Opinion
University Daily Kansan
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2010
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--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
A turtle fence is what you'd think it is. It's a fence that keeps turtles from getting hit by cars
My Jewish roommate just put up a Christmas tree.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
A 130 pound girl is talking about losing weight and she is drinking slim-fast. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
I feel like an ashtray outside of Anschutz would make some janitor very,very happy
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
Oh Rastas, you're crazy.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
New drinking game: Watch family matters, Drink whenever Eddie is wearing MC Hammer pants.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
Sounds like you couldn't live up to his standards.I recommend downgrading to a business student.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
Stressed out, depressea alone and getting terrible grades. It must be December.
If I was a boy at sea I would be swinging from a broken tree.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
I just sat through a lecture talking about why Missouri sucks
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
I'll have an affair with you once you're married. I've always wanted to be part of an affair!
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
I give up on men and have decided be like Sue Sylvester and marry myself.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
My best friend is being set up with a guy because they're both virgins. Welcome to college.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
It's happened again. At the start of each semester I do really good and read the FFA everyday. But as the semester progresses, I slowly stop reading it and just continue to live my life instead.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
Considering sleeping with a K-State fan. Buying Jayhawk panties for the encounter.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
If you refer to being pregnant as 'preggo' or 'pregz' you probably shouldn't have kids. Wrap that ish up.
--seeing family, spending leisurely afternoons at the local coffeeshop and sleeping in served as a great recharge. I cane out of break with more energy than when I started — a true success.
CAMPUS
Thanksgiving break just gives false hope to real freedom
Noon came Monday and I was sitting in my room, surfing the Internet. Monday at noon also happens to be the time for my Western Civilization lecture.
As much as it is sometimes tempting to skip this class on Monday mornings, I didn't skip. My reason for not attending is much simpler, and much more sad.
I simply forgot.
I wasn't watching some awesome YouTube video, or pouring over that day's Wikileaks documents (which you all should, by the way) that caused me to forget. I wasn't doing anything amazing at all. The fact that I had this class simply escaped my mind.
It's a bit odd that this would happen on the second to last week of class. I've been going to this class for at least three months now. I've never forgotten before.
Hawk Life
So what happened? Break happened.
Thanksgiving break was a wonderful, glorious time. Reconnecting with old friends,
BY JONATHAN SHORMAN
But there's also a dark side to breaks like these, a downside not realized until you try to return to your daily rhythm. Thanksgiving break gives you just enough time — five days — to start to get comfortable in your old digs. It's just enough time to settle into an old routine filled with old friends and familiar locales reminiscent of summer.
Normally, that's great. I am fond of my summers and generally enjoy spending time back home (despite the neverending lack of
“things to do”). But when a break gives you just enough time to reacclimate and then rips you out of your warm bed and back into bitter-cold Lawrence mornings, only pain can result.
Not to get all psycho-analytical, but I think subconsciously I'm still on break. My mind deep down doesn't really want to be here. It's all I really want to think about, too. I actually paused from writing a paper that's due tomorrow to write this column (yeah, weird study break, I know, but that's my point)
These last three weeks are the twilight zone of the semester. Your mind's wandering away but your body's still here. The trick is to either reconcile the two or figure out a way to get your stuff done while disconnected.
That's the trick I'm still pondering. If you have it figured out, let me know.
Shorman, the opinion editor, is a junior from McPherson in journalism.
It's almost winter break!
MARIAM SAIFAN
GUEST COLUMN
U.S. should not ignore North Korean threat
American humorist Will Rogers once said, "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie,' until you can find a rock." In the case of North Korea, the United States is dealing with a crazy pit bull and has few rocks left to throw.
The North's recent shelling of a South Korean city, an attack that killed four and injured 16, opens the door for the United Nations to represent the international community by standing with the U.S. and South Korea to oppose North Korean aggression. When the U.S. invaded Iraq seven years ago, it made the U.N. politically irrelevant on the international stage. But the status quo of today is not the status quo of 2003. Today, the U.S. cannot afford to become unilaterally embroiled in another foreign conflict if the Korean situation worsens. Only with the help of an active, supportive U.N. can North Korea be held accountable for further aggression, which at this point could mean war.
To continue with Rogers' metaphor, let us consider a neighborhood that America must defend against vicious dogs. Ten years ago, the neighborhood was pretty nice. America had a lot of rocks and there were not a whole lot of dogs. The neighborhood had been safe ever since that Russian terrier up and died without a single rock being thrown. But then came 9/11, and a new breed of animal came into the neighborhood. It was some kind of stray. No one knew where it came from or who owned it, but some of the worst neighbors on the block were said to feed it scraps. America remembered seeing it years before, when it used the stray to attack that old Samoyed. After the stray wounded the beast, America had patted its head and left it alone. America thought the stray would just go away and die — or something like
that.
Then came 9/11, and America realized how dangerous that stray actually was. The neighborhood came together, gathered up all of its stones and hurled them at the snarling stray. But the stray disappeared and nobody could find it. America decided to take the offensive and identify any other possible strays in the neighborhood. It wrote up a list and identified three: the mean Iraqi mongrel, the Iranian wolf and the vicious North Korean pit bull. Against the advice of its weaker neighbors, America picked up its stones and hurled them at the mongrel, knocking it dead. Feeling slighted and a little embarrassed that they couldn't throw as well, the other neighbors gathered all their stones and refused to let America have any more.
