COLUMN: A curious look into a whole new world
In a statement that has made me nerd out hard, NASA has announced it will create a multidisciplinary team in order to continue its search for alien life.
44 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
In a statement that has made me nerd out hard, NASA has announced it will create a multidisciplinary team in order to continue its search for alien life.
It would seem that the Tulsa Police Department should consider creating an age limit to the officers on ?its force.
In a recent bid toward public health and safety, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced a plan that will cause thousands of Australian families lose thousands of dollars of childcare and welfare benefits if they ?refuse to vaccinate their kids.
I came across an article this week about how a museum at a small Japanese university is going to display pictures of WWII doctors performing dissections on eight United States airmen while they were still conscious.
I wrote a column before spring break about the necessity of taking vacations while we are in college.
In a true victory for free speech, the Indian Supreme Court declared this week arrests made for offensive content online were ?unconstitutional.
It’s that time of year again here at the illustrious Indiana University. The sun is coming out, the snow is melting and the constant scowl people sport all winter is beginning to fade.
Like many Americans, I was skeptical when I started to see e-cigarettes gaining traction in mainstream use.
I’m writing this at 4:39 a.m., and I haven’t slept yet.
A United States judge rejected BP’s appeal last Thursday to pay a lesser amount than the original civil fine of $13.7 billion for its involvement in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion.
I’m going to ask you a very important question right now, with a few follow up questions. Don’t worry if the first question doesn’t pertain to you — I still think you’ll get a kick out of this ?column.
With the increase in violence within Ukraine, President Obama is considering supplying weapons to ?Ukrainian government troops.
President Obama stated Sunday that the United States is working tirelessly to free an unnamed American woman who is being held as a captive of ISIS. According to the president, this woman is the last remaining American being held by the Islamic State.
In a statement that would confuse our caveman ancestors, India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar happily said Tuesday that the country’s plan to grow the tiger population is ?working. In just seven years, the tiger population has risen from 1,411 to 2,226.
It would seem Pope Francis is once again ?stirring the pot of controversy within the Catholic Church.
With the recent cyber attacks on Sony and the Pentagon’s Twitter feed, more and more Americans are wondering just how cyber-secure their country is. And rightfully so, as the 21st century continues to move online with no indication of stopping.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Finals week is almost here, and with it comes the question I hear every single year: Why do I have to learn this?This question has always bugged me, especially now that we’re all out of the educational hell-hole known as high school. In my mind, this hatred of learning cuts right to the center of what’s wrong with how people experience life. For me, learning is growth. If I know the same amount today as I did last year, I consider my year wasted. I’ve always been a voracious learner, doing my best to get my hands on knowledge I didn’t have, and it still surprises me most people aren’t this way.Aside from growing as a person, filling your brain with as much knowledge as possible has definite benefits. In a study of elderly subjects, researchers found that the more education a person received in his or her life, the easier they could deal with or stave off the effects of dementia in their later years.Basically, the more you learn now, the less time you’ll spend trying to relearn the names of your grandchildren.I understand the stress associated with so much learning can turn some people off to the idea of pushing themselves to learn. Believe me, I’m not much of a test taker.But think about it this way: The only way we as a society can continue to be relevant on the international stage is if we keep making ourselves smarter.Sure, you probably won’t need to remember that differential equation, and your future boss probably isn’t going to make you recite “Macbeth” for him. But as we go through life, we’re all going to be confronted with new ideas and technologies. We’re all going to have to change the way we think about things and how we view the world.The best way to practice that is to constantly push ourselves to learn more. — kevsjack@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Every year, my mom’s side of the family goes to Chicago on Black Friday. It’s been a family tradition that’s been going on for longer than I remember, and the reason we go has always been the same.We don’t go to get any special deals or to save money on our Christmas shopping, online shopping has pretty much taken care of that. We go to watch the crazy people claw and fight each other for things they probably can’t afford. It’s a yearly reminder for me of how hilarious and ridiculous consumerism can be. If you’ve never witnessed the opening of an Apple store on Black Friday, I seriously recommend that you do. Watching a 50-year-old woman spit in the face of another adult is a life changing experience. That’s