If you’re one of the five people (my editors included) who read Saxa Politica last week, you’ll know that I was ridiculously excited about Margaret Atwood’s visit to campus today. Not only did her talk not disappoint, but I actually got to meet her and ask her a few questions in the ICC elevator before the official lecture.

Maybe it was the fact that I already had blogging on the brain, but in my two minute interview I asked her how she thought the Internet had changed the state of reading and writing literature. Her response? “The Internet is a very literate form, of course … You’ve probably noticed these blogs that are everywhere…[they are] similar to the novels people used to write in the 18th century.”

Later, two friends and I crashed the lecture event in Gaston, and the technology question came up yet again. During the Q & A, a curious freshman asked Ms. Atwood whether she owns a TV. It turns out that she does, along with a DVD player, and she messes around online just like the rest of us. If a serious author uses the Internet as a procrastination technique, maybe it doesn’t kill as many brain cells as I thought.

But if Halo 2 is your thing, you’re still not off the hook. “I don’t play interactive video games,” Atwood said. “Yet.”

Posted by Anna Bank, Assistant News Editor

I never thought I’d say this, but check out this month’s issue of The Georgetown Federalist, the University’s conservative publication. Despite Editor J.P. Medved’s direct shot at the Voice in his “From the Editor” column, the issue does have a very worthwile piece by junior Alexander Bozmoski on why conservatives should be united against climate change (no link to this one–they don’t have a web site).

Bozmoski argues that the true conservative stands against drastic change of any kind. The tradition of Edmund Burke stresses the fact that we should pass onto our children the same great civilization that we have been fortunate enough to grow up in. God knows that global warming threatens all the progress that human society has made in the last 200 years.

The fact that this argument has hardly been voiced at all by any member of the GOP indicates that today’s Republicans are more interested in the immediate needs of big business than in a truly “conservative” stewardship of our society.

Posted by Chris Stanton, News Editor