“The system must be completely overhauled,” said Nicolas Sarkozy in October 2008, as the world economy was in the midst of a startling decline. A few months later the cover of Newsweek announced “We Are Socialists Now.” These were just two signs of the surprisingly mainstream consensus that the global financial crisis had marked a significant rupture with traditional economics and politics.

Historically, international legislation on the topic of gender equality has often sparked controversy and critical dismissal. The latest version of the debate on women’s rights has focused on the increasing prevalence of quotas for women leaders in both politics and business. Despite the obvious irony, it comes as no surprise that seven Indian MPs harassed Vice President Hamid Ansari on March 8, International Women’s Day, tearing up and throwing copies of the Women’s Reservation Bill at him while shouting anti-bill slogans.

On May 6, the U.K. will hold what David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, described on April 6 as “the most important election in a generation.”

Picture a world where the whistle of bullets drowns out the chirping of birds. Where army units patrol violent, poverty-stricken streets. Where farmers walk among fields of poppy, hoping a successful harvest will provide for their families. Where mothers of lost sons gather and pray that each new day may bring a resurrection of peace. This is not a distant snapshot, but a reality close to home. Welcome to the world of narcocultura. Welcome to Mexico.

Whenever Americans recall Somalia, whether considering lofty foreign policy aims or simply reflecting upon the chance encounter with the name, our minds inevitably snap back to October 3, 1993 and the tragedy that was the Battle of Mogadishu. This is a memory of eighteen U.S. soldiers lying senselessly dead and desecrated, one even decapitated, in the streets of a hostile city. Given the striking clarity with which Black Hawk Down has memorialized the chaos and the horror of this battle, it is no surprise that the trauma remains fresh in our collective consciousness. At the time, the shock of this loss and the seemingly intractable and inhuman belligerence and disorder of the nation compelled the U.S. and all other foreign forces to withdraw. Somalia did not fit with the spirit of the times, the notions of how intervention and aid was to be conducted. After 1993, Somalia dropped off the map of U.S. foreign policy, relegated to a distasteful and repressed memory, and no one has been able to make a great case for a return.

“Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry,” spat Karl. He’d be damned if he let some senile old waiter bring out a tray of canapes without doilies. Without doilies! Might as well ration the butter and sleep with Stalin’s corpse.

Hillary Clinton is a brilliant, paranoid bitch. Barack Obama is clever but arrogant. The less said about John Edwards, the better—ditto for his wife, Elizabeth. Okay, fine: she’s an “abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazywoman.”

With the help of the French, the veil—also known more accurately in various forms as the burqa, hijab or niqab—has conquered both the bra and the bikini as the world’s most contentious piece of women’s apparel.

The headlines make it obvious: banks are now earning record profits while the national unemployment rate hovers near ten percent. The clichéd “Wall Street vs. Main Street” dichotomy has become embedded in our political vernacular.

For those who campaign for stricter limits on how and where guns may be acquired and used, the new legal challenges will create troublesome delays, if not outright roadblocks.

When I moved to New York City last year to attend Columbia University, I knew that finding housing would be a challenge; after three weeks of frustration, I finally managed to find an acceptable studio apartment one mile north of campus. What I didn’t know was that the apartment was available because the previous tenant had recently leapt to his death out of the 15th-story window. That element of surrealism would foreshadow some of my sociological experiences in the new building.

On Jan. 28, in the aftermath of the unprecedented mass demonstrations of late December in which millions of protesters challenged riot police in running street battles, the Iranian government publicly hanged Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.

It’s on roughly a third of all laptops in any given lecture hall, and one of your suitemates is, I guarantee, playing it right now. A Columbia student recently featured on the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire website revealed to the Spec his study habits: “I just did a lot of Sporcle and hoped for the best.” Welcome to the world that Sporcle has created.

It was morning in America—and Harry Reid was already having a bad day. Below is a day in the mind of the Senate Majority Leader.

By some divine coincidence, we’ve all somehow landed ourselves here in Morningside Heights together. Each of us, once belonging to vastly different worlds, has come to inhabit the same space just a few weeks ago hurling snowballs at each other and now sharing the same anxieties about midterms. But sometimes even the best of friends forget that, even though we share many of the same concerns and inside jokes in the present, every one of us brings our own bizarre pasts to this equally bizarre institution called college.

Susan said that her commune was “the best kind of anarchism, for a short time.” It functioned as an artists’ retreat, collective, and farm; although it now functions solely as a land collective, the colony’s hand-built houses still dotting the hill that leads to Haystack Mountain. A new bridge runs across the brook, whose banks are overgrown with wild raspberries. Upstream, a giant waterfall flows, where the commune members bathed every day, surrounded by rock sculptures. The construction along the brook is destroying their woods, and mountaintop tree removal is visible from the pastures and dirt roads.

A few months ago, I was standing in line at the Gap when I overheard a mother talking to her young daughter. “Buying this shirt will help us to save Africans,” she said, smiling as she waved a child-size shirt that read “INSPI(RED)” across the chest. I wondered if this could possibly be true.

Frank Lloyd Wright had a useful hint for the contemporary urban planner: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” As sentimental as this advice might sound, the role of nature in the context of the built environment is no light concern in the minds of policymakers and planners today. In a nod to the spirit of these “green” times, two current New York exhibitions are exploring the realities and potentials of this role—and in so doing offer two contrasting ways of approaching an understanding of the relationship between the built form and its underlying ecosystem.

This July, while interning for l’Organisation Marocaine Des Droits de l’Homme (OMDH)/Moroccan Human Rights Organization, I saw the streets of Rabat, Morocco adorned with red and green. The Moroccan national flag was displayed at every street corner, and pictures of King Mohammed VI were hung in every restaurant. The country was preparing to celebrate Throne Day, the ten-year anniversary of King Mohammed VI’s ascension to the throne.