The latest chapter in the ongoing war between the Internet’s devotees and their mainstream media adversaries is an article in The New York Times Magazine about Mike Allen, writer of an e-mailed morning news digest called Playbook that is enormously popular with Washington, D.C., residents and other “politicos.

The Daily Beast has recently released a ranking of the 50 most stressful universities in the country and has assigned Washington University a rank of lucky number 13.

This week is Passover, and while Jews are not breaking bread with their families, as Republican politician Carly Fiorina suggested in an e-mailed Passover greeting to her supporters, they have been breaking matzos, hiding one half as the afikoman, and eating it later as they prepare to conclude their Passover seders.

My family had two important milestones this weekend. The first was my little brother’s bar mitzvah. For those of you who have somehow spent at least a semester at Wash. U. without learning about this Jewish rite of passage, that means that my 13-year-old brother is now officially considered an adult…at least according to Judaism. Legally, thankfully, still not so much.

oday is election day, and in its honor, I planned to pen a mildly snarky column about SU’s general lack of meaningful action and to remind you dear readers that although I am pleased to see at least two candidates running for each position this year, I still doubt SU’s ability to take on issues that, you know, actually matter.

I’d like to lodge a formal complaint against the University for failing to de-ice the Underpass properly. For weeks, I have been worried that one of the many menacing icicles dangling from its crevices might fall and pierce me on my way to class. (Hey, it happened on “Grey’s Anatomy.”) Fortunately this has not yet occurred; but there is a particularly slippery and hard-to-detect patch of ice where said icicles have melted.

I do not like dogs. They slobber, they drool, they shed, and they always manage to jump on me at the worst possible times. They also aren’t really that cute. Yes, I am aware that this makes me a soulless human being. I know that you dog lovers think these foul creatures are man’s best friend, and I understand that you have this annoying “Love me, love my dog” mentality.

Whenever the topic of my future comes up at a family gathering and I admit that I want to pursue a career in politics, inevitably one of my relatives will shake their head and tell me, their voice deep with concern, that politics is a nasty business that I would be better off avoiding.

Jeff Smith is tweeting. From prison. Well, technically he is e-mailing his tweets to a former aide to post on his behalf, but close enough. This 134-character announcement is a fairly typical example of the jail posts released by JeffSmith7037 thus far: “got elbowed in the paint today on b-ball court, t-shirt bloody, had to tell guard asap to make sure i don’t get in trouble 4 fighting.”