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(04/27/04 4:41am)
As you read this column, I am taking shelter in a hidden bunker deep beneath the surface of Bloomington. It took most of my last six paychecks and all the limits on my credit cards, but it's worth every penny -- steel-reinforced, hermetically sealed doors; six-foot thick concrete walls with a layer of X-ray proof lead, independent generator, water and air supply, remote satellite link-up, and enough ammo, toilet paper, Spam and "Girls Gone Wild" videos to last me for the next 30 years. Everything a person could need to survive the end of the world.\nWhat, you think I'm nuts? Ha! \nYou fools might have thought you were safe after the millennium passed and the Y2K bug didn't destroy us with man-eating toasters and cold-blooded ATM machines, but you weren't looking for the signs. The signs! \nIt's all as foretold 500 years ago by the astronomer Nostradamus. All one has to do is translate his prophecies from the medieval French and the warnings become clear as day! Here, I'll show you.\nIn his 961st quatrain, he writes:\n"And in the 885th year/When Neptune is in the third house of Sirius/And Orion's belt has come unbuckled/The signs of the end times shall come."\nDecoding the year for this prophecy is a fairly simple process. All you do is count back to the date of the founding of the Knights Templar, add the age of John the Baptist when he was beheaded, divide by the number of Monkees members who could play their own instruments and carry the two. What do you find? The 885th year is 2004! \nStill don't believe me? Such skeptical unbelievers! Very well, let's look at what Nostradamus predicts as "the signs of the end times."\nOf the first sign, he writes:\n"And like the heads of the hound of Tindalos/Three brothers, surpassing puberty/With harmonies, climb past 100 on the board of William/And it shall be as a sucking of the hindquarters."\nClearly, he has predicted the release of the latest Hanson album!\nIn another vision, he foresees the political ascendance of Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger, apparently based on that most metaphysical of films, "Predator": \n"Great warriors will battle an invisible foe/And one shall gain the throne of the Vikings/And one shall lord over the huggers of trees/And Carl of the Weathers shall rule them all."\nWatch for Carl Weathers' campaign for president in 2008!\nBut Nostradamus' visions are not limited only to national events. He actually predicts the cicada invasion due to hit Bloomington this summer:\n"The town of Bloom shall see a plague/The cycle's seventeenth year, the buzzing host shall come\nAnd shall fill their piñatas to overflowing/And tears will be shed at many a birthday party."\nMy God, after this, what other proof do you need?\nYes, I know it's frightening. But all is not lost. There's a little time left. You can still make preparations. \nOf the final sign, Nostradamus writes:\n"On the last day, a miracle upon the grid of iron/Cream and Crimson soldiers, a season's campaign fought/Shall cause great amazement throughout the land,/The tide turning, for once they will break even."\nAnd as far as I can tell, this last prophecy has not yet come to pass.
(04/13/04 5:06am)
(Cue soft, smooth R&B in the background.)\nAww, yeah. It's spring. The grass is green, the birds and the bees are doing what they do and much of campus seems impatient to put their secondary sex characteristics on display. Yup, it's the time for love. But not all is well here in the Opinion Page Groove Lounge. For the past couple of weeks (see March 30, April 5), my brother and sister columnists have been nursing their wounds, sustained as embedded journalists covering the war of the sexes. And while those wounds are not the same, one complaint seems to get whispered softly, again and again, as they share a gaze with the olives in their martinis, "Where have all the good mates gone? Whatever happened to chivalry?"\nOK then, two complaints.\nWell, fear not lonely hearts, the (unlicensed) doctor of love has got a cure. But first a puzzle -- with more than 35,000 students in a town of 100,000 in a world connected by the Internet, why has it become so tough to find a good, decent, chivalrous mate? Or at least someone to warm the sheets as you keep looking? Now here's another question -- be patient, baby, the doctor's coming to a point -- do you know the name of the two-legged creature Luke Skywalker and Han Solo ride across the frozen planet Hoth? Or do you know who holds the major league record for career strikeouts (but suck at baseball)? Do you like Emily Dickinson poems? How about, do you have all the Harry Potter books? Enjoy show tunes? Are there old X-Men comics moldering under your bed at home? Ever been to a Renaissance Fair? In costume? \nIf you answered yes to any of these, then you're a geek. But don't worry, child, we're all geeks. Especially columnists. Especially grad students. And, yes, the doctor, is the grand high, class 10 (+2 to magic missile) wizard of geeks.\nBut most of us are geeks in denial. Closet geeks. Unlike the cats that dress up as elves at "Lord of the Rings" previews, we try to conceal our geekdom from the world. And when we tour the scene on the make for mates, we steer clear of our fellow geeks. Instead, we go for whoever looks, sounds and acts the way we think that chick on the cover of Maxim or the lead singer in that music video would. And, aside from being toned like an Australian surfing champ, nothing covers geekiness like bling. Why do you think rappers wear so much of it? Now, hold on there, hold on. The doctor saw how you crinkled up your little chipmunk nose. You're thinking the doctor is nuts. You're thinking the doctor's suggesting you lower your standards. Suggesting you hook up with someone who wears velvet capes and tights when it's not Halloween, and talks to their cats. But the doctor ain't suggesting any such thing. There's plenty of crazy folks in this world, and they're best left to themselves (believe the doctor, he knows)\nNo, the doctor says the secret is to look for real people, not 2-D airbrushed, choreographed, carefully lighted people wearing rouge to bring out their cheekbones. Real people are the only source of nookie we've got. At least until science comes up with a virtual reality codpiece. And that's not to mention love. So give the other geeks a chance. But, baby, stay clear of those folks who claim to speak Klingon. They're weird.
