Happy birthday Dartmouth!

The Dartmouth College charter was signed 242 years ago today. The first class of students actually didn't arrive until 1771, but the official beginning of the College was on December 13, 1769. What a remarkable journey the College has undertaken! Dartmouth lore is well-known to its undergraduates and alumni, but every now and then you come across a surprising tidbit all the same. Imagine my surprise, for instance, when I learned of the Dartmouth Peace Conference, a 1960s-era series of summits between intellectuals from the United States and the Soviet Union. Although later iterations of the event were held away from New Hampshire, the conference retained its name based on the original host site. The founder of the Dartmouth Peace Conference was none other than my own uncle, Norman. What a small Dartmouth world.

Dartmouth athletics is getting back into the swing of things after taking a break for fall term final exams. The men's hockey team beat up on Sacred Heart on Sunday, winning by a score of 4-1, while the men's basketball team turned in a respectable, albeit losing, effort against Notre Dame. The women were in action as well, but since I didn't watch any of their games, I don't have the scores right at my fingertips.

Speaking of athletics, I have recently rediscovered the joy of playing squash. My friend Evan and I were playing tennis weekly during the summer and early fall, but as the weather turned cold and the snow began to fall, we were forced to move indoors. I never really got the hang of racquetball, but squash I like. I have no formal training whatsoever--which means my backhands occasionally look like a cross between a tennis swing and a ping-pong stroke--but Evan has been teaching me strategy and technique. Our games are getting closer, too. No longer am I counting the number of points I win; now I'm counting the number of games I win. And soon I hope to start counting my record of games won and lost (though at the moment it would be Miami Dolphins-esque).

In other news, scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider have announced that they still don't know if there is such a thing as a Higgs boson. But they might know by next year. Thanks for the update, CERN.