MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2011
PAGE 5
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY GANSAN
opinion
Send your FFA submissions to freeforall@kansan.com
FREE FOR ALL
My body was NOT ready for that Cards home run.
To all the McCollum kids who ride the bus to Mrs. E's, seriously?
For Halloween, I'm dressing up as a KU football player with a bag over my head.
I'm male, single, straight and I don't drink. I'm also not a fratter. So where do I fit in the University's male population?
Overheard at the Hawk: "Ya, but I don't have a condom." The chick replied: "It's Ok. I'm pro choice."
The handcuffs on sluts are usually police-issued. The "handcuffs" on mature women are the wedding rings from their husbands.
Not considering a fraternity is why you're still alone.
Liberal arts and engineering majors, at least we aren't at K-State. We'd all be studying architecture right now.
I go out of my way to step on crunchy leaves.
To the person talking shit about the basketball team, you probably should transfer. That's a sin around here.
There is WAY too much arguing in the FFA. Whatever happened to random funny shit?
Editor's note. That's exactly what I've been wondering. Looks like you FFAers are losing your touch.
Halloween weekend: so many sluts so little time.
I want to go back to a day where the hardest decision you ever had to make was to color the grass yellow-green or green-yellow.
I can finally wear my generous bras again without anyone knowing the truth. #perksofgettingdumped
Hot girls in Halloween costumes? My slut sense is tingling.
Apogee, more like crapogee!
If GDIs hate us so much, why do they come to our parties?
Yeah, dressed up as the drunk guy My props were Sunkist and Captain Morgan.
Food tastes so much better when it's my roommate's.
Grinding against a hot Barbie girl is the best thing about Halloween weekend.
Carrying a hockey stick was my best idea on Halloween. Creepers back away!
How does The Gridiron have enough KU highlights to make their show?
EDITORIAL
Clever DIY costumes trump unoriginal getups
Each year, as October rolls around, we are faced with the daunting question: what am I going to dress up as for Halloween? And those people who truly get into the Halloween spirit spend a significant amount of time coming up with what they consider an unrivaled costume that simply cannot be outdone.
And what is so great about a holiday like Halloween is that we are given the freedom to express a side of ourselves we might otherwise keep hidden, at least in public. However, what constitutes a fun and unique costume nowadays has evolved over time and today we are left
with unimaginative, revealing caricatures of nothing special.
This pervasive trend that has been established within our generation, has led to extremely uncreative and cliché attempts of creating a memorable costume. Enough with the sexual fairy tale characters and the overdone Jersey Shore cast getups. Goldilocks and Little Red Riding hood probably didn't shop at Victoria's Secret, and the Snooki hair poof must be deflated.
And sadly with this trend, women tend to believe that their options are limited to "Sexy [insert occupation/animal/famous person/Disney char-
actor/manimate object here]." There isn't anything wrong with being "sexy," but students are getting lazy with their costume ideas and are choosing something mindless or rather risqué. The prepackaged costumes appear to be the least creative and honestly, giving a whole new meaning to "Slut-o-ween."
In the 2004 Hollywood hit, Mean Girls, a joke about girls and Halloween tells it all, Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, said, "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."
One doesn't have to look far
to make that observation. Just walk into any Halloween store and not only is everything overpriced, but the costumes often have less fabric than the average sweater.
Men's costumes are sometimes are no better. They usually range on the spectrum between generally goofy and downright grotesque, while channeling something straight out of "Animal House." Check out any online costume store website and under the "funny adult costumes" category, you will find things like a "Fart-O-Meter," "Department of Erections Inmate," "Holy Sh't.*" "When Sh't Hits the Fan," "Frank the
Flasher" and something called a "Sperm Tunic."
This should be the year of do-it-yourself costumes where you come up with something clever that will get you attention for all the right reasons.
If a grown woman wants to dress up in thigh-highs or fishnets or a grown man wants to go as human feces, that's their prerogative, but in doing so, we're moving further away from the scary and fantasy-themed elements that made Halloween.
Stefanie Penn for Kansan Editorial Board
TECHNOLOGY
Late Apple CEO's memory unrealistic
What's an occupier of Wall Street to make of a corporate chieftain who relied on cheap Chinese labor, chose not to engage in philanthropy despite an $8 billion fortune, ended his company's corporate giving program, and gained a reputation as a bullying boss?
The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have embodied the swash-buckling spirit of unrestrained capitalism, but when he died last month, many within Occupy Wall Street praised him as a visionary, without so much as an acknowledgedgment of his numerous shortcomings.
"Sad to announce the death of Steve Jobs," the @OPWallStreet Twitter account posted when Jobs died Oct. 5. "Much of Occupy Wall Street and the tech community respect & will miss you."
Why the praise for Jobs? Some observers credit the transformative impact of his innovations.
Protesters in the Arab Spring and demonstrators against American corporate malfeasance have all taken to their iPhones and iPads to galvanize the masses. Moreover, in a culture that considers corporate tycoons to be brilliant leaders by virtue of their wealth, Occupy Wall Street could assuage concerns about its radicalism by finding a "good" CEO who actually made things to contrast with the financial engineers of Wall Street. Finally, Jobs himself bucked the traditional CEO image. A Buddhist, acid-dropping, Obama-voting, Bob Dylan-listening vegan,
his liberal bona fides seemed unimpeachable.
