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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
KU should put cushioned seats in the front row of every class. Everyone would be trying to sit up there and it'll make the professors feel more loved.
Today, I found a trashcan full of packing peanuts. I've never so badly wanted to be Oscar the Grouch.
My political science book just used a quote from Shrek to prove a point...
You got on the bus at the union and off at Fraser. With that sort of work ethic, HOW IS YOUR BUTT SO TONED?!
Everyone in JRP is so gloomy their motto should be "School of Education: Where Dreams Go To Die."
Too bad the government shutdown doesn't stop cops from handing out $140 turn signal tickets.
All these people don't the chalk art
are gonna be really mad when it
rains Thursday and Friday!
Forget GTA V, I will be skipping class when Pokemon X and Y come out.
Trees are just really slow explosions.
It's true that if you get hit by a bus that you don't have to pay for college, but only because dead people have NEVER had to pay for college. Please look.
Is "being in the FFA three times in the span of two days" appropriate to put on my medical school applications?
Someone come feel my hair, it's so soft.
GIVE ME BASKETBALL OR GIVE ME
DEATH
I thought I had a pretty good parking spot until I had to ride a stairmaster to get to class...
Is anyone else devastated by the loss of Chinese food in The Underground?
It's sad that this is what Aaron Carter's life has come to, playing at the bottleneck on a Tuesday.
Even the weather is preparing for Late Night in the Phog.
PETA
My roommate just bought a bra as well, but to be honest he's just using it to creep me out.
Studying next to the campanile during football practice provides instant soundtrack VERSACE! VERSACE!
Ted Cruz 4 overlord of Uganda.
Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart are probably going to get married someday.
Space exploration raises questions about animal testing
Is sending cats to space the purr-fect plan to test the cosmos for humans? Iran has recently announced that they are planning on sending a Persian cat to space. Iran joined the space race in January 2013 by sending a monkey to space, but not without backlash.
Most of the criticism was rooted in the accompanying photographs of the monkey. The fur color was different in two of the pictures, raising questions as to whether or not the monkey truly survived. It was later confirmed that the monkey did in fact survive the flight, but the theories as to why the pictures differed vary depending on the source.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was enraged to see the distressed look on the monkey's face. As
stated in their blog, "Monkeys are smart and sensitive animals that not only are traumatized by the violence and noise of a launch and landing but also suffer when caged in a laboratory before and after a flight—if they survive."
after a night — they try to
This isn't the first time PETA has protested primates in space. NASA ended the use of primates for space radiation experiments in the early 1990s, after PETA adamantly protested this procedure. NASA planned to restart the program in 2010, yet PETA and others held their ground about the program's ethical violations.
PETA also quoted Jean-Jacques Dordain, the European Space Agency's director general, who stated that the ESA "declines any interest in monkey research and does not consider any need or use for such result." PETA
argues, "cruel tests on nonhuman primates do not produce relevant results for human astronauts."
I will fully recognize that PETA is a very biased organization. However, this organization is a necessary asset to our society because they successfully get people to question our society's practices.
Are there benefits to sending animals into space? Why is there such an extensive history of bringing animals to space?
John Fuller, from "How Stuff
Works," explains that, "before space programs started sending people up into orbit, scientists couldn't agree on what it would be like for a living organism to leave Earth's atmosphere. What would be the effects of weightlessness on a mammal? How would the body handle radiation from the sun?" Now that humans have already been into space, the experiments with animals are becoming more rare as there are more efficient and effective alternatives.
In his blog, "Starstruck," science writer Andrew Fazekas discusses the recent experiment investigating effects of the microgravity environment of space on bone loss in mice: "Accelerated aging of the skeleton with bones becoming brittle without the pull of gravity is just one of many medical challenges (ex. muscle atrophy
and space radiation) facing future human crews on multi-year deep space missions like those to the planet Mars." And as Fazekas continues to point out, there are "more down to Earth potential spinoffs too — like developing more effective drugs to fight the bone degenerative disease of osteoporosis seen in the elderly."
I think sending animals into space can be extremely helpful if it truly provides information that could not be found by any other method. As to whether Iran will really discover something groundbreaking by sending a cat into space, I have my doubts. In modern times, using animals as a form of entering the space race is outdated and unnecessary.
Jenny Stern is a sophomore majoring in biology from Lawrence.
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Lying is vital to human life, but should be used sparingly
Human memory is essentially binary — we can only focus on one thing at a time. So how do people capture that focus? Tell an interesting story? Summon the power of wit and formulate an eccentric pick-up line? Display our extrinsic worth by flaunting money, because our intrinsic worth isn't seen as formidable and attractive?
Maybe, but it seems people are more intrigued by hyperbolic stories that exist between reality and fantasy. Whether it's a struggle to appear interesting, a fight for attention, a quest for companionship or just an effort to portray ourselves in a positive light, lies can be effective for short-term gain. But the line between "cutely attempting to impress someone" and "sociopathy" is vaguely small.
