The Dartmouth Observer |
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Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Armavirumque Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Belmont Club Black Prof Brown Daily Squeal Stuart Buck Cliopatria The Corner Crescat Sententia Crooked Timber Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Dartlog Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Victor Davis Hanson Hit and Run Instapundit James Joyner Mickey Kaus Martin Kramer The Little Green Blog Left2Right Lenin's Tomb Joe Malchow Josh Marshall Erin O'Connor OxBlog Pejman Yousefzadeh Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Virginia Postrel Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Roger L. Simon Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station Michael Totten UChicago Law Faculty Blog The Valve Vodkapundit Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
"Michael Moore Conservatives"? Adrian Woolridge, the Economist's Washington correspondent and co-author of The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, writes in The Weekly Standard on how the Tories are beginning more and more to resemble American liberals. What are the reasons for this? One's Tony Blair: American conservatives may regard Blair as a reincarnation of Winston Churchill, but for most Tories he is the devil incarnate, a cultural vandal who is destroying great British institutions, from the House of Lords to fox hunting, in the name of nonsense such as "Cool Britannia." Tories resent Blair for showing more backbone in dealing with America's enemies, in the form of al Qaeda, than he showed in dealing with the IRA; some of them are also bitter at George W. Bush for bestowing the Churchillian mantle on a left-wing lightweight.For more reasons, read the whole article. It's at times like these That I'm glad I'm not at Berkeley. Although, to be fair, we don't know Dartmouth will react until Pipes is actually invited here, which I'm willing to bet won't happen. Read the whole article. Thanks to Volokh for the link. Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Can there be such thing as good news from Iraq? Chrenkoff from Down Under has some facts for the doomsayers. (Thanks to Pejman for the link.) Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Articles 1) Michael Totten takes issue with this Paul Savoy piece in The Nation. I found these sentences particularly strong: It’s true that many people are dead in Iraq because of what we did. It’s equally true that a larger number are alive because of what we did. The well-being of Iraqis isn’t even remotely what’s at issue to Mr. Savoy. He only cares that we are morally pure. Tyranny, barbarism, and genocide are fine with him in a lesser-evil sort of way as long as we can sit safe and sound on our side of the ocean and not have to dirty ourselves by messing with it.2) Armavirumque reproduces a New York Sun profile of Anthony Daniels (Theodore Darymple) - a quite superb writer. Monday, May 17, 2004
An Islamist speaks Canada's National Post has some revealing comments by one Khalid Khawaja, a friend of Osama bin Laden: "Your civilization is selfish and self-centred. Just you want to live and enjoy yourselves and that is all, you don't give." "We don't believe in killing innocent people but we would certainly like to send you into the Stone Age the same way you have sent us into the Stone Age." No further comments required. (Thanks to Daniel Pipes for the link.) Random fact of the day In the wake of recent claims that Diane Kruger simply isn't hot enough to launch a thousand ships, Josh Chafetz points out that the phrase we associate with Helen of Troy ("the face that launched a thousand ships") is in fact not from ancient Greek texts (although Aeschylus does mention that "A thousand ships from Argive land / Put forth to bear the martial band"), but from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Thesis!! Postings will be somewhat sporadic until May 28, which is when my thesis is due. In the meanwhile, check out Free Dartmouth and (comments-enabled) Dartlog. Monday, May 10, 2004
STOP IT, PLEASE Will all the relevant parties in the blitzwar with the subject heading "Recycle Your Dartmouth Review" please, please go away and leave me in peace. Thank you. Dartlog has comments enabled Who will become Dartlog's equivalent of John Buckholz at Free Dartmouth? Opinion Duel, II Be sure to check out Opinion Duel for a debate between Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic and Mac Owens of National Review on the postwar situation in Iraq. A model of civilized disagreement, if ever there was one. Saturday, May 08, 2004
Books! Reflections in D Minor gives me the opportunity to show off how much I haven't read (those that I have read are in bold): Beowulf Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart Agee, James - A Death in the Family Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights Camus, Albert - The Stranger Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard Chopin, Kate - The Awakening Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage Dante - Inferno de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust Golding, William - Lord of the Flies Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter Heller, Joseph - Catch 22 Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms Homer - The Iliad Homer - The Odyssey Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt London, Jack - The Call of the Wild Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener Melville, Herman - Moby Dick Miller, Arthur - The Crucible Morrison, Toni - Beloved O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night Orwell, George - Animal Farm Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49 Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye Shakespeare, William - Hamlet Shakespeare, William - Macbeth Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Sophocles - Antigone Sophocles - Oedipus Rex Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair Thoreau, Henry David - Walden Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Voltaire - Candide Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five Walker, Alice - The Color Purple Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse Wright, Richard - Native Son I seem to have done better than Pejman, although as he points out, the list is kinda arbitrary. Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Brilliant There's very little else I can say about this entry from protein wisdom. I'm reminded of this effort by Mr. Derbyshire. Even Andrew Sullivan could have appreciated it. Tuesday, May 04, 2004
COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER: Jeffrey Immelt '78, CEO and Chairman of General Electric Good choice. Oh, and Margaret Atwood's getting an honorary degree. That's good too. Monday, May 03, 2004
Jared Diamond Fellow 04s will recall being assigned Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the summer of 2000 as reading for the Freshman Lecture later that year. I tried hard, but ultimately couldn't bear reading a purported history that was completely devoid of human personalities (save Montezuma, Cortez, Charles V, and the tribesman Yali). Well, now's your chance to dust off that copy of GGS and pose the questions you've always wanted to ask about the book to the man himself. Prof. Diamond will be giving a lecture in 105 Dartmouth Hall this Wednesday at 4 pm on "Religious elites and the evolution of human culture." The official writeup of the event goes something like this: "Differences among human societies spring largely from geographical factors shaping technology, economic and social life, and forms of cultural expression. This lecture will focus on religion as a cause and consequence of human social development." That doesn't quite make sense to me. If Prof. Diamond is going to argue that religion, which is very much an anthropocentric phenomenon, stimulates human social development, then how still stands his thesis about geography as the cause of differentiation among human societies (a thesis, by the way, that I don't really believe in)? Rocky blog Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center now has a blog, run at the moment by Ryan Abraham '04 and Susan Napier '04. The one thing keeping it back seems to be a reluctance on the part of the posters to venture their own opinions. I can understand this reluctance: even if Rocky issues a disclaimer distancing itself as an institution from whatever views are expressed on the blog, people will invariably make that connection. Especially if someone says something particularly controversial. Still, the disclaimer should be made, and the posters should express their opinions: it's the best way to get a discussion going. Simply posing questions is unlikely to be effective. Saturday, May 01, 2004
This is NOT a Dartobserver endorsement It's that time of the Dartmouth year again: that's right, elections for the Student Assembly are around the corner. Running for SA President is one James Baehr '05, who seems like a decent chap, except that I can't understand -- for the life of me -- why he'd go to such extraordinary lengths to publicize his campaign. Not content with debating his fellow candidates and postering his mug everywhere, Baehr's established his own website, which, while not as spiffy as www.johnkerry.com or www.georgewbush.com, allows you to watch a homemade campaign video of him wandering the streets of LA seeking opinions from the man on the street. There's also a page full of endorsements by everyone from the President of the College Republicans to the President of the College Democrats to Larry James. Does this all strike you as a bit...excessive? I mean, a campaign video? A website (with broken links)? It's only the Dartmouth College Student Assembly Presidency at stake, for goodness sake, not the American Presidency or even a Dartmouth Trusteeship. Perhaps I'm just cynical about politics at all levels. Or maybe Baehr really cares. |