Opinion
United States First Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010
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FREE FOR ALL
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--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
How to spot a freshman: wearing heels to the first day of class! They will never make that mistake again.
Recap of first class: have no cell service in the classroom, sat behind the hairstack back ever, and one girl starts crocheting during lecture. Oh KU
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
I love dressing up for the first day of classes!
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
I had to get hammered so I could sleep. It's a win/lose situation.
Has anybody used the condoms you get at Watkins?
Are they any good?
The best thing about college is that I get older, but the freshmen stay the same age.
Ugh, I hate math.
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Your boyfriend's so ugly, he couldn't get laid at a "Twilight" convention
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
To my best friends...I wish I was there with you guys today! Miss you much!
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Senior tip of the day: You can get the Blackboard app on your iPhone and it works a lot faster than using the web browser
I'm going to sit on the beach and get my amusement for the day by watching freshmen. Oh I remember when
You aren't supposed to flush tampons, moron.
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Mmmm, smoothies.
Mission completed.
Hey frat guys, you all look like douches. That is all.
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Boom! I was the first FFA post of the year!
Really? Can't afford your own?
Don't let the girl know you are that cheap
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Any good jobs at the job fair this year?
When did people start bragging about banging grandmas?
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
The original!
--you have to drop napalm on them. How else will you become Internet famous?
Relieve pent-up frustration and ditch your job in style
HUMOR
It's the beginning of a new semester. This is a time when slates are clean, starts are fresh, and hope springs eternal Naturally, one thing comes to mind: quitting.
Maybe it's the weather, or maybe it's the equally stifling economic climate. Whatever the reason, quitting has been rather in vogue as of late. In recent weeks, two high-profile quitters have given voice to a generation with their showmanship, creativity and absolute unwillingness to take it anymore.
Steven Slater, a veteran flight attendant for JetBlue, became something of a folk hero when a rude passenger pushed him over the edge. He gave a brief, dramatic speech over the intercom, grabbed two beers, activated the inflatable evacuation chute, and slid out of the plane in style.
Days later, a woman named Jenny took the Internet by storm when she quit her job as a broker's assistant via dry erase board, exposing her boss as a creep and a Farmville addict in the process.
Though it turned out to be a hoax, the speed with which her tale spread across the Web is a testament to America's insatiable thirst for compelling resignations.
For people fed up with their awful jobs, the stakes have been raised. It's no longer enough to merely burn bridges; now
BY ALEX NICHOLS
Luckily, I'm here to help. In addition to being the divinely chosen savior of print journalism, I am also a prominent quitting consultant. I can help you parlay your workplace meltdown into fame, fortune and maybe even a new job!
- If you're a disgruntled zoo keeper, you can make an exit of Biblical proportions. First, grow a long beard. Then, pair off all the zoo animals and march them onto a giant wooden ark. When all of the animals are secure, flood the zoo! Your boss's jaw will drop when you stand on the bow of your ark and bellow: "I'm giving my 40 days' notice!"
So here are a few tips:
- Most cooks who quit dramatically go the obvious route — food poisoning. To avoid prosecution, you need to be creative. If you work, for example, at a Mexican restaurant, try making nothing
but Scottish food for an entire shift. Customers expecting burritos and enchiladas will surely start a riot when confronted with a plate of haggis and rumbledethumps, and you'll be out the door and on your way to the Food Network.
- The advent of satellite imaging has opened the door for quitting on a tremendously large scale. Let's say you're a lumberjack looking for a way out. All you have to do is strategically chop down vast amounts of trees. Then, send management a link to Google Maps. Your boss will see "I QUIT" carved indelibly into the woodlands of the Pacific Northwest. Everybody will get the message — even the International Space Station.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
- Are you two-and-a-half years into your first term as the governor of a sparsely populated state but find it to be a tad above your intelligence level? No worries. Just resign, give a nonsensical press conference and spend the next year topping yourself with increasingly moronic babble. The worse the syntax, the better! You will quickly become insanely wealthy and have a higher profile than ever before. Butbeware: the Constitution is under constant attack. Good luck.
Nichols is a senior from Stilwell in creative writing.
NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
GUEST EDITORIAL
Friends essential to college life
Human beings are social creatures. Society is built upon the series of relationships we have, whether they be with classmates, romantic partners, parents or the cashier at the Chevron on University Boulevard. So, our survival is dependent on relationships. We need people regardless of how they fit into our lives and who they are.
Now, I use the word "relationship" liberally. One may not think of their brief interaction with the friendly cashier at the Chevron as much of a relationship compared to a relationship with their friends, but it is. They serve a purpose to us just as we serve one to them.
A good friendship with a good friend can get you through anything good, bad, happy or sad. And I believe now is perhaps one of the most crucial periods in our lives to have good friends.
So am I saying that a relationship between two or more people is supposed to fulfill the needs and desires we have within ourselves? Yes. We have needs and wants that we cannot meet by ourselves so we form relationships with others to have those needs and wants fulfilled.
We are becoming adults. We are becoming the people who we will be for the rest of our lives. Parents tell us to be the best we can be. To do that, we have to know who we are.
