Opinion
SHORMAN: KANSAS SHOULD NOT REJECT GITMO INMATES
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MONDAY,FEBRUARY 2,2009
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--into my car.
My roommate comes up with a new rule for our apartment every day and then writes it on the dry erase board. Now I'm doing a cost-benefit analysis on if I should light her bed on fire or not.
To the sorority girls that were crossing the street near Green Hall: You need to look before you start walking because I was already in the crosswalk when you almost walked right into my car.
I just saw a flyer that said there's going to be a hundred free pizzas at Hashinger next Thursday. Bad ass.
I just saw this girl in Malott wearing a K-State shirt and it threw me way more than I ever expected it would.
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
Today the guy that sat in front of me smelled like bug spray.
So who do you think would make a good villain in the next Batman movie? It would definitely have to be a half-shaven hamster with a watermelon for a face.
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
I am the same age as Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer, and that is cool.
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
For all the girls who get rides from their boyfriends to Budig, get off your asses and walk. Seriously!
How are we watching Kansas State and North Carolina but not the Jayhawks? This is a problem.
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
It's like arthritis, but in your eye.
Are you taking care of your most important asset? Are you taking care of your brain?
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
If you were a crayon, what color would you most like to make out with?
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
Ryan McGeeneve/KANSAN
I am selling the plasma in my blood for alcohol money.
Seriously though, am I the only one worried by the fact that so far it looks like the only qualified Cabinet appointee is a holdover from the Bush administration?
PAGE 7A
I cried while I was watching the Australian Open trophy ceremony. I love Rafa so much but when Federer started crying, I lost it.
--give home court winning streak. The 36-game streak is the product of great teams, and also great fans and great tradition. The new basketball pregame, however, breaks with our appreciation for tradition.
I am happy I met you last night, because you are all I can think about now.
I hate pro football.
A beam of sunlight in Allen Fieldhouse illuminates a swath of fans during the Jayhawks Jan. 31 game against Colorado. Fans have criticized the new basketball pregame schedule for breaking momentum.
EDITORIAL BOARD
New pregame spoils momentum, tradition
The Kansas men's basketball team has the nation's longest home court winning
The Athletics Department has changed the order of the pregame activities that are intended to whip Allen Fieldhouse fans into a frenzy as tipoff approaches. Now, instead of methodically building excitement, the pregame schedule joils its way toward an unnatural, forced apex.
"It really kills the momentum going into the game; there's too much downtime" said Wes Gapp, Clinton, N.Y., graduate student.
The new pregame starts with the alma mater followed by the Rock Chalk chant, which is a
break in tradition.
Then there's downtime with bored fans listening to the pop band play pop tunes. Next, the players come out and the excitement builds only to be slowed again by the national anthem. By the time the countdown starts, people are no longer pumped for the game.
The old pregame tradition
involved a buildup for 12 consecutive minutes beginning with slower patriotic and school songs and dimaxing with the countdown into the game.
KANSAN'S
OPINION
The reason for the change stems from wanting both teams on the court for the national anthem, according
to Jim Marchiony, associate athletics director. The change was "recommended unanimously by the coaches of the league," Marchiony said. That makes sense. But that's no reason to remove the buildup from the original pregame
tradition.
This new pregame schedule hasn't any flow to it. It breaks tradition at what is supposed to remain a tradition-rich school.
"Counting down gets the crowd ready to go, but now we have to wait a long time," said Shane Lennon, Branson, Mo, junior.
Fan support plays a major role in the home court advantage in which this university takes pride. What may seem an insignificant alteration could actually diminish that advantage. Certainly, it destroys a beloved KU tradition.
— Kansan Editorial Board
TYLER DOEHRING
Turning people into products
On my weekly target run, I found some intriguing items hardwired and
keeps nakedryers and plates with Hannah Montana's face plastered on them, and a children's book called (seriously) "Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope." That item might be topped only by the Yes-We-Can-Opener featured last December on 'Jav Leno.'
Maybe I pulled a Rip Van Winkle and have been asleep for years, waking to find out Harnash Montana discovered the cure for cancer, and Obama single-handedly saved the economy. Or maybe I misread the Bible and Obama really is the Messiah.
The answer is over-marketing.
Last time I checked, Hannah Montana is a television character and "singer," and Obama has been in office for two weeks. What does it show about our society when we put certain celebrities on a pedestal? If we do believe in change, why didn't we slap Mother Teresa's face on coffee mugs? Where is the I-Have-a-Dream Catcher?
