//------------------------------//
// March 9 [politics is like sports] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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March 9

All anyone could talk about at breakfast was the primary.  People whose candidate had won were gloating, which wasn’t that surprising, and the others put the best face forward and said that their candidate had done better than expected, or they were building momentum for the next primary, or they were showing that they were still in the race, or the results didn’t matter anyway.

It was a lot like sports.

What did seem odd was that each state got a primary, but they didn't all happen at the same time. There would be another one next week, and another one the week after that, and so on. Each candidate won a number of votes, and then they carried them forward until they had a majority of votes, or I guess there was some other convention where they could be nominated if they didn't have a majority.

After that, the two winningest candidates would face off against each other and then there would be another election, and the winner of that would be the next president.

It sounded needlessly complicated, and I told people that. Our cities had the same mayor until we decided that she wasn't doing a good job any more, and then we replaced her.

Joe asked me if we were worried about tyrants or dynasties. I said it was more about how well she did and not so much who her mother was. That's why the unicorn system is dumb. Sure, they must get good leaders sometimes, but they also got stuck with Prince Blueblood.

Then when I got to climate class, I had to change my thinking from politics to the weather. The professor said that he was going to spend half the class reviewing for the final exam, and then we could spend the second half studying on our own or else working on the weather project I was going to grade.

Well, that meant that I wouldn't get to do any studying on my own, so I really had to pay attention in the first half.

I think if wasn't for all the terminology the humans used, I would have been more confident, but I was still having some trouble with how they described things. Especially when it was an incomplete description, because humans didn't always know how things actually interacted and divided stuff into separate categories when they ought not to have.

I didn't want to undo what he had explained when I was talking about how we did the weather, either, 'cause I knew people were going to ask for more details. Even though it wasn't really part of the extra credit assignment..

So I told them about how we get the water up to the weather factories, both capturing it when it's already in the sky and making up the difference with water tornadoes.

Of course everyone wanted to know if I could make a tornado, and I said that I probably could, but I was worried that if I did it would go out of control, and by the time it was even formed at all, I'd be so exhausted that I wouldn't be able to stop it.

If there was already one naturally formed, or about to, I could influence it with less work on my part, but it was still incredibly dangerous.

They were disappointed that I'd refused, and I thought about making a little bitty dust whirl, but I didn't tell them that I probably could if I tried and the conditions were just right.  Maybe next time I was flying over a large open field I’d give it a try and see what happened.

I reminded them that they weren't supposed to try and calculate how many ponies it would take to turn Goldopolis into productive farmland. Even I didn't know that. Besides just the weather ponies, you'd have to have lots of earth ponies working the soil for a long time: just dumping lots of rain on arid land would only cause flash floods.

Then class was over, and I took a break and read Aquamarine's letter. She said that she was looking forward to Spring Break as well and that she'd be happy to see me and it would be nice to talk mare to mare, 'cause humans were really weird about a lot of stuff. She also said that her roommate had said it was okay if I stayed with them for a couple of days, which was really nice of her roommate. I'd get to spend some more time with her and catch up face-to-face.

I wrote a quick computer letter to Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn telling them what Aquamarine had said, and added what my schedule for finals was going to be. I'd gotten so busy the second half of the quarter that I'd almost completely forgotten about them. Then I rushed off to philosophy.

We learned about labor and value, which was something that I was familiar with. Ponies produce things that other ponies need or want based upon their skills. Weather ponies make rain, and the rain grows crops, and the crops are turned into food for the weather ponies, and so the cycle goes.

I asked the professor if taking things away also counted as value, and she wasn't sure what I meant at first, then I told her how I'd been working breaking up storms, and that could be thought of as taking something away rather than producing something.

Then another student said that he thought that was a type of production. We produced a measure of safety, and he said it was like the fire department, who protects everyone by putting out fires before they can spread.

But a few students protested why Marx's philosophy wouldn't work, and the teacher said that we weren't going to be arguing the political side of his philosophy; that was a different class, and that got people back on course.

At the end of it, I was still pretty sure that Marx had come up with the best ideas, and maybe that was why we'd saved him for very last.

It was interesting how at lunch almost everyone had forgotten about the election last night; nobody was talking about it at all. Or maybe they'd said all that they wanted to say at breakfast.

After lunch, I wrote back to Aquamarine, and told her what my finals schedule was and said that I was still waiting to hear back from Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and that I was sorry for not having written back sooner but I'd been snowboarding all weekend. I hoped she understood; I was going to be so upset with myself if she was mad. Then I added in at the end about the weather assignment I was going to help grade and wanted to know if she was doing anything similar.

I hope she can read my mouthwriting: I wrote the letter in kind of a hurry.

I just barely made it to Equestrian class in time, but I got there. There wasn't any time to talk before the class started, but afterwards Meghan asked if I wanted to come over tomorrow night and watch the second Harry Potter movie with her.

Surely, it would have been wiser to spend the time studying, but I could spend all day Sunday doing it, and it would be fun to see more of Harry Potter and spend some more time with Meghan.

I went over to Aric's right after dinner, and I had my saddlebags on, 'cause I wanted to have him help me with my vocabulary.

He wanted to know what was in it for him (he said it jokingly), so I told him what was in it for him when we got done with studying and he said that sounded like a pretty good deal.

So he reached under my belly and unstrapped my saddlebags and I got out my notebook. He sat on the couch and I lay my head down on his lap and he read the definitions and I said the words, and then we switched around to where I was defining the words, and after a couple of hours I was consistently getting them all right even though he was distracting me because he only needed to hold the notebook with one hand. No matter how many times I swatted it away, it came back, and I really didn't mind all that much anyway.