The Bowdoin Orient

Early last summer, first-year Jessica Song created a group on Facebook called "First Night Party!!" She got the idea from friends who had made a similar group at another college and thought that it would be fun to make one for the Bowdoin network. To Song?s surprise, her new classmates, whom she had never met, began joining the group in droves.

President Barry Mills plans to make public his recommendations on Bowdoin's investment policy regarding the humanitarian crisis in Darfur within the next two weeks.

The diagnosis of two students this week with an antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria shows Bowdoin is not immune to the skin infection that is becoming increasingly common on college campuses.

This week, students did well by McKeen's legacy, snatching up every spot for Common Good Day 2006.

For the second year in a row, the best college food in the country can be found here on campus at Moulton and Thorne dining halls. Bowdoin has retained the No. 1 spot on The Princeton Review list of "Best Campus Food."

This week, Facebook debuted its latest innovations: a self-updating catalog of friends' activities dubbed the "news feed," and a record of personal activity on each user's profile called the "mini feed."

Hey there, [your name], you old horsethief, you! How was your summer? "Good?" Really? Because I usually get a different answer! No, it wouldn't be awkward if you had said anything other than "good," not awkward at all! Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'd like a few minutes alone with the first years.

While you may have heard some faint murmurs of the cacophonous debate over immigration this summer, it's often difficult to break through the banal partisan talking points for long enough to see what proposals are actually under debate. While many bills have been proposed from both sides of the aisle, only one has made it through even one chamber of Congress.

Nick Manny traveled to Switzerland and Austria to work on several organic farms. He participated in this venture through an organization called Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF). Over the course of the summer, he worked at five farms in Switzerland and one in Austria.

Welcome to Bowdoin 2006-2007, from all of us in the health services! In this first column of the new school year, I wanted to review some of our programs and services and write a little about our sense of mission here at Dudley Coe.

I thought the world had seen enough tragedy lately. Crikey. Our minds, our TV sets have both been stuck on the Calamity Channel for ages, weathered by the reliable vehicular accident, natural disaster, military mishap, the child molester du jour.

When William Cohen '62, secretary of defense under former president Bill Clinton, left office, many people surely expected him to write a memoir about his experiences. Instead, the Bowdoin alumnus authored "Dragon Fire," a highly charged thriller about a fictional U.S. secretary. His investigation of a potential nuclear threat thrusts him into a world of underhanded politicians and international terrorist threats.

Magic Hat Circus Boy - ($7.95 for a six-pack at Uncle Tom's Market) As the summer months fade and all eyes turn towards fall, most jovial beer drinkers can only sigh as their beloved summer ales begin to leave the shelves and empty out of taps everywhere. I suffered this exact fate just Tuesday night at Sea Dog, when the bartender could offer me only a Red Ale rather than my usual Summer Wheat. Instead of fits of rage and bouts of profanity, I offered him a simple smile and a $5 bill.

Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as "Leadbelly," was a Southern folk and blues musician whose songs have been covered by everyone from Johnny Cash to Kurt Cobain. Aside from being an inspiration to timeless musicians, Leadbelly has also been the force behind rising poet Tyehimba Jess's award-winning book of poetry, "leadbelly."

Ever worry that your weekend "extracurriculars" are destroying your brain cells? Thanks to the work of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, you can give your mind the exercise it needs with the Nintendo DS game "Brain Age." Kawashima is at the forefront of Japanese research on brain imaging and turned that research into a video game, which, played daily, could increase your brainpower.

This summer I had an experience that totally altered my impression of professional athletes. I worked at Kraft Media Communications, inside Gillette Stadium (home of the New England Patriots, winners of three of the last five Super Bowls). Just walking into the office was intimidating enough. Each day on my way in I would walk through a veritable Patriots Hall of Fame, including historic balls and jerseys that left me wide-eyed. But inside the office was an even more amazing atmosphere.