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2011
Molarity Classic 106-110
BYStrips 106-110 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977, follow the ever-present changes to the ND alcohol policy and the heartbreak of football losses.
Read full articleThe Sweet Sixteen Solution
BYEvery year the Bowl Championship Series recycles one or two of the controversies that illustrate its inherent contradictions. But there is a simple solution to the BCS nonsense.
Read full articleND monogram winners serving at Pearl Harbor, 1945
BYJohn Hickey Jr. ’69, son of John Hickey ’44, found the attached photo in his father’s scrapbook recently. “He told me that someone had gathered all the ND monogram winners they could find serving in Pearl Harbor some time in 1945,” Hickey wrote.
Read full articleBelieving: Amazement
BYIt appears early each Advent season, the massive crèche mounted on a platform of hay bales at the eastern edge of Notre Dame’s Grotto.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Christmas dilemma
BYThe trouble with gift-giving is that for it to be a good gift it’s got to be something someone else wants and not what I want to buy them.
Read full articleUnbalanced: Bad Santas
BYOverdosing on too many gooey Hallmark Christmas movies? If you believe this seasonal sugar rush needs a dash of Bad Santas to bring you down, our culture’s Grinches are happy to provide.
Read full articleThe Four Horsemen against the Bomb
BYMilitary officials and politicians today seem unable to conceive of a future without the Bomb. Old thinking retains its grip at the Pentagon. Yet some of the principal architects of the Cold War have now become advocates of disarmament.
Read full articleMolarity Redux: Uniforms
BYWelcome to Molarity Redux, the 25th strip in the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends. It’s time to go bowling.
Read full articleMr Borges
BYThis soft and redolent Indiana evening, I walked into Washington Hall, a rickety lovely castle, which that evening was to host a writer from Argentina named Jorge Luis Borges.
Read full articleHank Aaron still chasing the dream
BYFor Hank Aaron, who spoke at Notre Dame on Dec. 7, it was never about the records. It was about playing and working to his full potential — and helping others do the same.
Read full articleThe Playroom: The prodigal mom
BYOn the great big long list of things I’m really good at, just underneath donating money to solicitations with baby polar bears on the front, is overpaying for everything.
Read full articleHow is the brain wired?
BYHow the brain works remains largely a mystery. But physicists at Notre Dame’s Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications (iCeNSA), working with neuroscientists in France, have recently shed some new light on the process.
Read full articleThe Damage Done
BYIt may have seemed that time heals the brain after severe blows to the head, but the evidence shows a cumulative effect may cause long-term suffering.
Read full articleWalling off noise
BYDriving around, you’ve probably noticed those tall sound barriers erected to minimize highway noise near residential areas and wondered if they work. Notre Dame’s Joe Fernando and those who live near Arizona’s East Loop 101 Freeway answer: “Not always.”
Read full articleNetworthy ND 21
BYUFOs, dragons and wizards, oh my! What has gotten into Networthy ND? There’s actually much more than “news of the weird” and fantasy. But today that is where we begin. . .
Read full articleUnbalanced: How not to give directions
BYYes, I get lost. A lot. If you have to give directions, listen up.
Read full articleLucie and Me
BYShe was my student, I her teacher. But as life wheeled around, so, too, the swing of our friendship — until she became my very own fairy godmother.
Read full articleThe sacred and secular at Ground Zero
BYIn the 10 years since 9/11, the section of Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero has resonated in the minds and hearts of Americans more than any other place in the nation, not because of what it is — a 16-acre hole in the ground that you can walk around in about 20 minutes — but rather because of what it represents.
Read full articleNetworthy ND 20
BYThis edition of Networthy leads off with some thoughts related to the child abuse scandal involving former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Read full articleThe Playroom: Time to believe
BY“Believe you can and you are halfway there,” said Theodore Roosevelt. That may be good advice if you are running for president or you’re a little engine trying to bring toys to the good little boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, but children’s stories don’t always work out that way.
Read full articleMolarity Classic 101-105
BYStrips 101-105 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977, follow the tune-in,drop-out philosophy of Timothy Leary, as well as the importance of laundry.
Read full articleBelieving: A peculiar feast
BYThis annual holiday is as unsettled as America itself, an utterly secular feast during which we celebrate an indistinct gratitude, expressing our thanks, if we are believers, to God, and if we are not believers, to Whomever or Whatever might receive them … as a castaway might toss a message-bearing bottle into an expressionless ocean.
Read full article@nd.edu: A Black Friday survival guide
BYTis the season to be competitive. The season to push and shove. The season to be greedy. ’Tis the season for Black Friday.
Read full articleAn Epilogue for Neil
BYA decade has passed since 9/11 and friends still gather in his memory, laughing at the stories that keep him and his playful soul alive — and celebrate his quest for the “arduous good.”
Read full articleTV’s frequent flyer
BYIt’s 2007 and I’m trying to catch a plane from Miami to Newark on Super Bowl Sunday. As I boarded I saw, nestled there in first class among those flying for business or wanting just a little extra comfort, Regis Philbin.
Read full articlePioneers on the Peace Corps frontier
BYAccompanying a priest like an altar boy, Tom Scanlon headed up a mountain made dangerous by man and nature. The Peace Corps volunteer had graduated from Notre Dame in 1960, just two years earlier, and was now on a Chilean mountainside avoided by police and government officials.
Read full articleEscorted to eternity
BYDeath came to our house in February 1960. It was a Saturday morning. I was 7, playing alone in my front yard. My sister, four years older than I, came outside and said, “Grandmother died.” Our eyes met, then she turned and went back into the house.
Read full articleThe Playroom: A dip into the tween years
BYThis past summer, the summer of my daughter’s entry into tweenhood, I rediscovered something I had almost forgotten, french onion dip.
Read full articleBelieving: A reassurance of purgatory
BYNotre Dame theologian Gary Anderson, an Old Testament scholar, recently wrote about purgatory. I read it late last Saturday night, after a day spent raking up the first autumnal deposit of dead leaves from our front and back yards.
Read full articleFlights of Fancy
BYIn a world where the supernatural is threatened with extinction, the sacred may survive in the lands of fairies, fantasy and fable.
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