I went to a lecture last night on "voting in America." It was pretty interesting. Listen to this: About fifty percent of Americans register to vote. About fifty percent of those registered actually vote. And the winner is decided by about fifty percent of those voters. So, if you do the math, about 12.5% of the population actually make all the decisions for all of us. I think that sucks, and I frankly find it a bit scary. So, WHOEVER YOU VOTE FOR, GO OUT AND VOTE!!!!!!! It isn't that hard. Even if you can't be bothered to go to your local polling station, you can request an absentee ballot, so you just have to fill it out at home at your own convenience and send it off in the mail. I requested my absentee ballot at the Carson City Courthouse, but I'm sure you could do it over the phone or even the internet. Anyways, another interesting factoid I learned last night was that voting is mandatory in Australia. Wow. That's really cool! Forcing everyone to vote! How do you think they enforce that law? Maybe they arrest you if you don't show up to vote.

So, I finally got to learn something new in my math class. It is calculus, but so far it has just been review of things I learned in Trig and Algebra 2. But today we started learning about derivatives! Woohoo! f '(x)=3x^2! yay!

I watched a large part of A New Hope this morning. I was so excited when Shinta gave the DVDs to me on Friday, but this is the first I have been able to see of them. It looks so good on DVD! I really like the way they made the menus. The menus and transitions are extra cool. I'll probably watch all of the movies before I move on to the special features DVD.                                    If anybody doesn't know what I'm talking about, shame on you.