(03/30/04 4:24am)
According to an article published this weekend by Reuters, with yet seven months to go before anyone does any voting, Americans are already being turned off by the negative tone of the 2004 presidential campaign. Journalist John Whitesides reports the effect is bipartisan. The Democratic consultants, Democracy Corps, report a 10 percent increase in negative assessments of John Kerry, while polls from Ipsos, Fox News and Newsweek all show declines in support for George Bush (Reuters, March 28).\nThis result is disappointing both for the American people and American democracy. Clearly it is time for a new candidate to enter the fray. It is a job for someone we can trust. A job for someone of great courage and patriotism. Someone who can leap tall buildings in a single bound.\nIt is a job for Superman.\nWait! I know what you're thinking. Yes, I'm aware of the fact the Man of Steel is entirely fictional. I just don't see why that should prevent him from running for president of the United States. \nI'm sure you have concerns, so I've attempted to address them in the familiar FAQ format.\nQ: How would he determine his position on complex political issues?\nA: Superman has been around since 1938. According to the unnervingly thorough Superman fan site, www.superman homepage.com, Action Comics (in which he made his debut) is up to issue number 809 as of this column's publication. And that's just one series in which Supes is featured. Given this tremendous amount of material, his political positions could be estimated using advanced statistical techniques and textual analysis. All it would take is the comics, a computer, a thousand gallons of Mountain Dew and a geek of truly epic proportions. They're probably already working on it at Purdue. \nQ: Given that Superman does not actually exist, how could he make decisions over national policy?\nA: Presumably, the same way real presidents do -- through a complex series of negotiations and bickering among career bureaucrats, campaign advisors, speech writers, astrologers, fishing buddies and others. Before assuming office, they could be allocated votes based on experience, party support, breath-holding, swimsuit competition, whatever. Better yet, Superman's position could be determined by weekly public opinion polls. It worked so well for the last administration.\nQ: How would he interact with people?\nA: For most of us, the president is pretty much just a head on the pixel-projecting idol in our living room. We can do that with CGI. Want a photo with the president? We can do that with PhotoShop. Want to shake his hand? We'd just install virtual reality booths at those $1,000 a plate fundraising dinners. It would cost $100 for five minutes, but it would be worth it. When you pay the fee, you team up with Superman to blast mutants in a futuristic labyrinth. With a real president, all you get is the hand.\nQ: What would he bring to the office?\nA: He has experience wrestling with dinosaurs, giant robots and sea monsters, so he'd be great at congressional hearings. Not being alive per se, he'd be assassination-proof. Drawing on his Justice League buddies, he could have a terrific cabinet (Batman may not be as intimidating as John Ashcroft, but he has a wicked utility belt). With NASA's help, he could rotate the earth backward to undo policy failures. And best of all, his weaknesses -- kryptonite, red suns -- don't involve interns.\nWhen all is said and done, there is only one major barrier to Superman's success. Being from Krypton makes him a non-native-born U.S. citizen. Does he have the power to get a constitutional amendment passed? Tune in next time ...
(03/09/04 4:27am)
To: Indiana Daily Student readers\nFrom: IDS Human Resources Department\nSubject: Personnel changes\nGiven increasing competition in the global college newspaper market, it has become necessary to find ways of cutting our per-issue production costs. You may have noticed some changes already. For example, we have shifted from using northern softwood kraft pulp for our newsprint to poison oak (note: if you experience redness or irritation and are not reading the staff editorial, seek professional help). We have improved the horoscope's efficiency by merging some of the less popular signs. Now you can look to Cancergo, the crabby virgin, or the water-bearing twin bulls, Tuareg. And 40 percent of this year's IU Student Association election coverage was recycled from last year. \nBut more drastic measures must be taken in order to maintain our fragile bottom line. Thus, as a pilot program, we have outsourced this column to the top writer for the University of Tarragonia's "Student Daily Diktat," Norgi Kreb. Thanks to this decision, we have preserved our journalistic excellence, while lowering the cost of a column from $8 to 40 cents. This $7.60 savings alone is enough to fund such crucial features as the down clues in the crossword puzzle, or to provide our editorial board meetings with a fresh, naughty ice sculpture each and every week. We're sure you'll come to love Norgi as much as we love our ice sculptures.\nSincerely,\nHuman Resources.
(02/24/04 4:28am)
Columnists live for controversy. It's our raison d'être. Contrary to general human nature, we want to be despised. Perhaps not to the extent of having to duck thrown knives or finding severed sheep's heads on our doorsteps, but at least to the degree that people find themselves fuming over our columns every week. And, given our inability to make people cancel their subscriptions to the IDS in disgust, the only way we can know we're truly effective is through angry letters to the editor.\nI've been writing for this paper for 10 months now and do you know how many angry letters I've gotten? One. And it wasn't very angry. This is unacceptable. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I haven't motivated you enough. The sad fact is that many of today's great fiery debates have been played out to the point of cliché. I find them uninspiring, and I suspect you might as well. How often do you hear that a news program is staging a debate between Democratic operatives and Republican operatives, or between pro-choice supporters and pro-life supporters, or between those who think Ralph Nader is a egomaniac and those who think he's a narcissist -- and think to yourself: "why bother listening, I already know what they're going to say?"\nExactly. So, I've devised a prompt that should spur anyone to action. Ready? \nHere goes:\n"I hate you. In fact, I hate any and all groups to which you belong and/or have sympathies -- be they political, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, academic, geographic or 'other.' Especially 'other.' Especially if 'other' involves pantomime. I am against everything you believe in, whatever it is. I support government policies that unfairly disadvantage you relative to other people, and I would vote against your preferred candidate for any elective office, even if they were running unopposed. If we were living in the Middle Ages, I would eat your crops and burn your house down. Unless you were growing lima beans. Then I would eat your house and burn your crops down. So there. What're you gonna do about it?"\nOK, now that the motivation is taken care of, it's time to address the other thing that might keep you from writing in. That is, you might be a lazy sod. Or perhaps you just don't know how to write a letter to the editor -- although this doesn't seem to stop anyone else. In either case, here is a pre-written letter for you using the familiar "Mad Libs" format. All you have to do is copy it, insert your choices for the parentheses, and send it to the IDS. As a matter of fact, if you go to the Web site, you can just cut-and-paste it into e-mail. It follows below:\n"As a long-time reader of the IDS, I was (verbed) and (other verbed) by McFillen's column from Feb. 23. How you could allow such a blatant (epithet) to spew such (noun you wouldn't want on your carpet), I will never understand. I have always suspected the presence of a(n) (adjective) bias in your (choose one: newspaper, rag, birdcage lining), and now am convinced. You should (verb) him immediately and send him on a (noun) to (a place), where the natives would stuff (nouns) in his (orifice) until he (verbs). I will never read the opinion page again. Instead, I will only pick up the IDS to read "The Adventures of Skully" or "Blender Kitty" because I am a (noun) who sits around getting high off of (verbing) a (household chemical or small reptile)."\nNow -- you have the motivation. You have the letter. You have no excuse. Go to it.
