Be “friends” with Obama on Web 2.0

By Marshall Knudson / November 6, 2007

In order to stay in vogue and surmount competitive obstacles, politicians have always taken advantage of available technologies to gain endorsement and to engineer the consent of their constituents. In the past this meant decidedly undemocratic methods such as “the rack” and “the dunking stool,” but in modern times these have given way to skilled...

A wag of the finger at Colbert Nation

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 6, 2007

I’ve been a fan of Stephen Colbert since his show premiered in 2005. I’ve found him to be one of the most incisive, poignant, and hilarious satirists in America. He’s launched ingenious initiatives out of nowhere—from his Gravitas-Off to his Decemberists showdown to his Wriststrong campaign. That being said, I breathed a sigh of relief...

Science must win Clone Wars

By Prakriti Mishra / November 6, 2007

Last month, biologist Kevin Eggan took to the stage at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and startled everyone with his announcement: More than a year after their proposal to start human therapeutic-cloning research had been approved, Eggan and his team were still at square one. Despite spending more than $100,000 on advertising, they had yet...

Time travel not worth the effort

By Maroon Staff / November 6, 2007

Have you seen The Time Machine? No, I don’t mean the older classic, I’m talking about the 2002 blockbuster starring Guy Pearce and bearing only vague resemblance to the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. It’s the classic story of love: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl dies. Boy spends...

Halloween more than just Snickers

By Claire McNear / November 2, 2007

For children across the United States, October 31 is a day of shimmering Americana. With the aid of vacuous pre-coffee parents, they don the guises of cowboys, princesses, dragons, unicorns, witches, ghosts, and Harry Potter, and parade to school for a day of general inanity in advance of an evening of blunt, candy-seeking menacing. Onward...

A failing grade

By Maroon Editorial Staff / November 2, 2007

The University of Chicago is often referred to as the “Teacher of Teachers.” U of C graduates tend to go into academia at much higher rates than do those at peer schools, and many of the ideas associated with the University—the “Life of the Mind,” “Chicago Math,” and “progressive education,” for example—are directly relevant to...

Intelligent life encounters Kucinich

By Tim Murphy / November 2, 2007

Dennis Kucinich just wanted to smell the roses. Jimmy Carter was just trying to be friendly. Now America has a full-scale alien problem on its hands. The announcement hit the presidential campaign trail like a Mack truck hitting a family of possums. Dennis J. Kucinich, U.S. Representative from Ohio’s 10th congressional district, champion of the...

Democrats must avoid Hillary

By Frank Lin / November 2, 2007

One of the nice things about human sleep is that, really, we get to fill the time with whatever we want. This phenomenon is so alluring that Barack Obama thought to name both of his best-selling books after it. So imagine my surprise last week when, at the tail end of a midmorning nap, I...

Not all it’s Chalked up to be

By Maroon Editorial Staff / October 29, 2007

Just about every student at the U of C uses Chalk for one reason or another. Whether it’s to find readings, feverishly check grades, or get the notes from a missed 9:30-a.m. lecture, the website can be a helpful academic tool. However, despite the site’s utility, Chalk’s discussion board, as currently employed, is useless at...

Congress should keep out of colleges’ business

By Alec Brandon / October 29, 2007

Oxford and Cambridge used to be the pinnacle of higher education. They had the most money, the best professors, and the top students in the world. But ever since the British government decided to keep tuition rates artificially low, the two have fallen on hard times. They still have top-notch faculties and their students tend...

What is it good for? War takes toll on generation

By Ryan McCarl / October 29, 2007

War is expensive. It is an outrageous waste of human life and economic resources, and the true cost of a war—including the opportunity costs associated with the loss of untold numbers of lives and livelihoods and the use of enormous amounts of capital for purposes of destruction rather than production—is incalculable. There is a popular...

Kennedy’s 40-year-old version

By Steve Michalkow / October 29, 2007

This past year or so has brought about a perfect storm of death, reflection, and publication for America’s new favorite literary genre: blind hero worship of President Kennedy. The recent death of Arthur Schlesinger, the first and foremost author of Kennedy fawning, along with a growing desire to find similarities between the current quagmire in...