Let's think about this: imagine advertisements that always told the truth. I'm picturing Blake Griffin, successful NBA player, assertively saying in a commercial to "buy gear at Foot Locker, because they paid me a lot of money to say this." I'm no expert, but I'm not sure that would resonate as well as, "I shop at Foot Locker because it makes me look and play my best." The latter tells me that if I shop at Foot Locker, I can look and play as well as Griffin — Wow, lies make me feel good. But in reality, no amount of Foot Locker gear will make me a 6-foot-10 freak of nature with a 40-inch vertical leap.
Celebrities aren't the only culprits — students deviate from the truth too. Think about your
resume; is everything on there 100 percent accurate? Some of us revel in the idea of coming up with ambiguous terminology to make us sound more salient: "McDonald's fry cook" can easily be reworded as "director of culinary engineering." These lies are the difference between who we are and who we want to be. Lies allow you to manipulate and brand yourself to stick out from competition and, hopefully, gain the attention you're craving for in doing so. Does this make you bad? No, it makes you human.
Lying is viewed as more acceptable in certain positions. For example, we expect politicians to be less honest than scientists. I confess that I've channeled my inner politician under circumstances of severe pressure and scrutiny. I've sold advertisements to companies that cost more than the budget proposed, and may not have had the best interest of the businesses in mind, but of course I assured the companies otherwise. As a result, quota was surpassed, the boss was temporarily happy and my ethical core had been breached.
"How do I approach her? What do I say?" The delirious allure of women can incapacitate any man's speech. At risk of sounding like a bumbling idiom, men often turn to lying, but you can't blame them entirely. Unless you're a student athlete, the truth isn't as amusing to women who have many (male) options. Before too long, men find themselves trying to conceive a lie that can even the playing field or propel them ahead of the competition. I've even seen guys pretend to be in a fraternity in order to gain a sorority girl's attention.
Women inspire men to lie more than anything. Most men quiver when they see an attractive girl:
Don't get me wrong, women lie too, but they seem to be more strategic and less public about it. Unless, of course, someone asks about weight, age and how drunk they actually were last night — then all bets are off. If you want to see this in action, then visit the local lavahawk Cafe.
Everyone lies and everyone knows it's wrong, but deception is just a part our society, similar to racism, sexism and stereotypes. As long as humans have brains, lies will continue to exist.
The world is built on lies. Lies create jobs and conversations, they foster relationships and they help the public sleep at night in blissful ignorance. Who knows how many people would lose their jobs if we all stopped lying. Lies make the world go round, and we don't want the world to stop spinning.
Bryenn Bierwirth is a senior majoring in journalism and communications from Overland Park.
Cope with personal loss through living
GRIEF
We all have suffered through our own losses and each one is difficult to get through in its own way. Losses shape who we are and how we look at others. They often come without warning, hitting us hard, not even giving us a chance to protect ourselves. But change is the one aspect that is uniform among all losses. They say change is always good, but nothing is good about losing someone close to you. I couldn't comprehend the loss of my teammate — my friend. The closest thing to a brother I ever had. I was devastated, and I saw everyone else hurting as much as I was. That only hurt me more. But we all were able to help each other. Time helped. The community helped. It made everyone affected stronger, and gave us a feeling we had never felt before. Even if we had lost someone close before, this was different. Tyler Rathun was different.
I had known Tyler since middle school, but didn't become close to him until my junior year of high school. That was when we became teammates on and off the soccer field and created a bond I never could have imagined.
Now all I have is memories. I still think about walking out of the church that day. I can still hear the piano, and I can still hear the eerie silence from the walk back to my high school. I had to put my arms around two of my
Sometimes I think back to the day of his funeral. That day was so painful. I felt it in my veins. I couldn't deal with the utter emptiness I was feeling.
friends as I walked. I had to lean on them. My body was so weak. I still cannot explain it. My mind could not comprehend the pain I was going through.
I had a soccer game that night.
The first in awhile I had played in without him on the field. We tied 1-1. There wasn't a minute he wasn't on my mind. When the final whistle blew, I fought off tears. But they fought back. As I walked off the turf, my face got red. My hands covered my eyes, and I bawled.
I saw the freshly sharpie-written "14" on the toe of my cleats as I took them off. I took a deep breath, and stopped crying. He wouldn't have wanted me to cry.
As I sat on the chilly turf that cold November night, my body was weak. I tried to get back to my feet. It hurt; it hurt to get up. I didn't want to. But the thought of Tyler got me up, because I know he wouldn't have stayed down if he was in my cleats. He wouldn't complain, he wouldn't feel sorry for himself. He would get up. And so I did.
G. J. Melia is a freshman majoring in journalism from Prairie Village.
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