Heading out to go shopping for groceries on a Sunday afternoon is simply ridiculous – the bus is  always late (and if it isn’t late, then I know it came about 10 minutes before I got to the stop).  I used to think that this was just my utter inability to navigate the simple city bus system, but I’m beginning to think maybe it’s not me after all.

During the week, the buses hit a given stop about once every ten minutes, which never seems like too long to wait (unless I’m already late anyway).  During the weekend, however, the buses only come once every 20 minutes…and then once every 40 minutes….and then once every hour.  By the time Sunday afternoon rolls around, the buses are so unpredictable that I can find myself waiting for over an hour with no real concept of when the arrival will be.

What’s really strange is this:  I’m not the only one at the stop. In fact, I’m surrounded by students and community members who are just as confused and impatient as I am, wondering why the bus company seems to be convinced that they don’t need service on a Sunday.

Sunday is that first day of the week that’s utterly free for a student, with no real commitments or pressing events.  It’s the day we sleep in late – and yes – it’s the day we go shopping.  Maybe there aren’t thousands of students filing off to class, but there are certainly some of us who need to get around town (whether for church, leisure, or a quick grocery trip).

I think it’s time that the bus company recognizes our need (and if they can’t quite muster up the man-power to run more than once an hour on a Sunday – they should at least make the effort to run on time).

It’s that time of the year again:  budget cuts.  Administrators begin to scramble around and lock themselves in their offices until all hours of the night.  Faculty members cower in fear wondering if the next meeting will be their last.  And apparently, (in California at least) the students go on strike.

What is being hailed as a “day of action for public education” began early Thursday morning, with hordes of students and community members exiting their classes and jobs to join the protest.  With drums, bullhorns, and sling-shot ice chunks, they fought to get their point across:  we need more money.

Now, I understand the idea behind the protest.  Budget cuts in schools aren’t just a question of salaries or who gets to build a new gym, they can radically alter the efficiency of the whole education system.  But what I don’t understand is how thousands of people who can mobilize to defend their right to an education can’t take the next step and sit down to find a creative solution.

At some point, schools are going to have to realize that the fight for money will always be present. We don’t need awareness; we have that.  We don’t need man power; we have that too.  What we need is one of two things:  literally more money (which just isn’t going to happen) or CREATIVITY.

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if those 1,000 protestors had convened in a giant circle instead and brainstormed ideas for the future?

• Cap overhead/administrative costs at 35% of the Operating Budget (Currently, overhead costs are approximately 50% of the Operating Budget).
• Raise Executive Board annual pay (the current rate of $4,000 is less than most people make in a part-time job even though it takes up about as much time as some full-time positions): President: $15,000; Treasurer: $12,000; and VPs: $10,000. Raising Executive Board pay will help recruit better candidates for our student government and make good candidates more apt to stay on board more than the usual one term.
• Increase Transparency: Minutes from all Executive Board and IUSA Congress meetings and events should be posted online on the IUSA website within one week of the meeting occurring. Additionally, the process of archiving past by-laws and resolutions should be expedited so that they may be put online as soon as possible.
• Rewrite the Constitution to allow the IUSA Congress to pass binding resolutions which require the University to act. These resolutions, once passed, would then be reviewed and either passed or killed by the Faculty Council and then either signed or vetoed by the University Administration before becoming binding. Here’s a sample diagram of how it might work:
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Rachel Greer, a seventh grader at River Valley Middle School in Jeffersonville, Indiana, has been suspended for a week because she violated her school’s zero-tolerance drug policy.

Greer, however, was not selling or buying drugs. Nor was she under the influence in any way. In fact, she didn’t even want the drug. She was simply holding it in her hand before refusing another student’s offer, which by some convoluted logic equates to being in possession of Adderall, an ADHD drug.

“Someone hands them a pill or a drug or something like that and they say well I said no I didn’t participate. Well the act of saying no is not to be there, not to be involved in the handling the you know they didn’t have to put their hand out,” said Marty Bell, a school administrator within Greater Clark County Schools.

Needless to say, this is absolutely ludicrous. What message is the school trying to send students by punishing a student for turning down drugs? This girl obviously did not intend to consume the drug or participate in using it in any manner, so she clearly is in compliance with the original intent of the zero-tolerance policies.

This girl could have very well extended her hand just to examine the drug out of pure curiosity, or more probably social pressure. Just because you are in the presence of drugs does not automatically mean you are using them. By that logic, anyone at a bar is obviously drunk and anyone in a smoking-friendly restaurant is a cigarette user.

I’m already not a fan of zero-tolerance policies in schools, but this case is truly beyond me. Clark County Schools need to get their heads out of the clouds and deeply re-examine their stance on what should, and should not, be regarded as drug use.

