Last week President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama made a stop in Saudi Arabia to pay their respects to the late king and meet the country’s new ruler.
“I’m just here so I won’t get fined.”
It’s Friday night and you’re at Midtown. A few drinks already in your system, you lock eyes with someone across the bar. Talking leads to dancing, which leads to making out, which leads to inviting them back to your place.
Generally, the announcement that a new Internet service and cable provider is moving into your hometown isn’t big news, but when that provider is Google, people get excited. Why would anyone do a happy dance over the tech giant creating a new Internet service in your city?
Last weekend, Republican Party presidential hopefuls flocked to Rep. Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Summit — if there’s “freedom” in the name, it has to be right, good and conservative — to court the first-in-the-nation caucus state. I found many aspects of this forum, as well as some positions of the GOP hopefuls in general, worrying.
I was eating lunch last week and heard, “It weighs 8 grams.” My eardrum sent a text to the memory library, forcing an intern to check Catalog Random. The intern hunted the shelves, returning to the master librarian red-faced and wheezing. “Weight is 8 grams times 9.8 m/s2,” the intern gasped, “but how do we explain?” To illuminate complex ideas, I look to a computer science concept called abstraction.
Any time I hear news regarding immigration policy in Arizona, I hold my breath. First, they passed a bill allowing police officers to demand documentation from people who prompt “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country illegally. Then, they banned Latino literature and ethnic studies from the classroom because it supposedly fosters racial resentment — as if banning an entire culture from the classroom doesn’t kindle any resentment. Thursday, however, I exhaled a sigh of relief while reading about Arizona in The New York Times. U.S. District Judge David Campbell issued a permanent injunction requiring the state to issue driver’s licenses to immigrants who have been deferred from deportation under President Obama’s DREAM Act.
If you’ve ever watched daytime television, you would probably recognize this annoying commercial: A young man standing in a parking lot yells at you for sitting on the couch and wasting your life. After a few minutes of making you feel ashamed of your situation, he gives you hope by telling you it isn’t too late to finish your degree and land your dream career. All you have to do is make a simple phone call.
Last week Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, announced that he will be addressing a joint meeting of Congress in early March to discuss actions to be taken against Iran’s nuclear program should the diplomatic approach prove fruitless. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, invited the prime minister to make these proposals to Congress with little excitement from the White House. Josh Earnest, the Obama administration’s press secretary, said that Obama will not be meeting with Netanyahu when he visits in March because they want to steer clear of him during Netanyahu’s election campaign. Earnest went on to explain that they want to avoid “the appearance of any kind of interference with a democratic election.”
Every year after the State of the Union speech, the president of the United States goes on a cross-country tour to make a case for his agenda.
Imagine this: You’re a professional football player who just had the season of your life. You outperformed every other player in your position in the National Football League, and the fans have rewarded you by voting to send you off to the NFL Pro Bowl, where the league’s top talent form two teams and play each other.
Following President Obama’s sixth State of the Union address this week, the Republicans once again provided an official response to Obama’s speech. And once again, it was stilted, filled with talking points and sounded more like a sketch from Sesame Street than an address meant for millions of American adults. This year’s victim was recently elected U.S. senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst.
I asked, and you answered. Thanks to all who submitted questions and ideas to me. This week, someone wrote to me with an issue between her and her boyfriend: They have sex and after he orgasms, he feels no attraction to her. Her question: “I’m wondering if you’ve ever come across this before where a guy, after climaxing, loses attraction, sexual desire, and even emotional desire?”
The controversy surrounding “American Sniper” is petty and self-serving. The feud basically revolves around the back-and-forth quips of two distinct groups of people. The first group is what I like to call the “America Rah! Rah!” group. These are the people that have the song “Free Bird” as their ringtone, and have more guns in their house than people living in it.
It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to observe that this weekend — officially dedicated to commemorating the legacy of a great pacifist and visionary of a more just world — was hijacked by Hollywood and rededicated to a film, which serves to glorify American militarism; attempt once again to justify the unthinkably savage slaughter waged for a decade in Iraq; and reignite hatred against Arabs and Muslims. Just check Twitter.
Imagine an average student with an iPhone: She gives $45 a month to AT&T for cell service. If she switched to my $12.71 Republic Wireless plan, she’d save approximately $387 a year. That’s about 28 jars of Nutella from Amazon, or about 49 months of Netflix.
Unless you come from Texas, or you keep up with the intricacies of state politics, you probably aren’t aware of the fact that Texas currently only has seven functional abortion clinics. Some people will probably say that seven is plenty, or perhaps too much. Some people might be horrified by the fact that I say there should be and need to be more. Texas is the biggest state in America, and as of 2013, a safe and healthy medical procedure is now likely impossible for many people who don’t have the resources or ability to go to an abortion clinic that could be hundreds of miles away.
Naor Amir’s response (“Response to previous letter urging UF to cut ties with anti-Palestinian groups”) to Amanda Nelson’s op-ed (“Call to UF: Cut ties with anti-Palestine community”) was persuasive and thought-provoking. We believed it warranted a response, as it contained many of the arguments that have been used to justify Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. These arguments included, “Israel is the only free country in the Middle East,” “Terrorism is bad” and “What about other Middle Eastern conflicts?”
Let’s be real. It’s the 21st century, but — other than advances made in modern contraception — not much has changed in the world of sex. Names are frequently confused. Abandoned muscles are continuously being rediscovered. And, unfortunately, orgasms are still faked.
We are now three weeks into the New Year, which means move aside 2015 — 2016 is the star. It’s the year when we finally get to have another presidential election, and not one of those boring ones where one of the candidates is an incumbent. We start with fresh contenders from both parties.
Solutions by The State News
