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Chris Ruebeck, Assistant Professor of Economics & Business, will be teaching a 100-student Economics 101 course this spring. To help keep his students even more engaged, Chris will be distributing to each student a hand-held audience response device that each student will use throughout the semester. These devices, often referred to as "clickers," will allow Chris to quickly poll his class on course content, take attendance, and potentially collect quiz responses almost instantly.

I'm not trying to be an advocate for big box stores, but this weekend I found out there is a Best Buy in Stroudsburg. It's a small store, but well stocked at the moment. It's only been open 3-4 weeks. I only share this so others who hate Whitehall but need to spend the gift cards will know.

The Easton Area School Board's meeting tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Easton Area Education Center, 1801 Bushkill Drive, Easton, as it does the third Saturday of every month. What makes tonight different is they'll be discussing (and likely voting on) plans to renovate March and Paxinosa Schools. It's item K under section XI. NEW BUSINESS of the agenda. As part of these renovations, the school district has stated they intend to close Paxinosa and March schools next year (2008-2009) and have the students attend the old Middle School instead (its students having been moved to the new Middle School in Forks).

Parents of the affected schools met about two weeks ago to discuss this, and submitted a number of questions about the projects and their associated plans to the school board.

Election Coverage

• League of Women Voters 2007 State Municipal Election Guide.
• The Morning Call's take on the guide (PDF)
• Express-Times' Endorsements
• Morning Call Endorsements

Voting Information

• How to use the voting machines
• Where to vote in Northampton County

Apple's new store at the Lehigh Valley Mall opens this weekend; specifically 10 a.m. this Saturday. I think a weekend expedition with the kids is in order. Check out the store web page.

Since this is, after all, Soapbox, allow me to get on mine.

There is a concerted effort on the part of a small group of dedicated faculty, staff and students to collect - and donate - items such as furniture and canned food (600 pounds of food have already been collected!!) that are left behind as people move out of College housing. These are perfectly good things that otherwise would have gotten thrown away. Please read the messages below (most recent at the top) and, if anyone is inclined to put the money where his or her mouth is, please pitch in and help!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I wanted to let you know that just the last weekend's collection yielded 600
pounds of cans that we donated to the local food pantry. In addition, we
also collected over 30 large (20-gallon) bagful of clothes that was dropped

i love professor havranek

Hockey

This band do the greatest music in all U.S. and A!

The Cosmic Cup now has a blog. Not much there yet except for announcements about music and new coffee (but hey, I'm not complaining, seeing as how I like new music and love new coffee...).