not even the worst that Black Friday has to offer. In 2008, an argument in a Toys-R-Us resulted in a shootout, claiming the lives of both shooters. Think about that for a second. Two grown men shot each other to death over some plush doll their kids would have forgotten about a week after Christmas. These people who will do literally anything to save a couple dollars aren’t just crazy singularities that pop up now and again. They exist by the thousands. Every year I watch them snatch items out of each other’s hands and scream at the top of their lungs that they were here first. It’s like someone took a preschooler shopping. I get that times are tough right now for a lot of people. As someone who has to look at a single digit number in his bank account at the moment, I know what it means not to be able to afford the things I want. Tough times aren’t an excuse for some of the things that shoppers have done during the years. If you have to stampede over some poor Walmart employee to be able to pay for that new LED TV, you probably can’t afford it in the first place.Your kid isn’t going to hate you forever for not being able to buy him the exact toy he wants this year, and you aren’t going to die if you don’t get the new iPad Mini. Life is too short to spend 14 hours in a line so you can violently fight for stuff you don’t need. Believe me, it’s equal parts sad and funny to watch. — kevsjack@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s official. President Barack Obama has been reelected. It’s been a crazy campaign with way too much drama, and I’m happy to say it’s all finally finished.While I’m glad to see all the vicious campaign advertisements and political fighting finally stopping, I’m really ecstatic about being able to push people like Donald Trump back to where they belong — obscurity.If Trump’s rant on Twitter last week about Obama winning the election is a reminder of anything, it’s that money can’t buy intelligence.Before the ultra-liberal California was even called, Trump exploded his rage on Twitter about what he thought was the president’s win of the electoral college, but loss of the popular vote.He even went so far as to demand people to march in Washington, D.C., calling for some kind of revolution against the government.Of course, Obama went on to win both the popular and electoral votes, again showing Trump to be the reactionary ass clown he’s always been.But Trump wasn’t alone in his tirade against what was clearly a fair, democratic election. Detroit musician Ted Nugent also had some choice words for the president. He said America had committed “spiritual suicide” by voting for Obama. Personally, it’s a little hard for me to think of Nugent as a spiritual leader considering he adopted his 17-year-old girlfriend back in 1978 so he could keep having sex with her.But creepy pseudo-incest aside, I’m extremely happy to see useless commentators like Nugent and Trump slink back to their respective areas of expertise.Sure, Trump is going to keep waking up every morning with more money in his bank account than I’ll ever see in my entire life. Nugent will still be better at slaying the guitar than I’ll be in anything that I ever do.The only difference will be that I won’t have to listen to their half-formed reactionary political ideologies for at least the next four years. And to be honest, that means everything in the world to me.— kevsjack@indiana.edu
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Reaffirming my staunch cynicism in the human race, a Tunisian immigrant in Sweden robbed a man blind before leaving his unconscious body on the subway tracks last week.The victim, a Swedish national, had fallen on the train tracks in a drunken stupor. A camera caught robber Nadar Khiari robbing the victim and leaving him to die on the tracks. Thankfully, the victim only lost a foot, but this whole situation has made me realize how responsible we are for the people around us.Obviously, the victim’s drunkenness was his own fault. He made the choice to drink until he couldn’t stand, and falling on the tracks was completely on him. That doesn’t give Khiari the excuse to leave him to die.As a species, we’ve done quite well living in communities with other humans. As of 2008, more than half the world’s population lives in cities or towns. We like to live together, and it’s more than just human interaction that we crave. We live together in such large clumps because we want the community. We want the knowledge that when things go badly for us, someone will be there to help.Yes, we have firefighters and police to help out in extreme situations, but we expect even the most regular of people to help when they can.This is why Khiari has received so much national backlash concerning his actions.Khiari didn’t need to perform mouth to mouth or brave the fiery depths of a burning building to pull this man to safety. All he had to do was move the victim’s body about 12.5 inches to the left and call for help.Instead, he chose $600 over the life of a fellow human being.Thankfully, Khiari is being punished to the fullest extent of Swedish law on charges of theft. He has been sentenced to deportation after serving one and a half years. Hopefully, the extreme nature of Khiari’s actions continue to catch wind, and more countries enact Good Samaritan laws that require those around someone in mortal danger to help.We do have a responsibility for the people around us, one that they also have for us, and it’s this shared reciprocal altruism that has made society what it is.— kevsjack@indiana.edu