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One of the maintenance workers in the underground looks exactly like Walter from "The Big Lebowski."
I love storms
FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351
I agree with the Kansas's interpretation of tomorrow's weather:"54 does not inspire me."
now dump
are still
sid.
One advantage to being a nontraditional student... I don't constantly get accosted by the student senate groups because they think I'm too old to vote.
My rooms finally respond in meows when we converse. Taking the definition of cat lady to a whole new level!
There is literally one job that boyfriends MUST do: provide soup and snuggle to their sick girlfriends. Which basically makes mine worthless since he did neither
To the guy smoking the e-cig INSIDE Bailey, next time you are getting more than just a dirty look.
Ctrl + F my name on the KU secret admirer page. No results. Maybe next time.
A girl wearing a hat is the universal sign for not having showered that day.
Sooo I'm thinking Harry Potter.
Sometimes I take toilet paper and trash bags from the bathrooms on campus. What? Pretty sure I paid for them.
With the student senate elections being over, my commute time from class to class is cut in half.
Saw a parking department guy smoking while writing tickets. Suddenly for a smoke free campus!
The guy in front of me is wearing Crocs cleverly disguised as Vans. Well played.
Whoever wants to get rid of the steam whistle - I support you! That blows.
The "master debater" joke was only funny on your high school debate squad.
Whistling on the bus is a definite NO.
To the guy wearing the Michigan sweatshirt on daisy hill, I'm about to spill this coffee all over you.
To football players: please wear your number tag on your back pack so we know who you are.
Can we have a campus wide Nerf war?
What do those trees smell like? I can't put my finger on it.
The Hawk isn't a bar. It's a phase.
I always had a sneaking suspicion Obama was a KU fan.
I think I deserve an "I voted" sticker after last week...
EDITORIAL
With the election over,the true test begins
Last week's Student Senate election was a watershed moment in the governance of this university. The student body answered the call for greater participation in elections, bringing the voter turnout to 25 percent of the student body. That's a three-fold increase from last year's dismal numbers, and evidence that, if people are invested in a cause, they're willing to take five minutes and click a couple of buttons on a webpage to make their voices heard.
In all seriousness, the students deserve an acknowledgment: They chose to actively engage the issues surrounding their campus, their community, and made some change happen. Sure, college students are fickle. If you get them to care, however, they're willing to give you some of their time.
So, we on the Kansas Editorial Board want to follow up this unprecedented action
I can see through your leggings.
with a final word on the matter. It's kind of like "Spider Man": Uncle Ben reminds Peter Parker that, "With great power comes great responsibility." Or was that Voltaire? Either way, the words carry weight. They also highlight the need for this year's round of elected senators and executives to follow through with the solutions and policies presented in their platforms.
Because, in many ways, this is an experiment. This is their chance to show that they mean it.
The democratic system that votes imbue with their sovereignty is a powerful thing indeed. With the full mandate of the people, a democracy gathers a consensus and, if practiced in an ideal way, develops a compromise among constituent groups and executes policies by the people, for the people. An ideal democratic body doesn't exist in reality — that's why it's an ideal.
But, it's in the pursuit of the ideal that people and organizations accomplish previously unthinkable goals. That's what the student body should expect from its newly formed Senate coalition: Representatives who try everything they can to maintain their promises and, even in the face of compromise, deliver on the issues that concern their constituents.
The executives and senators from Ad Astra, along with the other independent senators and incumbents who won seats in Senate, have been given an unprecedented opportunity.
They have to prove that they mean business by actually doing something with this opportunity. It's easy to cast a ballot; it's difficult to translate it into policy. Similarly, it's easy to promise responsibility, but it's difficult to stay true. Politics is full of obstacles — it's practically a part of the definition — and the true test of those designated to lead
is overcoming those obstacles.
This principle, which might seem a bit highfalutin and sophisticated for University governance, applies even at this level. That's how pervasive it is. Thus, we have an addendum: the Senators are responsible for the action, and the students are responsible for the vote. Students must continue to engage the campus community in order to preserve this sea change and the positive consequences it will have for life at the University.
