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Opinion
FOLMSBEE: STEM CELL RESEARCH NEEDS CLARIFIED DEFINITIONS
FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2009
COMING MONDAY
United States First Amendment
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FREE FOR ALL
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Given the massive amounts of rain, I'm quite thankful that I'M ON A ROAT!
I just realized why nobody is in my math class. It is canceled.
two.
I'm sorry, some people don't feel the need to waste money on an umbrella when we got over our fear of water at age
--rest of my life.
If I had to choose between being single forever or dating someone like my roommate's boyfriend, I would definitely choose being single for the rest of my life.
Why do people ask if I'm pregnant when I tell them I have morning sickness? I'm a guy; guys can't get pregnant. I just feel sick every morning!
--without them?
--without them?
I want to make something. I don't know what, I just feel like building something really
--without them?
PAGE 5A
Well, this is just the giant crappickle in the sandwich of a day I'm having
--without them?
If you can't have fun without alcohol, you must be a boring person.
--without them?
Build a big bird house, one big enough for an ostrich.
--without them?
I'm a fan of personal responsibility! Yay me!
It's cruel when you've been in the library for four hours studying and you keep smelling pizza.
--without them?
I want to thank the great men who sit around all day filling libraries with volumes of useless books that no one except source-hungry college students will ever read. Where would research papers be
The Humpty Dumpty rhyme never says he's an egg, guys.
To the guy who was shitting in Watson at a quarter to midnight on Wednesday: Sorry I turned off the lights. I couldn't resist.
To the hot chick try to be subtle in front of Wescoe: I totally saw you pick that wedding.
--received a fair price.
To the really cute guy who swipes cards at Es: I enjoy our 10 seconds of quality time together.
The weather here reminds me of Forks High School. Too bad the guys don't.
--received a fair price.
--received a fair price.
University making progress with strong fair trade effort
GUEST COLUMN
BY DANNY NORDSTROM
The increasingly globalized world brings with it a strong level of interconnectedness and interdependence among countries. Coffee drinkers in the United States must be aware of the effects of their consumption on coffee producers in the developing world. The fair trade movement helps farmers receive a fairer price for their coffee bean and better the living conditions of the greatly impoverished coffee farming community.The University should be applauded for its awareness and support of the fair trade movement.
Nona Golledge, director of KU Dining Services, said all coffee sold through the University was considered fair trade. Golledge said the University's coffee came from The Roasterie, a business located in Kansas City, Mo. She said many of the coffees it sold were fair trade certified, and those that aren't are still considered to be fair trade by the University and Roasterie's standards.
Golledge said the owner of The Roasterie traveled around the world to hand-select the beans, always making sure the farmers
"They are very aware of the farmers' needs." Golledge said. "Not all of their coffees are certified fair trade, but they follow the guidelines. They just have not taken the steps to get them all certified vet."
Makame Muhajir, geography doctoral student and former director of urban planning for Tanzania, said he thought fair trade was an important issue in the increasingly globalized world.
"I think trade should be advantageous to all the groups involved in the process," he said. "We are trying to help the people from extreme poverty recover from that level. By having fair trade, you have a balance of economic deals with everyone involved."
Muhair explained that fair trade was helping impoverished coffee farmers living in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Columbia organize into unions to make their voices heard.
"Fair trade encourages the farmers to group themselves together with cooperatives," he said. "These cooperatives create a much stronger and wider voice for negotiation."
Muhairjir went on to say that he thought the University was doing a good job with respect to fair trade. He explained that there were many other products that should be examined with fair trade in mind, such as tea, cocoa, cotton and rubber, but commended the University for its progressive initiatives with coffee
Golledge commented on the University's future with fair trade.
"We feel that fair trade is important, especially for coffee," she said. "We're always open to other opportunities out there. We are a business and have to do what makes the most business sense to us. We want to do what's right for everything that we have to take into consideration."
Overall, the University is making a valid effort in supporting and raising awareness for the fair trade movement. By offering coffee bought from farmers at a fair price, the University is helping to balance the economic relationship with the countries we greatly rely on.
