THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2012
PAGE 5
opinion
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You know you had a good night at The Hawk when you lose your debit card, shoes and room key.
You won't read "The Hunger Games" because you're a hipster and everyone is reading it, but you are reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Hmm...
You know it's going to be a good semester when it's only the first day of classes and you're already in the FFA. Editor's note: Always glad to brighten someone's day!
Withey's basketball skills are almost as hot as his haircut...almost.
You know you're unprepared for the first day of school when you don't even have a pencil.
Why is Anschutz so full right now? Classes just started. All I wanna do is eat lunch and read the UDK without being crowded.
How big is KU? Not big enough. The annoying kid in Greek and Roman mythology last semester is in my biology this semester.
The only reason why i'm glad to be back in class is now I can read the FFA every day.
Editor's note: We're really glad you guys are reading something even if it is random nonsense texted at i a.m.
To the awesome guy who bought my lunch at the Underground when my card was declined: I owe you beers.
I mean, I don't know where you're from, but here we walk on the right side of the sidewalk.
We meet again, FFA. It's you, me and my Fridays alone with a certain bottle of Kentucky Gentleman. Let's do this.
Having Dan back on route 43 made the first day back to class bearable.
The blood flow in my fingers has been compromised!!! Are the FFAs really worth this? I think yes.
I just have to keep reminding myself that all of the people with New Year's Resolutions at the gym will be gone in a week.
Today is the best day ever... Dan is back driving the red route!
Basketball game or karaoke night?
Hmm...drunken singing wins!
I'm only texting in because Twitter told me to.
The month without the Free For All felt like the apocalypse. #KUproblems
God, it feels good to be on campus again.
Am I the only one who thinks Adele is overplayed?
On this day in history: flights of fancy
HISTORY
For most of us today, walking on the moon is passé. It might be something our parents thought was cool, but, let's face it, the only thing relevant from their generation to ours are the Doors for perennial stoners and Monty Python for the incurable nerds. The rest of us have been cruelly disinherited.
From the dawn of time, man has yearned to see the world from the highest heights of heaven. Once he got there, his first thought was (as immortalized by VanHalen), "Might as well jump!" There is no record of this end happily.
Indeed, it seemed that the cruel dictatorship of gravity allied with the junta of Newtonian physics would continue to exert their merciless grip on the wingless children of men. This was and is the lasting effect of super-villain extraordinaire Sir Isaac Newton and his gravity ray.
Early attempts to fly by crossbreeding a horse and a bird, sadly, ended in hybrids with deep existential crises. Yes, even though gravity was conquered in 1903 by the Wright brothers, this was universally acknowledged as "cheating."
However, one score and ten years ago today, a truly relevant combination of intelligence and invention conspired to produce the most prohibitively expensive aeronautical sport our generation has ever known (except, perhaps, for Ouidditch).
Two brave souls, instead of aiming for the stars, shot for the ground. In a literally un-ground-breaking moment in history, these two men fulfilled that definition of flying (as per "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") in aiming themselves at the ground and missing. No, these men were not Orville and Wilbur Wright. They weren't even Superman impersonators or on PCP.
What, then, was their secret of survival?
Those of you who have marveled, irrevocably transfixed by YouTube videos of BASE jumping need no explanation of what it consists of nor be surprised that's how the two survived. For those of you who can study without the temptation to surf the web, BASE jumping is the ancient and practiced art of jumping off of Buildings Antennae, Spans (an English word translated as "bridges") and
Earth (as in fjords, cliffs or gentle, sloping hills). The idea is that you need a parachute to land.
However, the conquering heroes of today's story are Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield. While their names loom not large in the pantheon of courageous humanity, perhaps their names should be alongside those of Christopher Columbus, Amelia Earhart and The Fonz, who, lest we forget, risked life and limb in the shark jump of our legends.
The Phil-tastic duo had already made successful jumps off of the Antannae, Spans and Earth but this was the crowning moment, commemorated today, that ended forever vulgar ASE jumping and ennobled it to BASE jumping.
As the fearless team jumped off that skyscraper (the missing B
in the acronym) they must have been watched by literally dozens of bystanders, fixated in horror or Schadenfreude. They landed safely on the pavement and probably had an after party in which they booked James Taylor to compose the ballad "Fire and Rain."
What made the BASE jumping possible was the invention of the parachute. Some people thank Leonardo da Vinci for this invention due to his primitive schematics. These same people credit George Lucas with inventing light sabers. No one really knows who invented the parachute, for the simple reason that it's far easier to attribute the invention to da Vinci, the famed Grand Master of the Priory of Sion (source: Dan Brown).
Today, the latest and greatest tool yet for BASE jumpers (aside from the parachute) is the wing-suit. Students of mythology will recall the wings of Icarus and are the only people who would be interested to know that those were prototypes for the wing suit.
Perhaps the idea to create a wingsuit first entered the mind of man when looking upon the humble flying squirrel. Yet man was so cursed to be deprived of
the unseemly skin connecting the arms with the legs. Necessity, being the mother of invention, then gave birth to the wingsuit.
Probably a millennium later, the wingsuit was born. As chronicled in "Batman Begins," super billionaire Bruce Wayne funded research for the state-of-the-art wingsuit (inconspicuously disguised as a cape). This paved the way for dozens of people with more money than sense to amuse themselves in an otherwise suicidal pastime.
What lesson can we learn from this historical watershed? Perhaps, one day, wingsuits will become boring to those who now possess them. Cars were once cool. Who thinks they're anything but prosaic now? When this new ennui sets in, I predict newer ways of defying the limitations of nature will outstrip our current means. The advent of the jetpack and hovercar is just around the corner. This is my advice to all: Keep your eyes on the skies.
