I’ve been lucky this year to be in some (okay, two) of the right classes at the right times. Last semester, when much of the healthcare debate was going on, I was in Health Law Survey. We didn’t have time to do a comprehensive analysis of the issues, but we read a few articles and looked at some of the provisions in the bills, and the process was enlightening.

I learned just enough in that course to know that U.S. health care is insanely complicated and full of problems and money sinks, and that I never ever want to practice health law.

And now I’m in Space Law in time to talk about Obama’s announcement of the cancellation of the Constellation program. To be honest, I haven’t been keeping up with space stuff in the last few years, and I knew very little about Constellation before it got axed. I’m excited about the further development of private space enterprises, personally, but it’s going to be weird for NASA not to have a manned spaceflight program. Will American kids nowadays have to dream of becoming space tourists?

I heard on the radio a couple weeks ago that NASA will be auctioning off the artifacts of the shuttle program that museums don’t want. I don’t know if any of the auction is open to the public, but how cool would that be, to own a little tiny piece of a space shuttle? Or even a lowly space shuttle wrench that spent its whole career in Florida? Surely there are more bolts and unidentifiable thingamajigs than the museums of the world can handle.

Of course, now I can’t find any reference to this auction at all, except a few news articles about the shuttles themselves being offered to museums (for a surprisingly low price, in the hundreds of thousands). I did, however, find this little series called “50 Years of NASA” from KUHF. You’d better not have been lying to me about this auction thing, KUHF. I can see you from the Law Center. Or I could if the building had windows on that side.

So yeah. Maybe I wandered a little off topic in this post. But I want my space stuff.

I normally don’t have much to say about politics, and today is no different, but I did live-tweet tonight’s State of the Union address (or at least the parts of it for which citizentube’s stream didn’t stall out), so I thought I’d preserve those tweets here for the heck of it. Please to enjoy.

Tuned in just in time to hear “…the President of the United States!” Watching on citizentube. #sotu

Oooh, Supreme Court justices! *fangirl moment* #sotu

What, the little Obamas don’t get to come this year? J.Crew must be so disappointed. #sotu

Ahahahaha, Biden and Pelosi are all matchy-matchy with the lavender and white. Think they called each other last night? #sotu

Hey Nancy, what are you wearing tonight? Oh, probably my lavender suit, Joe, why? Uh, no reason. #sotu

Dude, Obama is live-tweeting his own State of the Union address. Like I always say, vote for the guy who knows magic. #sotu

Does the policewoman sitting next to Michelle Obama have a cane hanging on her wrist? #sotu

Citizentube’s broadcast keeps stopping and starting, sometimes cutting out altogether. Boo. #sotu

How come 5/10 trending topics worldwide are about the SOTU, but when I switch to US, the top 3 are itampon, ipad, and nowthatsghetto? #sotu

The Houston trending topics have no reference to the SOTU at all, even when I refresh the page. Really? #sotu #trendingtopics

Yeah, repeal don’t-ask-don’t-tell! #sotu

“Let’s try common sense!” *silence* #sotu

Do the people of Haiti really chant “USA! USA! USA!” when the Red Cross or whoever pulls someone out of the rubble? #sotu

Wow, surprisingly low production values on the White House staffer panel for citizentube. These kids need a stylist, at least. #sotu

I’m still half-listening to the citizentube post-SotU question-and-answer session, and I have to say that the folks they picked are pretty good on camera and certainly knowledgeable. I guess first impressions aren’t everything. They do look super-young, though—does the White House fire people when they hit 30?

Did anybody else have a Trapper Keeper back in the day? I remember mine—it had overlapping red, yellow, blue, and green rectangles under a plastic cover.

In second or third grade, my elementary school banned Trapper Keepers. Apparently the velcro was so noisy that it disrupted class. This would have been about 1992. I get the feeling they banned something else that year, too, but I can’t remember what it was.

Later, in maybe fifth grade, I had a green fabric-covered binder that zipped all the way around. I guess clipping papers into the holes was too much trouble sometimes.

Nothing profound to say here, just remembering.

You know who else super-awesome has a Twitter account? Besides Carol Hannah, I mean. Stephen Motherfucking Hawking. Oh yes. Probably the most brilliant living physicist is on Twitter. He talks about the TV shows he likes to watch.

Damn, I love living in the future.

In related news, I’ve heard from a few people that Foursquare is the new Twitter. Really? So far I don’t understand the appeal, but apparently Twitter is hard to the get the hang of at first, too, so I’m sticking with it for a while. I’m getting my first smart phone tomorrow (squee!), so maybe that’ll liven it up a bit. Right now it seems more like Stalker’s Little Helper than anything else.

[Source: xkcd.com]

Oh man, do I ever love me some dimensional analysis. It’s so satisfying to line up all the units and cross them out two-by-two until you’re left with the perfect combination…or the mess that confirms that you’ve gravely misunderstood the problem.

If only I could figure out how to apply this fun and useful skill to the study of law, my life would be radically more fulfilling.

