THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2011
PAGE 5A
opinion
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Wait, we lost to Kansas State University? I was under the impression we lost to Pullen State University. Sorry, my bad!
It's 2011. Get some birth control already.
MTV... The M stands for "meh."
Last time we lost to KSU and Texas we won the National Championship
You know you've lost the art of conversation not when you fail to keep up a conversation with a girl, but when you can only talk about the weather, even with your dad. Sigh!
Campus should have been turned into a spotlight party today.
Boo to the business world. You know a girl who's tax-free on her back and making plenty of cash.
I miss being the age when I thought
I would have my sh!t together by
the time I was the age I am now.
Last night I was so drunk I thought a tube of toothpaste was astronaut food.
I wonder what it's like to have a god-awful basketball team and be able to storm the court when they unexpectedly win... I guess I'll never find out.
What the game plan for the second half should have been: Have Withey kick Pullen in the knee, get a flagrant foul, get ejected from the game, Pullen is out for the season and Withey goes down a god. But,
"Last question Pullen, are you going to be playing in the NIT?"
Wanted: a young handsome man to butter my biscuit.
EMAW... that's what your mom said last night.
Girlfriend "I'm still recovering from that epic poop from yesterday." HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ME!
I need to see some walks of shame to aid the dateless year ... AGAIN.
You wanna cyber? I'll put on my wizard hat and cape.
Roses are red/violet are blue/KU has class/do you?
Oh wait... You're K-State
What do the '52,' 88 & '08 KU championship teams all have in common? A loss to K-State.
Twenty-one shots? How 'bout 21 bong hits
HUMOR
I'm really not looking forward to telling the story of my 21st birthday for the rest of my life. Mainly because it includes the phrases, "I went to Fatso's and it was like an awful, hot high school dance" and, "No, I did not take any birthday shots, because I'm not into projectile vomiting on my friends."
I know this is sort of taboo and shiz for a college kid to say, but alcohol just isn't my thing. Beer and wine are alright beverages, and sometimes I enjoy tasting their strange flavors, but I'm not into tweeting, "I m Ssi drunk right now11!" and puking peppermint schnapps in my shower.
The whole night of my 21st birthday, I couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like had weed been legalized already. NPR's "All Things Considered," unsurprisingly, did a pretty rad report in 2009 entitled "What If Marijuana Were Legal? Possible Outcomes."
The report was from a hypothetical world in which marjuanha had been legalized two years prior – and I think NPR was a bit worried a few "conservacrabs" would faint on the spot (a la Orson Welles' famous "War of the Worlds" radio play), so the guy reporting says something like, "THIS IS ONLY HYPOTHETICAL, YOU GUYS, DON'T FREAK OUT, K?" like eight times throughout the report.
The report highlights a lot of great stuff that would come out of marijuana's legalization (including its economic
stimulation), but does not spend much time on the legal consumption age.
In the report, NPR assumes the legal age of consumption would be 21 which makes sense. It would have been wonderful to celebrate my 21st birthday with a ton of cannabis as opposed to burning poison.
I mean, to each their own, but I can only imagine how my 21st birthday would have gone in this perfect weed-is-totally-legal-for-real-y'all world.
I assume that Lawrence would have some marijuana bars - I like to imagine that Lawrence would have one that's just a huge arcade or full of a bunch of TVs showing "Rugrats" or something.
My friends and I would smoke. I'm sure there would be some stupid "Take 21 hits in a row, bro!" type 21st celebration thing that I would not participate in, because I wouldn't want to rip the skin off of my esophagus.
They would buy me some brownies or something, and maybe the bar would have some birthday mini-cupcake for 21st birthdays and I'd be all like. "Aw, thanks. This is the best birthday ever!" The bar might have some discussion room, so we could go there after a while and have the obligatory, "What if the colors I see aren't the colors you see?" discussion.
Then, to top off the night, we could take a very high walk around Massachusetts St. I can only assume my twin sister would have done the alcohol-thing on our 21st, and we could have met up afterwards and gone to IHOP. Her, drunk, and me, high as a kite. And we would both think our pancakes were the best food we'd ever eaten.
What a wonderful, wonderful world.
