Andrew Golis

Fear not you nonexistent readers of my blog, I am still alive and well. I didn’t post yesterday because last night was poker and basketball here at the Golis and Company household. I got my ass kicked in poker about as badly as the lakers did in basketball. Although, unlike some members of the Lakers it wasn’t as a result of playing like a girl (no offense ladies, but it’s true).

I still have to write a longer post on what my job’s like. For now let is simply be said that I work 8 hours a day at a desk on the phone and typing stuff. None of my work is particularly interesting in and of itself, but I’m trying to prove myself so that I can take on something more challenging and stimulating. We’ll see.

I just watched the Godfather for the first time since I was 12 maybe. I guess I’d be pretty much joining the choir to say it was an amazing movie, says a lot about masculinity and lots of other things. What? It does! Ok, I’m a choir boy. And I’ll leave you with that image…

I started work today. pretty good overall, but it’s hard to know much yet. I’ll write more tomorrow or wednesday, but you can see the project I’m working on at www.coveringkids.org.

ok, I have now changed the settings so that anyone may post, so stop your whining.

Today will be my first day at my new job. I’m working for Greer Margolis, or GMMB (I forget who M and B are), a political consulting firm in Georgetown. I’m looking forward to it, lots to learn and all that. Hopefully it’s also fun!

Also, Matthew Jose Glazer has pointed out two obnoxious things about my blog. First, my obnoxious “artsy” corner of head picture. I admit, it’s a bit douchey. I was trying to put up a picture without putting my full picture on the internet, cause that freaks me out a bit. Second, apparently you have to register to enter comments. That too is douchey, but I like to think of it as the threshold of friendship. Understand!?

I just watched the end of the fourth game of the NBA finals. That is some good shit. I don’t know a ton about NBA basketball (in fact, I could pretty much care less during the regular season), but I remember before the series started all the sports pundits talking about how outmatched the Pistons were against the all-star Lakers. Well, it’s 3-1 Pistons now. The Lakers look like a bunch of spoiled brats, and the Pistons are killing them. The Lakers may have two of the best five players in the NBA in Kobe and Shaq, but they look mediocre. The Pistons are working harder, playing better defense, playing better as a team and staying focused. The Lakers are whining. It’s fun.

that the current adminstration is pushing to the very limits of the mainstream with it’s right wing agenda.

This article from the Crimson sketches out the successes and failures of the Mahan administration (for those of you who aren’t from Harvard, he is the current Undergraduate Council President). While I obviously have some biases in the whole situation (my roommate is quoted as a “Mahan ally”) I think it paints an interesting contrast between what you saw with Rohit’s presidency and Mahan’s. Rohit was a deal-maker, a non ideologue. If you want to be crass (and I do), you could say that he didn’t really care what got done on the UC, just that things did, that the machine ran smoothly, that power was maintained and expanded. Mahan is not, and could not, be this type of leader. It’s unsuprising to me that it’s been a controversial semester because Mahan is an ideologue. Because of this he’s done a lot of politically stupid things in the interest of his ideals and in many ways has sacrificed future success because of it. But he’s also furthered his causes in very real and concrete ways by throwing his weight emphatically behind them regardless of what was “politically savvy”.

It’s funny to me how the UC simulates a lot of these political structures and dynamics. This really is the classic trade off between, say, a Howard Dean and a Bill Clinton. Do you want a leader who is willing to fight for what he believes even if it creates a poisonous political environment and sacrifices political capital or a leader who compromises his ideals and shifts his positions but always maintains control and power? I guess the stupid and obvious answer is that you need some of both, or one in some situations and one in others. And, of course, to say that Mahan is all one, and Rohit all the other is a gross simplification. It is, however, the basic political balancing act.

This is a very interesting article about the cultural renaissance of poker that is currently taking place. The thesis is:

Strategy-oriented, individualistic, and embedded in a nice masculine mythology, poker is the perfect game for the revenge-of-the-nerds generation looking to square their intelligence with their inner maleness.

Seems right to me.

PS: Thanks for the link Christopher.

I like it when newspapers attempt to tie things together and begin to define recent history with broader strokes, because you get to see how history will simplify and explain the political patterns of our day. This article takes a stab at the 80s and 90s, in the context of a comparison between Reagan and Clinton and how the contrast between them mirrors the current political debate.

According to a poll taken by Gallop in late May, only 63% of Americans knew that we were fighting the Germans on D-Day, and only 61% knew that D-Day occured at Normandy. When, exactly, do we decide that this level of ignorance is unacceptable? When do we realize that America will absolutely not be the great world power, regardless of what bombs we make, if our population is stupider than the rest of the world?