I stumbled upon a piece by Gary Hart, former democratic contender for president until his Clinton moment, that is an excellent and brief description of the battle that the word liberal faces in our society.  As I’ve brought up in a column, even the word liberal is treated as a dirty thing in this country. And this debate needs to switch from liberal as bad, to a battle against the ignorance and smear campaigns run by right wing hacks with no understanding of political theory, or history, or really much of anything.

Every one of the founding fathers would be a dirty liberal by the right wing of today. Even Nixon was a liberal by today’s standards. Universal Health Care? God what a travesty.

Anyone dumb enough to suggest we need to try a free market model of health care, please remind them that’s exactly what we have. And stop demonizing liberals, and the term liberal, as insurance companies astroturf you into thinking they are the maligned in this battle.

It’s been a little while after the whole super-bowl hoopla, but I’m still enjoying some of the advertising spill-over.  Every time I see some iconic and hilarious ad, I have to wonder, who is this for?  Who does the company think it’s going to rope in with this ridiculous and hilarious message?

A large part of advertising is just about exposure and how memorable you can be, but another part is completely focused on wooing in specific demographics.

The Droid phone ads are a classic example:  Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.

Have you ever heard a more ridiculously stereotyped plea to the male population?  Please, buy our phones.  They’ll make you more of a man.

As the first numbers come in from Droid sales, let’s see if it worked.  Not surprisingly, almost 80% of the Droid buyers are male.

It’s easy to look at such a statistic and laugh.  We all know about the effects of advertising, we’re just convinced that they apply to everyone but us.  We’re the rational choice kings and queens; they’re the stupid gullible masses.  The truth is, maybe it’s time we thought about the alternative.  Maybe it’s time the consumer became a little more informed and admitted the effect of the word “banana” on their patronage.

Have a look at this, then tell me what you think. It’s one of the most concise and convincing arguments I’ve ever heard (3 minutes of your time) for a fundamental change in today’s math education.

We all know what it’s like to look up at a Calculus teacher and say, “When will I ever use this?”  For some of us who want to go into higher math or hard sciences, the answer is:  “All the time.”  But for others, the answer is never.

Is it really a good reflection on our education system that we hold as a standard that which is useless?  I’m all for the availability of resources, but maybe the standardization should reflect a more general trend, rather than emphasize the need for something fairly specialized.  Other “genres” of math, like Statistics, are far more widely applicable to the average student.

Personally, I think Calculus is absolutely fascinating and even beautiful.  But I also think Jackson Pollock paintings are beautiful, and I don’t expect others to gain expertise in the matter.

Breakfast appears to be the latest victim of the economic downturn. According to a fascinating article by Washington Post writer Ylan Mui, polls have shown that Americans are either cutting back or skipping breakfast altogether when faced with economic turmoil.

Two fast food companies, Wendy’s and McDonald’s, have made changes to their operating strategy regarding the breakfast bust. Wendy’s recently cut their breakfast menu due to shaky sales, while McDonald’s started offering a dollar breakfast menu last month.

I would go with McDonald’s strategy over Wendy’s. Eggs are cheaper than beef, and coffee is almost entirely water; breakfast is easily the most profitable meal to sell. While breakfast meals account for only 25% of McDonald’s revenue, it makes up 35% of its profit.

Personally, I haven’t willingly woken up to eat an actual breakfast since Christmas morning. However, I am a little disappointed to hear that the productive part of America isn’t choosing to eat the most important meal of the day, as bacon lobbyists and concerned mothers everywhere claim.

The long-term effects of skimping out on Eggo waffles and coffee are unbeknownst to the author at the time of this writing, but I can only imagine American metabolisms are slowing down at a macro level. On the other hand, spring break is right around the corner. Maybe America just wants to lose those stubborn love handles.

Came across this gem on Digg.com and thought everyone could enjoy:

Whether we consider ourselves to be at the high end or low end of computer literacy, we can all appreciate just how fundamental the Internet is to our lives.  We laugh at the professors who say, “When I was a student, we had to dig through the card-catalogue at the library and carry home stacks of heavy books just to get the research for a paper.”  It just goes to show how incredibly wrapped up we are in the technology age, and how inadequately we can imagine living without its benefits.

A new study out from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project considers this dependence, and envisages the long term effects.  What will Internet life be like in 2020?  Let’s ask the experts.

Will Google make us stupid?  76% assert that human intelligence has been bolstered by the availability of immediate information processing, not diminished, citing reasons like equalization of access, the opening of new avenues of inquiry, and the validation of popular hunches; while 21% agree that web tools like Google may in fact be lowering human intelligence by presenting useless content and discouraging in-depth thought.

Will the Internet enhance and improve writing, reading and the rendering of knowledge?  65% agree that the Internet will clearly enhance these skills, citing reasons like increased access to writing resources, and the added bonuses of externalized memory; while 32% feel that the Internet in 2020 will endanger writing by emphasizing summary, numeric representations, and abbreviation.

At least it’s relatively encouraging to hear that the benefits side of things is highly recognized, despite much of the popular opinion.  But now that we’ve heard the experts, let’s find out what you think.