Jonathan D. Blundell

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Spc. Aaron P. Latimer, 26, of Ennis, Texas, died in Mosul, Iraq, on May 9. Latimer was assigned to the 562nd Engineer Company, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
This incident is under investigation.

From Capital Annex:

The Texas AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Democrat Chris Bell for Governor is more than just the “huge shot in the arm,” Bell says it is: it’s exactly what his campaign—and Texas Democrats—needed right now and goes a long way toward illustrating that Texans realize more of the same old regime in Austin isn’t going to fix the problems of our state.
The endorsement of the Texas AFL-CIO, a group of more than 220,000 Texas workers, also difinitively proves that this is a race between Rick Perry and Chris Bell—and that Strayhorn and Friedman are nothing more than the wildflowers along the highway leading to election day.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn turned in over 200,000 signatures to the Texas State Secretary today, Frontburner reports that Kinky will turn in well over 100,000 signatures.
AP reported that Strayhorn had paid workers gathering signatures and I do believe all of Kinky’s signatures were gathered by volunteers, but don’t quote me on that.
Both independent candidates for Texas Governor were required to get 45,400 signatures by the May 11 deadline.
An e-mail from Kinky’s camp this week said Kinky would present his signatures tomorrow at noon.

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was on The Talk Show today on KERA.
I only caught the tale end of the show, but the topic was interesting.
Pollan said that he decided to research food sources like Organic Chicken. He found that the “Free Range Chickens” weren’t so free range after all. Often they are organic, but don’t exactly sit out on a prairie eating bugs and grass.
Often times there housed in large barns and given a few weeks where they can go outside and walk around a small penned in area if they choose.
Interesting read, I’d love to read his book.
From Amazon.com:

Reviewed by Pamela Kaufman
Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls “our national eating disorder” (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It’s a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You’ll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: “The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world.” All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. “[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of… well, precisely what I don’t know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven’t yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly.”Pollan’s narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald’s lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa.
Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of “big organic”; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he’s foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn’t preachy: he’s too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He’s also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow’s-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I’m not convinced I’d want to go hunting with Pollan, but I’m sure I’d enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.

Listen to the show’s podcast.

Eric’s working on a story for the paper that’s quite interesting on both sides.
According to Texas law, students must pass the TAKS test before they can graduate/get a diploma from high school.
Twenty-one students in Waxahachie did not pass the TAKS test. They met all the other requirements for graduation, grades, attendance and so forth, but they didn’t pass the test.
From my understanding, the school principal is not allowing students who failed the TAKS test to walk at graduation.
Parents of course are upset and are saying their kids have met all the other requirements and should be allowed to walk.
Some are claiming it’s a racial issue (which simply turns me off).
The school says the students were told at the beginning of the year that passing the test would be a requirement for graduation.
Last year students were allowed to walk and simply given a certificate of completion. Another test was given during the summer to allow them to get their diploma but only a very small number came back to take the test.
Should students be allowed to walk simply because they met three of the four requirements for graduation?

UMHB Receives Grant To Expand Nursing School Programs
(May 3, 2006)—A $87,100 grant from the Sid Richardson Foundation will help the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor expand programs in the university’s Scott & White College of Nursing.
In response to an acute nursing shortage in Texas, the foundation began working with UMHB in 2001 to increase the number of students in the program.
Over four years, UMHB doubled the size of the graduating class of the nursing program and the number of students enrolling has increased 75 percent.