The IRS will never demand payment in iTunes gift cards, you will not get a $500-a-week job as a remote personal assistant, and your extended warranty has not, in fact, expired. Most people just rolled their eyes at these cliches, but apparently, not everyone is so worldly. And so, because some of them are successful, Saint Anselm College is bombarded with scam attempts. From emails to chalk solicitations, we must deal with digital scammers every single day. As someone who has yet to be humbled by falling for one of these schemes, I was content to ignore them. That is, until I was personally inconvenienced.

Canvas now requires multi-factor authentication, as you may have noticed. It sucks. Whenever I want to check when an assignment is due or see the readings, I need to have my phone on hand to enter a six-digit numeric. This new security procedure directly results from our community members’ lack of sollertia. As someone who is mildly peeved by the situation, I must ask that you all think twice before you click on an email link.

Imagine Dragons is like Game of Thrones: when it’s good, it’s great, but when the band slips, the mediocrity is numbing. Over the past thirteen years, they have released a lot of boring songs, and quite a few fantastic hits. Every album is a mixed bag (like a house at Halloween that hands out skittles and raisins). Despite their inconsistency, the Vegas-based band is probably the largest rock act of the twenty-first century. Recently, Imagine Dragons rereleased its greatest album, Night Visions, as a 3+ hour extended edition with all the originals, demos, remixes, and two never before heard songs. The album included staples like “Radioactive” and “Demons,” but I am most interested in the new addition “Love of Mine.” The galloping track will win no awards for its opening notes, but 14 seconds in greatness strikes. Imagine, if you will, walking down the trail to NHIOP with a stone in your backpack. The ungainly weight and sleep slope force every step to be larger than the last. Imperceptibly, you transition into a trot. That type of forward momentum characterizes the song. You cannot help but bop to the driving baseline and upbeat lyrics. The song is plain fun. Maybe it’s too shallow, but that’s sort of Imagine Dragons’ thing.

Politics and Eggs is off to a running start this semester. Last week former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA Mike Pompeo spoke at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. Fifteen student ambassadors met Secretary Pompeo and got signed wooden eggs to take home. This week Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is coming to participate in the program. Maryland prohibits anyone from holding the governor’s office for more than two consecutive terms, meaning Governor Hogan will soon be out of a job. Thus, his visit to New Hampshire is a sure sign he is contemplating a presidential run. No one from Maryland has ever been elected President.

To boost male enrollment, St. A’s created the football team as we know it. Prior to 1999, when the Hawks first played at Grappone Stadium, Saint Anselm College had gone decades without a football team. The team’s formation was spurred by a national trend of declining male college enrollment, a trend which has accelerated today. I cannot speak to how well the team has done in changing the college’s demographics these past 25 years, but it has not been effective enough. The college sits slightly below the national ratio with 39 male students for every 61 female students.

Hurricane Ian cut Northeast through central Florida before veering west to slam into the Carolinas. The storm was hugely destructive, with millions affected. I see headlines celebrating that because of the hurricane, “Ron DeSantis Shows Some Good Manners.” This is the response to tragedy of a callous partisan. We saw similar cheers during Covid, and today we hear them for rising gas prices. I have yet to read or hear one prayer for Florida. Perhaps I am just consuming different media, but it feels like natural disasters spur fewer calls to prayer than they once did. I do not think this reflects growing irreligiosity but rather shrinking compassion. This trend, if it does exist, is not a good one.