That’s right. The first working rough draft of the book is ready to go, all laid out.

Time to get antsy in your pantsies.

It’s official. This year’s “Back to the Booze” is out on newsstands all around campus.

Go out and get one–it’s colorful and packed full of helpful tips on how to survive as a freshman.

Cheers to the two girls I saw reading it and laughing at “OC Asks…”

“Robocop: A condom. Ha!”

Well it’s 12am and I’m still here at the EMU. Luckily for you, it’s all for your benefit. The book is coming along nicely, and looks to be coming in at a fat 340 pages. It will include a hardback binding, dust jacket and 12-page glossy insert of selected art from over the years.

The layout process is tedious to be sure, but I look to be finishing it up by the end of this week and sending it off to the printer.

Look for it on shelves in about 3 weeks.

Don’t quote me on that.

After months of playing with the idea of purchasing the iconic “Made in Portland” sign The University of Oregon has decided to back off.  This week marked the end of a lease the UO purchased that gave it the rights to buy the sign. After a year that included one of the biggest American economic meltdowns the UO has seen, the people in charge decided over a million bucks was not worth it.  Here is portland news stations KATU’s take on the sign below.

Darryl Paulsen the owner of the sign is disappointed in the the deal gone wrong, but not because he is a Duck, Paulsen is a fan of freedom of speech. I believe in Paulsen’s love for the first amendment but I believe the $800,000 he lost in the deal gone wrong. My  personal favorite part of the video is one thing we all have to take note “Oregonians are sentimental.”

No go on O: UO drops plan for Portland Sign

I was sitting in my “History of America in the 60’s” class and the professor posed a question that obviously blew a few fuses in the minds of nubile freshmen.

The question posed was: “You’re on your back porch, and you have train tracks that run across next to your land, but not on your property. You see a baby caught in the traintracks, and you hear the train coming. The train eventually comes and kills the baby.

Should there be a law that requires you to help that baby?”

Of course, the students in the class had a hard time balancing the moral responsibility of the person with the slippery slope of the law. Some kids were absolutely unwavering. One girl said, “If that person doesn’t help, that person should NOT be on the fucking streets of America.”

Still others felt it was the law’s duty to force people out of personal choice, “It should be common courtesy. But people aren’t stepping up in modern society, so maybe we should make it a law.”

I’m glad to see that, even when posed with a theorhetical question, students are still unable to grasp the concept of personal choice. Hilarious.

In other news, the campus’ Athiest Club (United Atheist Alliance? I don’t know what the hell they’re called) was out in force, standing with two drenched sandwich boards in the amphitheater. The absurdity of the club need not be covered here, so instead I’d like to make an announcement:

We are starting the University of Oregon Nilhist’s Club.

We won’t meet anywhere, and we won’t do anything.

Glad to be back.

Sudsy’s first appearance, Summer 2001, Vol. 18, Issue 15

Today is the birthday of our beloved mascot, Sudsy O’Sullivan. He was brewed one drunken night at Rennie’s–concocted from the clip art of a mug of beer, the arm from Baby Herman (of Who Shot Roger Rabbit? fame) and the face of the Kool-Aid man.

A replacement for the Commentator‘s “original” mascot, Kevin Smith’s “Buddy Jesus” from Dogma, Sudsy was immediately accepted by staffers and readers alike after his incorporation. He’s gone through a lot in his lifetime, including momentarily dying one summer when trying to turn himself into a giant boilermaker for the Commentator staffers. Truly, his giving knows no bounds.

Here’s to you, Sudsy! May this year be better than the last–and with more prarie fires.

Cheers

I’ve had trouble liking President Obama since before he was elected. I’ll admit to not voting for him, though writing in McCain without Palin on my ballot probably didn’t get my vote counted anywhere.

This article from Newsweek by Howard Fineman lays out the things about Obama that I find troubling. This isn’t a conservative v. liberal thing for me personally.

He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation

This is a choice paragraph that sums what Fineman is explaining in his article. Now this isn’t me jumping on some Fineman bandwagon but I do agree with his opinion.

There is a lack of content to Obama’s presidency. True, we’ve only been at this for a few months now but still. I’ve always felt that Obama was more style than substance. I would like to see him make some change, of any kind, just to see that he’s doing something.

However, for now, that isn’t happening. Here’s to hoping some more.

We are happy to inform you all that our new issue is ready to hit the stands.

Inside

• Gun control really about all civil liberties by T. Dane Carbaugh
• A letter to freshmen from Carly Erickson
• Survival guide
• Booze review

Cheers!