Why else would their faces be on every inanimate object?
Too many products make us forget about the person. Marketing is about money. But money is not why these people do what they do (or so they say).
The answer is over-marketing.
In addition to diminishing what the person is trying to accomplish, over-marketing makes us forget that the person is a person. We expect the over-marketed individual to be superhuman, and are disappointed when everything he or she touches does not magically turn into gold.
Obama cares about fixing the nation. Ms. Montana wants to make music and be a normal teenager (if any teenager can be normal; if one is; he or she should be studied immediately).
We do the same with books as well as celebrities. The "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" series have kids running to the aisles to buy costumes and action figures. Have the kids missed the meaning of the books? Are they so obsessed with trying to recreate the magical worlds that they forget to live in the real world? They don't realize
How weird would it be if every 11-year-old had my face decorating his or her room? It would probably make me miss my Facebook stalker.
Over-hyping can also turn off audiences. A lot of students, for example, like the underground and Indie music scenes because the bands are not over-marketed and controlled by money-hungry producers.
that they can use the lessons the characters learn and apply them to reality without waving fake wands and wearing Hermione Granger wigs.
The musicians have the freedom to make and focus on their music instead of turning themselves into icons. They still advertise their music, but they try to sell their music, not their bodies. If Beyonce were a boy, as she sings about in her current single, I bet she wouldn't sell half the CDs she does.
The trick is finding the fine line between advertising and selling one's craft without compromising who one is and what one is trying to accomplish with one's work. And a children's book about a two-week-old presidency is definitely crossing that line.
Letting Ty Inc, make beanie dolls that have the same names as and look exactly like Obama's daughters, however, is not overmarketing. It is pure coincidence.
Hartz is a Stilwell senior in creative writing.
ECONOMICS
Our economy was drunk
ruly comes such as exercise and healthy food. We can make ourselves feel good by obtaining a high blood-alcohol content, but the next morning sucks. A quick-fix, feel-good solution doesn't achieve truly healthy results. The same is true for the economy. A healthy economy comes from the natural interaction of supply and demand, not through heavy doses of government intervention. Here's how it works.
Consumers use their wealth to purchase the goods and services they demand. Necessities will naturally have the highest demand, so the consumers will first spend their wealth on such items. On the other side, the producers first spend their resources to supply the goods with the highest demand. The interaction of supply and demand will result in the greatest quantity of goods that can be produced at the lowest sustainable price. Then, some producers will get smarter and make the goods more efficiently, increasing supply. A larger supply will drive market prices down and force other producers to adopt more efficient strategies or close up shop. This more efficient means to production makes the consumers wealthier by increasing their purchasing power; consumers can buy the same amount of goods with less of their wealth. In an all-natural economy, the aggregate result is an economy that produces what the consumers demand by the most efficient means, thus maximizing wealth, or health.
American economic policy has not followed the all-natural approach for some time, if ever. Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Bush and Clinton administrations all thought they could do better than supply and demand. They intervened in the housing market. The Federal Reserve lowered the price of lending by increasing the money
supply. Congress and presidents steered the price of homes by forcing increased demand via the "Ownership Society" agenda. The result was artificial home equity and an unnaturally low interest rate. We thought we had wealth, so we borrowed against that wealth and bought plasmas, iPods, Boxes, and lots and lots of coffee. The increased demand for these goods built coffee shops, Wal-Marts and factories that employed Joe, Jan and Jimmy. This price controlling couldn't go on forever and it didn't. The market saw the excess supply of housing and started a very violent correction, one that wiped out all that home equity we used to by plasmas, iPods, Boxes, and lots and lots of coffee. Now that we can't buy all that stuff, Joe, Jan and Jimmy are sent home.
Essentially the economy got drunk and ended up in a strange bed. Then the sun came up and nothing was as beautiful as it seemed last night. Years of artificial economic growth was built by government manipulation of housing prices and interest rates. Huge increases in GDP were built on this artificial wealth. Now that the fake wealth is gone, our economy cannot sustain that high GDP, so it's coming down.
We can become healthy the natural way, or we can put off the pain with another bottle of liquor. Natural policies will let consumers and producers determine supply and demand. On the other hand (or in it) is a trillion-dollar bottle of liquor, a debt-driven stimulus package of more government manipulation of supply and demand.
Davidson is a Tonganoxie senior in economics.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD Members of the Kansan Editorial Board are Brenna Hawley, Tara Smith, Mary Sorick, Kelsey Hayes and Ross Stewart.