Telling the Difference
(07/08/08 4:00am)
Back in 1999, having somehow not heard that print magazines were in trouble, I started the one you're now reading.
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Back in 1999, having somehow not heard that print magazines were in trouble, I started the one you're now reading.
Talk to an evolutionary biologist long enough and you'll eventually hear the words "minimum population size." It's a simple concept: If a group's numbers dip below a certain point, it has no hope of survival. I was 17 when I learned this lesson in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy 93, so I know it's one a teenager can easily comprehend. Why then can't Duke's administrators? There's little other explanation for their recent decision to cut the BAA faculty below its critical minimum, from 17 to six - either they don't understand that this will result in the department's extinction, or they are hoping for just such an outcome. It's hard to say which makes them look more foolish.
The apartment above mine is flying an American flag. I saw it last night when I looked up to scan the skies, squinting through the haze that has drifted into midtown Manhattan on the north wind. Days ago, I smelled this haze, the remains of burning buildings and papers and bodies, as a reporter working for Newsweek the night of Sept. 11. For blocks and blocks near the World Trade Center, it hung in the air, a stench that could only bring to mind concentration camps and war.
During my freshman year I wrote a column called "On the Brink" for America Online. In the beginning, I had envisioned it as a web diary, a way to let future freshmen find out about what they were getting into. But as things written by 18-year-olds tend to do, it quickly devolved into a series of musings on the meaning of life. At the time, I thought it was terribly wise.
I hate to admit this in public, but here goes: I became obsessed with Duke basketball because I was already obsessed with some blonde guy.
Bishop Neumann High School has 231 students, with about 20 students per class. The home of the Golden Knights, it is situated three hours north of Pennsylvania in a bucolic town called Williamsport. In recent years, its students have done especially well in forensics and foreign languages. A full 85 percent of them go on to college.
Robert Reich is worried.
I used to laugh at the insipid columns The Chronicle always runs this time of year, the ones that feature overeducated Duke students whining that no one will hire them. But I'm not laughing anymore. I have now resigned myself to three facts (drum roll, please): I'm graduating in May, I don't yet have a job, and I'm writing one of those columns about the fact that I don't have a job yet.
Marlene is throwing a small dinner party in honor of her recent promotion to managing director, and she has an intriguing, if impossible, guest list: famous Victorian traveler Isabella Bird; Lady Nijo, the Japanese Emperor's courtesan; legendary Pope Joan; Patient Griselda from the Canterbury Tales; and Dulle Gret, whose sole claim to fame is being painted by Brueghel.
It's no surprise that Utah is trying to take our Congressional seat-it's a state that steals things.
What kind of baby shower would you throw for a robot that had just given birth to triplets? What would you say to a cyborg you met on a city street? And what would you do if a prominent and entirely sane computer genius suddenly started worrying that robotic advances were the harbinger of the end of the world?
"The whole campaign is just emotionally draining, and to have to go through this again-this is horrible," said the presumptive president-elect. "At this point, to my knowledge, there's no set date for the election."
Don't you just love The Glass Menagerie? The maudlin symbolism? The sad, saccharine storyline?
With one day left, candidates are scrambling to get in the last word on important issues-mainly Social Security, Medicare, taxes and defense.
I went back to my high school over fall break, but it wasn't there.
The Bible's Pharaoh dreamed of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. But when botany professor James Clark dreams up similar scenarios, they're on a 100-year scale-and they may not be just Bible stories, but visions of the future.
If you've ever taken Political Science 91, you've probably read "Locked in the Cabinet," Robert Reich's memoir of his four years as Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor. And you probably remember bits and pieces of it, too-his apt descriptions of Newt Gingrich as the school bully and Dick Morris as a man with no conscience, or his height jokes.
Late-night cravings. Mexican food. Big, gooey burritos that spill all over the table and, if you're not careful, your lap.
No one ever thought the Brady Act was a magic bullet. But a study co-conducted by a Duke professor shows the law has done even less than many people hoped: It has not been a factor in reducing gun-related homicides nationwide, according to the study.
Convocation wasn't necessarily in the Chapel this year, orientation included trips to local bars and move-in didn't take place on East Campus.