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(11/29/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU has no mascot. There is no furry dancing head, animal or character. There is no symbolic entity to rally behind, but I think this is a good thing.Most mascots represent their college in strange personifications of wildlife, culture or history ingrained within their campus. The problem is in the details. Native American culture and similar cultural groups receive media attention every year because an athletic team has created an offensive characterization of their heritage. While there is no characterization of a race or culture through the medium of a dancing, cheerleading harlequin will never receive praise from the people it’s meant to be characterizing.Although racism and stereotyping are both terrible things, I can’t help but think the most accepted and prevalent group of mascots, the animals, are what I find the most disturbing. The animals depicted are almost always sexualized, but in relation to human sexual dimorphism and not their own species. What if IU had a coyote mascot? According to popular mascot design, a female coyote would have lightly cupped breasts and noticeably peared birthing hips. A male coyote would have defined shoulders and arms, as well as a possible Adam’s apple. In both cases, no genitalia are exposed. If mascot culture were to portray accurate coyote sexual dimorphism, we’d have mascots all across the country wearing four separate tops for their four sets of breasts, and the male counterparts would simply lack those breasts unless genitals began to be depicted. What does it say about our culture when we cheer, shout and get excited at sporting events when we see a half-animal, half-human, sexualized but sometimes visibly castrated, cartooned mutant silly-dance to La Bamba between plays?It says there is something wrong with us.There has been discussion about creating a mascot for IU. Most suggestions involve designing a characterized version of a “Hoosier,” whatever that might be. I, for one, would rather the word “Hoosier” remain ambiguous. In this fashion, the student body, a constantly changing group of fans, remains the premier representative of school spirit. We are not dancing sex monsters. We are Hoosiers, and it should remain that way. — ktgragg@umail.iu.edu
(11/15/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During a class of mine, a student brought up a personal bias of his that I’d never heard before. The guy said whenever he sees a jogger, a cyclist, a weight lifter or any muscle-toned person, he can’t possibly imagine that person being any sort of an intellectual. This makes no sense. It’s been proven through multiple studies that student athletes tend to have a higher graduation rate than the rest of the student body and also tend to graduate with a higher GPA. Some might argue that student athletes have an unfair advantage in academics due to built-in academic tutoring programs that come with playing on the team or special treatment in the classroom and others might argue that grades in general are not accurate reflections of intelligence. So let’s forget about grades and University-tied athletes and focus on how exercise and proper diet has an effect on the brain. For one, exercising has a direct affect on neurogenesis, the process in which your brain produces new cells in your hippocampus, which is the place where memory and learning happens. Secondly, exercise increases the four chemicals that fight depression and have been proven to promote balance, which improves your mood: dopamine, endorphins, epinephrine and serotonin. Obviously the guy in my English class had no reason to discriminate against athletes, but more importantly he probably wouldn’t have made that mistake if only he’d taken the time to enjoy the 22 brains across Bloomington and the IU campus.If you’re not too busy exercising, studying or experimenting with recreational drugs, it might be a good idea to learn a little about your body’s central processing unit. The JBT Brains contain a potpourri of anatomy, art and fun facts guaranteed to rock your mind. The brains are brightly colored and more visually stimulating than the lights on the art building, not to mention you don’t have to sit upside-down to enjoy them. Of course, that’s not to say they are not enjoyable from an underside perspective. If getting high and putting your feet on stuff is your default way of enjoying things, then by all means enjoy the brains and shine on, you crazy diamond. Everyone should enjoy all of their brains. --ktgragg@indiana.edu