Now, the North Korean pit bull has attacked an innocent ally, South Korea, and the United States is low on rocks. Logically, the neighborhood (the international community working through the United Nations) needs to collect their rocks (their combined military and diplomatic power), join America and get behind their wounded ally. If the North attacks again — possibly even harder this time — and the international community does nothing, the civilized world effectively tells North Korea and other brutal, violent regimes that they can go so far as to physically attack neighboring countries and no one will stop them.
The situation in the Koreas is tense and uncertain. The U.S. and South Korea are engaged in war games, which the North has hypocritically warned may cause "full-blown war." While diplomats scramble, North Korea continues to move towards a nuclear future. Yesterday, the North announced that it is currently operating a uranium enrichment
)
In the worst-case scenario, which recent events have revealed to be quite possible, North Korea develops a nuclear weapon and, in another act of paranoid aggression, nukes the South. If that happens, the U.S. would probably launch a joint airstrike with South Korea against the North's capital, Pyongyang, and bear the price for whatever goes wrong.
A better alternative is for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (himself a South Korean) to offer the U.N.'s unflinching support for the South Korean government in anticipation of an attack, and urge the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and other allied nations to offer military support if the North escalates the conflict. If the North goes ahead and bombs South Korea, the allied nations would then rally together under the UN flag and invade while a missile strike hits Pyongyang.
There is hope for the U.N. in this stage of international politics. Even though the UN has been damaged by the United States' unilateral action against Iraq, inaction in Rwanda and Darfur and its own internal corruption (e.g. the 2000s oil-for-food scandal), it still has the power to provide greater legitimacy to a military strike. In doing so, it can rise out of the ashes and return to global significance. But if the U.N. just sits back and lets individual nations take the lead against North Korea, it cements its own diplomatic irrelevancy and leaves America to deal with the neighborhood dogs once again.
plant powered by "thousands of centrifuges." Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University scientist who has visited the facility,says it could be quickly converted to produce highly-enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
- From UWIRE. Arragon Perronefor The Daily Campus at Connecticut University
SCHOOL PERFORMANCE
Tenure poor reason to retain incompetent educators
I'm guessing that everyone has had their bad share of teachers in public schools. When a thermometer broke in chemistry lab, my old teacher told a student to simply clean it up. A day later, the student was in the hospital because of mercury poisoning. Sadly, even with this act of negligence, my old teacher is most likely still teaching high school chemistry.
If I were the principal, I would have immediately fired him and any other teachers who proved to be incompetent. The reason many bad teachers are never fired is because of tenure, which basically guarantees a teacher his or her job. Another teacher teachers never get fired is because teacher unions make the process expensive and time-consuming.
An article in The New York Daily News reported that in the New York area, "over the past three years [2007-2010], just 88 out of some 80,000 city schoolteachers have lost their jobs for poor performance." An article in Newsweek reported that in Chicago, "0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008." There are examples of this all over the country.
The problem with tenure is that a teacher's performance in the classroom has no effect on their employment. For example, if a teacher is completely dedicated to helping students learn in the classroom, that teacher will stay employed and receive additional benefits. If a teacher behaves unprofessionally, texts during class, and is being disruptive to the learning environment in school, that teacher will also stay employed and receive the same benefits as good teachers.
How is this morally correct? Regardless of performance, these teachers
Seth's Scoop
BY SETH ROBINSON
robinson@kansan.com
stay employed and receive benefits. Consequently, this reduces the incentives for teachers to do their very best at teaching students. It's no wonder that high school students collectively and consistently score low on math and science tests. Out of thirty countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development being tested on math, an Associated Press article reports that U.S. teens have an "average score that was lower than the average in 23 of the other leading industrialized countries." This makes it almost impossible for our graduates to compete on a global level, and the blame mostly goes to these incompetent teachers.
There are a few exceptions, however. In some cases, the blame should go to parents for not teaching their kids the importance of a good education. Teachers who do a great job should not be blamed if the student refuses to take learning seriously.
There must be an education reform that can make the process of firing inefficient teachers easier. Legislation to reform tenure laws were passed in Michigan two weeks ago, which is a good start.
If we simply fired bad teachers and rewarded good teachers (which is the way it should be), we could begin to see improvements in students' educations.
Robinson is a senior from Houston in civil engineering.
Responses to the news of the week on Kansan.com
Chatterbox
"I wouldn't say that fans or students are at fault for the no-show at all. I blame poor scheduling and even worse incentive. To go to the game this weekend would have cost me money for traveling, for the ticket and parking, and for any food/extras while I was at the game. The fact that the game was over Thanksgiving break at 11am also hurts. Fans would have had to make trip to Kansas City at nearly 9am, especially students. There was no reason to fans to "tailgate" because it was too early in the day. The fact that it is a "shopping holiday" also led to many people making the trip to Oak Park Mall or other places instead of to a game that they knew were lopsided. Another factor that helps keep the stands empty is the way fans have been at KU games all year, leaving before halftime and barely cheering on the team, even when they are less than 10 points behind.
— "MeowMix" in response to "Fans no-show for Saturday's Border Showdown" on Nov. 28.
"I know that the weak-willed will not recognize the threats facing our country. They belittle the attempts to defend freedom and mock anyone who supports America's right to exist.
"The fact people confuse us with progressive Democrats is good," From the Communist Party in the US website.
If you are Left of moderate, you stand a good chance of supporting communist agendas to eliminate freedom, increase government monopolies and kill entrepreneurship. Those who produce threaten those who steal for a living.
It is just that simple. Line up your terms, but it comes down to "Do you seek to produce or do you seek to steal?" Cue the ad hominem attacks."
— "Metacognition" in response to "Iowa Supreme Court judged on specific decisions not capabilities" on Nov. 27.
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