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(05/28/03 9:00am)
I'm not one to dwell in nostalgia and sentimentality. Graduation shouldn't be about losing Dartmouth, but about carrying what we've learned from our school into the next stages of our life. Yes, Hallmark cards will be writing to me soon, and, no, I haven't gotten a signing bonus for writing this column. Graduation is a time of transition -- the biggest one I've faced so far. That simple fact can be nerve-wracking, but it doesn't have to be.
(05/16/03 9:00am)
More equivocating than Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference, more confusing than Michael Jackson naming his baby "Blanket," just a bit longer-lived than the average mayfly, Green Key is here again. Which is to say little, as we are approaching our least understood excuse for a hedonistic holiday. The only thing I know for certain is that this is no "honor society" -- in fact, there's no real reason for why Green Key exists, but we still participate in it when it comes around once a year. It's kind of like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of Dartmouth. You watch a game against the Rays, but you're not sure why.
(05/08/03 9:00am)
What is particularly galling about the peccadillo caused by Kathleen Reeder's May 2 column in The Dartmouth, "Sex, Lies and Feminism," is that she has not been held accountable for her flawed conception of feminism. To define herself as a "conservative feminist" simply because she "believes in the equality of the sexes" is an innaccurate understanding of feminism. Rather, feminism's central goal is to establish gender equality; other branches of feminism differ in their beliefs about how to achieve this goal, whether that be the "shock and awe" tactics of radical feminism or the "shop and awe" ones of conservative feminism. While I don't necessarily agree with the inflammatory rhetoric of one side (all women should be lesbians, all sex is rape, etc.), I also don't agree with the conservative feminist position either. Like always, I try to appeal to sense, and that, for me, usually lies in between the two positions.
(04/23/03 9:00am)
This is a typical example of one song that your, uh, English music newspapers would call a drug song: " I go, I don't, uh, I don't write druuuggg songs " (slurring words), "You know like I never have, I wouldn't know how to go about it, but this is not a drug song [crowd claps]. I'm not saying it for any kind of defensive reason or anything like that. It's just not a drug song. I don't mean " it's just [affects English accent] vulgar to think so."
(04/07/03 9:00am)
I would just like to chart how one song, "The
(03/28/03 11:00am)
While most Dartmouth students drank themselves silly in tropical climes or bored themselves at home over break, I did something different. Yes, this was my "alternative spring break," although I certainly wasn't helping the homeless, unless you believe that by homeless I mean myself, and by soup shelter you mean Novack. For spring break, I did the same thing that I'd been doing for the previous 10 weeks " work.
(02/07/03 11:00am)
The big three -- Homecoming, Winter
(05/16/02 9:00am)
If you're holding this column in your hands, the words you are reading are already dead. And when I say dead, I mean there's a salad fork sticking out of it the size of post-coke addiction Matthew Perry. The Dartmouth already gets more individual user hits on its web site per day than it prints issues. More alumni and current students read thedartmouth.com than well, I'm sure you get the point -- you're all smart enough. Print is dead. Curse technology for killing our culture and reducing human experience to inhumane pixels and bytes, right?
(05/02/02 9:00am)
Though Ehud Barak did not give a speech worthy of a classical orator, he made his point emphatically clear: this is the "world war on terror," and it is our duty (read: the West and Israel) as the defenders of all that is good and democratic to stamp out Palestinian terrorism. He used several analogies and quotes, most noticeably comparing the terrorists to pirates sailing on the high seas, and the subsequent effort to quash their existence. This metaphor clearly brands the pirates as either people from "rogue states," or non-state based organizations such as Al-Qaida. It thrusts us into the role of the civilizer, investing us with the duty to take back the seas (Palestinian land) by depriving the pirates of food and water (imposing economic reforms on the fhPalestinians).
(02/13/01 11:00am)
For the first time in my life, I have seen urban America outside of the confines of Boston. Sure I'd been to redneck burgs in Wyoming and Utah, but I'd never seen a real city past the Mississippi. Not until this past weekend. Since I grew up outside of Boston, I was led to believe that everyone endured harsh winters and muggy summers, everyone lived in clapboard houses with rooms. People cared about three things: sex, sports and politics. So Mayor "Mumbles" Menino and Larry Bird ruled the (if you pardon the pun) roost. We were expected to take pride in our cramped Boston Garden, the dead spots on the parquet and pigeons in the rafters -- the sort of history and decay that created our home court advantage. We yearned for the past, for 1918, for Tip O'Neill and the Kennedys. The subtle racism and segregation that permeated the city should be accepted and never talked about, for we were still a city of clashing immigrants, from the Italians in North Boston to the Irish in Southie. Ethnic conflict was as sure as the Italian restaurant that seemed to be blown up every year (you could read about it in the Herald, the staunch liberal everyman's paper).
(01/30/01 11:00am)
In a situation that requires solemnity, such as this one, people surround themselves with displays of emotion, just as I did when my grandfather died, just as anyone would. But I want to address a larger issue-- how I cope with dying, and, hopefully, how to cope with dying. I am writing this piece to anyone who has a concern about this issue. I have trouble with death and dying, I must say. Maybe I am abnormal, but when I hear about a death, even a death in my family, I have trouble knowing what to feel. Deaths are surreal to me. Instead of an outburst of emotion, I would rather take on the easier process of masking my feelings, whether through humor or work or activity. I become detached, scared, confused. If my prose is a little choppy from here on or my passive is abundant or I am abstract, forgive me.
(01/16/01 11:00am)
The subject of the Greek system is a touchy issue, at best. We all know the arguments, but I will hazard to rehash them. On one side of the spectrum, we have the ardent supporters of the Greek system who would sell their own mothers to maintain the status quo. And on the other side, there is an angry mob who, if they had the chance, would try to ban all alcohol from the campus and, possibly, all those who would commit the sin of joining a house. If you have read other articles about the topic, you have probably only read the radical pro or con viewpoint about the system (probably because radicals are more apt to have opinions). I would like to write from a different, more moderate perspective, because we cannot compromise without having moderation. Just as Clinton suffered backlash in his first few years from trying to pass health care, so too will the extremists at Dartmouth. And I am not one of those people who "aren't a member but support the Greek system." I hate those shirts.
(01/05/01 11:00am)
I am the king of Boggle/ There is none higher/ I gets eleven points from the word 'quagmire.'" A few years ago, I thought this line from a bad Beastie Boys song was incredibly funny, if a bit random. The line made you remember that, at heart, the Beastie Boys are just a bunch of Jewish boys from New York. But little did I know that I would come to the pinnacle of boredom and also become the king of Boggle, much like Mike D and Mario C. How I came to be the king involves a much more complicated and sinister story (well, actually there's nothing sinister about it -- I was bored). Here's the story, quickly:
(11/17/00 11:00am)
The press continues to pester me. Well, not really me, but two issues keep coming up in the media that pester me. So clearly you can see how the press actually means to bother me, because I am easily bothered.
(11/01/00 11:00am)
The election is one week away. Pundits are talking about the "home stretch," or saying that the candidates are "rounding third," and using similar sports analogies. These analogies, while they appear to be used purely to make an article sound exciting, are important to our world of American politics. We live in a society where political discussions are usually associated with heterosexual masculinity and male-identified sports. Candidates don't just defeat their opponents by a wide margin, they "slam dunk" them. A good line in a debate is the "touchdown pass." These metaphors play upon the central notion that a politician must be tough to serve in office. Hence, generals like Eisenhower have an advantage, because they don't need to assert their masculinity. George H.W. Bush needed to overcome his image as a "wimp" in order to take the presidency. This rhetoric also defines women out of the political domain. We don't picture a WNBA player on the court; we picture Michael Jordan.
(10/03/00 9:00am)
Last spring when I saw the Transformers movie (yes, put this one alongside Vanilla Ice's "Cool as Ice" and GI Joe for retro Gen X-er appeal), I had no idea I would be using it as a bad way to start off this opinion article. At the time, I also wasn't really thinking about nationalism or anything American at all. Yes, I was more concerned with the endless war between Optimus Prime, the Autobots and the feared Decepticons.
(08/22/00 9:00am)
Al Gore struggles along, though the convention was supposed to give him some purpose. However, he still has yet to address his biggest problem, which comes directly from the ultimate campaigner, the Man from Hope, Bill Clinton. Gore is not Clinton, and that simple fact continues to hurt him. Too often during the Clinton years we saw how the president used the White House and politics as a mirror for his inner struggle. This mirror cannot be shown more clearly than following the Lewinsky imbroglio, after which Clinton called the yearlong constitutional crisis a "personal growth experience." So while the polls show a dead heat, given the economy and Clinton's success, Al Gore should be ahead by a considerable margin.
(08/16/00 9:00am)
Since it's summer (for one more month, at least) and I've driven home to watch reruns of the Simpsons and work a little, I've noticed how much more intelligent I am at home. Now that last statement may sound arrogant, but it's true -- I've suddenly become an intellectual, something of the person I was in high school. I've suddenly started reading books at a faster pace than at any time since the second grade -- only then I was reading books called "Freddy's Adventures to the Mushroom Planet" (And that writer was on what?).