I’m watching the Texas/Alabama game. You know, because I need to witness this moment in the cultural, uh, zeitgeist.

Okay, fine, every now and then I enjoy watching a little football. But I’m still a nerd, goshdarnit.

This particular game, though, is not all that enjoyable. Everything after Colt McCoy’s game-ending injury right out of the gate has been more or less embarrassing for everyone involved. I want to give that poor backup quarterback a big hug and tell him it’s not his fault.

One thing Texas does have is better majorettes. I only saw two of them out there, but those two ladies could twirl circles around Alabama’s dozen bumblers. It’s the small victories that matter, right?

(By the way, the Bloglines problem seems to have fixed itself.)

You may or may not have noticed that the RSS feed for this site was lost in the switch. I didn’t notice, actually, so thanks to reader Vee for pointing it out. In fact, the people who use RSS are the least likely to notice—they’ll just stop seeing my posts.

John and I have been working on it, and we think it’s fixed now. You should be able to access the feed at http://prepoceros.com/feed/, the same address as before. There does appear to be a lingering problem with Bloglines (and maybe other readers), which seems to have cached the broken version. Since the link is the same, we’re waiting to see if Bloglines will fix itself in the next day or two. I’ve tried unsubscribing and resubscribing, but it made no difference. Google Reader, meanwhile, picks up the correct feed just fine.

If you’re having trouble with the above link, you can also try http://prepoceros.com/wp-rss.php. We’ll keep an eye on this mess and let you know how it turns out.

———

P.S. While trying to figure out the RSS stuff, we discovered that the switch had also broken all of my permalinks. They should be working now.

Today I switched hosts (Bluehost to Dreamhost) for this site. It was John’s idea; Dreamhost is better for various reasons that I’m sure he’s explained several times. I think the switch went smoothly, but if you see anything that appears to be broken, let me know. And for anyone who is about to comment that my face appears to be broken, yes, yes, you’re very funny. Run along now.

One highlight of mucking around in the blog’s innards is that I finally figured out how to remove that obnoxious “miscellany” tag from my tag cloud.

Here’s the totally boring story: I prefer tags to categories. WordPress used to have only categories. A few versions ago they added tags, but they still kept categories. Every post must be assigned to a category. If you don’t assign it to one, it goes into the default category, which I’d named “miscellany.” I stopped using categories when tags came along, so all my posts went into the “miscellany” category. I can’t delete that category.

Unfortunately, WordPress seems to have trouble keeping categories and tags separate. To every post that by default went into the *category* “miscellany,” it secretly added a *tag* “miscellany.” This ruined my tag cloud, making all the real tags tiny in comparison to the enormous, meaningless MISCELLANY.

This has been bothering me for probably a year now, but today I finally found a way to delete WordPress’s made-up “miscellany” tag. The cloud looks much better now, don’t you think?

Tom at TrueTalk wonders if women under forty call themselves “feminists” anymore.

For my own part, I certainly think women and men should have equal rights, but I don’t label myself a feminist. To my generation (I was born in 1984), the word signals radicalism and activism. If many more women openly called themselves feminists in the ’60s and ’70s, I guess either feminism was more mainstream back then, or radicalism itself was more acceptable.

Today, if a woman under forty tells me she’s a feminist, it’s usually because she has An Agenda, and I’m about to get an earful. It doesn’t matter whether she approves of whatever I just said or the behavior I just described in someone else—there’s gonna be a speech.

Agendas aren’t bad in and of themselves, but I don’t want to be associated with that kind of in-your-face crusade, so I avoid calling myself a feminist. Being a feminist may be a legitimate point of pride for some people, but it’s just not me.

I’ve found, actually, that it’s more acceptable for young men to call themselves feminists these days than for young women to do so. A man who labels himself that way COULD be a speechifying activist, but he could also be a modern, progressive, considerate, non-crusading guy. I’ve met a few of the latter kind. Heh, maybe this is another injustice for the crusaders to rail against. I’m not all that worked up about it.

I know most of my five readers are under forty. Do y’all (male or female) call yourselves feminists?

I came to school today because I thought the low-distraction environment would help me focus on studying for my exams.

I’m in the journal office right now. It’s the best place I’ve found to study, at least when it’s not too busy, because it has lots of semi-enclosed workspaces with big desks. And, unlike in the library, I can eat in here.

Today there are three people in the office besides me. Two are studying quietly at a table together. The third is bravely attempting to induce carpal tunnel syndrome by playing a computer game that involves incessant high-speed clicking.

I’m pretty sure wrist injuries won’t get you out of taking your exams. Why are you here, clicky-person? Over the last forty-five minutes, not thirty seconds have gone by without a barrage of clickclickclickclickclick. Can’t you clickclick at home?

What’s that, voice of reason? Ask clicky-person to stop? You mean, like, go over there and say it out loud? No, that’s crazy. I will put in my taiko earplugs and fume on the internet instead.