(02/10/04 10:42pm)
This Saturday is Valentine's Day, but do you honestly know where Valentine's Day comes from? While we've all heard the holiday has something to do with a "St. Valentine," few people realize the holiday's origin is a bit of a mystery. \nIn fact, historians believe it is the culmination of various traditions that emerged during the last 2,700 years.\nThe earliest element contributing to modern Valentine's Day was the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia. Every Feb. 15, the Romans would go out to a cave in the Palatine Hill called the Lupercal to feast and dance and sacrifice goats. To this day, goats do not celebrate Valentine's Day. The highlight of the festival was when two teams of naked men would race around the hill hitting people with goat-hide whips. Women struck by the whips were said to become fertile. This tradition holds today, except, of course, it is the guys who end up whipped.\nIn the third century A.D., "St. Valentine" made his historical debut. Actually, there were two St. Valentines, one a Roman priest and doctor, the other the bishop of Turni, a town near Rome. In a show of bureaucratic redundancy, the Romans executed both. As legend has it, Emperor Claudius II whacked one for violating an imperial order by conducting secret marriages for soldiers. \nClaudius apparently thought marriage made his soldiers into sissies, whereas leather skirts were dead butch. Besides being the patron saint of lovers, St. Valentine (either one, presumably) is invoked to cure epilepsy. This is why so much of Valentine's Day is spent in the hope of swallowing a tongue.\nIt was also in Roman times that Cupid, the son of Venus, became a symbol of love -- because, of course, nothing says love like a projectile-weapon toting, bare-arsed flying baby. According to myth, Cupid flies around invisibly, shooting people with gold-tipped arrows, which makes them fall in love, or shooting them with lead-tipped arrows, which makes them die of lead poisoning.\nAn English tradition, dating back to the time of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, holds that Valentine's Day was a holiday of love because it happened to be the day birds chose their mates. One can only wonder how the English learned this. The 14th century must have been a very slow century indeed.\nBy the 1700s, a variety of Valentine's Day-related customs had emerged. According to the 2003 World Book Encyclopedia, young women hoping to summon their true loves would circle their church at midnight chanting things like "I sow hempseed. / Hempseed I sow. / He that loves me best, / Come after me now." \nToday, this tradition finds expression in the work of the contemporary poet, Mr. Snoop Dogg: "A-ha, niggaz be brown-nosing these hoes and shit. / Takin bitches out to eat, and spendin money on these hoes knowwhatI'msayin?" ("Chronic Break"). Amazing how little has changed over the \ncenturies.\n The 19th century saw the emergence of mass-produced valentines. While some decry the commercialism that has crept into Valentine's Day ever since, I personally think this development was a boon for humanity. After all, shelling out $2.99 for a card of a teddy bear that says "I wuv you" is often far less costly than telling someone what you really think of them.
(01/27/04 4:16am)
Forget parenthood, the greatest joy in life is being an opinion columnist in a presidential election year. Like a Shakespearean tragedy with multiple heroes, there is hyperbole, treachery, misfortune, madness and bizarre twists of fate -- and we columnists get to play the Fools to the candidates' Lears.\nAt what other time, except, perhaps, while playing drunken foosball, would an adult claim he had "Joementum?" When else would the governor of Vermont's bloodcurdling scream be turned into 57 techno remixes and counting (according to my last check of deangoesnuts.com)? What other event could make the most powerful man in America, much less the world, take time to warn Congress about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases? Not that the warning wasn't good for them ... \nIn short, if you're not paying attention to this race, you're missing out on the greatest reality TV show in years, perhaps ever. By comparison, "Survivor" is a pale, asthmatic choir boy with flabby arms, and "Fear Factor" plays with dollies. But there is always room for improvement, particularly with so much of the season left to go. So I would like to suggest some more twists to make the race all the more compelling:\nBush is found to be an android -- all the mispronunciation and grammatical errors were because of his having an MS-DOS operating system. The 2003 State of the Union line about yellowcake uranium was a "type 53" error.\nAt a campaign rally, Joe Lieberman starts speaking in tongues, bringing a sudden boost to his poll numbers in Alabama. Locals report to journalists it was the first speech they'd understood in years.\nJohn Kerry rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually John Edwards. Edwards rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually Wesley Clark. Clark rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually Joe Lieberman. Lieberman rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually Howard Dean. Dean rips off his latex mask to reveal he is actually George Bush. Bush rips off his latex mask to reveal he is John Kerry. Al Sharpton rips off his latex mask to reveal he is the reunited 80s new-wave band Flock of Seagulls.\nThe General Accounting Office wins its suit to open the records of Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group meetings. It turns out they were practicing the Mikado. Disgraced former Enron CEO Ken Lay was to play Ko-Ko.\nJohn Edwards is Keyser Soze.\nWesley Clark changes his name to "Butch," because no terrorist would ever surrender to a president named "Wesley."\nHaving shut down all machines for 15 minutes to warn the world about atomic weapons, Dennis Kucinich and robot companion Gort climb back in their flying saucer and go home.\nThe night before the Democratic convention, Howard Dean shoots J.R. Ewing -- but it is all just a dream.\nOnce the victor wins, they find Dick Gephardt's picture in the White House presidential portrait gallery. After dropping out of the race, he went back in time to beat Eisenhower in the 1952 election, when union endorsements still mattered.\nSeriously, this stuff is exciting. Tonight, get some friends together, have a couple of beers (if of legal age) and watch the New Hampshire results come in -- as if you needed the excuse to drink on a weeknight.
(01/13/04 5:15am)
One day, near the end of last semester, I had a strange encounter on the bus home from the office. Three stops before mine, a passenger bumped into me on the way out. As he passed, I saw he was older, say about 30, skinny, disheveled, with a gray face that made him look thoroughly beaten. His receding hairline suggested that he was a fellow graduate student. We locked eyes for a moment. His held a wild intensity that was somewhat disturbing. And then he was gone.\nWhen I got home, I found that a couple sheets of folded paper had been shoved into my jacket pocket. It was a manifesto of sorts, typewritten, anonymous, titled "The Machiavellian's Guide to Graduate Study: Things Grad-Student Kind Was Not Meant to Know." Perhaps the guy had recognized me from my IDS mug shot, or perhaps he was handing them to people at random. It might not have even come from him. But as soon as I read it, I knew it had to be published. \nThe guide is composed of ten rules for success and happiness in one's graduate career at the cost of any higher ideals -- such as the advancement of knowledge -- or, to a degree, the success and happiness of others. Being a conscientious, dedicated and moral grad student myself, I personally disavow it. By exposing it to the light of public scrutiny, however, I hope others will write in to confront and ultimately defeat its cynical prescriptions. Of course, I understand this means making it available to grad students, prospective grad students or even undergraduates of such low character that they might actually find it useful. But I prefer to believe that my peers' better natures will win out.\nThe Machiavellian's Guide to Graduate Study:\nRule #1: When a sane person cannot handle it, go insane. Haven't you noticed graduate students and/or professors sometimes wander around muttering to themselves? Academia runs according to its own rules, divorced from reality -- learn them in order to bend them.\nRule #2: Procrastination breeds efficiency. In the business world, people get rich through "just-in-time" production. Nothing breeds novel solutions like having an assignment due in 20 minutes.\nRule #3: Take anything seriously, and it will cripple you. Why worry? Let others do it for you.\nRule #4: The brighter the candle, the quicker it melts. Graduate study is a long, hard slog, like marching into Russia in winter. Best not to be Napoleon.\nRule#5: A conscience only complicates grading. Remember that your funding is not based on the opinions of your students. And they are only rarely armed.\nRule #6: It is easier to fake effort than brilliance, and often more rewarding. In fact, the longer you make a paper, the more revenge you heap upon your professors.\nRule #7: Lies can be uncovered, but interpretations can only be debated. There is always some other nutty person who will believe you. This is how schools of theory are born.\nRule #8: Never ruin a good theory with facts. Most of the people on the New York Times Non-Fiction List don't do it, why should you?\nRule #9: Consulting a professor is like praying to a strange, primitive god: do it only when you are desperate or when what you say will appease it. You have a place in the academic universe, and it is just above sea cucumbers.\nRule #10: Regarding gods and faculty, know that the intervention of either requires a sacrifice.\nNow that they're out, I'm sure you see the fallacy of these rules. Right? Right?
