The Barometer Online

As The Summer Barometer reported on July 23, the Oregon Board of Higher Education approved the building budget for 2009-2011 at Oregon State University. The university is said to be planning on improving and constructing several new buildings on campus. The College of Business will get a new building, and there will also be a new international residence hall and a student involvement center put in.

Summer term at OSU: smaller class size and a relaxed atmosphere juxtaposed with three weeks of work packed into one. Hmm... It makes you think. With benefits come costs. The way things are, the way we manage our resources, population, civil infrastructure and government - these collective decisions we make are all based on trade-offs.

According to unreliable sources, Comic-Con may be the greatest annual event of all time (after Christmas and Talk Like a Pirate Day). The Con, as it is sometimes called, has been referred to as the "coconut pie" of comic book/movie/video game conventions - coconut pie, of course, being the most scrumptious of all fibrous drupe-based pies.

In the July 23 issue of The Summer Barometer, my colleague, Dan Fitzpatrick, penned a seething attack on Planned Parenthood - in particular, the new one in the process of being built in Northeast Portland. Like many other anti-choice zealots, Fitzpatrick equates PP solely with abortion, and even claimed "it sells people contraception that often is ineffective, so when it fails, its customers can return and demand medical treatment.

"The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole..." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract.