Nuclear abstraction

By Ryan McCarl / May 16, 2008

[img id=”80614″ align=”alignleft”] One Wednesday afternoon last quarter, I was sitting in John Mearsheimer’s “Seminar on Great Power Politics,” discussing nuclear deterrence and strategy. In technical, jargon-laden language, students discussed issues like “counterforce” and “countervalue” nuclear weapons (counterforce weapons are targeted at other countries’ nuclear stockpiles, while countervalue weapons are targeted at their cities), nuclear...

The self-esteem soap opera

By Matt Barnum / May 16, 2008

[img id=”80612″ align=”alignleft”] My room back home is littered with evidence of the self-esteem craze of the 1990s. My annual participatory baseball, basketball, and hockey trophies battle for space, with a couple of sportsmanship awards also lingering among the shiny plastic. Hanging pathetically on the sidelines of my shelves are the few genuinely earned awards—math...

Yes, I can

By Nathan Bloom / May 12, 2008

[img id=”80602″ align=”alignleft”] My wallet used to hold, along with my “organ donor” driver’s license, my credit card–sized Democratic voter registration card from the state of Pennsylvania. That way, if I died suddenly in some horrific car crash, at least everyone would know that I cared about the poor. Preposterous? Of course. Rooting for the...

Sticking it to the Man

By Claire McNear / May 12, 2008

[img id=”80600″ align=”alignleft”] Books are good things. Libraries, like books, are good things as well—they give the books a nice roof to save them from inclement weather and provide other books to keep them company; they also give those of us with eyes and opposable thumbs a pleasant place in which to enjoy our reading....

Four more years

By Zack Hill / May 8, 2008

[img id=”80582″ align=”alignleft”] Sometime during your fourth year, you’re bound to have The Conversation. One day you’re walking to campus, thinking about the latest bit of Plato that you’ve read (or, given that you’re a fourth-year, wondering what time the Pub opens). And then you run into an acquaintance—perhaps some old suitemate from your days...

Equality for Illinois

By Marshall Knudson / May 8, 2008

[img id=”80580″ align=”alignleft”] As media operatives fished around in the goldfish bowl for a story last fall, they stumbled into proving to the world that historians can be newsworthy and even interesting. Allan Tulchin, who holds a Ph.D in history from the U of C, published an eye-opening article in the Journal of Modern History...

Fanning the flames

By Ben Jervis / May 8, 2008

In its trek across the six continents, the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch has been engulfed by a series of political and ideological battles and subjected to criticism (and occasionally capture) from journalists, human-rights groups, Free Tibet advocates, and other parties dissatisfied with the Chinese government’s human rights record. If the story of the torch relay...

The Right stuff

By Tim Murphy / May 5, 2008

[img id=”80574″ align=”alignleft”] Buried by the debate over whether Hillary Clinton will win Indiana (she might), and whether it even matters (it doesn’t), the revelation that Dick Cheney is on a one-man mission to destroy an American icon swept by unnoticed like a flock of plankton drifting beneath the stormy political seas. Primary or no...

Arts, Schvarts

By Alec Brandon / May 5, 2008

Bespectacled in a pair of trendy sunglasses, Mark McGowan, a British performance artist, has buried himself up to his neck in the sand on a beach in Britain. He plans to stay that way for 48 hours. He could stay for another 48 years, and I still wouldn’t get what makes it art. It seems...

The Court’s mistaken identity

By Matt Barnum / May 1, 2008

There is a constant tension in politics, as in many other areas of life, between process and results. Compromising the former often nets short-term gains in the latter but ends up wreaking havoc in the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in Supreme Court jurisprudence. The Court’s latest decision—Crawford v. Marion County Election Board,...

Switching gears for safety

By Ronan McNulty / May 1, 2008

[img id=”80561″ align=”alignleft”] With warm weather comes more crime. It’s a simple enough statement, but in a city neighborhood, it can sometimes mean coming home to a broken window and no laptop. Protected by the Chicago Police Department, the U of C Police Department (UCPD) and, for a few blocks at least, the United States...

Seven-day activists

By Claire McNear / April 28, 2008

[img id=”80549″ align=”alignleft”] Last week marked my 978th consecutive week on Earth. Much like the previous 977 weeks, it was characterized by the beleaguered existence of the Amazon Rainforest, ice in Antarctica, and 1,196 species of geckos; unlike the other 977 weeks, last week this mattered, but, in true U of C activism style, only...