We at the Department of Darts & Laurels aren't huge TV fans, apart from our nightly "Jeopardy!" sessions and one of our members' obsession with all things TLC.
Quit bitching. Seriously, shut up. I am tired of hearing all of you Floridians complain about how bad the recent cuts in the Florida Bright Futures program are for you.
I am Jewish and very proud of my religion and heritage but I cannot say that I am proud of the state of Israel. It is hard for me to talk about this issue but I feel that I must.
By now, you might've heard of Joe Wilson and his inability to hold his tongue. If you haven't, here's the story:
If President Obama's speech did not manage to turn Republican members of Congress last night onto the idea of major health care reform, it will be a huge political failure and a huge disappointment.
I just have to write about Cheeburger Cheeburger at UF. I have been there three times and all three times there have been problems. My first time, I tried to order waffles. Guess what? They don't make waffles, but they are on the menu. The second time, for lunch, I ordered a hamburger. I had to wait 15 minutes because they were waiting on fries. Guess what? I didn't order fries. The orders in front of mine had fries, and they could only make four burgers at a time. So everybody after them had to wait even if they did not have fries. My third time, I tried to order a salad, and they tried to charge me $12.79 for one salad. The salad did not even have meat on it.
I am writing in regard to Travis Hornsby's guest column, "Mideast trip reveals need for peace."
In a few years, Sarah Palin will be a hot forty-something with her own little media empire. The thing we may remember most about Sarah Smile, though, could be the way she hijacked the multifaceted debate about end-of-life care and turned the whole thing into a screaming match about government "death panels."
Zach Mayo's column in Tuesday's Alligator, "UF should keep cheap food options," should set off a firestorm of protests and lead to the canning of whoever is responsible for these exploitive food prices. There is no reason for the prices they gouge from students at UF, except greed.
In regards to the "Twilight" article, I agree that the series has no literary value. But then again, I have heard no one in my daily travels claiming that it is of literary merit. To attack something that isn't even claimed to be "literary" seems like too much wasted effort to me. I read the books when I was a freshman here, and I thought they were very entertaining. That was the goal, right? They had the same effect on me that "Harry Potter" did, to be perfectly honest, mainly because I didn't think "Harry Potter" was high-quality writing either. And although "Wuthering Heights" may be great writing, when was the last time anyone lost themselves in that book?
I picked up "Twilight" because my roommates told me that I'd love it and I wouldn't be able to put it down, not because I was expecting the next great American novel or anything of the sort. While I don't know if "Twilight" has any literary value (in whatever sense of the phrase you mean, that is), I do know that I've never heard anyone claiming that it does. So what if high school students of the future never end up analyzing examples of conflict in the books and underlining metaphors describing Edward's appearance as akin to David? And for that matter, "Harry Potter" isn't scheduled to reach the classroom any time soon, either. It's still highly entertaining when I want to lose myself in a fictional story.
Instead of working odd jobs, getting an internship or taking classes this summer like a normal college student, I decided to go to the Middle East. I spent the majority of my time in the West Bank, even though the U.S. Department of State advised to stay clear of the Palestinian territories. What I saw has completely changed my views and understanding of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Schools should have shown President Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday instead of succumbing to parents who wanted it boycotted.
"Twilight" has made the world a worse place.
This is the first time I've written to the Alligator in my four years at UF. I've thought about it many times, but Columnist Joe Dellosa's article about patience yesterday was the first time I actually felt inspired to. Though I haven't read any of David Foster Wallace's work, I think the message of the article was clear: We are a nation of impatient people. And the Internet isn't the only place where that is evident. We spend a week talking about pressing issues like health care and then forget about it all together when it becomes boring. We can't even listen to a full album of our favorite bands anymore because it takes too much of our precious time.
I noticed the article in Tuesday's issue stated that 51 people were ejected from the football game Saturday. I was one of the nine people ejected from the stadium for being in the wrong section.
I agree with Zach Mayo's stance on the restaurant situation at UF. At a place where I pay to attend, you'd think my food would be somewhat subsidized. Instead, the opposite is true: At every eating establishment on campus, the price is hiked. In South Florida I can get an entire meal from Pollo Tropical for $3.50, here you may as well double it. I think it's wrong of UF to take advantage of its students by charging more simply because we have no other options on campus.
Over the past couple of days we have heard several Student Government officials praise the new "transparency policy" being created through Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act waivers. This new policy should not be lauded as progress towards creating an open government, but rather as a cheap ploy by higher-ups at the university.
Pastor Randy Meadows of Louisville's City of Refuge Church so believes in the power of God to transform individuals that he's willing to use the welfare of children as collateral.
It is understandable that, in the heat of national debates over health care, CIA interrogations and the way forward from a crimson summer in Afghanistan, we have not talked enough about the recent facelift of the Reitz Union food court.
Solutions by The State News