Of course, those who represent won't know what to do or what their constituents want if those constituents don't hold up their end of the social contract. There's a reason why we in the West use the metaphor of a contract to define the social agreement between those in charge and those they represent. If one party doesn't hold up its end of the bargain, the whole system falls apart.
While the campus experienced a notable political event last week, the work is just beginning. In this election, the students (at least 25 percent of the students) held up their end of the bargain. Going forward, the goal for all parties involved, representative and represented alike, should be to at least maintain this level of engagement or surpass it. Clearly, students care about the University. Similarly, the Senators and executives care enough to make the will of the students a reality.
Thus, all components of University governance must maintain this momentum in meeting the challenges to come. You took the time to vote, after all. Why not prove that it was worth it?
TRAVEL
Brian Sisk
for the Kansan Editorial Board
Train trip and travelers make mind jump the tracks
All I wanted to do was get back to Lawrence. With 10 minutes to spare, I boarded the Southwest Chief sitting in Kansas City's Amtrak station, all the while being glared at by a bitter old conductor with frizzy blonde hair and her short, squat attendant.
As I hauled my luggage onto the train, I saw a very large family occupying the seats across from me — not to mention the seat I'd been assigned to, which was being kept warm by a little 8-year-old girl. All in all, the group comprised two kids, their mother, and three grown men. I honestly couldn't figure out which of these men was the kids' father; maybe they were too lazy to get a paternity test done and decided it would be easier just to share the kids?
The conductor turned and left the car, saying, "We'll be back through in five minutes to check your tickets." I sat in silence for about 20 minutes before she came back with a scanner and a
I didn't want to block up the aisle with my luggage, but I had nowhere else to go, which forced the aged conductor to turn sideways and shuffle awkwardly past me like some sort of geriatric crab, coming very close to grinding on the side of my pelvis. I felt a bit awkward, but it would have been worse for me if I'd been in the place of one of the numerous fathers of this little girl, who, despite the conductor's pleas in the sweetest (but still vitriolic) baby-talk she could muster, refused to get up. The monosyllabic argument between the two escalated to the point where the conductor started to shoo the girl off of the seat with a quick swatting motion that I feared would break her brittle wrists if she kept it up. Finally, one of the dads intervened, picking the girl up and putting her in the seat beside him.
flashlight and demanded grubly,
"Ticket and a photo ID." As I forked over the documents, I realized she hadn't stopped to check the ID of anyone else on the train. Just me. And then I shuddered a bit at the fact that I apparently looked more suspicious than any of the three fathers sitting across from me.
Meanwhile, another attendant was checking the tickets of the couple seated in front of me. "Where are you going?" she asked.
The young woman, wearing floral leggings, hipster glasses and a dirty beret and smelling of something illicit, replied hazily, "Topeka, but maybe to Albuquerque."
"What do you mean?"
While the Southwest Chief attendant and the stoner tried to hash out exactly where she was trying to go, the little girl across from me was playing with her mother's phone, and, for some reason, had begun shouting out the names of colors. Interspersed with barely-audible arguments for why a ticket to Topeka should entitle a rider to 700 extra miles on the rails were high-pitched yelops of "Yellow! Purple! Red!" After a couple of repetitions of this, the closest of the fathers decided he'd had enough and gave the little girl a light slap on the arm. "Shaddup," he barked.
"I'm going to Topeka, but I might be going to Albuquerque. It's not that complicated."
"Sir?" The conductor tapped me on the shoulder. "We'll be in Lawrence in about 20 to 40 min
utes. We don't make announcements." What the hell do you mean you don't make announcements? How am I supposed to know where my stop is? Maybe this is what the hipster chick meant: "I want to go to Topeka, but, if I miss my stop because of your negligence to properly inform me when it is, I'm punishing you by riding this sucker all the way to New Mexico!"
"Green!" I started, my train of thought jumping the tracks. "Shaddup!" the father countered. Smack.
In about 20 minutes, the train rolled to a stop. "This must be it." I thought as I grabbed my bags from above and headed for the exit, only to be stopped by the old conductor. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Train's stopped." I said.
