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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
WWW.KANSAN.COM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2006
▼ OUR OPINION
Proposed ban would affect some unfairly
Making sure seatbelts are fastened when a Lawrence police officer turns on their lights may not be the only concern for driving students if the city's Traffic Safety Commission gets two new ordinances passed. The two ordinances would call for heavier fines for those using cellular phones in car accidents and would ban the use of cellular phones by drivers under the age of 18.
While the commission did not reach a decision at its meeting Monday night, it is on the right track in wanting to prevent accidents and protect the community, but the measures it's seeking may be going too far to solve the problem.
After speaking with a commission member, Paul Atchley, associate professor of psychology, provided research to the commission on the effects of cellphone use on drivers last semester. He himself studies the effects conversation has on attention and supports the ordinances, having said that the use of cellphones by drivers, handheld and wireless, is at least as risky as driving drunk.
"People can drive with one hand. It's having your mind occupied that is the problem," he said.
Lawrence is not alone in this issue, Atchley said. Other cities, states and countries have passed legislation limiting the use of cellular phones by drivers. But the commission's
Issue: Driving while talking on a cellular phone
Stance: Proposed ordinance will be unfairly specific or too vague to be effective.
actions may not need to be as drastic as they currently are.
Drivers under the age of 18 may be the most inexperienced drivers, but are they really that much different from a 19- or 20-year old driver? Age is too variable a factor to be the basis of a ban in this situation. It would be better to prevent all drivers from using cellular phones than to base a ban on an arbitrary age. To ban wireless devices would also be too drastic. They were specifically designed to be less distracting than handheld phones. Given the other distractions that a driver has to put up with, it seems the commission is being too cawaller in its drive to solve the problem.
Cellular phones are a distraction to drivers. They take attention away from what a driver should be focused on: The road and the actions of his fellow drivers. That being said, the commission's proposed ordinances would either unfairly go after specific groups or be too broad.
- Ty Beaver for the editorial board
Free All for Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
Last week, I got so drunk that I had a dream about being drunk
in t-shirt straight from the dryer, or like cold beers on game day. It is like sleeping in until well past noon — without the pesky hassle of a hangover. Being with the person you truly love is like eating warm chocolate chip cookies with plenty of milk. Love is sunsets and rainbows and mix tapes and everything else so sickeningly fluffy and happy and carefree in this world.
Girls and guys can totally be best friends. Have you never heard of gay
guys?
Will somebody fix the effing Mrs. E's menu Web page,
Your mom only thinks Coor's Light tastes better 'cause she's junky and she doesn't know any better.
I love the fact that I'm under quarantine for the month, and I currently have like five other girls in my room. And the Virgin Mary just choked on a peanut.
in t-shirt straight from the dryer, or like cold beers on game day. It is like sleeping in until well past noon — without the pesky hassle of a hangover. Being with the person you truly love is like eating warm chocolate chip cookies with plenty of milk. Love is sunsets and rainbows and mix tapes and everything else so sickeningly fluffy and happy and carefree in this world.
in t-shirt straight from the dryer, or like cold beers on game day. It is like sleeping in until well past noon — without the pesky hassle of a hangover. Being with the person you truly love is like eating warm chocolate chip cookies with plenty of milk. Love is sunsets and rainbows and mix tapes and everything else so sickeningly fluffy and happy and carefree in this world.
Real men eat hearty beef stew.
stew.
Free-for-All, I'd rather live in a homeless shelter than Margaret Amini scholarship
Pita Pit is like the male Hooters. They should call it Prairie Pit
This is to the frat guy who called in about Dungeons and Dragons. It's called a campaign, not a tournament.
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Fetis P
PAGE 7A
Study's findings reveal love is universal to all
COMMENTARY
Helen Fisher, an anthropologist from Rutgers University, released a book in 2004 titled "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." Fisher's book was the culmination of a series of questionnaires on love that she administered to a vast cross-section of cultures. Heterosexuals, Caucasians, males, Catholics, homosexuals, females, Asians and Protestants. The participants were asked to think about a passionate relationship and to answer a wide range of questions about age, financial status, sexual preference, religion and ethnicity, accordingly.
What Fisher found was astonishingly simple: The experience of being in love is virtually universal. Of the people that Fisher polled, she found no statistical differences between the varying cultural groups. Males and females answered similarly to 87 percent of the questions while heterosexuals and homosexuals gave parallel answers to 86 percent of the questions. Young and old, Caucasians and non-Caucasians, Catholics and Protestants all gave responses that were eerily similar.
The best kind of love is like slipping on your favorite broken-
Fisher's study reveals that love is a universally uniting aspect of life. What is so wondrous is the way each of us arrives at and forms our feelings and experiences in love.
COURTNEY HAGEN opinion@kansan.com
But more than that, the best kind of love has a sort of redeeming quality to it. When you are truly with the right person, they bring out the best in you. Their efficiencies make up for your deficiencies, and help you to become a better person. Like a great partnership, true love should not force you to become something you're not, but only enhance your good qualities by joining forces with another human being.
As I get older, I am becoming even more in awe of the twists and turns that life and fate inevitably lead me down. To me, the concept of love once seemed so obtuse and impossible. True love seemed like a stumbling block that would
cloud my judgment and stunt
my lofty dreams. I once thought
my mind was made up...but
after all, as I've discovered,
love has a mind of its own.
