|
| |
|
|
Excuse me, sir: May I help you?
By JULIANA CASTELLANOS
“Excuse me, sir: May I help you with your suitcase?” It’s one of those questions that you ask, but not necessarily because you feel like helping someone. You ask because it’s the right thing to do; because the bus is full and while you are sitting semi-comfortably in one of the front seats, he is nervously standing in front of you, trying to decide which of three things to do. One, he can hold his suitcase with both hands in order to avoid being robbed by one of those people that rides busses during rush hour with the purpose of taking advantage of people who, having just two hands, usually decide to hold onto their suitcase with just one hand so as to wrap the other one around the horizontal bar that runs along the ceiling of the bus. Two, he can hold onto the bar with his right hand and hold onto his suitcase with the left.
{more} |
|
|
Has The Academic/Elitist Cocktail Party
By MIKEY McNAMARA and ELIZA SCHRADER
Now is a confusing and exciting time in Macalester’s Queer Union. This year has so far started off a little differenlyt than the last two years. With five minutes before the Wednesday night meeting time, thirty people are already crowded into a classroom in Old Main. There is socializing, nervous energy and relatively few familiar faces. QU’s first meeting attracted ninety people into a hazardously stuffed room. Our faces were red and sweaty.
{more} |
|
|
Dumpster divers of the Twin Cities, unite!
By JESSE GOLDMAN
New Zealand apple sits in my Minnesotan hand. From seeds germinated, the apple grew in a New Zealand field, was picked with busy hands, packed into a tight box, put on a truck, placed on an airplane, driven from the airport on dirty trucks to a Whole Foods distributor, transported to the Whole Foods on Grand Ave., put on the shelf in an attractive display with its sisters and brothers, disregarded by choosy Whole Foods customers, taken off of the shelf by young exploited workers because of its one small brown spot that had developed, thrown into an outside gray dumpster and picked out of the top of the dumpster by me. A New Zealand apple sits in my Minnesotan hand.
{more} |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The best of steak fries and bad puns
By EILEEN FITZPATRICK
Every summer I return to my hometown of College Station, Texas, where I am again confronted with the other side of the political spectrum from that commonly found at Macalester. Frankly, after growing up in Texas, I figure I know how to deal with, and possibly even understand, the majority of the right-wing. Several of my best friends are adamant Republicans, and I respect and try not to ignore their beliefs and opinions even when I’m in the midst of the liberal-minded neo-hippies that I love.
{more} |
|
|
|
The word on the street
By RÓSA GÍSLADÓTTIR
Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga!
Apparently this is Greenlandic Eskimo for ‘I should stop drinking.’ (This expression might actually be common on the streets of Greenland considering that alcoholism is a big problem there...) Not only is this jawbreaker incredibly long and weird looking, it has many parts-of-speech in one word! This is very common in Eskimo languages, since their speakers’ sense of what can be packed into a word is completely different than ours (that is if you speak English). Languages that work like this, where whole phrases or clauses can be formed in one word by attaching affixes to noun stems or verbs, are called polysynthetic. So, for example, instead of having a separate word for the adverbs ‘probably’ or ‘badly,’ the suffixes –qquuq and –nirluk are added to the verbs. And with affixes substituting our various wordclasses, nouns in Greenlandic can have up to 312 different combinations each and verbs more than 1000!
{more} |
|
|
|
Need quick and easy friends? Want to date a hipster? Read on...
By SARAH McCOLL
In one of my favorite movies, Six Degrees of Separation, Stockard Channing marvels at the eponymous concept of human linkage when a chance encounter turns out to be serendipitous: Will Smith is not only a friend of her bratty kids at Harvard, but the son of Sidney Poitier! Even if the whole thing ends up being a ruse in the movie, the concept still stands: you are linked to anyone else through six people. Since the popularizing of this idea of interconnectedness, we’ve all played the Kevin Bacon game to pass the time on turnpikes, linking any celebrity to that Footlooser in six stars or less. Friendster, however, takes six degrees, limits it to four, and makes the game of who you know, and who they know, not only useful but eminently addictive.
{more} |
|
|
|
What’s a brethren to do, ‘ey?
By KATHERINE TYLEVICH
I don’t judge my friends on the basis of being imaginary or inflatable. In fact, I don’t judge my friends at all. Can you say the same? Only you can be the judge of that. And, sadly enough, only you can prevent forest fires.
{more} |
|
|
|
What won’t you tell me
By PHILLIP HIGGS
I’ll put my finger to your lips
To keep you from speaking.
{more} |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
First-years frolic in hall
The stress of school has Dupre resident Ben Garnett ’07 bouncing off the walls, literally. Photo by Peter Bartz-Gallagher.
|
|
|
News Links
| |
|
|
|
Local Music Links
| |
|
|
|
Local Arts Links
| |
|
|
|
The Mac Weekly is an entirely student-produced publication. The opinions expressed in this document are those of its authors and editors, not of Macalester College.
| | |
|