The Register-Guard’s Rob Moseley writes today that “[a]ll indications are that Oregon will unveil a retro-style uniform” on Saturday. Speculation is rampant, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that the best-case scenario is that they resemble those worn during the 1995 run to the Rose Bowl:

Unfortunately, at this point it looks like the Ducks’ best hope for winning the game is for Cal’s Jahvid Best to be so impressed with Oregon’s tasteful throwback fashion statements that he simply takes a knee every time he touches the ball rather than risk exposing them to unsightly sweat stains.

What happens when an influential Senator dies and the law says that he can’t be replaced without holding a special election? Just get rid of the law, which your party put in place back in 2004 to prevent the rival party from potentially taking a vacated Senate seat, so you can appoint this guy to the seat and have 60 “aye”‘s when it’s time to vote on health care:

The jury’s still out on how good of a head coach Chip Kelly is, but if there’s something we now know for sure it’s that he’s a pretty nice guy.

After the Ducks’ disastrous opening night loss to Boise St., Oregon alum and season ticket holder Tony Seminary emailed Kelly to register his disappointment. Attached “in jest” was an invoice for Seminary’s expenses to attend the game totaling $439.

Well, as the superb college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday (EDSBS) reports, Kelly responded by asking for Seminary’s address and then sending him a check for the full amount:

Seminary returned the check to Kelly after making a copy, and tells EDSBS “I now know why his kids would run through a wall for that guy, because who does what he did, right? That is simply amazing.”

Myles Brand, who preceded the now-retired Dave Frohnmayer as President of the University of Oregon has died after a battle with cancer.

(H/T: Blue Oregon)

Via Reason, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a great article about one of the Commentator’s favorite topics — intellectual diversity on campus. It starts by discussing the (somewhat eyebrow-raising) opening of a “Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements” at Berkeley, and eventually moves into a broader discussion of the intellectual monoculture that’s evolved on college campuses over the last forty years:

Though we are no longer in the politically correct sauna of the 1980s and 1990s, and experiences vary from college to college, the picture [David Horowitz] paints of the faculty and curriculum in American universities remains embarrassingly accurate, and it is foolish to deny what we all see before us.

Over the past decade, our universities have made serious efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity on the campus (economic diversity worries them less, for some reason). Well-paid deans work exclusively on the problem. But universities show not the slightest interest in intellectual diversity among faculty members. That wouldn’t matter if teachers could be counted on to introduce students to their adversaries’ books and views, but we know how rarely that happens.

[…]

Lyons was an American historian who wrote about the 60s and made no secret of his liberal politics or his loathing of Reagan and post-Reagan conservatism. But he was also disturbed by how few colleges offer courses on conservatism, treating it as a “pathology” rather than a serious political tradition…

The author, Mark Lilla, offers some anecdotal evidence of what happens when students are allowed the opportunity to take courses in conservative thought that are taught actively and honestly:

Lyons’s class was split almost evenly between liberal and conservative students, who had no trouble arguing with each other. They seemed to understand what thin-skinned professors wish to forget: that intellectual engagement is not for crybabies. The students had loud debates over Reagan’s legacy, Bush’s foreign policy, religious freedom, abortion, even the “war on Christmas”—and nobody broke into tears or ran to the dean to complain. And the more the students argued, the more they came to respect one another. According to Lyons, students learned that that conservative guy was no longer just the predictable gun nut or religious fanatic. And the conservative students learned that they had to make real arguments, not rely on clichés and sound bites recycled from Fox News. [emphasis added]

[…]

We should be grateful for his modest book, which has lessons for everyone. It reminds liberal academics of just how narrow-minded and conservative (in the nonpolitical sense) they are in their hiring and teaching, and how much they have to learn if they want to understand the political world we live in.

There are lessons for conservatives, too. Anti-intellectualism has always dogged conservative tradition (you betcha!), and figures like David Horowitz, who stoke the hysteria, only contribute to the dumbing down. Hopped up on Fox News, too many young conservatives have become ignorant of the conservative intellectual tradition and incapable of engaging civilly with their adversaries. [emphasis added]

Or maybe it’s just more convenient for some to promulgate the “racist, gun-toting, religious nut” stereotype and continue to churn out the thoughtless, pliable Nate Gulley’s and Diego Hernandez’s of the world.

That pesky little document that seems to be continually thwarting the best laid plans of our political class, the Constitution of the United States of America, was signed 222 years ago today. Let’s hope it keeps pissing people off and frustrating their ambitions for another 222 years.

(H/T: Instapundit)

“US President Barack Obama does not believe current criticism of his policies is based on the colour of his skin, the White House has said.” Prediction: angry letters in next week’s Eugene Weekly excoriating the President for being a racist.

But seriously, the guy just went up a few points on the “classiness meter” as far as I’m concerned.