Opinion

This year, as I'm sure you're aware by now, marks the 100th birthday of UC Davis. There has been a great deal of change since the university opened its doors to students in 1908, but The California Aggie has been here for 93 of those 100 years, serving the Davis community since 1915.

Welcome to my last column of the summer! If you've been reading my column the entire summer, you might be surprised to find out that I received the most reader response (over the entire summer) for my column on random thoughts.

It should come as no surprise that Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose, at long last, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.

Wait, no, the announcement came as a huge surprise.

As a result of a discussion with my friends this weekend about names, I've been thinking about names and what they mean lately. Consequently, this column will be a limited dissection of the names of some people you may have heard of. To keep the investigation as honest as possible, I looked only at etymology and commonly held interpretations of names. I visited the helpful ancestry.com, cross-referenced with other websites, and even delved into the labyrinthine depths of genealogical forums.

Dear Mr. Edwards,

I cannot conceive of a way in which you could have failed this country more grandly than you just did. You said in your interview on ABC recently that "nobody can beat up on me more than I have already beat up on myself." Allow me to sincerely try and prove you wrong.

Some of you may already be aware of the tree-sitting protestors at UC Berkeley that are currently preventing the construction of a new athletic facility (and if you weren't, you certainly are now). I'm here to tell you that this protest is ridiculous.

My column this week aims to salute to those people and companies that have a different, refreshing way of doing business.

Recently there were murmurs of concern over the health of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, Inc.

This column will continue my goal of talking about current events, although this week I'll be delving into the wide world of sports.

Now that Davis is down to a chilly 92 degrees, this story may not resonate with some of you as it might have last week, but I'm telling it anyway. Walking home from the ARC, I felt like getting a cool drink.

To celebrate this recent July 4 weekend, I'm dedicating this column to random thoughts, which I suppose means I'm giving a nod to Rob Olson and consequently Thomas Sowell for the inspiration.

The UC Davis Health System will take an important step Tuesday, when smoking will finally be banned on the entire UCDHS campus.

It is refreshing that a leader in local medical practices is making such a strong statement about smoking - finally.

Civil rights groups have requested that the California courts block an initiative which would renew the state's ban on gay marriage from appearing on the November ballot.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but the idea that so many people are willing to devote so much of their own time and money to fund an initiative that would take rights away from their neighbors is incomprehensible to me. Don't they have better things to do?

The number of herons and egrets populating the arboretum in recent years has become unmanageable; between 2005 and 2007, the number of egrets in the arboretum has increased more than fivefold.

After 24 years of dedicated service to UC Davis, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef announced Monday he will be stepping down at the end of next year.

I've written a lot of columns this year - 27, actually, including this one - and I'm proud of every damn one of 'em. Very proud. I'm proud of them because, let's be honest, they were pretty damn good.