Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
BROWN: CAN NEW COALITION ENVISION A CONNECTED CAMPUS?
MONDAY JANUARY 26, 2009
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COMING TUESDAY
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Homework + Harry Potter = a fun Sunday afternoon.
I was watching "Titanic," but then it got sad. "I'll tune back in at the very end! I'm such a girl."
I'm having one of those days where I just want to tell everybody exactly what I really think of them. You're trash, and I hate having you in my life.
I may have mono,and I kissed you last night.Sorry about
Why the hell must you females be so damn "dont talk to me"
The Watson Library bathroom smells like Go-Gurt. Who's responsible?
For Valentine's Day I am going to buy a box of chocolate to throw at random guys.
Should I stop drinking if I fell off a porch and got a concussion?
I just wanted to apologize to everyone who I almost ran over with my bike on campus. It's been a while.
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The comic "Sketchbook" is the best one in the Daily Kansan.
So, if you're walking on campus when it's cold, can you see your farts?
I didn't make it home four nights in a row. I spent the night with a different guy every night. What does that say about my moral compass?
Aww man. This juice gets my taste buds every time I drink it
Dear Winter: Thank you for overstaying your welcome.
It's askew?
PAGE 5A
Overstaying? I know this is Kansas but it is only January. Winter does last until March.
Psch. Winter lasts until May 1. Do you people not realize what state we're living in?
Rose pisses me off saying, "I'll never let go"; then what does she do? She lets Jack go!
I never learned how to read
My car is so dirty it looks like Ashy Larry.
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EDITORIAL CARTOON
TYLER DOEHRING
New wave of changes still not radical enough
As students, we are educated, attentive and informed, and as we become globally aware many of us are becoming more concerned about the myriad of problems plaguing our society. Upon graduating from college, we'll enter into a "real world" beset by a failing economy, drastic inequality, and vast social and environmental problems. Political leaders and popular culture have thus far failed to solve the pressing issues of the day. Perhaps the time has come for us to radically reassess our social, political, and economic systems, and to fundamentally change the direction in which our nation is heading. Alternative academic leaders of the past and present have offered up social and economic critiques of current dominant forces that are inexorably linked: private property, capitalism, and consumerism
Jean-Jacques Rousseau examined the origins of inequality and identified private ownership of property as the exclusive force that magnified inequality. He wrote that private ownership exacerbates the small, innate inequalities between people by its ability to compound differences through possession. Karl Marx integrated capitalism into the argument, showing that it leads to the exploitation of the working and professional class, and an inevitable separation of wealth in society. Marx concludes that democratic common control over society's resources and modes of production would prioritize the interests of public over those of the few.
The critique is expanding to this day. Donald Worster, KU professor and leader in the field of environmental history, studies the interaction of a society's economic and cultural values with its environment. In his book "Dust Bowl," he demonstrates that the urgings of the prevailing economic culture, such as indefinite expansion, individualism and self-aggrandization, clash with the community and nationwide interests, and the limited resources available.
Certainly, we can see that private ownership has compounded wealth in the hands of the few. Data collected by the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury in 2001, shows that about the top 20 percent of the population owned 84 percent of the nation's wealth, leaving the other 80 percent of the population with a scant 16 percent. The
minority of the opulent have the means necessary to control public policy,but their interests will not likely coincide with interests of the majority.
In addition, we've witnessed the many social and environmental problems that capitalism creates on the fringes of its crude calculations. So-called "externalities," the factors that do not affect the bargaining parties in a transaction, actually affect the many less fortune that surround them.
The status quo no longer satisfies the needs of the majority of us. A more equitable solution presents itself: the democratization of our resources, so that decisions are no longer made in the exclusive interests of the shareholders or the stockholders, but rather the stakeholders: the community. If we really want our generation to be successful, we must stop accepting short-term solutions and look toward drastic social changes that challenge our values. We shouldn't feel constrained to the thinking of our parent's generation; and we must remember that just because things are doesn't mean that's how they should be. We must define our own generation.
Kenny is a Leavenworth senior in civil and environmental engineering.
BLOGS
In Rome: A heartwarming thing happened on the way to the Forum
BY MARK DENT
mdent@kansan.com
ROME - All right, first comes the full disclosure. The confession.
The main reason I'm writing this blog post is because I really wanted to use this headline at some point while I was here. Who wouldn't? Does it get any better than making a play on words about "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum?"*
It's about a tour guide. One who is known as the best at the Colosseum and Forum, according to our Study Abroad leaders. She once gave tours at the Forum and would address 500 or more people. She shd't tales about one of most historically significant parts of a city draped in history.
