Columns

WILK | Viral Nihilism, Chronically Coping When No One Gives Us a Cure

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I was in seventh grade and 12 years old, when my history teacher, Mrs. Saylor, paused and turned her attention away from the dirty whiteboard in a moment of realization to say that we, the cluster of restless preteens seated in front of her, had never known life without war. I’m still not sure if that statement was completely correct. I do know that she was right about the list events she subsequently rattled off to try to help us, children supposedly bombarded with unending violence on the very largest scale, understand the stuff we’d been through, the stuff we’d seen: 9/11, the Iran/Iraq War, ongoing military aggressions with Afghanistan, a hard-hitting recession, the Boston Marathon Bombing, constantly-stacking murders by our police force, Sandy Hook Elementary and so many shootings since that it’s far past the point of pathos to try to name them all. It was a lot. I almost hadn’t noticed.

Arts & Culture

Dunkirk: Sound and Storytelling

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So I’ve been trying to write this review without swearing but uhhh… holy shit did this movie floor me. If you’re one of those people who reads only the first couple lines of a review: go see Dunkirk. It’s breathtaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-eMt3SrfFU

And that’s the first thing I need to harp on — Dunkirk is beautiful. There were more than a couple of takes in this movie where I couldn’t help but think director Christopher Nolan and director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema were just showing off, flexing their cinematographic muscles.

Arts & Culture

Self-Reflection: Eye in the Sky

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If Britannia once ruled the waves, America now indisputably rules the skies, and its aerial power is growing ever more precise. First, the USAAF of 1945, then an adjunct limb of the ground forces, could drop phosphorous bombs with impunity on every exposed inch of Dresden. Two decades later, napalm could be used to raze thin stretches of settled and foxhole-littered jungle in Vietnam, sans, supposedly, excessive civilian loss of life. Now, a house in a Kenyan neighborhood can be pinpointed and destroyed from kilometers above with the latest in predator drone technology. This is as much a moral as it is a technological evolution, and it is a moral dilemma which lies at the heart of Eye in the Sky, given limited release in select theaters in the United States this past month.

Football

MEISEL | Understanding the Superbowl

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On Sunday Jan. 1991, 10 days before the commencement of Desert Storm — which kicked off with our noble nation dropping 88,500 tons worth of bombs onto the nation of Iraq — Whitney Houston stepped out to the microphone in a red, white and blue tracksuit. With a powerful voice trained in nightclubs and gospel choirs and accompanied by the Florida Orchestra, she then performed one of the best and most popular renditions of the Star Spangled Banner in U.S. history. It became a hit, actually charting at 20 on the Billboard Top 100. After Sept.

Uncategorized

Students Discuss Georgian Conflict

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Cornell boasts of having one of the most diverse student and faculty populations in the world. With undergrads, grads and professors from over 120 countries, few are better suited to keep you up-to-date and informed on rapidly changing world events. This weekly section will highlight prominent global issues through a Cornell perspective.

Last Saturday, hundreds of Georgians in T-shirts emblazoned with the red crosses of the Georgian flag linked hands along New York City’s Fifth Avenue to protest the Russian attack on Georgia.