Now, I'll never lead you astray in what appears to be tangential, superfluous fluff, so have faith and follow me into the Promised Land and enjoy these words that will, undoubtedly, be the milk and honey to your cerebral cortex. I've stated that relationships are what sustain the human existence, but
I'll speak more specifically on what I have found to be one of the most valuable relationships we can have. That is a friendship.
If you feel that you cannot be everything you are with your current clique, then it's high time to find a new one. We need friends who will let us be who we are, who will accept and love us unconditionally. Our personal growth will be forever stifled if people who want to shape us into something we are not surround us
It is important to be careful and selective with the people we choose to befriend. We must ask ourselves what we need in a friend. Do we need someone who looks like ourselves? Do we need
This is the time to find those people who fulfill us in all the ways we need and desire to be fulfilled. I have fortunately come to these realizations through personal experience with my friends.
someone that shares our nonacademic or academic interests? Do we need someone to have stimulating conversations with? Do we need someone who shares our religious beliefs?
I was lucky. I didn't have to search. My friends fell into my lives and I fell into theirs as if it were predestined.
Find people who will support you. Find people who will feed you when you're hungry, clothe you when you're naked, offer you refuge from life's storms. Find people who'll loan you money to get your car out of the impound when you don't have the money. Find people who'll drive you to your house that's two minutes away on foot just so you don't have to walk at night alone. Find people to sit in the Ferguson Center with and people-watch. Find people to spend hazy summer nights with on the couch watching bad movies and stumbling through the Internet. Find people that will make you a better person. Find someone that you want to make a better person. I pray you won't be discouraged in your journey to find these people because I have found them for myself.
Devon Morisette for The Crimson White at The University of Alabama
SKEPTICISM
Locavores big on food, short on fact
This August, taking a trip to the produce section of any Wal-Mart in the U.S. will yield a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables similar to that of any other Wal-Mart in the country during any other month.
Whether it be fall or spring, June or January, many of the same items will still be in stock.
To some, the perceived environmental costs of such methods of food distribution are startling, and have given rise to today's local food movement
So, how is it possible that somebody in, for example, Bismarck, N.D., could sit down and enjoy a watermelon on Christmas, despite the fact that the city experiences an average high of 26 degrees for December? Simply put, that melon got north by way of fossil fuels.
—the proponents of which (known as locavores) claim that more responsible alternatives can be found in buying food "locally" (unlike USDA organic certification, there's no agreed upon definition for what constitutes locally grown food). And, while the environmental reasons for buying locally are noble enough, the reality of this aspect of local foods is something quite different.
According to author Brian Dunning, the produce of a traditional grocery store may actually be more environmentfriendly than the fruits and vegetables of a farmer's market, due mostly to the grocery store's use of a distribution center for foods. Distribution centers serve as hubs between farmers and a retailer, where a single truck may travel from a distribution center to many different farmers then back in order for the food to be delivered to supermarkets in the region.
Dunning writes that since most local food sources lack such a hub, tracing the paths of trucks from the retail point to the farms becomes a massively cluttered "starfish," while doing the same for a system using a distribution center leads to a set
Good Science,
Bad Science
BY ANDREW HOLTZEN
aholtzen@kansan.com
of much more efficient paths. By not having to run wasteful, overlapping routes, grocers are able to save money that would normally have to be spent on diesel for trucks.
This bottom line issue of increasing profit is what ultimately contributes most to the improved efficiency and smaller carbon footprint of traditional grocers.
Others in the local food movement argue that when a food is available regionally, importing it from thousands of miles away is environmentally irresponsible, but that unscrupulous grocers do so anyway because it bolsters revenue. They seem to ignore the reason for improved revenue, however, which is, again, lower costs due to fewer resources being utilized.
The truth is that certain foods, particularly animal goods, will naturally be produced more readily in specific climates and, therefore, require fewer resources, resulting in less money to produce a yield equal to that of a less appropriate climate.
Then, there's the final alternative from locavores: if something's not in season in your area or never available, for that matter, then you could always choose to just not eat it. Sure, North Dakotans could probably go without a Christmas melon, but diversity is essential to a healthy diet, and limiting oneself to what could possibly be only a handful of foods grown regionally would be nutritionally detrimental, not to mention downright unexciting.
Holtzen is a junior from Fayetteville, Ark., in chemistry and Spanish.
Responses to the news of the week on Kansan.com
Chatterbox
"A misuse of the term 'science' in that article. I believe Ms. Free meant logic. Science is an ammoral system that can't really dictate legislative opinion; science can't tell you that murder is wrong, only what can incur death and what death looks like."
"There is a place that many say can be found at the end of a road paved with good intentions. Too bad the legal impacts aren't directed at the organizations targeted with the campaign. If the target of the campaign is to reduce free ads, apply the punishment to businesses and not people/students. Isn't that the simple solution?"
— "xz007" in response to "Court ruling a victory for equal rights" on August 19.
—"Metacognition" in response to "Chalking restrictions strike at free speech" on August 19.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansan Editorial Board are Alex Garnison, Nick Gerik, Erin Brown, David Cawthon, Jonathan Shorman and Shaun Blackmon.