By Nate Bradbury

I love Chris Rock. He manages to take the issues that confront Americans everyday, distill them, and present the issue with startling clarity. You wouldn’t expect that I think of him and James Madison as amazingly similar intellectually.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison are part of our required curriculum-their names may sound familiar- and the Federalist no.10 essay might even ring a few bells. Hamilton and Madison, coauthors of the Federalist Papers, warned us about the dangers of factions and pitfalls inherent to the democratic process. In brief, our Founding Fathers knew what was up and were trying to look out for future generations of America.

Not surprisingly, we are still faced with the challenges that they warned us about. Sadly, the words of the Federalist Papers are big and tough to connect with. Let’s have Rock translate it for us:

“Everybody’s so busy wantin’ to be down with the gang, going ‘I’m a conservative, I’m liberal, I’m a conservative, I’m a liberal. That’s bullshit. Be a fucking person…Listen! Let it swirl around your head! Then form an opinion. ‘No,’ ‘Normal,’ ‘Decent,’ ‘Person,’ is one thing. I got some shit I’m conservative about, I got some shit I’m liberal about…”

By Ambrose Pierce, Jr.

Leadership (noun) - Ability to command the respect of the masses through a potent combination of cunning, virtue, skill, charisma, and luck. Mayor Rudy Giuliani claims to have shown great leadership in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in New York City.

Opportunism (noun) - The unethical exploitation of a situation to one’s own benefit. Giuliani has been accused of opportunism for excessively evoking 9-11 to further his political ambitions.

Buzz Words: Blackwater, Mercenaries, United States, Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki

On September 16th, armed security guards from the private military contractor Blackwater fired their weapons into Nisoor Square in Western Baghdad, “killing at least 11.”

Would you like to know more? Read Top Ten PR Moves for Blackwater from Wired Blogs’s Danger Room.

Sometimes reading The Water Tower inspires our readers to get naked and fight the power. But most of the time, they just send us e-mails. Excerpts below. On the s orority chick tri-factor:

“My friend and one of my other new roommates are both members of a sorority… Here’s the funny thing: the Crocs on my feet belong to my Pi Phi roommate. The plaid patched jeans I’m wearing belong to my Tri Delta roommate. The other day I was told by both of them to try using the French press to make my coffee because it doesn’t call for any filters, which are a “waste of paper.” Not once have I heard either of these girls make a scene in Monelle or bitching to their daddy.

By Max C. Bookman

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.”

-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to a student audience at Columbia University during last week’s trip to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly. The comment from the commonly inflammatory president received an embarrassing mix of boos and laughter from the audience. Perhaps there’re no closets in Iran either.

By Max C. Bookman

What’s Going on Here?

That short, smug, defiant man whose last name nobody can pronounce has become the biggest pain in the western world’s ass to come from Iran since Xerxes owned 300 defiant Spartans last year. Indeed, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this year’s academy award winner for “Best ‘Fuck America’ Performance at the United Nations,” seems to have fully grown into his role as valiant anti-American crusader by decrying US hegemony when no one else will.

How sad, the planet has turned to the outspoken leader of an oppressive Islamic theocracy for inspiration. Last year’s award winner - another anti-American crusader - was nowhere to be seen. Only one year after Hugo Chavez dominated headlines for his scathing anti-American comments, the Venezuelan president found himself too busy at home to make it back to New York for round two.

Maybe his speechwriters just had trouble topping last year’s performance, where Mr. Chavez complained that the podium smelled of sulfur following President Bush’s speech. The comment was a blunt comparison between our president and the devil (you can’t get much worse than the devil, you know).

By Lea McLellan

I saw a boy from my high school the other day, and he had a beard. Not a real, bushy, lumberjack beard, but one of those wiry patches of hair on his chin. Even so, I was shocked. As far as I could tell in high school, there wasn’t even any evidence that he had the ability to grow facial hair.

But there he was, walking to class with a tiny little beard like it was the most normal thing in the world. I wondered if this had been his plan all along. Maybe he knew coming in one morning with facial hair would send shock waves down the halls of my small, gossipy high school. So he planned and waited, knowing when he made the four-hour trip from Connecticut to Vermont, he could let his chin hair grow free.

Life offers few opportunities to completely start over. Going away to college is one of the rare chances a person gets to reinvent him or herself.

By Lauren Foley

I’m curious how something as simple as a cup of morning coffee has had the ability to evolve into something so complicated, calculated, and political. All of the coffee on campus is fair trade, of course, so we’re not talking about environmental or ethical politics. What I’m talking about are personal politics.

What does your coffee (or other hot beverage of choice) say about you? After a rigorous investigation involving an enormous consumption of caffeine, hot chocolate, and apple cider, I have concluded that coffee has the potential to incite divisive conflict among many students.

By Jessica Beder

Everybody loves to people watch. There is some innate human fascination with studying and judging others as they pass. People are intriguing! I found a vantage point in the Church Street Starbucks, located in the apex of downtown activity.

