Last night I went to hear Anderson Cooper speak at Foellinger, and was pleasantly surprised. Not so much by Cooper, who I expected to be pretty likeable and articulate, but by the students who stood up to ask questions. Reading the Daily Illini, I often get the impression that the campus is filled with... what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes... morons. I mean, sometimes these kids can barely string a sentence together, and the mistakes that get through their "copyediting" just make me want to cry. But last night, when I would have expected questions like "who's your favorite celebrity" or, I don't know, "where did you get that incredible suit" (I mean, c'mon, you know Gloria Vanderbilt's son has to know from fashion), students instead asked about the emerging political power of the European Union and why the conflict in the Sudan wasn't receiving more media coverage. So... enjoyable and insightful questions and a speaker who strongly agrees with Jon Stewart that all the shouting on tv discourages rational discourse added up to a very enjoyable evening. Although I did have a momentary pang when I was one of the few people who laughed when Cooper said that his mother urged him to "follow his bliss" after graduation, when he had been looking for advice more along the lines of "plastics". Does no one watch the classic movies anymore? Sigh. What do they teach children in school these days?