TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014
PAGE 4B
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Text your FFA submissions to (785) 289-8351 or at kansan.com
Saw an empty billboard in Columbia. Anyone else feel like we need to put a "ten there, done that" sign up?
I used to never get hungover. Now I drink a beer and I'm lucky if I got out of bed the next week.
I puked the entire length of Mass Street while sticking my head out of my friend's car window as she drove us home. Happy 21st to me.
Jokes on you! The friend zone is where I thrive!
Or if they're too old for you if they didn't even know that there was an "old Marvin bus stop."
The high of seeing your FFA printed is nothing like the high of seeing your picture on the front page. #FeelingFamous
I should go around campus selling shirts that say "if you talk to me I won't vote for you."
If KU housing would turn on the AC at the dorms. I'd really appreciate it. I don't like sweating in my room.
I'm facing seven months of sports I couldn't care less about.
To the guy who can't kill germs with cold water; it's called soap.
Number 23? Shoot, I think the whole baseball team is pretty good-looking.
Why isn't the crossword all on one page? Talk about awkward paper folding...
Apathetic Party: We would write annoying chalk slogans, but we don't care enough.
I hate it when I'm right handed and am reduced to sitting in the left-hand only desk.
To the girl who tutors upstairs in Club Schutz: I'm only brave enough via FFA to tell you that I think you're beautiful.
Last object of my college career make the ffa of the day.
I can't tell if the people who wear tails love animals so much they want to be one...or hate animals so much they wear their severed body parts.
Is there anywhere in the world where not winning isn't losing?
Unless you're using boiling water you won't kjil germs. The 90 degree hot tap water is bacteria'a best friend.
Lobsters teach us about change
ANIMALS
As spring begins, the earth changes from the dreary, white winter to the fresh, green spring. The birds sing, the flowers bloom and color is added back into our lives. This is your opportunity to turn over a new leaf (pun may or may not be intended).
I'm not sure about you, but I have heard this trope one too many times. Change in our lives is hard, requires effort and commitment, and does not always have "flowery" consequences.
When equating nature with the human experience, my preferred metaphor for change is that of the lobster losing its old shell. The lobster's molting process is beautifully described by Trevor Corson, in his book "The Secret Life of Lobsters."
A lobster that is ready to shed its shell will pump seawater into its body. The resulting hydrostatic pressure forces the old shell off of the new one. "The lobster remains mobile and active until the last minute, when the membrane that lines its old shell bursts and the animal falls over on its side, helpless and immobilized," Corson says.
humbledness,believe Change knocks both lobsters and humans off their feet, resetting their course. Lobsters, however, catalyze their change by pumping water through their body. With some very complicated exceptions, I believe that we catalyze our own change as well. Even when it feels like life is beyond our control, our prospective and actions shape the course of our life.
"Before molting the animal must diet away half the mass in its claws or risk getting
suck in its old clothes," Corson says.
Just as lobsters lose the weight in their claws, humans must release the idea that the change is negative in order to fully embrace it.
Corson continues, "Flexing the muscles of its abdomen, the lobsterc shake off the old shell around its tail and is free"
Releasing the past is important for both lobsters and humans; it may just take a little muscle or hard work to finally let it go.
Once the lobster can stand and move around, "Its first priority is to use its newly rigid mouthparts to devour the husk of its former self, a convenient and nutritious source of additional calcium."
Although after change, we may not literally eat our past. I think internalizing your past is a vital final step in the process of change. Lobsters live and eat while we live and learn, but there is a common lesson between the two that becomes easy to forget in day-to-day life.
Maybe you prefer to liken yourself to a blooming flower. I, however, am in ane of the lobster and strive to emulate their beautiful routine in handling change.
Jenny Stern is a sophomore from Lawrence studying ecology and evolutionary biology.
FFA OF THE DAY
Any ideas on what breed of dog Blue from "Blue's Clues" is? I need to make a childhood dream happen.
ENVIRONMENT
It's time to get angry about climate change
I'm angry about climate change, but I think that anger should be used to produce positive action, rather than passive vexation. The climate is changing and 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it's very likely caused human activity, according to NASA.
Contrary to popular belief, climate change is already affecting people. In the Maldives, a small island nation consisting of 1,200 islands and atolls, sea level rise is threatening the very existence of the state, according to The Guardian. As the Maldives are rapidly covered by the Indian Ocean, government officials are scrambling to adapt to this glaring example of climate change. Yet what are we, the collective young people of this nation, doing about it?
We are thinking about climate change, but we're not doing anything about it. Our world is headed toward the sixth mass extinction, a scientifically categorized event that rivals the biodiversity loss of the dinosaur extinction, and college students are partying at Jayhawk Cafe and obsessing about their future job prospects that will give them wealth and status.
Global temperatures are on the rise, which is causing ice caps to melt; that melting is leading captured methane to release and sea level to rise. Agriculture is facing huge crop losses and potential vector-borne disease outbreaks. Storms are getting stronger and staying longer.
As students, we have more power than we realize. We are in an ideal position to understand the past and imagine a better future because our dreams, ideas and passions have not been squashed by the "real world" yet. We simply have to look at history to understand that young people can influence change. Young people were, and are, key actors in the civil rights, gay rights and immigration rights movements. Our voices have been heard time and time again because we refuse to embrace the status quo and we constantly innovate our modes of communication.
Action on climate change isn't restricted to turning
off lights after you leave a room. Action is educating yourself about climate change and talking about it. Action is taking that knowledge and applying it to our future careers and daily lives.
We can choose to stick to the societal and economic infrastructure that has altered the balance of the earth, or our generation can choose to be the group that says, "We're done." We're done with dirty oil and natural gas. We are done with poorly planned, fossil fuel-driven cities; we are done with genetically modified, pesticide-ridden food.
Action is standing up when a citizen or politician scoffs at the idea of climate change and intelligently telling him or her that he or she is wrong. Action is contacting your senators and representatives and tell them the time is now for action on climate change.
We must adopt strict carbon taxes and move toward a full-scale switch to alternative energies. The time is now for green building regulations, city planning and agriculture. The time is now to leave principles of unlimited economic growth to the misguided politicians of the mid-20th century.
We cannot wait to get angry about climate change until later. We would be fools to care about climate change only after we personally feel the effects of famine or an unprecedented natural disaster. I don't want our generation to go down in history as the one that stood by, iPhone and beer in hand, while the world deteriorated. This University teaches us to be innovative leaders, to serve our communities and to change the world. Let's do what history and this institution have taught us. Get angry about climate change and turn it into constructive action. This is your world, and someone has to fight for it.
Gabrielle Murnan is a sophomore from Pittsburg studying environmental studies.
JAKE KAUFMANN/KANSAN
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