(11/08/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There is finally a product that transcends the vegan and cannibal border on the shelves of all your local supermarkets. It’s called Hufu, a tofu product that is designed to imitate human flesh in texture and taste. Except it’s not. Hufu was a practical joke played on the media back in 2005. The creator and owner, Mark Nuckols, claimed that you’d be able to order it off his website two months after the public announcement, but never actually created the product. Like many news stations and papers back in 2005, I was duped into believing the hype. I was ready to try it, but a fair amount of my friends were disturbed by the idea of possibly knowing what human flesh tastes like. I like eating all kinds of animals so naturally I was curious. A lot of people have admitted that in a survival scenario they might eat a leg or an arm, but I haven’t heard anyone admit that they might try it under less dire circumstances. Let’s say this: You’ve been accepted among a long lost tribe as one of their own. Maybe you’re an archeologist, maybe an Indiana Jones type or just a tourist who’s extremely lost. The tribe has the custom of eating just a morsel of their recently fallen in a ritual of respectful consumption under the belief that the energy of the dead is being returned to the living.It smells like barbecue, it’s covered in sauce, it looks like tenderloin and its name was Steve. Would you eat it?I would. Meat is meat. As an ex-biology major and somewhat of an outdoorsman, I’ve dissected and cleaned a large number of animals. The muscle tissue always looks the same because relatively the muscle tissues of all animals are created by the same processes. If it’s all relatively the same stuff then why are we so scared to try our own species? Or even a tofu alternative?I believe cannibalism is misunderstood through its negative association with tribes that the western world often labels as “savage.” Possibly even deeper than that is the common human assumption that Homo sapiens are greater forms of life. To eat another human would be immoral. This is an arrogant belief. I invite the invention of a Hufu-like product, not just because it would animalize humans to a more grounded and realistic self-image, but also because it has to taste better than tofurkey. — ktgragg@umail.iu.edu
(11/01/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Imagine if IU was a nudist colony. Imagine the students, the faculty, police officers and anyone else on IU’s campus naked as the day they were born. To some of you this may be an old nightmare, a fleshy childhood daydream that branded images of body hair and spider veins into the area of your brain that recalls adolescent tragedy, but I think we would greatly improve our community if clothes were removed from the picture. Like any university, IU is filled with students suffering from self-esteem issues. To battle this someone within the University has resorted to writing pick-me-ups on the Student Recreational Sports Center’s mirrors. After I’m done using the urinal, a mirror tells me to “love myself” and to “dig the skin you’re in.” Thanks, mirror.But instead of throwing optimism like salt on an old wound, I think it would be significantly more effective to treat the system that keeps the wound open in the first place. Nudity brings a significant handicap on one’s ability to manipulate their own body image. If people were less able to change how they look then they would be less likely to search for the things society has defined as “flaws,” leading to less shame, more acceptance and happiness with one’s body and less graffiti on mirrors. During the winter, we would have to bundle up to avoid hypothermia and rescue our nipples from hardening, but on the warmer days, we can naturally benefit from being exposed to the sun. Most have probably heard of at least one study about health issues caused by exposure to the sun’s rays, including sunburn and cancer, but the sun does more good than its given credit for. The body naturally produces vitamin D when exposed to the sun. In addition to promoting cell growth, calcium absorption and immune function, vitamin D has a major effect on the mental health of person. Those who are vitamin D deficient usually suffer from depression. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that places like Alaska, where people experience almost 24 hours of darkness during the winter, have some of the highest suicide rates.Let us dance the shameless dance of the naked people and celebrate this by exposing ourselves to the world and the sun. Let’s make our community a more intimate one by writing President Michael McRobbie and local politicians about the benefits of nudism. Don’t forget to include pictures.— ktgragg@indiana.edu
(10/24/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>With the recent success of “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory,” it has come to my attention that canned laughter still exists. This came as a surprise to me not because I’ve been oblivious for the past decade, but because I honestly thought with the success of shows like “The Office,” “Arrested Development,” “Scrubs” and others that deliver an innovative use of perspective, canned laughter would become obsolete. It didn’t. Why do we need someone to laugh with us? Shouldn’t the show itself be enough to make us laugh? It should be enough, but it’s not. Shows using canned laughter rely on a sense of familiarity to weasel their way into your living room. When examining shows that contain canned laughter, you can break them down into two categories:1. The family sitcom — usually a working-class family living in the suburbs. 