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BURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013
opinion
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
I'm a senior, but...freshmen are looking good this year. "I get older, they stay the same age."
All of us communications majors are at the bars, because we do NOTHING in class.
Love the 'sidewalk etiquette' editorial! Next editorial: 'Street-crossing for Dummies?'
Hinga Dinge Durgen! Happy Leif Erikson day!
Patsy Cline Vinyl = awesomely creepy background music for cappin zombies on COD black ops. You're welcome.
To the girl wearing a Michigan shirt on campus...it's still too soon.
This will be the last day of the FFA before Pokemon X and Y come out. Train long and prosper, trainers.
Ironically, communications majors don't seem to communicate their major too well.
Will twerk for cough drops or Vicks.
it's really hard to dress like a home-
less person when the weather con-
ties to be so nice. Hurry up, fall!
This girl behind me loves playing footsies with my chair.
Dude, you pooped, wash your hands.
Oh, and use soap.
Just as K-State doesn't have a national title in basketball, so does Battenfield not have a school hall olympics title #getonourlevel
Not much is better than walking to the beat of the KJ Drum Line in front of lit up Allen Fieldhouse at 9pm.
When it's Chick-fil-a night anything goes. -Pearson FBM
This guy just blatantly admitted to this girl that he's been facebook stalking her. Rookie mistake.
If I were pregnant, I could stop sucking in and let my food baby out freely. It would be cute rather than terrifying.
Beer doesn't make you fat... Beer makes you lean... On tables, walls, chairs, couches, etc.
CONCERTS
I just took a test in printed in Comic Sans.
Mama Kitty, who hangs out behind Dole, had her kittens!
Pumpkin spice cough drops for fall allergies.
'Affordable Ticket Act' keeps music alive in hard times
How much are tickets? This is usually the first question my friends will ask before they allow me to drag them to see a band they've never heard of before. Ticket prices often do raise some concern, especially if you happen to fall victim to the "broke college student" stereotype. After all, we have cover fees and alcohol to keep in mind.
As consumers, it's natural to be cautious about what we spend our money on. But as of late, artists are growing concerned with what we spend our money on too, in fear that it might not be on them. When word about the government shutdown spread, the music industry faced two options: dig themselves in an even deeper financial hole, or do something about it. Luckily for us music fans,
they chose the latter.
"9:30 Club," a-state-of-the-art concert venue and local promoter in Washington, D.C., came up with the concept of offering an "Affordable Ticket Act," a spin-off of the formal name for Obamacare. The premise is far less complicated than trying to register for health care, that's for sure. With the Affordable Ticket Act, tickets for nine upcoming October shows were sold as buy one get one free. The only requirements were that a promo code provided by 9:30 Club be used to access the offer, and that all tickets he purchased by a given deadline.
the purchase by young
The nine acts were not just limited to 9:30 Club's shows, but to various venues with performers such as: The Flaming Lips with Tame Impala, Steve Aoki with Parrill Williams, Marky Ramone
By Lyndsey Havens
lhavens@kansan.com
(of The Ramones), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Fountains of Wayne, and BOY, among others. Aside from offering basic facts about what the Affordable Ticket Act entails, I have to say I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been more commentary or press regarding the idea. When I first heard about it, I personally felt as though it was the greatest thing to come along since the Keurig. I believe that the Affordable
Ticket Act has such strong potential because it stems from the already successful medium of live performance. Artists have continually struggled to make a decent profit from their music since digitalization took over, and live performance has grown to be the primary stream of revenue over the years. With financial worries on the rise, particularly with the current state of our government, the music industry chose to revitalize the reliable resource of live performance, rather than leave the artists stuck in the studios and the fans stuck at home.
Live Nation, the world's largest promoter of live-events, has already reported a profit of $58.1 million in ticket sales within the first half of 2013 alone, according to Pollstar. This amount clearly illustrates the large impact that
live performance has on the music industry.
So why would a two-for-one deal on tickets be necessary with a dollar amount like that? Well, let me ask you, when was the last time you attended a concert alone? Most of us wouldn't even want to grab dinner on Massachusetts Street without some company. Unity is at the core of music. Music is meant to bring people together, and what better way to do so than selling tickets in a pair? Neil Young once enlightened us all to "keep on rocking in the free world," and with the government out of commission, it seems as though the music industry has every intention of doing just that.
Student abroad observes stereotypes internationally
Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu province and a former capital of China itself. Roughly 200 miles inland from the coastal city of Shanghai, this city has four distinct seasons. Established along the Yangtze River and nestled between two mountain ranges, Nanjing is noticeably more humid than Kansas City, perhaps even more so with its cozy population of around 10 million.
Despite the large size, the public transit is very good. The subway has two lines currently in use, and additional ones are under construction. Five companies run a bussing network that is composed of over 370 routes. Additionally, there are cab drivers in abundance, but word has it that as a westerner, they are not always the easiest to acquire. I won't blame the cabbies, though. It's likely that most of them have at one point or another picked up a westerner, asked politely in Chinese where they would like to go, and had a single line of directions shoved in their face. "Zhegei!" shouts the passenger with bulging helpless eyes. So I won't blame that balding Chinese man who passed me by last week only to pick up a Chinese couple not more than twenty meters down the road.