CULTURE
Daniel Obermeier is a junior majoring in history from Olathe
Lessons from dad Men challenge themselves by accomplishing tasks without help
As I write this, I'm sitting in a relatively comfortable chair with my feet in front of the fireplace in a ski lodge at the beautiful Keystone, Colo. Tomorrow, I'll be hitting the slopes with my 56-year-old father, and I'll be hard-pressed just to try and keep up.
Just to clarify, I'm no slouch of a skier. I started sliding down mountains with planks attached to my feet at the ripe age of 4, and I'm no stranger to black diamonds. So, it's not due to my lacking skill that he'll ski me into the ground. It's because he combines the certifiable toughness and know-how of Clint Eastwood with the athleticism of a thoroughbred. Put simply, it's because he's a man. A manly man.
On our way out to the slopes, we spent some time in Denver attempting to find new roof clamps for our ski rack and seeing some old friends. Being former Denver
dwellers, it was only natural to reminisce. In driving to our various destinations, mydid pointed out each golf course he used to go to and choked
assembly directions in the box, and that's where they stayed. My dad wouldn't be caught dead reading directions. They're for yuppies anyway.
It's important to note that the masculine practice of ignoring the existence of directions is in no way petty and isn't just a ploy that we use to annoy the women in our lives (although that can be a relatively humorous side effect). We really do it to test ourselves.
"To men, it's much more rewarding to accomplish a task using nothing but intuition and sheer will power."
Having moved away 15 years ago, he was rusty when it came to local geography. My mom was constantly upset by his guessing which direction to go and acting like he knew where we were. Our car has On-Star and my cell phone has a GPS, but he was not going to use any of that black magic. If he couldn't get there using his God-given directional abilities and somewhat unreliable memory, then he didn't deserve to get there anyway.
Would it be easier to read the instructions and follow them step by step? Of course it would. To men, it's much more reward-
When we finally procured replacement clamps for our ski rack, after several U-turns and detouts trying to find the ski shop, it was time to get the rack attached to the roof. There were
back tears (manly ones) as he saw that some of them had been replaced by strip malls and fast food joints.
ing to accomplish a task using nothing but intuition and sheer will power. I'm not implying that women don't get the same thrill from accomplishing
MUSIC
a challenging task, but they don't seem to have the same inexplicable hatred for reading potentially useful information.
All things considered, I'm fully convinced that if my father ever asked for directions or read the assembly instructions for that new ski rack, he would be an exponentially worse skier, lose half of his muscle mass, and his thick, red beard would fall out instantly. I'm somewhat worried by the possibility of this outcome. However, I'm equally worried by the possibility that our campus could be overrun by rabid, bloodthirsty werewolves, but I can say with near certainty that neither of those things will ever happen.
Lovell is a sophomore in creative writ ing from Overland Park.
Auto-tune technology ruins integrity of music industry
The old saying goes: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is true in ali aspects in life, but to me, it is most recognizable in music. In the late 1980s, MTV's music-video culture was well on its way to defining what was popular in music. And at that time, engineered sounds made by synthesizers and an attitude made famous by heavy metal bands was very popular. Today, these trends seem to be finding their way back into popular music.
Since rap and hip-hop have found their way to the top of the charts in record sales and radio plays, they have the ability to set what is popular is music. The idea of using fake, generated sounds is still the norm. In the world of hip-hop, artificial sounds are the crux of music. Sure, Kanye West has some amazing lyrical verses, but his music wouldn't sound as great if it weren't for those fly beats he makes with Jay-Z (and a computer).
With technology constantly improving, the ability for music producers to affect music via computers has set off a trend seen in the most popular music. This technology is called auto-tune. Autotune's purpose is to technologically enhance vocal recordings. All it takes is a twist of a (computer graphic) knob. This allows some artists who are not as vocally talented to compete with those who are. But the enhancement is still
noticeable to the listener, and there has been an outcry against auto-tune. But that hasn't stopped some artists from making their whole career off auto-tune (see: T-Pain).
This fad isn't specific to hiphop, though. Bands such as Maroon 5 have also used this technology. With the release of the song "Moves Like Jagger," Maroon 5 used both auto-tune and computer-generated sounds instead of their usual rock instruments.
Even bands in the hardcore screamo scene are following these fads. In the past couple of years, bands in this genre have started to use the advantage of computers to make more complex music, but at the same time they are compromising their integrity. Autotune and fake techno beats can be heard in a genre that was created by bands that sought to be as real as possible.
The heavy metal attitude is not seen as much as it was in the '80s, but it isn't much different than the fake lifestyles some famous artists create. Many artists, most notably
in the hip-hop genre, have been caught making up fake back-stories to justify their music.
Fads can be contagious, but they all come to an end. A three-piece rock outfit from Aberdeen, Wash., that went by the name Nirvana destroyed the original synthesizer and heavy metal attitude. Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain wanted to destroy the fake culture of heavy metal, while at the same time bringing music with real sounds back into the mainstream. Nirvana's most popular release, "Nevermind," was celebrated by many rock magazines for its 20th anniversary this past September, showing us that being real is still respected by the mainstream.
Nirvana will be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soon, not because two of its three albums were massive commercial hits, but because its authenticity changed the game.
The aforementioned quote may have originally been used as warnings to make sure people don't make mistakes that have already been made in history. But when mistakes are repeated, sometimes the only way to fix them is to repeat what works. So I wonder: Where's my Nirvana?
Lysen is a junior from Andover majoring in journalism.
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