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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012
opinion
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For Sale; barely used trophy cabinent, like new. Need to sell ASAP before move south. Location: Columbia, Mo.
I have already adopted one of the squirrels here. His name is Sir Henry.
Apparently nature doesn't want me reading the UDK because it ripped it out of my hands. Harsh.
Why is it that important life stuff always happens when I have tons of homework?
Why can't the hill be flat?
Editor's note: Because then this would be K-State.
Sometimes I study so I can justify the insane amount of time I spend on Facebook and Pinterest as "study breaks."
I know there are red and white KU shirts. But at the game everyone should have a "Blue Out."
Yes, I do hate Mizzou, but I Withey the fool who loses to K-State twice.
I gave up Facebook and Twitter for Lent. I've already thought up six tweets in the last 15 minutes.
What if Bill Self was real Jeff Withey and tomatoes were green *gasp*
Sometimes I wonder "where does the color purple come from?" Then I think "Why did I just have that thought?" Then I remember, "Oh yea, I'm stoned."
Holding onto the poles on the bus makes me feel like a stripper.
Yea, chivalry is dead. The remains were found on the bus this morning when a girl on crutches failed to get a spot.
Judging from their clothing, I don't think sorority members can remember their social events unless they make a t-shirt about it.
When my chem professor says "hot and heavy" I don't want to think about electron orbitals.
I'm frolicking through the Forest of Allen Fieldhouse.
I often find myself wondering odd questions like, "I wonder if any of the cheerleaders can sing the original pokemon song?" Because that would be awesome.
Wireless service on campus disappoints
I'm preparing for Saturday's game by listening to "300 Violin Orchestra" non-stop for the rest of the week!
I think "The Newsies" is a much more suitable stereotype for frat packs
I think I should get royalties for being filmed walking around campus.
Internet and wireless services at the University of Kansas have been hot topics since the University signed a contract with Apogee to provide internet service in student housing. Students now deal directly with Apogee for internet service at their homes, rather than with the University.
EDITORIAL
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing to not put a tomato in your fruit salad.
I always have this urge to perch myself in the little trees in front of Snow Hall and throw glitter at people who walk by.
Why is it that I do something nice for someone and people think that I'm trying to sleep with them?
Originally, the contract called for complete wireless installation by May 2011, but the University pushed back the time line for that work. Today, all of the scholarship halls, all of the residence halls, except Corbin and Jayhawk Towers A and D, have wireless internet. The University plans to begin installing wireless access points for the remaining Jayhawk Towers during February and Corbin Hall during the summer.
What if it's really the washer that's been losing our socks and we've been blaming the dryer all these years?
Meanwhile, some students will be paying more for internet next semester. Kansas differs from other schools, such as the University of Missouri and Kansas State, in separating internet from tuition and campus fees.
The tierd service offered by Apogee charges $98 for its basic package of 8 Mbps, $138 for its intermediate package of 15 Mbps and $158 for its highest package of 20 Mbps. The speeds were updated last October when students complained about the coverage.
Apogeen's proposed packages for next year will charge students $128 for a basic package of 10 Mbps, $148 for 20 Mbps and $168 for 30 Mbps.
To put internet service in perspective, it might help to look at
how Kansas State does it.
Our in-state rivals have a more complete wireless program that extends throughout the residence halls. Every hall has wireless that extends into students' dorm rooms. K-State doesn't set a speed for users. A representative said that students can expect four Mbps or faster at any given time of day.
If they have a problem with their service, there is one number to call.
their internet are directed to the universities' Internet Technology departments at K-State.
Students at K-State pay for internet as part of their student fees at the beginning of the semester. Because that fee isn't separated from their tuition, it is difficult to tell how much each student pays for their internet service. All of the questions students have about
Students should call Apogee if they have a problem connecting to the internet in their residence area. But if they have problems connecting in any other building on campus, they should call KU IT Customer Service , according to David Day, a Communications representative of KU IT Services.
This differs from Internet support at the University in that students here have two places to resi
Under this system, the University isn't responsible for a large portion of the technical support students may need. Instead, students find themselves dealing with a private firm that is insulated from the consequences of
irritating customers. They have an eight-year contract with the University.
After looking at K-State's Internet and comparing it to ours we might conclude that our friends in Manhattan are getting a better deal
In the future, maybe the University should be more wary of contracting out services to out-of-state companies by offering them exclusive deals that last for years. It's great for Apogee, and easier for the University. But it seems students may be left hanging between them.
Angela Hawkins for the Kansan editorial board
BEHAVIOR
Celebrities should not be rolemodels
Intellectually stimulating yourself can lead to a more productive life
Imagine there is a boy who never has any negative consequences. He punches your brother and your mom says, "Great job honey!" with a big smile. Or maybe he steals a snack pack from little Johnny at school every day and enjoys that great chocolate pudding without a care in the world. He can do what he wants when he wants. That sounds like a good life to me. Well what if the boy grew up like that and the trend continued into his adult life? Ladies and gentlemen, meet Charlie Sheen!
Celebrities are the center of our culture and likely will be for a long time. In the case of little Charlie Sheen, he is positively reinforced for anything he does. This essentially means he is more likely to repeat whatever behavior occurred prior to being reinforced. At the same time he is never punished, which constitutes not receiving consequences that effectively control his behavior.
Let's say you work for a generic financial sales company. Each week you are positively reinforced with $100 bonus if you meet an average quota of sales that week. But then say your boss triples that weekly bonus and increases the sales level by five percent. How would you react?