(12/09/03 5:26am)
The holiday season is almost here. That time of year when it's most important to think about those who are truly needy, those who are less fortunate, those whom fate has dealt a sorrowful hand. And by "those," I mean "us," your IDS columnists.\nAs you might have noticed, the news harvest hasn't been terribly rich lately. Sure, the semester started off promising enough. The controversy over the Rasmussen Web site provided palatable, if predictable, fare. And the high politics of reshuffling IU's upper administration was a tantalizing treat. But as we approach the conclusion of fall 2003, the well is nearly dry.\nNormally, we would simply import stories from around the world and find some way to make them relevant to you. But this month, it's a dustbowl out there. For example, how do you start a heated debate about a winter storm hitting the Northeast? Argue it should have hit the Southwest, because America needs a more equitable distribution of snow? Call for a boycott against sleet? Insist it was the Democrats' fault? And the other major stories are little better for our purposes, unless you're actually interested in Medicare and Michael Jackson ...\nYeah, that's what I thought.\nCertainly, my valiant colleagues have been struggling to turn news-Spam into news-filet mignon, but you can see the strain in their prose.\nThus, we need your help. We need you to incite new and exciting controversies for spring. \nI'll leave the exact controversy up to you. I'm sure that you can come up with things that only people addicted to licking frogs could ever imagine. Not that I'd know, ahem. But to get you started, I have a few suggestions.\nFirst, go have an affair with someone famous. Just look at the flap in Britain surrounding Prince Charles. And, thanks to British libel laws, those journalists can't even say with whom he allegedly had the affair (although you can find it on the Internet). Or, if you can't find anyone famous, at least find someone utterly inappropriate. Your account could probably spur a whole week of moral condemnation, employing the entire page. Sure, it may give things a bit of a sleazy tabloid feel, but hey, desperate times call for desperate columns and I, for one, am willing to make the sacrifice.\nSecond, create a new disadvantaged group. Obviously, the easiest way to go about this is to combine already existing groups -- develop a society for paraplegic, left-handed transsexual Sherpas, for instance. Of course many of the traditional distinctions are passé. How about an organization that worships "American Idol" through ritual trepanation? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like putting a hole in his head whenever he hears Clay Aiken sing.\n Third, protest something. Anything. It could be the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the activities of the World Trade Organization, the quality of the meatloaf in the dining halls, the color of the sky. Whatever, as long as it involves tent cities, and bongos, and effigies, and people chaining themselves to things, and folk singers doing bad impressions of Bob Dylan, and naked, hairy people dancing around a bonfire in front of the IMU. Wait, scratch that last one. They'll never allow a bonfire in front of the IMU.\nWhatever you do, please do it soon. If we don't have something good by February, the editors might put us in the closet with the spider monkeys. And those spider monkeys, they have sharp, sharp teeth.
(11/24/03 5:22am)
Last month, Interim Public Access Counselor for the State of Indiana, Sandra Bowman, issued an opinion stating that e-mails sent by IU employees via university accounts can be disclosed to the public through the 1984 Indiana Access to Public Records Act (IDS, Nov. 20).\nAs this means that e-mails to and from my account could be matters of public record, I felt it necessary to explain and clarify some items of correspondence that, upon release to the public, could be, well, misinterpreted. Given space constraints, I cannot reprint the text of the messages here. But I have provided the dates and subject lines, in order that this column might serve as a key to their original intent.
(11/11/03 5:31am)
As I understand it, President Herbert is looking for a new IU-Bloomington Chancellor. Well, I just want to say, "Hey, I'm available."\nNow, I'll admit that I'm not exactly your typical choice for chancellor. For one thing, I haven't achieved my doctorate yet. But, you see, that's a strength. After all, how better could an administrator come to understand his or her university than by being down in the trenches, neck-deep in the steaming bowels of the institution? And I'm no ivory tower elitist. Rather, I know what it's like to trip over the bodies of students sleeping on sidewalks and staircases because callous Registrar's office bureaucrats refuse to consider Axis' 5 cent draft night when scheduling classes. I know your pain.\nNor do I have an Ivy League education. Instead, I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps. My alma mater, the College of Wooster, was no $40,000-a-year prep school (as of fall 2003, the comprehensive fee is only $31,300). There was only one coffee bar. And with as many as 40 students in a class at times, you had to struggle to distinguish yourself from the pack. It was rough, but it built character. \nFurthermore, I may have no administrative experience, or even know off-hand where the chancellor's office is, but this is also in my favor. I'm an outsider. I bring a new perspective. I'll be a fresh breeze blowing out the old ideas. A cyclone shaking up the system. Give me a chance, and I'll give the University wind.\nNow, you may be wondering what a chancellor does. To be honest, it took me awhile to figure that out myself. Based on the job title, one can assume that a chancellor is responsible for chanceling the chancellees. But that's hardly revealing.\nThe Web site for the Office of the Chancellor does not provide a description, and President Herbert is planning to change the chancellor's role, anyway (IDS, Oct. 31).\nThe most concise description I could find came from the University of Alaska, Anchorage (www.uaa.alaska.edu/chancellorsearch). I'll explain my "vision" line by line.\n"The chancellor is the chief executive officer of the (university) and reports to the president of the (university)."\nI have absolutely no problem with being subordinate to the president. Indeed, were the trustees to offer me a 2004 Jaguar XJ to entice me into the job, I would insist the president get one, too. Except I'd demand that his have leather seats instead of vinyl. Better yet, were I given a sedan chair and servants to carry me around campus (much more environmentally friendly than a golf cart), I'd make sure his sedan chair had twice as many servants, and a mini-bar. There's no room for egos in this business.\n"Within the scope of Regents' Policy and University Regulation, the chancellor exercises very broad delegated authority and is responsible for all aspects of (the) administration."\nI am perfectly happy to delegate authority. Indeed, the more delegated the authority, the more effective I become. I would even hire someone to go into the office for me. Above all, I'm a team player.\nFinally, "the chancellor works with all university, state, community and private constituencies to develop support for the institution."\nWere I chancellor, I would work around the clock building support among IUB's constituencies. We especially need to reach out to our constituencies in far-flung corners of the world like Tahiti and the Virgin Islands. They have been too long ignored by the university administration. In fact, I'm willing to go meet with them personally, just to let them know how much they matter.
