Brandeis University's Community Newspaper — Waltham, Mass.
Traffic safety is not a joke. For this reason, The Hoot applauds the Waltham Police Department for its recent increase in surveillance of the crosswalk on South Street. The trouble is that traffic surveillance is not the answer to speeding or students crossing streets negligently. In the case of South Street, the City of Waltham […]
President Obama gave his State of the Union address Wednesday night. If you didn’t know that, you might as well stop reading and go back to the rock under which you’ve been living. I hope it didn’t lose too much value in the housing collapse. Not that you would know about that either. Much has […]
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday did not connect means and ends. The speech pointed to a few obvious “big and difficult challenges: ”a sluggish economy generating high unemployment, an inefficient health care system that leaves some uninsured, and a gaping annual budget deficit. Solving these problems will likely cause Americans […]
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, has played his cards well for the past 11 years. He knows that Venezuelans tend to forget history quite fast, and even faster once the government does a “revolutionary project” here and there. The devaluation of the Bolívar (Venezuela’s currency) on Jan. 8 – which will be […]
In response to inflation and the economic ills of the time, Ronald Reagan declared, in his first inaugural address, that “government is the problem…not the solution.” Twenty-eight years later, many people considered the election of Barack Obama a repudiation of this core tenet of modern conservative dogma. Unfortunately, a year into his presidency, with much […]
Editor’s Note: The following piece is factually embellished and contains multiple incidents that did not actually occur. “Hurry up, Bret,” I said. I was getting impatient. “Hold your horses,” he replied, carefully studying the shot glass in his hand. “I’ve got work to do later, and I can’t go overboard.” “F*ck you and your f*cking […]
As someone who is neither a husband nor a father (I hope), it may seem puzzling that I would choose to read Michael Chabon’s “Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures of a Husband, Father, and Son,” a collection of 39 essays that, as the title implies, focuses primarily on marriage and children. I’m simply not in […]
It’s hard to tell what inspired ABC’s decision to produce and air the new legal drama, “The Deep End,” which premiered Thursday night. Perhaps the corporate execs figured that, with their success with “Grey’s Anatomy,” focusing on another profession would be just as profitable. Whatever the reason for green-lighting this project, I doubt it’s because […]
MTV’s “Jersey Shore” has come and gone, and it was undoubtedly a goldmine. Before the season was even halfway over, the cast members were making appearances with Jay Leno, getting paid upwards of $5,000 to make club and bar appearances and receiving condemnation from commercial sponsors and government officials alike. They even graced the pages […]
If you attended a performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra last fall, chances are pretty good that you heard one or more of Beethoven’s symphonies. The BSO, widely recognized as one of the world’s most elite orchestras, presented a complete set of these vaunted works throughout October and November and has several additional performances scattered […]
