The Dartmouth Review: The Inner Office

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Super Tuesday

Today was 'Super Tuesday', and my candidate did well in my home state--which should always make a person feel good--capturing 25% of the vote. In fact, it was his best showing to date.

Posted by A. S. Erickson at 11:50 PM (0 comments)

Monday, February 04, 2008

Election Updates from American Apparel?

All of the pundits can stop talking since American Apparel has issued an official statement on Election 2008. In their email to customers the skimpy clothes purveyors stated,

"Four decades ago, the chairman of General Motors proclaimed:
"What's good for GM is good for America." Today we're saying,
"What's good for American Apparel is good for America."

We urge voters to consider Obama on the Democratic side.

We urge voters to consider McCain on the Republican side.

Why? Because of their honesty on the issue of immigration, the most significant civil rights concern the country has faced in 50 years."

They then continued to issue a formal statement against Hillary Clinton:

We appreciate Senator Clinton's campaign on many fronts, but when it comes to the issue of immigration she has not shown the same strength and conviction as Obama. This was clear during last week's California debate. While he supports driver's licenses for undocumented workers, she is opposed "at this time." Tell that to a mother of three in East L.A. driving her children to school every day. Obama has also pledged to accomplish immigration reform in his first year; Clinton has not made such a commitment. Immigration is the most critical issue that faces the United States, California, and Los Angeles today?we appreciate the Obama campaign's clear voice on it. We also applaud his refusal to scapegoat immigrants for political gain, as some other candidates have.

Despite all of the political jargon, I feel safe to say that they picked simply on the basis of who would look best in their newest unitard. We can only venture to guess who will be next to weigh in. (Hoping for Jacko or the Dixie Chicks, personally.)

View their Obama emblazoned homepage here and experience the time-capsule images of all the candidates' immigrant loving or hating personae.

Posted by Courtney at 9:59 PM (0 comments)

Monday, December 03, 2007

Latin Sharpens Prose Writing

This is a bit of a test?to see if this blog still works. Posting may or may not commence shortly. In the interim here's an interesting piece in the NYTimes:

But also, learning to translate Latin into English and vice versa is a tremendous way to train the mind. I think of translating concise, precise Latin into more expansive, discursive English as like opening up a concertina; you are allowed to inject all sorts of original thought and interpretation.
As much as opening the concertina enlarges your imagination, squeezing it shut ? translating English into Latin ? sharpens your prose. Because Latin is a dead language, not in a constant state of flux as living languages are, there?s no wriggle room in translating. If you haven?t understood exactly what a particular word means or how a grammatical rule works, you are likely to be, not off, but just plain wrong. There?s nothing like this challenge to teach you how to navigate the reefs and whirlpools of English prose.

Posted by A. S. Erickson at 4:54 PM (0 comments)

Thursday, July 06, 2006

What Drive the Markets?

Here's a great post on Volokh regarding stock market movement. The gist of the post: is it really fair to make sweeping comments about how concerns of North Korea, or new optimism in the Middle East, drive the markets up or down. It's clearly not that simple, yet analysts and observers always boil it down as such. Food for thought on a Thursday morning.

Posted by Daniel F. Linsalata at 9:13 AM (0 comments)

Thursday, April 13, 2006

More cartoon controversy

Perhaps this wouldn't be news except that South Park was recently awarded a Peabody Award, but it is interesting nonetheless.

It would take too long to recap the entire two episodes of South Park's "Cartoon Wars," but basically the main premise is that the creators, Matt Parker and Trey Stone, did a scathing critique of the whole Danish cartoon fiasco and America's response to it - using rival Family Guy as the vehicle on the show - and at the end of part one last week, basically called out their network, Comedy Central, to let them show an image of Mohammed in last night's part two. ("Will the people of America be safe? Will Fox let the Family Guy air? Will they show Mohammed Uncensored? Find out next week to see if Comedy Central pusses out.").

Plenty of good sideplots and other barbs, including all of America literally burying their heads in sand to try to appease the Middle East and plenty of defenses for Freedom of Speech.

Comedy Central wimped out, though, censoring the scene in which Mohammed was supposed to appear, with the words ""Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network" in its place.

Of course, an image of Mohammed already aired on an episode of South Park five years ago. In the "Super Best Friends" episode, Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha and other "Super Best Friends" fought against the cult of David Blaine.

More in depth commentary can be found on the blogosphere at Michelle Malkin and The National Review.

Posted by Ben at 2:10 PM (0 comments)

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Chilling

Fox News (and a number of other sites by now, I would suspect) has posted the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder from United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.

For the sake of not publishing a pseudo-racist, explitive-laced diatribe, I'll hold off from further comment. You can fill in the rest yourself.

Posted by Daniel F. Linsalata at 5:26 PM (0 comments)

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Rumsfeld on the "Civil War"

Seccretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's press conferences never ceases to amuse me. He blends a measured arrogance, a take-no-crap attitude, and a wanton impatience for those he deems to be incompetent (namely, everyone). While these qualities may make him a thoroughly detestable character, you have to admit that his weekly thrashings of the press corps make for great entertainment.

Yesterday, after giving a comprehensive rundown on the exaggerations of the impending, so-called "Civil War" in Iraq, this was the first question Rumsfeld received:

Mr. Secretary, I'd like to clear up exactly what you're saying here. Are you saying that this poll and that what you call the rush toward declaring civil war in Iraq, is that the result of intentional misreporting of the situation there?

Ya think?

Posted by Daniel F. Linsalata at 2:31 PM (0 comments)