From the casually barefoot hippies shuffling past en-route to the smoke shops to the rotund, cheerfully bustling older ladies sporting fanny packs bulging with hand lotion and tissues, there is never a dull moment. In the midst of my street-gazing stupor, I put together a little impromptu experiment. I decided to shamelessly stare at individuals near my spot for the sake of forming a better understanding of those around me and, admittedly, to confuse unsuspecting strangers.

By Kurt Weiss

If you asked UVM students where they are from, an overwhelming majority would tell you they come from Boston, “outside” Boston, “near” Boston, “right outside” Boston or “just outside” Boston. Apparently no one lives in Massachusetts anymore.

It’s somehow become acceptable to claim Boston as home if you live anywhere within 200 miles of it. People think that if they can drive to Boston, they live there- even if it would be cheaper to fly.

By Max Johnson

If I’m not full of shit, I’m about to make something happen. Much like whoever coined “déjà vu” before me, I’m about to use French to describe a peculiar sensation that has plagued mankind for years but has scraped by without being identified. It’s not really a big deal but neither was déjà vu, really. It’s just damn satisfying to put a finger on it. C’est bizarre.

By Mac Smith

Recap

Sunday was a very important day in determining the playoff contenders in Major League Baseball. If some of you decided to turn away from the football games while nursing your hangovers, this is what you would have seen:

The New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies went into the last game of the season tied for first place. With seventeen games left in the season, the Mets had a seven game lead over the Phils but had managed to piss it away like last night’s Pabst. The Phillies’ 6-1 win over the Washington Nationals coupled with the Mets’ 8-1 loss to the Florida Marlins put the Phillies in sole possession of the division and the Mets out of a playoff spot. The Mets really did try hard to give it all away and they managed to do so. Way to go guys.

The other undecided playoff spot was the NL Wildcard. Coming into Sunday, the Colorado Rockies trailed the San Diego Padres by one game. The Padres’ loss to the Milwaukee Brewers coupled with the Rockies’ win over the Arizona Diamondbacks put the two tied for the playoff berth with one game to decide who gets in.

Created By Anya Brodrick, Illustration by Alexander Whitehead

This section deconstructs the styles of today. The tripartite nature of the section demonstrates the intersection of image-word-mathematics.

7:30 am: Wakes up, throws on organic hemp tee from floor. Makes oatmeal, bikes to his first class, NR 280: Stream Ecology.

8:45 am: Indulges in some fair-trade coffee from the cyber cafe, obviously uses his recyclable mug. Wonders why they even allow paper cups to be used, much less the cardboard ‘sleeves’.

9:54 am: Runs into Rubenstein regular, begins discussion on how to remove all disposable eating/drinking utensils from campus; however, they realise that this will never happen, so they instead talk about some awesome kayaking they did this summer in Costa Rica.

By Alex Townsend

Rocky Votolato performed at Higher Ground last week. I’m guessing that’s something that will mean more to most of you out there than it did when I first heard about it. It turns out he’s pretty good, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The crowd wasn’t exactly huge that night. There were probably about thirty people in a room designed to hold a few hundred.

Still, despite all the room they had almost everyone was huddled closely around the stage. Silent. Waiting. Then the first opening act came out, receiving minor scatterings of applause.

They were called The Great Depression and boy was that an apt name. They were two men singing and playing on acoustic guitars and it seemed all their songs were about lost loves, abusive relationships, and being drunk and depressed.

Do lesbian feminists feel a conflict of interests when it comes to porn?

It seems like they would.

“Look at that woman! She’s being mistreated and taken advantage of and oh my God she’s hott!”

By Anya Brodrick

I use music to relax, to put myself in a good mood, to continue my wallowing, to wake myself up in the morning and to go to bed…and you probably do as well. You and I are very similar. Music is about life and it’s fitting that it makes up such a big part of our lives.

We all like different music, but when we hear something that touches an inner part of ourselves that either we know all too well or not at all, it’s important. Music that remains relevant throughout different periods of our lives, different friends we have, and even different generations is powerful and something that I can’t get enough of.

The Beatles have a huge legacy: Beatlemania, arguably the greatest rock ‘n roll band of all time, four iconic members that we all recognize. While certain Beatles fans can classify their favorite Beatles ‘period’, I love everything Beatles. The compilations, the covers, the movies…there is almost too much out there.

Those born under the sign of Libra have a strong chance of having a birthday this month. Also, there’s a chance of them being made of metal.

Do you know that the Libra is the only inanimate astrological sign?

Libras must be horribly boring people. As such the stars foretell that it’s a great time to get a hobby.

Jupiter is in the 18th and half house. Avoid places with large numbers of bees. Libras like to be calm and avoid confrontation, but bees are Tauruses and will freakin’ kill you.

By Alex Townsend

The trees outside are beautiful

Full of leaves and branches and stuff

So I’m writing a poem

because I’m too cheap to buy a camera