"We're refueling. Get back in your seat," the woman shot back, with at least a penn of venom in her voice. If she thought I was suspicious when I got on, she probably thinks I'm the next Osama bin Laden now, and I sensed that, if I said another word, I'd be kicked out of fear that I was going to hijack the train and run it into a farmhouse or something.
The train finally rolled into Lawrence 30 minutes later, and I jumped off quickly, taking care not to make eye contact with anyone. As the doors closed and the engine ready to roll off into the night, I swore I could still hear a string of primary colors emanating from the car in a shrill, grating voice.
All this is to say I'd sooner throw my inside in front of an Amtrak train than ride it. Your mileage may vary (although I doubt you'll be able to vary it as far as Albuquerque).
May is a sophomore majoring in German and journalism from Derby
NATIONAL SECURITY
North Korean nuke will not hit the US
There are a lot of analogies I could use to describe North Korea trying to attack the U.S., but the one that most accurate is a very hungry David slinging a rock 20 miles at a tank. Now, if North Korea wanted to nuke South Korea, they might be able to do a pretty good job of that, because South Korea is right next to North Korea, and the best North Korean rockets can go 6,000 km, according to analysts being quoted by almost every major news source.
In case you've been under a rock for the past month, you know how stupid North Korea has been acting. For those of you rock dwellers, glorious leader Kim Jong-Un and his North Korea have actually declared war on the U.S. and threatened to nukel us. This is the same North Korea that has zero satellites, and its former leader Kim Jong-II was the world's number-one buyer of Hennessy. There aren't many moments when you get to laugh at a country with nuclear weapons, but this is one of them.
So if Kim Jong-Un wanted to nuke Lawrence (which is 10,000 km from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea), his rockets would somehow have to travel an extra 4,000 km, which is a really, really long way. That is, if his missiles could somehow cross the giant defense grid the U.S. Navy currently has covering the Pacific Ocean. If any of the giant floating radar installations pick up any activity from North Korea, there would be a U.S. rocket intercepting that missile within 45 minutes (which is like a bullet going 1,500 mph shooting down another bullet going 1,500 mph — which is awesome)
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Or, the one of the Navy's new laser cannons could shoot down the nuke. Last Monday, the Navy tested its new ship-borne laser defense system. The laser passed with flying colors, shooting down a drone midflight, which entailed targeting said plane, blinding said plané's radar and cameras with a smaller laser, and
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
Who has the largest air force in the world? The U.S. Air Force. Who has the second largest air force in the world? The U.S. Navy. The U.S. now only has 3,051 nukes, which is about 3,025 more nukes than what North Korea has. Of the world's 21 aircraft carriers, the U.s owns 11. The U.s is on its own level of destructive power, so we can handle ourselves. Now, remember that China, South Korea and Japan will help take care of North Korea if it tries anything.
then shooting said plane with a beam of light intense enough to set metal on fire.
I admit, talking about nuclear war like some pissing contest is a terrible thing. But Kim Jong-un is likely crazy and could do some terrible things to Asia. But he's not going to. He's crazy, not stupid. Kim's nuclear weapons are his chest pieces. He can't use them because they're the only things giving him strength over his people and other countries. So sleep tight, North America, North Korea will not be shooting missiles at us. And even if they tried to, they would miss by thousands of kilometers. 'Murica.'
OK, let's do some math.
Chance that a North Korean rocket will magically travel 10,000 km when it only has fuel for 6,000 km: zero. Chances that a North Korean rocket it past U.S., South Korean, and Japanese defense systems in the Pacific: maybe 1 in 50,000. So, zero times 1/50,000 is ... Would you look at that? Zero percent. There is no way a North Korean nuke is hitting the U.S. OK. Our turn.
Simpson is a freshman majoring in chemical engineering from Fairway
@kcmarks
@UOK_Opinion Don't forget about KU opportunities off campus! I'm spending my last weekend in Minneapolis on my KU sponsored internship!
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@DUK Opinion Helping homeowners with
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CONTACT US
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of The Kansas Editorial Board are Hannah Wise, Sarah McCabe, Niki Weikert, Dylan Lyssen, Else Farrington and Robert Hoyle.