(10/28/03 5:59am)
This weekend, I was invited to a Burmese cultural event at the Leo Dowling International Center. Actually, it was more a political event than a cultural event. Although the festivities included the sampling of mon' hin gar (a fish and noodle soup) and a briefing on the wearing and uses of the longyi (the cotton skirt worn by both men and women throughout the country), much of the attention focused on photos and videos detailing the brutal repression of Burma's democracy movement. This caught me a little off guard -- I knew that Burma (officially Myanmar) had an autocratic government, but I wasn't expecting the political conditions to receive such emphasis, not that I ever mind talking politics. \nIt made more sense, however, when I learned that my hosts, the members of the Burmese Students Association, are refugees from the military junta that, since 1988, has ruled Burma with an iron fist. In taking power, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) killed thousands of protesters and has since handled its critics by packing them into some of the world's least pleasant prisons. Indeed, the SLORC is such a nasty piece of work, it has been publicly condemned by both Susan Sarandon and President Bush, making it perhaps the only thing upon which the two agree (www.freeburmacoalition.org).\nWhile I waited for my bowl of mon' hin gar, an article from the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs kept rattling around in the back of my mind. The uninitiated Foreign Affairs is a highly influential journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations and generally relies on historical anecdote, random statistics and author's prestige rather than empirical research. In this article, Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a foreign policy think-tank, argued "Destiny and choice have made the United States the dominant power in the world today, yet many U.S. policy makers -- both Republican and Democrat -- have failed to learn from past mistakes. The pursuit of their universal democratic utopia, as attractive as it may seem, is damaging vital U.S. interests …" (Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 2003). This is because "democratic nations are not always prepared to support the United States (but) authoritarian ones sometimes are, including on the crucial issues of our time, such as nonproliferation and terrorism." \nIndeed, Simes complained that U.S. foreign policy had been Shanghaied by "powerful but too often reckless single-issue groups and non-governmental organizations -- which aspired to shape policy without having responsibility for its consequences" using "emotional but poorly explained television images."\n To be fair to Simes, I should make clear that his article is primarily concerned with the use of force -- that the U.S. military should not be sent in to overthrow one autocratic regime after another. Fair enough, this argument could be made on feasibility alone. But as I sat there, surrounded by folks approximately 8,000 miles away from home, trying to get the word out about the awful things happening back in their country, I couldn't help but think that he had it all wrong. In this country, democracy isn't something we advocate just because it's in our interest. We advocate it because it's what we are, even if it does result in a damned nuisance or two sometimes.\nSo when you finish this column, I want you to think about all the other folks who are out there reading papers that carry only the news the government wants them to hear. And I want you to think about what you can do to help them.
(10/15/03 7:22am)
This week, perhaps as early as tomorrow, the government of the People's Republic of China will make its first attempt to send a man into space in the Shenzhou 5 from Dongfeng Space City in the Gobi Desert. But it is just a small step in a larger plan. \nAccording to CNN's Joe Havely, the mission is seen as a stepping stone toward "the establishment of a Chinese space station(,) ... sending manned missions to the moon and eventually establishing a permanent Chinese lunar base" (CNN, Oct. 10). In a November 2000 White Paper, the PRC government makes clear that its interest in space is not purely altruistic: "The exploration and utilization of space resources shall meet a wide range of demands of economic construction, state security, science and technology development and social progress, and contribute to the strengthening of the comprehensive national strength."\nNote that "strength" bit.\nHaving grown up in front of the television set, like most Americans, I find that the upcoming Shenzhou 5 mission evokes two distinct sets of TV images.\nThe first is the grainy black-and-white footage of the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Little guys in bulky white suits, bouncing around on the moon's gray rocky surface with the earth hanging above them, slightly goofy but still utterly amazing.\nThe second is footage from nearly 20 years later, June 4, 1989, of the PRC government unleashing columns of mechanized infantry against unarmed students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. While the actual number of casualties remains uncertain, a declassified State Department report, sent June 9 from the Beijing embassy to Washington, estimates that 2,600 were killed and around 7,000 wounded, with Chinese democracy among the dead.\nThus, from these two streams, a single question: are we going to sit back and let the world's most powerful autocracy overtake us in space?\nGranted, the PRC is only just approaching a feat that the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin achieved 42 years ago, and NASA is busy reforming after the Columbia Shuttle disaster. \nBut it's disturbing that the bold plans for human kind's progress toward the stars are not coming from visionary scientists supported by the democratic peoples of the world, but from a brutal oligarchy seeking influence abroad and legitimacy at home. Compare the PRC's lunar ambitions with this description of current NASA thinking by journalist Ralph Vartabedian: "In a departure from the ambitious goals it has set since the dawn of the Space Age, NASA wants a modest system that will break no new technological barriers, but instead reduce costs and improve safety -- perhaps by adding a crew escape system, for example" (Montreal Gazette, April 19). \nOh, wow.\nAs the European Space Agency is consumed with plinking communications satellites into orbit and the Russian Space Agency is one budget-cut away from building capsules out of paper maché, NASA is the world's best bet for ensuring that the night sky becomes no one's empire -- especially the empire of an undemocratic power that might decide space-based weapons are a nifty way to get Taiwan back. \nAs President John F. Kennedy said in the 1961 speech that launched the race to the moon: "Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share"
(09/30/03 5:08am)
