Imperfect Ten There’s an issue with kids these days. Jeff Pilchiek sees it in the Westlake High School upperclassmen he counsels on college admissions. “These are kids who don’t want to get rejections,” he says. “In the past, we’d just apply to schools and hope, but the student today is scared of rejection because they haven’t had much of that in their lives.” This might not invoke much sympathy from the grow-from-your-failures generation, but it’s an attitude that’s been encouraged by state law. In the 12 years since the top 10 percent law (HB 588) was passed, The University of Texas at Austin (along with the other public state universities) has guaranteed admission to all in-state applicants who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. In 2008, HB 588 alone accounted for 76 percent of UT-Austin’s freshman class. Projections showed that the campus would be entirely occupied by HB 588 admissions within a decade. The school had, according to UT President William Powers Jr., “lost control” of its admissions process. More

2010 MLB predictions (AL edition) I think this will finally be the year when the Colorado Rockies are a powerhouse and not a Cinderella. I think the Texas Rangers will shake off some organizational accursedness to win a pennant. And I think I should probably trash this entry instead of publishing it, because my predictions are always wrong and I’m probably jinxing it all just by typing. Nonetheless, here’s my notoriously untrustworthy outlook for the 2010 Major League Baseball season: More

Joe Stack’s sad plane crash A deranged pilot flew his plane into an Austin office building this morning, smashing through the windows of a local branch of the IRS. The crash happened in the vicinity of other offices, including the FBI and St. Edward’s University’s annex campus. Even though, if the suicide website is to be believed, I completely agree with the guy’s point about the insane vagaries of the IRS and the U.S. income tax law, terrorism is terrorism. In the tradition of Kamikazes, no great nation was ever formed, no brutal dictatorship ever defeated. For all the impassioned rhetoric, I find it tragic that Joe Stack turned toward solutions of despair and violence. I only hope that initial reports hold up and that nobody aside from the pilot lost a life due to his grandiloquent empty gesture. I’m left feeling dejected. What does this say about people like me who believe our taxation system is broken and wrongheaded? Far from bringing momentum and serious discussion to the movement, has Joe Stack, someone who obviously understood the issues the way I do, single-handedly marginalized income tax reform for years to come? The reason nonviolent protest is so powerful is not because it gains results quickly. In fact, nonviolent protest might be the slowest, most incremental way to make a political point possible. But a commitment to nonviolence allows opposition movements to sustain themselves, coalitions to form, events to transpire. I wish I had met Joe when he was alive. I wish I could have had a beer with him, shared his frustrations and grief, and maybe changed his mind about the prudence of his plot.