The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics came to a close this past Sunday. Over the course of about two weeks, national pride spread virally throughout the globe as concerned citizens routinely tapped media outlets for up-to-date medal counts.
I, however, sat out on this one, feeling absolutely no communal ties to my bob sled-bound brethren. Instead I did my best to elude every image, article, and utterance related to the frosty faux-spectacle. I have an aversion to winter sports; I don’t even like Cool Runnings (though I’ll admit, the film’s tagline—“One Dream. Four Jamaicans. Twenty Below Zero.”—remains enticing 17 years post-production).
The Winter Olympics—showcasing a haphazard hodgepodge of physical feats—is absurd and, dare I say, unashamedly inequitable (a meager percentage of the population has ready access to a snowboard…let alone a fiber-glass skeleton sled). Yet, pools of ink and energy were drained crafting narratives around bogus competitions like the biathlon—which demands dual proficiency in riflery and cross-country skiing. One reassuring quotation happened to surface amid the media maelstrom. John Shuster, member of the USA curling team, broke down during his final match, exclaiming, “I hate this stupid game.”
While thrusting projectiles in the snow is indeed, rather stupid, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than assuming the role of said projectiles (the basis of the bobsleigh, the luge, and the skeleton). According to the official Winter Olympics website, luge racers “now regularly reach 140 kilometers an hour or more and G-forces reach over 5G.” Unfortunately for these arctic daredevils, reverse mountain climbing will never match the gritty, raw spectacle of genuine physique—and practical technique—that is the Summer Olympics.

Speaking of Venn diagrams (cf. the X Page), overlay Page 8’s pseudo-apocalyptics and page 9’s dreamy sketches of Yellowstone, and you’ll find only one thing in common: Supervolcanoes. You might have heard of Krakatoa, the volcano that famously erupted in the 1883 with a force 13,000 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and you’ve probably heard of Mt. St. Helens, which flattened 230 square miles of Washington state when it blew its top in 1980, but those are cherry bombs in the toilet compared to the once and future monster that is Yellowstone.
Beneath America’s first national park, below all the bison and bears, lies a 38-mile-long magma chamber, a spongy sea of half-melted rock that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is “shaped like a banana lying on its side with ends pointing up.” The banana has crumbled under the geologic pressure three times in the past three million years, each time blanketing most of what is now the western US of A in a layer of ash and blocking out the sun worldwide. 74,000 years ago, the ash from an eruption in Toba, Indonesia, made global temperatures drop by 21˚ (F), drawing the Ice Ages out even longer. By comparison, Yellowstone’s prehistoric kabooms were ten times Toba’s. We’re talking extinction events here.
So, what makes superVs blow? Generally, the magma, like a horrible secret, gets too hot to keep under wraps, and swells towards the surface, rumbling as it goes. At Mt. St. Helens, an earthquake triggered the hull breach that started the devastation, and the same can happen with supervolcanoes, finally popping the bubble.
Understandably, then, some alarm has bounced around geological circles in recent weeks, as a swarm of earthquakes—1,805, to be exact—has been detected under Yellowstone since January 27th. Even worse, the quakes keep originating closer and closer to the surface, which some see as a harbinger of rising magma doom.
In the past week, though, the swarm has slowed to a more typical speed, and scientists on site are saying the blame can be laid on the structure of the rocks, rather than any impending explosion. Supervolcanoes generally lurk under calderas, giant sinkholes created when a huge magma chamber empties out (read: explodes) and the land above collapses in. Yellowstone’s no exception, with three calderas from its triad of historical eruptions. Much like sophomores living in a triple, each ring finds itself sharing space in an old magma chamber, and each finds and exploits every fault in the others to get more settled. As a result, rapid-fire earthquakes should be expected.
And, to put it in perspective, Lewis and Clark only stumbled into Yellowstone 200 years ago, records have been kept for less than that, and our guesses as to when things happened in the distant past have margins of error longer than all of recorded history. While it might be good for some geo-blog page hits and capslocked Discovery Channel specials, Yellowstone is as likely to explode in the next geological era as it is next week