Nordstrom is a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sophomore in journalism and economics.
MUSIC
BEN COLDHAM
Artists such as Kweli keep hip hop love alive
Hip hop, like every other genre of music, has its one-hit wonders and flavor-of the month artists. They typically blow up for two or three months, plateau, and then are never heard from again (where you at, Soulja Boy?).
There have been countless groups and encees over time that have fit this mold and, despite their own desperate attempts to rekindle the initial spark, these has-beens are never quite able to recapture the magic. The reason for this is always the same: They don't have love for real hip hop. Every artist who has experienced success and longevity in the rap game (a very difficult thing to do) has love for real hip hop. And I don't mean love for popping bottles or slangging rocks. I mean a pure love for rocking the microphone, whether it be in a basement or live at the Grammys.
Talib Kweli, an exceptionally talented Brooklyn emcee who performed Sunday night at the Granada here in Lawrence, has mad love for real hip hop. In fact, I don't know of any emcee of Kweli's caliber who has been so productive on such a consistent basis for such a long time.
Kweli first truly showcased his unadulterated love for hip hop with Black Star, a collaborative effort with fellow Brooklyn emcee Mos Def, in 1998. The album became an instant classic among hip-hop heads worldwide and garnered widespread praise for its high quality of production and lyricism. Shortly after this release, Kweli recorded an album with now-legendary producer Hi-Tek
under the group name Reflection F eternal. The group dubbed the album "Train of Thought," and it, too, was immediately recognized as one of the most ground-breaking hip-hop albums of its generation.
Reflection Eternal is working on a new album scheduled to come out this summer, and the super-duo showed up in Lawrence Sunday night to rock the house and promote its release.
Fo more than an hour, Kweli and Hi-Tek made the Granada go absolutely insane. Even when performing cuts from the upcoming album, songs no one in the audience knew, the crowd remained estatic and incredibly responsive to Kweli's raw lyrics and knack for keeping up the crowd's energy. The two icons slyly tried to deceive the crowd into thinking they were retiring backstage (an act no one in the crowd bought) only to return a minute later to belt out some more hot tracks. Reflection Eternal topped this all off with the two members switching roles. Kweli hopping behind the turntables while Hi-Tek enforced for about an hour. Audience members who wanted to come on stage were encouraged to do so, and we completely surrounded the two behind the tables.
I heard both artists scream "We love Lawrence!" on several
BEN'S BEATDOWNS
Hot tracks: "The Thrill Is Gone" by Statik Selektah, feat. Styles P and Talib Kweli
"Someday" by DJ K.O., feat. Talib Kweli and Torae
Ill blogs: Nahright.com,
Onsmash.com
occasions, and you could tell that Kweli was genuinely having a great time, happily mixing hip-hop classics and watching the break-dancing circles form in front of him. It is this type of interactive experience that real encees offer a crowd. The two could have left after the encore, but decided instead to give fans, myself included, an experience they definitely will not forget any time soon.
After all these years touring the world and performing for crowds, Talib Kweli is still passionate about his art and still has a love for real hip hop. Kweli is in the process of developing three new albums, including one with the Reflection Eternal project, and he is featured with artists from every corner of the hip-hop spectrum (check my beatdowns for some titles). This is the reason Kweli has been able to remain successful for so long; he has never lost his love for hip hop, and hip hop has never lost its love for him. Peace.
Coldham is a Chicago senior in journalism and English.
STUDENT LIFE
Cleaning up can pay
Is your kitchen sink an orgy of dirty dishes and mushy, moist, black, green, puke-smelling mildew? If you walk through your kitchen barefoot, do hardened crumbs tickle your toes? If this sounds like your residence, you probably live with a few roommates. Your kitchen is filth-ridden because you, as a rational person, don't clean it. Why should you forgo valuable time in front of the TV to scrub a few dishes? Your roommates are probably thinking the same thing, so the cladosporium colony is free to grow into a man-eating monster. You don't listen to your roommates when they tell you to housemates and, likewise, they don't listen to you. The solution to your nauseating nightmare of a kitchen is a well-designed Dirty Dish Tax.
