Darts & Laurels: October 21, 2016

You’ve been studying all week. Late nights in the library. Early mornings with the study group. You’ve never felt more prepared for an exam in your life. Now, here you are, sitting in the exam room with your blue book in front of you. “I’m ready for this,” you think to yourself as the teaching assistants pass out the exams. Once they’ve all been dispersed, you read the first question on the exam. But it’s not really a question. You raise your hand, and a TA walks over. “Is this a joke?” you ask. The TA shrugs, mutters “good luck,” and walks away. You glance back down at the exam, hoping it’s changed. It isn’t. Staring right back at you are 35 questions, each with four multiple choice answers, each question and each answer reading nothing but…

Darts & Laurels

If you’ve been keeping up, dear readers, then you’ll know that this week, a team of Tennessee scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered a chemical reaction by which carbon dioxide can be converted into ethanol, which can in turn be a new source of energy. This could be key in the fight against climate change. But that’s not all in the wonderful world of science that has happened this week, dear readers. On Wednesday, the first new U.S. nuclear reactor in 20 years went live again in Tennessee, providing quality clean energy to many residents of the Tennessee Valley. We give this laurel to all the Tennessee scientists who have been kicking butt lately, not only by developing clean energy, but also for keeping in mind that all of this brings us closer to remedying the problem of climate change.

Speaking of problems, the third and final presidential debate was held Wednesday night. The beginning of the end of this circus is finally near. At the beginning of the debate, the moderator, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, reminded the audience that they agreed to not cheer or boo at any point during the discussion. But when Trump insisted that no one has greater respect for women than he does, the audience sworn to silence exploded into laughter. This should speak volumes about his character. Regardless, the audience broke their promise, and for that, we lob a dart at them. Though we also give them a secret laurel for identifying the irony in Trump saying, “Nobody respects women more than me,” before calling the first nominated female presidential candidate of a major party in American history “a nasty woman.”

The debate was held in Las Vegas, and it’s safe to assume that people flew in for the debate. As many of you know, flying is by far one of the worst experiences one can endure. Sometimes it’s so bad that your luggage gets lost and ends up in a foreign land for what feels like forever. Luckily for us, President Barack Obama and his administration rolled out a proposal earlier this week that would make it so airlines have to refund those pesky baggage fees if your luggage is delayed. We present a laurel to you, President Obama, for bringing justice to the repeat offender that is the American commercial airline industry.

The Obama administration also learned this week that North Korea, yet again, failed to test-fire a missile. There is still no information as to where the missile was intended to go. Regardless, we’re extremely grateful that the operation was a fluke. But for trying to launch missiles in the first place, we give a dart to North Korea’s de facto dictator Kim Jong-un. Seriously, he is really sticking to his plan of starting World War III.