The significance of Wednesday’s Veterans Day remains
profound. Americans still fight and die abroad, and those
who return bear the physical and emotional costs of their
work. Truly honoring these Americans is at times obscured
by stumping and jingoist pageantry, as well as misplaced
protest. It is clarifying to recognize that at its essence, the day
is about America’s proudest sacrifices, about its people—as
well the weight of our most dreadful political errors, our
worst scars. This season’s tug-of-war over health care shows,
again, that Americans do not agree on details, nor did we
ever. We cannot expect to. But there is a unifying idea behind
Veterans Day: improving the quality of life for all Americans
must inspire our actions.
Earlier this week, Governor Don Carcieri vetoed a bill
that would have granted Rhode Island’s same-sex “domestic
partners” the right to arrange each other’s funerals, a right
currently reserved for heterosexual married couples. Made so
close to Veterans Day, the denial of basic family rights to a
group of this state’s citizens seems all the less patriotic.
On the same day of Carcieri’s veto, the Harvard Medical
School released a study that calculated that 2,266 veterans
under 65 years of age died in 2008 because they did not
have health insurance. The study reports that this figure is
“more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered
by US troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice
as many as have died (911)…since the war began in 2001.”
That translates to an average of six deaths each day as a result
of reduced access to health care.
To honor—and justify—veterans’ enormous contribu-
tions to each American’s wellbeing, our politics must be
guided by improving each citizen’s quality of life. That quality
of life hinges on two fundamental issues: the right to health
and the right to family. These rights are not fundamental for
a select few, but for all of us.
KSO

Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) has agreed to meet with Providence bishop Thomas J. Tobin after the clergyman extended an invitation to discuss healthcare reform and how it relates to certain church policies—ahem, abortion—with the congressman last week.
The invitation comes after Kennedy and Tobin have traded public remarks on each other’s positions. In late October, Kennedy drew fire from the Catholic Church after speaking out against its opposition to many aspects of President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative.
Kennedy, who represents the First District (which includes College Hill), also challenged how the Church can claim to be both pro-life and still against legislation that would provide life-saving healthcare to millions.
But that pro-life stance is at the crux of the issue: some Catholics and church officials believe healthcare reform could overturn a longstanding ban on federal subsidies for abortion.
Tobin fired back at Kennedy, saying that the bishops “are indeed in favor of comprehensive healthcare reform and have been for many years.” He added that their objections are solely to bills that “require taxpayers to pay for abortion.”
“I can’t understand for the life of me,” Kennedy said in interview with CNSnews.com, an alternative conservative news site, “how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person.”
Though both sides have continued to release statements in response to the other since Kennedy’s original CNSnews.com interview, the meeting—which has not yet been scheduled—should help clear up misunderstandings of their respective positions on healthcare reform.
MC

Last Wednesday, after almost a year of procedural hold-ups, Spain’s government began to exhume six mass graves near the Andalusian town of Alfacar. The graves hold the bodies of Spaniards killed by the dictator Gen. Francisco Franco between 1936 and 1939, during the Spanish Civil War. Two years after Franco’s death in 1977, the Spanish parliament passed an amnesty law that became known as the pacto de olvido, or pact of forgetting: a potent sign of the country’s unwillingness to confront the atrocities in its past. This official silence and failure to condemn Franco continued until late 2008, when Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish judge, ordered that nineteen mass graves be exhumed. (Historians estimate that about 125 graves exist in total, containing some 12,000 victims.)

Garzón’s ruling sparked massive public debate about Spain’s ability to reconcile its modern, democratic state with the Franco years; Conservatives oppose the opening of the graves, arguing that dredging up the past will only serve to divide Spain further. From the start, though, the issue has been complicated by the identity of one of the graves’ bodies: Federico García Lorca, the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the 20th century.

At the age of 38, Lorca was shot outside of Alfacar, having been targeted for his open homosexuality and Republican, anti-fascist sympathies. His body was quickly and secretly buried with three other men; the location of his remains was not determined until 1966, 30 years after the fact. His family members have opposed the exhumations, fearing that it will become a “media spectacle,” prompting criticism at their willingness to leave such a significant body buried.

Garzón, in specifically naming Lorca’s grave to be excavated, capitalized on the writer’s popularity and iconic nature, spurring support for the opening of his grave. Still, it seems that this effort to turn Lorca into a symbol counteracts the larger goals of the exhumations: the focus of public discourse has shifted from whether and how Spain should confront its history to whether or not a single man should be dug up. While Lorca’s literary influence and significance are unquestionable, he cannot possibly serve as a representation for the 114,000 Spaniards killed or disappeared during the Civil War. Though his remains will soon be recovered, Lorca’s bones alone will not reconcile Spain with its past.

