The Year In Pictures: A Compilation

What better way to reflect on 2008 then through the year's photos? The year has been marked by some of the greatest events in the last decade: the U.S. Election, the Olympics, genocide, terrorism, war, natural disasters, economic crisis and much more. Here is a photographic compilation of 2008 from some of the world's leading publications. If you only have time for one, the Daily Beast collection is especially poignant.

BBC: Year In Pictures 2008

Daily Beast: The Year In Pictures

The New York Times: 2008- The Year in Pictures
Divided into sub-categories: The Election, The Nation, Sports, The World, Arts, Entertainment.

Slate: A Year of Pictures

Professors on the Election

Several of our professors have been called upon by the mainstream media in the past few weeks to talk about the election:

• Anthropology/AFAM Professor Gina Ulysse on Michelle Obama as an exceptional model of a professional black woman in the Hartford Courant.
• Psychology Professor Scott Plous on how biases affect perception, as evidenced in this year's election season, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• Government Professor Elvin Lim and History/American Studies Professor Claire Potter suggesting what President-elect Obama should add to his reading list, in Inside Higher Ed.

23/6 Deconstructs Wesleyan Liberalism

23/6 spoofs Wesleyan students' reactions to Obama at commencement with a kind of lame fake Wespeak. How many people at Wes actually fulfill this Kucinich-supporting, deconstruction-happy stereotype? Although this is an "overstimulated, underinformed Wesleyan sophomore", so I guess there could be one out there in particular:

Though I'm just a sophomore, I snuck into Barack Obama's commencement speech this weekend (stickin' it to the man since 1988!) to listen to the words of wisdom of The Great One, as he's informally known on campus.

Don't get me wrong--I dig on Barry's commitment to bureaucratic transparency, his refreshing approach to diplomacy, and his mad oratorical skills as much as the next former Kucinich supporter whose hopes were dashed early in the game. But in this campaign of firsts--first black, first female, first semi-qualified Republican (!)--I fear we may simply be reversing course and privileging novelty and change over the tried-and-true and status quo, just as Derrida would point out we have always privileged speech over text and man over Woman.

23/6: An Overstimulated, Underinformed Wesleyan Sophomore Writes a Campus Newspaper Editorial on Barack Obama's Commencement Speech

Bill O'Reilly Dance Remix

A video has been making waves across the Internet this week of Bill O'Reilly, everybody's favorite conserva-pundit, flipping out over a teleprompter malfunction. This is the remix!

Unlock the Open Media treasure chest!

A little poking around in Wesleyan's Open Media database uncovered some not-really-noteworthy but potentially-interesting stuff:

• Photos from housing inspections!
• Videos about agility for the Phys. Ed. department!
• Drew Black teaches strength training!
• Ridiculously high-resolution photos of African stuff!
• Less ridiculously-high-resolution photos of African stuff!
• Browse through these photos for faculty hotties!
• Random special events photos!
• And finally, two sets of WESeminar webcasts!