By Scott Rainen scottrainen@gmail.com
Naturally, we are kept separate from the Chinese undergraduate students for fear that we will pollute their impressionable minds with our western ideals inspired by academically inept, socially provocative and sexually
perverse idols. For example, Bill Gates; college dropout.
We instead study at Nanjing Universities' Gulou campus, roughly a mile away from the main campus, and as an extra precaution, our classes are held in the same building that we live in. Never before has xenophobia led to such convenient living arrangements, I suppose.
Thus, I frequently mix with an international crowd including those who are polite enough to avoid rightfully criticizing my home country, those who are quick to hold me accountable for all the evils my country has committed – ignoring their own respective histories – those who study things they are not interested in simply to acquire visas, keeping them out of undesirable situations, and – of course – those who are feverishly studying "business Chinese" so they too can get their slice of the ever dwindling pie. jiayou!
Then there is myself: a product of the Nike generation, one who simply does things to do them. It's too easy to expand the stories and impressions given by a select few people to represent a larger whole. This is a common problem life confronts us with, and it is of particular danger to a temporary such as myself. I pop into a place for a short span of time. Hear stories. Tell them to friends back home. Slowly, the
person in the story loses their name and it is replaced by the name of a whole group of people - East Coasters, Spaniards, Africans. I try to avoid making generalizations, but if I falter, it wouldn't have been be the first time and certainly won't be the last.
Generalization seems to be one of those natural evils in life, though. There is too much information, and our minds need to simplify it, but this inevitable is a close cousin of bigotry, among a slew of other illustrious family members. Yes, one can reduce Bill Gates to a college dropout, and this is correct, but whether you like him or not, how many people would agree that this completely-accurate characterization of the man truly sums him up?
I suppose I've sat through too many conversations of kids returning from some foreign country commenting: "but you know how the French are," but do I really know? Do You? Who knows? It's probably just in my head. The living arrangements were probably just a thoughtful notion by the University and that balding Chinese man probably just didn't notice me calling for his cab.
Scott Rainer is a senior studying geography and East Asian language and culture from Overland Park.
He is currently studying in Nanjing China.
PRIVACY
Sexuality clarification unfair and distasteful
Think back to Disney's sports-movie classic, "Remember The Titans." There's a scene in which Petey Jones cryptically asks Ronnie 'Sunshine' Bass if he's gay (in reference to Sunshine's locker room kiss-stunt on Gerry Bertier). Like a good sport, Sunshine humors Jones by pretending not to understand the question, ultimately deciding not to answer it, but this upsets Jones. In that scene, following Sunshine's refusal to tell, Jones demands, "I have to know." Here's my question: why did he need to know?
Although that interaction is already emblematic in that Petey is outwardly asking Sunshine whether or not he's gay, what I find seemingly interesting and relevant in today's culture is the public's obsession with "needling to know" a person's sexual orientation.
Take the recent hubbub surrounding Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the September issue of Out magazine, Levitt addressed an ongoing public debate over his sexual orientation by simply stating "it would be really tacky" if he had to clarify because that would mean "they would win," referring to an incident in which paparazzi were hired to shoot Levitt and a friend to insinuate that the two were romantically involved. Levitt's refusal to clarify reminded me of a similar situation.
Dang it KU, I'm just an environmental studies major to be a hippie with a degree! Not to take hard classes.
Last year Grammy-award-winning artist Frank Ocean made waves in the LGBTQ community, as well as the rap community, for an Internet letter revealing he had once fell in love with a man. Although he was praised for his bravery in his coming-out, journalists began writing Ocean down as gay or bisexual, even though the letter never indicated either. Later in an interview, GQ would address the letter, asking Ocean "if he considered [himself] bisexual." Ocean's response:
"You can move to the next question ... I'm not here to sell you sex. People should pay attention
By Evan Shinn
eshinn@kansan.com
@Dunkfaced
KansasQuestion Dream about the upcoming basketball season.
to that in the letter: I didn't need to label it for it to have impact
... As a writer, as a creator, I'm giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain't got to pry beyond that. I'm giving you what I feel like you can feel. The other [things], you can't feel. You can't feel a box."
In my own experience, there will be moments in conversation when someone will speculate or pry as to whether I know if someone is gay or not, and my reaction always tends to be: "Why does it matter?" Defensively he or she will respond with "it doesn't matter; I'm just curious." But if it doesn't matter, then don't pry.
In no way do I advocate for a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" mentality on sexuality. DADT silences the right to reveal freely, and by that definition, the right to keep private as well.
What's interesting about these cultural figures is their refusal to acknowledge their sexuality due to a belief that it relays no importance to their professional image.
My problem is with people demanding answers on others' sexuality, not because it matters, but because they're interested in satisfying their curiosity without respecting an individual's right to remain ambiguous. That's problematic, seeing as sexuality can prove to be a very sensitive indicator of whom someone is.
Some people prefer to come out on their own terms, and others prefer friends and family to ask. It's not always easy determining how someone would like to acknowledge their sexuality - if at all - but the curiosity of knowing and the frustration of not knowing should never warrant an answer, especially if its relevancy won't qualify a person's opinions, views or life perspectives.
LETTER GUIDELINES
Evan Shinn is a sophomore majoring in journalism from Lenexa.
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