The merriness of the Christmas season contrasts sharply with the anger of several prominent atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, who attack the belief in God in their recent bestsellers.
I have spent most of my column space this semester complaining about one thing or another, but in the spirit of holiday cheer I have decided to be laudatory rather than critical.
ALMOST everyone who watches television knows that the Writers Guild of America is on strike. What few realize are the enormous benefits of the strike, not only for the writers, but for viewers.
LAST WEEK, the lead editorial in The Cavalier Daily labeled the Lawn Selection Committee a nepotistic aristocracy, alleging that 20 out of its 35 members consist of student leaders and heads of select CIOs like the UJC, Honor and University Guides, while only 15 are randomly selected by lottery.
THIS PAST week, I received an unexpected package in the mail from one of the kind matriarchs of my church back home.
WHEN DAVID Mata submitted his letter to the editor, he realized he'd gotten a fact wrong. Three minutes later, he submitted a correction. The error appeared in The Cavalier Daily anyway. Mata's letter ("The price is wrong," Thursday) said Al Groh had been ranked the worst coach in college football by ESPN before this season began.
AS I sat down to write my last column of the semester, I could not help but feel utterly incapable of thinking about anything besides the amount of work ahead of me in the next two and a half weeks.
I RECENTLY learned that it's impossible to be handicapped. If you ever refer to deaf or blind people as handicapped, then you will have deeply offended them and, most egregious in an academic setting, said something politically incorrect.
LAST MONTH, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer dropped his plan to give driver licenses to illegal immigrants.
ON THE Friday before Thanksgiving break, hundreds of high school students from around the country arrived on Grounds.
IN THE United States, we're serious about our voting. Sure, on November 4, 2008, you can expect about half of eligible voters to avoid the polls, but for the rest, casting a ballot represents the culmination of a two-year battle for the highest office in the land in a process that is at once unbelievably preposterous and distinctly American.
JOHN F. Kennedy once said "a young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living." For much of the twentieth century, a variation of this sentiment was applied in presidential elections.
AFTER the peaceful respite Thanksgiving afforded from the pell-mell pace of this past semester, I returned to Grounds with renewed steely resolve.
IN THE last few years, the University community has discussed at length plans to "internationalize" the curriculum to better prepare students to compete in a world that seems to be rapidly shrinking.
AT THE end of a column several weeks ago I took what some might feel is a cheap shot at the Purple Shadows when I compared their sartorial predilections to those of the Ku Klux Klan.
WE DON'T balk at some of the most bitter truths modern science teaches and even propagandizes: for example, that mindless subatomic particles govern all things, or that whatever is eternal is indifferent to us, if it exists at all.
THE CIA'S assassination plots against the regime in Cuba during the last four decades read like a comic book.
TWO WEEKS ago Queer and Allied Activism (QuAA) held an event titled "Live Homosexual Acts" in the University Chapel as part of the biannual "Proud To Be Out" week celebrations.
AS ALWAYS, a Virginia loss brings out the Al Groh haters, once again claiming that the old ball coach has let the Wahoo faithful down.
"ALL OUR social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." The speaker of this quotation taken from an article appearing in the Times of London is not a white supremacist or neo-Nazi, but a once-brilliant scientist James Watson -- co-discoverer of DNA's double helix -- whose recent bigoted and unsubstantiated claim created a firestorm of controversy.
