Monday inside
Foreign policy forum The student organization KU Greens is hosting a forum on U.S. foreign policy to provide students with information and help them make better voting choices in elections. PAGE 3A
Basketball minus Lee Kansas lost starting guard Mike Lee after he broke his right collarbone during practice on Friday. He is expected to return to the court in six to eight weeks. Kansas takes on Texas Christian University tonight in Fort Worth, Texas. PAGE 12A
The Kansas volleyball team received its first bid for the NCAA tournament in school history. Two victories during Thanksgiving Break helped the team earn a spot in Malibu, Calif. PAGE 12A
California dreamin'
It's 'Dickie V' baby
Dick Vitale visited Lawrence to sign his new book and cover the Kansas-
Michigan game on Tuesday. PAGE 12A
On the Web
If you missed Jayplay Live, or would like to see or hear the bands again, check Kansan.com to listen to or view the show. GO TO www.kansan.com
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Talk to us
Vol.114 Issue No.68
Tell us your news. Contact Michelle Burhenn-Rombeck, Lindsay Hanson or Lean Shaffer at 864-4810 or editor@kansan.com
index
Briefs 2A
Opinion 4A
Sports 12A
Sports briefs 7A
Horoscopes 10A
Comics 10A
KANSAN
Monday, December 1, 2003
The Student Newspaper of the University of Kansas
Poker popularity rises among campus card players
Kit Leffler/Kansan
By Zack Hemenway
zhenmenway@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
When I look up from my cards, I see six sets of cold, blank eyes staring back at me. These intense poker faces tell me that everyone at the table forgot I was a reporter 20 hands and $5 worth of chips ago. I'm just another stack of chips, and my **K**-**K**=10 of diamonds has combined with the flop of **A**-**3**-**Q**-**4** to put me one card away from a flush and one away from a straight (see rules, 6A)
Tara Milleson, Wichita sophomore, rakes in a big pot she won with a pair of jacks. From left, Felipe Rosso, Overland Park senior, Joseph Shult, Wichita senior, and Chris Stachura, Milwaukee junior, wait for the next hand.
I'm waiting for Adam Heasley to bet. Heasley told me before the cards were dealt that he's up $250 this month. The flurry of folds following his bets have showed me the other players respect and fear him.
"All-in", he says, pushing all his chips towards the pot. Other players fold quickly, and it's up to me. Heasley wants to scare me into folding. But even if he has A-Q, a flush or straight will beat him. Besides, he's already pegged me as a weak player, the type most likely to fold after a big bet. Maybe it's this
Our pre-game talk helped Heasley size me up too. He knows I've never played in a game like this, and if he didn't, my skills with the cards made it clear, I've been passing them to him when it's my turn to shuffle. We're playing no-limit Texas Hold'em, the game where you can bet every chip you have at any point in any hand. Heasley stares at me, and in a cold, unfearing tone, does just that, with the two most important words in the game.
intelligent poker reasoning, or maybe I'm remembering what Heasley told me in my pre-game interview when I asked why he prefers no limit.
"If I can't bluff, I can't play." Heasley said.
"I'll call."
Whatever the reasoning, my mind is made up. The bloodflow to my heart triples as I say the words.
More KU students have experienced this kind of mini-drama this semester than ever before, as increased coverage of no-limit hold'em on television has introduced the game to a new generation.
watching and networks are noticing the target demographic. Thanksgiving viewers were offered 17 hours of televised poker tournaments on ESPN, Fox Sports Net, and the Travel Channel.
Poker on television is not a new concept. But when networks aired tournaments in the past, the programs were not much different than watching friends play. Viewers couldn't see the players' cards, so they often never knew if a player was bluffing.
All the players in Heasley's game started playing after seeing the World Series of Poker on ESPN, and each knew of other regular games in town. Coverage of the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel has inspired, other weekly games.
