about setting up boxes for donations of clothes, toliet stuff, and non perishable foods.

If anyone wants to donate stuff and you can't find anywhere to do so(though I don't know why that would be the case) just let me know.

Guardsmen Greeted With Applause, Anger

Skipping over what might seem to be the most obvious topic of conversation, I just wanted to say one thing.

I got my little red glow stick out of my freezer tonight.

It's beautiful.

There are some communities that we are all apart of. For example, the world as a whole is really a kind of community. Our place in the world community is in a way similar to the place we have in our family communities. No one can choose their parents, just the way they have no control over the fact that they were born at all.

Writing in the first plural person, if such a thing exists, is just not working for me.

My point is, there are communities that I am a part of just by existing. And because I am a part of a community, something bigger than myself, I have a responsibility to those communities.

I'm just trying to see how this thing works.

However, my community entry will be about.... well, I guess I'm still working on that one.