A colleague was approached by one of his engineering students, who asked, "Why are you a Democrat?"

My colleague answered, "Don't get me started", to which the student replied, "I'm a Republican, but I don't know why."

Such was the week here in Tempe, dominated by politics because of the presidential debate at ASU. I supervise several labs that were scheduled to meet that night, and I chose to hold classes as usual. I also made the decision that if students asked to makeup the lab because they wanted to participate in debate-related activities, they could do so. A few contacted me and were given permission. However, the majority of the emails I received had to do with the inconvenience of parking and traffic and asked me to cancel classes so that they did not have to show up to campus. Those students were told to show up to class. My favorite came from a student in the Honors dorm who didn't want to WALK across campus through the crowds. Wow. If I considered these sorts of complaints to be valid, I don't think I would have ever attended class when I was an undergrad at UCLA. Egads.

One of my students, twenty-nine years old, will be voting for the first time this upcoming election day. He said that he never really cared previously, that he thought his vote didn't matter, but now he feels like his freedoms are slipping away. Good! I hope that there will be many previously apathetic first-time voters in this election.

And if you haven't witnessed the beauty that was Jon Stewart on "Crossfire", check it out. He's almost become a Trent Reznor-like deity for me after this appearance.