I finished J.F Cooper's The Spy about half an hour ago, and it was good albeit a little dense. I'm told the next book we're reading for Freshman Studies, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by T. Kuhn, is even more dense, so this was a good warm-up for my homework tomorrow.

Freshman Studies today was a little heated. The Diplomat, who as anyone would still readily attest is a nice guy, is continuing to get on everyone's nerves in class. I've gone over why he annoys me before, but my main gripe with him lately is his constant forced integration of current events into class discussions.

In high school I took Speech, and in my Extemporaneous Speaking category everyone was like The Diplomat; lording their knowledge over others at every opportunity. They don't even realize they're doing it, I think, they were just raised on approval, by parents and teachers who told them not to pay attention to the other, stupider kids.

Every day The Diplomat goes to class, and writes on his legal pad and nods vigorously at everything and sits all alone. He no doubt gets better grades then me, and like I keep saying, everyone likes The Diplomat outside of class. Still, he rubs me the wrong way, possible because I see so many things in him I don't want to be, yet could easily become.

The low point of the class period was when a three way discussion of free speech broke out between The Queen of Plantz (who argued off of her beliefs and opinions), The Diplomat (who argued off of news articles and court rulings and judicial impacts, like the former Policy debater he so obviously is) and myself (I argued off of moral implications and vague, topic-specific (read: "chilling effect") words like the former L,D debater I so obviously was).

Somehow, The Diplomat got started on the collapse of the Russian economy, and it's causes, but luckily some other students jumped in and turned our narrowminded debating into an actual class discussion.

Calc is making sense; I've been explaining things to The Vain Man lately, and often without volunteering to.

Greg says I have no hobbies, because writing and reading and computer games aren't hobbies in his mind. Since I have more time than him (and I do) it follows that I should have a great variety of activities to entertain myself with while he's at the Con. I don't, and it bugs me more than I let on to him, but I resent reading for fun being equated with 'schoolwork'.

Anyways, later.