2. The single friends sitcom — usually a group of five to six young attractives living in the city. The combination of the two categories spans a lifetime from childhood to young, single adulthood to older, family-oriented adulthood, creating a time with which everyone can relate. The categories also repeat a number of characters, such as the dumb and/or emotionally incompetent father, the mother desperately trying not to be like her mother, the ditzy boy- or status-obsessed sister, the ladies’ man and the dweeb of a younger brother.These societal memes allow the viewer to become instantly familiar with the show’s entire structure without watching a prior episode. The canned laughter also clues the viewer into the rhythm of when to laugh so they are instantly familiarized with their place within sitcom as an audience member. The illusion of an audience seems to create a sense of belonging to a defined group. This group skews the viewer’s perception of what is funny, favoring what is suggested to be funny. In effect, the viewers of these shows laugh at things that are not funny but are accepted as funny under the circumstances. It’s a trick. We’re tricked into wasting 30 minutes on the same repetition of jokes used since the first season of “Married with Children,” and we are still being made fools of today. The next time you hear canned laughter, remember someone is paid to laugh that way while you sit on a couch alone. Remember they’re not laughing with you, which means they must be laughing at you. Watch “How I Met Your Mother,” and remember you’re alone. — ktgragg@indiana.edu
(10/10/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The lesula, discovered recently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the first species of monkey found in 28 years.Although this discovery brings hope to the Western science front that there are still lost species to discover, nooks and valleys to explore and unknown fauna and flora to categorize, the discovery also marks a disturbing turn in the natural history of the lesula itself. Whether it likes it or not, this new monkey is now considered a new species and has formed a relationship with humanity, the abusive stepfather of the animal kingdom. Throughout time, man has broken in the backs of horses, branded cattle and murdered competing predators to the point of extinction.After we nearly destroyed the wolf population in North America, the deer population rose, but is it really doing better? Now, deer are hunted by station wagons and minivans, or worse, beer-drinking men who insist on a post-murder petting and photo shoot.And what does it say about humanity, observing the types of species that have benefited from our existence?Cockroaches, rats, mice and other vermin. The vultures, coyotes and parasites. All scavengers and freeloaders. We’re surprised when the media warns us of swine flu, avian flu or the newest deadly strain of pathogen, yet we helped cultivate the distinct environment that evolved these viruses and bacteria into super diseases. Make no mistake. We’ve created this imbalance, and now a new species has to suffer with us. So welcome, lesula! Welcome to ecological Hell. This will be your new home, and we are the masters.We are the ones who shifted the balance in the global environment so bad that not even our atmosphere is holding up, and we’re also the ones who either hunted all of your relatives, experimented on them or made them wear funny hats for tourists’ money. In all seriousness, I wish the lesula the best of luck, and I hope Western science will use this opportunity to shift the balance back a little, despite the fact it will be truly shocking if this actually happens.I hope this species receives the protection it’s been promised.Maybe its discovery will refuel a desire to conserve the rest of our planet before the damage becomes irreversible. We need to swallow our pride as masters of the animal kingdom and change our ways.But don’t take my word on it. Take the word of a massively influential Japanese philosopher, Yoshida Kenko.“You should never put the new antlers of a deer to your nose and smell them. They have little insects that crawl into the nose and devour the brain.” — ktgragg@indiana.edu
(10/04/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>We’ve all heard people say stuff like “I felt it in my heart,” “Oh, my heart goes out to those poor folks” or Hollywood’s favorite “You have my whole heart.”Yes, the heart has been glorified throughout history as a producer of passion, love and integrity, but the symbol doesn’t match what it symbolizes. This is a problem we need to recognize and rectify. When I was 7 years old, I watched a cow give birth on television. The calf was born with its organs on the outside of its body and flopped amidst the dust of the barn floor while the farmhands injected the mother with drugs. A farmer grabbed the calf by what I could only imagine was its shoulder.In my head I remember yelling, “Kill it! There’s no way it wants to live.” But no, he flopped the pile of organs onto his knee and pointed at a wet, black strawberry in a mess of veins and said, “Thas the heart, right thur.” Thank you, Discovery Channel. Thank you for literally