This Friday, graduate students from the sociology department invited me and my political science colleagues to an Oct. 2 meeting at the Karl F. Schuessler Institute for Social Research. According to the flyer sent to the sociology departmental list-serv, its coordinators "have been discussing the idea of forming a graduate employee organization since this spring" because "as employees we lack a strong voice in the decisions that affect our wages, benefits and working conditions. An organization that represented us as employees would allow us to speak collectively."\nThe sociologists were talking about unionizing, if not in such words.\nThis is hardly revolutionary; graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have been unionized since 1969 (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2001). And the flier suggested that we could gain "pay increases, better health care coverage, better spousal and dependent benefits, domestic partner benefits, subsidized childcare, guaranteed office space, faculty library privileges, increased job security, lower student fees, higher tuition wavers, better grievance procedures and more."\nIn response to an e-mail inquiry, Stephen Viscelli, the sociology department's graduate employee union representative, insisted that talk about organizing is just beginning, with plenty of room left for discussion and debate. Hopefully, in this spirit, optimists about this project will make their views known in the coming days through letters to the IDS. \nBut as for me, I'm a pessimist. Despite its noble intentions, recent events have made me doubt whether such an undertaking is feasible and worth the costs. \nFirst, where will the money for raises and additional benefits come from? With undergraduate tuition up 4 percent this year, plus a $1,000 freshman fee, few tuition-payers will be sympathetic to grad student demands. And facing an $800 million budget deficit, the state government is unlikely to make up the difference (South Bend Tribune, May 4). To spend more on each of us, something else must be cut. Given the expense of graduate education (the small class sizes, the time spent with senior faculty), the decision might just be that IU will fund fewer grad students. \nSecond, the recent unionization efforts at Yale, Brown and Columbia have not been pretty. On occasion, activists have cornered people two-on-one in their offices to talk them into joining, accused students opposed to unionization of being pro-administration traitors and arranged union eligibility to exclude students in the natural sciences who might vote "no" because of better job prospects (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 17, 2002). \nDon't misunderstand me; the invite for the Oct. 2 meeting was very polite and friendly, and I don't expect any such behavior from the people who initiated this discussion. But I worry that these actions might be symptoms of the organizational problems facing a grad student labor movement. For one, since we are very busy, any leadership positions might attract only the most zealous candidates. Also, we are (generally) only at a university a short period of time, so organization leaders might not consider long-term interests. The result could be radical activism rather than pragmatic negotiation and great future costs for small immediate gains.\nThird, one problem with collective bargaining is it requires a collective. By Viscelli's description, the sociology grads were so interested in having a GEO that they practically drafted him into being their union representative. Meanwhile, in two years, I have never heard serious griping about wages or benefits among my poli-sci colleagues. And we really like to gripe. Besides, the departments allocate the graduate funding. Wouldn't it make more sense, not to mention be easier, to organize pressure in one's own department?
(09/16/03 5:19am)
Lately, my Democratic friends seem listless, apathetic, demoralized. A great sadness has come over the tribe, and I believe it comes from disappointment with the nine Democratic presidential candidates. This is understandable, as the options range from unrealistic (Al Sharpton), to boring (Bob Graham), to difficult to spell (Dennis Kucinich). Perhaps Gen. Wesley Clark will throw his hat into the ring this week and reinvigorate the faithful, but perhaps not. Thus, I have taken it upon myself, in the spirit of fair play and humanitarianism, to suggest five new, more exciting Democratic candidates.\nTommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong): entrepreneur, entertainer, craftsman, convict. At the NAACP's annual convention in July, a discussion of restoring voting rights for felons created a competition between Al Sharpton and John Kerry. Sharpton claimed that he was the only candidate who had spent time in jail, but Kerry contradicted him, claiming that he too had been in jail (one night, after a Vietnam War protest) (Washington Post, July 15). Currently facing nine months in prison for manufacturing bongs, Tommy Chong could top both of them, yet still be out in time for the inauguration. Plus his claim to have beaten his marijuana problem through salsa dancing was far better than Clinton's "I didn't inhale." As Chong explained the power of salsa to U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab: "It's a Latin American dance that's awesome," (The Associated Press, Thursday).\nLucky the Leprechaun: cereal spokes-elf. Lucky is independently wealthy and has been vocal on protectionist policies for years ("Can't get me Lucky Charms!"). He could face questions regarding his citizenship and the fact that he's fictional, although the latter has never been a weakness in American politics. Lucky would be the perfect running mate for Dick Gephardt, given that Gephardt's plan to provide universal health insurance and balance the federal budget will require magic and a huge pot o' gold. He could also bring Gephardt the endorsement of the Universal Brotherhood of Keebler Elves.\nTed Williams: baseball legend, fighter pilot, TV dinner. After dying and being cryogenically frozen, the political appeal of the Red Sox hall-of-famer has only increased. He's a particular challenge for John Kerry. He's from Massachusetts, like Kerry. He's an athlete, like Kerry. He has on-screen charm, like Kerry. He's a war hero, like Kerry. And he's cold and stiff, like Kerry.\nSaddam Hussein: bloodthirsty tyrant, successful novelist ("Zabibah and the King"). Granted, his lack of democratic values and tendency to murder anyone who gets in his way might alienate the party core … and the swing voters … and everyone else, but Saddam does bring a couple of cards to the table -- with his face on them, no less. He shares the only quality that the current candidates have in common: He despises George W. Bush. He is also a patron of the arts, notably paintings of busty women threatened by mythological beasts (New York Daily News, Apr. 15). And, after all, he was against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.\n Newt Gingrich: former politician, pundit, desperately seeking attention. Recently Dick Gephardt accused Howard Dean of supporting the changes to Medicare pushed by Gingrich in 1995 (Washington Post, Saturday). \nGiven Dean's growing popularity, this begs the question -- what if you put the real Newt on the ticket? He has been critical of the Bush administration -- that is, if the Department of State still counts (The New York Times, June 17). And his love affairs, most recently with Congressional aide Callista Bisek (now his third wife), practically make Newt a Kennedy (Washington Post, Dec. 18, 1999). Best of all, the GOP would never see it coming.
