Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Chronicle's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query. You can also try a Basic search
46 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
I live with an alien. Her name is Shibby Shibby and she is a shape-shifter. Well, she might be a shape-shifter. Most of the time when I’m watching she looks like a walking shadow with cute-but-creepy yellow eyes. It’s when I’m not watching that she does her shape-shifting.
Sport, that great anachronism. An exhibition of passion and will, a struggle of endurance, a demonstration of teamwork in an age of individualism, all culminating in a championship. The story of the 2009-2010 Duke men’s basketball team was transformed into a heroic epic as the last nerve-wracking seconds ticked away leaving only Duke still standing. But when the Homeric story ended, the world didn’t take much time to snap back to normalcy. A couple of class cancelations may have prolonged the celebration, but soon enough it was back to the daily grind. The remnants of the game survived in the form of two new questions heard around campus: “Where did you watch the game?” and “How did you celebrate?” These are more than innocuous questions. They are gasps for air, probes for weak points in the modern psyche that permits no room for prolonged celebration. Our world is one of binary oppositions: Be rich or suffer poverty; be skinny or suffer obesity; be successful or suffer failure. And success is defined through the constant accumulation of more; rest for too long and you will miss out on the gravy train. On the surface, this value system doesn’t seem much different than that of the sports world. You either win or you lose. But sports are different, mostly because of their ends. Athletic competition, unlike that of the marketplace, is not about accumulation. In seeing Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski show that much emotion after winning a fourth championship, it’s obvious that the number of trophies doesn’t matter. It’s about something more, about the magic produced when a group of people band together to achieve a common goal and then realize their collective dream. We revel in sports, in stories of achievement, even in fairy tales like those of “Harry Potter” because we can clearly see the underlying purpose of it all. We watch a movie about some epic achievement, and we leave the theater comforting ourselves by compartmentalizing the experience: “It’s just a movie.” Is that because we have become too tame to dream big? Or is it because we wander through life aimlessly—every time a purpose rears its head, do we shrink from taking on the task because it is too bold, too fantastical, too much? These heroic tasks invariably seem to benefit others. The hero in Greek mythology may have been seeking individual glory, but such glory could only be achieved through service. Present-day heroes are often chosen from a select group of individuals dedicated to serving the community. The immortals among athletes are those who bring their team success—many individual hall of fame considerations, for example, take into account championships won. But we’re supposed to be selfish, we are told, thanks to Adam Smith. To some extent, we have even tried to classify heroic acts as somehow self-interested. But perhaps we were told the wrong story about Smith. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen spoke at Duke two weeks ago about the misinterpretation of Smith’s system. Smith, the proto-architect of the way we live our lives, expected more heroism from humankind. Self-interest will certainly motivate some actions, but we must also always keep in mind the needs, wishes, hopes and dreams of others. Before you buy into the individualistic philosophy of an Ayn Rand, consider for just a moment whether you felt anything at all when you saw Duke cut down the nets, or, on the flip side, when you saw a dejected Butler team collapse emotionally. Then ask yourself why. There is an old Rabbinic teaching that captures Smith’s point well, although it precedes Smith’s work by almost 1,800 years. Rabbi Hillel asked, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” With semester-concluding decisions upon us, we cannot fall into the trap of selfish abandon. It’s tempting to believe the myth that purely self-interested individuals will make choices that benefit society as a whole. Sometimes, that’s true. But even Smith couldn’t imagine a system that disregarded social responsibility, and Rabbi Hillel described a purely selfish individual as a “what” rather than a “who.” Selfishness infringes on our very humanity. This isn’t to say that we should all drop everything we have planned to join the Peace Corps. Some of the most socially responsible people made their riches first and then looked for ways to benefit the community. But every minute of every day will present you with an opportunity to help someone else, to be a responsible member of the society you wish to see. At the precipice of action, you must ask yourself, “If not now, when?” May the dedication to ask that question be the legacy that the Blue Devil’s athletic achievement has on the Duke community. Elad Gross is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Friday.
