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November 2008


News

East campus runs dry

On Monday, one week after students living in West Georgetown experienced two power outages, they were faced with yet another utility problem-water pressure in a large area of Northwest D.C.... Read more

News

The neighborhood’s new face

While the rest of campus rejoiced or despaired over the results of Tuesday night’s presidential election, one student was still “on pins and needles.” Aaron Golds (COL `11) was waiting... Read more

Leisure

Critical Voices: Los Campesinos!, “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed”

Los Campesinos! has defied the laws of nature. Or, at least, defied the nature of the music industry's slump. When a single band can muster up enough energy and talent to put out two of 2008's most notable releases while relentlessly touring, it seems like a slap in the face to the artists working tirelessly for over a decade on music that ends up taking an artistic step backwards (ahem, Axl).

Leisure

Race isn’t over

Whether you're elated or despondent about the election results, post-election depression will inevitably set in soon. So for those politics junkies who are already nostalgic about refreshing FiveThirtyEight, The Race may be the cure for your politics fix.

Leisure

Scale, and beauty, matter

"Scale Matters" at the Phillips Collection may be modest in size, but its colossal depictions of natural wonder and man-made machinery bring magnitude and dimension to the small exhibit on the museum's second floor.

Leisure

Coming back?

For nearly two decades, Guns ‘N Roses haven't been timely--gods of a decadent late 80s scene that seems particularly incomprehensible today. But, barring yet another setback, Axl's new Roses (Slash and Izzy Stradlin are long gone) will be relevant once more with Chinese Democracy. Set for release on November 23, it is perhaps the most hyped comeback album of all time, and that fact probably sets it up for failure.

Voices

My Catholic catharsis

My name is Chelsea Paige and, until recently, I was scared of Christianity. For about one-third of the world's population, Jesus is numero uno. But for that largest of religious diasporas, the Jews of the New York metropolitan area (or the ones I know, at least), Jesus was altogether foreign-a vague, amorphous being who lay at the core of the religion which brought us the Crusades and the Inquisition. Oddly enough, my visceral reaction to Christ stemmed from silence rather than any anti-Christian propaganda: my teachers failed to mention him once during my fourteen years of Hebrew school.

Page 13 Cartoons

MUN: Kicking ass, and taking Ivy names

Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service is one of the leading undergraduate schools for the study of international affairs, and Georgetown is located in the nation’s capital. One would assume that Georgetown should naturally dominate the collegiate Model UN circuit. Unfortunately, until two years ago, we didn’t.

Voices

50% Austrian, 50% South African, 100% American

I understand why my parents came to America. Where else can two fresh-off-the-boat, kiss-strangers-on-both-cheeks-in-front-of-the-local-blue-collar-bar foreigners eventually become locals? In the late 1970s, they stepped off a plane in appallingly-polyestered Kennedy International Airport as outsiders and by the grace of the American experiment, they now celebrate Thanksgiving, watch college sports, pay taxes, vote, do yardwork, have potlucks, and cheer for U.S. Olympians alongside Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution. They criticize this country, but they always acknowledge that in no other place in the world would the union of a South African daughter of a pogrom survivor and an Austrian son of a Nazi ambulance driver have been possible. I accept this, but even so, I've always wished I had not been born in America.

Page 13 Cartoons

The tea party’s over: the plight of India’s workers

Because of the expanding tea industries in both Kenya and Sri Lanka and the overall decreased demand for tea in our coffee and latte-chugging world, the tea industry is facing a downward spiral in India. Plantation after plantation has had to shut down, especially in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal. While many plantations are still pulling in a substantial profit, the owners are not reinvesting their profits back into their plantations and their workers. Instead, they are putting their money into other industries and failing to adjust their laborers' salaries to inflation in the market.