Articles by: benjamin

 

• Coywolves Prove Even Evolution Gets Bored

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:37 pm Comments are Disabled

  Brandon Minster, Broadside Correspondent Wolves are getting randy for coyotes at an alarmingly ever-increasing pace, and we have evolution to blame. For readers unfamiliar with these animals, I’ll remind you that wolves are the direct ancestors of chihuahuas, and coyotes are used by cowboys as a pronunciation test of the claims to authenticity of other cowboys, much like English merchants making a suspected Dutch say “bread and cheese” in the Rising of 1381. A fellow might be practically indistinguishable from the Village People cowboy, but if he says “coyote” with anything more than two syllables, he’s a good-for-nothing city slicker, bent on fencing the last free range of the West. As it turns out, the coyote is more useful than any of us suspected. In a pinch, it can serve as the nightcap of a wolf’s Saturday night. According to Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News, wolves are getting their interspecies freak on (paraphrasing) and the result is something called a coywolf. Like any good modern American, I have two questions. Firstly, who is responsible? Secondly, is that responsibility fiduciary in nature, or can I at least convince a Mississippi jury that it is? Roland Kays of the New York State […]

   

• How to Save on a Cup of Joe: Being Conscious of Coffee Spending

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:36 pm Comments are Disabled

  Ausan Al-Eryani, Broadside Correspondent If you’re anything like me, you’ve always got to have that cup (or multiple cups) of coffee every morning. But have you ever taken a look at your bank statements or examined your spending habits and realized that coffee is probably at the top of the list for what you spend? I don’t want to disclose any numbers, but I’m pretty confident that my coffee-spending habits aren’t exactly wise. With that said, I love coffee and I love getting coffee from a lot of different places. I’m not about to give that up. So here’s the question: How is it possible to save money when it comes to something we love? Well, for one, invest in a coffee mug! It’s incredibly efficient, convenient and will pay for itself in due time. A lot of places even fill your coffee order in your mug and save you money too. Plus, you can fill up more in your coffee mug than you would get if you bought a cup of coffee. Second, and I know this is going to break many of your hearts to hear this, cut down on buying coffee from places like Starbucks and Dunkin […]

   

• Letter to the Editor

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:34 pm Comments are Disabled

  Natalie Losik, Global Affairs For the month of September, every Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the North Plaza on the Fairfax Campus hosted a weekly Farmers’ Market, where local growers and producers brought their wares for sale to students and faculty of George Mason University. Traditional Farmers’ Markets close shop around the end of October (like the one in Old Town Fairfax) and begin again in May of the following year. In recent conversations with some of the regular sellers, there is a real interest in keeping the Farmers’ Market on the Fairfax campus open through the winter. Without the winter sales, the Farmer’s Market may not continue ever again past the end of this month. The Farmers’ Market is an important staple to the George Mason community, the greater Northern Virginia and Maryland area, and to the world in general. There are some real benefits for allowing the Farmers’ Market to continue year-round. As for the average Mason student, making healthy choices in a hectic, high-paced life can be difficult. Everything offered at the Farmer’s Market is not only delicious and fresh, but it provides a convenient and healthy alternative to potato chips and Red Bull. It […]

   

• Letter to the Editor

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:32 pm Comments are Disabled

  Colin Bennett, Office of Sustainability In response to “Global Warming: The Falsehood Coming to a Campus Near You” by Alan Moore: In July 2007, President Merten signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment committing George Mason University to climate neutrality. That means that, as an institution, we are committed to reducing our total greenhouse emissions to zero. Considering the size of Mason, figuring out how to eliminate our emissions is no easy task. For the past year we have been working on our first-ever Climate Action Plan, which will, when completed, clearly lay out the steps that we need to take to achieve climate neutrality. To date, over 80 people from across Mason, including both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and alumni have actively assisted in creating this plan. Once it’s completed, we’ll need the help of every member of the Mason community to reach the goal of climate neutrality. As such, it was with great disappointment that we read Alan Moore’s opinion piece in the recent edition of Broadside. While we fully support academic debate and scientific research, we feel that Mr. Moore’s piece was full of misinformation and claims that are blatantly false, and we […]

   

• Letter to the Editor

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:30 pm Comments are Disabled

  Justin Higgins, English and History In “Global Warming: The Falsehood Coming to a Campus Near You” (9/28/09), Alan Moore presents a number of points that, from his perspective, not only disprove anthropogenic global warming, but even fundamental issues like the role of CO2. It’s worth looking at these points he raises in greater depth. First, Mr. Moore discusses the issue of sea levels rising to unsustainable levels because “the polar ice caps will melt.” He says that “the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the rising sea levels may in fact be cyclical and there is no evidence that man contributes to these rising sea levels.” In fact, the most recent assessment report from 2007 concludes that anthropogenic warming and sea level rise will continue to rise even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations now, and that the probability that this is the result of natural processes alone is less than 5 percent. All of this can be read at The Intergovernal Panel on Climate Change’s “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.” The IPCC report itself does not back up Mr. Moore’s claims about what they have stated. Mr. Moore then continues by arguing that the […]

   

• Letter To The Editor

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:27 pm Comments are Disabled

  James Lepore, Professor, School of Dance I was heartened to hear that in Mr. Alan Moore’s opinion (in an editorial entitled, “Global Warming: The Falsehood Coming to Campus Near You”), that the overwhelming majority of Mason faculty believe that global warming is an “indisputable fact…caused by man.” Mr. Moore’s opinion aside, this would put Mason faculty in agreement with the scientific community-at-large. It is ironic that Mr. Moore characterizes the conclusions reached by an overwhelming majority of scientists as “laughable,” while directing his readers toward the opinion of a former television personality, John Coleman. I was about to read some of John Coleman’s writings when I discovered that he had been a frequent guest on Glenn Beck’s bombastic, agenda-driven cable “news” show on Fox News. Glenn Beck? Now that would indeed be “laughable,” were it not for the fact that some folks actually take him seriously.