Charmichael is a junior from Mulvane in creative writing.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Minerals fueling electronics might be financing violence
We depend on our smart phones to keep us connected to loved ones, informed of current events and on punctual time to Friday night's party. According to a Pew Research report featured in "Wired" magazine, 85 percent of American adults own a cell phone.
Personal technology is well on its way to becoming man's new best friend. Unfortunately, our new best friend has a dirty secret: one that involves violence, rape and murder. That secret now involves us.
Imagine that your hometown is rich in the minerals that make cell phones work. Imagine that groups of militant rebels are getting rich selling these minerals to electronics companies. Now imagine that one of these gangs violently rapes your mother in order to intimidate the community and maintain control of these valuable resources. To us, this sounds like a movie, but to hundreds of thousands of women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this is reality.
The sale of minerals such as tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold provide wealth and power to renegade militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Electronics manufacturers purchase these minerals to make cell phones, MP3 players, gaming products and laptops. Over the last decade, these militias have killed 5 million people and raped more than 200,000 women in order to maintain control over mineral mines in the
BY RAEANN HANDSHY
rhandshv@kansan.com
Congo. Financing rape and murder are obviously not our intentions when we purchase a new cell phone, and of course we didn't start this cycle, but we are fueling it with every electronic device we buy.
The geography of our global community may make us strangers, but our humanity makes us family. We would never finance the rape and murder of our mothers, our sisters and our children, so why are we financing the rape and murder of someone else's mother, sister and child?
One solution to this problem is for electronics manufacturers to diligently track the origin of these minerals and refuse to purchase those minerals coming from conflict zones. As of now they are not doing this, and it is up to us to demand that they do. To learn how you can tell companies like Apple and HP to stop buying conflict minerals, visit www. enoughproject.org.
Handshy is a first year MBA student from Lawrence.
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CARTOON
ENVIRONMENT
NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
Global warming doesn't depend on weather
With the country besieged by snow, one may ponder the issue of global warming.
Can what they say be true? It's so cold. Until you realize that, oh right, climate is not weather and the atmosphere's capacity to hold moisture increases when it heats up, global warming begins to make sense.
But why does this not make sense to so many people?
It seems that in this silly war over climate change, those who know what they're talking about often get drowned out by those with more money and less knowledge.
is true. The scientific process leaves room for error, and sometimes scientists have less than pure intentions and desires to achieve specific outcomes — exciting or groundbreaking work is more likely to get published and whatnot.
BY ALI FREE
afree@kansan.com
A healthy skepticism for science is as appropriate as it is for anything else. We ought not accept things at face value, but instead look for evidence and question motives.
On both of these counts, science generally looks all right. Its whole gig is
evidence and data, and scientists have amassed an incredible amount of it that supports the existence of climate change and humans' role in it. There are some scientific organizations that take a noncommittal stance on the issue, but there are many, many more across the world that have come together in consensus on the human effects on climate change.
Certainly there are diverse groups that disagree with climate science for many different reasons.
Who, then, is virulently opposed to the idea that humans have some role in the changing climate and why?
The most vocal and powerful deniers consist of those with a stake in continuing
to operate as they always have regardless of consequences, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, which is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the nation.
These groups have quite a lot to lose if the public as a whole demanded clean energy and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. They would have to pay more taxes because of their carbon emissions, or invest in developing alternative methods of production.
No worries, though. They are working hard to spend that money on deceiving the public and the government about science instead.
Keep in mind that the Koch brothers, two of the most active opponents to business regulation, are tied for the fifth wealthiest people in the country. They and other ultra-rich, ultra-powerful businessmen use quite a bit of their control and cash to influence the media, fund ballot measures and pour millions into lobbying Washington officials against legislation regulating climate change.
As a result, many of those in power publicly disavow climate change. In
December, House Republicans dismantled the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is now chaired by Paul Upton, a congressman who seems intent upon acting in favor of energy companies and against regulation.
This is horrifying. All across the world, scientists are confirming and re-confirming data on climate change, and very few disagree that humans are playing a part in it.
Projected effects of climate change range from the inconvenient to the absolutely disastrous, with more signs pointing to the latter.
Everything from agricultural processes to economies to coastlines and animal plant populations to human habitats and so much more will doubtless be affected by rising global temperatures.
It is highly alarming that short-term pursuit of profit by powerful corporations is allowed to blind side us from these future consequences.
Free is a sophomore from Blue Springs, Mo., in women's studies.
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