You'd probably be pretty excited about making an extra $200 a week just for a little more work. Then two months later you earn $1,000 a week to sell an additional five percent. Will that motivate you to continue to sell better? It likely will, and this typifies how the environment can drastically change your behavior.
Now let's go back to celebrities where their environment is much less orderly. Take Ashton Kutcher as an example of being reinforced for inappropriate behavior. In 2011 he cheats on his wife and subsequently is praised in US-weekly by his secret girlfriend as romantic. Additionally, ratings of his show "Two and a Half Men" continue to rise and reinforce his behavior. He continues to make millions and his celebrity status only seems to rise.
There are two big pieces we can take from knowledge of celebrity behavior. The first is that idolizing and trying to emulate celebrities might not always be a good idea. As the drug abuse, early deaths, and conflict of many celebrity lives indicate, it's not all fun and games. Secondly and more importantly
The problem here is celebrities are difficult to punish in the behavioral sense. Normal punishments for illegal or other inappropriate behavior don't seem to apply for celebrities.
though is learning from celebrity mistakes to achieve our own sense of happiness.
What do celebrities lack when they go off the deep end? Usually they lack direction, control, and appropriate levels of intellectual stimulation.
As human beings, we need to find our flow to counteract these potential issues. The Psychological Concept of Flow is when all of skills and talents are thrown at a challenge that is barely manageable. You become consumed in it. You can be in Flow in both physical and intellectual activities.
But as Psychology Professor Mihaly Ciskszentmihalyi tells us in Psychology Today, Americans tend to report being in such a state markedly less than in European Nations like Germany. His research measures consciousness and attitudes by having participants report their scores at random parts of two hour intervals each day. These scores are interestingly the lowest during pure leisure time like watching T.V.
The concept of flow isn't an equation for happiness but you don't need to be able to pronounce Csikszentmihalyi to understand that involvement is key as a college student.
The next time you're tempted to take Underwater Basket Weaving II understand that you're making shortsighted decision and not be interested in the class might even lower you're grade as well as interest. Additionally, being able to continuously challenge yourself is a skill that is vital in all fields of work.
And speaking of fields of work, understanding what stimulates and challenges you is important in picking a job that is right for you. Lastly, we tend to loaf socially as opposed to spending free time in engaging extracurricular activities or hobbies.
CULTURE
More engaging activities won't just make your free time more enjoyable but will likely allow you to engage in your work more effectively as well. I hope you'll forgive my choice of words but just go with the flow.
Sofis is a senior in applied behavioral science from Pittsburgh, Pa.
Disney princesses gave us distorted relationship views
Recently, Disney unveiled its newest princess, Sofia the First, who is the first princess in the Disney dynasty to actually be a child herself.
This got me thinking: Why would Disney create characters that children are supposed to idolize and relate to who are nowhere near their age range?
Why didn't I have a princess when I was growing up who was dealing with the same troubles that I was going through, like taking spelling tests and being forced to eat green beans?
Instead, we 90s girls were forced to learn from 20-something beauty queens with problems that we couldn't imagine relating to, like the difficulties of finding a lifetime lover.
And naturally, we idolized these characters and took note of their behaviors.
Come to think of it, Disney was my first source of knowledge for relationships (besides my parents', which I paid virtually no attention to). And because I had no idea what the hell a real relationship really was, I watched the movies with a blind eye, idolizing behaviors of the princesses, hoping I would have the same ridiculous occurrences happen to me when I was in my early 20s.
Now being in my early 20s and still knowing the stories of my favorite Disney princesses by heart, I realized that not only were most of them completely spineless, brainless, and helpless when it came to them "finding love," but their behaviors are so common in young women my age who happened to grow up watching them.
Momentarily, think back to your favorite princess story, and it's really hard not to blame Disney for some of the relationship disasters of our generation.
"Beauty and the Beast?" This plot gives every girl who is holding on to an abusive, psychotic, egotistical jerk of a boyfriend because she has briefly seen a glimpse of kindness in that black heart of his and spends all her energy into turning him into a teddy bear, but is always just disappointed.
"The Little Mermaid" encourages girls to drop everything and
change everything all in pursuit of love. Friends, family, fins, you don't need them as long as you have a prince, according to Ariel.
And "Sleeping Beauty" just tells us to get wasted, pass out, and be overwhelmingly happy when you wake up to stranger making out with you.
I could go further, but I think you catch my drift.
While I do realize that these stories were all in the name of fiction, the fact that they served as a lot of young girls' first perception of relationships makes it hard to deny that these underlying messages had a bigger impact on us than we perceived them to. Young girls like myself really grew up idolizing these characters, watching their stories over and over again and intuitively taking note of their behaviors.
And I will admit, that Disney has shown a lot of progress in past twenty years with their princesses (Pocahantas and Mulan were definitely a step up), and this new preschool aged princess is huge progress from what it sounds, just as long as she's not in constant pursuit of finding her pre-school prince.
Matney is a senior in journalism from Shawnee
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
kaitlvnbutko
How do you feel about the end of a rivalry?
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@BOK Opinion it's sad to see such a heated rivalry die. K-State's like a little brother, but Missouri? They wanted slavery, man. SLAVERY.
Zhareefer
@UOK Opinion turns out my soulmate plays on the mizzou women's bball team. she'll never get to meet me and realize what she missed out on..
KG_Steez
**JOHN Opinion** Finally, Now we don't have to pretend like a 171-94 record is a rivalry #kubball
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UBK Opinion I can't decide if I think mizzou is cowardly for backing out of the rivalry or if they're legitimately just tired of losing.
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