   

• Letter To The Editor

  Editorials October 20, 2009 at 2:26 pm 2 comments

  Mitchell Huber, History On behalf of the Environmental Awareness Group: In last week’s paper, Alan Moore tried to convince us that anthropogenic climate change is “laughable.” As a group dedicated to fighting global warming on campus, we’d like to correct a few of Mr. Moore’s claims, and tell you why this issue is no laughing matter. The first and most glaring error he makes is that the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the rising sea levels may in fact be cyclical and there is no evidence that man contributes to these.” In reality, the IPCC’s most recent report found there was over a 90 percent likelihood that global warming is in fact human-caused. His next claim is that new glaciers are forming, offsetting the hundreds that are melting so rapidly. He is not alone – many people, Alaskans, this summer claimed that local glaciers were expanding because they were advancing further than before. However, as Chris Larsen of the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute explains, “Terminus advance, in this case, is not a sign of a healthy glacier. Quite the opposite.” In fact, it is glacial melt that causes these glaciers to drop in elevation and thus advance […]

   

• Paying Off The Taliban?: Possible Solutions For Resolving The Many Afghanistan Conflicts

  Editorials October 6, 2009 at 2:01 pm Comments are Disabled

  Bardia Mehrabian, Broadside Contributor “It’s time to get real about Afghanistan,” writes Fareed Zakaria, contributing writer and editor for Newsweek International. He, in a Sept. 21 Newsweek article, continues, “Withdrawal is not a serious option. The United States, NATO, the European Union, and other nations have invested massively in stabilizing the country over the past eight years, and they will not—and should not—abandon it because the Taliban is proving a tougher foe than anticipated.” These words should resonate for any proponent of seeing the Taliban eradicated in Afghanistan, but from NGOs, think-tanks, to the military itself; everyone is stuck scratching their head regarding how to achieve this objective. Zakaria’s prescription: pay the Taliban, whom are virtually all ethnically Pashtun, to stop killing and bombing. He elaborates: “Buying, renting, or bribing Pashtun tribes should become the centerpiece of America’s stabilization strategy, as it was Britain’s when it ruled Afghanistan.” Zakaria’s argument is mainly drawn from the strategies that were employed in Iraq by the U.S. military. During the most violent years of the second Iraq war, the U.S. bribed different militia groups not to kill U.S. troops and rival militias to quell the maelstrom of violence plaguing Iraq. This was met […]

   

• Dirty Little Secret: America Possibly Facing the Oppression of Past-Marxist Countries

  Editorials October 6, 2009 at 1:59 pm Comments are Disabled

  Alan Moore, Broadside Contributor A colleague in one of my classes, whom I have nothing but the utmost respect for, referred to “America’s Dirty Little Secret” in class the other day in the context of the widespread oppression in the United States of America. Another person alluded that Marxism should be mulled over more in the U.S. because when people are being oppressed it should always be considered. They spoke as if Marxist governments embodied some romantic, revolutionary, blue-collar paradise and that we should be ashamed of wrongdoings committed by some people in this country. Huh? After hearing that I felt like I was taking crazy pills or something. America is not only a country, but an ideal. The ideal that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This was written by great men who were truly being oppressed by a tyrannical foreign government without direct representation. The point being that the individual is responsible for his or her actions, not a country. To label this country as having a “Dirty Little Secret” is utterly ridiculous and offensive. That would […]

   

• A New Threat Against Home: Americans Now Have More to Worry About Than War

  Editorials October 6, 2009 at 1:56 pm Comments are Disabled

  Ryan Comer, English, (Broadside Contributor) America should be thankful: The last war that was fought between her shores echoed only the thundering of charging cavalry, the resounding boom of cannons, and the crackle of musket fire; a desired alternative to the churning of metal tanks, the devastation of thundering artillery, and the screaming of machine gun fire. For many people in the world, however, these sounds are as common to them as the sounds of rush hour are to you and I. Indeed, even the oldest generation of Europeans remembers the horrific devastation caused by World War II. However, America, when compared to the rest of the modern world, has been a safe haven. Pearl Harbor, one of the deadliest attacks by a foreign enemy on U.S. soil was, in a sense, isolated. Hawaii was still only a territory when the attack happened, and resting about 2500 miles from the mainland, it was a remote land to most Americans. However, in 2001, despite it’s history of safety, America’s status quo instantly changed a week after Labor Day. Americans were forced to swallow a grim dose of reality; a reality many countries across the Atlantic Ocean had already acclimated themselves to. […]