pulling a clear definition of a heart out of a cow. Somehow that was the first real definition, up to that point in my life, that wasn’t fallacious. A circulatory device is just a pump that has nothing to do with love.So, how do we fix this? What should we put our hand on during the pledge? What should we fill with chocolate when we want to express to someone how desperate we are to see his or her genitals?Frontal lobes.This is a more suitable symbol for a plethora of reasons. For one, the frontal lobes monitor the balance of chemicals that determine most emotional states as well as act as the center for creating reasoned arguments. That’s right. Emotion and reason — two dogs that have never gotten along, and your douchebag brain keeps them in the same cage. Yet emotion and reason are two of the most mentioned characteristics of love. For example, “We have so much in common!” is a reason and “She makes me feel alive!” is an emotion. Let’s put our hands on our heads when we show love for our country. It’s not like we can look more stupid when we’re talking to a flag before baseball games. And let’s use our brains for once next Valentine’s Day by filling them with chocolate. Because it’s not like any of us really understand the tradition, and regardless of whatever thoughts you have to share with your significant other, they’ll never be as sweet as those little milk chocolates. — ktgragg@indiana.edu
(09/27/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Somewhere amidst the myriad of lies and misinformation, I was made to believe that the clothes I wore reflected something about myself, an assumption that’s safe to say most of us make every time we stand in front of a mirror. If this notion is true, however, then how did we evolve such vast and generalized styles of fashion?I think the answer to this can best be illuminated within the social world of the noblest of all domesticated fowl, the chicken. You see, the chicken’s world is very simple: There are roosters. There are hens. They procreate. Yet the relationship between chickens’ feathers and mating habits are eerily similar to the relationship between our clothing styles and interactions with the opposite sex. Let’s start with the rooster, or the “cock,” if you will. These kind of males wear bright and unusual colors and a number of attention-seeking accessories like earrings, chains and sunglasses with large red temples, much like a rooster develops brightly colored feathers. They also have large attention-grabbing crests and gizzards.Sometimes the rooster will be bred to develop nontraditional feather forms, or in other words, wear their feathers in strange ways. This development is very similar to the way males of our culture wear backside-exposing pants or popped collars.The “hen” has its own style as well.Most hens are virtually identical. The hens develop this through a genetically inherited lack of demand for attention, whereas females in our culture develop this through an extremely limited ideal of beauty. Probably the greatest implication of these two trends is the fact that both are the result of countless generations of inbreeding.In a way, you could argue genetics and fashion trends are eerily similar in the way they produce phenotypic traits or a worn style.When you look at multiple generations of hens you’ll see a repetition of similar gene expression, just like in female fashion, when trends like leggings keep repeating themselves. This is a result of inbreeding. Much like the chicken, we’ve reduced a beautiful creature — the fashion industry — into an overproduced and sexually exaggerated medium that consumes the very people for which it produces. I don’t think my clothes say anything about me, but I’ve acknowledged the fact that I can’t help but judge others by their clothes. What worries me is that I judge most of them to be inbred. — ktgragg@indiana.edu
(09/20/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Arguably nothing represents IU better than the national recognition it has received through its athletic events. Standing below the Memorial Stadium’s towering concrete walls, gazing up at the 40-foot photographs of iconic coaches and players, one is moved by the striking similarities to the gladiators of ancient Rome, the Coliseum and the crimson-embroidered pride that lifted the once expansive city-state forever into the history books as one of the most glorious civilizations to ever exist. And just like most of ancient Rome, there’s an orgy next door.Lately, IU’s orgy, otherwise known as the tailgating fields, has received public attention with a picture published on multiple college-themed websites.So what’s so important about the picture? To the untrained eye the picture may look like a guy fingering a girl in a third world country, but really the picture shows a young man and woman expressing their love through the most forbidden of handshakes, in broad daylight, next to a smiling, pointing girl, surrounded by empty beer cans, red cups and fellow tailgaters. Like it or not this picture has now become a nationally recognized symbol of IU and its fans. To most this might seem a bit disappointing, but let’s not be