Opinion

He put his dirty fingers deep inside his cheeks and turned them inside out. His giant brown eyes bugged and his teeth glowed shiny white and orange — gold fillings shimmered from the back of his cave and his face loomed large over his crooked body. He was hunched over a baby, pulling his typical […]

Over the past dozen and a half columns, I have explained how the system we have today is not capitalism, and that, despite the blame that capitalism receives for many of our current problems, it is the return to laissez-faire that we need to live in a free and flourishing society. But is this not […]

Ah, technology. The giver of light. The bringer of information. The creator of worlds both Orwellian and Farmvillian. In the sunrise of the digital age, in the shadow of Silicon Valley, I can sit and marvel at the technology that surrounds and permeates life, and I can see how it has changed our world for […]

I can clearly remember walking down the hospital hall, preparing to see my friend’s dying grandfather, John. I had become attached to this gentle, kind man in the two years I had known him. His wife, Mary, met us in the hallway. She explained how John’s condition was deteriorating. In her aged face I saw […]

Money has always played a role in politics, but the abuse of money has been exacerbated with the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission, which [opened] the floodgates for massive spending on electoral campaigns with effects that have already skewed the political process. Take, for example, the recent House […]

At the May 23 ASUCD Senate meeting, senators voted to eliminate the BloodSource line items from the ASUCD budget. In the past, ASUCD has designated $1,250 for BloodSource — $1,000 goes to room reservation fees that BloodSource later pays back, and $250 is used for advertising. The chief driving force for this decision was because […]

A new online course evaluation tool is currently being developed for use starting next fall. UC Davis is the one of the last UC campuses to implement online course evaluations for undergraduate courses. It is about time the University made plans to implement online evaluations, especially when nearly every other UC has done this, as […]

On Monday, like every Memorial Day, the cultural sphere was flooded with messages about thanking veterans for your freedom. Although the holiday honors fallen soldiers, social networking sites such as Facebook abounded with pictures reminding us that the military is the foundational source of our lives, liberties and freedom to buy a double-cheeseburger for only […]

In writing a column titled “Sex & Society,” it makes sense that many of my pieces would deal with women’s issues. After all, rape, body image and gender stereotyping are all exclusively female challenges, right? Wrong. Though these matters are most commonly associated with women, they affect men, too. Some issues, like female-on-male rape and […]

Editor’s note: For an opposing opinion on this issue, see BRIAN MOEN’s column “Tea Party whiners.”  Recently, it was discovered that the IRS has been targeting conservative groups by arbitrarily delaying their application for tax-exemption because of their policy viewpoints. This is obviously unacceptable, as even President Obama will admit. But I think this raises […]

Over 12,000 members of AFSCME 3299, patient care technical workers, participated in a planned two-day strike of UC Medical Centers due to conflicts regarding the union contract with the University of California. We urge the UC and the union to return to the bargaining table and reach a compromise that is financially responsible and respects […]

From May 17 to 19 , ASUCD senators, executive officers, unit directors and members of the public met to discuss the 2013-14 ASUCD budget. The group was unable to finalize the budget after they spent approximately 30 hours over the weekend discussing it. They will continue to deliberate at the May 23 senate meeting. While […]