Jobs may have charted a contrarian course in his public persona, but he did little to challenge the disturbing trends of corporate America. Last year, reports emerged that workers at Chinese Apple factories, working in sweatshop conditions, were committing suicide in alarming numbers. The factories responded not by improving working conditions, but by forcing workers to sign pledges not to commit suicide. It doesn't take a Jobson genius to realize that Jobs's liberal admirers would have been much more scathing in their assessments of the company if a right-wing billionaire had been at the helm.
With its focus on alleviating income inequality and challenging plutocrats' dominance of our political process, Occupy Wall Street aims to change the amoral,
profits-before-people mentality at the heart of unmitigated capitalism. And despite the protest movement's name, the problem extends well beyond Wall Street. Wherever corporations discard notions of social responsibility, workplace fairness, and human dignity, intolerable injustices are committed.
Anti-plutocratic protesters may take to their Apple products to promote their cause, but there is nothing hypocritical about also holding Jobs and his company to account. Indeed, it is morally essential to do so. Without a frank discussion of Apple's part in a larger corporate culture, Occupy Wall Street's goals won't be achieved.
Because of persistent unemployment, Occupy Wall Street is rightly training its focus on the economic challenges confronted by the working and middle classes. The movement must also
demand a renewed emphasis on work-life balance and workers' quality of life. Employment and a salary aren't ends in themselves. They're means that allow people to pursue pleasures - leisure time, travel, family activities, books, and so on.
To Jobs, the idea that people are more than their occupations was a very foreign notion. According to Walter Isaacson's biography "Steve Jobs," he locked employees in all-night design sessions, lambasted coworkers as "fucking dickless assholes" (sorry, Mom), and governed Apple with an authoritarian streak.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking revelation in the new biography is Jobs's reason for wanting Isaacson to write it. Jobs said he wanted his children to know who he was.
Brinker is a senior from Topeka majoring in history.
ENVIRONMENT
Homes aren't so earth friendly
Rachel Schwartz
rschwartz@kansan.com
As the winter months approach, I envision myself taking a long, hot shower after being out in the cold and then curling up in a blanket in my toasty apartment. I don't think doing these things sounds unreasonable. In fact, I know quite a few people who do just that. I know I sure have. And I want to keep doing that too. But, there is a slight problem: greenhouse gas emissions.
I thought cars and other vehicles were to blame for producing the most emissions. But, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), electricity is the biggest source, being responsible for 32 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. In general, buildings (yes, that includes your home or apartment) account for as much as 35 percent of these emissions.
Looks like it won't be too great of an idea to take those routine long showers or have my apartment blazing hot this winter. I know I can just find alternatives though. I can take speedy hot showers, and, instead of a super toasty apartment, just wear a thermal shirt, bundle with blankets and drink hot chocolate.
How do those things contribute to my carbon footprint though? And what else having to do with my apartment does? I wanted to know what to do to have a more eco-friendly home this winter. So, that, my friends, is what I determinedly found out.
First, in general, you need to turn off the light bulb (not the one in your head though, that could be bad). When you're gone from the room so should be the light. I bet the lights are never on when Ke$ha is not there because that would mean the party started without her (don't hate on Ke$ha.) Being conscious of whether or not you've turned the lights off is important. If you know you will forget, then stick a note somewhere you will see it such as the door.
No worries, though, there are other simple ways to stay warm. Obviously, as I mentioned above
On to the next topic: heat. How in the world am I supposed to stay warm without having my heat high? It is recommended that you keep your temperature at 68 degrees. I mean, that's not cold but I'd like it warmer in the winter when I come inside from freezing my butt off. But for each degree you have it higher, it wastes three to five percent more energy, which is quite a lot!
Concerning the shower, you don't necessarily have to take tiediously short showers. If you have a normal showerhead, taking short showers is the best way to reduce your water bill. But, you can also install a water-efficient showerhead. This way you can take longer showers and it actually increases the water pressure. Score.
is the warm clothes, hot drink and blankets. When it's all sunny outside, all you have to do is keep your curtains or shades open. Then the sun's warm rays will heat up your house. At night, just do the opposite to keep the cold away.
Other ways to reduce your carbon footprint include sealing your windows and cracks, insulating your water heater and unplugging electronics when not in use.
To see what your carbon footprint is, use the household emissions calculator on the EPA website.
Stay warm this winter, reduce your bills and save the environment at the same time. Besides hot chocolate, what could be better than that?
- Schwartz is a senior in journalism from Leawood
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jdmoreland
Would have to be Bono. I could travel the world and be front row every show...
rockstarlife
KG_Steez
@UKK_Opionment I want a celebrity Uncle and it would be James Franco, that guy can ACT!;¡!¡!
BrandonWoodward
@UKR_Option Beyonce and Jay-Z! Run the world and be friends with Kanye.
winning
Dben2323
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