so quick to judge the young couple. I say we embrace them. Whether intentional or not, these two have made a political statement in the name of free love and in a sense have revived the idealism of 1960s counterculture and feminism and expanded it into the hearts of every IU student. These two lovers had the courage to stand up and say, “We will not subject ourselves to the tyranny of Puritanism that has plagued this country for far too long. We will express all two knuckles of our love the way we were born to, in public and unashamed!”I say, these two brave souls should be celebrated as liberators as well as teachers. Women, this young woman is the product of 50 years of feminism, a truly modern woman and the local symbol of female empowerment you’ve all been waiting for. Men, we could all learn to express our love like this man has, openly and unafraid. I believe that these two lovers have been sent here to lead a sexual liberation among the IU student body and possibly faculty and regardless as to whether you agree with that, I think we can all agree that one of the things this picture definitely shows is that IU and all its traditions bring people together in more ways than one.— ktgragg@indiana.edu
(09/06/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>They’re very strange when you don’t see the physical act creating them, when the room is dark and you haven’t the vaguest clue as to whether there are others around you.The short, wet smackings that occur between the deeper, thick-juice pops and the slurping, the eerie bubble gum chew like rhythm. All of it could easily be mistaken for an octopus wrestling a sweaty sausage.These are undoubtedly the sounds we associate with our deepest moments of intimacy, yet there’s a trend in nearly every sex or heavy kissing scene in nearly every film where these sounds are either edited out or barely audible.Turn on Netflix and watch the first sex scene you can find. You won’t hear make-out noises or grunts or watch the man fiddle with a condom for 10 minutes. You’ll probably hear orchestral music and see two people float all over each other in perfectly white sheets.Do not be mistaken. This is not sex. This is two heroin-induced opera fans rolling on one another and making strange faces.Real sex has all the musical finesse of a ketchup bottle being emptied onto a wet platter, all the dancing grace of dropping a ham on a waterbed again and again and again.How is it that every character on TV has the ability to have sex with all of their clothes on? Sure, the mechanical motion of it all is relatively simple, but you can’t just vaguely open a skirt and smoosh everything together. There’s a little more to it than that.Or how about the fact that every female character doesn’t go straight to the bathroom afterward? These girls must be getting urinary tract infections on the daily and that’s disgusting.Real sex can be smelly or painful. It can involve lots of stains or the release of gas and fluids. Mechanically, it’s a piston-based pleasure engine made of flesh and determination. And all that may make it sound a bit awful, but ask anyone who has had it, be it your parents, neighbors or cat. They’ll tell you it’s great.So, we don’t make love like swans in front of a sunrise. Who cares? Let’s hump like the stupid apes we are and enjoy it. — ktgragg@indiana.edu
(08/30/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>President Barack Obama, a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School and now leader of the United States, once said, “The reason I’m running for president is because I can’t be Bruce Springsteen.”Even Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., loves The Boss and made reference to the song “Darkness on the Edge of Town” in Tuesday’s RNC keynote.Many have speculated that Obama’s quote was made in jest, but I believe in the more reasonable explanation he clearly referred to was an age-old hierarchy of greatness, in which the title “President of the United States” is placed several tiers below Bruce Springsteen.I say this is the more reasonable explanation because, like Obama, I have often fallen short in my accomplishments when I am compared to Springsteen. In fact, all of us fall short, even you. If you are reading this article, you are likely an IU student, faculty member, alumnus or Bloomington resident. This means you most likely were not conceived through the amorous consummation of blue-collar values and rock ’n’ roll in the wastelands of Freehold, N.J. You most definitely did not rise from that wasteland in a denim jacket and red bandana combo that made Rosie the Riveter look like a fool. In comparison, you probably didn’t rise much at all.Yes, you might have accomplishments of your own — a beautiful spouse, a special talent, a job — but you must remember:1. Regardless of gender, Springsteen’s raspy voice and swinging man-hips can take that spouse away from you.2. Any talent you have is absolutely flattened by Springsteen’s ability to power-slide the entire working class into ecstasy-like states with the opening riff of “Glory Days.”3. Even if you worked your way up to be manager, owner, head chef or CEO in your career, Springsteen will always be The Boss.So, give up.Enjoy your “Glory Days” for what they are. You’re not famous, but, hey, you’re alright. It’s not like you need the fame and recognition, and you can’t handle his job.Just be proud you were “Born in the U.S.A.” where you can do what you can, to the best of your ability, even if it’s just “Dancing in the Dark.”— ktgragg@indiana.edu
