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You are currently browsing the archives for February, 2009.
Brandeis remembers its motto.
…since we’re doing the debate metaphor, I thought I’d finish with my “rebuttal” speech. But since Jehuda ended up “punting” (though not surprisingly and unlike Storey, I applaud him for it), I figure there’s no reason to go through some big point by point refutation. I’ll just make three final statements:
Ifilm is reporting today that Johnny Depp will portray the immortal Hunter Thompson as a young, insanity-prone journalist making his way as a writer in 1950s San Juan.
A very, very exciting prospect. Fans of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas will recall Depp’s uncanny ability to inhabit the world of Raoul Duke. Even though this bears some of the stink of the Hollywood Prequel Bandwagon, I can’t criticize anyone willing to share more tales of Dr. Gonzo.
Here we go again. Alex Rodriguez admits to substance abuse back in 2003, and the Cadre of Crusading Baby Boomer Moralist Sportswriters are again denouncing the current crop of MLB players (and the records they hold) as “tainted.” They are crying to the Baseball Heavens,
“Oh Mercy, Lawd! Take us back! Take us back to a time when baseball was played by the honorable and when records made sense! A time of purity! A time of nobility! We can’t stand the awful sight of these players who have no respect for basic rules and decency! Deliver us, Lawd!”
Get your day-glo vests and buckshot ready, it’s Fat Cat Season.
Average Americans, armed with incendiary e-mails and blog commentaries are actually beginning to affect Business As Usual. An op-ed from yesterday’s NYT documents the new populist fervor.
In debate, we have speeches at the close of the round called “rebuttals”. This terminology, despite its use in both high school and college, is something of a misnomer. To rebut something is to disagree, to counter-argue. The rebuttal speeches are actually the middle speeches, where everything being said is a refutation of an earlier argument and few to no new arguments are made. I think the phraseology evolved from the fact that new arguments are disallowed in “rebuttals”, but they should really be called “summations” or “closing arguments”.
Fun Rocketboom episode today on obnoxious loquacity…
Run away! Run away!!
Before Storey and I continue our pleasant little war, it appears Brandeis has already ended the debate, while pretending the sides weren’t the right ones to begin with. From Jehuda Reinharz to the Brandeis community today:
An artist’s rendering of 320,000 lightbulbs, or about the number of kilowatt-hours wasted every minute from a lack of efficiency in the home.
Part of a gallery of photographer Chris Jordan’s attempt to show people the staggering amounts of stuff we use up as a collective.
Great idea for a piece, though I would have have gone with a person by person account to hammer home the potential change that one dedicated individual can make. Also, I’d really like to see my personal lifetime bananas-eaten fractal image.
You're using me to justify what?!
I must admit I hadn’t expected a reply of any kind from a fellow Mepper, though I considered the possibility that some Brandeis alumns might disagree (though, as Storey points out, the vast majority of Brandeis alumni are as annoyed about this as I am)–but I must say I was pretty flabbergasted at Storey’s take on my post about the closing of the Rose Museum.
