Our Weekly Missive.

Our Weekly Missive.

From Us To You.

Welcome Pre-frosh! Congratulations on your acceptance to [one of ] the most selective college[s] in the Ivy League!

Two-hundred and fifty seven days, folks. Two hundred and fifty-seven. Let it roll of your tongues—257—it won’t be long now.

It is strange how a Bangladeshi child can have a disproportionately large effect on the electoral fate of a Republican presidential primary. Yet in 2000, let’s just say it was Bangladesh: 1, McCain: 0. Yes, few people recall that it was John and Cindy McCain’s adopted baby, the ...

It was the first dance of the year, and we were eighth graders, the cream of the crop, the big kahunas, the head honchos…you get it. We were on top, and it was our year. Pulling up in our now deceased Mazda MVP minivan, I could hardly contain myself ...

It's the images of a frying egg which haunt me, I think, and make my responses to his question habitual. "No," I respond again. This is probably the fifth time he's asked me to get high with him. Something about new levels of consciousness. I tell him my ...

And you can feel it coming every year. Thanksgiving morning on the train tracks, you can feel it trembling, Christmas in transit, mere moments until it knocks you sideways and leaves you for dead. It isn't that I don't like Christmas. I do. Sort of. My brother and ...

If you want to determine how desperate a group of people are, just look at their heroes. So Saddam's shiny new posthumous status as martyr surprises me not. As Saudi Arabian TV personality, Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi relates, "The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time. The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too."

They call it bumper car diplomacy in international relations--the idea of decisions made not because of an over-arching grand plan, but due to political exigency, the needs of the moment. These days it could seem our lives are practices in this art. We feel we might lack that unifying force ...

There are mannequins coming out of the ceiling. That is the first thing you notice when you walk into the Paper Moon diner. There are mannequins tangled in ceiling fans with garlands of ivy. There are Barbie dolls and action figure heads glued to the walls. There are old alabaster ...

In an episode of The Simpsons, Ned Flanders goes mad. Lashing out wildly at every person in the town of Springfield, Flanders' acid tongue finally rests on Lisa Simpson, the town know-it-all. "And here is Lisa," Flanders snaps, "Springfield's answer to the question nobody asked." If you would like ...

A heroic moment in American oratory two Sundays ago, when our President rose before Congress, wiped away his crusties and spoke for longer than five minutes without utterly destroying another facet of American life. Bush emphasized his legacy as one that is pro-dream and anti-totalitarianism, urging us to consider the warning of “the late terrorist Zarqawi”: “We will sacrifice our blood and bodies to put an end to your dreams, and what is coming is even worse.”

A sigh of relief in Washington as former Republican congressman and present director of the Office of Management and Budget Jim Nussle declares that there is little reason to worry in the short-run about our deficit, which is expected to grow to 400 billion dollars by the time President Bush ...

Marked by a certain charged starkness and by an utterly terrifying absurdity, Greenwood’s score to There Will Be Blood is ushered in with trademark twangs and plucks which register as the pulse of the film itself. In “Open Spaces” an ominous nearly-lush melodic darkness is interrupted by a hopeful ...

Instead of the usual how-do-you-do, we’d like to tell a story.
There once were two bears. Both were young and happy; both led pleasant and fulfilling lives.
Or so they thought.

In a similar way, the most troubling thing about Sarah Palin is not that she lies. The problem is that she is not qualified, and in the very real event that John McCain would either pass or suffer a disease of old age during his presidency, like, say, Ronald Reagan may have, she would become the leader of the free world. So I wonder: why do the Republicans care so much about winning that they would actually put their country at such significant risk?

Over a lunch of pizza bagels, a fan of this very paper was asked to explain the Nass 100. "The Nass 100 is this thing that the Nass does every year where they like list one hundred things they never want to see again and like 33.3% of them are super funny." Well, we are pleased to announce a full 67 (round up!) percent of this year's list is top-form humour! Incremental progress, folks.

Ca: I think we need to have a talk.

Cb: What about?

Ca: I didn’t actually call you in here to take a shower. I called you in here for something else.

Cb: What’s that?

Ca: I called you in here because I think you have a drinking problem.

NW: On the topic of religious holidays: Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement. For the Princeton students, is there anything you must atone for?

[Pregnant pause]

JW: Caring too much.

A conversation with 4 Nass staffers on race, gender, sexuality and the 2008 election.

Intellectual awakening can often seem an accident in Princeton. It is an accident a number of people never has the misfortune of suffering. Inherent to the structure of the liberal arts system is an unlikely conflict between the academic and the intellectual, cast crudely, the conflict between getting a good grade and finding your passion (and discovering the tools which can help you communicate that passion to the people around you.)