(08/23/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Once upon a time in an education boardroom far too close to home, a group of teachers and administrators gathered to discuss how to mislead the youth. The most handsome of the group, a smelly toad-man with rakes for arms, proclaimed that there were no stupid questions.He claimed that any question asked was asked to gain more knowledge. He further claimed that the apprehension of more knowledge, despite its simplicity, was the basis of all education. The idea was a hit and the terrible rake-monster was awarded a gift card to Macy’s, where it bought lipsticks and fuzzy hats. However, the rest of the world was infected by an overwhelming increase of stupid questions that will never, ever end. Ever.Stupid, as in lacking of intelligence or common sense, is a perfectly appropriate adjective for a plethora of different questions. Here’s why. All questions reveal information on the asker. This information, be it assumptions, ignorance or evidence of a professional background, can logically be interpreted as stupid. This is especially true if revealed in the wrong situation to the wrong people. In other words, everything is relative, questions included. For example:In a crowded Wafflehouse in Payette, Idaho, I was once asked loudly, by what can only be described as a mud-river mama “Ain’t there lots of them blacks out there?” in reference to Indiana. This is a perfect example for a stupid question.It does three stupid things:1. It reveals the asker’s limited understanding of grammar.2. It exposes the asker’s own ridiculous belief that it’s okay to refer to an entire race of people like they’re a nasty flavor of Jellybean. 3. It was asked to a complete stranger, in front of complete strangers.Of course racism, a synonym of ignorance, is easy to attack, but rest assured there are many other stupid questions like asking police officers personal questions or philosophy majors political questions. Or asking the same question repeatedly like, “Do we have to use a condom? Are you sure? Do we have to use it?”Trust me, the answer doesn’t change and it makes you look stupid.If your professor this week encourages your class to participate by claiming that there are no stupid questions, tell him/her that they’re perpetuating an overgeneralized idealism that is as absolute as it is far from the truth. Then, ask them if they’ve ever paid to be spanked.— ktgragg@indiana.edu
(08/21/12 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I was reading an article about in vitro meat, which is grown in a lab, when it dawned on me that in vitro meat might be greatest new technology to exist in today’s world.First, if in vitro meat were mass produced, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would finally have a reason to be happy. For years, PETA has been portrayed in the media as habitual pessimists that nag and nag and nag at all the terrible things we do to animals. But if every slab of steak wasn’t akin to the violent murder of an otherwise gentle beast, PETA could finally breath a sigh of relief and develop ulcers from other things.Second, vegans could finally eat meat. The sample needed to produce meat could be taken from needle poke or a hair pull. Though the plight of the vegan is to save all animals from suffering, I don’t think they’ll mind the little prick required if the trade-off is hamburgers for all.Third, our atmosphere would see a great reduction in methane, offsetting the effects of global warming. Cows fart methane. Cows fart a lot. There are a lot of cows. If there were fewer cows, there would be fewer farts.Finally, and my favorite point of all, imagine the endless possibilities of what we could eat. If we can grow chicken, pork and beef in mass quantities, how long would it take until our supermarkets contained cuts of nearly every animal in the kingdom? I’m talking penguins, monkeys, lions, rhinos, pelicans and those cute little koala bears. Everything from every corner of the Earth could be floured and deep fried in your kitchen. Or how about that woolly mammoth we found back in 2007? Why couldn’t we make some steaks out of that? Better yet, could we take the soft tissue sample we found in a T. Rex’s femur and make it into meat? It could be possible.I guess the point I’m trying to reach here is that one day, maybe a Fourth of July, I want to grill steaks on my back porch, watching fireworks light while Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in The U.S.A.” plays on the radio.In that moment I don’t want to feel guilt about how some animal was murdered or worry about global warming or whether my meat has hormones or steroids in it. In that moment I want to taste barbecued dinosaur. And I bet that’s going to taste a little bit like freedom.— ktgragg@indiana.edu