Often it feels as if the debate on American nutrition is dominated by academics and lobbyists, each lecturing at each other louder and louder, trying to drown out all dissent and make you pay attention only to them. Sometimes, that is what you want to have, but Stuffed by Hank Cardelo is different. Instead of a lecture as to what is Good and what is Bad for America, Cardello (a former food executive with experience on all sides of the debate) instead makes the book feel like a conversation over dinner at a restaurant. Wandering across the landscape of the food industry he explains the problems that create obesity and poor nutrition in America, along with what causes and institutionalizes those problems, and he explains it such a way that anyone could understand it, but doesn’t dwell the issues so long as to bore anyone.

For many books, knowing the ending before you open the first page takes away from the experience. That is not true in the case of “Best American Political Writing of 2008” (edited by Royce Flippin), however. Instead, knowing that Barack Obama will be our 44th president lends a sort of surrealism to this expose of the finest political commentary on politics in 2008. This work is little more than a series of articles from various journals and magazines, each with a paragraph or two of introduction but little more – left to stand on their own merits.

Inside you will find how a fortune cookie may have saved John McCain’s primary campaign, why Hillary Clinton stubbornly refused to show emotion – a stance she had built up over a lifetime of trial and humiliation, and how Barack Obama’s age is important not only because he is young, but because he is the first candidate born after the 60’s, growing up shielded from the quarrels of the baby-boomer generation which have shaped our politics for the past 40 years.

Robert Baer's new book The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower is one of the worst books written on Iran in recent years, which is quite an achievement considering how many books are coming out on the subject. The problem isn't so much the author, a former CIA agent who worked in India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Lebanon, but that he writes solely about what he knows, and he doesn't know much about Iran. He spends most of his time dwelling on Iraq and mounting Iranian influence there, on Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, on Syria, but most of all on Hezbollah. The amount of actual discussion on Iran, discounting Baer’s mostly baseless speculation, is incredibly threadbare and rationed sparsely throughout the book.

News Director Robert Glass interviewed Maryam Belly on the recent controversy regarding the Vice President of Multicultural Affairs.

This is a live blog of the Student Assembly of Binghamton University meeting where a motion to have a student wide referendum on removing the post of the SA Vice President of Multicultural Affairs was discussed and voted on. The blog was written by News Director Robert Glass and was updated (and time stamped) throughout the meeting. Please excuse any minor grammatical errors, as this blog (which has almost eight full pages of single spaced text and roughly 4,500 words) was written live as the meeting took place, with very little time for editing.

7:05: Andrew Epstein has first comment during public comment. Fitting somehow.

7:11 Four comments in and not one in favor of the amendment. One E-Board member of the Rainbow Pride Union spoke of personal history with a previous VPMA (Redbord?) in helping to deal with a BTV personal attack that was aired against him. Also head of College Democrats says this resolution "more fitting for other states, and not for Binghamton."

News Director Robert Glass recently sat down with Matt Landau to talk about the ongoing situation with regards to the Student Association Vice President of Multicultural Affairs.

Important note: The Student Assembly meeting where the motion on the abolishment of the VPMA will be discussed is officially moved to the Osterhout Concert Theater in the Anderson Center. It is going to take place this coming Monday, the Eighth, at 7 P.M.

Transcript:

Robert Glass: Thank you very much for agreeing to do this.

Matt Landau: Sure.

Robert Glass: There are a lot of rumours swirling around as to what this motion in the student assembly actually means. Would you clarify what it actually means and what it does not mean?

Leah Gottlieb, an assistant editor for WHRW News, talked with Bill Lawrence over the phone about Scrubs and its future.

Donald F. Kettl has quite the resume of government-based books, such as The Transformation of Governance (winner of the National Academy of Public Administration’s 2003 Louis Brownlow Book Award for the best book in public administration). He is also the Stanley I. Sheerr Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Needless to say his life in the study of government policy and public administration is lengthy but his new book, The Next Government of the United States, fails to live up to what it could have been.

In the book Donald postulates that with the increasing complexity and size of problems faced by the government in the 21st Century there can be no blame placed solely on the shoulders of one foolish knave. Throughout the book he is constantly stretching towards a better point, but never quite uses the words to make it work. Kettl never quite reaches the point of explanation in his book before falling back to repetition without variation.

WHRW News has been informed, from sources close to the Student Assembly, that the upcoming assembly meeting regarding the status of the Student Association office of the Vice President of Multicultural Affairs is undergoing a venue change, and an upgrade in security. While the average SA meeting takes place in the Susquehanna Room in the University Union and garners the attention of, at most, 85 people, sources tell WHRW News that the SA is looking to reserve the Osterhout Concert Theater in the Binghamton University Anderson Center. The Osterhout Theater can seat up to 1200 people in auditorium style seating, far more space than any previous SA meeting has ever garnished.

WHRW News will keep you updated as this story develops.

Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov is a very hard book to review. It recounts a violent uprising by an extremist Sunni sect of Muslims in 1979 that were able to take control of the Grand Mosque of Mecca for days, and could only only be forced out by a protracted and bloody siege. Causing the Saudi government to lose face, influence, soldiers and to seek outside help from western governments out of sheer desperation. In the process the book recounts the social history of the Saudi Arabia, the causes and conflicts that brought out the conflict, and everything else in between. The book is hard to review because the reviewer is left feeling as if he should be able to go on ad infinitum extolling the virtues of the book, but to start the tirade of superlatives and compliments becomes boring. Further, any sustained praise for the book feels as if it's doing the book a disservice because it simply cannot hold up to the quality of the book. The fact of the matter is, if a reader fancies him or herself a student of modern events, of Islam, of Islamic terrorism, of the Middle East, of America, of Foreign Affairs or of just about anything similar they should read this book.