One last conversation with Shrill O’Really

By Patrick Hogan / June 2, 2006

Unbeknownst to me, apparently every graduating senior is required to give an exit interview before grabbing their shiny new diploma and departing for that mythical land beyond the quads where people don’t try to beat their own Rubik’s cube record and stare at their feet while talking to you. Imagine my surprise when I showed...

Ahmadinejad writes Bush a follow-up letter

By Patrick Hogan / May 12, 2006

By now, everyone’s heard about the historic personal letter recently sent from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush. Well, we here at the Factor have the next big development in this story: Just yesterday, one of our correspondents intercepted another letter sent from the Iranian head of state, and in a worldwide exclusive, we...

Gravitational ripples: the newest eco-scare

By Patrick Hogan / May 5, 2006

Since it first emerged as a proclaimed environmental threat in 1989, global warming has become one of the most contentious and hotly debated scientific theories of the modern age. Yet for all its headline-grabbing controversy, global warming is hardly the first or even the most insidious hoax of its kind. If anything, it has been...

AOL-speak is destroying language’s beauty

By Patrick Hogan / April 14, 2006

“Haha JK!!! JK 4EVR! U R SO LOL – SOL!!! U R SBC CIA! NBC FBI FUBAR? NATO; BFF!!! :)” After seeing this, my first thought was, “What the hell am I looking at?” Since then I have been puzzled over my irate, troubled gut response to this note, an excerpt from an e-mail a...

Writing a B.A. is an endless battle of wills

By Patrick Hogan / March 31, 2006

“In this sense the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right...

Lady Justice brutalized by rape verdict

By Patrick Hogan / March 7, 2006

This week, the O’Smiley Factor’s not feeling entirely smiley. Quite the contrary, in fact. One might even go so far as to say that, at the time of this writing, things are rather in O’Freakin’ Furious Factor mode. Why, you ask? Because this week the assholes won. I’m sorry if my vocabulary let anyone down...

The U of C has a dangerous addiction

By Patrick Hogan / February 17, 2006

From our primeval ancestors’ first ruminative munching on cacao leaves to the latest cocktails of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, people have been subject to an ever-expanding set of psychological and chemical addictions for millennia. In fact, the range of addictions on campus is almost as diverse as the student body itself. There are...

Here’s a transcript of my talk with O’Really

By Patrick Hogan / January 26, 2006

Recently, I had the honor of appearing on one of America’s top rated cable news talk shows for a head-to-head with the world-famous Shrill O’Really, a man whose bizarre name certainly hasn’t kept him from clawing his way to the top of the entertainment food chain. Although the episode will not actually air until next...

On the oh-so-scary liberal activist judges

By Patrick Hogan / January 12, 2006

We live in very dark and restless times indeed. According to screaming headline after screaming headline, wild-eyed pundit after wild-eyed pundit, our nation is besieged from within by a festering malice, a rankling infection whose touch threatens to taint every corner of this land. Indeed, to hear it told by some, the very foundations of...

The real war is the War on Christmas

By Patrick Hogan / January 5, 2006

Despite the peaceful spirit of love and joy allegedly pervading the holiday season, the final weeks of 2005 shall be forever marked in the history books by the scourge of war, a period of celebration punctuated by chaos and anguish. As anyone skimming the cable news channels or the pages of the odd newspaper must...

“A tsunamic human wave of adrenaline and desire:” One man’s perspective on the NCAA Cross Country Championships

By Patrick Hogan / November 22, 2005

I had originally planned to bring along my notebook and jot down a point-by-point account of our exploits at this past weekend’s NCAA meet. Unfortunately, in all the excitement I completely forgot to make notes of any sort. I return Chicago with nothing but memories of our ninth-place finish, the best in our program’s history,...

Regionals Diary: Two days in the life of UCXC

By Patrick Hogan / November 20, 2005

Editor’s note: Men’s cross country entered the fall with high hopes after losing just one major contributor from a squad that made the national meet last year. Going into last Saturday’s Midwest Regional meet at Peoria, IL, there seemed to be no reason to expect that they wouldn’t realize those hopes. The team had already...

Regionals Diary: Two days in the life of UCXC

By Patrick Hogan / November 18, 2005

Editor’s note: Men’s cross country entered the fall with high hopes after losing just one major contributor from a squad that made the national meet last year. Going into last Saturday’s Midwest Regional meet at Peoria, IL, there seemed to be no reason to expect that they wouldn’t realize those hopes. The team had already...

Who knew? The Right is compassionate.

By Patrick Hogan / November 17, 2005

If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the furor over May House’s Ghetto-Thuggin’-Straight-Stupid dorm party—which, by the way, I’m pretty sure got billed as a Klan meeting on the national news, so there we go sliding down the U.S. News rankings again—it’s that stereotypes, though artificial, are hurtful, ugly things (by that definition, people...

Crichton is talking to Congress?

By Patrick Hogan / November 3, 2005

Recently, a funny blip popped up on the national news radar: Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park and ER, served as a lead witness at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Finally!” I thought. “It’s about time Congress cracked down on dinosaur cloning in this country!” Unfortunately, my initial enthusiasm evaporated...

Eating at Pierce and finding species-being

By Patrick Hogan / October 6, 2005

Many things can be found lurking in or around a plate of Pierce food (though it’s probably best not to speculate too much on what they might be) including the fodder for some serious philosophical musings. Some friends and I were sitting in that fine dining establishment, and someone mumbled a brief lament about having...