Change. Yes we can. All those chanters supporting President Barack Obama’s campaign proved they really could make some changes, at least with respect to health care.
There are ghosts among us.
A Duke student spends a summer building solar cookers for an impoverished community through DukeEngage. Throughout the course of the next year, that student learns from those she helped that some of the cookers are breaking. The student turns to Duke for help, but DukeEngage cannot provide additional funding. Where does the Duke student go?
With an economy in shambles, rising tuition and cramped dorm space, today’s college environment may not be the best in which to raise a baby. But with the apparent degeneration of relationships into a series of drinking games and superfluous conversations, any combination of which leads to someone’s bedroom, the traditional workload normally required to satisfy hormonal urges has significantly lightened over the years. Soon, if the economy continues to struggle, niceties such as beer and vodka may no longer be affordable in the new courting process, and the whole roundabout scheme to achieve physical satisfaction may devolve into one charmingly simple question: “Sex?”
In the beginning, there was chaos and continual disappointment. Duke football was one of the worst programs in the entire country, to the point where attorneys were able to defend Duke’s team in a scheduling lawsuit by arguing that Duke was unable to win a football game. But order was finally brought to the chaos.
The courtroom stirs with anticipation. Lawyers make last minute preparations, witnesses sit anxiously in the front row and then suddenly the judge enters. All rise. For some in the crowd, this may all seem ridiculous. The lawyers aren’t really lawyers; they’re college or high school students. The witnesses are their schoolmates. The case the judge will hear didn’t actually happen. For the next few hours, everyone in the courtroom shares a fantasy involving expert witnesses, emotional defendants and ruthless attorneys.
Will Phillips is the man—though technically, he is not quite a man yet.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the U.S. commemorates Veterans Day. A day once used to celebrate the end of World War I was institutionalized by President Dwight Eisenhower to be the day Americans honored all veterans.
On Nov. 9, the Western world will celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbolic moment that seemingly captures the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War all in one physical manifestation. With the end of the Cold War, capitalism and democracy were trumpeted as the best system for all of humanity and the international arena changed forever as the United States held sway over virtually all issues of consequence. The U.S. was declared the victor of the Cold War.
Why do we care about the Earth? Global warming, nuclear fallout, plastic proliferation—it really doesn’t matter. Old planet Earth will be just fine. It’s ourselves we should be thinking about.
This Friday, Duke will rededicate and update the war memorial located between the Chapel and the Divinity School. Fifty-four names will be added to the list of Duke alumni who have been killed in service to their country.
“The only thing they’re going to be putting pressure on is the grass.” That was Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s response to Sunday’s LGBT rights march in Washington, D.C. Frank believes that such demonstrations really have no impact on securing civil rights for maltreated groups.
The bridge is at the center of controversy again.
Maybe instead of visiting Copenhagen to lobby for a Chicago Olympics in 2016, the Commander-in-Chief could give Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a phone call.
On Monday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, earned himself a spot in the history books. McChrystal’s report on the war in Afghanistan, sent to President Obama Aug. 30, can now be read on the Washington Post’s Web site.
The Prime Minister sits alone in his office, staring out his window as he subconsciously rocks in his brown leather chair. He envisions streets full of rubble, buildings gutted by the explosion, all against the backdrop of nuclear winter. With a stony resolve and a sinking heart, he officially orders the most complex surgical aerial bombardment in human history.
“Anything that goes to ePrint will be duplex,” read the Duke Student Government minutes from Sept. 27, 2006. Three years later, that dream has yet to be realized. Hundreds of Duke students have been subjected to double the carrying weight and double the paper cuts because of our collective failure to act.
Glute-blasting on the ellipticals, abdominal-cutting on the stability ball, bicep-flexing in the corner mirror—walk into Wilson or Brodie recreation centers any moment of the day, and you’re bound to see many a sweaty mess working themselves into shape.