Now, of course, the Forum, along with the Colosseum, is a vacation haven. Tourists flood the area every day, no matter the season. They snap pictures of anything that the Italians dressed as phony Roman soldiers tell them is important. All the while vendors offer 20 postcards for one Euro. They'll disintegrate in four minutes, but they do only cost one Euro.
For years, the Forum was the center of Roman life. In fact, all distances in Rome were measured from the Forum.
Back in the 7th century B.C., the king of Rome drained the tangled mess of weeds and water collected in the middle of the city into the Tiber River. The Forum was created on the spot. Soon there was a palace and several temples, including the Temple of Vesta, and over the years, senate houses and arches and prisons.
But there is a story here.
Amidst all this, the tour guide remembers the history. Throughout the years when she shouted, people learned. They learned all the wonderful stories about the Roman senate, the Vestal Virgins, the Basilica. Did you know it was three times the size of the remaining structure you can see now?
"I was using my vocal cords incorrectly" she said.
Those loud speeches came many years ago, many tour groups and history lessons and sore throats ago. Soon, the doctors told her she couldn't go on the same way.
She had to get surgery. She had to speak carefully for the rest of her
read the rest of this blog and follow Mark's travels during his last semester of college in Rome at www. kansan.com/blogs/ notorious_blog/
KANSAN.COM
life or risk other damages.
Yet here she was on Thursday, speaking to my Study Abroad group, at the Colosseum and then at the Forum. Instead of a crowd of 500, she had a group of 15. Instead of shouting, she had a walkie-talkie. She could whisper into it, and all of us listened through walkie-talkies of our own as we walked behind her.
She still told the wonderful tales. Julius Caesar's cremated ashes were placed in the Forum and people worshipped that site because the Emperor Augustus told them to, she said. Nero, although he didn't build the Colosseum, was sort of a precursor toward it because the emperors after him felt like they owed the people a magnificent structure after he spent all their tax money on lavish buildings for himself, she said.
SEX
Double standard persists between men and women
Let's talk about sex.
Obviously in order to have sex there must be a
Have sex there must be a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. However you choose to do it, we all have sex.
When it comes to heterosexual sex, the same question has been asked since the beginning of time. Why is it that when a man has sex with multiple women he is considered a stud, but when a woman has sex with multiple men she is considered a slut?
In the biblical age, sex was not an acceptable topic of conversation, but rather a means of procreation. And in many tribes in other parts of the world today sex is meant for only men to enjoy and women to endure. For example, the Bana tribe located in Ethiopia believes in circumcising women as well as men. When a woman is circumcised, the clitoris is removed from the vagina so that the woman is not able to experience any sexual pleasure.
When a woman has had many sexual partners, she is seen as promiscuous. Typically, men will not take her seriously when it comes to a relationship.
American society has come a long way in women's rights. Women have gained the right to vote, the right to wear short skirts and pants in public and the right to be treated as equals to men in the workplace, yet women are not considered equals to men in the bedroom. The women's sexual movement will be a never-ending fight for equality.
She's "the fun girl," "the friend with benefits," "the one-night stand," "a cuddly buddy," "a booty call," and the list goes on. Most men like this type of woman for today but not for tomorrow. A guy would not take her home to meet his family, because she will not be in his life for long. She's what's called a "quick fix" until he decides to settle down with Mrs. Right. When a man has numerous sexual partners; however, he receives a social trophy for his accomplishments. Men want women to wait around for Mr. Right, even though they are not willing to wait for Mrs. Right. If a woman tells a man that she wants to wait until she is married before engaging in sex, not many men will wait for her. Most men would just get sex elsewhere, whether that entails cheating or simply leaving for a woman that will have sex before marriage. It's a lose-lose situation for women.
It's no secret; women enjoy sex just as much, if not more than, men but do not want to be categorized as the promiscuous type. There is an obvious injustice here. If men choose to refer to women who sleep around as sluts, they should also refer to themselves as sluts if they are sleeping around.
Cartledge is a Wichita junior in journalism.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
YES, OUR NEW DOLLS ARE NAMED SASHA AND MALIA IT'S JUST COINCIDENCE
THAT OBAMA'S KIDS ARE TOO.
...AND THE SECRET SERVICE ACCESSORY ACTION FIGURES. ..THAT'S JUST COINCIDENCE, TOO
NICHOLAS SAMBULUK
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