By Brett Yates If you had asked me in 2015 to name three people from Minnesota, I probably would have thought for a moment and then come up with iconic pop star Prince, Senator Al Franken, and the public radio […]
Tag: columns
Maximum speed
By Brady Crain The shoulder is coming along, and next week I will be able to lift weights. This week was marked by lots of walking and lots of road riding, because of the gorgeous weather. One interesting thing that […]
Product review: Tropical Sour Patch Kids
By Brett Yates Sour Patch Kids, the iconic child-shaped treat invented in the 1970s by a Long Island man named Frank Galatolie, are, in my opinion, perhaps the greatest mass-produced American candy. To me, their astringent artificiality best captures the […]
Guinea pig training progresses
Pip the guinea pig, peaking out from his blanket fort By Brady Crain I have, based on the orders of everyone, been taking it much easier. I lift or do pushup/pullup sets every two days, walk at least once a […]
Estimating the cost of college
By Kevin Theissen It doesn’t take a degree in finance to see that the cost of college continues to rise. In its 2015 report, the College Board showed that public four-year institutions raised prices an average of 3.4 percent annually […]
Awakening to a new reality
By Marguerite Jill Dye I feel as if I’m abandoning a sinking ship, leaving America for a pilgrimage across Spain during this perilous time of crises, turmoil, and uncertainty. Keeping up with the news, one can only wonder, has Armageddon […]
Deerflies: An intense buzzing game
Illustration by Adelaide Tyrol By Declan McCabe My students and I were conducting research in the Winooski River floodplain at Saint Michael’s College last week when the buzzing became particularly intense. A brisk walk is enough to outdistance mosquitoes, but […]
Taking a stand for diversity
By Marguerite Jill Dye We attended the very first gathering of the Woodstock Social Justice Initiative, a last-minute rally for love, equality, and peace on the Green in Woodstock. Seventy-plus local residents demonstrated in solidarity with the people of Charlottesville […]
Empathy, part two
By Brett Yates Last week, I wrote a column whose conclusion I myself found, at the very least, debatable. Fortunately, my conception of my job here has never included a requirement to be correct—every week, I try my best only […]
Good things for bad people
By Brett Yates This month, following social media pressure upon their employers, two workers in the San Francisco Bay Area were fired for holding opinions widely deemed abhorrent. The first was a Google engineer who circulated a memo criticizing certain […]