GB

Last Wednesday, after almost a year of procedural hold- ups, Spain’s government began to exhume six mass graves near the Andalusian town of Alfacar. The graves hold the bodies of Spaniards killed by the dictator Gen. Francisco Franco between 1936 and 1939, during the Spanish Civil War. Two years after Franco’s death in 1977, the Spanish parliament passed an amnesty law that became known as the pacto de olvido, or pact of forgetting: a potent sign of the country’s unwillingness to confront the atrocities in its past. This official silence and failure to condemn Franco continued until late 2008, when Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish judge, ordered that nineteen mass graves be exhumed. (Historians estimate that about 125 graves exist in total, containing some 12,000 victims.)
Garzón’s ruling sparked massive public debate about Spain’s ability to reconcile its modern, democratic state with the Franco years; Conservatives oppose the opening of the graves, arguing that dredging up the past will only serve to divide Spain further. From the start, though, the issue has been complicated by the identity of one of the graves’ bodies: Federico García Lorca, the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the 20th century.
At the age of 38, Lorca was shot outside of Alfacar, having been targeted for his open homosexuality and Republican, anti-fascist sympathies. His body was quickly and secretly
buried with three other men; the location of his remains was not determined until 1966, 30 years after the fact. His fam- ily members have opposed the exhumations, fearing that it will become a “media spectacle,” prompting criticism at their willingness to leave such a significant body buried.
Garzón, in specifically naming Lorca’s grave to be ex- cavated, capitalized on the writer’s popularity and iconic nature, spurring support for the opening of his grave. Still, it seems that this effort to turn Lorca into a symbol counter-acts the larger goals of the exhumations: the focus of public discourse has shifted from whether and how Spain should confront its history to whether or not a single man should be dug up. While Lorca’s literary influence and significance are unquestionable, he cannot possibly serve as a representation for the 114,000 Spaniards killed or disappeared during the Civil War. Though his remains will soon be recovered, Lorca’s
bones alone will not reconcile Spain with its past.
GB

We’ve known since Sunday that the Boy in the
Balloon was a hoax all along, so now what?
Some think the heenes could, at the least,
pay for the rescue operation fees (which are
floating around $20,000). That’s certainly one
level of compensatory justice. But they probably
shouldn’t the foot the bill alone—cable news
could pitch in, for one. Fox News, MSNBC, and
CNN doubled their average ratings during the
live coverage from noon to 2 PM last Thursday.
According to the Nielsen Co., nearly 5 million
tV viewers tuned in for the colorado airspace
chase. That’s just on television; the New York
Times spent two hours of live updates on their
website, front page center.
I’d slip in a buck or two to the donation cup
(it’s a lot cheaper than Imax). But only after
nBc’s Today Show and cnn’s Larry King Live–
whose interviews with the heenes made pop
culture history—would agree to match. ABC’s
Wifeswap, which featured the heenes twice,
could ration a bit from their inevitable ratings
spike for the Heene recuperation fund. YouTube
and twitter users can offer as much as they did
for In Rainbows.
Face it—everyone’s accountable and
almost everyone was enjoying it, at least
peripherally. Now it’s the old Choose Your Own
Cocktail Topic: live spectacle, news credibility,
conspiracy, information networks, ideological
superstructures—the list goes on; it’s the
academic blame-game. Or we could pass the
hoax off as simply a freak spectacle, fueled by
years of child kidnapping stories, Ufo sightings,
and a bit of apprehension about death in airspace
(should we shoot it down?). But that’s avoiding the
bigger issue of why this story worked as well as
it did.
The answer lies in reality TV. Reality TV
functions by hiring for cheap with one-time
offers. Because no one gets a Hollywood salary,
the shows have extremely low overhead and a
keep a very high turnover. Big networks look for
the desperate and the bizarre, people like the
heenes, who are willing to risk their dignity for
a spot on TV.
too often as viewers-cum-disseminators we
take the same role as the networks. We look for
the news items that will be easiest to throw out
the next day. The experience of a news article,
sample-based pop song, or Wifeswap episode
has been reduced to the most cursory pleasure
possible. Stories become as long and detailed as
their hyperlink.
the heenes didn’t want to get thrown away,
nor, by the time bubble popped, did we want
them to. In the days of cheap media sometimes
a strong story is what everyone needs. Watching
the heenes’s saga of desperation unfold as a
hoax might have been depressing, but it was the
most honest and true-to-life reality TV I’ve ever
seen.
AQR