The networks televising poker solved that problem about six months ago with the new "hole-card cam" technology, which lets viewers see the players' cards. To see the hands, tiny spy cameras are built into the poker table, and the viewers see the cards at the same time players do. The image is transmitted to a locked
SEE POKER ON PAGE 6A
Muralist adds color to Kansas horizons
By Meghan Brune
mbrune@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Inside the 4-1-1 Studio in East Lawrence, a group of novice artists gathered around a makeshift plywood table as artist David Loewenstein begin to sketch absentmindedly. Loewenstein's students pored over a set of drawings and watercolor paintings to come to a conclusion on their final mural design.
The studio, previously a small, white house and garage, has become a colorful workspace for a muralist and a group of young artists.
Outside, Loewenstein's art covers the building. Inside, spray-painted portraits, empty paint cans and drawing plans for much larger pieces of art lead the way into the artist's den.
Loewenstein, a local muralist, opened his studio doors in September to a group of Lawrence residents and University of Kansas students. His goal was to teach them about this public form of art and help them create one together. But his goals extend beyond this group.
SEE MURALIST ON PAGE 3A
"I just jumped in," he said. "I had to find out for myself."
Though he has worked on murals in far away places such as New York and
After obtaining a Master of Arts in Painting from Purdue University, Loewenstein came to the University to study mural arts. But none of his professors knew anything about larger art form.
Lowenstein began to study muralists such as Diego Rivera and painted his first mural in Lawrence in 1992. Since then he has created murals all over Kansas and Missouri.
A graduate of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, Loewenstein always knew he wanted to paint but didn't like constraining his art to a studio or gallery.
Making of a muralist
Bowl bound
John Nowok/Kansas
Kansas quarterback Bill Whittlemore waved to the crowd during the final minute of the Iowa State game on Nov. 22. The Jayhawks accepted a bid to the Tangerine Bowl on Saturday, their first bowl appearance since 1995. SEE STORY ON PAGE 12A.
Martin's host family remembers her life
By Lindsay Hanson
hanson@kansan.com
Kansas senior staff writer
GOLFITO, Costa Rica - Shannon Martin stumbled upon a nest of 15 butterfly larvae during one of her twice-daily hikes through Golfito's forest.
Odette Porras, Martin's host mother during her spring 2000 semester at Golfito's Institute of Tropical Studies, glows when she tells the story. A friend, a local parks guide, had coached her in scooping the fragile larvae into a bucket and delivering them to the Porras home. For weeks Martin, a biodiversity, ecology and evolutionary biology major at the University of Kansas, had been nursing the sluggish larvae when they were near death, seeing them into the caterpillar stage and later into the cocoon stage.
Martin, a 22-year-old Topeka junior, hadn't been looking for butterflies, specifically. She had been collecting rare fern specimens as an independent research project for the honors thesis she would
Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series about the murder of Shannon Martin, a Topeka senior who was killed May 13, 2001, while completing research in Costa Rica.
write the next year. Just before graduation the following spring, she would find that she needed a few more samples to make her thesis work. She found some stray funds in the biology department, crammed her final into two hectic days and hopped on a plane to Golfito for a quick, seven-day trip before she was to return home to walk down the hill with her boyfriend and her sister Sheri.
Katie Nelson/Kansan
But early in the morning of May 13, 2001, three days after her arrival and seven before graduation, her trip ended abruptly. She was stabbed 14 times while walking on an unlit airport access road from the popular nightclub Jurassic Bar to the Por-
Odette Porras examined a fern in her G肥侨, Costa Rice, backyard. Porras, Shannon Martin's host mother during her study abroad semester in G肥侨 in Spring 2000, has maintained the garden started by Martin.
ras home, where she was staying. She was about 30 meters from the bar, whose open, bamboo-barred dance floor was filled with between 100 and 200 people. But no one heard anything. Fifty meters down the road, the Pornas slept undisturbed.
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SEE MARTIN ON PAGE 5A
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