(09/02/03 5:17am)
It has been about three and a half months since I became a member of the media, and the experience has generally been rewarding. But there has been one considerable disappointment: I have neither been invited to join the "liberal elite," nor the "vast right-wing conspiracy." I have seen no secret handshakes, no passwords and no hidden tattoos. No one has offered me a furry hammer-and-sickle-bearing hat or a pointy white hood and certainly no dinero from special-interest groups or shadowy political think-tanks. \nI feel like a wallflower at a junior-high dance.\nLately, conservative Ann Coulter and liberal Eric Alterman have gained attention for tackling the bias issue. Or, rather, for accusing their adversaries of bias. In "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right," Coulter declares the right is outnumbered: "The public square is wall-to-wall liberal propaganda. … The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob." In "What Liberal Media? The Truth About 'Bias' and the News," Alterman warns the left is outmatched: "Even the genuine liberal media is not so liberal. And it is no match -- either in size, ferocity, or commitment for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda."\nEach has their rogues' gallery. Coulter's includes NBC's "Today" show, the New York Times, Time Magazine and CBS' News and "Early Show," to name but a few. For Alterman, it's "Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, New York Post, American Spectator, Weekly Standard, New York Sun, National Review, Commentary and so on."\nWhat's really going on? \nWell, over a century ago, Oscar Wilde observed this of the press: \n" … The unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible." \nWilde was complaining about the press's fixation on celebrity scandal (gee, can't imagine why). But this argument holds for phenomena like the "human-interest story," the "trial of the century" or other media events which command great attention with little relevance to the audience-members' lives.\nAnd it biases political reporting, as well. \nIt is no longer enough for national news organizations, whether in the form of newspapers, magazines, radio, television or Web sites, to argue that they are a greater source of timely, pertinent and/or reliable information. The wide amount of information available today has made this advantage moot. You can just change the channel or double click a new Web link.\nHow, then, can a source gain a competitive advantage? \nSimple: Let your audience feel like it's right, particularly through confirming it's fears. \nWhy is the Fox News Channel the most popular cable news channel in America (The Weekend Australian, August 16)? Why did Lichter's Center for Media and Public Affairs find that: "Coverage of the Bush administration's consideration of a military strike against Iraq, as seen in the network newscasts and in front-page New York Times stories from … July 1 through Aug. 25, was 72 percent negative" (The Washington Post, Dece. 18, 2002)? Why could Marina Jimenez report "There are two wars in progress over Iraq. The one on CNN bears no resemblance to the one on its Arab equivalent, Al Jazeera …" (Ottawa Citizen, April 1)? \nThink about it, if you don't agree with an opinion column, do you read the whole thing or skip it and move on to something else?\nObjectivity no longer pays. Weigh the facts. Make up your own mind. Don't trust people to do it for you. \nExcept me, of course.
(08/07/03 1:27am)
It's almost that time of year again. The bees are buzzing, the sun is shining between downpours, the last of this summer's prospective-student families are lumbering across campus, and I just paid half a month's salary to cover what IU vaguely describes as "fees." Soon, the rest of IU-Bloomington's nearly 39,000 students will return in a tsunami of people and cars and boxes and furniture, filling up every parking lot and sprawling on every flat or quasi-flat surface. Around 17 percent of this flood will be freshmen and they'll be brimming with questions. As I'm now facing my seventh year in college, and have not yet been committed to a psychiatric institution, I figure I can provide some answers.\nWill college help me get a good job? \nThis depends on your definition of a good job. If you mean a job where you don't have to compete with 13-year-olds in Guatemala, then the answer is "probably." Although, you might want to think hard before pursuing that degree in philosophy. \nIf you mean a job with a high salary, the answer is "maybe." It most likely will mean taking classes that involve math, such as economics, physics or accounting. This requires a degree of masochism. Thus, it might be easier, and more lucrative, to let people pay to beat you with a rubber hose. \nIf you mean a job that's personally fulfilling, then you should get back on the mother-ship. However, with all the recruiters that come to campus, you won't lack for options. Last year, IU students even managed to break into the adult film and nude modeling sectors.\nIs it true that IU students party a lot?\nA "lot" is a highly relative term. For example, if we compare the average number of hours spent partying in any given week to the average number of hours spent, say, shearing sheep, the amount of partying will naturally seem huge. However, when compared to other activities, that amount might look tiny. I suspect that when compared to the amount of time IU students spend sleeping, the amount of time spent partying appears very small indeed.\nWill college prepare me for the real world? \nLet me put it this way. Jerry Springer is running for the U.S. Senate. An opera based on his show is a smash in London, while a musical called "Urinetown" is drawing critical acclaim on Broadway. Last week, a Pentagon research group proposed (then retracted) a system for betting on international crises. The Associated Press reported Sunday that a half-dozen Indiana lawmakers pack heat while debating in the state capital. And last Thursday, Fox aired back-to-back programs about insect bites and foreign objects pulled from people's bodies. \nTherefore, my answer is no. College is too sane to prepare you for the real world. However, with the planet's movers and shakers behaving as if they've been gargling absinthe, college will provide a nice place to hide out for four years. Nine, if you go on to graduate school.\nWill I make it?\nYou likely will. By my observation, it takes a special kind of laziness to flunk out of college. It takes commitment, dedication, long hours spent at the game console finding all the secret characters, days memorizing every guest star on Gilligan's Island and weeks of sleeping through class. Not everyone has this ability. It requires a special gift, a genius for idleness. For most of us, flunking out is simply not worth the effort. It's no wonder serious failures so often turn to drugs and alcohol. They get burned out.\nIn conclusion, let me welcome you to Bloomington. It's a special place. Nowhere else will you find more Tibetan restaurants than empty downtown parking spaces.
(07/24/03 1:09am)
Before I go further, let's make something clear. I'm a Republican. I voted for Bush. I believe in free-markets, small government, personal responsibility and making sure the world's tyrants see U.S. Marines in their nightmares. I am not one of the "liberal academics" that pundits would have you believe are teaching their students to smoke banana peels as a prelude to socialist revolution. That said, this week's column is directed at my own party and the attitude its officials are taking toward sex and related matters.\nBack in April, Sen. Rick Santorum, R.-Pa., stirred some hornets when he equated gay sex with bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery in an interview with The Associated Press. However, in their rush to stamp "bigot" on his forehead, the press and the Democrats missed the really sinister part of the interview. Explaining an article in which he blamed liberalism for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Santorum said, "(The problem within the Church) goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this 'right to privacy,' then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get."\nFeel a cold shiver go down your spine? Santorum's comments are a riff in an eerie drumbeat coming from the Republican right flank. And more GOP officials are dancing to the tune. Santorum won a Triple Crown of support from the party leadership: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (AP, April 29), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 23) and President Bush (Washington Post, April 26). Last year, Justice Secretary John Ashcroft spent $7,750 in his compulsion to cover up an aluminum booby (London Daily Telegraph, Jan. 29). And recently, Rep. Patrick Toomey's, R-Pa., attempt to prevent the National Institutes of Health from funding research on sexual behavior, including the Kinsey Institute's study on sexual risk-taking, failed by only two votes (IDS, July 14). Next, the officials will order that all table legs must be covered. \nThis Puritanism arises less out of ideological conviction than a "devil's bargain" for electoral support. The party's ideology dictates that "Ours is the party of liberty, the party of equality of opportunity for all and favoritism for none" (preamble, Rules of the Republican Party). \nIndeed, senators Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Gordon Smith and Olympia Snowe, as well as the Republican Unity Coalition and the Log Cabin Republicans, went on record against Santorum's position (Washington Post, April 26; AP, April 29). However, electoral number crunchers consider the religious right indispensable. A poll by Quinnipiac University found that "43 percent of those polled -- and 61 percent of those who said they attend religious services every week or almost every week -- thought religion should have more influence (on politics and public policy)" (Hartford Courant, June 13). And since they like belching fire and brimstone terms like "sodomites" and "fornication," the rest of us tolerate it to win elections. What else can we do?\nGeorge Orwell wrote of Big Brother's sexual policy in "1984," saying, "Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it ... The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party." \nWe're the party of individual liberty, not Big Brother. Let the religious right vote for the Democrats.
