Opinion

The idea of carpooling with a stranger usually ignites either a Jack Kerouac-like idealism, or the fear of being bludgeoned by a murderous hitchhiker. While both scenarios are possible, sharing a ride home for winter break will most likely be an uneventful experience and one that all students should consider.

Yael Steinberg’s bias is quite apparent.

All right, I’ve bitten my tongue long enough. Usually I prefer to avoid the heaviest firefights on campus, having plenty to do teaching world history to my seventh graders and taking my own classes in the afternoons. But I am sensing a very limited array of voices on a particular subject, and I really must comment.

I estimate that 80 percent of you have no idea my Christmas started last night. I didn’t dig through a stocking for that trendy new piece of electronics or open a greeting card that sung to me. I’ve never tried eggnog and my grandma never bought me a sweater I felt was too itchy. I still don’t know what a partridge is, but I’m confident that if my true love really knew me, she wouldn’t waste her shekels getting me one. On my first day of Christmas, I played a lacrosse game at a community college.

Since this is my last column of the quarter, and perhaps the conclusion of my column writing career altogether, I want to leave you, the readers, with something special.

As finals roll around the corner, there are many things to consider and reflect on, such as the noble student.

A penthouse in Manhattan, an editor position at Vogue – just two of the wishes I’d make if a magic genie were to now suddenly appear. Oh, excuse the Aladdin reference; I’m writing this column from home and am sitting beside my baby sister, who is currently in a daze watching the Disney classic.

Through the last nine columns, I’ve written at length about your health – what you need to do, what you can try, what you shouldn’t do, how you can do this and avoid that, why you should be healthy at all. While I tried to err on the side of simplicity, some of the advice could get complicated, the details too difficult to recall weeks later. So you might have forgotten every tip I labored onto paper. I’m here to tell you this week that it’s okay. Lucky for the both of us, all the advice I could ever hope to impart, and the only advice you ever really needed, was discovered by a long-ago marginalized Greek philosopher.

The emergence and seeming dominance of cyberspace may have improved variety and access in the media. One can be tempted to use the overused adage “the more the merrier,” yeah? Well, my industry (newspapers) is anything but the merrier for it. Real hard news is taking a bludgeoning, continually. I daresay that as publishers’ worries about gloomy bottom lines and cost-cutting trump obligatory quality, we risk surrendering the traditional role of the fourth estate. It’s really sad.

There’s an old adage of government spending, often attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirkson: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

On Jan. 4, ASUCD will open a new unit designed to help feed cash-strapped students.

We all know that fee hikes in the UC system are out of control. Last year’s 15 percent, plus another 15 percent on top of that, after multiplying, comes to a total percent increase of 32.25 percent. When the upcoming 8 percent increase takes effect, that will make a net increase of 42.83 percent since 2009, or nearly 43 percent.