This mid-October, in between staving off deadly microbes (that hand sanitizer seems too good to be true), debating whether Columbus is Friend or Foe (Frenemy?), reflecting on the global significance of the G20 summit (does teargas wash out of denim?) (see page 9), and wondering whether seasonal pumpkin beers are too shamefully effete for human consumption (yes but I won’t let it stop me), take a moment to shrug off temporal cares and smell the roses. Or, since roses aren’t in bloom this time of year, the leaves, which in Rhode Island are in the nascent stages of their transformation into the riotous colors that will provide the makers of Martha Stewart Home with an entire year’s worth of catchy paint monikers (a touch of ‘Gilded Endive’ for the den?). If your folksy flannel’s in the wash and apple-picking demands too much forethought, never fear: all foliage-watching requires is a pair of eyes and moderate attunement to
Mother Nature’s bounty.

We’re just in time to chart the leaves’ transformation in full: while Maine and Vermont leaves are already in full color, trees in southern New England don’t reachtheir fiery finale until the end of October. The
showstopper across from the Fox Point Early Childhood Development Center on Hope and the Japanese maples by Sayles Hall are a couple of our current favorites on the East Side. If we get really into the dendrology spirit,
a week or two from now we just may pack up some cider and spend a Saturday outdoors when the foliage is in full swing (Goddard Park in Warwick/East Greenwich, a couple exits down I-95, offers stone walls, open fields, and all the big fat trees we can feast our eyes on).

Science suggests we should enjoy it while we can: a thirty-year study released in January found that global warming has more than doubled the rate of tree death in American forests in the past several decades. While organizations like Providence 2020 do their part to encourage urban arboreal life by planting trees across the city, the least we can do is throw on our jackets and revel in nature’s splendor while it’s ours to share.

At least for the ten minutes we spend waiting in line for the swine flu vaccine.

Consider the following: last Saturday, a
Brown student went to a certain Thayer Street
nightclub and ordered a round of tequila shots
and a Grateful Dead. When the bartender presented
him with the 20-dollar tab, he looked
around, smirked, and wrote “$0.00” on the
tip line. He then turned to this editor, perhaps
hoping for someone to share in his little joke.
This editor was not amused.
Of course, not all students go out to restaurants
and bars with the intention of stiffing the
waitstaff. However, the practice is common
enough that Brown students have acquired
a reputation on the East Side for being a little
too tight in their tipping practices. At Spats
Restaurant on Angell Street, servers have
resigned themselves to the fact that when a
troop of Brown students comes in, orders a
single 100-ounce tube of beer (priced at $17-
$28 each), and sets up camp at a table for four
hours, it is very likely that they will leave a tip
of one or two dollars, even when the waiter
performs well.
This is not acceptable. Although Oprah Winfrey
(who stated over the summer on her television
show that it was okay to tip servers 10
percent in “these economic times”) and Rachel Ray (who commonly tips 10 percent or less on
$40 A Day) have popularized the notion that
customers may go out to eat, order a full meal,
and then stiff the server due to financial constraints,
the reality is that waiters and bartenders
deserve better. Minimum wage for servers
in Rhode Island is $2.89 an hour; their making
the true minimum wage of $7.40 is completely
reliant on tips. And, if Barbara Ehrenreich’s
experience in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)
Getting By in America is to be believed, even
earning minimum wage falls far short of making
a living wage.
Some argue that it’s not the responsibility
of the customer to make up for the unfair pay
structures used by restaurants. Fine. But until
industry-wide wage reforms occur (which likely
won’t be soon, as neither minimum wage
bill passed in the Rhode Island legislatures
this year), it’s up to us, the customers to accept
our responsibility to the service workers
who shake our martinis, dress our salads, and
clean up our crumpled napkins.
—AL vM

Another September and the stars are against
us.

This fall, the College Hill Independent enters its 20th year, even as Mercury slips
into retrograde. Until the end of this month,
Mercury, the patron planet of information,
communication, and travel, will slow down and
appear to stop and retrace its steps. If you feel
funny, your text messages don’t send, and your
laptop keeps freezing, you’re not alone. Witness
our public figures’ impaired communication
faculties: “Kut-off” Kanye’s false promise to
let Taylor Swift finish her acceptance speech at
the VMAs; South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s
regression into liar-liar-pants-on-fire politics; RI
Health Department’s David Gifford’s mistaken
alert that set residents a-boilin’ (see page 5).

