By Harold
We had some special guests on the futon and the couch the past few days, so I’ve fallen a little behind recapping the week’s events. Here’s a highlight a day:
Monday: I was robbed. Although I didn’t report it to the police, because their employer was the culprit. In order to get a North Carolina license plate, you have to pay a “highway use tax” which is three percent of the value of your car. And according to the Tar Heel State, a 2001 Honda Civic with 160,000 miles on it is worth… $5,000! If any state employee out there will actually offer me that much for the car, you can have it, but I’m guessing there won’t be any takers.
Tuesday: I attended a discussion on Justice by Michael Sandel at Duke. Sandel teaches one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history (the course has its own Web site, where it claims 14,000 students have taken it). Aristotle tries to find the fundamental value in something, and Sandel used this philosophy to debate modern political issues. He started with a discussion of Casey Martin, who sued the PGA under the Americans with Disabilities Act so he could use a cart during tournaments. So the Supreme Court had to decide, is walking fundamental to golf (so no cart)? Or is it solely shotmaking, making walking incidental? Next we moved to whether the government should legalize same-sex marriage, and again the key issue was, what is fundamental to marriage? Is it procreation (so SSM shouldn’t be legal)? Is it honoring commitment (so SSM should be legal)? The whole thing took less than an hour, but it was obvious why the course was so popular — when was the last time you had an intelligent, philosophical argument over a divisive issue?
Wednesday: I was back at Duke’s Sanford School for Public Policy to hear Isaac Herzog, the Israeli Minister for Public Affairs. He joked that he would love to debate something like health care (or likely any of the theoretical debates from Tuesday), but a different crisis hits his desk every six hours. Just that day Israel had stopped a ship full of weapons headed to Iran, and Herzog spoke with a Secret Service-style security detail in the room. On a lighter note, the hummus was flowing at the post-lecture reception.
Thursday: You have no idea how fun those American Gladiator-style games are until you’ve tried them. Laura and I took a turn jousting Thursday night, along with other inflatable games at “Fair Before the Fight”, part of a week’s worth of events leading up to UNC’s inevitable football win against Duke. Just for comparison, Duke’s lead-up to the game involved the coach sending a campus-wide e-mail asking for student support, and then giving the students free Coke so they would listen to him.
Friday: In a previous post, I mentioned how a cappella concerts are huge on college campuses and nowhere else. Well, there’s something else to add to the list: step shows. And I can only imagine what they’re like at historically-black colleges, because the one at UNC was four hours long on Friday night, and that’s not even including the inevitable 30-minute late start. Here’s some free advice: Don’t plan on getting dinner after the step show. Because there’s not much open at 11:30. Even while starving, and with absolutely no background on stepping and its importance to black culture, it was impossible not to appreciate the hard work that goes into putting on these shows.
Unfortunately I’m out of time before I can get to the Duke-UNC football game on Saturday. Oh well.
Laura
Harold
