It’s almost the end of the year and I’m trying to stretch my funds to the max. I have a pretty good feeling that I’m not the only one running low on the dough at this time of year. It’s totally hard keeping the credit card spending down when there are spring break trips to…
Category: Columns
Small steps make big change
If you are like many Concordia students, you are unphased by the start of Lent this Wednesday. But this year, whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or anything else, I challenge you to harness the spirit of Lent to do good for our planet. Last week at the 23rd Annual Nobel…
Youth in politics
As a child of the ‘90s, I have grown up in an era where youth involvement in politics has been hard to find. My childhood was split between two countries, and in both I saw political systems dominated by old people. When I entered middle school and started to learn about citizen involvement in the…
Further Revolution in the Middle East
Egypt. Libya. Yemen. Oman. Bahrain. Tunisia. Iran. Iraq. As revolution and rebellion ripples through the Middle East, it’s important that we learn quickly and keep our minds open. In conflict with our idea as the center of global politics, the United States is decidedly outside these clashes. Taking a look at Egypt, particularly Cairo, in…
In defense of freedom
Last week, Mark Besonen acknowledged that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s regime is a dictatorship. Despite this, he argued that the United States’ government should be cautious about supporting the Egyptian people in their revolt against Mubarak. Besonen’s argument centers around two key assumptions. The first is that U.S. interests should naturally override the interests of…
Beyond Green Week
In Minnesota, this part of winter gets unpredictable. As the weather shifts daily from cold to warm to incomprehensibly frigid and back again, even the most staunch of cold-weather lovers begin to think of greener times. It was in this spirit that I realized how much I miss the farmers market on campus in the…
Is Computer Science Important?
I’m fortunate enough to have grown up geek when I did. I’ve never had to convince anybody that technology was the way of the future like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates often had to do. Still, every so often, there are signs of resistance from the tech-less generations that came before us. Usually it’s people…
The Cost of Awareness
So here’s what I’m thinking. America’s got too many czars now. Why in the world did we pick the term “czar?” Could you think of anything more ominous, scary, and big-governmental? It’s a term we’ve picked to describe government officials “waging war” with the power of a government department against some thing. I was surprised…
Egypt Goes Black
On the afternoon of Jan 28th, almost all Internet traffic in Egypt stopped. Nothing was coming in or going out. Citizens were left with no access to vital communication sources, news sites, and just about every other Web site and service requiring Internet access. The blackout was most likely an attempt by the Egyptian government…
Standing in solidarity with Egypt
Millions of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest their government after years of corruption and mismanagement. These protests, originally organized by young people on Facebook, aim to overthrow the 30-year regime of president Hosni Mubarak in order to establish in Egypt something the country has never seen: true democracy. The people’s efforts even…