Coffee Against Cigarettes

I’ve heard that Austin’s not like the rest of Texas. It’s a totally liberal city. What people are meant to understand from this awkward phrase is not that Travis County went for Mondale, but instead that a liberal city is one where lots of people saw Tapes n’ Tapes play SXSW. This is the scene theory of politics, where liberalism is a limited-edition brand available only for loft apartment dwellers in urban districts with just the right veneer of grittiness.

Pretty soon we get great ideas like Blue State Coffee, which will soon allow you to drink liberally on Thayer Street. I’m gonna need a fake, because I hear they rip Indiana licenses up at the door.

UPDATE (3.12.07): My line about “loft apartment dwellers” was a cheap shot and cheaper still for not really being directed against anyone in particular. This post appears in a refined version (second FTE) in the College Hill Independent.

3 2/3 Things

Card checks approved by the House of Representatives.

Task Force College

Brown’s Herald leads with news that “New task force will review College.”

The task force is an elite commando unit charged with doing just what the headline says it will…College. The range of this mandate is only exceeded by the range of the administration’s power over the very same Task Force that is supposed to act as its advisor. 10 faculty members (including two from the administration) ensure that there won’t be any awkward repeats of the embarrassing plus/minus vote.

The three students on the council will be chosen by UCS, an organization that the Herald estimates is approved of by 46% of the student body. The students will actually be paid by the Dean of the College’s office for their trouble.

By stacking the debate (or, I suppose at this point, the discussion) like this, the Dean has made it quite clear what she expects the results to be: fewer “stumbles” along the road of the New Curriculum. See this week’s College Hill Independent for my piece on the Banner registration rollout, with special reference to the Force.

Numerology

The problem with blogs is that you never know when they are going to end. New posts feed on forever, clogging your browser windows in reverse chronological order. I have solved this problem. This blog has four demands. It will be discontinued when they are met.

1. Universal health care.
2. Card-check unionization.
3. Phased withdrawal from Iraq.
4. Pavement getting back together.