The sex and love battlefront isn't always easy, but like any war, it invariably changes you in ways you never thought possible. The love battle teaches you to be alert to the enemy of heartbreak and guard yourself against it by unconscious isolation. But all too often your vulnerable spot is penetrated. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to resist it, but to surrender completely.
This kind of love, my friends, the chance attack that penetrates through all your reinforcements and safety tactics, is the best kind of love. This is the kind of love that rocks you to the core, the kind that makes you smile at the most inopportune times of day at the mere thought of it. This is the kind of love that changes your life and your future for the better. Survive this kind of love and you will grow stronger, deny it and you won't feel nearly as alive.
If you don't understand the kind of love that I am talking about, I hope that your life and fate will lead you there some-day and you find all that you are looking for.
Hagen is a Council Bluffs, Iowa, junior in journalism and theater and film.
'Pro-life' stance leads to discirmination against women
The abortion debate in America is perhaps the greatest struggle for civil rights faced by our generation. The right for a woman to be secure in her person, as guaranteed by the Fourth amendment, and her right to privacy as guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth amendments as defined in Roe v. Wade, is under constant attack by the forces of ignorance and hypocrisy. One shudders to think what might happen if the so-called "pro-life" movement had its way.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Perhaps the greatest irony about this whole debate is that
the proponents of legislation to ban abortion cite great leaders in civil rights movements as their inspiration, but in reality they are trying to restrict the rights of women everywhere. Before Roe, women had difficulty finding jobs because employers feared that they would get pregnant and be forced to take time off or quit. Because there was no law protecting the right of a woman to control her own body, they were relegated to a second-class citizen status and thought of merely as baby-makers and not much more.
An even greater irony is that
many in the pro-life movement complain that the tactics of the pro-choice movement are "venomous." However, I have never heard of pro-life people being singled out and harassed at their homes and place of work because of their beliefs. I have never heard of pro-life people being murdered at their meetings with pipe-bombs. I have never heard of pro-life leaders being shot to death in front of their families while at home. If the tactics of the pro-choice movement are venomous, then the tactics of the pro-life movement are downright repulsive, not
to mention hypocritical. To say that you value life and then allow for people in your movement to destroy it, that is the textbook definition of hypocrisy. This seems to be symptomatic of the pro-life movement as a whole. They say one thing, and then do another.
Some people in the pro-life movement claim that it is not about morality, and that Roe is simply a bad law that needs to be repealed. Do not believe them. Without the morality argument, the pro-life stance crumbs. We as Americans must take a strong stance in our conviction that a woman has the
If you believe abortion to be immoral, then do not have one, but do not think that you can restrict the civil rights of women and Americans as a whole because of your convictions.
final say in what happens and does not happen to her body. We must make it clear that we will not tolerate legislation based on a subjective interpretation of morality. The law applies to everyone, not just people who share similar beliefs.
Steve Nichols Overland Park senior
DAVID ARMSTRONG opinion@kansan.com
The average American watches more than four hours of television per day, according to the Media Education Foundation. The American Obesity Association (AOA) reports the average adult American to be more likely overweight than not. Furthermore, $ 30.5\% $ of the adult population in this country is obese (AOA).
Get off the couch and better your life as well
While some may find the proposition I am about to make as being preposterous, others may believe a study would indicate in accordance with my speculation. My hypothesis is that there is a strong correlation with the folks spending no less than a sixth of their lives staring at a television screen and being overweight. That is, just a guess, of course.
COMMENTARY
I propose that if people stopped watching television the world would be a better place. Turning off the television allows individuals to become more in touch with themselves and reality. Of course, if you want to lose the weight (and experience self-actualization), abstaining from couch vegging and the like is a must.
Fly a kite
Have a lemonade stand
Plant a tree
Meditate
Catch up with an old friend
Smile
Dream
Sing
Read
Paint
Go for a walk or even a run
Cook
Throw darts
Volunteer
Enjoy nature
Break a bad habit
Draw
Go swimming
Start a compost pile
Yoyo
Go on a trip
Play outside
Breath
Photograph
Write a letter to a friend
Pick up litter
Go fishing
Hackie sack
Visit the park
Get organized
Play billiards
Knit
Make your own bumper sticker
Have a picnic
Skate (or die)
Armstrong is an Overland Park senior in anthropology.
TALK TO US
Last week was TV Turnoff Week. If you missed out on the unofficial holiday, it is not too late to help make the world a better place by making yourself a better person. The less television you watch, the more thinking you will do. It is amazing, you really should try it. The following is a list of potential activities that could improve your physical, mental and emotional well-being. Try substituting one or more for your first day without television.
Jonathan Kaeling, editor
864-4854 or |kxaelung@karan.com
Joshua Bickel, managing editor
864-4854 or |jickel@karan.com
Nate Kautlin, managing editor
864-4854 or nkxaelung@karan.com
Jason Shad, opinion editor
864-4854
Patrick Ross, associate opinion editor
864-4924 or pross@kansen.com
Arl Ben, business manager
864-4924 or adddirector@kansen.com
Sarah Connellly, sales manager
864-4924 or adales@kansen.com
Maleclim Gibson, general manager, news adviser
864-7967 or mgibson@kansen.com
Jason Shaad; opinion editor
864-4924 or jahaad@kansan.com
GUEST COLUMN
GUIDELINES
Jennifer Weaver, sales and marketing adviser
864-7666 or jweaver@kansan.com
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Lawrence, KS 66045
(785) 864-4810, opinion@kansan.com
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Jason Shead, Patrick Ross,Ty Beaver, John
Jordan, Malinda Debaure
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