(07/10/03 1:03am)
If there were such a thing as an architectural crime against humanity, Paris' Charles De Gaulle Airport would be one. After struggling through the bottleneck-plagued circular check-in room, you take a moving walkway through a plastic tube the color and texture of a giant intestine to a floor of insipid duty-free shops.\nUp a level, get through security, and you find yourself trapped in a Plexiglas box like those authorities on "The X-Files" use to cage shape-shifting mutants or carriers of extraterrestrial diseases. All to spend hours in a cramped, overheated cylinder watching the latest Martin Lawrence movie; eating food that doubles as a floatation device; appeasing flight attendants, gate personnel, security guards, customs officers and countless other petty dictators. \nAt such a time, most folks just sigh and pray for their luggage. I realized that after nagging you to leave the comfortable certainties of home and undergo the expense, discomfort and risk of traveling to a continent where air conditioning is rare and not everyone speaks English, I never addressed the most basic question involved. So, for this final article about crossing the sea, I'll attempt it: what does Europe hold for 21st century Americans anyway?\nIn 1867, Mark Twain took a trip to Europe and the Middle East, later chronicled in his classic "The Innocents Abroad." Twain does not mince words about the trip, calling it "a funeral excursion without a corpse," yet he recommends that all Americans go abroad because "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." \nWise words, but today we require more justification.\nFirst reason: the fact that the rest of the world's doings eventually end up on our doorstep. In his time, Twain could report "that a good many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a good many more knew it only as a barbarous province away off somewhere." This was mainly because policy and geography made America isolationist and isolated, but thanks to modern technology, politics and economics, neither is possible. And with populous industrial powers, advanced technology, languages regularly translated into English and centuries of relations with the U.S., Europe is better situated to monkey with your life than any continent except our own. \nThen there's the fact that modern Europe is one of the greatest achievements in the history of politics. Think about it. Until the late 20th century, Europe was a land of autocratic rulers and brutal conflicts. Twain's description of France's Napoleon III paints the portrait of the time: "Above all things, he has taken the sole control of the empire of France into his hands and made it a tolerably free land -- for people who will not attempt to go too far in meddling with government affairs." \nYet today's Europe is free, peaceful, prosperous, increasingly bound by common laws and values. This is a miracle, something that could one day change humanity, and something that Americans should take as much pride in as Europeans. After all, modern Europe might use local ingredients, but in representative democracy, we supplied the recipe (and if they let me back in after that line, they're not reading this column).\nLastly, you can't understand your American identity without going to Europe. For all our internal divisions, we as a whole are different, and this becomes clearest in the continent so many of our ancestors left behind. As Twain puts it, "Many a simple community in the Eastern Hemisphere ... will remember for years the incursion of the strange horde ... that called themselves Americans and seemed to imagine in some unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud of it"
(06/26/03 1:13am)
The French city of Strasbourg might not be Europe's heart, but it's at least a ventricle. Walking distance from the Franco-German border; headquarters of the European Parliament; home to medieval, half-timbered houses and global corporations, it provides an ideal vantage point from which to observe the face of the new and improved Europe as it enters the 21st century. So, for the past three-and-a-half weeks, I've been acting as your mine canary, gathering information to help you (and other Americans) come out from your hidey-holes. My goal, to help return to Europe's cobbled streets that age-old cry: "DO-YOU-SPEAK-ENGLISH?"\nThis week's advice is a bit of a warning, something you should know about before you come over. No, it's not about anti-Americanism. Hell, thanks to a series of civil service strikes, the French are back to combating their greatest traditional enemy: themselves. Instead, I am going to let you in on what I have seen to be the No. 1 cultural difference between Americans and Europeans: the pace of life.\nSure, there are plenty of differences between American culture and cultures of Europe's individual countries, just as there are between the European cultures themselves. In fact, according to the latest European Union-sponsored Eurobarometer public opinion survey (March 2003), respondents who favored their European over their national identity amounted to a measly 7 percent, while those poor strange creatures who feel solely European came to a mere 3 percent. For sake of reference, the latter is about the same percentage Ralph Nader won in the 2000 presidential election.\nYet, what do you find on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Brussels, Luxembourg City, Munich, Strasbourg or any European city? Hundreds, even thousands of people at outdoor tables in front of sidewalk cafes, roosting like puffins. They sit, and they chat, and they sit, and they drink a little, and they sit, and they smoke, and they sit, and they eat a little, and they sit, and they sit, and they sit, and they sit ... And, as an American, I honestly don't know how they do it. \nIf you sat for that long in the states without doing anything, someone would come along and bury you. Furthermore, with nearly all the shops closed Sundays, sitting becomes the continental pastime. After awhile, one becomes aware of one's own need for activity, one's own need for constant stimulation; one's own need to do something at any given time. No wonder otherwise normal Americans felt the need to venture off into the vast wilderness of a mysterious continent -- we're hyperactive.\nNowhere is this more apparent than in dealing with restaurants. The general idea over here, of course, is that a meal is an event. Dinner is supposed to be a two-hour, multi-act performance, with the main dish as the glorious climax -- have no doubt, dining is serious business. This sounds pretty good in the abstract, and it is for the first couple of times. But for post-modern Americans, who know that microwaves only achieve top speed when encouraged by a steady flow of foul language, the two-hour dinner quickly becomes a grueling experience of absentee waiters and wallpaper scrutinized more thoroughly than the Mona Lisa's smile. Before long, a region's ancient culinary arts are exchanged for the siren's song of the kebob or, God help you, the Golden Arches.\nThanks to its cultural roots, the American need for haste generally manifests itself with little reflection or conscious thought. It just slips up behind you and starts pushing like a schoolyard bully. But what are we rushing off to anyway? Why the hurry? I already have my hands full with one continent, so I'll leave that to you to figure out. Just don't take too long.