Whatever. You hold in your hands (and
can peruse online, at our shiny new theindy.
org) proof that our staff’s labor and love will
surmount some planet’s celestial funk. Even
more, you, reading this, are part of an ongoing
conversation between readership and media,
an interaction that must be strengthened
because, not in spite of the growing distances
and misfirings that challenge that relationship.

In 1989, the founders of the Indy made
the case that Providence needed a weekly publication that integrated the curiosity and
creativity of Brown University and RISD
students with the city they call home. Ours was
one of the first joint ventures between the two
schools: 20 years later, RISD and Brown share
a dual-degree program, and the Indy has a fullfledged
Metro section. And while still rooted in
print, we’re branching out. We may or may not
now have a Twitter.

We have never listened to negative
oracles. We don’t check the weather. We reject
bleak forecasts about the future of print media
and local reporting. Mercury’s retrograde
ain’t no thang. We’re committed to asking
tough questions, publishing real student voices,
and covering the bowm-bowm beats. And
if technology continues to usurp traditional
media only to punk out when we need it most,
we will strap wings to our heels to deliver the
Independent.

–KSO, SJL, DMT
Managing Editors

Imagine Shaquille O’Neal, Georgia O’Keefe, Cary Grant, your Grandparents, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Roosevelt, Otis Redding, Emperor Moctezuma, Virginia Woolf, Homer Simpson and yourself going someplace for Mother Earth’s birthday party. The stars are out and the slightest of breezes is at your back. Despite your differences, everyone’s getting along famously. This is the Indy.

THE INDY WANTS YOUR CREATIVE JUICES! THE BEST PAINT-BY-NUMBERS FRIDA WILL BECOME THE INDY’S COVER. SUBMIT YOURS TO BROWN CAMPUS BOX 1930 OR EMAIL IT (300 DPI, PLZ) TO THEINDY@GMAIL.COM; FOR, YOU, TOO, COULD BE AN INDY ARTIST!!!1

If it isn’t communists it’s drug-runners and kidnappers. The North American media tends toward the yellow when covering the countries south of our border, presenting the lawless drug cartel murders and the latest Chavez tirade as the only news coming out of Latin America.

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What makes a good president of Brown’s Undergraduate Council of Students? you may ask. Of course, there is no single answer. Is it cunning, oratory or bravado? Is it madness?
For Michael Glassman (2007-2008) it was a combination of networking skills and granola ideals that drove him. Brian Becker, our current president, brings sunny exuberance and Brown pride to the halls of government.
We believe Mr. Wertheimer has what it takes to be President.

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I don’t know too many people who believe the United States has come close to racial equality or equity. I don’t know too may people who profess to be colorblind while their eagle eye vision can spot the imminent post-racial society. I don’t know too many people who think the 2008 election solved the race problem in this country, while I also don’t know too many people who didn’t vote for Obama. Apparently, I don’t know too many Supreme Court Justices.

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One of democracy’s many dark days fell on October 23, 2001. That day, John C. Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney at the Justice Department, authored a memo arguing that “First Amendment speech and press rights” could “be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”

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Saturday night, in a rare yet welcome gesture of togetherness, the seniors of the Indy staff gathered to potluck.

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Pour a 40 out. More of our brothers-in-arms have fallen victim to the economy. Since December, Tribune, Star Tribune Holdings, Journal Register and Philadelphia Newspapers have filed for bankruptcy. Together, these companies account for about 30 publications across the country, among them The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune. Their futures could not be more uncertain, but for the time being, they continue to print the news.

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EPHEMERA

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ENGLEWOOD–Aug. 29: Officers responded to La Casa De Tacos on West National Road, and observed a male yelling at the owner about his burrito. The subject was swaying, had the odor of alcohol about his person and was unaware officers were on scene. A young female employee came outside and he yelled at her, “I’ll be back for you! You’re gonna see me again!” He pointed at the female and yelled, “She’s fine!” and also said, pointing at her, “I’ll go to jail for THAT!” The owner told officers the subject came in drinking from a liquor bottle and yelling, and at one point pulled out a screwdriver and said to a male patron, “Come on, let’s go!” He was arrested for disorderly conduct, drug possession and open container. (FROM THE DAYTON DAILY NEWS)

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