By Evan Carlson   When the world weighs us down, at least we have our pets to come home to — a cat to cuddle, a dog to play fetch with, or a parrot to teach curse words. Undoubtedly, these animals bring us comfort in times when comfort is hard to find. But we often fail to do the same for them, and even the … Continue reading Is It Right to Own Pets?

By Pat Reilly   Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court was a public reminder that the narrative of the powerful is a difficult one to challenge. Why, for instance, was his submission of a handwritten calendar taken seriously as evidence? Why was Dr. Ford’s accusation and testimony met with the same familiar string of questions that seem to follow any accusation of sexual misconduct … Continue reading Why Do We Believe Men More Than Women?

By Mark Honey   What do landlords even do? Let’s role-play a scenario: You’re renting. Your fridge stops working in the middle of the night, and everything in there is gonna go bad if it isn’t fixed today. Your options: 1. Let the food rot, let the appliance sit, abandon the kitchen, and never refrigerate anything again 2. Fix the fridge yourself 3. Phone a … Continue reading We Don’t Need Landlords

What do we talk about when we talk about “the future”? By Phil Gillen What do you know about the future? When you look ahead, what do you see? Self-driving cars, electric cars, artificial intelligence, vast collections of data, space travel? Where did you learn about this future? It seems like more than a coincidence that most of the ways we conceptualize “the future” have … Continue reading The Future Is Theirs

All truck drivers must face driving in the wretched wind at some point in their career. I definitely hit strong winds during my training pretty much everywhere I went, but some places are way worse than others. Some places are known “Wind Tunnels.” Like when I’d come out of the shelter of a mountain canyon in the Southwest, hit the open road, and WHAM! I’d … Continue reading Windward Ho!

 Review of The Rider (2017)   By Taylor Thornburg In her film The Rider, Chloe Zhao draws attention to the frequently neglected personalities of the American Midwest, their sumptuous environments, the diverse experiences of diverse human bodies, and into the secret places where we keep our biggest dreams and greatest fears. The film explores the life of the young rodeo star named Brady Blackburn (portrayed by Brady … Continue reading Zhao’s film draws out the contradictions in our country and ideology

Some professional athletes maintain ties with their working-class roots   By Phil Gillen For the most part, our society is divided into two camps: the haves, and the have-nots. When it comes to the luxuries that money can buy — big houses, expensive cars, the ability to travel, fancy clothes — the have-nots are mostly synonymous for the working class, our class, the basis for … Continue reading The Working-Class Millionaire

By MC Raterman As the summer wanes and the nights grow longer once again, many of us return to a familiar place: the classroom. We spend these newly protracted evenings pouring over readings, drafting papers, and in club meetings. So too, we begin to return to a life dictated by a calendar and a clock. From the ages we are barely self-aware, up until we … Continue reading Back to School, with a new mindset

I don’t know what other truckers use, but on my first Trainer’s Truck I had Navigo, (which is the company-mandated Qualcomm Navigation) and TomTom, which is not meant for truckers but can still navigate a plan fairly well. When I say not meant for truckers, I mean that car navigation systems do not take into consideration the things that truckers need to be concerned with, … Continue reading Watching the Road