Author: Natalia Grozina

Imagine a boy spending his whole life in a car seat or in a playpen. He never leaves his place and has been living in a home where fruit flies cover walls so thickly that they look like a wave.

When President-elect Barack Obama said he would have a diverse team, he definitely meant it. Obama has brought together a team of men and women, black, white and brown, Democrat and Republican and at least one gay.

Christmas is celebrated in different ways around the world. In Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7, 13 days after Western Christmas. This is due to the fact that Russia celebrates its Christmas in accordance with the old Julian calendar. After the 1917 revolution, Christmas was banned throughout Russia because it was considered a religious celebration. It was not until 1992 that the holiday began to play a big role in Russian culture.

For a while Portland has been known to be the second-largest growing environmentally sustainable city–with Chicago being the first. But when it comes to sustainable fashion, Portland comes in second to no one.

Yes, smokers, you are right. Government should not have the right to take away your right to smoke, but it does have the power to keep you from smoking in certain places, so other people that want a healthy life can have one. Your smoking habits are not the government’s concern, but rather other people’s, whom are affected by your decisions.

“Hey I’m going down to the Tube tonight, how ’bout you?” “Oh man, I would totally come but I lost my fake….” “Don’t worry, I know everyone who works there and you can get in for free.”

Many people who try to simplify their life and de-clutter their living spaces find that the most difficult thing to achieve isn’t throwing out everything you don’t need, but rather dealing with the roommate or significant other who doesn’t have the same goals, as you try to achieve simplicity.

Oregon’s Measure 60 is an initiative introduced by Bill Sizemore that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot. Measure 60’s goal is to mandate basing Oregon state teachers’ pay raises on classroom performance. In other words: Vote no. Here is why:

It’s clear that the people producing The Oregonian think of themselves as a national and regional powerhouse–and one can’t ignore the seven or so Pulitzer Prize awards the newspaper has won since 1999. The most recent was for breaking news reporting for its coverage of a family disappearing in the southern Oregon woods and their father’s desperate attempt to save them. Sure, all of the reporting was great, hanging perfectly on the walls of The Oregonian, but according to most Oregonians–they think the big O is not a good newspaper at all.

Do you remember the days when, if your phone rang in class, you would be thrown out of lecture for the day, or your professor took five points off your exam, even 10? Well, at certain universities that policy doesn’t exist anymore. If you transfer to Duke, Abilene Christian University or Harvard you will get a new iPhone for free and, in fact, be encouraged to use it.

When the members of the Texas school board were drafting their ruling on gun control, I wonder if an animated paperclip pop-up on their Microsoft Word document batted its eyelashes and said: “You seem to be writing something that will cause a lot more chaos than it already has. Would you like some help?”