Putting a price on dirty dishes will clean up those cookie crumbs faster than Martha Stewart. If you and your roomies agreed that every dirty dish, from forks to frying pans, could be left in the sink at a cost of, say, $1, everyone would think twice before culturing a habitat for malodorous mold. If you were to leave three spoons and two bowls of corn flakes unattended and roommate Rodolfo shined them up, he could tax you a hefty $5. Under the Dirty Dish Tax system, the external cost of dirty dishes on your roommates would be borne by your wallet.
This system is much fairer than the traditional method of putting off the cleaning until Marvin Moldy emerges. Let's say cleaning the kitchen takes one hour per week. If you have 17 hours of school, while Rodolfo plays Mob Wars, then one hour of cleaning the kitchen incurs a much greater cost on you than it does Rodolfo.
If cleaning the first pot takes one minute and that minute is worth more than $1, you'll go ahead and clean that pot, but if your plate takes two minutes to spruce up, and you'll be late to work if you don't get out the door, you'll forgo that dollar. Rodolfo doesn't have to worry about getting to work so he's happy to clean up your leftover hashish for a buck. So each roommate cleans to a level that benefits himself. The result is no more living organisms in the kitchen sink.
In some cases, the Dirty Dish Tax may not work. Implementing a Dirty Dish Tax will be more difficult with more dish-diryting dudes in the hacienda. If you live with 10 roommates and only three want to play the game, you will not escape the fragrance of moist, week-old pizza crust or fusty old beer. And you might also want to implement some sort of exchange rate. If all dishes cost $1 to clean, odds are you will have plenty of clean spoons, but the great tower of "Pot, Kettle and Pan" will be built for all who enter the kitchen to marvel at.
If the repulsive aroma of putrefied peaches and moldering mashed potatoes is not enough incentive to turn you into Mr. Clean, try implementing the Dirty Dish Tax and maybe the almighty dollar will push you and your buds to keep the foray of fungi at bay.
Davidson is a Tonganoxie senior in economics.
FROM MISSOURI
BY CHARLES AUSTIN
U. Missouri
The Maneater
Swine flu and a dinosaur epidemic
As you read this, dinosaurs are attacking the White House. The Associated Press is reporting dinosaur sightings across Virginia and Washington, with rumors that the creatures have spread as far as New York. Scientists fear a massive dinosaur migration toward Houston once they realize how delicious fat people are.
I realize now that half of my readers are probably already running toward Seattle in an effort to lose weight and escape the dinosaur menace. But if anyone is still around, I must admit that I was a little hasty in my opening remarks. I saw "urassic Park" on TV and mistook it for a live news feed for a moment. How did they get those dinosaurs to act, anyway?
But the truth is, I'm not the only one getting carried away in baseless fear-mongering these days. According to CNN, people are spreading all sorts of misinformation about swine flu over Twitter.
Finally, spreading bad information isn't just for the government and H.G. Wells radio broadcasts. With the latest technology, every
day people like you and me can propagate bullshit to millions of people, just like the pros do.
The moment I'm writing this, swine flu has killed a staggeringly low number of people in the U.S. I say this is staggering because, according to a Nielsen Online report, 2 percent of all Twitter posts Monday related to the swine flu. When one out of every 50 posts is about an illness, I would expect it to be the plague or the T-Virus.
It's especially ridiculous when you consider that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36,000 people die every year in the U.S. alone from normal flu-related symptoms. But your average run of the mill flu isn't exciting enough for the average Joe the Plumber to get worked up about, no matter how deadly it may be.
I would go post on Twitter right now about how I'm still alive and how everyone in the country is still alive, but unfortunately, 100 percent of people who can read are alive, meaning this news is shocking to no one. But I'm pretty sure I hear a dinosaur outside my window right now, so I think I'll go Twitter about that.
— UWire
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